MARCH 21

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MARCH 21 — 1861 Confederate VP Alexander Stephens gives Cornerstone Speech; 1947 Police find bodies of America’s most notorious hoarders; 1863 Edwin “Bullhead” Somner dies; 1980 Carter tells U.S. athletes of Olympic boycott in Soviet Union; 1963 Devil’s Island closes its doors

MARCH 21

1861 – Confederate VP Alexander Stephens gives his Cornerstone Speech in Savannah, GA.
In the speech, he says: “Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea (of the United States); its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science.” I’m not sure what science project Stephens was referring to that proves the negro is substandard to the white man.

I don’t know maybe he got a piece of white concrete and a Kobe Bryant bottle head and put them out in the microwave to see which one would melt first. I’m just guessing though. President Jefferson Davis didn’t care much for Stephens brutal honesty in this speech, even though this is how the southern slave-holding whites thought at the time.

1947 police find corpses of the collyer brothers.

Two of America’s most famous hoarders, Homer and Langley Collyer, had lived a secluded life in a brownstone on 2078 Fifth Avenue in New York, but now the smell of their rotting corpse was stinking up the neighborhood.

Homer and Langley didn’t start out with Collyer syndrome, or hoarding, or disposaphobia, or whatever you want to call it. Born in the 1880s, they were the elite of Manhattan; dad was a surgeon who died in the 1920s. Six years later when  mom died, Homer suffered a stroke and as a result lost his eyesight, so brother Langley had to quit his job of selling pianos to help Homer. That’s when the hoarding began.

He promised Homer that with patience and a good diet, he could get his eyesight back. He never left the house, but since they had money he ordered food to be delivered – 100 oranges, black bread and peanut butter. I’m guessing the oranges were trucked in from Florida, but I really have no idea. But the seclusion of these men seemed odd to an ever changing city of Harlem. People were wondering what they were doing with all that junk they were collecting.

Vandals and thieves would often try to break in, so Langley, who was an engineer, rigged booby traps around the perimeter of the house. They removed the doorknobs and wired the doors shut and reinforced all windows with metal bars. The newspaper collection grew, and grew, and grew. When the police came on this day in 1947, they would find themselves beginning a massive move of 120 tons of newspapers and other trash, along with an X ray machine, a horse’s jawbone, a baby carriage, and Lord only knows what else.

Since Langley fed Homer, he would maneuver his way through the house to get food, crawling through tunnels of newspaper stacked all the way to the ceiling. It’s believed that one of his own booby traps went off, collapsing the tunnel. Homer therefore never got his food, and died of starvation. Now his rotting body got the police to their place, and though it took several hours to dig through the clutter and crap, Homer was found, though Langley wouldn’t be found until several days later.

These days, it’s a pocket park. Check it out!

1980 One of the most, if not the most famous cliffhangers in season ending episodes on TV ever.

After this night in history we all began asking for the following eight months: Who Shot JR? One of TV’s original night time soap operas, Dallas premiered in 1978 and went through twelve seasons. It was a show about the Ewing brothers who owned the independent oil company Ewing Oil and the cattle-ranching land of Southfork. In the beginning of its airing, the show primarily focused on the marriage between Bobby Ewing and Pamela Barnes, whose families were sworn enemies of each other.

As the show went on, oil tycoon JR Ewing, played by Larry Hagman, grew to be the main character, was a scoundrel son-of-a-bitch that every Dallas viewer loved to hate. Dallas lasted an astonishing 357 episodes, making it one of the longest lasting full hour primetime dramas in American TV history, behind Bonanza (430), law & Order (456), and Gunsmoke (635 episodes). Time magazine called Dallas in 2007 one of the 100 best TV shows of all time, and Dallas spawned the spin-off show Knot’s Landing which began airing in 1979, which also lasted 14 seasons.

But getting back to the cliffhanger. The episode was aptly named “A House Divided” and at the end of the season finale Hagman’s character was waxed. America questioned all summer long Who Shot JR? It was a tough call since he had so many enemies. I mean that slogan Who Shot JR was on T-Shirts. The answer in the first episode of the next season, was delayyyyed due to the Screen Actors Guild strike. Just when you thought you’d find out! Finally we found out the culprit – Kristin Shepard, JR’s mistress and as well as wife’s sister. Dirty!

1863-The Death of Edwin Vose Sumner died.
Bull Head, as he was called, faught the Black Hawk war with distinction in the Mexican American War on the Wester frontier, and in the Easter Theater of the first half of the Civil War. He led the II Corps of the Army of the Potomac through the Peninsula Campaign, the Seven Days Battles, the Maryland campaign and the Battle of Fredricksburg. Legend has ie that a musket ball once bounced off his head.

1980-Carter tells US athletes of Olympic boycott. Why? Because the Olympics were in Moscow that year, why else.
At the time, the Soviet Union was invading Afghanistan and America responded quickly; by suspending arms negotiations with the Soviets, condemning the Russians in the United Nations, and boycotting the Olympics.

On this day, the Peanut Farmer met with about 150 US athletes and coaches to explain his decidion and told them, “I understand how you feel, but what we are doing is preserving the principles and the quality of the Olympics, not destroying it.”

The athletes actually didn’t take the news well at all. In fact marathon runner Gary Fanelli led a pack of runners for 15 miles wearing a shirt that Read The Road to Moscow Ends Here.

Although this did nothing to change Soviet politics in Afghanistan, or anywhere else for that matter, 65 other countries joined the Olympic boycott. On a side note, in 1984, the Soviet Union boycotted the Olympics located in Los Angeles due to chauvinistic sentiments and an anti-soviet hysteria being whipped up in the United States. A big whopping thirteen Soviet allies joined the boycott, including Iran and Albania. Believe me, they weren’t missed.

1963-America’s Devil’s Island closes its doors and transferred the last of its prisoners. During the 1950,s the prison known as Alcatraz, housed over 200 of the worst prisoners imaginable. The first prison to use metal detectors, Alcatraz was supposedly inescapable, being a mile and a half swim away from San Francisco. Nowadays, it’s a tourist trap. Check it out!

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