October 19, 1946: The Rutgers-Princeton "Cannon War"

"Big Cannon," with Nassau Hall behind it

October 19, 1946, 80 years ago: Princeton beats Rutgers, 14-7 at Rutgers Stadium. An attempt to steal the cannon proves even more embarrassing for RU.

Rutgers University is in New Brunswick, in Middlesex County, New Jersey. (The stadium is across the Raritan River, in Piscataway.) Princeton University is in the town of the same name, in Mercer County. They are separated by 17 miles of State Route 27. In 1869, Rutgers beat Princeton in "the first college football game," in New Brunswick, hence Rutgers calls itself "the Birthplace of College Football."

Two cannons were left on the Princeton campus after the War of the American Revolution, although neither of them were used in the Battle of Princeton of January 3, 1777, as is often claimed. "Big Cannon" is located behind Nassau Hall in the center of the quadrangle there, called "Cannon Green," and "Little Cannon" is situated between Whig and Clio Halls.

For the War of 1812, Big Cannon was transported to New Brunswick to help defend the city against potential attack by the British, remaining on the Rutgers campus, where it was used for training during and after the American Civil War of 1861-65 by Rutgers cadets, until it was taken back to Princeton in 1875 by the "Princeton Blues," a local militia.

On the night of April 25, 1875, 10 members of the Rutgers Class of 1877 set out to take Big Cannon from Princeton. However, they were unable to move it, so instead they returned to New Brunswick with Little Cannon. Princeton responded with a raid on Rutgers, stealing some muskets, and the presidents of the colleges exchanged polite but demanding correspondence. Eventually, a joint committee settled the matter, and Little Cannon was returned to Princeton, escorted by the New Brunswick Police Chief. In other words, Rutgers was forced to cave.

On October 19, 1946, a contingent of Rutgers men slipped onto the Princeton campus, and again tried to steal the famed Big Cannon. This attempt was even more disastrous than the first. They attached one end of a heavy chain to the cannon and the other to their car, a Ford. Surprised by Princeton students and the police, they gunned the engine of the car so hard that the car, weighted down by the cannon, was torn in half. The Rutgers students managed to escape, but with neither the car nor the cannon.

This is what a 1946 Ford looks like.

This was not a little car.

On the eve of the annual Rutgers-Princeton game of 1971, Big Cannon was apparently "stolen" again. A 5-foot-deep hole was found where the cannon sat. Campus police were baffled that the cannon had been taken, given its extreme weight. After crime photos were taken, it appears that a hole had simply been dug next to Big Cannon, and the dirt from the hole used to bury it. The kind of trickery that New Jersey native David Copperfield would have used to make people think the cannon had "disappeared."

Reports appeared in the Rutgers newspaper, the Daily Targum, as well as nearby papers such as the New Brunswick-based Daily Home News, the Princeton Packet and The Times of Trenton. (Rutgers won the game, 33-18.)

With Rutgers having committed to "big-time" (sometimes written as "bigger time") football, and Princeton having committed to the smaller-time Ivy League, the schools haven't played each other in football since 1980, a 44-13 Rutgers win in Piscataway, although they still play each other in other sports.

Big Cannon at Princeton is routinely painted red by Rutgers students, particularly in the week leading to Rutgers commencement, as well as on other notable Rutgers dates. In November 2011, a group of Rutgers students who went to paint the cannon in Princeton brought a video camera with them and made a documentary about the tradition.

The footage became part of a larger project about the history of the Cannon War and its perception in the minds of current students today. The film, Knights, Tigers, and Cannons. Oh My!, by Zack Morrison, premiered at the New Jersey Film Festival in September 2012, and won the award for Best Student Film. 

October 19, 1901: Edward Elgar Debuts His "Pomp and Circumstance Marches"

October 19, 1901, 125 years ago: Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 and March No. 2 premiere, at Philharmonic Hall in Liverpool. The marches are conducted by their composer, Edward Elgar. Two days later, he conducts them again at Queen's Hall in London.

Elgar was born on June 2, 1857 in Lower Broadheath, Worcestershire, in the West Midlands of England. By the age of eight, Elgar was taking piano and violin lessons, and his father, who tuned the pianos at many grand houses in Worcestershire, would sometimes take him along, giving him the chance to display his skill to important local figures.

In 1879, he took up the post of conductor of the attendants' band at Powick Hospital, a psychiatric institution outside Worcester. In 1882, he became a violinist with a Birmingham orchestra. He married Alice Roberts in 1886, and they lived in her hometown of Great Malvern, outside Worcester. By 1892, his own compositions began to be performed. In 1899, his Enigma Variations made him world-famous.

Elgar took the phrase "Pomp and Circumstance" from Act 3, Scene 3 of William Shakespeare's tragedy Othello:

Farewell the neighing steed and the shrill trump,
The spirit-stirring drum, th'ear-piercing fife,
The royal banner, and all quality,
Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!

Pomp and Circumstance was written in 6 "Marches": No. 1 in D major in 1901; No. 2 in A minor, also in 1901; No. 3 in C minor in 1904; No. 4 in G major in 1907; No. 5 in C major in 1930; and No. 6 in G minor, which remained unpublished at his death on February 23, 1934, from colon cancer, at the age of 76.

The five original marches were dedicated to friends of Elgar's: The conductor Alfred E. Rodewald, the composer Granville Bantock, and the organists Ivor Atkins, G.R. Sinclair, and Percy Hull. He did not get a chance to make a dedication for March No. 6.

Pomp and Circumstance, March No. 1 includes the trio section "Land of Hope and Glory." It is the section that truly popularized the work, since it became the "Coronation Ode" for the Coronation of King Edward VII on August 9, 1902.

It is often known as "The Graduation March," and is played as the processional tune at many high school and college graduation ceremonies. It was first played at such a ceremony on June 28, 1905, at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, where the Professor of Music, Samuel Sanford, had invited his friend Elgar to attend commencement, and receive an honorary doctorate of music. Elgar repaid the compliment by dedicating his Introduction and Allegro to Sanford later that year.

At the time, Woolwich Arsenal Football Club were playing soccer in South London. In 1913, they moved to North London, and became Arsenal F.C. In 1979, having had to go to 4 replays in the 3rd Round of the FA Cup against Sheffield Wednesday, the last 3 of them on neutral ground at Filbert Street, home of Leicester City, Arsenal fans -- nicknamed "Gooners," after the team's nickname, "the Gunners" -- adapted Elgar's "Land of Hope and Glory" into this song:

We all follow The Arsenal

over land and sea!

(And Leicester!)

We all follow The Arsenal

on to victory!

The next season, after going to 3 replays of the FA Cup Semifinal against Liverpool, losing the Final to West Ham United, seeing Liverpool win the Football League title, and seeing Nottingham Forest win the European Cup, the Gooners redid the song again:

We hate Nottingham Forest!

We hate Liverpool, too!
(And Tottenham!)

We hate West Ham United!

But Arsenal, we love you!

October 16, 1946: The Nuremberg Executions & Gordie Howe's Debut

Göring, at the far left (or so to speak)

In the year 1947, America was able to do fun things again. In that year, we desegregated baseball, established network television, began watching Howdy Doody Time on said television, invented the microwave oven and the transistor, and began looking for UFOs.

But first, in 1946, we had serious work to tend to: Punishing Nazis.

October 16, 1946, 80 years ago: Ten Nazi war criminals, convicted of crimes against humanity, are executed by hanging at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, Germany. They included:

* Joachim von Ribbentrop, age 53, Adolf Hitler's Foreign Minister.

* Julius Streicher, 61, Nazi Germany's top propaganda publisher.

* General Alfred Jodl, 56, Chief of the Armed Forces, who had signed the surrender papers on V-E Day.

* Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, 64.

* Hans Frank, 46, Governor-General of occupied Poland.

You may have seen the "Hitler Rants Parodies," based on a scene from the 2004 film Downfall, starring Bruno Ganz as Hitler. Christian Redl played Jodl in that scene, and Dieter Mann played Keitel.

As for the other 2 Generals that Hitler had asked to remain in the room: Hans Krebs, played by Rolf Kanies, and Wilhelm Burgdorf ("Mein Führer, this is an outrage!"), played by Justus von Dohnányi, both committed suicide in the Bunker on May 2, 1945. Krebs was 47, and Burgdorf was 50.

Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, not named, also remained in the room. He committed suicide in the Bunker the day before. He was 47, and was played by Ulrich Matthes. Also not named, but remaining in the room, was Martin Bormann, head of the Nazi Party Chancellery. He escaped on May 2, but saw the Soviets closing in, and committed suicide. He was 44, and was played by Thomas Thieme. SS leader Heinrich Himmler committed suicide in British custody on May 23. He was also 44. He did not appear in the scene, but did appear in the film, and was played by Ulrich Noethen.

Not among the condemned, but scheduled to be so, was Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, the highest-ranking Nazi official to have survived V-E Day. He had made an appeal, asking to be shot as a soldier instead of hanged as a common criminal, but the court refused. So he committed suicide with a potassium cyanide capsule the night before he was to be hanged. He was 53. He also was not in the scene, but was in the film, played by Mathias Gnädinger.

October 16, 1946 was a Wednesday. Actress Suzanne Somers was born.

With the World Series having ended the day before, with the St. Louis Cardinals beating the Boston Red Sox in Game 7, there was only one sporting event on this day. And it is the NHL debut of Gordie Howe. The 18-year-old native of Floral, Saskatchewan wore Number 17, instead of the familiar 9 that he will start wearing the next season. The right wing scores against Walter "Turk" Broda, and the Detroit Red Wings play the Toronto Maple Leafs to a 3-3 tie at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit.

The goal will be the 1st of 786 that the man who becomes known as Mr. Hockey will score for the Wings, going on to win 4 Stanley Cups and becoming the greatest player the game has ever known, and I don't want to hear about no Number 99: Gordie was better. We lost him in 2016, at the age of 88.

October 16, 1901: Booker T. Washington at the White House

October 16, 1901, 125 years ago: Fresh off the publication of his memoir Up from Slavery, Booker T. Washington, leader of what is now Tuskegee University in Alabama, is invited by President Theodore Roosevelt to have dinner with him at the White House.

The South was outraged. The Memphis Scimitar called it "the most damnable outrage which has ever been perpetrated by any citizen of the United States." Senator Benjamin Tillman of South Carolina -- known as Pitchfork Ben for his declaration as Governor that, while Grover Cleveland was President, Cleveland "is an old bag of beef, and I am going to Washington with a pitchfork and prod him in his old fat ribs" -- said, "The action of President Roosevelt in entertaining that (N-word) will necessitate our killing a thousand (N-word)s to get them back in their places!"

Today, outside of their respective home States, Theodore Roosevelt and Booker T. Washington are remembered, while Ben Tillman is not. And if the Memphis Scimitar, and its successor the Memphis Press-Scimitar, are remembered today, it is for the August 17, 1977 headline, "A Lonely Life Ends on Elvis Presley Boulevard." The combined paper folded in 1983.

No record of what was said at the dinner has surfaced, but in 1903, composer Scott Joplin wrote his 1st opera, A Guest of Honor, speculating about the subject.

Sheik, Russia and Roll!

To the tune of the 1954 rhythm & blues classic "Shake, Rattle and Roll," the "cleaner" (but no less sexist) Bill Haley version rather than the original by Big Joe Turner:

Get out to that rally, and rattle those MAGA fans.
Get out to that rally, and rattle those MAGA fans.
And don't let 'em know that you're Vlad Putin's man.

I said, Sheik, Russia and roll!
I said, Sheik, Russia and roll!
I said, Sheik, Russia and roll!
I said, Sheik, Russia and roll!
Well, you never do nothin', but shake America's soul!

Wearin' those blue suits, your hair done up so weird.
Wearin' those blue suits, your hair done up so weird.
And Mohammed bin Salman is glad your checks have cleared.

I said, Sheik, Russia and roll!
I said, Sheik, Russia and roll!
I said, Sheik, Russia and roll!
I said, Sheik, Russia and roll!
Well, you never do nothin', but shake America's soul!

I'm like a bug-eyed cat, screamin' in a groc'ry store!
I'm like a bug-eyed cat, screamin' in a groc'ry store!
You said you'd stop inflation, but it's still growin' more!

I believe you're doin' us wrong, and now I know
I didn't have to change this verse, and now I know:
The more I work, the faster my money goes!

I said, Sheik, Russia and roll!
I said, Sheik, Russia and roll!
I said, Sheik, Russia and roll!
I said, Sheik, Russia and roll!
Well, you never do nothin', but shake America's soul!

Sheik, Russia and roll!

October 15, 1986: The Mets-Astros Death Struggle

October 15, 1986, 40 years ago: Desperate to win Game 6 of the National League Championship Series at the Astrodome, the Mets do not want to face Houston pitcher Mike Scott – a Met-killer both as a Met and an Astro – in a Game 7, especially in the Astrodome, where Scott is far better than he is on the road.

The Mets use that sense of desperation to score 3 runs in the top of the 9th to force extra innings. In the 14th, the Mets make their first bid to win. After Gary Carter opens with a single, a walk to Darryl Strawberry puts 2 runners on with nobody out. After Knight forces Carter at 3rd, Wally Backman drives a single to right. When Kevin Bass' throw to the plate sails high over Alan Ashby's head to the screen, Strawberry scores.

But with 1 out in the bottom of the 14th, and the Houston fans with their heads in their hands, Billy Hatcher shocks everyone with a line-drive home run off the left field foul pole. It was the 1st earned run allowed by the Mets bullpen in the entire series. Hatcher went 3-for-7 in the game, and his homer meant the Astros would be kept alive for at least one more inning. (This presaged his heroics in the 1990 World Series.)

Both teams fail to score in the 15th, and the game goes to the 16th inning, the most innings in baseball's postseason history at that time. The Mets appear to take control of the game once again, this time coming up with 3 runs in the top half of the inning. The rally begins with Strawberry receiving a gift double when Hatcher and Bill Doran misplay his towering fly ball with 1 out. When Knight follows with a single to right, a poor throw to the plate by Bass allows the tiebreaking run to score, just as it had in the 14th. Jeff Calhoun then relieves Aurelio Lopez and uncorks a walk, two wild pitches, and a single by Lenny Dykstra to bring in 2 more runs, putting the Mets up 7–4.

But as they had in the 14th, the Astros refuse to go down without a fight in the bottom of the 16th. Jesse Orosco strikes out Craig Reynolds to open the inning, but a walk and 2 singles later, Houston has a run in and the tying run on base. Orosco induces Denny Walling to hit into a force play at 2nd for the 2nd out, but Glenn Davis singles home another run, bringing the Astros within 7-6.

The tying run is on 2nd, the winning run on 1st – a run that Met fans do not want to allow to score. So damned smug all season long, Met fans are now are freaking out over the possibility of facing Scott in the Dome in Game 7, and their magnificent 108-win season, their "inevitable" World Championship, going down in flames.

But Orosco strikes out Bass, ending the game. He throws his glove in the air, foreshadowing the end of the World Series. As the pitcher of record when the Mets took the final lead, he is was awarded the victory, marking the 1st time in postseason history that a reliever won 3 games in a series.

Despite a .189 batting average, the lowest average ever recorded by a winning team in a postseason series to that point, the Mets have their 3rd National League Pennant. Until 2015, it was the only one they'd clinched on the road.

My Grandma watched Major League Baseball for about 75 years, first as a Dodger fan in Queens and Newark, then as a Met fan in the New Jersey towns of Belleville, Nutley and Brick. I asked her once what her favorite game of all time was. This is the one she chose, without hesitation.

I can't say that I blame her. It wasn't a "heavyweight title fight," with big punches going back and forth. It was more like a middleweight or welterweight fight, with lots of jabs, until finally one fighter finished off a "death of a thousand cuts" and the other fell. It was an epic.

How epic was it? In 2010, the MLB Network listed this game at 5th on their list of MLB's 20 Greatest Games -- limited in scope, due to the availability of surviving videotape, to 1975 onward.

*

October 15, 1986 was a Wednesday. The same day, after being down 3 games to 1 in the ALCS, the Red Sox complete one the greatest comebacks in Playoff history by defeating the California Angels 8-1 to win the American League Pennant.

The game caps yet another heartbreaking failure for Angels skipper Gene Mauch‚ who in Game 5 was 1 strike away from reaching his 1st World Series in 25 seasons as a major league manager. He had previously been a part of the Phillies' collapse in 1964, a tough last-weekend Division loss for the Montreal Expos in 1980, and the Angels' 2-games-to-none choke against the Milwaukee Brewers in 1982. No manager ever managed longer without winning a Pennant. After the game‚ 2nd baseman Bobby Grich retired after a fine career with the Orioles and Angels.

The Angels' inability to win a Pennant was beginning to be called "The Curse of the Cowboy." Gene Autry, Western movies' "Singing Cowboy," was their 1st owner, and still owned the team at this point. There seemed to be no reason why he would put a curse on his own team, but maybe he was the one who was cursed.

In the midst of the illness that would end his life the next year, Autry sold the Angels to the Walt Disney Company in 1997. Disney changed the team's name to the Anaheim Angels. The team finally won their 1st Pennant in 2002, and then won the World Series, ending the curse. But maybe they've started a new one: They've been to the Playoffs a few times since, but still have only the 1 Pennant.

The Mets and Red Sox winning Pennants on the same day -- with the Sox having beaten the Yankees out for the Division en route to doing so. This was a bad day to be a Yankee Fan, and the Yankees weren't even directly involved. Over the next 12 days, it would get worse.

October 15, 1966: The Black Panther Party Is Founded

Bobby Seale (left) and Huey Newton

October 15, 1966, 60 years ago: The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense is founded in Oakland, California, by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. Its core practice was its open carry patrols. That is, the open carrying of firearms, calling the patrols "copwatching," designed to challenge the excessive force and misconduct of the Oakland Police Department.

From 1969 onward, the party created social programs, including the Free Breakfast for Children Programs, education programs, and community health clinics. The Black Panther Party advocated for class struggle, claiming to represent the proletarian vanguard.

In 1969, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover described the party as "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country." The FBI sabotaged the party with an illegal and covert counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) of surveillance, infiltration, perjury, police harassment, all designed to undermine and criminalize the party.

The FBI was involved in the 1969 assassinations of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, who were killed in a raid by the Chicago Police Department. Black Panther Party members were involved in many fatal firefights with police. Newton allegedly killed officer John Frey in 1967, and the Party's Minister of Information, Eldridge Cleaver, led an ambush in 1968 of Oakland police officers, in which two officers were wounded and Panther treasurer Bobby Hutton was killed.

Cleaver's collection of essays, Soul On Ice, was published in 1968, and was practically a sacred text for what became known as the Black Power movement. However, while many found the movement, and the Black Panthers, to be liberating, the book's essays were written in prison, and included details of the crimes that put him there. Cleaver was an excellent writer, but, at the time, he was not a good person.

Party membership peaked at around 5,000 in 1970, and gradually declined over the next decade, due to vilification by the mainstream press, and infighting, largely fomented by COINTELPRO. The Party dissolved in 1982.

Newton was murdered in Oakland in 1989, by another black activist. Cleaver became a Mormon and a Republican, and died of cancer in 1998. Seale, who became one of the Chicago Eight, is still alive. If he is still alive next Thursday, he will reach his 90th birthday.

What would all of today's white right-wing "open carry" advocates say if they saw a bunch of military-looking black men with big guns on the streets? Probably, "Mommy!"