AUGUST 15 – 1899 Henry Ford goes to work; 1848 Hanchett patents dental chair; 1969 Woodstock begins; 1990 Mark McGuire hits 30th homer; 1979 Apocalypse Now released
AUGUST 15
1899 – Ford goes to work.
…Actually Henry Ford already was working, but it wasn’t on cars. He worked for Thomas Edison as chief engineer at the Edison Illuminating Company in Dearborn, MI. It was a good job that paid extremely well. But Ford was on call 24 hours a day making sure the city’s electric was running okay and didn’t have a lot of spare time to do what he really wanted, which was of course working on cars. He had already invented the Quadricycle in 1896 which had an n actual gasoline engine.
By resigning from Edison’s company, Ford gambled it all. He turned down a promotion that would have paid him $1900 per year. That was huge money at that time. But he turned it down on August 15, 1899, and got to work. He gathered together a group of investors, and established the Detroit Automobile Company. For the next few years, Ford tried competing with the 60 other automakers around the country at the time, and failed, got back up, failed again, got back up, failed again.
Finally a third time in 1903 Ford came up with the Model T, and Tin Lizzy got Ford’s business going ahead of the rest. These days you can check out the Edison Ford Winter estates in Ft. Myers.
1848 – M. Waldo Hanchett from Suffield, Hartford, CT, patents the dental chair by attaching a next extension to a four legged chair. It was made of wood, so it’s changed quite a bit throughout the years. In anti Vietnam news.
1969 – Woodstock begins. Groovy man! Peace, love and rock and roll. Beginning August 15, Woodstock Music & Art Fair took place on a dairy farm in Bethel, NY. Why a dairy farm? Because organizers John Roberts, Joel Rosenman, Artie Kornfield, and Michael Lang were unable to find a venue in the town of Woodstock in New York, so they found a dairy farm about 500 miles out of town. They were expecting around 200,00 people. Wrong!
Try a half a million. Not sure the little town of Bethel had ever seen such groovy and peaceful chaos. Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, the Who, Janis Joplin, Joe Cocker, Arlo Guthrie, Sly and the Family Stone, and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were just a few of the biggest bands at the time that played. According to Woodstock.com, Woodstock is known as one of the greatest happenings of all time and –perhaps- the most pivotal moment in music history. Joni Mitchell said, “Woodstock was a spark of beauty” where half-a-million kids “saw that they were part of a greater organism.” The rain and mud soaked the crowd!
Surprisingly there were very few violent incidents, with two casualties; one who got run over by a tractor, don’t ask, and another from a drug overdose. This countered the numbers of hippies who got pregnant during the event. The 25th anniversary of Woodstock wasn’t quite as peaceful, with bands such as nine inch nails, Green Day, and Metallica, featuring James Hetfield who got the crowd chanting Die Die Die Die Die during the song Creeping Death. Good times. Ah yes, Woodstock.
Four days of music… half a million people… rain, and the rest is history.
1990 Mark McGwire is the first to hit 30 home runs in each of his 1st four seasons
1979 – Apocalypse Now is released starring Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall and Martin Sheen. Winning!