December 4, 1935: Swastikas Over White Hart Lane

The Swastika flag can be made out,

in the upper-right corner of the photo.

December 4, 1935, 90 years ago: The national soccer teams of England and Germany play each other at White Hart Lane in Tottenham, Middlesex, a northern suburb of London. The match is surrounded by controversy.

That had not been the case the 1st time the teams played each other. On May 10, 1930, at the Poststadion in Berlin, with Germany governed by the Weimar Republic, there were no incidents, and the game ended in a draw, 3-3.

But in 1933, the Nazi Party took power in Germany. Their oppression of the nation's Jews, for blaming them for Germany's defeat in World War I, caught the attention of the world. And so, when a 2nd football match between the countries was set for England, many people worried about what Germans, traveling to watch their team play, might do to English people they perceived as Jewish.

To make matters worse, the chosen venue for the match was White Hart Lane, in Tottenham. Until a 1963 Act of Parliament redrew the boundaries of England's Counties, Tottenham was part of Middlesex. Effective January 1, 1965, it would be a part of London, as would parts of Kent and Surrey, while Middlesex was eliminated entirely.

Fans of Tottenham Hotspur, or "Spurs," the team playing home games at The Lane, have always claimed that "North London is ours." It's never been true: Arsenal, 4.7 miles away, and officially within London since 1913 (even though White Hart Lane never moved following its opening in 1899), have always been the more successful team.

Why did the choice of venue make things worse? Because Tottenham has long been thought of as a Jewish area of London, and "Spurs" a "Jewish club." It's not true: Their local area does not have a noticeably larger percentage of Jewish residents than most of London.

Nevertheless, their fans have accepted this identity, flying Israeli flags, and even using an anti-Semitic slur (which I won't use here) for the name of their hooligan firm. Fans of other London teams, including (regrettably) Arsenal, East End team West Ham United, and West London team Chelsea have also used slurs and anti-Semitic tropes against them.

It had been rumored that 8,000 Germans were traveling to London for the match, and trouble was feared. In fact, none of the Germans among the crowd of 54,164 is known to have caused any trouble. Still, the photographs showing the Nazi Swastika flag flying over White Hart Lane, as well as the English Cross of St. George and the British Union Jack, was jarring.

Germany wore white shirts. England, wearing blue, fielded this lineup:

* Goalkeeper, Henry Gibbs, of Birmingham City.

* Right back, George Male of Arsenal.

* Left back and team Captain, Eddie Hapgood of Arsenal.

* Right half, Jack Crayston of Arsenal.

* Centre half, Jack Barker of Derby County.

* Left half, John Bray of Manchester City.

* Outside right, Stanley Matthews of Stoke City.

* Inside right, Horatio "Raich" Carter of Sunderland.

* Centre forward, George Camsell of Middlesbrough.

* Inside left, Ray Westwood of Bolton Wanderers. And...

* Outside left, Cliff Bastin of Arsenal.

If 4 Arsenal players in the starting lineup seems excessive, let the record show that Arsenal had won the last 3 Football League titles, and that the 1934 match against Italy known as "The Battle of Highbury," at Arsenal's stadium, had 7 Arsenal players.

As The Times of London reported, the game was not much of a contest. I have left the account as written, with no changes of spelling or grammar:

England beat Germany at White Hart Lane yesterday by three goals to none. The football was naither as interesting to watch nor as perfect in technique as it might have been, but the afternoon was a great success for at least two reasons. First, the game was played throughout in the friendliest of spirit ; and, secondly, after a morning of heavy and persistent rain, the sun came out, and both the players and the spectators had far better conditions than they could have expected three or four hours before the kick-off.

Germany were fortunate in that the margin against them was not bigger, and it would be flattery to pretend otherwise...

England's one goal came when Camsell was given a pass which sent him racing through in the inside-left position, and his shot, taken from an extremely acute angle, could not be stopped...

First a movement down the left wing begun by Hapgood ended with Bastin centreing across for Camsell to head into the net, and then some splendid football by Bastin, who had worked into the centre, led up to Camsell, who had run over to the left, to return the ball to Bastin, who never looked like making a mistake with his shot.

So that was 2 goals for Camsell, and 1 for Bastin, whose 178 goals for Arsenal would be a club record until 1997, and are still 3rd all-time behind the 228 of Thierry Henry and the 185 of Ian Wright.

The Observer, which had warned of German violence, had to admit: "So chivalrous in heart and so fair in tackling were the English and German teams who played at Tottenham in mid-week that even the oldest of veterans failed to recall an international engagement played with such good manners by everybody."

The teams would play just once more before World War II broke out, at the Olympiastadion in Berlin in 1938. The German players saluted the Nazi flag. The English players did as well, in a gesture of solidarity, except for Stan Cullis of Wolverhampton Wanderers, later to manage that team to glory. England won this game, 6-3.

December 2, 1995: The Curse of St. Patrick

December 2, 1995, 30 years ago: In an NHL "Original Six" matchup, the Detroit Red Wings beat the Montreal Canadiens, 11-1 at the Montreal Forum. Vyacheslav Kozlov scored 4 of those Detroit goals. Mark Recchi had the lone tally for the Habs.

This was the game in which Canadiens' goalie Patrick Roy was infamously hung out to dry by Canadiens management. General manager Réjean Houle told head coach Mario Tremblay to leave Roy in the net. He left Roy there until 11:57 of the 2nd period, after the Canadiens' defense, strong enough to win the Stanley Cup 2 1/2 years earlier, had collapsed to the point where he'd allowed 9 goals in that time.

Roy skated over to where team president Ronald Corey was sitting, and said, "It's my last game in Montreal." Roy was suspended, and, 4 days later, came "Le Trade": Roy and team Captain Mike Keane, a right wing who had also been feuding with Tremblay, were traded to the Colorado Avalanche for goaltender Jocelyn Thibault, left wing Martin Ručinský and right wing Andrei Kovalenko.

Ironically, until the season before, the Avalanche had been the Quebec Nordiques. Roy was from Quebec City, and had grown up loving the Nords and hating the Habs, before winning 3 Vezina Trophies and helping them win 3 Stanley Cups. 

He helped the Avs win the Cup that season, and again in 2001. In addition to the '96 Cup with the Avs, Keane would win the Cup again with the Dallas Stars in 1999. What did the Habs get? Not much, although Kovalenko did score the last goal at the Forum, as the team was preparing to move into the new Molson Centre (now the Bell Centre).

Canadien fans took Roy's side in the dispute. They let their displeasure be known all season long, including into the move, with the new arena having room for an additional 3,300 fans. It took until 2008 for Roy and the team to reconcile enough to get him to come for the retirement of his Number 33.

The winningest team in hockey history took until 2021 to return to the Stanley Cup Finals, losing it to the Tampa Bay Lightning. It is known as "The Curse of St. Patrick," even if, as he has proven in his subsequent coaching and management career, Roy is no saint. He had helped them win their 23rd and 24th Stanley Cups. They are still looking for their 25th.

December 2, 1975: Archie Griffin Is Awarded a 2nd Heisman Trophy

December 2, 1975, 50 years ago: Archie Griffin becomes the 1st player ever to be awarded the Heisman Trophy as college football player of the year for a 2nd time.

Archie Mason Griffin was born (as "Archie," not "Archibald") on August 21, 1954, in Columbus, Ohio, the seat of The... Ohio State University. Perhaps he was born to play football there. He started at running back as a freshman in 1972, the 1st year that freshmen were eligible to play in NCAA Division I. He ran for 867 yards.

Head coach Woody Hayes said, "He's a better young man than he is a football player, and he's the best football player I've ever seen." For the 1973 season, to better take advantage of Griffin's skills, Hayes switched from the T formation to the I formation, with Griffin at the back. He rushed for 1,428 yards, and was named a First Team All-American. Ohio State went 10-0-1, winning the Big Ten Conference title and the Rose Bowl.

Griffin finished 5th in the voting for the Heisman Trophy. At the time, this was considered an astounding achievement for a sophomore. His teammate, guard John Hicks, finished 2nd. In any era, this would be considered an astounding achievement for an offensive lineman. Griffin also finished behind John Cappelletti of Penn State (1st), Roosevelt Leaks of Texas (3rd) and Dave Jaynes of Kansas (4th), and just ahead of another Ohio State player, linebacker Randy Gradishar.

In 1974, Griffin ran for 1,620 yards, as Ohio State went 10-1, winning the Big Ten again, before losing the Rose Bowl. He won the Heisman in, appropriately enough, a runaway. He beat out fellow running backs Anthony Davis of USC and Joe Washington of Oklahoma.

In 1975, Griffin made the most of his senior year, rushing for 1,357 yards, making himself the 1st player ever to lead the Big Ten in rushing for 3 straight years. He remained the only one until Jonathan Taylor did it for Wisconsin from 2017 to 2019.

Ohio State won the Big Ten again, going undefeated, until losing the 1976 Rose Bowl in Griffin's last college game. Overall, the Buckeyes went 40-5-1 with him in the starting lineup. Overall, he rushed for 5,589 yards and 26 touchdowns.

No player had ever won the Heisman twice. Four players had won it as juniors before Griffin: Doc Blanchard of Army in 1945, Doak Walker of Southern Methodist in 1948, Vic Janowicz of Ohio State in 1950, and Roger Staubach of Navy in 1963. Each had good senior years. But, in each case, another player simply had a better season. (In Blanchard's case, it was his Army backfield mate, Glenn Davis.)

But in 1975, the Heisman voters saw no problem with giving the Trophy to Griffin again, as he won by about as big a margin as he had the year before. And he beat a better crop of running backs, too: Joe Washington again, Chuck Muncie of California, Ricky Bell of USC, and the one who ended up winning it the next year, Tony Dorsett of Pittsburgh.

Winning 2 Heisman Trophies has never happened again. The closest call so far has come in 2008, when Tim Tebow of Florida came within 151 votes of a 2nd Heisman. And with players leaving after their junior year having become common, it is unlikely that there will ever be another.

In 1992, Ron Powlus, the most sought-after high school quarterback in the country, signed a letter of intent to play at Notre Dame. Beano Cook of ESPN, a shameless Notre Dame fan, predicted that Powlus would win 2 Heismans. He had a decent college career, but went 0-3 in bowl games, and never came close to winning the Trophy. Having sustained 2 notable injuries in that time, he went undrafted, and, despite having signed with 3 different NFL teams, he never played a down in the League.

Griffin? He was taken in the 1st round of the 1976 NFL Draft, by his home-State Cincinnati Bengals, where his teammates included a pair of Ohio State teammates: His brother Ray Griffin and Pete Johnson. But injuries limited him to 2,808 career rushing yards. He did help the Bengals win their 1st AFC Championship in the 1981 season, but he had a fumble (which he recovered himself) in Super Bowl XVI, and the Bengals lost.

After playing a season with the Jacksonville Bulls of the United States Football League, he retired from playing, and became a successful businessman. He served as President of The Ohio State University Alumni Association, and as an assistant athletic director. He is, essentially, an ambassador for the University, and speaks to the team before every game. Although his pro career was a disappointment, he is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame. 

In 1991, he filmed a commercial for the University, one of those ads you see colleges air during their football games. He spoke briefly about his experiences, and two Heisman Trophies were shown. He closed by saying, "I received something no one else in the world has: A degree from The Ohio State University with my name on it." A clever piece of misdirection.

December 1, 1955: Rosa Parks Holds Her Seat

December 1, 1955, 70 years ago: Rosa Parks is told to get up and move. She says, "No." In so, doing, she made history.

As historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich said, "Well-behaved women rarely make history."

Let the record show that Rosa Parks was not the first woman to make this kind of history. In 1943, 17-year-old Bernice Delatte was arrested for defying segregation rules on a bus in New Orleans. In 1944, a U.S. Army Lieutenant was told to go to the back of a bus, to make room for a lower-ranking soldier. He refused. He got court-martialed. He was acquitted. His name was Jack Roosevelt Robinson. Yes, that Jackie Robinson. And in 1953, a 6-day boycott got the buses in Baton Rouge, Louisiana desegregated.

On March 2, 1955, Claudette Austin was arrested in Montgomery, the capital of Alabama, for refusing to give up her seat to a white woman on a crowded, segregated bus. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People had been waiting for a chance to challenge a "send the blacks to the back of the bus" law, in line with the decision the year before, by the U.S. Supreme Court, in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, that accommodations that were officially "separate but equal" was unconstitutional.

But Claudette was 15 years old, unmarried, and pregnant. Parks later said, "If the white press got ahold of that information, they would have a field day. They'd call her a bad girl, and her case wouldn't have a chance." The NAACP would need a more sympathetic defendant. Nine months later -- perhaps an appropriate time period -- they found one: Parks herself.

Rosa Louise McCauley was born on February 4, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama, and grew up in Pine Level, outside Montgomery. She was bullied by white children, and never forgot it. In 1932, she married Raymond Parks, a barber who worked with the NAACP. She joined the Montgomery chapter in 1943, and was elected its secretary. During World War II, she rode on an integrated trolley at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery. She later said, "You might just say Maxwell opened my eyes up."

On November 27, 1955, Rosa Parks was attending Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, whose pastor was 26-year-old Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He had invited T.R.M. Howard, head of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership in Mississippi, to speak of the recent murder of Emmett Till, and the acquittal of the 2 men who did it.

It was still on her mind 4 days later, on December 1. At around 6:00 PM, she boarded a Montgomery City Lines bus downtown. Eventually, all of the White-only seats in the bus filled up. The bus reached the third stop, in front of the Empire Theater, and several White passengers boarded. The driver, James F. Blake, noted that two or three White passengers were standing, as the front of the bus had filled to capacity.

Blake moved the "colored" section sign behind Parks, and demanded that four Black people give up their seats in the middle section, so that the White passengers could sit. Three of them complied. Parks said, "I thought of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African American who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955, after being accused of offending a White woman in her family's grocery store, whose killers were tried and acquitted – and I just couldn't go back." In her autobiography, she said:

People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.

When Parks refused to give up her seat, Blake took to his radio, and called the police. When she was arrested, she asked the officer, "Why do you push us around?" She remembered him saying, "I don't know, but the law's the law, and you're under arrest."

She was charged with a violation of Chapter 6, Section 11, segregation law of the Montgomery City code. Edgar Nixon, president of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP and leader of the Pullman Porters Union, and her friend Clifford Durr bailed Parks out of jail that evening.

On Sunday, December 4, plans for the Montgomery bus boycott were announced at Black churches in the area, and a front-page article in the Montgomery Advertiser helped spread the word. At a church rally that night, those attending agreed unanimously to continue the boycott until they were treated with the level of courtesy they expected, until Black drivers were hired, and until seating in the middle of the bus was handled on a first-come-first-served basis.

The next day, Parks was tried on charges of disorderly conduct and violating a local ordinance. The trial lasted 30 minutes. After being found guilty and fined $10, plus $4 in court costs -- the total of $14 worth about $170 in 2025 money -- she appealed her conviction, and formally challenged the legality of racial segregation.

It rained that day, but the Black community persevered in their boycott. Some rode in carpools, while others traveled in Black-operated cabs that charged the same fare as the bus, 10 cents. Most of the remainder of the 40,000 Black commuters walked, some as far as 20 miles.

The boycott lasted for an entire year. On December 20, 1956, the federal ruling Browder v. Gayle took effect, declaring the Alabama and Montgomery laws that segregated buses were unconstitutional. All the seats on all the buses were now open to all.

In 1957, Rosa and Raymond Parks moved to Detroit, living with her brother and sister-in-law. She became a fair housing activist, helped John Conyers get elected to Congress in 1964, and served as his secretary until 1988. She participated in the Selma-to-Montgomery march in 1965. Her husband and brother died within weeks of each other in 1977, and she stepped back from civil rights activities thereafter to care for her mother, who died in 1979.

She then returned to the struggle, adding Planned Parenthood to her causes. In 1994, she was robbed and assaulted in her Detroit home. Mike Ilitch, founder of Detroit-based pizza chain Little Caesars, and owner of baseball's Detroit Tigers and hockey's Detroit Red Wings, bought her an apartment in a high-rise riverfront condo.

The following year, in commemoration of the 40th Anniversary of her seated stand, President Bill Clinton invited her to the State of the Union Address. He said, "She's sitting down with the First Lady tonight, and she may get up, or not, as she chooses." Acknowledging a standing ovation, she briefly stood.

She died on October 24, 2005, at the age of 92, after years of ill health and cognitive decline. Although often called "the mother of the Civil Rights Movement," she had no children of her own. She became the 1st woman, the 2nd black person, and the 1st private citizen to lie in state under the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington.

A statue of her stands in Montgomery, roughly where she was arrested. In her adopted hometown of Detroit, the bus terminal is named for her. The bus on which she was arrested was also moved to Detroit, to the Henry Ford Museum in adjoining Dearborn, where it is on display along with the limousine in which President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and the Ford's Theatre chair in which President Abraham Lincoln was sitting when he was assassinated.

As has been said, Rosa Parks sat, so that Martin Luther King could march, so that Barack Obama could run.

Bernice Delatte, the 1943 New Orleans protestor, lived until 2010. Claudette Austin became a nurse, married, and took the name Claudette Colvin. As of December 1, 2025, she is still alive.

November 28, 1925: The "Old" Garden & the Grand Ole Opry

November 28, 1925, 100 years ago: Madison Square Garden, the 3rd building with the name, opens between 49th and 50th Streets, between 8th and 9th Avenues, in Midtown Manhattan, at the northern end of the Theater District. The front entrance is on 8th Avenue, topped by a marquee that will soon be world-famous.

The 1st Garden was built at the northeast corner of 26th Street and Madison Avenue, catty-corner from Madison Square Park, in 1879. It had no roof. It was replaced in 1890 with a Moorish-style building, designed by the renowned architect Stanford White, that not only had a roof, but a tower with a roof garden where shows were hosted, and an apartment for White atop that.

Atop that was a statue of Diana, the Roman goddess of the hunt. This statue, sculpted of gilt copper by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, was nude, and the hoity-toity critics of the day hated it. One of the nastiest reviews came from a Philadelphia newspaper. Ironically, when the 2nd Garden was demolished, the Diana statue was taken to the Philadelphia Museum of Art (you know, the one whose steps Rocky Balboa ran up), and is still there. A copy now stands in New York's equivalent, the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

For both versions, the bowstring has been lost.

Otherwise, they are intact.

White would take showgirls up to his rooftop apartment, for a pre-movies version of a "casting couch." One was Evelyn Nesbit, whom he then made a star. She left him for a man named Harry Thaw. On June 25, 1906, jealous over Evelyn still having feelings for "Stanny," Thaw went to the roof garden during a show, and shot White. Evelyn's star faded: Late in life, she said, "Stanny White died. My fate was worse: I lived."

The New York Life insurance company owned the mortgage on the 2nd Garden, and decided to tear it down to build their new headquarters. George "Tex" Rickard, the top boxing promoter of the era, decided to build his own arena, where he wouldn't have to worry about anybody else's whims. He was lucky that New York Life was willing to sell him the rights to the name "Madison Square Garden": It was already a valuable brand name, which is a big reason why the "new Garden" has never sold naming rights.

When his Garden proved successful, he decided to build 6 copies, all over America. It didn't work out that way: He built the Boston Madison Square Garden in 1928 -- soon, it became simply "The Boston Garden" -- but died early the next year. He had gone to Miami to escape the cold New York weather, and to make a deal on a prizefight featuring up-and-coming heavyweight Jack Sharkey (who would hold the title from mid-1932 to mid-1933), but came down with appendicitis. This was before antibiotics, and he was dead at age 59.

The 1st event at The Garden was a six-day bicycle race. It sounds ridiculous today, but this kind of competition was huge in the "Roaring Twenties," especially in Europe, where it's still popular 100 years later. Teams of 2 men take turns riding for 6 days straight, from 6:00 PM to 2:00 AM, and the winner is the team that completes the most laps.

The 1st prizefight was held on December 8, for the Light Heavyweight Championship of the World. Paul Berlenbach defended the title by winning a unanimous decision over Jack Delaney. The following July, Delaney took the title from Berlenbach in a rematch at Ebbets Field.

The Garden became known as "The Mecca of Boxing." Heavyweight Joe Louis, light heavyweight Archie Moore, middleweight Sugar Ray Robinson, lightweight Henry Armstrong, and more became internationally-known superstars from their fights at The Garden.

It would also be known as "The Mecca of Basketball," with collegiate doubleheaders starting in 1934. It became a secondary home court for the City's college teams: New York University (NYU), City College of New York (CCNY), Long Island University (LIU), Columbia, Fordham and St. John's.

It also hosted the annual National Invitational Tournament (NIT), starting in 1938. And it hosted what would now be called the NCAA Final Four in 1943, 1944, 1945, 1946, 1947, 1948 and 1950, the last of these won by CCNY, which also won the NIT that year, the only time this "double" was ever achieved. 

The point-shaving scandal the next year crippled college basketball in New York City, and not only led to St. John's, not accused in the scandal, being the only major program that has survived on that level, but the NCAA ruling that teams could no longer compete in both their tournament and the NIT. The Final Four did not return to the New York Tri-State Area until 1996, when it was held at the Meadowlands.

That scandal coincided with the 1st trip to the NBA Finals for the New York Knicks, who debuted at The Garden in 1946. The scandal may have saved the Knicks, and thus may also have saved the NBA: Hoop fans needed something to turn to.

Rickard, who didn't always do things on the up-and-up, offered use of The Garden to Big Bill Dwyer, a bootlegger, who founded a hockey team, the New York Americans. The 1st NHL team in New York debuted on December 15, 1925, losing to the Montreal Canadiens 3-1.

The "Amerks" did so well at the box office that Rickard, noting that New York had 3 Major League Baseball teams, decided that it could support 2 hockey teams. So he founded his own team, and when the media found out, they nicknamed the new team "Tex's Rangers." He decided to go with it, and the New York Rangers debuted at The Garden on November 16, 1926, beating the Montreal Maroons 1-0.

With Rickard's promotional skills, the Rangers proved even more successful than the Americans. World War II knocked the Amerks out, as the manpower drain caused by the American and Canadian military drafts forced them to suspend operations after the 1941-42 season, and they never returned.

But the Rangers, the Knicks, college basketball games, prizefights, circuses, musical performances, ice skating shows, rodeos, and an event that predated even the 1st Garden, the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, continued at The Garden through the 1930s, the '40s, and the '50s. Madison Square Garden was right up there with the Empire State Building and Grand Central Terminal as the most famous building in the City.

But poor sight lines, and the need for more space and more dates, proved the arena's undoing. In 1960, the Pennsylvania Railroad, desperate for money, sold the air rights above Pennsylvania Station, between 31st and 33rd Streets and 7th and 8th Avenues, to the Madison Square Garden Corporation. The plan was to build a new station on the site, and a new arena on top of that.

On the afternoon of February 11, 1968, the Rangers played their last game at "the Old Garden," a 3-3 tie with the Detroit Red Wings, which was followed by a final skate with several NHL legends, including the Wings' still-active Gordie Howe. That night, "the New Garden" opened with "The Night of the Century," a salute to the USO, the United Service Organizations, which since 1941 has worked with the armed forces to provide supplies and entertainment. The co-hosts were old film partners and golfing buddies Bob Hope and Bing Crosby.

The last event at the Old Garden was 2 days later, February 13, the Westminster Dog Show. Demolition soon began. The site became a parking lot while various parties haggled over what to build on the site. Finally, in 1989, the 778-foot office and residential tower Worldwide Plaza opened there. The Subway station at 50th Street includes a mural dedicated to the Old Garden.

Worldwide Plaza

*

On the same day, The Grand Ole Opry is first broadcast, on radio station WSM, 650 on the AM dial, in Nashville, Tennessee. The station itself was brand-new, having gone on the air the preceding October 5, its call letters standing for the slogan of its original owner, the National Life & Accident Insurance Company: "We Shield Millions."

The Opry stage at the Ryman

George Hay, an Indiana native, had been a reporter for what was then the largest-circulating newspaper in Tennessee, the Memphis-based The Commercial Appeal. When that paper founded a radio station in 1923 (many early radio stations were founded by newspapers), WMC, he was its first evening announcer. In 1924, he left for Chicago station WLS, and hosted a program titled National Barn Dance.

In 1925, he took the concept to Nashville and WSM. The original Opry, officially titled WSM Barn Dance, was a one-hour program, simulating a barn dance but broadcasting from a radio studio. The show's 1st performer was Uncle Jimmy Thompson, a fiddler, already 77 years old. In other words, he had been born in 1848, only 52 years after Tennessee had become a State. (He lived until 1931.)

Most of the early performers on the show wouldn't be recognizable names today, but among them was Bill Monroe, the fiddler considered the inventor of bluegrass music, who was still performing up until his death in 1996, and whose song "Blue Moon of Kentucky" would be on the B-side of "That's All Right," the 1st single release of Elvis Presley.

(Elvis only appeared on the Opry once, on October 2, 1954. The audience reacted politely, but Jim Denny, by then the show's manager, told him that his style did not suit the program. Also before becoming nationally known, Elvis made several appearances, and was received considerably better, on a well-known radio show out of Shreveport: The Louisiana Hayride.)

An early regular act was the Fruit Jar Drinkers, whom Hay wanted to close every show, because he liked their "red hot fiddle playing." They were led by a banjo player, Uncle Dave Macon, a.k.a. the Dixie Dewdrop. Music historian Charles Wolfe wrote, "If people call yodelling Jimmie Rodgers 'the father of country music,' then Uncle Dave must certainly be 'the grandfather of country music.'"

If you've ever wondered why, in his song "Blue Suede Shoes" (covered by Elvis), among the things he would forgive before he would accept you stepping on said footwear, Carl Perkins listed, "drink my liquor from an ole fruit jar," this was clearly a tribute to the Fruit Jar Drinkers.

In 1926, WSM joined the 1st American radio network, the National Broadcasting Company, or NBC. On December 10, 1927, after playing Music Appreciation Hour, a classical music show which, that night, had been playing selections from grand opera, WSM Barn Dance came on. And Hay introduced DeFord Bailey by saying, "For the past hour, we have been listening to music largely from grand opera. But, from now on, we will present 'The Grand Ole Opry.'" The name stuck, and has been used ever since.

The show became more popular, and made the City of Nashville synonymous with country music, and vice versa. People wanted to watch as they broadcast. The larger studio they built turned out not to be big enough. In 1934, they moved to the Hillsboro Theatre, so they could have a paying audience. They outgrew that, too. They moved to the Dixie Tabernacle in East Nashville in 1936. Then came the War Memorial Auditorium.

Finally, in 1943, they moved back downtown, to the 2,362-seat Ryman Auditorium, and it became known as "The Mother Church of Country Music."

It remained home to the show until 1974, when, due to cramped quarters, it was moved out to the new Grand Ole Opry House at the Opryland USA theme park. In 1997, the park closed, and the Opry Mills Mall was built on the site. All the while, the Opry House remained open.

The Ryman remained open, and was renovated with modern amenities in 1994. In 2010, the flooding of the Cumberland River damaged the Opry House, and the show temporarily moved back to the Ryman while repairs were made.

George Hay died in 1968, at the age of 72. The Opry lives on, sometimes alternating between the Ryman and the Opry House.

*

November 28, 1925 was a Saturday. The Army-Navy Game was played that day, at the Polo Grounds in Upper Manhattan. Army won, 10-3.

November 22, 2000: The Brooks Brothers Riot

November 22, 2000, 25 years ago: An election that began to be stolen on Election Day itself, November 7, takes a big step closer to being stolen, with "The Brooks Brothers Riot."

The Republican nominee for President, Governor George W. Bush of Texas, lost the national popular vote to the Democratic nominee, Vice President Al Gore. But he appeared to have won enough Statewide popular votes to win 271 Electoral Votes to Gore's 269.

In dispute was the State of Florida, where Bush was originally certified to have won by 1,784 votes. It's important to note that the Governor of Florida was his brother, John Ellis "Jeb" Bush. Through his Secretary of State -- and, it was rumored, his mistress -- Katharine Harris, Jeb had the Florida vote fixed for his brother, including the deletion of the names of 55,000 people, nearly all black men, from the voter rolls.

In other words, if those 55,000 people were permitted to vote, even if less than half of them ended up voting at all, there was no way Gore wouldn't have gotten enough of those 55,000 votes to offset a 1,784-vote lead for "Dubya."

A clause in Florida's State Constitution mandated that, since the election was so close, a Statewide recount had to be done. The recount for Dade County, including the City of Miami, was done at the Stephen P. Clark Government Center, at 111 Northwest 1st Street in downtown Miami. (Clark was Mayor of Miami from 1967 to 1972, and again from 1993 to 1996.)

The Stephen P. Clark Government Center

The recount began, but Representative John E. Sweeney, then a freshman Congressman from New York's Capital Region, including the State capital of Albany, told an aide to "Shut it down." And so dozens of people, many of them wearing sharp suits typical of Republican staffers at the time -- hence the name of the demonstration, as Brooks Brothers is a popular store chain with them -- found their way into the building, and pounded on the doors of the room where the recount was being done, making it unsafe for the counters.

They got what they wanted. Bush's lead got down to 537 votes, when a local court ordered that the recount be stopped. In other words, some votes were never counted, not even once. The State Supreme Court ruled that the recount had to resume.

But on December 12, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the recount had to stop. And so, Bush's 537-vote win in Florida was certified by the State of Florida, and later by Congress.

Strange: For decades, conservatives -- first in the Democratic Party, then in the 1960s they began to shift to the Republican Party -- were in favor of States' rights over civil rights. But when States' rights and civil rights came together in Florida in 2000, the conservatives wanted the State of Florida to have no rights.

Did Democratic protestors try to stop Congress from certifying this apparently stolen election, as Republican ones tried 20 years later? No. Every Democratic demonstration, including outside Bush's Inauguration as the 43rd President of the United States on January 20, 2001, was peaceful.

But the Republicans have now tried this sort of thing twice in the 21st Century. Indeed, the Brooks Brothers Riot has been called a "dress rehearsal" for the Capitol Insurrection of January 6, 2021.

Many of the Miami demonstrators later took jobs in the Bush Administration. One of them was Roger Stone, a self-described "GOP Hitman," with a history of Republican dirty tricks going back to his work for Richard Nixon's Committee for the Re-Election of the President, the group behind the Watergate burglary of 1972.

Nobody was ever charged with a crime in connection with the Brooks Brothers Riot -- not with election fraud, not with property damage, not with assault, not even with trespassing, of which they were all guilty.

*

November 22, 2000 was a Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving. As was tradition in my family, I spent Thanksgiving weekend at my grandmother's house, including the Thursday night with my parents and sister, and we sat transfixed at the TV, watching not football games -- the Detroit Lions beat the New England Patriots 34-9 at the Silverdome in suburban Pontiac, Michigan; while the Dallas Cowboys lost to the Minnesota Vikings, 27-15 at Texas Stadium in suburban Irving, Texas -- but footage of the Brooks Brothers Riot, on a seemingly endless loop, as talking heads on CNN and MSNBC tried to make sense of the most blatant election theft in American history.

Other Presidential elections have had accusations of fraud. But this was on television. Even the alleged theft of Illinois' votes by Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago in 1960 -- the overturning of which wouldn't have swung the election from John F. Kennedy to Nixon anyway -- wasn't caught by TV or film cameras. The Brooks Brothers Riot was, and the news networks were all too happy to show it over and over again, refusing to say that it was wrong.

The fact that Al Gore's rightly-won Presidency was being assassinated on November 22, the anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, seemed not to have occurred to most people. Certainly, I didn't think of it at the time. With the chaos of the election, the JFK anniversary may have been mentioned less than on any November 22 since 1963. 

November 22, 1950: Pistons 19, Lakers 18

99: George Mikan. 9: Bob Harris.

November 22, 1950, 75 years ago: The worst game in NBA history is played. There were games that were sloppier, and games that had ugly brawls. But as far as quality of play is concerned, nothing will ever top this one -- or "bottom" it, if you prefer.

The Minneapolis Lakers were hosting the Fort Wayne Pistons at the Minneapolis Auditorium. The Lakers were representing Minnesota, the State known as "the Land of 10,000 Lakes," while the Pistons were owned by Fred Zollner, whose Fort Wayne, Indiana-based Zollner Corporation ran a foundry that manufactured pistons, primarily for car, truck and locomotive engines.

Both teams began play in the Midwest-based National Basketball League before entering the NBA. The Pistons won the NBL Championship in 1944 and 1945. The Lakers won it in 1948, then joined the NBA, and won their title in 1949 and 1950.

Coached by John Kundla, a Minneapolis native and University of Minnesota basketball star who wasn't much older than his players, the Lakers were led by George Mikan, at 6-foot-10 the professional game's 1st great big man. Before coming to the Lakers, he had helped Chicago's DePaul University win the NIT (then considered a more important competition than the NCAA Tournament) in 1944 and 1945. Earlier in 1950, despite being just 26 years old, the Associated Press named Mikan the greatest basketball player of the 1st half of the 20th Century.

(The AP's other honorees: Babe Ruth for baseball, Howie Morenz for hockey, Jack Dempsey for boxing, Bill Tilden -- despite his recent scandal -- for men's tennis, Suzanne Lenglen for women's tennis, Man o' War as the greatest racehorse; and Jim Thorpe for football and track and field, and as greatest athlete overall.)

Mikan wasn't fast or graceful: In 1969, longtime New York sportscaster Bill Mazer wrote, "He was more like a stampeding elephant"; while Boston Globe columnist Bob Ryan said on a 1996 ESPN panel, "Great player in his time. Deserved every accolade he ever got. But, today? He's Greg Kite with a hook shot."

The Lakers had other players who would make the Hall of Fame: Jim Pollard jumped around the court so much, he had the nickname "the Kangaroo Kid" years before Billy Cunningham of the Philadelphia 76ers did; while Slater Martin and Vern Mikkelsen were also among the best players in the game. Kundla would also eventually be elected to the Hall, and lived to be 100, outliving each of these players.

The Lakers' game was simple: Find an outside shot, and, if you can't, get the ball to Mikan and let him shoot over everybody. So, Pistons coach Murray Mendenhall decided that the only way to win the game was to make sure that Mikan doesn't get the ball. And the way to do that was to hold onto possession for as long as possible. In other words, or other word: Stall.

A crowd of 7,021 saw this: The Pistons leading 8-7 at the end of the 1st quarter, the Lakers leading 13-11 at the half, and the Lakers leading 17-14 at the end of the 3rd quarter. The crowd, hoping to see Mikan do his stuff, knew what the Pistons are trying, and they booed vociferously.

The Lakers scored only 1 point in the 4th quarter, but were still leading 18-17 with 6 seconds left in regulation, with Mikan having scored 15 of their points, including all of their field goals, 4 in 11 attempts. The rest came from 3 free throws: The other Lakers shot 0-for-6 from the field.

On the game's final play, unable to stall any longer, Pistons rookie Larry Foust took an inbounds pass, and laid it up over Mikan's outstretched arms. Mikan couldn't stop the shot, and it went in. Final score: Pistons 19, Lakers 18.

Point totals: Pistons: John Oldham 4, Curly Armstrong 4, Foust 3, Fred Schaus 3, John Hargis 2, Jack Kerris 2, Bob Harris 0, Ralph Johnson 0; Lakers: Mikan 15, Bob Harrison 2, Pollard 1, and none for Martin, Mikkelsen, Arnie Ferrin, Joe Hutton, and Bud Grant. Yes, football fans, the same Bud Grant who made the Pro Football Hall of Fame for leading the Minnesota Vikings into 4 Super Bowls (but losing them all).

Kundla told the sportswriters, "Play like that will kill professional basketball." But teams found the Lakers' weakness: Hold on to possession, and you can beat them. The 1950-51 NBA Championship was won by the Rochester Royals.

Kundla got his team to bounce back, winning the NBA Championship in 1952, 1953 and 1954. Then Mikan retired, and they didn't win another title until 1972 -- and not in Minneapolis.

Mikan's timing may have been absolutely right: For the 1954-55 season, the NBA adopted the 24-second shot clock. Stalling was no longer possible. Other teams, by necessity, needed faster players to copy the Lakers' now-useless fast break. For that reason, the aforementioned Bob Ryan said that 1954 is the demarcation line: When comparing great players and great teams in NBA history, you shouldn't put pre-1954 entries into the discussion, because they weren't really playing the same game.

The 19-18 game didn't kill pro hoops, but winning it didn't help the Pistons much. Although they reached the NBA Finals in 1955 and 1956, they didn't win either time. In 1957, accepting that Fort Wayne was too small a market in which to compete, Zollner moved the team to Detroit, the Motor City, where the Pistons name still made sense.

Murray Mendenhall lived until 1972, Fred Zollner until 1982, Larry Foust until 1984, and George Mikan until 2005.

Built in 1927, the Minneapolis Auditorium seated 10,545 people, and was home to the Lakers from 1947 to 1959. They played the 1959-60 season at the Minneapolis Armory, which still stands. After that season, they moved to Los Angeles, where the Lakers name didn't make sense. But they became L.A.'s most popular sports team, and remain so.

Since 1980, they have won 11 NBA Championships, the most of any team over that stretch. In total, in Minneapolis and Los Angeles combined, they have won 17, 2nd only to the Boston Celtics, with 18, for the most. One of those Laker titles came in 2002, when a questionable imbalance of fouls gave them the Western Conference title over the Sacramento Kings. That remains the closest the Kings franchise has come to the NBA Finals since... 1951, when they were the Rochester Royals, the team that briefly interrupted the Lakers' Minneapolis dynasty.

Since their respective moves, the Lakers and the Pistons have played each other in 3 NBA Finals. The Lakers won in 1988, the Pistons in 1989, and the Pistons in one of the great NBA Finals upsets in 2004.

Made obsolete by the construction of the Metropolitan Sports Center in suburban Bloomington in 1967, and more so by the plan to build the Target Center downtown (it opened in 1990), the Auditorium was demolished in 1988, and the Minneapolis Convention Center was built on the site. The Minnesota Timberwolves began play in 1989, playing their 1st season in the Metrodome before the Target Center was ready. They have not been a success: Only twice have they made the NBA Western Conference Finals, and they've lost both: 2004, to the Lakers; and 2024, to the Dallas Mavericks.

*

November 22, 1950 was a Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving. Steven Van Zandt, who played guitar for Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, and played consigliere Silvio Dante on The Sopranos, was born on this day.

There were 2 other games played in the NBA that night. The New York Knicks beat the Baltimore Bullets, 87-73 at the Baltimore Coliseum. And the Washington Capitols beat the Tri-Cities Blackhawks, 65-60 at the Uline Arena (now the Washington Coliseum).

Baseball was in the off-season. Football was in midweek. There were 2 NHL games played that night. The New York Rangers beat the Montreal Canadiens, 3-2 at the old Madison Square Garden. And the Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Chicago Black Hawks, 5-2 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. The Boston Bruins and the Detroit Red Wings were not scheduled.

In spite of the next day being Thanksgiving, a day on which the NBA generally doesn't play today, 5 games were played: New York 109, Washington 78; Philadelphia 89, Rochester 71; Boston 94, Tri-Cities 78; Indianapolis 92, Syracuse 85; and, in a rematch in Fort Wayne, Pistons 73, Lakers 63. So the 19-18 game was an aberration: The Pistons proved they could win while playing what then passed for normal basketball.

In the NHL on Thanksgiving 1950: Toronto 2, Detroit 1 in Detroit; and host Chicago 4, Boston 1. In the modern era, the NBA and the NHL avoid playing on Thanksgiving Day, so as not to compete with college and pro football, although there are usually some college basketball games on the day.

Among the college football games on T-Day '50: Number 12 Wyoming 42, the University of Denver 12 in Denver; Number 19 Washington & Lee 67, Richmond 7 in Richmond; Columbia 33, Brown 0 in Providence; Virginia Military Institute 27, Virginia Tech 0 in Roanoke; Missouri 20, Kansas 6 in Columbia; and Utah 46, Utah State 0 in Salt Lake City.

And in the NFL on T-Day '50: Detroit Lions 49, New York Yanks 14 at Briggs Stadium (Tiger Stadium) in Detroit; and Pittsburgh Steelers 28, Chicago Cardinals 17 at Comiskey Park in Chicago.

November 21, 1995: The Dayton Agreement

November 21, 1995, 30 years ago: The Dayton Agreement is reached at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, outside Dayton, Ohio, ending the Bosnian Civil War. It was signed there on December 14.

It took the leadership of the President of the United States to stop it. A President who, just hours earlier, was fighting to get his own government reopened.

Taking down Slobodan Milošević and Newt Gingrich in the same week is a very impressive feat, and Bill Clinton simply doesn't get the credit he deserves.

Among the Republican politicians opposing the agreement were Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, a bigot who hated anyone who wasn't white and, by his definition, "Christian"; and Representative Robert Dornan of California, a Korean War bomber pilot who so loved war that he was known as "B-1 Bob," but suddenly became a pacifist when it was a liberal Democrat enforcing a peace.

What does it say about Helms and Dornan that they were less reasonable than Slobodan Milošević? A man who killed more people in 5 years than Saddam Hussein killed in 25 years, more than Fidel Castro killed in 50 years?

Just in this war, about 31,000 soldiers died, and an equal number of civilians, many of them in concentration camps, because of their religion -- in this case, Eastern Orthodox Catholic Serbs killing Bosnians for being Muslims. It had been half a century since the Holocaust, and "Never again" had happened again, on the same continent.

Finally, after 3 years of being begged to do something, and remembering how he did nothing to end the Rwandan Genocide in Africa the year before, President Clinton met with his fellow NATO leaders, and united them, and convinced President Boris Yeltsin of Russia to stay out of it. On August 30, Operation Deliberate Force began, with NATO planes bombing "Bosnian Serb" artillery positions. On November 1, Milosevic realized he could beat the Bosnians, but he couldn't beat NATO, and let peace talks begin.

As of November 21, 2025, the peace still holds. The Nobel Committee has given the Nobel Peace Prize to Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama -- but not, as yet, Bill Clinton.

November 21, 1945: Dynamo Moscow Kicks Off Sports' Cold War

Yes, the fog was that thick.

November 21, 1945, 80 years ago: The most-hyped game of the 1st visit of a Soviet soccer team to England, the sport's traditional birthplace, takes place. In hindsight, it can be called the event that kicked of the sports division of the Cold War.

In Communist countries, sports clubs, and the teams they fielded, were sponsored by state-owned industries. The countries' armies sponsored teams named "Central Club of the Army," or "CSKA" in Slavic languages. The national railroads sponsored teams named "Lokomotiv." The auto industry sponsored teams named "Torpedo." The teams most hated by the citizens, but with the most funding from the government and the most favorable decisions from government-appointed officials, were named "Dynamo."

Football Club Dynamo Moscow won the Soviet Top League in 1936, 1937, 1940 and 1945; and were regarded, along with Spartak Moscow, as the best team in the Soviet Union. So when World War II came to an end, Dynamo wanted to test themselves against what was seen as the best competition in the world: The British.

This was the age of radio. Television existed, but it hadn't yet done much to cover sports. Most of what people knew about sports was what they read in newspapers. So there was very little information on Dynamo for the British teams they would be facing, and their fans -- and vice versa: Dynamo knew very little about their opponents.

Interviewed for a 2001 documentary, Dynamo forward Konstantin Beskov said, "Until those games, we only knew that England was the motherland of football, that English football was the best in the world." One of Britain's national newspapers, The Evening Standard, wrote, "Don't expect much from Dynamo. They are only beginners, blue-collars, amateurs." They would regret that dismissive derision.

On Tuesday, November 13, Dynamo visited Chelsea Football Club, at Chelsea's West London stadium, Stamford Bridge. Officially, the crowd was 75,000 people. It was probably much more than that, given English "footie" fans' propensity to jam themselves into those vast "standing terraces." It's a wonder there weren't more disasters like Ibrox in 1971 and Hillsborough in 1989.

Chelsea, prior to the 1960s rarely even a good team, much less a challenge for Dynamo, took a 2-0 lead. Just before the half, Dynamo were awarded a penalty. Leonid Solovyov hit the post with his shot, and the Soviet side went into the locker room embarrassed. Whatever was said to them in the locker room, it worked: They came back to tie the game, 2-2, fell behind 3-2, and then tied it again near the end of the game, to end it 3-3.

Tommy Lawton, the former star of Liverpool team Everton FC who had recently been signed by Chelsea, said, "Dynamo were one of the fastest teams I have ever seen in my life. They flash the ball from man to man in bewildering fashion, often while standing still." Chelsea Captain John Harris said, "At least two of Lawton's kicks were of such a type that no goalkeeper would catch, but Khomich jumped like a tiger and caught them." The Soviet goalie was known as Tiger Khomich from then on.

On Saturday, November 17, Dynamo visited Cardiff City Football Club. England's Football Association, of which City were then 1 of 3 Welsh members, refused to rearrange their schedule to accommodate Dynamo, so City were the only team available, and they were in Division Three, equivalent to Class AA in modern baseball.

Wales, full of coal mines, steel mills and dockworkers, was openly sympathetic to socialism, and welcomed the Soviet team with open arms. But City were completely overwhelmed, as Dynamo beat them, 10-1.

The team with which Dynamo were most familiar, and the team they truly wanted to test themselves against, was Arsenal Football Club, winners of the Football League in 1931, '33, '34, '35 and '38. Dynamo badly wanted to play Arsenal at their North London home, the Arsenal Stadium, nicknamed Highbury for its neighborhood.

Having made trips to the Continent, including an annual home-and-home series on Armistice Day, November 11, with Racing Club de France in London and Paris, Arsenal were happy to make themselves available for this soccer "summit." But they could not do the same for Highbury: It had been commandeered by the British government at the outset of World War II, as an Air Raid Precaution Centre, and had not yet been returned to the club's control. Since 1939, Arsenal had been playing home games at White Hart Lane, the home of their arch-rivals, Tottenham Hotspur, a.k.a. Spurs, 4.7 miles to the north.

A dirty little secret had gotten out: Dynamo had "drafted" 4 star players from other Soviet teams, including Spartak Moscow and CSKA Moscow. So the FA made arrangements for teams to "loan" some players to Arsenal, including Stanley Matthews of Staffordshire team Stoke City, a winger known as "The Wizard of Dribble," and possibly England's best player at the time. Another loanee was Stan Mortensen of Lancashire team Blackpool. With massive hypocrisy, the Soviets complained.

(In 1953, Blackpool, having acquired Matthews, won the FA Cup Final, with Mortensen scoring the only hat trick in the history of the Final, but Matthews had put on such a show that it's still remembered as "The Matthews Final.")

The game was set for Wednesday, November 21, but, as so often happened in those days before environmental regulations were passed, leading to outsiders nicknaming London "The Smoke," a thick fog settled over White Hart Lane. Still, the place was sold out, 54,000 strong, and the FA didn't want to issue refunds, so the game went on. The Soviet officials insisted on a Soviet referee, Nikolay Latyshev, who had accompanied the team. The FA agreed.

Writer George Orwell, who had recently published Animal Farm (Nineteen Eighty-Four was yet to come), was in attendance, and called the match "War minus the shooting." The Soviet players, knowing Matthews was the best player on either side of the pitch, targeted him for rough treatment.

Both goalies, Khomich and Arsenal's Wyn Griffiths, took more physical assaults than shots with the ball. Griffiths sustained a concussion, and had to be replaced for the 2nd half. Harry Brown, goalkeeper for West London team Queens Park Rangers, was in attendance, and, since the Soviets had negotiated for the right to a substitution, something the FA wouldn't allow in League and cup ties until 1966, they allowed Brown to step in for Griffiths.

Dynamo scored first, but Ronnie Rooke equalized shortly thereafter. Shortly before the half, there were 3 goals within a span of 4 minutes: Mortensen put Arsenal up 2-1, then he took another Matthews feed to make it 3-1, and then Beskov put the ball past Griffiths to make it 3-2.

The 2nd half was a travesty. Solovyov scored to tie it up, but multiple witnesses claimed he was blatantly offside. Latyshev let the goal stand. A little later, Arsenal thought they should have been awarded a penalty, but Latyshev denied it. Shortly after that, he sent Arsenal midfielder George Drury off for throwing a punch. No one else claimed to see the punch.

Vsevolod Bobrov, who became one of the Soviet Union's first great hockey players as well, received a Solovyov pass while offside, and scored. The goal was allowed to stand. Rooke was nearly brought down by a rugby-style tackle by Dynamo Captain Mikhail Semichastniy, opening a cut on his forehead, but elbowed him out of the way, giving him a black eye, and driving a 25-yard shot that beat Khomich. But instead of rightly allowing the goal and sending Semichastniy off, Latyshev waved off the goal and called Rooke for a foul.

So instead of what it should have been, 4-2 to The Arsenal, with Arsenal having 11 players on the pitch and Dynamo having 10 at most, it was 4-3 to Dynamo, with Arsenal down to 10 and Dynamo fielding... no one was sure how many. Dynamo took advantage of the fog to put more players on, with some accounts saying it was now 15 against 10.

The match ended 4-3 to Dynamo. The Daily Mail wrote, "It was one of the most exciting games 54,000 people never saw." Unusually for the paper known in modern times as the Daily Fail, it was the truth.

The controversy threatened to cancel the 4th and final game on the tour. But the FA were making too much money to bow to the wishes of the fans, and the finale went on. On Wednesday, November 28, Dynamo were hosted by Rangers Football Club, Scotland's most successful team, at Ibrox Stadium in Glasgow. Despite Bobrov scoring what The Daily Telegraph called "as perfect a goal as has ever been scored at Ibrox," Rangers held on for a 2-2 draw.

Dynamo had finished the tour with 2 wins, 2 draws, and no losses. But all the goodwill they had generated in their games against Chelsea and Cardiff City was thrown away by their actions against Arsenal. The game with Rangers did them no good in the eyes of the British, or European, sporting public.

Dynamo would win the Soviet Top League again in 1949, 1954, 1955, 1957, 1959, 1963 and 1976. But they never won it again. Nor have they won its replacement, the Russian Premier League. They have long since been surpassed as Moscow's top team by Spartak and CSKA, and St. Petersburg team Zenit have also surpassed them among Russia's teams.

Nikolay Latyshev, the referee for the Arsenal-Dynamo match, went on to officiate at the 1962 World Cup Final, which featured a team from what was then a Communist nation, Czechoslovakia. But none of his calls in the game were considered controversial, and Brazil defeated the Czechs.

November 21, 1945 was a Wednesday. Actress Goldie Hawn was born on this day. 

November 19, 1975: "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" Premieres

November 19, 1975, 50 years ago: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest premieres, directed by Miloš Forman, and based on the 1962 novel by Ken Kesey. Kesey himself hated the film.

Maybe the film's star, Jack Nicholson, had something to do with it. After all, in 1980, Stanley Kubrick directed a film version of Stephen King's The Shining, and cast Nicholson as the lead, and King hated it.

Shortly after its publication, the novel had been produced on Broadway, starring Kirk Douglas. Gene Wilder, not yet a star, played Billy Bibbitt. Ed Ames, already a star, 6-foot-3, and, despite being Jewish, dark-skinned enough to have played Native Americans before and after, played Chief Bromden.

Douglas held the film rights to it, but it remained stuck in "development hell." He allowed his son, actor Michael Douglas, to produce the film. Michael hired Hal Ashby to direct, but Ashby decided that Kirk was now too old to play the lead, and Michael backed him up on this. When Forman, Kirk's first choice to direct but stuck in Communist Czechoslovakia, escaped to America, Ashby gracefully stepped aside, but Forman also maintained that Kirk was too old. (He was just short of turning 59 when the film was released.)

Oddly, Michael Douglas would have been about the right age (31 when the film was released), but things were already strained between him and his father, so he stepped aside, and served as producer only. Gene Hackman (45) and Marlon Brando (51) were also too old for the role, but were offered it, anyway. So were James Caan and Burt Reynolds, who were age-appropriate (35 and 39, respectively). All 4 turned it down. Nicholson (38) accepted.

The title comes from a nursery rhyme read to Chief Bromden as a child by his grandmother, mentioned in the book:

Vintery, mintery, cutery corn,

Apple seed and apple thorn,

Wire, briar, limber lock,

Three geese in a flock.

One flew East, one flew West,

And one flew over the cuckoo's nest.

It was filmed in the exact same place that the book takes place, the Oregon State Hospital, in the State capital of Salem, although the building where most of the action takes place has since been torn down. (Kesey lived most of his life in Oregon, and had worked as an orderly in that hospital.) Since it's a psychiatric hospital, the patients are "cuckoo," hence, "cuckoo's nest."

The film takes place in 1963, a year after the novel was published. We know it's 1963 because, when Randle Patrick McMurphy, played by Nicholson, asks the other inmates to imagine they're watching the World Series on television, he says that Sandy Koufax of the Los Angeles Dodgers is pitching against the New York Yankees.

McMurphy is 38, and has been arrested for assault many times. This time, he is convicted of the statutory rape of a 15-year-old girl. The film makes no effort to suggest that he was innocent. Let me make that clear: McMurphy is not the hero of the film, or any kind of hero.

He is sentenced to a State work farm, but wants to avoid hard labor. He pretends to be insane -- which, of course, is what Nicholson spent much of the 1970s and 1980s doing for a living, pretending to be insane -- so that he can be transferred to a psychiatric institution, and avoid hard labor. He would have been better off leaving well enough alone, and serving his sentence and doing the labor. Let me make this clear, as well: McMurphy was not as smart as he thought he was.

Louise Fletcher plays Mildred Ratched, the "Big Nurse" (big in power, not in physical size -- she's not especially tall, and not fat) who runs the ward. Like the character of Major Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan on the TV show M*A*S*H, she was an Army nurse. Unlike Margaret, she let her wartime experience turn her into a cold, passive-aggressive tyrant. She maintains her World War II-era hairstyle, as Kesey pointed out in the book that "life had stopped for her a long time ago." (In real life, years later, he ran into the woman on whom he modeled the character, recalling, "She was much smaller than I remembered, and a whole lot more human.")

She holds near-absolute power over the patients' access to medications, privileges, and basic necessities such as food and toiletries. She capriciously revokes these privileges whenever a patient displeases her. She maintains order, keeping the patients from acting out, either through antipsychotic and anticonvulsant drugs, or her own brand of psychotherapy, which consists mostly of humiliating patients into doing her bidding. They are terrified of her, and, since the doctors and the hospital administrators value order, they let her get away with it all. Let's make one more thing clear: The 1960s were not a golden age for the treatment of mental health.

Among the actors playing patients are Danny DeVito and Christopher Lloyd, not yet stars, and later reunited in the cast of the TV sitcom Taxi. Will Sampson, a 6-foot-7 member of the Muscogee Nation, plays Chief Bromden, a very tall Native American who acts as though he is deaf and mute. Brad Dourif, later to be the voice of Chucky in the Child's Play franchise, plays Billy Bibbitt.

McMurphy quickly realizes that some of the patients don't really belong there, and wouldn't be if people had just taken more care with them, especially Billy. McMurphy and Ratched begin a war of wills, which leads to her decision to have him given electroconvulsive therapy. It doesn't work, and only makes him more defiant. That inspires the other inmates.

But they're still too scared to stand up to Ratched. Murphy says he'll pick up the hydrotherapy console and throw it out the window, breaking it, and allowing the inmates to escape. He can't, as it's too heavy. He tells them, "At least I tried!"

Bromden reveals to McMurphy that he can hear and speak. They plan to escape. But first, McMurphy gets a hold of the ward's phone, and makes arrangements for what he calls "a Christmas party." He brings a pair of prostitutes over, with bottles of booze.

The next morning, Ratched sees the ward is a mess, and sees Billy and a prostitute named Candy sleeping naked together. She verbally abuses Billy, as always. This time, he stands up to her, and even loses his stutter. But she has one more "fear card to play": She threatens to tell his mother. He goes back to fear and stuttering, and is taken to the office. Billy breaks some glass, and slits his throat with it, killing himself. Upon learning this, McMurphy blames Ratched, and lunges at her, and tries to strangle her to death, before the orderlies can pull him off her.

Time passes without McMurphy being seen, and rumor spreads that he has escaped -- leaving Bromden behind, breaking his promise that they would do it together. But McMurphy is brought back to his bed. He has been lobotomized, and is now "a vegetable." Ratched appears to have won the war.

But Ratched has suffered the consequences of the attack: She is wearing a neck brace, and her voice is only a whisper. And McMurphy has kept his promise to Bromden, although not in the way he had hoped. Bromden carries out a "mercy killing," smothering McMurphy with a pillow, and ending his suffering. Bromden is strong enough to lift the hydrotherapy machine, and to throw it through the window. He escapes. Ratched and the orderlies can't stop him. The other inmates cheer -- but don't follow him. 

Bromden is the hero of the film. But, since neither the book nor the film have ever had an authorized sequel, we have no idea of what will happen to him afterward: Maybe he'll truly escape, maybe he'll get caught; maybe he can now "make it" in the outside world, maybe he can't. Given this, and given what happened to every inmate but Bromden, it's arguable that Ratched is still "the winner." The "bad guy" wins -- barely.

Bromden narrates the book, which, unlike the film, details his background: He became a paranoid schizophrenic due to his World War II experiences, and his white mother committed him to embarrass his Native father.

Another big difference from the book: McMurphy is considerably less violent in the film, which treats him as more of a con man than a serious threat. And the fishing trip isn't McMurphy hijacking a hospital bus on a whim, taking the patients with him, doing the fishing, and then taking them back rather than making it a permanent escape. In the book, it's planned by the doctors, but Ratched attempts to sabotage it.

The film was nominated for 8 Academy Awards, and swept the 5 major "Oscars": Best Picture for producer Michael Douglas, Best Director for Forman, Best Actor for Nicholson, Best Actress for Fletcher, and Best Adapted Screenplay for Laurence Hauben and Bo Goldman. The only other films to do that have been It Happened One Night in 1934 and The Silence of the Lambs in 1991.

Michael Douglas would later win Best Actor in 1988, for Wall Street. His 2nd wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones, would win Best Supporting Actress in 2003, for Chicago. Kirk Douglas was nominated for Best Actor 3 times, but never won an Oscar, in any capacity. Jack Nicholson has 12 acting nominations (only Meryl Streep, who's won 3 times out of 21 nominations, has more), and 3 wins: Along with One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, he won Best Supporting Actor in 1983, for Terms of Endearment; and a 2nd Best Actor in 1997, for As Good As It Gets.

Laurence Hauben died in 1985, Will Sampson in 1987, Kirk Douglas in 2016 (at the age of 103), Miloš Forman in 2018, Louise Fletcher in 2022, and Bo Goldman in 2023. As of November 19, 2025, Jack Nicholson, Danny DeVito, Christopher Lloyd, Brad Dourif and Michael Douglas are still alive.