May 16, 1966: The Greatest Day In American Music -- and a Bad Day In China

Left to right: Carl Wilson, Brian Wilson,

Dennis Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine

May 16, 1966, 60 years ago: Was this the greatest day in the history of American music? Three epochal events happened. No one fully realized just how epochal until later.

The Beach Boys released their album Pet Sounds. Brian Wilson -- born on June 20, 1942, 2 days after Paul McCartney of The Beatles -- admitted that Pet Sounds was his response to the Beatle album Rubber Soul, released on December 3, 1965. Wilson viewed Pet Sounds as a solo album, and attributed its inspiration partly to his marijuana use, and an LSD-rooted spiritual awakening. 

He said he aimed to create "the greatest rock album ever made," surpassing Rubber Soul, and extending the innovations of producer Phil Spector's "Wall of Sound." This explains the use of an orchestra, and some instruments that even Spector hadn't used before.

It included 2 of the group's most-loved singles, "Wouldn't It Be Nice," which led off Side A, and "God Only Knows," which led off Side B. It also included "Sloop John B," an adaptation of the folk song "The Wreck of the John B." Oddly, given how much it sounds like it's in the spirit of the album, it does not include "Good Vibrations," which became the group's 3rd and last Number 1 hit, and is often called their greatest song.

John Lennon, the other main creative voice in The Beatles, said Brian was "doing some very great things." With Revolver about to be released on August 5, McCartney later said that Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, released on June 1, 1967, was his -- if not his band's -- response to Pet Sounds. Brian tried to top it with Smile, but, battling his inner demons, was unable to finish it.

Along with The Basement Tapes by Bob Dylan and The Band, Lifehouse by The Who, The Black Album by Prince, and Chinese Democracy by Guns 'N Roses, Smile became one of the great talked-about-but-unreleased albums in rock and roll history. Of course, all of these were eventually released. In Smile's case, in 1993.

*

On the same day, the aforementioned Bob Dylan released his album Blonde On Blonde. He's never said it was a response to anything.

Neither the name of the performer

nor the title of the album was on the front cover.

Bob already had that much oomph.

One of the things I love about Bob is that he came up with such great song titles. One of the things that drives me crazy about him is that sometimes, those titles are not mentioned anywhere in the lyrics, making it hard for someone who hears the song, but not the title, to know it. Typical of this is the song that leads off the album, "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35," better known by its chorus: "Everybody Must Get Stoned."

"I Want You" and "Just Like a Woman" were hit singles. The 9-verse, 7-minute "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again" is fantastic. I once discovered that it fit the rhythm of Ernest Thayer's poem "Casey at the Bat," and imagined Dylan singing it to the tune. The album also includes "Visions of Johanna" and "Absolutely Sweet Marie."

It's a double album, 4 sides, although the 4th and last side is just 1 song, the 11-minute-23-second "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands." Based on the lyrics, and the word "lowlands," we can presume that this song, along with some of the other songs on the album, were written about Sara Lownds, to whom he was married from 1965 to 1977. Their breakup inspired Dylan's best post-crash album, Blood On the Tracks, in 1975.

I say "post-crash" because, on July 29, 1966, just 76 days after releasing the album, Dylan was badly hurt in a motorcycle crash near his home in Woodstock, in the Catskill Mountains of New York State. He didn't record again for nearly a year, and didn't tour again until 1974.

In 1987, celebrating its 20th Anniversary, Rolling Stone magazine named its 100 Greatest Albums, though not limiting it to just the last 20 years. Sgt. Pepper came in 1st, Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen 2nd, Blonde on Blonde 3rd, and Pet Sounds 8th.

The magazine dropped Blonde on Blonde to 9th in 2003, and all the way to 38th in 2020. Perhaps there were 6 better albums released between 1987 and 2003, but there's no way in hell that 29 better albums were released between 2003 and 2020.

Pet Sounds was ranked 8th in 1987, rose to 2nd in 2003, and kept that honor in 2020. Sgt. Pepper has remained 1st.

*

Those 2 albums being released on the same day would make the day epic enough. But, also on that day, Janet Damita Jo Jackson was born in Gary, Indiana, outside Chicago. The youngest of the 9 singing siblings, she not only became the 2nd-most successful among them, but, by 1986, was able to establish her own "brand," separate from her megastar brother Michael, although they did occasionally work together. Judged solely on her own merits, she also became one of the biggest music stars in the world.

And, while this has nothing to do with music, another celebrity was born on the day: Thurman Thomas, running back for the Buffalo Bills, a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

*

Unfortunately, May 16, 1966 was also the day that Chinese dictator Mao Zedong began what he called the Cultural Revolution. In 1958, he launched a plan to transform China into a modern industrialized state, a plan he called "the Great Leap Forward." He thought that establishing "people's communes" in the countryside, focused mostly on producing steel, would be a good way to go about it.

Taking people who only knew farming and getting them to leave their fields to become steelworkers had worked in America, earlier in the 20th Century. But that was by those men's own choices, because they believed that packing everything up and leaving the South to go North, or West, and learn the necessary skills, however hard it might be, was a better life than living in segregation and rural poverty -- a poverty so bad, it made white men as well as black ones leave.

In contrast, Mao was forcing his decision on people who didn't ask for it, and were completely unprepared for it, and over 30 million people starved to death. Li Jingquan, the Party boss in Sichuan, told Mao that 10.6 million people had died in his province alone by 1961.

In terms of numbers, the Great Leap Forward may have been the greatest blunder in human history. But there's a big difference between a blunder and a crime.

Mao abandoned the program after getting the numbers. Thereafter, moderates in China reversed many of the Great Leap Forward policies, and even began cutting Mao out of economic decision-making. Having an ego as big as his country, Mao didn't like this. In 1964, he saw that the Soviet Union had removed Nikita Khrushchev from power, and figured the same thing could happen to him, and he needed to do something about it. So he determined who had questionable loyalty, and secured his position by removing them from powerful positions, replacing them with sycophants.

Then, on May 16, 1966, there was a "notification": Mao declared the beginning of what he called the "Cultural Revolution." He said the moderate approaches that followed the catastrophe of the Great Leap Forward were bad, and that the Communist Party of China had to re-impose Maoism.

He called on his cult followers to rise up in violent class struggle, proclaiming, "To rebel is justified." On January 5, 1964, he published Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung (that's how his name was usually written in English during his lifetime). By 1966, he had over 1 billion copies of this "Little Red Book" made up, so that it could fit in the pocket of every person in China. (The country didn't have a billion people yet, but it would become the 1st country to reach that figure.) Among the better-known of these quotations:

* "War is a continuation of politics."

* "Politics is war without bloodshed, while war is politics with bloodshed."

* "In waking a tiger, use a long stick."

* "Despise the enemy strategically, but take him seriously tactically."

* "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."

* "All reactionaries are paper tigers."

Countless people were persecuted, massacres were abundant, and millions more died. And, because intelligent people are more likely to question the leader, intellectuals were maligned, and schools were closed. In an intentionally cruel reversal of his Great Leap Forward, Mao forcefully transported 17 million young, urban intellectuals to the countryside to be made to work as farmers, as punishment for their less-than-fully-loyal thinking.

All of this proved every bit as ineffective, if not as fatal. By 1971, knowing that the Cultural Revolution was failing, and that his health was also beginning to fail, Mao was willing to meet with the President of the United States, Richard Nixon. Mao died in 1976, and the power struggle thereafter was won by Deng Xiaoping. Because he was willing to experiment with free-market reforms, he was able to do what Mao was not: Turn China into a modern industrial nation -- though still a brutal totalitarian regime.

Generation X Has Trust Issues

Somebody recently pointed out that my generation, "Generation X" -- usually defined as people born between 1965 and 1980 -- has trust issues.

You think so?

We are the children of the first generation of parents that decided it was okay to get divorced.

We were told that if we worked hard and graduated from high school, jobs would be easy to come by. By the time we got those precious diplomas, a college degree had become the prerequisite to get a good job.

The first President that Gen X can remember is Richard Nixon. He told us he was not a crook. He was one.

CBS told us Henry Blake was going home. He never made it out of Asia. They also told us J.R. Ewing had learned his lesson after getting shot. He hadn't. Then they tried to tell us Bobby Ewing was dead, and then showed us that he was still alive, and that him dying was all just a dream.

ABC told us to love Suzanne Somers. Then they fired her when she wanted to be paid as much as her male co-star John Ritter -- even after Ritter stood up for her.

Ronald Reagan told us he would balance the budget. He blew up the deficit. He told us he would create jobs. He did, for China and Saudi Arabia.

We were told greed is good. It wasn't, and it still isn't.

We were told that Bill Cosby, Pete Rose, O.J. Simpson, Robert Blake, Joe Paterno, Hulk Hogan, Mike Tyson and Donald Trump were good guys. They weren't.

You better believe we have trust issues.

September 2, 1945: The Battleship Missouri Surrender

MacArthur signing, for the U.S. acknowledgement of the surrender

September 2, 1945, 80 years ago: Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu, acting for the Empire of Japan, signs the Instrument of Surrender to end World War II, on the deck of the American battleship USS Missouri, anchored in Tokyo Bay. Shigemetsu later served as Deputy Prime Minister, and died in 1957.

Representing the Allied Powers:

* The United States of America: General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, and Admiral John S. McCain Sr., grandfather of the longtime Senator and Presidential candidate.

* The British Empire: British Admiral of the Fleet Sir Bruce Fraser, Canadian Colonel Lawrence Moore Cosgrave, Australian General Sir Thomas Blamey, and New Zealand Air Vice Marshall Sir Leonard Isitt.

* France: Général d'armée Philippe Leclerc.

* The Netherlands: Vice Admiral Conrad Helfrich.

* The Republic of China: General Xu Yongchang.

* The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics: Lieutenant General Kuzma Derevyanko.

Admiral Fraser was the last survivor of these men, living until 1981.

World War II is over, and the Allies have won. Now, the victorious nations have work to do, to set their own people free. The British Empire will get there first, mostly getting it done by 1960. France will take a little longer, due to a nasty war in Algeria. America will take until the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Soviet Union, and the countries formed when it broke apart? Some of those countries have been free, to this day.

USS Missouri

The Missouri, built at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, was the last ship built by the U.S. Navy to be classified as a "battleship." The "Mighty Mo" also served in the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Persian Gulf War, and was decommissioned in 1992. It is now a museum ship – appropriately, at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii.

August 25, 1945: The Death of John Birch

August 25, 1945, 80 years ago: John Birch dies. This was not widely known at the time, nor was he famous during his lifetime. Most Americans never knew he was alive until they knew he was dead, and they didn't know that right after his death, either.

John Morrison Birch was born on May 28, 1918 in Landour, India, where his parents were Presbyterian missionaries. The family returned to America in 1920, due to his father suffering from malaria. They lived in Vineland, New Jersey and Macon, Georgia.

He graduated from high school, and enrolled at Mercer University, a Baptist-affiliated school in Macon. His fellow students noted his zealotry at Mercer, as he opposed the theory of evolution, and he made some enemies there. He graduated in 1939. He then entered the Fundamental Baptist Bible Institute in Fort Worth, Texas, needing only 1 year to graduate. In high school, at Mercer, and at FBBI, each time, he graduated at the top of his class.

FBBI's founder, J. Frank Norris, had been a missionary in China. Having heard from Norris about his missionary work in China, and finding the Chinese receptive to the Gospel, especially having suffered under Japanese oppression since 1931, Birch wanted to go. When Norris and some 150 members of the church gathered to send Birch and a friend off to China, Norris said they went "fully informed as to the dangers that await them, but they go like the Apostle Paul when he knew that it meant death at Jerusalem." Birch left his family with the words "Goodbye, folks. If we don't meet again on Earth, we'll meet in Heaven."

He arrived, and quickly learned the Mandarin dialect of Chinese. After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, bringing America into World War II, he wrote to the American Military Mission in China, offering to enlist in the U.S. Army and serve as a chaplain, but willing to "tote a rifle or whatever they tell me to do."

He enlisted, and rose to the rank of Captain. He was part of a rescue crew that saved Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle and members of his squadron after they bailed out over China. Upon Doolittle's recommendation, Birch was transferred into the Army Air Forces, which would be separated from the Army as the U.S. Air Force in 1947.

Birch was a genuine war hero, setting up intelligence networks of sympathetic Chinese, and rescuing downed American pilots. Contrary to what conservative Americans would later suggest, that the Nationalist Chinese government of President Chiang Kai-shek was blameless and worth supporting at all costs, Birch wrote to a friend that it was "relatively small and unrepresentative," and cited its "abuses, intolerance and impotence."

He did, however, praise Chiang for his steadfastness of purpose. However, Birch considered the Communists of Mao Zedong, despite their having temporarily united with Chiang to fight the Japanese, an "equally small, non-representative group," "whose leaders I consider hypocritical thugs."

The Japanese surrendered on August 14, which was named V-J Day, Victory over Japan. Captain Birch was among the American officers assigned to go into Japanese-held territory to inform Japanese units of their government's surrender. But on August 25, having encountered a Communist group, Birch and his Nationalist Chinese aide were shot and killed. Birch was only 27 years old.

In spite of his work, Birch would probably be forgotten today, if not for Robert W. Welch Jr., a retired candy manufacturer and conservative political activist from the Boston suburb of Belmont, Massachusetts. In 1954, Welch wrote The Life of John Birch: In the Story of One American Boy, the Ordeal of His Age. On December 9, 1958, in Indianapolis, Welch founded the John Birch Society, naming his anti-Communist and (allegedly) pro-Christian group after Welch, calling him "the first American casualty of the Cold War."

Welch received permission from Birch's parents to name his Society after their son, and both parents participated in Society-related events. But in a memoir released after his 1993 death, Birch's friend, General Jimmy Doolittle, said of Birch, "He had no way of knowing that the John Birch Society, a highly vocal postwar anticommunist organization, would be named after him because its founders believed him to be the 'first casualty of World War III.' I feel sure he would not have approved."

Welch considered anybody not anti-Communist to his satisfaction to be a Communist sympathizer, and even called President Dwight D. Eisenhower "an active agent of the Communist conspiracy." After a few decisions of the Supreme Court that seemed to Welch to be pro-Communist and anti-religion, the Society sponsored billboards attacking the Chief Justice, reading: "IMPEACH EARL WARREN!"

In 1963, folk group The Chad Mitchell Trio recorded a song titled "The John Birch Society," which made the Society's members look not only excessively paranoid, but stupid:

We only hail the hero

from whom we get our name.

We're not sure what he did

but he's our hero just the same!

And there was this rhyme:

There's no one left but thee and we

and we're not sure of thee!

The song also included this verse:

Do you want Justice Warren

to be your Kommissar?

Do you want Mrs. Khruschchev in there

with the DAR?

You cannot trust your neighbors

or even next of kin!
If Mommy is a Commie

then you've got to turn her in!

There was no chance of the wife of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev joining the Daughters of the American Revolution: He wasn't married at the time.

August 14, 1900: The Boxer Rebellion

August 14, 1900, 125 years ago: The Siege of the International Legations is broken by an "Eight-Nation Alliance." It is a turning point in the Chinese uprising that had become known as the "Boxer Rebellion."

After the Sino-Japanese War of 1895, villagers in North China feared the expansion of foreign spheres of influence, and resented the extension of privileges to Christian missionaries, who used them to shield their followers. In 1898, Northern China experienced several natural disasters, including the Yellow River flooding and droughts, which the uprisers blamed on foreign and Christian influence.

In objection to this influence, the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists -- Yìhéquán -- was formed. They were anti-foreign, anti-colonial, and anti-Christian. The use of "fists" in the name led to them being called "Boxers" in English, and to their uprising being called the Boxer Rebellion.

Beginning with the Battle of Senlou Temple on October 18, 1899, the Boxers clashed with troops of the federal government, ruled by the Qing Dynasty, officially led by the Guangxu Emperor, but actually led by his aunt, the Empress Dowager Cixi, widow of the Xianfeng Emperor.

The Boxers spread violence across Shandong and the North China Plain, destroying foreign property such as railroads, and attacking or murdering Christian missionaries and Chinese Christians. The events came to a head in June 1900 when Boxer fighters, convinced they were invulnerable to foreign weapons, converged on Beijing with the slogan "Support the Qing government and exterminate the foreigners."

Diplomats, missionaries, soldiers and some Chinese Christians took refuge in the diplomatic Legation Quarter in Peking. China has always called the city "Beijing," meaning "Northern Capital," but this name wasn't widely used in the West until Deng Xiaoping began insisting on it in 1979. Nanjing, meaning "Southern Capital," had previously been called "Nanking" by the West.

An Eight-Nation Alliance of American, Austro-Hungarian, British, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Russian troops moved into China to lift the siege, and on June 17, stormed the Dagu Fort at Tianjin. The Empress Dowager, who had initially been hesitant, now supported the Boxers. On June 21, she issued an Imperial Decree declaring war on the invading powers.

The Alliance, after initially being turned back by the Imperial Chinese military and Boxer militia, brought 20,000 armed troops to China. They defeated the Imperial Army in Tianjin, and arrived in Beijing on August 14, relieving the Siege of the International Legations. Plunder of the capital and the surrounding countryside ensued, along with summary execution of those suspected of being Boxers in retribution.

The Qing dynasty's handling of the Boxer Rebellion further weakened their control over China, and led the dynasty to attempt major governmental reforms in the aftermath. It didn't work, and the Chinese monarchy fell in 1911.

October 14, 1964: The Fall of Walter Jenkins -- and of Nikita Khrushchev

October 14, 1964, 60 years ago: Walter Jenkins, unofficially the White House Chief of Staff (officially, the office was vacant) to President Lyndon B. Johnson, resigns his post under pressure, following an arrest on what would once have been quaintly called a "morals charge."

He began working for Johnson, then a Congressman from Texas, in 1939, and remained with him through serving in the House of Representatives, the Senate (including LBJ's tenures as Minority Leader and Majority Leader), the Vice Presidency, and finally the Presidency.

He became a close friend to both Johnson and his wife, Claudia "Lady Bird" Johnson. Another LBJ aide, Bill Moyers, later a journalist, said, "If Lyndon Johnson owed everything to one human being other than Lady Bird, he owed it to Walter Jenkins."

But on October 7, Jenkins and another man are arrested in the men's room of a YMCA in Washington, for what was officially labeled "disorderly conduct." In spite of Jenkins being a married Catholic with 6 children, this was code for saying that he had been caught in a homosexual act.

It was difficult to keep the story quiet, especially when reporters found out he had previously been arrested on such a charge in 1959. That made it much harder to explain away as the result of overwork or, as one journalist wrote, "combat fatigue."

On October 14, The Washington Star called the White House for comment. His hand forced, LBJ told White House Press Secretary George Reedy to make a statement that the Administration was coming clean about the story -- 20 days before the Presidential election.

Jenkins had to resign, and the Republican Party wanted to make hay out of this. They knew LBJ was soundly beating their nominee for President, Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, at the polls. Goldwater refused to go along with it, and told them to back off. In his memoir, he said, "It was a sad time for Jenkins' wife and children, and I was not about to add to their private sorrow."

Jenkins had bad luck. But Johnson had good luck: The same day that Jenkins' resignation was announced, Nikita Khrushchev was ousted as Soviet leader. Apparently, he had become too liberalizing for the Supreme Soviet. They allowed him to live at his dacha, and he was able to get his memoir smuggled out of the country. But he died in 1971, officially disgraced by the country that, 10 years earlier, he had raised to its greatest height.

He once said, "If you feed the people with slogans, they will be with you today, and they will be with you tomorrow, and they may be with you the day after tomorrow. But the next day, they will say, 'To Hell with you.'"

The day after the Jenkins resignation and the Khrushchev ouster, Britain had a previously-scheduled national election. It changed the party of government: The Labour Party beat the Conservative Party, so Alec Douglas-Home was out as Prime Minister, and Harold Wilson was in. That same day, Game 7 of the World Series was played.

The next day, October 16, China announced it had The Bomb. Two days after that, Johnson gave a televised Oval Office speech, addressing the world situation; and comedian Jackie Mason appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, bombed, and was banned from the show by Sullivan, who accused Mason of giving him the middle finger onstage. That became a big story. And two days after that, on October 20, former President Herbert Hoover died, and both Johnson and Goldwater suspended their campaigns until after his funeral.

Between the media's reluctance to divulge details of a sex scandal, particularly what would later be called a gay sex scandal, and the preponderance of other news over the next few days, the Jenkins story couldn't gain any traction. On November 3, LBJ won 44 States.

Jenkins returned to his hometown of Austin, Texas, and worked as an accountant until his death in 1985. Moyers got Jenkins' job, but proved to be less skillful at it, and some historians believe that not having Jenkins to talk to may have hurt LBJ in his full term in office. Like many other former White House officials, Moyers later became a prominent journalist.

*

October 14, 1964 was a Wednesday. Game 6 of the World Series was played at Busch Stadium (formerly Sportsman's Park) in St. Louis. Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle hit home runs on back-to-back pitches from Curt Simmons‚ and Joe Pepitone belted Gordie Richardson for a grand slam. The Yankees won, 8-3, and sent the World Series to a deciding Game 7. With all the home runs that Mickey and Roger hit, this is the only time they hit back-to-back homers in a postseason game.

That same day, a future Yankee catcher, manager and broadcaster, Joe Girardi, was born.

The Cardinals won that Game 7, 7-5, with Bob Gibson, on 2 days' rest, hanging on for the win, despite Mantle hitting another home run, his 18th in World Series play, which is still, far and away, a record.

October 1, 1949: Red China

October 1, 1949, 75 years ago: The People's Republic of China, a Communist state, is declared by Mao Zedong. This brings the 37-year-old Republic of China, and the 22-year-old Chinese Civil War between each side's respective forces, to an end.

As American conservatives said, 600 million people were suddenly hurled into slavery. But then, as with Cuba 9 years later, "Nationalist China," led by Chiang Kai-shek and now limited to the island of Formosa (which was renamed Taiwan), was not a particularly free country. Certainly, it was not a wealthy one.

Today, "Red China" is home to 1.4 billion people, more than any country on Earth, although India may surpass it in the next 20 years. After its "reopening" in the 1970s, it became a sports power, and moved toward becoming an economic power as well. It remains totalitarian in practice, but mostly in official name is it still Communist.

American conservatives still consider China to be a threat. They are not: They know that any overt attack on America would be national suicide, economically as well as militarily. They're not stupid.

May 29, 1953: The Conquest of Mount Everest

Tenzing Norgay on the summit.

Photo taken by Edmund Hillary.

May 29, 1953, 70 years ago: For the 1st time, there is documented proof that someone has set foot on the summit of the world's highest mountain, on the border between Nepal and the Tibet region of China. and Nepal, in the Himalayan mountain range. The Nepalese name for it is Deodungha, meaning "Holy Mountain." The Tibetan name is Qomolangma, meaning "Holy Mother." In 1849, Andrew Waugh, the British-appointed Surveyor General of India, named it for his predecessor, George Everest -- who opposed the honor, but got it anyway.

In 1856, a British survey team determined that Mount Everest was the tallest on Earth. Over the years, various figures have been cited: It has been 29,000 feet high exactly (as measured by early surveyor Andrew Waugh), or 29,002 (Waugh listed it as such, because he didn't think anyone would believe it was exactly 29,000, thus earning him the mock title of "the first man to put two feet on Mount Everest"), or 29,028 (the generally accepted height in 1953), or 29,035 (a revision determined in 1999).

In 1922, a British expedition, with several Sherpa guides from Nepal assisting them, made the 1st serious attempt to climb to the top. It was led by George Mallory, and it made 3 attempts, with the last resulting in a height of 27,320 feet, before causing an avalanche that killed 7 people.

In 1924, Mallory announced another expedition. Someone asked him why he was doing this, when it was so dangerous. His answer has become legend: "Because it is there." (This answer would be cited by President John F. Kennedy, 38 years later, when giving a speech about America's mission to the Moon.) A member of Mallory's crew, Edward Norton -- no relation to the real-life actor or the fictional sewer worker of that name -- got to 28,126 feet before he had to turn back.

On June 9, Mallory and Sandy Irvine went up the route he'd taken, and were never seen alive again. Irvine's body has never been found. Neither was Mallory's... for decades.

English adventurer Maurice Wilson set out to climb it in 1934. Alone. His body was found a year later, not even as close to the summit as either of Mallory's attempts.

The Communist revolution in China in 1949 led to the mountain's North Face being closed off to would-be adventurers for decades, forcing them to try the more dangerous south side, the Nepal side. On October 31, 1952, a Swiss expedition tried to reach the top, when Dorje Mingma was killed by falling ice, and they chose to turn back.

In the Spring of 1953, Colonel John Hunt of the British Army launched a new expedition. He had hoped to reach the summit by June 2, to help celebration the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. On April 12, they established a base camp at 17,900 feet. On April 15, they got to 19,400; on April 22, 20,200; on May 1, 21,000; on May 3, 22,000; on May 4, 23,000. Then, things stalled, and it took them until May 17 to get to 24,000. On May 21, they got to 26,000; On May 26, 28,700. They were now 300 (or so) feet away. But altitude sickness set in, and they had to turn back.

On May 29, another attempt was made, by 2 members of the team: Edmund Hillary, 33, who had served in the Royal New Zealand Air Force during World War II; and Tenzing Norgay, a Sherpa mountaineer. At 11:30 AM local time -- Nepal is in a unique time zone, so it was 5:45 PM in Hillary's native New Zealand, 6:45 AM in Britain, and 1:45 AM on the U.S. East Coast -- Hillary set foot on the summit, planting a pole with the flags of Britain, New Zealand and Nepal.

Edmund Hillary. Not on Mount Everest.

Just as most of the photographs of the first manned Moon landing were taken by the first man to walk on the Moon, Neil Armstrong, and are of the second man, Buzz Aldrin, the first photograph of a human being on top of Mount Everest is of the second man, Norgay, taken by the first man, Hillary.

Tenzing Norgay. Not on Mount Everest.

In his memoir, Norgay wrote, "I motioned to Hillary that I would now take his picture. But for some reason he shook his head; he did not want it." In his memoir, Hillary asked Norgay if he'd ever used a camera before, and Norgay said he hadn't. "This didn't seem like the time to teach him," Hillary said, so he took the picture of Norgay.

On the way back down, they were met by expedition member George Lowe. Hillary told him, "Well, George, we knocked the bastard off." Not exactly "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind," but certainly memorable.

They got back to base camp in time to relay the news around the world, and it was announced on June 2, Coronation Day. As a native of a country in the British Commonwealth, both men were eligible to be knighted by the Queen. She did knight Hillary. She did not knight Norgay, possibly under pressure from Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru of India, who was then feuding with Nepal's government. Norgay did get medals from various countries. He died in 1986. 

In 1999, an expedition found a well-preserved body at 26,760 feet. The remains were taken back down, and determined to be those of George Mallory, finally found after three-quarters of a century. But was he on his way up, or on his way back down?

Sir Edmund Hillary was asked for his thoughts on the subject, and he was sacrosanct: "For 45 years, I've been regarded as the hero of Everest, so I really couldn't be upset now if it was someone else's turn." But he added, "You know, to mountaineers, it's one thing getting to the top, but another getting back to the bottom. I'll settle for that."

(After all, again to connect the conquest of Everest with that of the Moon, 16 years later, JFK said the goal was, before the 1960s were over, "of placing a man on the Moon, and returning him safely to the Earth.")

In 1999, Sports Illustrated conducted a joint interview with Sir Edmund Hillary and Dr. Sir Roger Bannister, the first man to run a mile race in less than four minutes. The 2 events took place a little less than a year apart, and while each achievement has been matched many times, there could be only one first time for each.

Hillary died on January 11, 2008, at age 88. At the time, his face was on his country's five-dollar bill -- and his name was still listed in the Auckland phone book. "If someone wants to believe I'm a heroic figure, fine," he said in that SI interview. "But for me, I did a reasonable job at the time. I didn't get carried away then, and I never have."

Top 10 Myths About World War II

May 8, 1945: Nazi Germany surrenders, ending the European Theater of World War II. It becomes known as V-E Day: Victory in Europe. V-J Day, Victory over Japan, came on August 14.

Top 10 Myths About World War II

1. It Began On September 1, 1939. That's the date on which Nazi Germany invaded Poland, beginning what became known as "the European Theater" of the war. But "the Pacific Theater" had begun earlier. Japan had been attacking China since 1931, when they invaded and annexed the province of Manchuria.

2. It never would have happened without Hitler. Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. He wanted revenge on Britain, France, Russia, and their client states Poland and Czechoslovakia. And he wanted revenge on the Jews, whom he blamed for a "stab in the back" that caused Germany to lose World War I.

He wasn't the only one who thought so. Had he never become Chancellor, there were others willing to step into the breach of chaos Germany was in during the early 1930s. Another such figure might not have been as eager to go to war. But it would have happened. And such a figure might have been a more competent commander-in-chief, allowing Germany to hold out longer, and maybe even to negotiate a peace that would have allowed it to continue as a fascist nation.

3. The French were cowards who surrendered too early. They were overwhelmed by the Nazis, unaware that their defenses, such as the Maginot Line, would be terribly ineffective. What were they supposed to do? Surrendering allowed them to stay alive as a country.

And they had a Resistance, and it kept fighting for 4 years, until the Allies came in and turned the tide. That sounds like "surrender" was a half-truth.

French Resistance flag, with the Cross of Lorraine

4. FDR knew Pearl Harbor was going to be attacked, and let it happen. This charge has been leveled at Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the greatest President ever produced by the Democratic Party, by Republicans who don't want to give a Democrat credit for winning the war.

They want the credit for winning the war to go to Republicans like Generals Dwight D. Eisenhower (who was elected President in 1952 and 1956, solely on the basis of his wartime command, as he'd never held elective or even civilian appointive office) and Douglas MacArthur (whom the hard right really wanted in the elections of 1948 and 1952).

The argument is that FDR couldn't convince Congress to declare war on Nazi Germany, because so many of them were either big-city Democrats, with large Irish constituencies that didn't want to go to war on behalf of Great Britain, and Italian constituencies that didn't want to go to war against Italy; or Midwesterners, of both parties, in America's largest ethnic group, which, then as now, was German, and didn't want to go to war against Germany.

Therefore, the only way to get America into a war against Germany was to get it into a war with Germany's ally, Imperial Japan. So, in their theory, FDR provoked Japan by instituting an embargo on exports to them, including oil; freezing Japanese assets in U.S. banks; and supplying Japan's enemy, China, through Britain.

Every surviving document that discussed the possibility of Japanese retaliation for these measures suggests a direct countermeasure, such as economic sanctions; or an attack on a considerably closer U.S. military base, such as one in the Philippines. Which did happen: On December 7 and 8, 1941, one or the other, Japan attacked pretty much every base America had in the Pacific Ocean, and some British targets, too. As he said in his address to Congress on December 8, asking for a Declaration of War:

Yesterday, the Japanese Government also launched an attack against Malaya. Last night, Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong. Last night, Japanese forces attacked Guam. Last night, Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands. Last night, the Japanese attacked Wake Island. And, this morning, the Japanese attacked Midway Island.

Malaya (Malaysia) and Hong Kong were then under British control. Congress granted the Declaration of War. America was at war with Japan. But it still was not at war with Germany. Three days later, on December 11, to aid its ally, Germany declared war on America. Only then did Congress declare war on Germany.

But the surviving documents that suggest that the Japanese would attack a U.S. military base directly mentioned the Philippines -- not the Hawaiian Islands, still a U.S. Territory. (Hawaii gained Statehood in 1959.) The idea that the Japanese were even capable of an attack on Hawaii appears not to have been considered by the U.S. Department of War. It was a complete surprise. It wasn't just that FDR didn't know: Nobody on our side knew.

5. Churchill was an incorruptible good guy. Using the term "corrupt" suggests that the subject was willing to be bribed with something -- money, power, or something else -- to achieve his goals. In that regard, calling Winston Churchill "corrupt" is ridiculous. He was always filthy rich, and could not be bought.

"You've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?'

Well, do you, you old sod?"

But... "Good guy"? He hated Nazis, which was a plus, especially when few others were willing to oppose them publicly. He hated Communists, which was a plus. But he was also an Englishman of the Victorian era: He was first elected to Parliament in 1900, the last full year of Queen Victoria's life. He was a big believer in the British Empire, and no fan of the natives of its colonies.

In 1919, as Secretary of State for Air, he agreed to the Royal Air Force's request to use mustard gas in Iraq: "I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gases against uncivilised tribes." The Versailles Conference was going on at the time, and Churchill said, "The democratic principles of Europe are by no means suited to the development of Asiatic and African people."

This was while the Irish War of Independence was going on. As in opposition to Margaret Thatcher and the paramilitary terrorists she supported in the early 1980s, there were hunger strikers in Ireland then, too. Of them, Churchill said, "Hunger strikers will be allowed to die in jail, the more the merrier. Some of them have died already, and a damn bad job they were not all allowed to die." And this was a man who had spent part of his childhood in Ireland: His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, served as the island's Lord Lieutenant, and his brother, Jack, was born there.

Winston also wanted to maintain control of the Indian subcontinent, saying in 1942, "I have not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire." That same year, he wrote, "Eventually, the Moslems will become master, because they are warriors, while the Hindus are windbags. Yes, windbags! Oh, of course, when it comes to fine speeches, skilfully balanced resolutions and legalistic castles in the air, the Hindus are real experts! They're in their element! When it comes to business, when something must be decided on quickly, implemented, executed -- here the Hindus say 'pass.' Here they immediately reveal their internal flabbiness."

It got worse. Of Hindus, Churchill once said, "They are a beastly people with a beastly religion." Famine struck the Bengal province, including present-day Bangladesh, in 1943, and over 3 million people starved to death, more than in the Irish potato famine of 100 years earlier. Churchill didn't lift a finger to send them food. For this reason, Indians, especially Bengalis, accuse Churchill of genocide, the very thing he was trying to stop the Nazis from committing.

In 1931, he said this of Mohandas Gandhi, who became world-famous with his Salt March the previous year: "It is alarming and nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir... striding half-naked up the steps of the Vice-regal Palace."

Not that Gandhi was a saint. His activities with, and feelings toward, women were unacceptable to present-day sensibilities. And on July 23, 1939, he wrote this letter to Hitler. I have not changed a word, or corrected a misspelling (as with "deliberately"):

Dear friend,

Friends have been urging me to write to you for the sake of humanity. But I have resisted their request, because of the feeling that any letter from me would be an impertinence. Something tells me that I must not calculate and that I must make my appeal for whatever it may be worth.

It is quite clear that you are today the one person in the world who can prevent a war which may reduce humanity to the savage state. Must you pay the price for an object however worthy it may appear to you to be? Will you listen to the appeal of one who has seliberately shunned the method of war not without considerable success? Any way I anticipate your forgiveness, if I have erred in writing to you.

That's right: Gandhi called Hitler "friend." At best, this was incredibly naive. Forty days later, Hitler invaded Poland.

6. The Western Democracies won it. If it wasn't for the 27 million deaths, military and civilian combined, of citizens of the Soviet Union, the Nazis wouldn't have lost nearly as many men as they did.

In the years to come, America and Britain didn't want to admit anything good about the Communist nations, so they came to believe that they won the war, without Soviet help. The British like to take it a step further: They like to claim that they stood alone for 2 years until America came in, and that America has hogged the glory ever since.

It gets taken even further than that. When England play Germany in soccer, England fans sing this, to the tune of "She'll Be Comin' 'Round the Mountain":

There were ten German bombers in the air. (In the air!)

There were ten German bombers in the air. (In the air!)

There were ten German bombers

Ten German bombers

Ten German bombers in the air. (In the air!)

And the RAF of England shot one down. (Shot one down!)

And the RAF of England shot one down. (Shot one down!)

And the RAF of England

RAF of England

RAF of England shot one down. (Shot one down!)

There were nine German bombers in the air...

And so on, until there's no German bombers in the air, 'cause "the RAF of England shot them down." This overlooks the fact that, during the Battle of Britain in 1940 and '41, before America got into The War, in addition to Englishmen, the Royal Air Force had Welshmen, Scotsmen, Irishmen, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, Indians, Africans, expatriate Americans, and exiles from all over the Nazi-controlled lands of Europe, but especially France and Poland. The French and the Polish actually exceeded those from elsewhere in the British Empire. If it had only been Englishmen in the RAF, those German bombers would have won. And the English footie fans can't even bring themselves to admit that.

7. If Hitler had only (pick your move that he could have made), he would have won the war. Unless you mean "If he hadn't invaded the Soviet Union," or "If he hadn't declared war on America." If he had never opposed the 2 strongest nations on Earth other than his own, he might have lasted long enough to get a stalemate with the 3rd of the 3 strongest other than his own, Britain, and the Third Reich might have lasted a lot longer. It wouldn't have been "The Thousand-Year Reich" that he proclaimed, but it would have lasted longer than the 12 years that it did.

But once he invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, he was doomed. Even if America hadn't gotten into the "European Theater" of the war, it would have been a matter of time before the Soviets got to Berlin. And then, Britain and France would have been faced with a Red Europe, as Stalin would have been more than happy to add the formerly Nazi-controlled countries, including France, to his Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

8. Roosevelt "sold out to Stalin" at Yalta. The last meeting between FDR, Stalin and Churchill was at Yalta, in the Crimea, on the Black Sea -- part of the territory of Ukraine that Vladimir Putin annexed to Russia -- from February 4 to 11, 1945. 

Ever since, conservatives have claimed that FDR "betrayed" Eastern Europe by leaving it to Stalin. Well, what was FDR supposed to do? Send American troops into Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, et al.? In other words, provoke Stalin?

The war was not over. Germany was still fighting, even if the end, there, was in sight. Japan was still fighting, with no end in sight. The Battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa were yet to come. FDR needed the Soviet Union in that fight. He also knew that the United Nations would be stronger after the war if the Soviets were in it. Roosevelt agreed to some concessions at Yalta, for the same reason he cut his social programs short, telling a reporter, "Dr. New Deal had to give way to Dr. Win the War."

My father, of Polish descent, was a Kennedy Democrat, but he never forgave Roosevelt, the President when he was born, for how he handled the Polish situation at Yalta. But David Reynolds, a professor of history at Cambridge University, has written:

The so-called "Yalta myths" have been a great part of Republican mythology ever since the 1940s. They were a way of attacking Roosevelt and the Democratic party and it’s been brought up at various times since. The assumption behind it is that Roosevelt "sold out" Poland and Eastern Europe to the Soviet Union. It’s hard really to square that with the realities of 1945. The Red Army is in control of most of Poland by the time they meet at Yalta. So unless you embarked, say, on a war to evict the Red Army from Poland, there really is nothing you can do about that.

In other words, Poland and Eastern Europe were not Roosevelt's to "sell." Stalin already had them.

If FDR "sold out to Stalin at Yalta," then so did Churchill. Because of Stalin's promises, Churchill believed that he would keep his word regarding Poland and remarked, "Poor Neville Chamberlain believed he could trust Hitler. He was wrong. But I don't think I am wrong about Stalin." He was.

9. Dropping the atomic bombs on Japan was not necessary to end the war. The closer the U.S. got to the Japanese home islands, the harder the Japanese army fought. With victory at Okinawa on June 22, 1945, the U.S. got as close to the home islands as could be gotten without building new, closer islands. But that battle took 12 weeks. There were 12,500 Americans killed.

Compare that total with the 4,500 killed in 8 years in Iraq. Those 12,500 were more men, in 12 weeks, than America lost in Vietnam in any single year except 1968. The Japanese lost 110,000 men, and even more civilians on the island may have been killed.

President Harry S Truman, who didn't even know about the atomic bomb project until his 2nd day in office -- that's right: FDR did not tell his own Vice President about it -- was given these figures. He asked for figures of how many soldiers would die in an invasion of the Japanese home islands, and how long it would take. He was told over 1 million Japanese, half as many Americans, and it would take at least 6 months of fighting to get Japan to surrender. Given that "X-Day," the day the invasion was set to begin, would have been November 1, 1945, that meant that the "Pacific Theater" of the war would still have been in progress by May 1, 1946.

Truman asked when the atomic bomb would be ready. He was told that the 1st test would be on July 16, and that, if successful, more would be ready to go at a moment's notice. He knew that, if the invasion happened, and the predictions for it came true (and he believed that they would), and then it came out that America had the bombs that would have ended the war before the invasion, and Truman didn't use them, the American people would blow their stacks. He knew it would destroy his reputation as a strong leader who cared about the country. He cared more about that than he did about the Democratic Party losing the 1946 Congressional elections or the 1948 Presidential election.

He gave the order to proceed. Hiroshima was bombed on August 6. On August 9, Nagasaki was bombed, and the Soviet Union invaded Manchuria. The Japanese knew it was only going to get worse, much worse, and surrendered on August 14, which became known as V-J Day.

10. Black men serving in the war made the desegregation of baseball possible. The line was, "If we can stop bullets, why not balls?" In 1945, Albert "Happy" Chandler, a former Governor of Kentucky and U.S. Senator, was appointed Commissioner of Baseball. (He said he took the job because he loved baseball, and because it paid better than serving in the Senate.) He cited black men serving in the war as a reason to allow them in the professional ranks of baseball.

But there was a reason Chandler was appointed to the post: It was vacant. It was vacant because the 1st and only man, to that point, to hold it, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, had died in 1944. And he was a racist. While he publicly denied that there was any reason why black men couldn't play in the major leagues, there was no way he was ever going to allow it. And he loved being Commissioner, so he was never going to resign, even though he was 78 years old when he died.

And he looked old when he was

considerably younger than that.

Branch Rickey, president of the Brooklyn Dodgers, signed Jackie Robinson to a contract on October 23, 1945. Had Landis still been alive and on the job on that date, there is no way in hell that he would have allowed that contract to stand. Not even if a black American soldier had shot Hitler, or if a black American pilot had dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, or even if a black man had, by whatever means, saved Landis' own life.

Lieutenant Jack R. Robinson, U.S. Army.

Don't bother looking for a picture of Kenesaw Mountain Landis

in a military uniform: He never served, and so it doesn't exist.

If Landis were still alive in 1945, then, today, Jackie Robinson would be remembered, if at all, as a good running back for UCLA in 1940. And God only knows when a black man would have played in Major League Baseball. But it wouldn't have been while Landis was still alive.

Of course, Rickey was a lawyer. And a brilliant man. He could have sued, and argued the case very well. But Landis had been a federal Judge, meaning he was also a lawyer. He could have tied the case up for years.

If Landis had still been alive and Commissioner in 1954, when the U.S. Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education, he still would have held firm, until the Supreme Court got the case of Brooklyn National League Baseball Club, Inc. v. Kenesaw Mountain Landis, and Chief Justice Earl Warren would have done what he did in Brown v. Board, and gotten a unanimous ruling in favor of the plaintiff, granting great joy to black Americans, and giving the elderly Landis a terrible public humiliation.

But it still would have been, at the minimum, the Summer of 1954, before that ruling was issued. Which means the debuts of Robinson, Roy Campanella, Don Newcombe, Larry Doby, Satchel Paige, Monte Irvin, Willie Mays, Ernie Banks and Hank Aaron all would have been delayed -- and, given the ages of some of them, possibly prevented entirely.