July 7, 2005: The London Bombings

Tavistock Square

July 7, 2005, 20 years ago: Islamist terrorists carry out 4 suicide bombings during the morning rush hour in London. They targeted Underground (what the British call their subway system) stations at Aldgate, Edgeware Road and Russell Square, and on a double-decker bus in Tavistock Square.

The bombs went off at 8:49 AM, 3:49 AM U.S. Eastern Time. Not counting the bombers themselves, 52 people were killed, and over 700 were injured.

It was the deadliest terrorist attack in London's history, in spite of the "best" efforts of the Irish Republican Army, its various offshoots, and their Unionist opponents. And no enemy force had killed so many people in London since the last airborne bombing by Nazi Germany's Luftwaffe during World War II, over 60 years before.

A police investigation determined that what became known as "the 7/7 Bombings" were planned in Leeds, in Yorkshire, and raids arrested members of the terror cells involved. Like their American counterparts, the FBI, Britain's MI5 do not mess around.

Every year since, in commemoration, just before 11:30 AM -- 6:30 AM, U.S. Eastern Standard Time -- every train in the United Kingdom pulls to a stop, and its crews and passengers observe a minute's silence, the traditional British tribute for a solemn commemoration.

February 11, 1945: The Yalta Conference

February 11, 1945, 80 years ago: The Yalta Conference concludes, after 7 days of meetings between American President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, at Yalta, in the Crimea, on the Black Sea -- part of the territory of Ukraine that Vladimir Putin would later annex to Russia. They discussed how to finish off World War II, both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. They also discussed how to conduct the postwar world.

Ever since, conservatives have claimed that FDR "betrayed" Eastern Europe by leaving it to Stalin at Yalta. Well, what was FDR supposed to do? Send American troops into Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, et al.? In other words, provoke Stalin, and start World War III before World War II was won?

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." 

June 8, 1949: George Orwell Publishes "Nineteen Eighty-Four"

June 8, 1949, 75 years ago: Nineteen Eighty-Four is published by Secker & Warburg in London. It is the last novel written by Eric Blair to be published in his lifetime. It has become synonymous with his pen name: George Orwell.

The year was not chosen at random: It was simply the year in which the book was written, 1948, with the last 2 digits reversed, suggesting a "near future" to which the reader might be able to relate, even if Orwell himself might not live to see it. (He was born in 1903, but it was a foregone conclusion: He had been suffering from tuberculosis as early as 1938, when he was a journalist covering the Spanish Civil War. He died on January 21, 1950.)

In the novel, Britain, now known as Airstrip One, as well as America and the entire Western Hemisphere, and also the original Oceania, meaning Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, are part of a totalitarian superstate, named Oceania. This superstate is apparently led by Big Brother, who is pushed by the Party, the political organization that actually runs Oceania. Orwell leaves it vague as to whether Big Brother is a man who actually exists, or ever did, or is merely a convenient symbol.

The government tells the people, "Big Brother is watching you." As a result, they don't want to disappoint him by doing anything against the Party, and therefore against the nation. "Who controls the present controls the past" is a Party plank, and so there is a Ministry of Truth, which rewrites history to suit the Party's needs.

"Oceania had always been at war with with Eastasia," which includes Japan, China, and the Himalayas. "Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia," which includes what had been the Soviet Union and the rest of continental Europe. Both statements of perpetual war had been true, and neither, and could flip, depending on what the Party thought it needed at the time. "Even the names of countries, and their shapes on the map, had been different. Airstrip One, for instance, had not been so called in those days: it had been called England, or Britain, though London, he felt fairly certain, had always been called London."

"He" is the novel's protagonist, a Ministry of Truth worker named Winston Smith. Through his work of changing the truth, he has seen the truth, and begins to rebel. One thing leads to another, and his contact in a resistance group turns out to be a mole placed by the Party, and Winston is captured and tortured, and his loyalty is restored. The last line of the novel is, "He loved Big Brother."

In real life, the year 1984 turned out to be very little like the world of the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, although a movie based on the book, starring William Hurt as Winston, was released that year. And yet, in the years to come, Britain, and, to a lesser extent, America, would become loaded with closed-circuit TV cameras used by law-enforcement agencies. This growth of government watching led to a British TV "reality show," exported to America, titled Big Brother.

In short, just as "Machiavellian" has come to represent the kind of tactics that Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli was mocking in his book The Prince, "Orwellian" has come to mean the kind of governmental approach -- in total, or even in part, as with CCTV cameras -- that Orwell himself, a democratic socialist -- opposed.

In 1982, Alan Moore's graphic novel V for Vendetta premiered, showing a fascist, surveillance-obsessed Britain of 1997, led by a Big Brother-type figure, who was basically insecure and needed the love of the people. A film version was released in 2006, set in 2038, and it took a lot of liberties with the original story, including making the Chancellor a much meaner figure. He was played by William Hurt, who had come full circle from playing Winston Smith 22 years earlier.

But an insecure leader, who is not the man his supporters believe him to be, who tells you what the truth is, and calls the actual truth lies, and punishes those who act against his government? We have already had Donald Trump in the Presidency. We do not need that again. We don't need 2025 to be like Nineteen Eighty-Four.

June 6, 1944: D-Day, the Most Important Day

June 6, 1944, 80 years ago today: The Allies invade Nazi-held Normandy, on the French side of the English Channel. The liberation of Europe has begun.

It was officially called "Operation Overlord" by the United States Army, and "Operation Neptune" by the United States Navy. Since Neptune was the Roman name for the god of the sea -- known as Poseidon to the ancient Greeks -- the name was equivalent to "Overlord."

The term "D-Day" is now used almost exclusively in connection with this event, but it is actually a generic term for the day on which a combat operation is to be initiated, and the "D" doesn't stand for anything. The earliest use of it was in World War I, on September 7, 1918, when the U.S. Army used it for their attack on the St. Mihiel Salient, also in France.

Oddly, the planned invasion of the Japanese home island of Kyushu, set for November 1, 1945, was code-named not another "D-Day," but "X-Day"; while that of the main island of Honshu, set for February 1, 1946, was "Y-Day." Both were rendered unnecessary by the atomic bomb.

And various other events in World War II have been retroactively labeled "D-Days": November 8, 1942, for North Africa; September 3, 1943, the landing at Salerno, has been called "D-Day in Italy"; and June 15, 1944, the start of the Battle of Saipan, became known as "D-Day in the Pacific." The landing an Incheon, on September 15, 1950, has been called "Korea's D-Day." 

June 6, 1944 was the largest amphibious (sea and land) assault in military history. Five beaches were invaded. The U.S. Army sent V Corps to Omaha Beach, and VII Corps -- including the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions, helping to make those perhaps the most famous single units in the entire U.S. armed forces -- to Utah Beach.

The British Empire sent their Second Army to Gold Beach, their I Corps to Sword Beach, and Canada's 3rd Infantry Division to Juno Beach. There was also assistance from Free French and exiled Polish forces.

All told, there were about 350,000 men on the Allied side, against about 50,000 for the Nazis, a 7-1 manpower advantage. And still, because of the defensibility of the terrain, the Allies lost 4,415 men -- all in one day, nearly as many as America lost in Iraq over an 8-year stretch, and half again as many as died on 9/11. The Nazis lost over 9,000 men, and were forced to retreat from what they were calling "Fortress Europe."

The commanding officer for the operation, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, had originally scheduled it for the day before, June 5, but had to call it off due to unfavorable weather reports. He saw that the weather reports for the next few days weren't getting appreciably better, and decided that June 6 would be "D-Day."

"Ike," a 53-year-old native of Abilene, Kansas wrote a statement to use in the event the invasion failed, claiming full responsibility. He never had to use it. The invasion would make him the most famous commanding officer of The War, and he would go on to become the 34th President of the United States.

Photo staged, after the fact

Among the nearly 200,000 U.S. Navy personnel was a 19-year-old old gunner's mate from St. Louis, aboard the attack transport vessel USS Bayfield. He saw "the rockets' red glare," and later told an interviewer, "It looked like the 4th of July." He may have been the calmest man in the entire operation. He was the one man who both took part in the D-Day invasion and played Major League Baseball. He was Seaman Second Class Lawrence Peter Berra. Yogi.

He did not thank the Nazis "for making this day necessary,"

but he could legitimately have called

the Allies "overwhelming underdogs."

Also serving in this battle was Captain James Doohan of the Canadian Army. The man who went on to play Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott in the Star Trek franchise was 24, and gunned down a bunch of Nazis. Unfortunately, the story that he "gave the Nazis the finger" isn't true: He lost the middle finger on his right hand, all right, but it was from "friendly fire," a mistake from one of his own men.

Compared to facing the Nazis,

the Klingons were "no tribble at all."

Anyway, that's why every time "Scotty" was shown fixing something or pushing a button, he used his left hand. When he used the transporter, or was "reversing the polarity" in the episode "That Which Survives," another actor's hands were shown.

Also serving that day were British writers William Golding (Lord of the Flies) and Kingsley Amis (Lucky Jim), and American writer J.D. Salinger (Catcher in the Rye).

The only woman to land on Normandy was Martha Gellhorn, journalist, and then-wife of author Ernest Hemingway. She was denied press credentials, so she posed as a nurse, was allowed onto a hospital ship, locked herself in a bathroom so she would be part of the landing, and became an actual nurse, carrying stretchers. She later became one of the reporters who divulged the story of the Dachau concentration camp.

June 6, 1944 was a Tuesday. And no games were played on that day. It was the off-season for the National Football League. The National Hockey League had completed its season on April 13, with the Montreal Canadiens winning the Stanley Cup. There was, as yet, no National Basketball Association. 

And with the news of the invasion reaching American shores early in the morning, the Commissioner of Baseball, Kenesaw Mountain Landis -- whose father survived the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, outside Atlanta, in the American Civil War, and named his son in honor of it, with a different spelling -- ordered the postponement of all professional baseball games scheduled for the day.

According to the website of the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Virginia, about halfway between Roanoke and Lynchburg, and over 200 miles southwest of Washington:

Assuming that D-Day veterans have died at the same rate as other WWII veterans, we can estimate that 1.8% of the 140,000 are still living. That gives us an estimate of 2,520 D-Day veterans still living in 2021.

These are the last survivors of the men, and a few women in support roles, who won the most crucial battle against Nazi Germany. This day, 80 years ago, was the most important day in human history. If the Allies had lost, the Nazis could have held on and negotiated a stalemate, and still ruled a big chunk of Europe for the foreseeable future.

But the Allies won. The good guys won. We won. We freed Europe from Fascism. (Except for Spain and Portugal, which were neutral, as they had been in World War I. Their liberation from Fascism took another 30 years or so, and they had to do it on their own.) We defeated, and punished, the greatest evil that the planet Earth has ever known.

These people, and those who fought in the war earlier from September 1939 onward, were the original "Antifa." We owe these people everything.

Including the decision to cancel the day's baseball games. As Baseball Hall-of-Famer Bob Feller, then serving in the U.S. Navy in the Pacific Theater of Operations, told people for the rest of his life, "Anybody who says sports is war has never been in a war."

Notable films about D-Day include:

* Breakthrough, 1950.

* The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel, 1951, with British actor James Mason portraying Erwin Rommel as a General too good for the Nazis.

* D-Day The Sixth of June, 1956, a British film whose actors included an actual D-Day lander, Richard Todd.

* The Longest Day, 1962, based on the 1959 book by Cornelius Ryan. It is an epic with a huge cast: Richard Todd again, John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Richard Burton, Henry Fonda, Red Buttons with no comedy whatsoever, Peter Lawford, Eddie Albert, Jeffrey Hunter, Rod Steiger, George Segal, Robert Wagner, singer Paul Anka; and, notably, the man about to become James Bond, Sean Connery, plus 2 future Bond villains as German officers, Gert Fröbe and Curd Jürgens. My mother saw it when it came out, and mentioned that it was notable as one of the earliest films in which the actors are shown speaking the languages they're supposed to, with subtitles. But she also said it was so long, it should be called The Longest Film.

* Two 1964 films with James Garner: 36 Hours, and The Americanization of Emily, also with Julie Andrews, a year before she took on the Nazis in The Sound of Music.

* A Matter of Resistance, 1966, a French romantic comedy, that happens to include the invasion, starring Catherine Deneuve.

* Where Eagles Dare, 1968, another with Richard Burton, in which Clint Eastwood infiltrates the Nazis, much as he would later do with the Soviet Union in Firefox.

* Patton, 1970, with George C. Scott playing General George S. Patton through the entire European Theater of Operations.

* Overlord, 1975, a post-Vietnam film looking at World War II as an overall failure of humanity.

* The Big Red One, 1980, with Mark Hamill fighting actual Nazis, not just an allegory for them as in the Star Wars films.

* Saving Private Ryan, 1998, Steven Spielberg aiming to make the most realistic version, and, in the opinion of many D-Day survivors, succeeding.

* Ike: Countdown to D-Day, 2004, with Tom Selleck, bald and without his famous mustache, nearly unrecognizable as Eisenhower.

* Storming Juno, 2010, the story told from the Canadian perspective.

Also on June 6, 1944, jazz pianist Monty Alexander was born. Phillip Allen Sharp was born, the 1993 winner of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. Derrel McKinley "Bud" Harrelson was born, the shortstop on the New York Mets team that won the 1969 World Series and the 1973 National League Pennant. But D-Day may have been a bigger "miracle" than the '69 Mets. And track star Tommie Smith was born. He would become known for his protest at the 1968 Olympics, during another war, one that divided rather than united America.

May 18, 1964: Mods vs. Rockers In Brighton

May 18, 1964, 60 years ago: Great Britain's 2 leading youth cultures square off, and it is a mess.

National Service for men aged 18 to 20 ended gradually from 1957. Britain has had an all-volunteer military ever since, just as America has had with the post-Vietnam ending of the draft in 1973. Both countries have found that having an armed forces staffed entirely by men and women who want to be there works far more effectively than having one with men who were forced to give up their lives to fight for a cause they didn't always understand.

But having so many more men ages 17 to 21 out on the streets, without an equivalent of America's G.I. Bill to send them to college, led to unintended consequences, including the creation of some subcultures that became nationally infamous, and then world-famous.

This was around the time that England's first rock and roll bands were being formed. It is no coincidence that 1957 was also the year that 17-year-old John Lennon met 15-year-old Paul McCartney in Liverpool; and that, early in 1958, they met 15-year-old George Harrison. By that point, 17-year-old Richard Starkey was already drumming in a band, and would begin calling himself "Ringo Starr" a year later.

After The War, young men in delinquent gangs who had adopted Edwardian-era fashion -- in the style of the years from 1901 to 1910, when the King was Edward VII, or "Good Old Teddy" -- were sometimes known as "Cosh Boys" or "Edwardians." On September 23, 1953, the national newspaper the Daily Express shortened "Edwardian Boy" to "Teddy Boy," and the name stuck.

By the early 1960s, that fad had ended the way most fads do: The originators grew out of it, and moved on. But 2 new subcultures took the Teddy Boys' place: The Mods and the Rockers. The Rockers were based on motorcycle culture, inspired by Marlon Brando in the 1953 film The Wild One. (Brando played a character named Johnny, which caught John Lennon's attention. And the film included a motorcycle gang named the Beetles. But The Beatles were named as a play on Buddy Holly's band, The Crickets.)

The Rockers wore leather jackets, leather pants or blue jeans, and leather boots, and generally made nuisances of themselves everywhere they went. Their choice of music was that of the early rockers who had toured Britain: Bill Haley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent. (Cochran and Vincent had completed a tour of Britain in 1960, and were heading home to London's Heathrow Airport when their driver crashed, killing Cochran and badly injuring Vincent.)

The Rockers were leather-clad slobs. The Mods were different. They dressed up. The play The Odd Couple wasn't staged until 1965, and the movie and the TV show based on it came a few years after that; but if the Rockers were "Oscars," the Mods were "Felixes."

And instead of big motorcycles, like the kind produced in Britain and America, they preferred scooters, small and efficient enough for getting around streets in the countries that were producing them, Italy and France. If the scooters could work well in the streets of Rome and Paris, it was reasoned, they could work well in the streets of London. They would have multiple lights, or "lamps" in British parlance, on them. But, what was more, you could show up to work dressed like a Mod, and keep your job. It was "respectable."

Their musical tastes were different as well. They were originally called "mod" because they preferred "modern jazz," instead of "traditional jazz," whose fans became known as "trad." But they also embraced rock and roll, not the harder stuff of Elvis and Chuck Berry, but vocal groups with the black and Italian "doo-wop" sound. 

Pete Townshend, the lead songwriter and the lead guitarist for The Who, defined the Mods for Americans in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine for their September 28, 1968 issue:

It was a movement of young people, much bigger than the hippie thing, the underground and all these things. It was an army, a powerful, aggressive army of teenagers with transport. Man, with these scooters and with their own way of dressing.

It was acceptable, this was important; their way of dressing was hip, it was fashionable, it was clean and it was groovy. You could be a bank clerk, man, it was acceptable. You got them on your own ground. They thought, "Well, there's a smart young lad." And also you were hip, you didn't get people uptight. That was the good thing about it.

To be a mod, you had to have short hair, money enough to buy a real smart suit, good shoes, good shirts; you had to be able to dance like a madman. You had to be in possession of plenty of pills all the time and always be pilled up. You had to have a scooter covered in lamps. You had to have like an army anorak to wear on the scooter. And that was being a mod and that was the end of the story.

There was another difference in there, mentioned by Townshend: The pills, amphetamines, as opposed to the Rockers' drugs of choice, tobacco and alcohol. That's why Who lead singer Roger Daltrey purposely stuttered on their signature song, "My Generation": As Townshend explained, he's under the influence of the pills.

The Mods seemed like the perfect counterweight to the Rockers and their predecessors, the Teddy Boys. They launched the 1960s culture that became known as "Swinging London." But, soon enough, it would be fists that would be swinging, between the Mods and the Rockers.

On May 18, 1964, the 1st warm weekend of the calendar year, it came to a head in several seaside communities in England. The worst of the Mod vs. Rocker violence was in Brighton in Sussex, where, as all surviving sources agree, the Mods started it, not the Rockers with what was then the more aggressive reputation. The fighting moved along the coast, to Hastings, which led to the media calling it "the Second Battle of Hastings."

There were also beach and beach-town battles in Margate, Kent; and Clacton, Essex. Newspapers called the groups "vermin" and "louts." The Birmingham Post warned that Mods and Rockers were "internal enemies" who would "bring about disintegration of a nation's character." The members of The Who -- Daltrey, Townshend, bass guitarist John Entwistle and drummer Keith Moon -- were not directly involved in the fighting. But Townsend would write the rock opera Quadrophenia about the events, releasing it in 1973. It became a film in 1979.

The Beatles' film A Hard Day's Night was filmed in March and April 1964, a few weeks before the Brighton violence, but not released until after: July 6 in Britain, and August 11 in America. If Americans had heard about the violence in Brighton at all, they had quickly forgotten about it. In the film, a female reporter asked Ringo, "Are you a Mod or a Rocker?" And with the "cheeky humour" for which the group was then known, he answered, "I'm a Mocker!"

Every so often, as with other fads, the British youth subcultures come back. The Teddy Boys had a revival in the Glam Rock period of the 1970s. The subsequent rise of punk rock in 1976 brought the Rocker subculture back. The "Northern Soul" movement of the 1980s, centered around Manchester, revived interest in the Mods. And The Stray Cats, an American retro-rock band of the early 1980s, proved more popular in Britain, and, wittingly or not, was another revival of the Rockers.

Queen Elizabeth II, 1926-2022

Queen Elizabeth II, who reigned longer as monarch of England or Great Britain than anyone, has died after 70 years on the throne. She was 96 years old, also the oldest English or British monarch ever.

She was born on April 21, 1926, as Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor, at 17 Bruton Street, in the Mayfair section of London. This was the home of her maternal grandfather, the Scottish nobleman Claude Bowes-Lyon, 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne. Her mother was Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, and her father was Prince Albert Arthur Frederick George, the Duke of York, the 2nd son of King George V.

In 1936, George V died, and was succeeded by his eldest son as King Edward VIII. But before the year was out, Edward abdicated the throne in order to marry the woman he loved, Wallis Simpson, who, as a divorcée (never mind a commoner and an American), was unacceptable as a spouse for the monarch. So Elizabeth's father became King George VI, and, at age 10, she was suddenly heir presumptive to the throne.

During World War II, the Nazis bombed London, including Buckingham Palace, but the royal family survived. Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, still teenagers, entered the British Army. Elizabeth worked in a motor pool, meaning she could, literally, fix your wagon and clean your clock. To the end of her life, she hated fascists.

In 1947, she married Philip Mountbatten, descended through intermarriages from the royal houses of Britain, Germany, Denmark and Greece. Like Elizabeth, he was a great-great-grandchild of Britain's Queen Victoria. They went on to have 4 children: Charles, Prince of Wales; Anne, the Princess Royal; Andrew, Duke of York; and Edward, Earl of Wessex. Each child had 2 children, so Elizabeth had 4 grandchildren; and lived long enough to see 12 great-grandchildren.

Left to right: Princess Elizabeth, Prince Philip,

Queen Elizabeth (known after 1952 as the Queen Mother),

King George VI, Princess Margaret

In 1952, while Elizabeth and Philip were on vacation in Kenya, then still a British colony, King George died. They had to fly back, a 25-year-old Queen and her 30-year-old Prince Consort, the Duke of Edinburgh. They were met at Croydon Airport in London -- Heathrow had not yet been expanded into London's international airport -- by the Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill, the 1st of 15 Prime Ministers to serve under her. (Harold Wilson lost the office in 1970, and regained it in 1974, but is only counted as one Prime Minister.)

She became the greatest diplomat the world has ever known. No monarch ever traveled more. She enjoyed visiting America, where some of the racehorses she owned were kept, and she met (sometimes in America, sometimes in Britain) with every President from Harry Truman to Joe Biden, except Lyndon Johnson. She enjoyed visiting Canada, and she met with every Prime Minister from Louis St. Laurent to Justin Trudeau. And she was the 1st British monarch to visit Australia.

With President John F. Kennedy, 1961

But during her reign, several colonies declared their independence, though some of them remained in the British Commonwealth: There were still 15 nations, including Canada and Australia, where she was still the head of state, represented in said countries by a Governor-General.

Although various individual members of the royal family, including her sister, the jet-setting Princess Margaret, saw their popularity rise and fall, her own remained high. The exception was the aftermath of the death of Princess Diana, the ex-wife of Prince Charles, in 1997. Charles had treated her poorly, including in public. And when the Queen stuck too closely to protocol thereafter, including not making a televised statement at first, the public turned on her.

It was the only time she ever lost a popularity contest, and the only time she ever had to eat crow: The day before Diana's funeral, she took to the airwaves and gave a brief, conciliatory speech. Unlike Charles, whose reputation was permanently damaged, the Queen won most of her new critics back.

But she knew she was reigning in a modern world. She proved adept at new media, including social media. She even agreed to record a short film for the Opening Ceremony of the 2012 Olympics in London, with actor Daniel Craig in character as James Bond. Through his many incarnations, the Queen is the one woman to whom Bond was always faithful. When two figures jumped out of what appeared to be the royal helicopter into the Olympic Stadium, it was the sort of thing Bond would do, but not the 76-year-old Queen. Then again, who could say it was completely out of character? She did attend the Ceremony, and took the traditional head-of-state role in the host nation of declaring the Olympic Games open.

A common joke from 2017 onward:

"Your orders regarding Trump, Ma'am?"

"Make it look like an accident, 007."

Like most British monarchs since it opened, she didn't much like Buckingham Palace, the official royal residence in London. She preferred Windsor Castle in Berkshire, a royal home since William the Conqueror had it built in 1170; and, even more so, Balmoral Castle outside Aberdeen, Scotland, built for Queen Victoria in 1856. (Kings Edward VII and George VI, and Prince Charles, had Sandringham House in Norfolk as their preferred getaways.)

Like many other monarchs (in particular, Edward VII), she loved horses and horse racing. She also loved dogs, and was known for her Welsh corgis, 2 of whom even made guest appearances in the Bond Olympic video. When England won the World Cup on home soil in 1966, she presented the trophy to team Captain Bobby Moore. And she supported North London soccer team Arsenal.

On a 1991 visit to America, President George H.W. Bush invited her to a baseball game at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore, then the closest city to Washington in Major League Baseball. The Orioles hosted the Oakland Athletics, who had one of their legends, Reggie Jackson, as a guest.

This was a bit awkward: In 1988, the film The Naked Gun had Jeannette Charles, who often played the Queen in movies and TV shows due to her resemblance, play the Queen as the target of a murder plot of a villain played by Ricardo Montalban. Leslie Nielsen played Lieutenant Frank Drebin, the Los Angeles policeman charged with protecting her.

The climax of the film was at a baseball game between the team then known as the California Angels and the Seattle Mariners -- supposedly at Anaheim Stadium (now named Angel Stadium of Anaheim), but actually filmed up the freeway at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. During the game, Reggie -- who had played for the Angels, but, by this point, was retired in real life -- was brainwashed, Manchurian Candidate-style, and walked from his position in right field to the Queen's box seat, all the while saying, "I... must kill... the Queen." Drebin manages to stop him, in a rather haphazard way.

Retroactively, the most bizarre thing about this spoof of police movies is that one of the Los Angeles cops is played by O.J. Simpson. But there were no hard feelings when the Queen and Reggie were introduced for real.

There were jokes that the reason the Queen lived so long was that she didn't want to hand the crown over to Prince Charles. But, understanding her duty, she refused to abdicate, even as the monarchs of Spain, the Netherlands and Belgium had all done so in recent years.

Or maybe she was willing herself to live long enough to see Prime Minister Boris Johnson and "President" Donald Trump leave office. She didn't like either one. In 2021, she saw Trump leave, but when Prince Philip died a few weeks later, at the age of 99, royal observers thought she wouldn't live much longer. Nevertheless, at age 95, having survived the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, the modernization of the world, and even a bout with COVID-19, she continued to not only do her job, but enjoy her job.

The year 2022 marked her 70th Anniversary on the throne, her Platinum Jubilee. For the 1st half of the year, turning 96, she was still involved in the celebrations. But she began canceling some appearances, due to what were being officially called "mobility issues." When she appeared in public, she seemed thinner, and was using a cane.

On September 6, with the Conservative Party having finally chosen a new Leader, triggering Johnson's announced resignation, that new Leader, Liz Truss, went to Balmoral, where the Queen was spending the Summer.

This was the 1st time since the establishment of the office of Prime Minister that the new holder of it had met with the monarch other than at a palace in London. That was considered a bad sign. And when no video of the event was released, that was also considered a bad sign. But in the official photographs, the Queen, while still thinner and looking frail, was smiling, and appeared to be fully mentally engaged. That was a good sign.

Just 2 days later, at 12:30 PM British time on September 8, Buckingham Palace released this announcement: "Following further evaluation this morning, the Queen's doctors are concerned for Her Majesty's health and have recommended she remain under medical supervision. The Queen remains comfortable and at Balmoral." At 6:30 PM -- 1:30 PM, U.S. Eastern Time -- the Queen's death was announced on the BBC.

Over 90 percent of people living in Britain had no memory of any monarch except Queen Elizabeth II. Now, they do: Her son became King Charles III. His son, Prince William, is now next in line.

Although Charles automatically gives up the titles he had previously held, William, already Duke of Cambridge, did not immediately receive Charles' title of Prince of Wales, which is usually given to the eldest son of the monarch. He will likely be invested in that title after Charles' coronation, which usually takes place a little over a year after the death of the preceding monarch. He did, however, immediately inherit Charles' former titles as Duke of Cornwall and Duke of Rothesay. Officially, he is now listed in England as "Duke of Cornwall and Cambridge."

And so, after 70 years, British coins and banknotes will have a new face on them. All the institutions that were named "Her Majesty's (whatever)" are now "His Majesty's." And the National Anthem, for 70 years titled "God Save the Queen," is, for the first time since February 6, 1952, "God Save the King."

Charles has waited 73 years for this. He should get it right. There are people in the Commonwealth who no longer want a monarchy. Indeed, in Australia, it is said that there are many people who were Elizabethans, but not monarchists. It is entirely possible that some of the 14 nations in the Commonwealth, other than Britain itself, were waiting for the Queen to be gone before finally jettisoning the monarchy. We shall see.

UPDATE: On September 9, in his first address to the nation as King, Charles announced that he had given William and Kate the titles of Prince and Princess of Wales. An official investiture date, as with Charles' Coronation, has not yet been announced. 

Basics for the MLB London Series

Saturday, 1:00 PM New York time, on Fox. Actually, first pitch is set for 1:10, but they need a few minutes for a preview. That's 6:10 PM, London time. Announcers: Joe Buck and John Smoltz.

Sunday, 10:00 AM New York time, on ESPN. Announcers: Matt Vasgersian, Jessica Mendoza, and "Yankee Legend" Alex Rodriguez.

The games will be played at the London Stadium, the main venue for the 2012 Olympics, and now the home of East End soccer team West Ham United. (I know, it confused me at first, too, but West Ham is part of East London.)

Not Wembley, the Home of Football. Not Twickenham, the Home of Rugby. And certainly not Wimbledon, the Home of Tennis.

You'd think it would be Lord's, the Home of Cricket, which has enough space. But it only seats 28,000. Add the capacity of the other major cricket venue in the London area, 25,500, and it still wouldn't be enough.

But the London Stadium has the capacity, 60,000 seats, and almost enough space. Center field will be a little short, about 385 feet from home plate, so there will be a higher fence there, about 17 feet. The foul poles will be a reasonable 330 feet.

Unfortunately, the games will be on artificial turf. But the Red Sox will be the official home team, so that's 2 fewer games we have to play at Fenway Park this season. Despite being the visiting team, the Yankees will wear their home Pinstriped uniforms.

Each team has been allowed to bring 28 players, with 26 being eligible, 1 more than usual, in case of emergency. Hey, you never know: A player could get jet-lagged, or, if they stay at the Canary Wharf Marriott, food poisoning. (Oh shit, he went there!) Damn right I did. I'm not only a Yankee Fan, but an Arsenal fan.

The Yankees have brought Reggie Jackson, Hideki Matsui, Andy Pettitte, Alex Rodriguez and Nick Swisher on the trip. I can't find a list of "honored" guests for the Red Sox.

Somebody asked if Neville Chamberlain was going to throw out the ceremonial first ball. I said no, because Bud Selig has already appeased the Red Sox for many years. Prince Harry will be on hand, as the member of the royal family who has spent the most time in America, and I suspect he will throw out the first ball.

Major League Baseball is so confident, they're doing it again next year. Same venue. On June 13 and 14, 2020, it will be 1 of the 2 big National league rivalries, the Chicago Cubs and the St. Louis Cardinals. I was sure they were going to select the other big NL rivalry: The Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Francisco Giants. Maybe that will be for 2021.

June 6, 1944: D-Day

June 6, 1944, 75 years ago: The Allies invade Nazi-held Normandy, on the French side of the English Channel. The liberation of Europe has begun.

It was officially called "Operation Overlord" by the United States Army, and "Operation Neptune" by the United States Navy.

The term "D-Day" is now used almost exclusively in connection with this event, but it is actually a generic term for the day on which a combat operation is to be initiated. The earliest use of it was in World War I, on September 7, 1918, when the U.S. Army used it for their attack on the St. Mihiel Salient, also in France.

It was the largest amphibious (sea and land) assault in military history. Five beaches were invaded. The U.S. Army sent V Corps to Omaha Beach, and VII Corps -- including the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions, helping to make those perhaps the most famous single units in the entire U.S. armed forces -- to Utah Beach.

The British Empire sent their Second Army to Gold Beach, their I Corps to Sword Beach, and Canada's 3rd Infantry Division to Juno Beach. There was also assistance from Free French and exiled Polish forces.

All told, there were about 350,000 men on the Allied side, against about 50,000 for the Nazis, a 7-1 manpower advantage. And still, because of the defensibility of the terrain, the Allies lost over 4,400 men -- all in one day, nearly as many as America lost in Iraq over an 8-year stretch. The Nazis lost over 9,000 men, and were forced to retreat from what they were calling "Fortress Europe."

The commanding officer for the operation, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, had originally scheduled it for the day before, June 5, but had to call it off due to unfavorable weather reports. He saw that the weather reports for the next few days weren't getting appreciably better, and decided that June 6 would be "D-Day."

"Ike," a 53-year-old native of Abilene, Kansas wrote a statement to use in the event the invasion failed, claiming full responsibility. He never had to use it. He would go on to become the 34th President of the United States.

Among the nearly 200,000 U.S. Navy personnel was a 19-year-old old gunner's mate from St. Louis, aboard the attack transport vessel USS Bayfield. He saw "the rockets' red glare," and later told an interviewer, "It looked like the 4th of July." He may have been the calmest man in the entire operation. He was the one man who both took part in the D-Day invasion and played Major League Baseball. He was Second Class Seaman Lawrence Peter Berra. Yogi.

With the news of the invasion reaching American shores early in the morning, the Commissioner of Baseball, Kenesaw Mountain Landis -- whose father survived the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, outside Atlanta, in the American Civil War, and named his son in honor of it, with a different spelling -- ordered the postponement of all professional baseball games scheduled for the day.

This day, 75 years ago, was the most important day in human history. If the Allies had lost, the Nazis could have held on and negotiated a stalemate, and still ruled a big chunk of Europe for the foreseeable future.

But the Allies won. We won. We freed Europe from fascism. (Except for Spain and Portugal. That took another 30 years or so.) We defeated, and punished, the greatest evil that the planet Earth has ever known.

These people, and those who fought in the war earlier from September 1939 onward, were the original "Antifa." We owe these people everything.

Including the decision to cancel the day's baseball games. As Baseball Hall-of-Famer Bob Feller, then serving in the U.S. Navy in the Pacific Theater of Operations, told people for the rest of his life, "Anybody who says sports is war has never been in a war."

Arsène Wenger: 22 Years of Filling Unforgiving Minutes

There was one understandable reason why Arsène Wenger should have left his post as manager of Arsenal Football Club.

And that is that he has had enough. Enough of the bogus calls of English referees. Enough of the lies of the English media. Enough of the abuse from people who claim to be Arsenal fans.

Now, about to close his 22nd and final season in North London, he has given up the greatest job he will ever have. But, like a former President who no longer has to deal with the stress, he is free at last.

*

Arsène Charles Ernest Wenger was born on October 22, 1949, in Strasbourg, in Alsace, a region that France and Germany spent the better part of 1870 to 1945 fighting over. He grew up in neighboring Duttlenheim, where his German father and his French mother ran a bistro named La Croix d'Or (The Cross of Gold), where he would spend hours studying the behavior of the football-loving customers. He would later say:

There is no better psychological education than growing up in a pub, because, when you are five or six years old, you meet all different people, and hear how cruel they can be to each other. From an early age, you get a practical, psychological education to get into the minds of people.

It is not often that a boy of five or six is always living with adults in a little village. I learned about tactics and selection from the people talking about football in the pub – who plays on the left wing and who should be in the team.

He got an economics degree at the University of Strasbourg, and played as a sweeper with FC Strasbourg, winning the Ligue 1 title in 1979 -- but that club has since been liquidated and reformed, its successor club RC Strasbourg Alsace finally having been promoted to the top tier of the French football system for this season, after 10 years away.

As a manager, he led AS Monaco – keep in mind that Monaco is a separate, though very small, nation but their soccer team is in the French league – to the 1988 Ligue 1 title and the 1991 Coupe de France, and Nagoya Grampus Eight to Japan's Emperor's Cup in 1996. That's when he was signed to manage the Arsenal Football Club of London.

Known as "Le Boss" for being French and "The Professor" for his scholarly demeanor, Wenger led "the Gunners" (whose fans are called "Gooners") to the Premier League title in 1998, 2002 and 2004, and to the FA Cup, England's national tournament, in 1998, 2002, 2003, 2005 and 2014 – taking both titles, a.k.a. "The Double," in 1998 and 2002.

The 2004 Arsenal team is known as "The Invincibles," as they went through an entire league season undefeated: 26 wins, 12 draws, 0 losses. It is the only undefeated season in the Football League since its very first, 1889, when Preston North End did it in far fewer games. Their undefeated streak eventually reached 49, breaking the former record of 42 set by the Nottingham Forest team of Brian Clough in 1978-79.

Arsenal infamously went 9 seasons without a trophy until the 2014 FA Cup, thanks to the addition of perhaps the best player in the world, Mesut Özil, who next won the World Cup with Germany. Wenger won the FA Cup again in 2015, and again in 2017. That made 7 FA Cup wins, the most of any manager in history. Aaron Ramsey, cruelly injured and missing a year in 2010 and 2011, scored the winning goal in extra time in 2014, and in the dying minutes of regular time in 2017, with Laurent Koscielny as the team's defensive rock. This season, he bought international superstars Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Henrikh Mkhitaryan.

In his 1st 20 seasons, he:

* Won the Premier League 3 times, twice having also won the FA Cup to "do the Double," and once going through an entire season without a loss: As a broadcaster said, "Played 38, won 26, drawn 12, lost exactly none."

* Never finished lower than 4th place.

* Never finished behind Arsenal's North London arch-rivals, Tottenham Hotspur FC, a.k.a. Spurs.

* Won 6 FA Cups in 7 appearances in the Final and 11 appearances in the Semifinal, never once losing in the first available round.

* Qualified for the UEFA Champions League every year since the 1997-98 season -- and reaching the last 16 of it every year since the one after after it, reaching the Quarterfinal 3 times, the Semifinal twice, and the Final once.

* Built the Emirates Stadium, a 60,000-seat sports palace that generates enough revenue for Arsenal to sign world-class players in a way that Highbury, the beloved 38,000-seat old stadium whose sideline stands went up in the 1930s, simply couldn't.

* And kept Arsenal playing at a high level despite having to pay off the debt from that stadium, meaning that, at first, world-class players would have to be scouted and developed, rather than bought.

But he went 9 years, from 2005 to 2014, without winning a trophy, unless you want to count winning preseason exhibition tournaments. And it's now been 14 years, since 2004, since he's won the Premier League. And he's never won the Champions League, hasn't reached the Final in 12 years, hasn't reached the Semifinal in 9 years, and hasn't reached the Quarterfinal in 8 years.

Many times, it looked, going into the Spring, like Arsenal would not finish in the Top 4, would not qualify for the Champions League, would not finish ahead of Spurs. And, thanks to Wenger's brilliance and Spurs' annual late-season fold, they always achieved these things anyway.

But last season, for the 1st time in 22 years, Tottenham finished ahead of Arsenal. They will do so again this season. For reasons I won't get into here, Arsenal finished 5th last season, and are currently 6th. They did not qualify for this season's Champions League, and can only qualify for next season's by winning the Europa League -- but they are in the Semifinal of that tournament.

*
Yesterday morning, Arsène released this statement:

“After careful consideration and following discussions with the club, I feel it is the right time for me to step down at the end of the season.

“I am grateful for having had the privilege to serve the club for so many memorable years.

“I managed the club with full commitment and integrity.

“I want to thank the staff, the players, the Directors and the fans who make this club so special.

“I urge our fans to stand behind the team to finish on a high.

“To all the Arsenal lovers take care of the values of the club.

"My love and support forever.”

Arsene Wenger

Read more at https://www.arsenal.com/news/merci-arsene#xaOCEjH8TsjK0mzF.99

“After careful consideration and following discussions with the club, I feel it is the right time for me to step down at the end of the season.

“I am grateful for having had the privilege to serve the club for so many memorable years.

“I managed the club with full commitment and integrity.

“I want to thank the staff, the players, the Directors and the fans who make this club so special.

“I urge our fans to stand behind the team to finish on a high.

“To all the Arsenal lovers take care of the values of the club.

"My love and support forever.”

Arsene Wenger

Read more at https://www.arsenal.com/news/merci-arsene#xaOCEjH8TsjK0mzF.99

“After careful consideration and following discussions with the club, I feel it is the right time for me to step down at the end of the season.

“I am grateful for having had the privilege to serve the club for so many memorable years.

“I managed the club with full commitment and integrity.

“I want to thank the staff, the players, the Directors and the fans who make this club so special.

“I urge our fans to stand behind the team to finish on a high.

“To all the Arsenal lovers take care of the values of the club.

"My love and support forever.”
Read more at https://www.arsenal.com/news/merci-arsene#xaOCEjH8TsjK0mzF.99

After careful consideration and following discussions with the club, I feel it is the right time for me to step down at the end of the season.

I am grateful for having had the privilege to serve the club for so many memorable years.

I managed the club with full commitment and integrity.

I want to thank the staff, the players, the Directors and the fans who make this club so special.

I urge our fans to stand behind the team to finish on a high.

To all the Arsenal lovers take care of the values of the club.

My love and support for ever.
-- Arsène Wenger

*

Some soccer teams name sections of their stands for great players, great managers, or chairmen. If Arsenal were to do the same at the Emirates, here's how they should do it:

* For Herbert Chapman, manager from 1925 until his death in 1934: The West Stand, since that's the stand he built, and lived to see built, at Highbury.

* For Bertie Mee, manager from 1966 to 1976: The East Stand, since he won Arsenal's first trophies in the TV era, and the cameras are aimed at the East Stand, as they were at Highbury.

* For George Graham, player from 1966 to 1972, and manager from 1986 to 1995: The North Bank, since the fans who still define "success at Arsenal" as being what he did still pine for the days when they stood on the pre-Taylor Report North Bank, and cheered his players.

* For Arsène Wenger, manager from 1996 to 2018: The south stand, known as the Clock End for the big clock atop it, first at Highbury, now at the Emirates, because he not only changed history, and spent more time as Arsenal manager than anyone, but built a legacy that is timeless.

*

The best tribute I ever saw to Arsène was a video made by someone who, ironically, quoted that most British, and least inclusive, of British writers, Rudyard Kipling:

If you can keep your head when all about you
are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
but make allowance for their doubting too.
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
and yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream, and not make dreams your master;
If you can think, and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster,
and treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
and stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make a heap of all your winnings
and risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
and lose, and start again at your beginnings
and never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
to serve your turn long after they are gone,
and so hold on when there is nothing in you
except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
or walk with Kings, nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
with sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
and, which is more, you'll be a man, my son!

Who has faced as many "unforgiving minutes" as Arsène Wenger? And, of those who have, who has filled them so well?

I submit that the answer is, "Nobody."

One Arsène Wenger, there's only one Arsène Wenger.