AUGUST 16 — 1977 Memphis Headlines: Death Captures Crown of Rock and Roll; 1888 Happy Birthday Electra Webb (Shelburne Museum) 1892 Ernest Seyd accused of bribing Congress; 1965 Miami Dolphins become 1st expansion team in AFL
AUGUST 16
1977 — Here are the headlines: Sun: King Elvis Dead.
Daily News: Elvis Presley Dies at 42, Singer Suffers Heart Attack.
Memphis Commercial Appeal: Death Captures Crown of Rock and Roll.
Millions around the world was All Shook Up like a Heartbreak Hotel when Elvis would Return to Sender on this day in 1977. His addiction to prescription drugs had gotten the best of him.
Born January 8 1935, in Tupelo Mississippi, this Hound Dog was inspired by the gospel music he heard to enter talent contests, win the attention of an agent named Col. Tom Parker, and basically from there took the world by storm and had won fans burning love for him. He made his film debut in 1956 starring in Love Me Tender, and since he couldn’t act, was able to sing his way through the musical, upsetting critics and winning over fans.
His suspicious Minds wouldn’t let him set his blue suede shows on foreign soil however, as he only toured in the US and Candida. Many blame it on Parker, who was accused of being an illegal alien from Holland, even though he served in the U.S. military. On the 1st of May in 1967, Elvis married Priscilla Beaulieu, with whom he had his only child Lisa Marie, and then THE American Trilogy collapsed as Elvis said Are You Lonesome Tonight and divorced Priscilla in 1973.
But Elvis the Pelvis, the King of Rock n Roll, who shook his hips because Forrest Gump taught him that, was hitting the Vegas circuit during the 70sand his addiction to prescription drugs, as well as his waistline, grew larger than his rhinestone studded jumpsuit.
The Devil in Disguise wasn’t Stuck On You anymore, but rather His Latest Flame Ginger Alden, who would find him dead on his bathroom floor at 3:30 pm at Baptist Memorial Hospital, where doctors, even though It’s Now Or Never, couldn’t revive. At least 80,000 folks showed up to the King’s funeral procession, and he was buried next to his mother at Forest Hill Cemetery.
But when grave robbers tried to steal his body, I mean, c’mon man, the two gravesites would be relocated to Graceland, where over a half a million people still visit every year to this day. RIP, King Elvis!
1812 – Detroit falls to the British
…and Shawnees. Just a month prior, American General William Hull, a veteran of the Revolution, now 59 years old, led 2500 man army to the Detroit River and made camp at Ft. Detroit. He sent a strong message to the inhabitants of Canada, threatening that in so many words, Mr. Canadian inhabitant; the Americans are coming into y our country to fight the British and Indians, so stay out of the way. If you’re not part of the solution you’re part of the problem. I’m paraphrasing, of course. Big tough words and yet Hull was totally unprepared when the attack actually came.
On August 11th, when he saw a sea of redcoats and Indians yelling their battle cries, Hull panicked, and even though his army outnumbered his enemy, for some reason he raised the white flag and surrendered the city. By the 16th of August, the British and Shawnees took over Detroit. It would be another 13 months before future US President General William Henry Harrison could recapture the city. Hull meanwhile, after the war of 1812 was over, court-martialed for cowardice and neglect of duty in surrendering the fort, and sentenced to death. President James Madison however rever4sed the sentence due to Hull’s previous brave actions during the Revolution.
1888 – Happy Birthday Electra Havemeyer Webb, founder of the Shelburne Museum in Vermont.
When she was growing up, Electra (that’s her real name) her parents collect some seriously good stuff from Asian and European Countries. Very cool. But what about the American antiques? You know, those are pretty cool too! So Mrs. Webb decided to carry on her parent’s hobbies, only an Americanized version of it. In 1947, she opened Shelburne Museum, featuring the collection of collections as she calls it, an educational project, varied and alive according to the museum’s website.
Everything Americana she needed for the museum was already there up and down the east coast, houses, barns, schoolhouses, a jail, general store, lighthouse, you name it, the whole neighborhood is in the Shelburn Museum. I don’t mean miniature collections; I’m talking about actual real life buildings. The fact that she was married to a Vanderbilt no doubt helped her collection. It’s 39 buildings, and thousands of rooms on 45 acres. The collection is massive: dolls, tools, carriages, toys, furniture, American Indian artifacts, check it out. Happy birthday Electra!
1892– German bimetallist Ernest Seyd is accused of bribing Congress.
Born in Prussia, March 7 1830, economist Ernest Seyd immigrated to the US when he was young, then moved back to Europe, and in Paris during 1848 during the Revolutions against monarchies that started in Sicily a France to Germany, etc. He became a close advisor to the Bank of England, and when Germany went to a gold-only standard, and Seyd was credited for successful banking reforms in several European countries.
Meanwhile, America was reeling from the Crime of ’73, or the Coinage Act as it caws called, which I get into much more detail only September 13th ep, basically ended bimetallism in the U.S. and went on the gold standard.
During this time, Seyd was accused starting as early as 1877, with money from the Bank of England, to bribe key U.S. Senators and Congressmen to vote for a gold-only standard. Then on this day in 18922, statesman Ignatius Donnely, a.k.a. Frederick Luckenback supposedly produced a sworn statement that said the following: “when Luckenback dined with Seyd in 1874, Seyd had told him just that story.
At the time Luckenbach was selling mining equipment to silver miners in Colorado. The president of the State Silver League persuaded him to give the affidavit about what Seyd allegedly told him” But it didn’t make any sense. Seyd was a bimetallist who fought against the gold standard in Europe and in America, and went to the trouble of actually writing a 250 page book called Suggestions in reference to the Metallic Currency of the United States. It was veryincionsistent, and smelled like more fake news.
On May 1, 1881, Ernest Seyd passed away, and never really got to see himself exonerated from a blatantly false accusation.
In football news:
1862 – Amos Alonzo Stagg invents the tackling dummy. That’s not why he has at least two high schools named after him, it probably has more to do with his ability to bridge communities of sports and religious faith.
1888 – We lose a great American as John Pemberton passes away. He gave us Coca-Cola. Why? Because when he served in the civil war he was wounded and needed a painkiller. Like many wounded veterans, Pemberton became addicted to the morphine that was administered. Pemberton was a pharmacist and wanted to come up with an opium-free alternative to painkillers.
Through trial and error he came up with the delicious kola nut soda and sold it as a fountain drink as opposed to medicine. The name Coca Cola was coined by Frank Mason Robinson. Pemberton in life unfortunately never shook his addiction to morphine and died at age 57 on August 16, 1888.
1974—Let’s go sniff some glue. At a dive bar in Manhattan, Douglas Colvin, John Cummings, Thomas Erdelyl and Jeffrey Hyman, aka Dee Dee, Johnny, Tommy and Joey Ramone start belting out a new type of music that would change the world It was noisy, they couldn’t play more than three notes, they were terrible. They were so bad that across the Atlantic, bands like the Clash and the Sex pistols started forming. But the Ramones not only get credit for comingup with a new genre of music. If it weren’;t for the Ramones, we probably wouldn’t have Green Day, Nirvana, the Hives or the Strokes. We probably wouldn’t have had Metallica, as Kirk Hammett once said There were no standards after the Ramones. All you had to do would just be yourself. These guys did not dress like hippies like everyone else was doing. They wore jeans, leather jackets, and a big attitude. The Ramones everybody like a boss! In football news…
1965 –The Miami Dolphins become the first expansion franhise in the AFL.