October 5, 1962: The 1st James Bond Film

His name was Connery. Sean Connery.

October 5, 1962: A film premieres, Doctor No. It is the 1st film based on a character created by Ian Fleming, a former officer in the intelligence division of Britain's Royal Navy. His agent number is 007. His name? "Bond. James Bond."

Eon Productions Ltd. was formed by Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli and Harry Saltzman to make films based on Fleming's James Bond novels, which began in 1953 with Casino Royale.

On October 21, 1954, the CBS anthology series Climax! adapted Casino Royale. They Americanized it: Barry Nelson was cast as American CIA agent Jimmy Bond, while the CIA agent Felix Leiter became British MI6 agent Clarence Leiter. Peter Lorre played Le Chiffre, the villain played by Orson Welles in the 1967 spoof version, and Mads Mikkelsen in the 2006 reboot.

This version is not well-regarded. Nevertheless, Nelson was the first man who played a live-action version of Bond.

Broccoli and Saltzman didn't know if turning the novels into films would work, especially in America. If successful, they would make more money there than in the rest of the world put together. If unsuccessful in the U.S., it wouldn't matter how successful it was in the U.K. and elsewhere: They would be doomed. So they chose Doctor No, the Bond novel that they thought would be the cheapest to produce. It worked, and subsequent Bond films had bigger budgets.

Most of the familiar Bond tropes started here:

* The opening "gunbarrel sequence" and opening titles, both designed by Maurice Binder, who would continue to design opening titles until his death in 1991.

* The iconic theme song, composed by Monty Norman, and performed by an orchestra conducted by John Barry.

* James Bond, Agent 007 of MI6, Britain's international security agency, played by Scottish actor Sean Connery, then 32 years old, looking cool as hell, killing the bad guys, getting the girls, and dropping mad quips.

* Bond's boss, known only as M, played by Bernard Lee, approving of his results, but not always his methods.

* Bond's playful banter with M's secretary, Miss Moneypenny, played by Lois Maxwell. (The character doesn't get a first name, Eve, until Skyfall in 2012).

* Exotic locations, in this case Jamaica, which had been granted independence by Britain after filming was completed, hence it was still a colony in the film.

* A spectacular lead "Bond Girl": Swiss actress Ursula Andress, as the revenge-minded Honey Rider. There wouldn't always be a suggestive name, but Goldfinger would have Honor Blackman as Pussy Galore, You Only Live Twice would have Mie Hama as Kissy Suzuki, The Man With the Golden Gun would have Britt Ekland as Mary Goodnight, Barbara Bach's Anya Amasova in The Spy Who Loved Me would be Agent XXX, Moonraker would have Lois Chiles as Dr. Holly Goodhead (at least they made her a brilliant Ph.D.), Maud Adams would have the title role in Octopussy (though not mentioned in the film, her real name was given as Octavia Smythe in the book), GoldenEye would have Famke Janssen as Xenia Onatopp, and The World Is Not Enough would have Serena Scott Thomas as Dr. Molly Warmflash.

* And an insidious villain: Joseph Wiseman as Dr. Julius No, with a nefarious plot: Sabotaging an American space launch, so that the Soviet Union would get blamed, starting World War III, and allowing No's superiors in SPECTRE to take over what was left of the world.

* Unfortunately, as was all too common in Fleming's novels, there was also racism: Dr. No is portrayed as half-Chinese, and Wiseman wears "yellowface" makeup. This would be even worse in the 1967 film You Only Live Twice, when Connery was made up to "look Japanese."

Not yet in place: Q and his gadgets (the only new equipment Bond gets is a new sidearm, a .32-caliber Walther PPK, which the films made internationally famous), a tricked-out car (the most famous being the Aston Martin DB5 introduced 2 years later, in Goldfinger), and a plot tying in with a current cultural phenomenon (which has been done a few times, and usually hasn't aged well).

If you can get past Bond's hyper-macho attitude, and the fact that the film views the world through a lens that is still tinted by the British Empire (which had, in real life, already given way to the British Commonwealth), the film is a good adventure with a satisfying conclusion.

Dr. No was a big success, allowing Eon to spend big thereafter. The 3rd film, Goldfinger in 1964, is generally considered to be where they hit their stride. Connery stepped aside temporarily for George Lazenby in On Her Majesty's Secret Service in 1969, and was asked back for one last go-round in Diamonds Are Forever in 1971.

Roger Moore took the role up from 1973 to 1985. Timothy Dalton played 007 in 1987 and 1989. After a bit of a gap, due to legal proceedings, Pierce Brosnan held the role from 1995 to 2002. It was then rebooted with Daniel Craig in 2006, and his 5th and last Bond film, No Time to Die, was released in 2021. Since Craig became the 1st Bond to die onscreen, the series will have to be rebooted with a new actor.

The Bond films inspired other spy films, such as The Ipcress File and The Spy Who Came In From the Cold. And TV shows, like The Avengers (not to be confused with the Marvel Comics superhero team), The Prisoner, and, in America, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Mission: Impossible. There were also spoofs: The TV show Get Smart, Dean Martin's Matt Helm films, and James Coburn's Flint films. Eventually, Mike Myers would produce and star in the Austin Powers films.

October 5, 1962 was also the day that "Love Me Do," The Beatles' 1st single, was released. It only hit Number 17, but it launched the one British phenomenon of the next 60 years that was bigger than the Bond films. In an article for the BBC's website yesterday, Mark Allison wrote:

The serendipity of this moment probably passed entirely unnoticed at the time, but the world we inhabit today is still enjoying its aftershocks...

Bond represents an explicit projection of imperial power, conveniently arriving at just the time that Britain's ability to wield such power in the real world was on the wane...

The Beatles themselves might have recoiled at the idea that the peace-and-love mantra of their music had anything to do with the violence and destruction wrought on screen by 007. But together, these two fashionable institutions wove a new national myth that Britain was not only benevolent and exciting, but cool. From the ashes of former imperial power had risen a cultural behemoth.

Cliché Alert: Timing is everything. Indeed, Dr. No's director, Terence Young, felt that the secret to his film's financial success was little more than timing. "I think we arrived not only in the right year, but the right week of the right month of the right year."

In a 2016 episode of the YouTube series Epic Rap Battles of History, Ben Atha of the British rock band Ivan Camp played the then-current Craig version of Bond, "Nice" Peter Shukoff played Mike Myers' copycat Austin Powers, and "Epic" Lloyd Ahlquist stepped in as the Connery version of Bond.

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October 5, 1962 was a Friday. It was midweek for football, and preseason for the NBA and the NHL. But baseball was played. Specifically, Game 2 of the World Series, at the old Yankee Stadium. The San Francisco Giants beat the New York Yankees, 2-0. Jack Sanford pitched a 3-hit shutout, outpitching Ralph Terry.

From 1956 to 1966, there was only one Cy Young Award for all of Major League Baseball, and Terry should have won it. Had there been one for both Leagues, as there has been since 1967, Sanford should have won it for the National League. Instead, it was given to Don Drysdale of the Los Angeles Dodgers, who didn't win a Pennant, having lost a Playoff for it to the Giants, as they had back in New York in 1951.

Willie McCovey hit a home run. This was the 1st Series where neither team won back-to-back games. The Giants won Games 2, 4 and 6. The Yankees won Games 1, 3, 5 and 7. Game 7 was won by the Yankees, 1-0, at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, with Terry pitching a 4-hit shutout. In the bottom of the 9th, the Giants got the tying run on 3rd base and the winning run on 2nd, with McCovey at bat. But this was not the modern era: No closer was brought in. Terry got McCovey to hit a line shot that 2nd baseman Bobby Richardson caught, and the Yankees won the World Series.

Auto racing is not a sport, but Michael Andretti, part of a racing dynasty, was born on this day.

July 7, 1977: The Best James Bond Movie

July 7, 1977: The Spy Who Loved Me premieres, directed by Lewis Gilbert. Put aside the kowtowing at the altar of Sean Connery: Roger Moore stars in the best James Bond film of them all.

Why? There's the opening sequence as the resort in the Austrian Alps, with the skiing shootout and Bond's Union Jack parachute. Barbara Bach plays a Soviet agent who is every bit Mr. Bond's match, including in her messy private life. Carly Simon sings the theme song. She sings it over a great Maurice Binder opening title sequence.

We get the rare sight of Commander James Bond in his Royal Navy dress uniform. Caroline Munro is in it, and plays the 1st woman ever shown to be directly killed by Agent 007. She was billed as "The British Raquel Welch," and nobody objected, not even Raquel.

Curd Jürgens, who had been imprisoned for opposing the Nazi regime in his native Germany during World War II, plays megalomaniac villain Karl Stromberg. The 7-foot-1-1/2-inch Richard Dawson Kiel -- unlike the Family Feud host, his name really was Richard Dawson -- plays Jaws, a henchman tough enough to survive the movie, and proved to be popular enough to be the only henchman ever brought back for a second main villain in a second movie.

Need more reasons? The submersible Lotus Esprit was a much cooler car than Connery's Aston Martin DB5 or Pierce Brosnan's Mercedes-Benzes. We learn Q's real name and rank: Anya calls him "Major Boothroyd." And Moore delivers a classic closing line, better than any Connery ever gave.

The Spy Who Loved Me probably saved the Bond franchise, or at least Moore's place in it: His 1st 2 outings, Live and Let Die in 1973 and The Man with the Golden Gun in 1974, were very poorly regarded.

Barbara Bach is not related to Catherine Bach of The Dukes of Hazzard: Barbara's real name is Goldbach, and Catherine's is Bachman. Barbara later married ex-Beatle Ringo Starr -- and July 7 also happened to be his birthday.

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July 7, 1977 was a Thursday. Because 7 is regarded as a lucky number in Western culture, this day, 7/7/77, was called "The Day of the Century." Dan Ingram, the afternoon disc jockey on New York radio station WABC, 770 on the AM dial, spent the rest of his life complaining that the station did nothing to commemorate the day, missing a golden promotional opportunity.

WABC usually didn't miss tricks like that. They always made a big deal when the temperature in New York was 77 degrees (but not that week, it was during one of the nastiest heat waves of modern times), and would never say that it was 66 degrees, to avoid mentioning rivals WNBC: Always 65 or 67, never 66. Likewise, WNBC would say it was 76 or 78 degrees, but never 77.

Also on that day, Fan Yuanye, a pilot of China's People's Liberation Army Air Force, veered off course after taking off from Jinjiang, and became the first person to deliver Communist China's new Shenyang J-6 fighter to the West. Fan, the third Chinese PLAAF pilot to defect to Taiwan, and the first since 1965, brought secret documents with him, and was promised a reward of 5,000 ounces worth of gold, worth US$698,400 at that time. Six other pilots would defect while flying the J-6 between 1979 and 1990.

Also on that day, the Marxist nation of Albania, led by Communist Party Chief Enver Hoxha, criticized China, "its only friend in the world," as it worked on closer diplomatic ties with the United States. The official Communist Party newspaper, Zeri I Popullit (Voice of the People), featured an editorial, apparently authored by Hoxha, that said that "'My enemy's enemy is my friend' cannot be applied when it is a matter of the two imperialist powers, the Soviet Union and the United States," adding that "The present theories about the so-called Third World and nonaligned countries are intended to curb the revolution and defend capitalism.". Three weeks later, Albania asked China to remove its military advisers from the Balkan nation.

The reggae album Two Sevens Clash, by the Jamaican group Culture and its songwriter and lead vocalist Joseph Hill, was released to coincide with the date 7/7/77, in anticipation of a prediction by Pan-Africanist leader Marcus Garvey that the date would be a time when chaos would ensue and wrongs would be righted. Although the prediction caused great concern in Jamaica, no unusual incidents occurred.

Also on that day, the governing body of the San Diego chapter of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club, the most famous (or infamous) motorcycle gang in the world, voted unanimously to declare war on the rival Mongols Motorcycle Club gang, in a dispute over territory in Southern California.

Over the summer, 4 Mongols members and a 15-year-old boy would be killed, and 6 others injured in shootings and bombings. In October, 32 members of the San Diego Hells Angels chapter would be arrested.

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These games were played in Major League Baseball:

* The New York Yankees beat the Cleveland Indians, 8-2 at Yankee Stadium. Rick Waits often gave the Yankees trouble, but, this time, he was outpitched by Jim "Catfish" Hunter. Lou Piniella went 2-for-4 with a home run and 2 RBIs. Reggie Jackson went 2-for-4 with 1 RBI.

* The New York Mets lost to the Philadelphia Phillies, 6-4 at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. Mike Schmidt hit a 3-run home run.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Toronto Blue Jays, 5-2 at Fenway Park in Boston. Carlton Fisk and Jim Rice hit home runs. Carl Yastrzemski went 1-for-2 with a walk and an RBI.

* The Chicago Cubs beat their arch-rivals, the St. Louis Cardinals, 2-0 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Rick Reuschel outpitched Larry Dierker. Larry Biittner -- that's right, 2 I's and 2 T's -- hit a home run. Lou Brock went 1-for-4.

* The Minnesota Twins beat the California Angels, 8-6 at Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota. Rod Carew only appeared as a pinch-hitter, and drew a walk.

* The Texas Rangers beat the Oakland Athletics, 8-3 at Arlington Stadium in the Dallas suburb of Arlington, Texas.

* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Houston Astros, 7-4 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Ken Forsch was injured, and had to leave the game after pitching to 2 batters. Emergency reliever Mark Lemongello then allowed 5 runs in the 1st inning, including home runs to Dusty Baker and Steve Yeager.

* And the San Francisco Giants beat the San Diego Padres, 5-1 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Willie McCovey went 0-for-3 with a walk. Dave Winfield went 0-for-4.

June 1, 1889: The Orient Express

June 1, 1889: The most famous train route in human history, the Orient Express, begins full operations.

Well, not quite full. It opened on June 4, 1883, going from Paris, France to Vienna, Austria. Nobody would confuse Vienna with the Orient, not even if Mozart had written The Mikado 100 years before Gilbert & Sullivan had.

Gare de l'Est, Paris, opened in 1849

On October 3, 1883, the route was extended to Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire. In 1923, the Ottoman Empire became the Turkish Republic, "Türkiye" in their native language, "Turkey" in English; and the capital was moved to Ankara. In 1929, the national government told the world to start calling Constantinople "Istanbul."

Still, it wasn't a single train. The original trip required passengers to disembark in Romania, to be ferried across the Danube to Bulgaria, where they would catch another train to the Bulgarian city of Varna, followed by a 150-mile ferry ride to Constantinople. The final leg of the train ride to Constantinople wasn't finished until 1885. Finally, on June 1, 1889, a single train left Gare de l'Est (Station of the East) in Paris for Sirkeci Railway Station in what became Istanbul.

Sirkeci Station, Istanbul, opened in 1872

Connections were made from Paris to London via Calais and a ferry across the English Channel to Dover. The main route went from Paris to Lausanne, Switzerland; to Milan and Venice, Italy; to Belgrade, Yugoslavia (now in Serbia); to Sofia, Bulgaria; to Istanbul -- and, on the way back, in reverse. An average Paris-to-Istanbul, or Istanbul-to-Paris, ride took nearly 3 days: 2 days, 20 hours of what the standards of the time considered exceptional luxury.

There were alternate routes, from Paris through Strasbourg (France), Munich, Vienna, Budapest (Hungary) and Bucharest (Romania) to Istanbul; and from Paris through Zurich (Switzerland), Innsbruck (Austria) to Vienna, Budapest, Bucharest and Istanbul. All routes were shut down during the World Wars.

The ride became popular among writers. Agatha Christie's most famous story remains the 1934 Murder On the Orient Express, in which the train, heading for Paris, gets stuck in the snow in Yugoslavia, and Hercule Poirot must solve a murder. Other fictional characters known to have ridden the famed luxury train include Count Dracula in Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula, and James Bond in the 1963 film From Russia with Love.

But, as in America, rail travel in Europe became superseded by air travel. The route stopped serving Istanbul in 1977, cut back to a through overnight service from Paris to Bucharest, which was cut back further in 1991 to Budapest, then in 2001 to Vienna, before departing for the last time from Paris on June 8, 2007. After this, the route, still called the Orient Express, was shortened to start from Strasbourg, leaving daily after the arrival of a TGV from Paris. On December 14, 2009, the Orient Express ceased to operate entirely, and the route disappeared from European railway timetables.

UPDATE: In late 2022, the hospitality company Accor announced plans to launch its own Orient Express from Paris to Istanbul, to start in mid-2026.

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June 1, 1889 was a Saturday. There were 6 games that day in what would eventually be called Major League Baseball:

* In the National League, the New York Giants lost to the Washington Nationals, 9-5 at the Swampoodle Grounds in Washington. This version of the Nationals were dropped from the NL after the 1899 season, and the current team with the name has no connection to it.

* Also in the NL, the Boston Beaneaters beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 7-2 at the South End Grounds in Boston.

* In the American Association, the Philadelphia Athletics beat the Cincinnati Reds, 8-4 at the Jefferson Street Grounds in Philadelphia. These Athletics went out of business after the "Players' League War" of 1890. The Reds were admitted to the NL in 1892.

* Also in the AA, there was a doubleheader at Oriole Park in Baltimore. The Baltimore Orioles won the opener, 5-4. The Kansas City Cowboys won the nightcap, 10-8. The Orioles were admitted to the NL in 1892, but dropped after 1899, and the current team with the name has no connection to it.

* And, also in the AA, the Columbus Solons beat the Louisville Colonels, 8-3 at Recreation Park in Columbus, Ohio. The Colonels were admitted to the NL in 1890, but were dropped after the 1899 season. The Solons folded with the AA after the 1891 season.