October 22, 1969: ARPANET: The Original Internet

October 22, 1969: The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) goes online, through the U.S. Department of Defense. It is an early packet-switching network, designed for resource sharing between remote computers, and the first network to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite. The first connections were made between major universities, and the very first was in California, between UCLA and Stanford.

It was designed by Leonard Kleinrock, Paul Baran, Donald Davies, Lawrence Roberts (who worked on the packet-switching methodology), Robert Kahn and Vint Cerf (who developed the protocols).

Although ARPANET was taken offline in 1989, due to successor networks having gone online, it is, essentially, the beginning of the Internet.

In 2000, Vice President Al Gore was running for President, and the Republican Party mocked him for claiming to have invented the Internet. What he actually said, in an interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN on March 9, 1999, was, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." Which is not the same thing as claiming to have invented it.

On October 2, 2000, Kahn and Cerf released a statement saying the following:

Al Gore was the first political leader to recognize the importance of the Internet and to promote and support its development.

No one person or even small group of persons exclusively "invented" the Internet. It is the result of many years of ongoing collaboration among people in government and the university community. But as the two people who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore's contributions as a Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official, to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time.

In other words, two of the guys who were part of the invention of the Internet said that Gore was vital as far as its development was concerned. But the American media, in the tank for Gore's opponent, Governor George W. Bush of Texas, never told the truth about it, sticking with the myth that Gore "lied when he said he invented the Internet," when he never said he'd invented it.

Davies died in 2000, Baran in 2011, Roberts in 2018. As of October 22, 2022, Kleinrock, Kahn and Cerf are still alive.

*

October 22, 1969 was a Wednesday. Adam Spiegel, a.k.a. the film director Spike Jonze, and Belgian singer Helmut Lotti were born.

Baseball season ended 6 days earlier, when the New York Mets beat the Baltimore Orioles in Game 5 to win the World Series. Football was in midweek. There were 4 games in the NBA:

* The Philadelphia 76ers beat the Phoenix Suns, 122-119 at The Spectrum in Philadelphia.

* The San Francisco Warriors beat the Atlanta Hawks, 94-93 at the Alexander Memorial Coliseum (now the McCamish Pavilion) in Atlanta.

* The Los Angeles Lakers beat the Cincinnati Royals, 116-109 at the Cincinnati Gardens. Just another day at the office for Wilt Chamberlain: 43 points and 20 rebounds.

* And the Milwaukee Bucks beat the San Diego Rockets, 115-102 at the San Diego Sports Arena (now the Pechanga Arena). Lew Alcindor, the man who would become Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, in only his 3rd professional game, scored 36 points and grabbed 19 rebounds.

There were 3 games in the American Basketball Association:

* The Carolina Cougars beat the Washington Capitols, 122-91 at the original Charlotte Coliseum (now the Bojangles Coliseum). These Capitols moved the next season, becoming the Virginia Squires, and have no connection to either the Washington Capitols who played in the NBA from 1946 to 1951, or to the Washington Capitals who began play in the NHL in 1974. Of course, all 3 teams were nicknamed the Caps for short.

* The Miami Floridians beat the Los Angeles Stars, 119-98 at the Dinner Key Auditorium in Miami. This was about 8 months after Jim Morrison of The Doors was arrested for some alleged naughtiness at a concert there.

* And the Indiana Pacers beat the Denver Nuggets, 117-107 at the Indians State Fairgrounds Coliseum (now the Corteva Coliseum) in Indianapolis.

There were 5 games in the NHL:

* The New York Rangers and the Chicago Black Hawks played to a tie, 1-1 at the new Madison Square Garden.

* The Montreal Canadiens and the St. Louis Blues played to a tie, 3-3 at the Montreal Forum.

* The Philadelphia Flyers beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 4-3 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.

* The Boston Bruins beat the Minnesota North Stars, 3-2 at the Metropolitan Sports Center in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota.

* The Los Angeles Kings beat the Pittsburgh Penguins, 2-0 at The Forum outside Los Angeles in Inglewood, California.

* And the Detroit Red Wings and the Oakland Seals were not scheduled.

October 21, 1967: Flower Power at the Pentagon

October 21, 1967: An antiwar protest hits Washington, D.C. The marchers head across the Potomac River to the Pentagon, and, to this day, some marchers claim they actually "levitated" the building. Uh-huh.

This was the day of the famous Pulitzer Prize-winning "Flower Power" photograph, taken by Bernie Boston of The Washington Star, of the long-haired (but not Hippie-length-haired) kid in the turtleneck sweater sticking a carnation in the barrel of a rifle held by a soldier "protecting" the Pentagon from the demonstrators.

The kid is usually identified as George Harris, then an 18-year-old actor from New York. He later took the stage name Hibiscus, and formed a drag troupe in San Francisco, and died in the 1st wave of the AIDS epidemic in 1982. Bernie Boston lived until 2008.

Novelist Norman Mailer, though already 44 years old and thus old enough to be the father of many of the demonstrators, covered the demonstration for Harper's Magazine, titling his article The Armies of the Night. Perhaps inspired by the publication the previous year of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, he took the idea of "Journalism is the first draft of history" seriously. It was published in book form the next year, and won Mailer the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction and the National Book Award for Arts and Letters.

Although there was not a demonstration at the Lincoln Memorial that day, it's been suggested that this was the day of the demonstration shown in the film Forrest Gump, which Forrest (Tom Hanks) wanders into after leaving the White House, where he'd just been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor by President Lyndon B. Johnson. A cop pulled the microphone cable out to prevent people far away from hearing Forrest as he spoke. So filmgoers never heard it.

The script has Forrest saying, "Sometimes, when people go to Vietnam, they go home to their mamas without any legs. Sometimes, they don't go home at all. That's a bad thing." That's when the cable gets plugged back in, and Forrest concludes, "That's all I have to say about that." And an activist, obviously meant to make the viewer think he's Abbie Hoffman (Richard D'Alessandro, making Abbie the only historical figure in the film portrayed by an actor rather than being digitally inserted in), says, "That's okay, man: You said it all."

At the start of the scene, a woman can be heard yelling the name, "Hillary!" Obviously, this is meant to suggest that Hillary Clinton, the First Lady at the time the film was released, was at the demonstration. However, while Hoffman was definitely at the Pentagon that day, and has been suggested as the source of the "levitate the Pentagon" idea, there is no indication that Hillary Rodham, then a 20-year-old junior at Wellesley College in the Boston suburb of Wellesley, Massachusetts, was there.

*

October 21, 1967 was a Saturday. There were college football games played on this day:

* Number 1-ranked USC beat the University of Washington, 23-6 at Husky Stadium in Seattle. Their Los Angeles arch-rivals, Number 3 UCLA, beat Stanford, 21-16 at the old Stanford Stadium in the San Francisco suburb of Palo Alto. They were on a collision course, and would play one of those periodic "Games of the Century."

It was the 3rd Saturday in October, and by this point, Alabama was used to beating Tennessee on the day. This time, though, Number 7 Tennessee beat Number 6 'Bama, 24-13 at Legion Field in Birmingham.

Notre Dame beat Illinois, 47-7 at Memorial Stadium in Champaign, Illinois. Ohio State beat Northwestern, 6-2 at Dyche Stadium in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois. Indiana upset Michigan, 27-20 at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor.

Penn State beat West Virginia, 21-14 at Beaver Stadium in State College, Pennsylvania. Rutgers lost to Army, 14-3 at Michie Stadium in West Point, New York. And Princeton beat Colgate, 28-0 at Palmer Stadium in Princeton, New Jersey.

The baseball season had ended 9 days earlier, when the St. Louis Cardinals ended the "Impossible Dream" of the Boston Red Sox in Game 7 of the World Series. There were 6 games played in the NBA that day:

* The New York Knicks lost to the Los Angeles Lakers, 114-106 at the old Madison Square Garden. The new Garden opened 4 months later. Willis Reed scored 30 for the Knickerbockers, but Elgin Baylor and Archie Clark each scored 25 for the Lakers.

* The Philadelphia 76ers, defending NBA Champions, beat the Detroit Pistons, 116-111 at the new South Philadelphia arena, The Spectrum. Wilt Chamberlain only scored 17 points, but Hal Greer scored 41 for the Sixers.

* The Boston Celtics beat the Baltimore Bullets, 125-109 at the Baltimore Civic Center. (The building still stands, and is named the CFG Bank Arena.) Sam Jones scored 31 for the C's.

* The Cincinnati Royals beat the Chicago Bulls, 109-107 at the Cincinnati Gardens. For the Royals, Happy Hairston scored 30, and Oscar Robertson scored 28.

* The St. Louis Hawks beat the San Francisco Warriors, 115-110 at the Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis. This would be the Hawks' last season in St. Louis. For 1968-69, they moved to Atlanta.

* And in a battle between 2 expansion teams, the Seattle SuperSonics beat the San Diego Rockets, 117-110 in overtime, at the San Diego Sports Arena. The Rockets moved to Houston in 1971. Of course, the Sonics moved to become the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2008.

* And one game was played in the brand-new American Basketball Association: The Indiana Pacers beat the New Orleans Buccaneers, 114-111 at the New Orleans Municipal Auditorium. Jimmy Jones scored 35 in defeat for the Bucs.

There were 5 games played in the newly-expanded NHL:

* The New York Rangers beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 5-3 at Maple Leaf Gardens. Vic Hadfield scored 2 goals for the Broadway Blueshirts against the Leafs, then defending Stanley Cup Champions, which they have never been since the 1967-68 season.

* The Montreal Canadiens beat the Boston Bruins, 4-2 at the Montreal Forum.

* The Pittsburgh Penguins beat the Chicago Black Hawks, 4-2 at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh.

* The Minnesota North Stars beat the Oakland Seals, 3-1 at the Metropolitan Sports Center in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota.

* And the Los Angeles Kings played the St. Louis Blues to a tie, 3-3 at the St. Louis Arena.

* The only NHL teams that didn't play were the Detroit Red Wings and the Philadelphia Flyers.

Also, my high school, East Brunswick in Middlesex County, New Jersey, beat Perth Amboy, 18-13 at what would become known as Jay Doyle Field in East Brunswick.

Arsenal, for some reason, did not play. Their next game was 2 days later, and they lost to Wolverhampton Wanderers, 3-2 at Molineux Stadium in Wolverhampton, outside Birmingham, in England's West Midlands. 

July 26, 1947: The National Security Act

July 26, 1947: President Harry S Truman signs the National Security Act into law. It turns the Department of War into the Department of the Army. It separates the U.S. Air Force from the U.S. Army, and gives it its own Department. It protects the U.S. Marine Corps as an independent service under the Department of the Navy.

And it puts all 4 departments under the new Department of Defense (DOD), headed by a Secretary of Defense. James Forrestal was confirmed as the 1st "SecDef" on September 18, 1947.

The Act also creates the U.S. National Security Council, run by the President, which includes the Vice President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Attorney General, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (the nation's top active-duty military officer).

Later added to it have been the National Security Advisor (a post created in 1953), the White House Chief of Staff, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, the Secretary of Energy, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Director National Intelligence, the Administrator of the Agency for International Development, and the Director of National Drug Control Policy. On occasion, other officials, whose expertise may apply to a situation, may be asked to attend: The White House Counsel, the U.S. Trade Representative, medical advisors, and so on.

The National Security Act also establishes the Central Intelligence Agency. This turns out to be beneficial in some cases, problematic in others, as later Presidents used the CIA to help organize coups in various countries, to topple governments seen as too friendly to the Soviet Union. Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter was appointed as the 1st Director of Central Intelligence.

The legislation creating the Act was already going through Congress when the Roswell incident happened earlier in July.

The current headquarters of the U.S. Department of State, built in 1941, was named the Harry S Truman Building in 2000. Its address is 2201 C Street NW. The CIA's headquarters, now named for the 41st President and the only one to be a former CIA Director, the George Bush Center for Intelligence, is in Langley, Virginia (and is sometimes nicknamed "Langley"), 10 miles northwest of downtown Washington.

*

July 26, 1947 was a Saturday. These baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees lost to the Chicago White Sox, 2-1 at Yankee Stadium. Eddie Lopat outpitches Bill Bevens, and helps his own cause with an RBI single. He impresses the Yankees so much that they trade for him the next year. Tommy Henrich hit a home run, but Joe DiMaggio went 0-for-4.

* The New York Giants beat the Chicago Cubs, 7-3 at Wrigley Field in Chicago.

* The Brooklyn Dodgers beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 6-4 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Jackie Robinson went 2-for-4 with a 2-run homer. Hank Greenberg, in his final season, went 0-for-3 with a walk. Earlier in the season, he crashed into Robinson at first base, helped him up, apologized, and, as the man who had faced more prejudice than any player until Robinson, told him he was doing all right and that he supported him all the way.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the St. Louis Browns, 12-1 at Fenway Park in Boston. Ted Williams hit 2 home runs.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 13-0 at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. I guess 84-year-old Connie Mack forgot to tell his A's that you have to come out of the clubhouse to play the ballgame. George Kell and Eddie Lake hit home runs for the Tigers, while center fielder Roger "Doc" Cramer, a native of New Jersey's Long Beach Island, went 3-for-5 with 6 RBIs. Virgil Trucks pitched a 6-hit shutout.

* The Washington Senators beat the Cleveland Indians, 8-4 at Griffith Stadium in Washington.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 1-0 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Bucky Walters pitched a 2-hit shutout.

* And the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Boston Braves, 9-5 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. Stan Musial went 1-for-4 with an RBI.

January 15, 1943: The Pentagon Opens

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January 15, 1943: The Pentagon opens, as the headquarters building of the U.S. Department of War, renamed the Department of Defense in 1947. A symbol of the U.S. military, the phrase "The Pentagon" is often used as a stand-in for the DOD and its leadership.

The War Department was 1 of the 1st 3 departments created by the executive branch of the federal government, along with the Department of State and the Department of the Treasury. Those 3 made sense: Preparation for war, guidance of overall foreign policy, and management of the economy.

The Department's original home was on Pennsylvania Avenue between 21st and 22nd Streets, 5 blocks from the White House. This building burned down in 1800. Its replacement was built next-door to the White House at 19th & F Streets. The Department of State moved into it, too.

Between 1871 and 1888, a new building was constructed on the site, the State, War and Navy Building, That building became known as the Old Executive Office Building, among other things, some of them very unpleasant. Author Mark Twain called it "the ugliest building in America." Over half a century later, his fellow Missourian, President Harry S Truman, called it "the greatest monstrosity in America."

Truman's successor as President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, considered demolishing it. He didn't, and, since 1999, it has borne his name: The Eisenhower Executive Office Building. It houses the offices of the Vice President, the National Security Council, and the Office of Management and Budget.

In 1918, during World War I, the Main Navy and Munitions Building opened on the National Mall, at Constitution Avenue and 19th Street. The War Department moved there on a temporary basis in 1939. Once the Pentagon opened, the building was turned back over to the U.S. Navy, and it was demolished in 1970. Constitution Gardens, including an artificial pond, is now on the site.

The coming of World War II meant that the War Department needed a new, much larger headquarters. Needing steel for the war, it would be built of concrete, and no more than 4 stories high, meaning it would spread out, not up. This ended up making the Pentagon the building with more office space than any in the world, a record it still holds.

The site originally chosen was Arlington Farms, in Arlington, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, near Arlington National Cemetery. The site had an asymmetric, roughly pentagonal (five-sided) shape, so the building was planned accordingly. But President Franklin D. Roosevelt thought it would obstruct the view of D.C. from the Cemetery, and chose a nearby airfield instead. He kept the Pentagon design, not just because coming up with a new design would have been costly, but because he was a history buff, and liked that it resembled "star forts" constructed during the gunpowder age.

It was built by John McShain, Inc., of Philadelphia, which had also designed the nearby Washington National Airport (now named for President Ronald Reagan), the Jefferson Memorial, and the National Naval Medical Center in nearby Bethesda, Maryland.

About 26,000 people, several thousand of them civilians, work in the Pentagon. It ended up having 5 floors above ground, 2 below it, and 5 "ring corridors." It is the largest office building in the world: Apple Park in Cupertino, California (outside San Jose) is larger, but has less occupied office space.

As the home of what Eisenhower called "the military-industrial complex," the Pentagon has become a location for antiwar protests. There were 3 in 1967 alone, with the one on October 21 attracting 35,000 people, and some people claiming they were there to "levitate the Pentagon" -- and some insisted, against all evidence, that they actually succeeded. It was at this protest that one of the most famous photographs of the Vietnam War era was taken, the "Flower Power" photo: A student in a sweater, later identified as George E. Harris III, placed a carnation in the gun barrel of a soldier protecting the building.

On May 19, 1972, the Weather Underground placed a bomb in a women's bathroom on the 4th floor. No one was hurt. On September 11, 2001 -- 60 years to the day after the building's groundbreaking ceremony, although that was almost certainly irrelevant to the attack -- recognizing the building's symbolism, the terrorist group al-Qaeda hijacked an airliner, and crashed it into the Pentagon, killing the 64 passengers, and 125 people inside the building. It could have been much worse: A renovation of the building had begun in 1998, and fewer people than usual were working where it was hit.

The most recent antiwar protest at the Pentagon was against the Iraq War, with 15,000 people converging there on March 17, 2007.

The building is bounded by Interstate 395, the Henry G. Shirley Memorial Highway; Virginia Route 110, the Richmond Highway; and Virginia Route 27, Washington Boulevard.

*

January 15, 1943 was a Friday. Baseball and football were out of season. The NBA had not yet been founded. And no NHL games were scheduled. Therefore, there were no scores on this historic day.

January 15, 1942: The Truman Committee Report

Time's coverage of the Truman Committee's work,

cover dated March 8, 1943

January 15, 1942: The Truman Committee, called to investigate fraud in the U.S. Department of War, issues a report to Congress at large.

The bipartisan committee, officially named the Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program, was formed in March 1941, to find and correct problems in U.S. war production with waste, inefficiency, and war profiteering. Chaired by Harry S Truman, just beginning his 2nd term as a Senator from Missouri, it proved tobe one of the most successful investigative efforts ever mounted by the U.S. government.

An initial budget of $15,000 was expanded over three years to $360,000, to save an estimated $10–15 billion in military spending and thousands of lives of U.S. servicemen. It got Truman his 1st appearance on the cover of Time magazine. It also raised Truman's profile to the point where the Democratic Party could accept him as a compromise candidate for Vice President under President Franklin Roosevelt at the 1944 Democratic Convention.

Truman stepped down from the Chairmanship of the Committee once he received that nomination. He was succeeded by James Mead of New York. After the 1946 elections, in which Mead unsuccessfully challenged the re-election bid of Governor Thomas E. Dewey, the Republicans took control, and Owen Brewster of Maine was Chairman. He famously investigated the business dealings of Howard Hughes.

In 1948, the committee was made permanent, as the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Unfortunately, in 1953, this Subcommittee would be hijacked by Joseph McCarthy, Republican of Wisconsin -- ultimately leading to his downfall.

The Department of War became the Department of Defense in 1947, by which point Truman was President. Truman appointed Mead to the Chairmanship of the Federal Trade Commission.

*

January 15, 1942 was a Thursday. This was also the day that President Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote what became known as "The Green Light Letter," allowing professional baseball to continue during World War II. I have a separate entry for that event.

Baseball, of course, was out of season. So was football. And the NBA hadn't been founded yet. There were 2 games played in the NHL. The Brooklyn Americans, soon to fold, lost to the Chicago Black Hawks, 7-4 at Madison Square Garden. And the Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Montreal Canadiens, 3-2 in overtime at Maple Leaf Gardens.