"Man is a history-making creature who can neither repeat his past nor leave it behind." - W.H. Auden
This Week in History presents summaries of a few selected historical events for each calendar week of the year.
September 14 - Earth invades the moon (1959)
Fortunately the lunar man-bats of the Great Moon Hoax didn't actually exist when their rude neighbors smashed a probe onto their planetoid on this day in 1959. They probably would have resented our alien invasion and we might have started an interplanetary war.
As it was, the Cold War was in full swing and the United States and the Soviet Union were in a race to become not just superpowers but extraterrestrial powers. Russia's successful launch in 1957 of Sputnik, the world's first satellite, sent our nation into a tizzy. The public demanded what our leaders already were themselves demanding of the scientists: a space race to match the Soviet satellites and eventually to land an American on the moon before the dreaded commies could claim Luna as Soviet territory.
Luna 2 space probe
The next Soviet feat came when their space probe,
Luna 2, was launched on September 12, 1959. Unlike a satellite, it was meant to take observations and measurements for a short time, destined to be destroyed on impact when it reached the moon. After a 33 hour flight of 240,000 miles, it crashed into the lunar surface near the Sea of Tranquility on September 14. Mankind had just made its
first contact with another world.
The Soviets continued to score points in the space race when they launched the first human into orbit in 1961. However, the Americans were close on their heels and President Kennedy promised us that Americans would land on the moon by the end of the decade. That promise seemed possible when just weeks after the Russian manned spaceflight, Alan Shepherd blasted off in a suborbital flight as part of the Mercury program. American pride was restored when John Glenn went into orbit in 1962.
The Gemini program, with 2-man crews, followed and kept the race on. NASA had the technological edge with the Apollo program and it's 3-person capsules and modular designs that would allow a separate lunar lander to descend while its "mothership" remained in lunar orbit. As every schoolchild learns, Neil Armstrong set foot on the surface of the moon on July 20, 1969, broadcast to the entire world live on television. More than 600 million people tuned in to see what is arguably the most amazing event in human history. Even the Russians at their space center viewed and cheered, feeling a solidarity as humans rather than nationalist competitors. As Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov put it, "Everyone forgot that we were all citizens of different countries on Earth. That moment really united the human race."
President Kennedy's promise had not been hollow: the space race had been won by Team USA.
Keep reading below the orange historical marker about more events during the third week of September.
September 15 - An icon is born (1954)
For decades, Hollywood had enjoyed tremendous success through the tight control of its studio system. One of the key elements of the system was creating motion pictures entirely "in house," using actors, directors, writers, and other creative and technical people all contracted to work exclusively for one studio. In the late 1940s, the system began to collapse and Hollywood needed another strategy for success.
It found it with the star system. Rather than churning out enormous numbers of movies each year, made relatively cheaply in-house, it would concentrate on fewer films driven by big names: producers, directors and, above all, movie stars.
One of the biggest stars who ever graced the cinema was Marilyn Monroe. The radiant actress was one of Hollywood's most bankable talents, guaranteed to draw in moviegoers and ensure that any film she was in would be profitable. Still under contract to 20th Century Fox in 1954, Marilyn was chosen to star in their adaptation of a Broadway play, the romantic comedy The Seven Year Itch.
Marilyn posing for photographers in NYC
The studio wasn't going to just count on the public's infatuation with the lead actress. Executives decided to generate advance publicity for the film and whip up the fans' adoration. Like most movies of the era, it would largely be shot on a
sound stage. But for one scene, the cast and crew went on location to New York City and welcomed reporters and fans to watch.
Marilyn's fans were not deterred by the middle-of-the-night shooting schedule. More than two thousand of them flocked to see the world's most glamorous star. They were joined by 150 photographers who snapped away as Marilyn posed and re-posed the soon-to-be famous scene.
That scene is recognized the world over. Marilyn is standing on a sidewalk above a grating. A subway train passes underneath and the wind blows her skirt up. Marilyn laughs and the most iconic image of cinema ever is born on this day in 1954.
The legendary white dress ultimately ended up in Debbie Reynold's private collection of Hollywood memorabilia. It was sold at auction in 2011 for 5.6 million dollars.
Thanks to that dress, inspired cinematography, and her natural talent for expressing the perfect emotion for the moment, Norma Jeane Mortenson was immortalized as Marilyn Monroe, the quintessential goddess of the silver screen.
September 16 - The biggest Black Friday ever was on a Saturday (1893)
Black Friday. It brings images of chaos and unbridled covetousness, of crazed people trampling each other in order to seize a bargain. The unruly tumult of sales on the day after Thanksgiving may shock us, but the furious and riotous race for a bargain in the 19th century makes a Walmart sale mob look tranquil.
On this day, in what is now northern Oklahoma, a cannon fired at the stroke of noon and soldiers stationed along the 60-mile border echoed the sound along the line by firing their own pistols. The Cherokee Outlet land run of 1893 had begun.
More than a hundred thousand land-crazed settlers set off on a pell-mell race to stake a claim to their own 160-acre parcel. Horses, wagons, bicyclists, hikers and even trains poured across the starting line in a madcap frenzy. As if the stampede wasn't perilous enough, there were only 42,000 parcels available, ensuring that both chicanery and violence would be in abundance. Memoirs and eyewitness reportage tell of threats, beatings, and bribery to pluck the right to a desirable plot from its original claimant. Prior to the land runs, Congress had wisely forbidden the sale of liquor in Oklahoma or there likely would have been even more and worse conflicts.
Start of the Oklahoma land rush
Another form of violence and chicanery had preceded the land rush. The Cherokee nation had been forcibly relocated from their home in the southeastern U.S. to Indian Territory (now in Oklahoma) in 1838, in the anguishing and deadly ordeal commemorated as the
Trail of Tears. Promised that these new lands would be theirs in perpetuity, they soon found out that "forever" actually meant a scant few decades or so. White settlers, pioneers, and ranchers continuously pushed to open up more western lands and politicians were happy to oblige.
Through various homestead, Indian territory and other acts, the federal government whittled away at the new Cherokee and other Native American homelands. The reclaimed acreage was typically offered as homesteads to white settlers on a first-come, first-served basis in a race-for-the-best contest. All in all, there were five land runs between 1889 and 1895, of which the 1893 Cherokee Outlet rush was the largest, not only in the U.S. but the largest ever in the world.
Although everyone was supposed to start at the same time, it didn't work out that way. Surveyors, Indian agents, marshals and other officials had a head start by already being inside the homestead lands before the races began and laid claim to choice parcels. At some points in the starting lines, troops were unable to hold back the eager homesteaders and crowds broke through. Those who, one way or another, staked their claims "too soon" were the foundation for the moniker now bestowed on all Oklahomans: Sooners.
September 19 - The Russians are coming, the Russians are not coming ... to the Magic Kingdom (1959)
By the late 1950s, tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union were high. Europe had been divided up into spheres of influence to neither side's satisfaction and Berlin was a focal point of irritation. President Eisenhower invited Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet premier, to meet with him at Camp David in an effort to improve relations.
The Soviet leader accepted the invitation and furthermore opined that he would like to spend a couple of weeks touring America in the first visit to our country by any leader of the USSR. The administration agreed and during his 12-day stay in the U.S he crisscrossed the country with stops in New York City, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, and Coon Rapids (Iowa), among others.
The famously temperamental premier had outbursts of indignation at nearly every destination but it was his visit to Los Angeles that triggered his wildest tantrum. The reason? He wasn't allowed to visit Disneyland, that famous shrine to American capitalist frivolity which, according to his Marxist theory, Khrushchev should have scorned.
On this day in 1959, Khrushchev landed in the City of Angels and was feted at a luncheon at 20th Century Fox. There he mingled with such celebrities as Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Tony Curtis, Ginger Rogers, Gary Cooper, Janet Leigh and dozens more of Hollywood's top stars. During the festive repast at the studio's famed Café de Paris, the premier was informed that his request to visit the Magic Kingdom had been rejected due to concerns about the ability to guarantee his safety.
Khrushchev was livid. Even though the head of his own security detail, General Serov, had agreed with American officials that the risks were too great, the Soviet leader smelled a capitalist plot against him. During his post-lunch speech, he decried the decision in over-the-top style:
And just listen — just listen to what I was told — to what reason I was told. We, which means the American authorities, cannot guarantee your security if you go there. What is it? Is there an epidemic of cholera there or something? Or have gangsters taken over the place that can destroy me? Then what must I do? Commit suicide? This is the situation I am in — your guest. For me the situation is inconceivable. I cannot find words to explain this to my people.
Khrushchev was somewhat mollified by the alternate entertainment of visiting the set of the musical
Can Can where he was charmed by its star, Shirley MacLaine. But when preparations were complete and the filming began, so did trouble. The scene was probably the most
risqué of the whole movie, with a stage full of scantily dressed young starlets dancing wildly and culminating with a male dancer diving beneath Shirley MacLaine's dress and emerging with her red panties.
The Soviet visitors were shocked. Such antics would never be permitted in the cinema of their homeland. Khrushchev denounced the film as pornographic, undoubtedly aligning with his people's view of the decadent West. America's greatest claim to global recognition, the artistic endeavors of Tinseltown, had failed to impress. There's just no accounting for taste.
The Soviet leader was probably indulging in flamboyant rhetoric when he said,
But just now I was told that I could not go to Disneyland. I asked: 'Why not?' What is it, do you have rocket-launching pads there? I do not know.
Nevertheless, we can speculate that after being forbidden from visiting the home of Mickey and Chip 'n' Dale, Premier Khrushchev returned to the Kremlin and whispered to his pet goldfish, in a
Boris Badenov voice, "Natasha, vee must infiltrate zecret base of mouse and squirrels."
And that's the news for this week in history. Goodnight, and have a pleasant tomorrow.