December 31, 1907: The 1st New Year's Eve Ball Drop

December 31, 1907: Times Square in New York has its 1st New Year's Eve ball drop.

The Commissioner's Plan of 1811 created a street grid for New York City, then consisting only of Manhattan Island. (What we now call the Five Boroughs came as a result of the consolidation of "Greater New York" in 1898.) Below 14th Street, which was where most of the developed part of the City then was, this pattern could not take hold. (It still doesn't. Incidentally, Houston Street -- pronounced "HOW-stin," not "HYOO-stin" like the Texas city -- serves as "Zero Street.") But above it, it does.

Under this plan, the east-to-west streets would be numbered, up to 264th Street in The Bronx. Most of the north-to-south streets would also be numbered, but were named Avenues, from 1st Avenue near the East River to 12th Avenue near the Hudson River. There are exceptions. Above 14th Street, Park Avenue takes the place of 4th Avenue. Lexington Avenue is between 3rd and Park. And Madison Avenue is between Park and 5th.

The other exception is Broadway: It starts out parallel to these Avenues, but curves at 10th Street, leading to "squares" where it intersects with the Avenues: Union Square (where 4th Avenue turns into Park Avenue) at 14th, Madison Square at 23rd and 5th, Herald Square at 34th and 6th, what was originally Longacre Square at 42nd and 7th, Columbus Circle at 59th and 8th, Lincoln Square at 65th and Columbus (known as 9th Avenue below 59th), and a last, unnamed intersection at 71st and Amsterdam (known as 10th Avenue below 59th), before running parallel to the Avenues again.

None of these "squares" actually has a square shape. On April 8, 1904, Mayor George McClellan Jr., son of the infamous Civil War General, noted the opening of the new headquarters of The New York Times on a triangular block bounded by 42nd Street, 7th Avenue and Broadway, and renamed Longacre Square "Times Square."

In 1913, the Times moved to a new building just off the Square, at 229 West 43rd Street, although it didn't sell the old building until 1961, to fund an expansion of the new headquarters. In 2007, the paper moved again, to The New York Times Building -- like the original 1904 structure, nicknamed Times Tower -- at 620 8th Avenue, across from Port Authority Bus Terminal and a block west of Times Square. The old Times Tower is now known simply by its address, 1 Times Square, and is known for his video board and its news banner, a.k.a. "The Zipper," which began operating in 1928.

While the whole stretch of Broadway from 42nd to 50th Streets is usually called "Times Square," that's officially the name of only its southern half, from 42nd to 45th. From 45th to 50th, it's Duffy Square, named after the famous World War I chaplain, Father Francis P. Duffy. Duffy Square includes a statue of an even more famous Irish-American, his contemporary, the leading Broadway star, writer and producer of the early 20th Century, George M. Cohan. Of all the stars in Broadway history, Cohan is the only one with a statue actually on Broadway.

Traditionally, New York's New Year's Eve celebrations had centered around Trinity Church, at Broadway and Wall Street in Lower Manhattan. But on December 31, 1904, Times owner-publisher Adolph Ochs decided to set off fireworks from his building, to ring in the New Year 1905. That brought 200,000 people into the recently-renamed Times Square, and that started a new tradition.

Drawing of the celebration in the next day's Times

In 1907, Ochs wanted an even bigger spectacle. Walter F. Palmer was the paper's chief electrician. He had seen a "time ball," a signaling device, on the nearby Western Union Telegraph Building. Ochs hired sign designer Artkraft Strauss to build such a ball. The result 700 pounds of wood, 5 feet in diameter, with 100 incandescent light bulbs attached -- this was only 28 years after Thomas Edison made such light bulbs practical.

The ball was hoisted on the building's 70-foot flagpole, and was lowered at 10 seconds to midnight on December 31. Once it hit the roof at 12:00 on January 1, 1908, the ball completed a circuit that lit 5-foot-tall signs on the sides of the building, reading "HAPPY NEW YEAR," and triggering fireworks.

In 1919, a 2nd ball was designed, made of iron, which lowered its weight to 400 pounds. For 1942 into 1943, and 1943 into 1944, there was no ball-drop, due to wartime lighting restrictions. Instead, a moment of silence was observed from 11:59 to 12:00, and then the sound of church bells was played from sound trucks, allowing everybody to let loose. In 1954, a 3rd ball design was introduced: Now 150 pounds of aluminum, it was just 6 feet in diameter.

In 1929, bandleader Guy Lombardo began hosting a nationwide radio broadcast on CBS, with his Royal Canadians, from the Roosevelt Hotel at 45 East 45th Street, 2 blocks east of Times Square. These broadcasts popularized Robert Burns' poem "Auld Lang Syne" in musical form. In 1956, CBS began televising Lombardo's New Year's Eve show, and he became known as Mr. New Year's Eve.

In 1960, Lombardo moved operations of the show to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel at 301 Park Avenue at 49th Street. (The Roosevelt closed in 2020, due to financial losses from the COVID epidemic. As of December 31, 2022, the building has potential buyers, but there are no permanent plans for it.) Through 1976, there were competing New Year's Eve TV show's: Lombardo's on CBS, with an announcer waiting until 10 seconds before midnight to start counting down; and the ball-drop on every other station, with the ball being lowered at 60 seconds before.

ABC began appealing to a younger generation, with Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve on December 31, 1971, live from Times Square (with some acts performing at a pre-recorded show in Hollywood), and it featured the ball-drop. In that New Year of 1972, Johnny Carson moved The Tonight Show from Rockefeller Center a few blocks away to NBC Studios in Burbank, outside Los Angeles, but continued to show the Times Square ball-drop, making New Year's Eve one of his few shows of the year to still be done live. He, announcer Ed McMahon, bandleader Doc Severinsen and the entire band, would wear tuxedos, a New Year's Eve tradition. (Lombardo and Clark also wore them.)

Lombardo died in 1977, and CBS carried on for 2 years with his brother Carmen moving out of the band to lead it, but gave up the ghost for 1979-80, and had new, more up-to-date programming. The Tonight Show has continued to be done live on NBC, with Carson having given way to Jay Leno, and now Leno to Jimmy Fallon. Clark died in 2012, but ABC continues his show with his name on it, hosted by Ryan Seacrest. But until she died in 2006, my grandmother, who grew up with Lombardo, said it was no longer really New Year's Eve without him.

For 1981-82, the ball was modified: The white light bulbs were replaced with red ones, with green "leaves" and a brown "stem," making the ball look like the City's nickname, "The Big Apple." I liked the design, but it proved unpopular, and they went back to white light bulbs for 1988-89.

In 1995, the ball was altered again, with halogen bulbs, strobe lights and rhinestones, making it flashier than ever. The 3rd ball was retired for the Millennium Eve of 1999-2000, leading to the 4th ball, with triangular panels made by Waterford Crystal. And in 2007, for the drop's 100th Anniversary, the 5th and current ball was introduced: It is bigger than ever, 12 feet; heavier than ever, 11,875 pounds (just under 6 tons); flashier than ever, with 2,688 panels with 32,256 LED lamps; and tougher than ever, made waterproof so that it can remain atop 1 Times Square all year long.

For 2020-21, with COVID restrictions in place, the Square was closed off, and only medical personnel, first responders, and their families, all masked, were let in, as was the case with the Concert for New York City at Madison Square Garden after the 9/11 attacks in 2001. For 2021-22, proof of vaccination was required to be let into the Square, but, otherwise, normal service was resumed.

Usually, people begin arriving in Times Square in the early afternoon of December 31, and the police close it off by 6:00 PM. In other words, if you go to this pickpocket's dreamland, you're going to stand for at least 6 hours with no chance to legally go to the bathroom, and you better bring food, because, despite all the chain restaurants around you, you're not getting into any of them until at least 12:10 AM -- and some will be closed at that hour, anyway, regardless of the holiday.

I often thought about being in that New Year's Eve crowd, which, when the Square is closed off, is over 1 million people. Then, one year, I had to be in Manhattan on a December 31. At about 2:00 PM, I came out of the Times Square subway station, ready to walk the block back to Port Authority and head back to New Jersey, and the place was already packed. What should have been a 5-minute walk from 7th to 8th Avenue took me twice as long. So Times Square on New Year's Eve is one "New York thing" that I will never do.

At 11:59 and zero seconds, the ball begins to drop, and it hits the bottom at 12:00 and zero seconds, at which point a sign illuminating the New Year lights up. Confetti is released, and the recording of "Auld Lang Syne" by Lombardo and his Royal Canadians plays over loudspeakers.

This is followed by Frank Sinatra's version of "Theme from New York, New York," Ray Charles' version of "America the Beautiful," Louis Armstrong's version of "What a Wonderful World," and Hawaiian singer Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's version of "Over the Rainbow."

That takes the crowd to about 12:10 AM, and the police take the barricades down. By 6:00 AM, not only are all but a few stragglers gone, but the Sanitation Department has cleaned up the Square, removing every last piece of confetti, so that you'd never know that last night wasn't like any other night.

*

December 31, 1907 was a Tuesday. Baseball was out of season. Football season was over: While there were 2 college games on Christmas Day, there were none on New Year's Eve. Basketball barely existed. And hockey was still all-amateur, and played no games on the day or the night. So there were no scores on this historic day.

December 8, 1962: The New York Newspaper Strike

December 8, 1962: The New York Typographical Union goes on strike. This means the newspapers of New York City have to stop publication.

This includes the broadsheets: The New York Times, The New York Herald Tribune, The New York Journal American, and the New York World-Telegram & Sun. It also includes the tabloids: The Daily News, the New York Post and the New York Mirror. And it included 2 papers on Long Island, both broadsheets: The Long Island Star Journal and the Long Island Daily Press. Newsday, a Long Island-based tabloid, was not affected.

New York had been a newspaper city for over 100 years. Even the growth of radio hadn't stopped that. Nor had the 1924 merger of the Herald, once the paper of James Gordon Bennett Sr. and Jr., with the Tribune, once the paper of Horace Greeley and the leading voice of the drive to abolish slavery in America prior to the Civil War.

Nor had the merger of the morning American and the afternoon Journal, both owned by William Randolph Hearst's company, in 1937. Nor had the merger of the World, once the paper of Joseph Pulitzer and the publisher of The World Almanac, with the Telegram in 1931, or the 1950 merger of the combined "World-Telly" with The Sun, the paper that declared in an 1897 editorial, "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus."

Nor had radio really hurt the newspaper business. Quite the contrary: Many of the early radio stations were founded by newspapers, and provided a great new source of revenue for them. Indeed, Chicago's best-known radio station, WGN, was founded by The Chicago Tribune, which named the station for the nickname it had chosen for itself: "The World's Greatest Newspaper."

But what radio didn't do, or even try to do, television, however inadvertently, did: It killed the institutions of the afternoon newspaper and the evening newspaper. It was bad enough for papers that there was a 6:00 news broadcast on local TV stations every night. But with the addition of an 11:00 news for when people were going to bed, and the promos throughout prime-time programming of a story they could watch on the news, with the tagline, "Film at 11," the need for an afternoon or an evening paper was gone.

The union knew they had the squeeze on the papers. The papers knew it, too. The strike dragged on through Christmas, New Year's, and the entire Winter. On March 4, 1963, the Post negotiated a separate peace. Finally, Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr. brought the sides to the bargaining table. On March 24, the strike was settled.

New York has had newspaper strikes since, but no strike in the history of the American labor movement has hurt an industry more than this one. Several of the papers never recovered. The Mirror published its last edition on October 16, 1963. My grandmother, who grew up in Queens, said it was no great loss: It was a conservative paper of low quality.

The remaining papers did whatever they could to survive, from cutting costs by laying off famous columnists to appealing to the rising Baby Boom generation. The Journal American, in particular, had gambled on gaining younger readers with heavy coverage of The Beatles' visits in 1964 and 1965, something you wouldn't expect a conservative broadsheet to do.

They even hired the famed "pop psychologist," Dr. Joyce Brothers, to analyze the Beatles from a distance. And they had the top entertainment columnist in New York, Dorothy Kilgallen, "The Voice of Broadway" and one of the panelists on CBS' What's My Line?, write about rock and roll for the first time.

But they lost their biggest asset on November 8, 1965, when Kilgallen died. The next year, a long-running power struggle between Hearst company CEO Richard Berlin and the Hearst family did the paper in. The paper's last edition was published on April 24, 1966.

The E.W. Scripps Company gave up on the World-Telegram & Sun the day before, April 23, 1966. The Daily News bought the rights to The World Almanac, and its parent company still publishes it today, although it's really a waste of money to publish a 1,000-page almanac, given how easy it is to look things up on the Internet.

The Herald Tribune, long the beacon of America's "liberal Republicans," with one of the finest sports sections in the country, hung on a little longer, until August 15, 1966. It was the most direct competitor to The New York Times, a.k.a. "The Paper of Record," which eulogized:

The death of The New York Herald Tribune stills a voice that for a century and a quarter exerted a powerful influence in the affairs of nation, state and city. It was a competitor of ours, but a competitor that sought survival on the basis of quality, originality and integrity, rather than sensationalism or doctrinaire partisanship.

For a while, the 3 papers that failed that year tried to band together: The World Journal Tribune began publishing on September 12, 1966. But instead of combining the best aspects of all 3 papers, it seemed to combine the worst ones, and the money problems of all 3. The WJT, or "Widget," never caught on, and Scripps (W-T&S) and Hearst (J-A) pulled the plug on May 5, 1967.

And so, New York City, which had 10 daily newspapers as recently as 1924, and 7 as recently as the Summer of 1963, was down to 3: The Times, the Daily News and the Post. The Daily News and the Post have each survived 2 existential crises since then, as well as their ideological flip-flop of 1976: Rupert Murdoch bought the Post, turning it from a paper for liberal intellectuals, especially Jewish ones, to a populist conservative paper, as the Daily News had been; and the News then became a liberal paper, though still taking conservative positions on crime in New York (helping Ed Koch and Rudy Giuliani get elected Mayor), the Israeli-Arab conflict, and Cuba.

One more note: A survey showed that 1963 was the first year in which a majority of Americans said that they got more of their news from TV than from newspapers. The New York newspaper strike of December 8, 1962 until March 31, 1963 may have had something to do with that.

*

December 8, 1962 was a Saturday. Baseball was out of season. The college football regular season had ended the day before. But each of the 2 pro football leagues of the time played 1 game. In the NFL, the Baltimore Colts beat the Washington Redskins, 34-21 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. And in the American Football League, the New York Titans, forerunners of the Jets, lost to the Buffalo Bills, 20-3 at the Polo Grounds.

There were 4 games in the NBA that day:

* The New York Knicks beat the Detroit Pistons, 87-78 at the old Madison Square Garden.

* The Syracuse Nationals beat the Boston Celtics, 102-97 at the Onondaga War Memorial Arena in Syracuse. This was the last season for the Nats, who moved the next season, becoming the Philadelphia 76ers. Their arena still stands, as the Upstate Medical University Arena.

* The Los Angeles Lakers beat the Cincinnati Royals, 131-128 at the Cincinnati Gardens. For the Lakers, Elgin Baylor scored 33, and Jerry West and Rudy LaRusso each scored 28. Oscar Robertson of the Royals led all scorers on the day with 42, but it wasn't enough.

* And the St. Louis Hawks beat the San Francisco Warriors, 145-129 at the Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis. Wilt Chamberlain scored 39 for the Warriors, but the Hawks got 26 from Bob Pettit, 24 from Cliff Hagan, and 21 from John Barnhill.

There were 3 games played in the NHL, as all of the "Original Six" teams were in action:

* The New York Rangers played the Boston Bruins to a tie, 3-3 at the Boston Garden.

* The Montreal Canadiens beat the Detroit Red Wings, 2-1 at the Montreal Forum.

* And the Chicago Black Hawks played the Toronto Maple Leafs to a tie, 1-1 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. 

November 21, 1934: The "Business Plot" Is Exposed

Smedley Butler

November 21, 1934: The New York Post and the Philadelphia Record break the story of what came to be known as "The Business Plot," a rich men's plan to launch a military coup and take over the American government.

The story is broken by Paul Comly French, a reporter who had once been the private secretary of Smedley Butler, a retired Major General (2 stars) in the U.S. Marine Corps.

Smedley Darlington Butler was born on July 30, 1881, in the Philadelphia suburb of West Chester, Chester County, Pennsylvania. His father, Thomas Stalker Butler, was a Republican Congressman. His maternal grandfather, Smedley Darlington, had previously held the same seat in Congress. Three earlier Darlingtons had served in Congress. Smedley's aunt, Isabel Darlington, was the 1st woman to practice law in Chester County.

He enlisted in the Marines, and served with distinction in the Spanish-American War, the Philippine Campaign and the Boxer Rebellion. His participation in the so-called "Banana Wars" in Central America caused him to look at war and its conduct differently.

He received his 1st Congressional Medal of Honor for his service in the American occupation of Veracruz, Mexico in 1914. He offered to return it, saying he had done nothing to earn it. He was ordered to keep it. He received a 2nd Medal of Honor for his role in repelling an ambush during the American occupation of Haiti in 1915.

He received his General's stars during World War I, and was appointed commanding officer of the Marine barracks at Quantico, Virginia, now the "home base" of the Corps (and of the FBI). In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge gave him leave from active duty so that he could become Director of Public Safety for Philadelphia.

He said, "Cleaning up Philadelphia was worse than any battle I was ever in." He brought crime down significantly, but his tactics were a bit heavy-handed. Still, there were many people who liked that, and they remembered it, thinking that Butler was their kind of man. He held the job for 2 years, returned to the Corps, and retired from the service in 1931.

He ran for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania in 1932, but, with the tide turning against Prohibition, which he supported, he lost the Republican Primary. He opposed the Bonus Army in a public statement that year, and there were many people who liked that.

That year, Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York, a Democrat, was elected President of the United States. His "New Deal" lifted millions out of poverty, increasing taxes on rich people in order to do it. America's wealthiest men were furious, and some were not willing to wait until November 3, 1936, the next election, to do something about it.

In November 1934, Butler testified before a special committee of the U.S. House of Representatives. He told them that he was visited by Gerald P. MacGuire, a prominent Connecticut businessman. MacGuire had visited Germany and Italy, and saw how veterans' groups had aided the Fascist movements there, movements that had stopped Communist uprisings. He told Butler that he viewed FDR and his advisors, the so-called "Brain Trust," as Communists, and said they had to be stopped.

He told Butler that a group of businessmen had $50 million to spend, and a private army of 500,000 ex-soldiers, many of them members of the American Legion, ready to march on Washington, to remove Roosevelt from power, and establish a Fascist dictatorship. MacGuire told Butler that the group wanted him to be the dictator.

Butler said that he later met with Robert Sterling Clark, an heir to the Singer sewing machine fortune. Clark told him about some of the other men backing the plan:

* Irénée du Pont, head of the DuPont Corporation, which had recently bought the Remington Arms company, which would produce the weapons and the ammunition for the coup.

* Thomas W. Lamont, running J.P. Morgan & Company on behalf of J.P. Morgan Jr., son of the company's founder, and an adviser to every President since Woodrow Wilson, including FDR, thus giving the group an "inside man." 

* Grayson Murphy, a director of Goodyear Tire, Anaconda Copper, and Bethlehem Steel, all companies capable of supplying the coup effort with necessary materiel.

* And the last 2 Democratic Party nominees for President before FDR: John W. Davis, a former Congressman from West Virginia and U.S. Ambassador to Britain, who was always more conservative than the mainstream of the Party; and Alfred E. Smith, who was also FDR's predecessor as Governor of New York, had lost very badly to Herbert Hoover in 1928, saw FDR beat Hoover even worse in 1932, and was intensely jealous of FDR's early success and popularity as President.

About all of this, Butler told French, whom he trusted due to his service. French did some digging, and found evidence that the plot was real, not just MacGuire and Clark blowing off steam at a President they hated. Armed with this knowledge, Butler met with MacGuire again, and said, "If you get 500,000 soldiers advocating anything smelling of Fascism, I am going to get 500,000 more, and lick the hell out of you, and we will have a real war right at home." And then he went to Congress, and spilled the beans.

French broke the story in the New York Post and the Philadelphia Record on November 21. On November 22, The New York Times wrote about it, calling it a "gigantic hoax." All the parties alleged to be involved publicly said there was no truth in the story, calling it a joke and a fantasy. Roosevelt's reaction to it is not known to have been recorded.

If the coup ever got beyond the talking stage, it was doomed without a leader -- or, more likely, a figurehead. It has been alleged that Hugh S. Johnson, a retired Army Brigadier General who had been running the National Recovery Administration for FDR, and had been named Man of the Year for 1933 by Time magazine, had also turned the plotters down.

In 1935, Butler published a book titled War Is a Racket, comparing what Dwight D. Eisenhower would later call "the military-industrial complex" to organized crime. He wrote, "I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business... a gangster for capitalism" who "might have given Al Capone a few hints." That book, all by itself, showed that the big business boys were looking to the wrong man for their goal.

Plaque honoring Butler, Philadelphia City Hall:

"He enforced the law impartially,

he defended it courageously, he proved incorruptible."

MacGuire died of pneumonia shortly before Butler published his book. Grayson Murphy died in 1937, Smedley Butler in 1940, Hugh Johnson in 1942, Al Smith in 1944, Thomas Lamont in 1948, John W. Davis in 1955, Robert S. Clark in 1956, Paul French in 1960, and Irénée du Pont in 1963.

In 2018 and 2022, Thomas Lamont's great-grandson, Edward Miner Lamont Jr., a.k.a. Ned Lamont, was elected Governor of Connecticut -- as a liberal Democrat. He has conducted the office very differently from what his ancestor would have hoped.

*

November 21, 1934 was a Wednesday. This was also the day the Cole Porter musical Anything Goes, starring Ethel Merman, debuted on Broadway. I have a separate entry for that event.

This was also the day that the Yankees purchased the contract of Joe DiMaggio from the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League. I have a separate entry for that event.

Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And while the NHL season began on November 8, there were no games scheduled for this day. So there were no scores.

November 6, 1928: The "Zipper" Debuts at One Times Square

November 6, 1928: The Times Square "Zipper" goes into operation, bringing news headlines to people who don't have access to radios -- in this era before television.

Since the advent of the telegraph in the 1840s, newspapers commonly used their buildings to share the latest headlines. At first, simple chalkboard signs were used for bulletins. But limelight illumination, electric lights, magic lantern projections, and other novel techniques were later employed.

The method of using electric lights to spell out moving letters was invented by Frank C. Reilly, and patented in 1923. Reilly called his invention the Motograph News Bulletin. In 1928, The New York Times installed a Motograph News Bulletin to display news headlines on the sides of Times Tower, at 1 Times Square, where 42nd Street, 7th Avenue and Broadway come together. The 1st news story it announced was the election of Herbert Hoover as the 31st President of the United States. (I have a separate entry for that event.)

The display was 388 feet long, 5 feet high, and employed over 14,800 light bulbs. Popularly known as the "Zipper," the sign went on to feature in several newsreels, including those announcing Presidential elections and the surrenders of World War II, V-E Day and V-J Day.

It was darkened during World War II, to comply with wartime lighting restrictions. It operated continuously until 1961, when The New York Times moved out of the building. The tower was subsequently purchased by Allied Chemical in 1963. It was put back into service in 1965, but would only operate sporadically with some gaps lasting several years.

It also displayed sports scores and weather reports.

In 1975, the Motograph Zipper was extinguished and sat dark for 5 years. Newsday rented the display in 1980, putting it back into service once more. However, in December 1994, Newsday announced the lease would terminate at the end of the month.

It was replaced by an electronic version in 1995, which was in turn removed in 2018 due to the replacement of all individual screens on the front of One Times Square with a 350 foot-tall LED billboard in 2018.

*

November 6, 1928 was a Tuesday. This was also the day the news-flashing "Zipper" sign was introduced in Times Square. I have a separate entry for this event.

Baseball season was over. Football was in midweek. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And the NHL season didn't start until November 15. So there were no scores on this historic day. 

October 16, 1973: Willie Mays Bows Out, Donald Trump Butts In

October 16, 1973: Two notable occurrences in New York City's Borough of Queens. One legend, who graced American sports for 23 years, bows out. Another legend, who has disgraced American life ever since, butts in.

The Oakland Athletics win Game 3 of the World Series, 3-2 in 11 innings over the New York Mets at Shea Stadium. Each team's ace starts: Jim "Catfish" Hunter for the A's, Tom Seaver for the Mets. Neither figured in the decision, although Seaver did strike out 12 batters while walking only 1 in 8 innings.

In the bottom of the 10th, Willie Mays pinch-hits for Mets relief pitcher Tug McGraw against Paul Lindblad, and grounds to short, where Bert Campaneris turns a force play. It is Mays' last major league appearance.

With 1 out in the top of the 11th, Mets reliever Harry Parker walked Ted Kubiak of nearby Highland Park, Middlesex County, New Jersey. Cliché Alert: Walks can kill you. Parker struck Ángel Mangual out, but catcher Jerry Grote couldn't handle it, and Kubiak reached 2nd base. Campaneris singled to center field, scoring Kubiak. Campaneris was out trying to stretch his hit into a double, but he got the winning RBI.

This put Lindblad into position to be the winning pitcher. The Mets did threaten in the bottom of the 11th: Wayne Garrett led off with a single to center, leading A's manager Dick Williams to bring in his bullpen ace, Rollie Fingers. Félix Millán bunted Garrett over to 2nd. With those 2 ordinary hitters out of the way, Fingers now had to face 2 men who are still among the best hitters in Met history. But he got Rusty Staub to fly to center, and Cleon Jones to ground to short, nailing down the Oakland win.

Afterward, in a private clubhouse meeting‚ Williams told his A's players that he will resign after the Series, win or lose. He has had it with the meddling of team owner Charlie Finley. Alvin Dark succeeded Williams.

Also on this day, Brian Cornelius Schottenheimer is born in Denver. At the time, his father, Marty Schottenheimer, was in his 1st coaching job, as linebackers coach with the Portland Storm of the World Football League.

Brian would grow up in the suburbs of Cleveland and Kansas City, while his father was head coach of the Browns and later the Chiefs. He got his 1st coaching job in 1997, assisting Dick Vermeil on the St. Louis Rams. Marty would put Brian on his staff in Kansas City in 1998, Washington in 2001, and San Diego from 2002 to 2005. He has also coached at Syracuse University, USC, the Jets, with the Rams again, the University of Georgia, and Indianapolis, but has yet to receive his 1st head coaching job. He is now the offensive coordinator for the Seattle Seahawks. (UPDATE: In 2025, he was named head coach of the Dallas Cowboys.)

Also on this day, David Gerald Unsworth is born in Chorley, Lancashire, England. A centreback, he played for Liverpool-based Everton, and helped them win the 1995 FA Cup. He was twice caretaker manager of Lancashire club Preston North End and once (so far) of Everton, and now manages Everton's reserves.

*

Also on this day, Donald Trump is mentioned in The New York Times for the 1st time. The story is of a lawsuit filed against the 27-year-old Trump, his father Fred, and their real estate company, by the U.S. Department of Justice, then (at least, for another 4 days) reporting to Attorney General Elliot Richardson, who reported to President Richard Nixon. The charge is housing discrimination in their Queens apartment complexes.

In his 1987 autobiography Trump: The Art of the Deal -- which was actually written by Tony Schwartz, then writing for GQ, and who now correctly calls Trump a "sociopath" -- Trump said, "The idea of settling drove me crazy... I'd rather fight than fold, because as soon as you fold once, you get the reputation of being a folder."

Nevertheless, on June 10, 1975, Fred (who had previously been arrested for attending a Ku Klux Klan demonstration in Queens in 1927) and Donald signed an agreement prohibiting them from "discriminating against any person in the terms, conditions, or privileges of sale or rental of a dwelling." The decree made it clear that the Trumps did not view the agreement as a surrender, saying the settlement was "in no way an admission" of a violation.

Nevertheless, Donald Trump officially became famous by being exposed as a bigot. And when you're officially too bigoted for Richard Nixon, that means that you've got a problem.

*

October 16, 1973 was a Tuesday. Football was in midweek. There were 2 games in the NBA. The New York Knicks beat the Buffalo Braves, 117-91 at Madison Square Garden. And the Philadelphia 76ers beat the Houston Rockets, 106-101 at the Hofheinz Pavilion (now the Fertitta Center) in Houston.

There was 1 game in the American Basketball Association: The San Antonio Spurs beat the Virginia Squires, 116-106 at the HemisFair Arena in San Antonio.

There were 2 games played in the NHL. The New York Islanders and the Los Angeles Kings played to a tie, 4-4 at the Nassau Coliseum. And the St. Louis Blues beat the Detroit Red Wings, 3-2 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit.

And there was 1 game played in the World Hockey Association: The Toronto Toros beat the Los Angeles Sharks, 3-0 at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena.

August 28, 2014: The Scandal of The Tan Suit

August 28, 2014: President Barack Obama wears a tan suit to a White House press conference. No big deal, right?

Apparently, it was a big deal to conservatives. They absolutely lost their minds.

The press conference was about the situation regarding ISIS in Syria, and how the U.S. military was planning to respond to it. At the conference, Obama said that the U.S. had yet to develop a plan regarding the removal of ISIS, and talked extensively about his concerns in the region.

But conservatives focused not on the message, or even on the messenger, but on his choice of clothing:

* Representative Peter King, Republican from Long Island, New York: "There's no way, I don't think, any of us can excuse what the president did yesterday. I mean, you have the world watching... ISIS is watching. If you were the head of ISIS, if you were Baghdadi, if you were anyone in the ISIS, would you come away from yesterday afraid of the United States? Would you be afraid that the United States was going to use all its power to crush ISIS?" King also said, referencing the beach resort in his home District, “He looked like he was on his way to a party at the Hamptons.”

* Lou Dobbs, host on Fox Business Network: He said the tan suit was "shocking to a lot of people."

* Pete Hegseth, panelist on Fox News Channel: "Only the Democrats, and only the liberals, could elect a guy in a tan suit." (As if he had worn it during either of his election campaigns.)

* Vanessa Friedman, fashion critic with The New York Times: "Khaki is a sort of wishy-washy color... a particularly odd choice for a discussion of wishy-washy military policy."

Someone, I forget who, but a supporter of Obama's, remembering his book titled The Audacity of Hope, called the suit "The Audacity of Taupe." Someone else turned his slogan of "Yes we can!" into "Yes we tan!"

The month before Obama's news conference, Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian was arrested in Iran on espionage charges and eventually convicted in an Iranian trial. In 2019, he tweeted, "I was in prison when this happened. Today is literally the first time I’m hearing of it... if this was actually a thing to be covered at the time – and now – we are indeed the most privileged – and perhaps pettiest – nation ever."

In June 1984, Ronald Reagan not only wore a tan suit, but was photographed wearing it in the Oval Office. Nobody objected then, either liberal or conservative.

I've also found pictures of tan suits being worn as Presidents by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Gerald Ford and both George Bushes. As Reagan would have said, "Well... "

UPDATE: On August 19, 2024, the 1st day of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Vice President and Presidential nominee Kamala Harris made an appearance, wearing a tan suit. On August 28, 2024, the 10th anniversary of the incident, Obama tweeted side-by-side pictures of himself and Harris in tan suits tweeting, "How it started. How it's going. Ten years later, and it's still a good look! #IWillVote.com."

*

August 28, 2014 was a Thursday. These Major League Baseball games were played:

* The New York Yankees lost to the Detroit Tigers, 3-2 at Comerica Park in Detroit. Batting against Shawn Kelley, Alex Avila singled Bryan Holaday home with the winning run in the bottom of the 9th inning. That, and the lineup getting only 5 hits -- 2 by Carlos Beltrán, and none by the soon-to-retire Derek Jeter -- ruined a good start by Hiroki Kuroda.

* The New York Mets lost to the Atlanta Braves, 6-1 at Citi Field. The Mets were only down 1-0 after 7 innings, but Jon Niese ran out of gas.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Tampa Bay Rays, 5-4 at Camden Yards in Baltimore.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Chicago Cubs, 7-2 at Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Chicago White Sox, 3-2 at the new Comiskey Park (now Guaranteed Rate Field) in Chicago.

* The Minnesota Twins beat the Kansas City Royals, 11-5 at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City. Royals reliever Bruce Chen absolutely collapsed in the top of the 10th inning, allowing 2 singles, 2 doubles, a triple, and 2 walks, 1 of them intentional, for 6 runs.

* The Houston Astros beat their in-State rivals, the Texas Rangers, 4-2 at Minute Maid Park (now Daikin Park) in Houston.

* The Los Angeles Angels beat the Oakland Athletics, 4-3 at Angel Stadium of Anaheim. Howie Kendrick won it with a sacrifice fly, bringing Albert Pujols home in the bottom of the 10th inning.

* The San Francisco Giants beat the Colorado Rockies, 4-1 at AT&T Park (now Oracle Park) in San Francisco. Yusmeiro Petit, normally a relief pitcher, started this game for the Giants. Having retired the 1st 8 batters, he ran his streak of consecutive batters retired to 46, a new major league record. I have a separate entry for this event.

* And the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Boston Red Sox, the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Miami Marlins, the Milwaukee Brewers, the Philadelphia Phillies, the Pittsburgh Pirates, the St. Louis Cardinals, the San Diego Padres, the Seattle Mariners, the Toronto Blue Jays and the Washington Nationals were not scheduled.

August 10, 1978: The 1978 New York Newspaper Strike

August 10, 1978: A newspaper strike shuts down New York City's 3 major newspapers until November 5. It was a multi-union strike: Not just the reporters, but the paperhandlers, machinists keeping the presses literally rolling, and the mechanics and drivers for the delivery trucks. Over 10,000 employees were out.

Wages were not the main issue. When the strike was settled, the union won some concessions in benefits, while management eliminated some overtime. Both sides could legitimately claim victory.

The fact that there were fewer reporters to bother them, and to complain to (although there were still TV and radio guys), is often credited as being one of the reasons the New York Yankees made their epic comeback and won the World Series.

Unlike with the 1962-63 strike that immediately killed the New York Mirror (a tabloid), and led by 1966 to the deaths of the Herald Tribune, the Journal-American, and the World-Telegram & Sun (all broadsheets), all 3 major New York dailies survived the strike. The broadsheet Times was as strong as ever. The tabloids, the Daily News and the Post, would each have their problems over the next few years, and each almost went out of business at least once, but have survived.

I've often said that the Times is the face that New York City prefers to show to the rest of the world, the Daily News is the face the City prefers to show to itself, and the Post is a face that only a mother could love.

*

August 10, 1978 was a Thursday. These Major League Baseball games were played:

* The New York Yankees beat the Milwaukee Brewers, 9-0 at Yankee Stadium. Ron Guidry pitched a 3-hit shutout, with only a double by Robin Yount, and singles by Yount and Dick Davis. He advanced to 16-2 on the season. He would finish 25-3 -- 27-3 counting the postseason. Reggie Jackson did not play. Chris Chambliss went 3-for-4 with a walk and 4 RBIs.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Cleveland Indians, 6-5 at Fenway Park in Boston. Andre Thornton had singled home the go-ahead run in the top of the 13th inning. But then, just after he giveth, Thornton taketh away: His error on a Butch Hobson grounder to start the bottom of the 13th led to another error on the same play, allowing Hobson to come all the way around to score. George Scott doubled, Gary Hancock pinch-ran for him, and Rick Burleson singled Hancock home.

On July 20, the Red Sox had led the Yankees by 14 games. After this game, their lead was 7 1/2. The Yankees would tie them on September 10, and they would finish in a tie for the American League Eastern Division title. The Yankees would win a Playoff, then the Pennant, and finally the World Series.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 3-1 at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. Mike Schmidt went 1-for-3 with an RBI. The Pirates' only run came on a home run by Dave Parker. Willie Stargell went 1-for-4.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Kansas City Royals, 3-2 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. Ken Singleton hit a home run, and Eddie Murray went 1-for-4.

* The Toronto Blue Jays beat the Chicago White Sox, 7-3 at Exhibition Stadium in Toronto.

* The San Diego Padres beat the Cincinnati Reds, 15-3 at San Diego Stadium (later renamed Jack Murphy Stadium and Qualcomm Stadium). Gene Tenace went 3-for-5 with a home run and 5 RBIs. Dave Winfield went 1-for-3 with 2 walks. Pete Rose went 2-for-4. Johnny Bench only appeared as a pinch-hitter, and did not reach base.

* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat their arch-rivals, the San Francisco Giants, 12-2 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.

* And the California Angels beat the Oakland Athletics, 16-5 at the Oakland Coliseum. Lyman Bostock went 3-for-4 with a walk and 5 RBIs. Having finished 2nd in the American League batting race to this then-teammate, Rod Carew of the Minnesota Twins, he was looking like a superstar in the making. Just 45 days later, he was dead.

June 13, 1971: The Pentagon Papers Are Published

June 13, 1971: The New York Times and The Washington Post publish The History of U.S. Decision-Making in Vietnam, 1945–1968. The document becomes known as The Pentagon Papers.

Written up by the U.S. Department of defense, it was considered classified. Daniel Ellsberg, a military analyst for the RAND Corporation who worked on the document, thought it important enough to leak them to the press.

One thing the document made clear was that the Administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson -- in office from November 22, 1963 to January 20, 1969 -- "systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress."

The Pentagon Papers revealed that the U.S. had secretly enlarged the scope of its actions in the Vietnam War, with coastal raids on North Vietnam and Marine Corps attacks, none of which were reported in the mainstream media.

For his disclosure of the Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg was initially charged with conspiracy, espionage, and theft of government property. Those charges were later dismissed.

Although it was the Johnson Administration that looked bad as a result of the document's text, the next and current President, Richard Nixon, fought hard to keep it from being made public, since they thought it would undermine support for the war. Nixon officials pressured the Times and the Post not to publish it. They did so, anyway, and support for the war, already having slipped to a minority status in America, slipped further.

The articles were published a little at a time, over a few days, until the Administration filed suit to stop it. On June 30, in New York Times Co. v. United States, in a 6-3 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Administration was violating the papers' rights of freedom of the press, as guaranteed by the 1st Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and the publication resumed until its completion. The papers would later collaborate on a paperback collection.

Nixon was a pioneer, inventing the Republican Party strategy of, when being faced with something that makes them look bad, rather than changing their behavior, they actively attempt to discredit the messenger. On September 3, 1971, Nixon sent some "Plumbers," so named because they "prevented leaks," to rob the office of Dr. Lewis Fielding, Ellsberg's psychiatrist.

Daniel Ellsberg

The burglary was conducted by G. Gordon Liddy, E. Howard Hunt, Eugenio Martinez, Bernard Barker and Felipe de Diego. They found Ellsberg's file, but it apparently did not contain the potentially embarrassing information they sought, as they left it discarded on the floor of Fielding's office.

This burglary turned out to be a warmup for the action for which the Plumbers unit would become best known: Martinez and Barker would go on to become 2 of the 5 "Watergate Burglars."

Harry Blackmun was the last Justice from New York Times Co. v. U.S., serving until 1994. Byron White was the last surviving Justice, living until 2002. As of June 13, 2022, Daniel Ellsberg is still alive. (UPDATE: Ellsberg died on June 16, 2023, at the age of 92.)

*

June 13, 1971 was a Sunday -- published on that day of the week to guarantee their papers' maximum readership. These Major League Baseball games were played:

* The New York Yankees beat the Oakland Athletics, 5-1 at the Oakland Coliseum. Fritz Peterson outpitched John "Blue Moon" Odom. Roy White went 3-for-3 with a walk and 3 RBIs. Reggie Jackson went 0-for-3 with a walk.

* The New York Mets beat the San Francisco Giants, 5-4 at Shea Stadium. Willie Mays went 1-for-4 with a walk. Ken Singleton drove in the winning run with a sacrifice fly in the bottom of the 10th inning, scoring Bud Harrelson. Tug McGraw was the winning pitcher, in relief of Gary Gentry. Juan Marichal started for the Giants.

* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Montreal Expos, 7-1 at Jarry Park in Montreal.

* The San Diego Padres beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 9-8 at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Chicago White Sox, 2-1 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. Mike Cuellar outpitched Tommy John. Brooks Robinson went 1-for-3. Frank Robinson did not play.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Milwaukee Brewers, 11-0 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Sam McDowell pitched a 2-hit shutout.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Minnesota Twins, 9-5 at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. Al Kaline went 2-for-4. Harmon Killebrew went 0-for-1 with 3 walks. Rod Carew went 0-for-3 with 2 walks.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Chicago Cubs, 4-3 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Lee May singled Pete Rose home with the winning run in the top of the 11th inning. Johnny Bench did not play. Fergie Jenkins went the distance for the Cubs, but lost.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 8-4 at Busch Memorial Stadium in St. Louis. The Pirates won it with 5 runs in the top of the 9th inning, including a home run from Richie Hebner, off Chuck Taylor, who had relieved Steve Carlton. Roberto Clemente went 2-for-4 with a walk and an RBI. Willie Stargell went 1-for-4 with an RBI.

* The Kansas City Royals beat the Boston Red Sox, 4-3 at Kansas City Municipal Stadium. Carl Yastrzemski went 0-for-1 with 3 walks.

* The Atlanta Braves beat the Houston Astros, 9-0 at the Astrodome in Houston. Pat Jarvis pitched a 5-hit shutout. Earl Williams hit 2 home runs. Hank Aaron hit a home run, the 611th of his career.

* The Washington Senators beat the California Angels, 5-2 at Anaheim Stadium (now Angel Stadium of Anaheim).

June 8, 1972: The Kim Phúc Photo

Note: I didn't want to use the main photo

as my "headline," for reasons of propriety.

June 8, 1972: A horrifying photograph shows that the Vietnam War is still every bit as bad as the antiwar activists were saying it was.

Phan Thị Kim Phúc (and that's pronounced "fook," not like the English profanity) was born on April 6, 1963 in Trảng Bàng, South Vietnam. The war that tore her country apart got noticeably worse that year, and didn't stop getting worse.

In 1972, she turned 9, and the North Vietnamese Army had attacked and occupied Trảng Bàng. She was fleeing the town with her family and several South Vietnamese soldiers when a South Vietnamese pilot, mistakenly thinking the group was the enemy, dropped napalm on them. It may not have been an American pilot, but it was American weaponry, and it was dropped by an American ally.

Her clothes caught fire, and she tore them off, which saved her life. Two of her cousins died. Film footage of the escape attempt was taken, but it is a photograph that everyone remembers. It was taken by New York Times photographer Nick Ut, from the front, and a naked Kim Phúc is screaming. She remembered what she screamed: "Too hot! Too hot!"

It's not supposed to make you feel comfortable. It's supposed to remind you that

General William Tecumseh Sherman was right: "War is all hell."

Immediately after taking the picture, Ut took the injured children to a hospital in the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon. Due to the extent of her burns, it was initially believed she would not survive. She spent 14 months in hospitals, and underwent 17 skin graft surgeries. A full decade later, she had a surgery at a specialized clinic in West Germany that gave her full movement again.

In spite of her unwilling nudity, The New York Times put the photo on its next day's front page. The picture horrified Americans -- some because of the brutality that was captured, some because it was seen as undermining the U.S. war effort.

President Richard Nixon was caught on one of his eventually-infamous Oval Office audiotapes, telling his White House Chief of Staff, H.R. Haldeman, "I'm wondering if that was fixed." He showed no sympathy for a child who had been badly harmed by her own people, America's alleged ally that he was telling the country that he was trying to protect.

At the time, anybody saying that the war would be over in less than 8 months would have been told, "You're delusional. Look at that photo!" As it turned out, though, Richard Nixon could have ended the war anytime he wanted to. But he needed to get re-elected. He ended it on January 23, 1973, 3 days after his 2nd Inauguration, and 1 day after his predecessor, Lyndon Johnson, the man most blamed for the U.S. role in the war, died.

Still, South Vietnam fell to the Communists in 1975. In 1986, Kim Phúc moved -- to another Communist country, Cuba, where she studied medicine. She got married in 1992, at age 29, and the couple had their honeymoon in Moscow, a few months after the fall of the Soviet Union. On the flight back to Cuba, the plane stopped to refuel in Gander, Newfoundland, Canada. There, the couple asked the Canadian government for political asylum, and it was granted.

Now a grandmother, Kim Phúc lives a life far beyond the "Napalm Girl" label. She became a Canadian citizen in 1997, and works to help child victims of war via the Kim Foundation International. She and Nick Ut, who took the picture, remain close friends. Ut, who was born in Vietnam and now lives in the U.S., appropriately named his photograph "The Terror of War."

Nick and Kim, looking at his original negatives

*

June 8, 1972 was a Thursday. These Major League Baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees lost to the Texas Rangers, 6-2 at Arlington Stadium in the Dallas suburb of Arlington, Texas. This was the Rangers' 1st season in Texas, after 11 years as an expansion team, known as "the new Washington Senators." Pete Broberg outpitched Mel Stottlemyre.

* The New York Mets lost to the Cincinnati Reds, 5-3 at Shea Stadium. Pete Rose went 2-for-5. Johnny Bench went 0-for-3, but had an RBI on a sacrifice fly. Pedro Borbón was the winning pitcher, in relief of Ross Grimsley. The losing pitcher was Tom Seaver. Willie Mays, newly brought back to New York by the Mets, went 2-for-3 with 2 walks.

* The Atlanta Braves beat the Montreal Expos, 3-2 at Jarry Park in Montreal. Hank Aaron did not play.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Houston Astros, 7-2 at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. Bill Champion went 6 innings for the win. This was 1 of 30 games that the Phillies would win all season without Steve Carlton as the starting pitcher. With him starting, they won 29.

* The Milwaukee Brewers beat the Kansas City Royals, 4-3 at Kansas City Municipal Stadium.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the San Diego Padres, 11-2 at San Diego Stadium. Willie Stargell went 1-for-4 with a home run and 3 RBIs. Roberto Clemente was injured, and did not play.

* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Chicago Cubs, 2-1 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.

* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the San Francisco Giants, 6-4 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Lou Brock went 1-for-5.

And most of the American League were not scheduled: The Baltimore Orioles, the Boston Red Sox, the California Angels, the Chicago White Sox, the Cleveland Indians, the Detroit Tigers, the Minnesota Twins and the Oakland Athletics.

March 9, 1964: New York Times v. Sullivan

March 9, 1964: In the case of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, the U.S. Supreme Court rules, in a 9-0 unanimous vote, that the freedom of speech protections in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution restrict the ability of public officials to sue for defamation.

The decision held that, if a plaintiff in a defamation lawsuit is a public official or candidate for public office, then not only must they prove the normal elements of defamation -- publication of a false defamatory statement to a third party -- they must also prove that the statement was made with "actual malice," meaning the defendant either knew the statement was false, or recklessly disregarded whether it might be false.

The underlying case began in 1960, when The New York Times published a full-page advertisement by supporters of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that criticized the police in Montgomery, the State capital of Alabama, for their treatment of civil rights movement protesters.

The ad had several inaccuracies regarding facts such as the number of times King had been arrested during the protests, what song the protesters had sung, and whether students had been expelled for participating.

Based on the inaccuracies, Montgomery Police Commissioner L.B. Sullivan sued the Times for defamation in Montgomery County Court. After the judge ruled that the advertisement's inaccuracies were defamatory per se, the jury returned a verdict in favor of Sullivan and awarded him $500,000 in damages -- about $4.8 million in 2022 money. The Times appealed first to the Supreme Court of Alabama, which affirmed the verdict, and then to the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case.

L.B. Sullivan

On March 9, 1964, the Court issued a 9–0 decision holding that the Alabama court's verdict violated the First Amendment. The decision defended free reporting of the civil rights movement campaigns in the Southern United States. It is one of the key decisions supporting the freedom of the press.

The Court reasoned that defending the principle of wide-open debate will inevitably include "vehement, caustic, and...unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials." Before this decision, there were nearly $300 million in libel actions from the Southern States outstanding against news organizations, part of a collective effort by Southern officials to use defamation suits to prevent critical coverage of civil-rights issues in out-of-State publications.

The Court held that the advertisement's inaccuracies did not remove its free-speech constitutional protections. In the official opinion, Justice William J. Brennan Jr. wrote:

The constitutional guarantees require, we think, a federal rule that prohibits a public official from recovering damages for a defamatory falsehood relating to his official conduct unless he proves that the statement was made with "actual malice" – that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.

The Supreme Court's decision, and its adoption of the "actual malice standard," reduced the financial exposure from potential defamation claims and frustrated efforts by public officials to use these claims to suppress political criticism. The Supreme Court has since extended Sullivan's higher legal standard for defamation to all "public figures." This has made it extremely difficult for a public figure to win a defamation lawsuit in the United States.

Lester Bruce Sullivan later served as Public Safety Director for the State of Alabama, and died of a heart attack in 1977, only 56 years old.

Byron White was both the last serving Justice on the Court from this case, retiring in 1993; and the last surviving one, living until 2002.

*

March 9, 1964 was a Monday. Baseball was in Spring Training. Football was out of season. And no games were scheduled in the NHL. There was 1 game in the NBA: The Los Angeles Lakers beat the Baltimore Bullets, 122-112 at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena. Jerry West scored 37 points.