December 31, 1934: The Oval Office Opens

December 31, 1934: The modern Oval Office opens, in the West Wing of the White House in Washington. It has been the seat of power for every President of the United States from Franklin Delano Roosevelt onward.

There is an Oval Room on the 2nd floor of the main building of the White House, and it inspired previous Oval Offices. In 1903, Theodore Roosevelt had the greenhouse on the west side of the building torn down, to make for more office space. He took a corner office, and had it built in an oval shape.

His successor, William Howard Taft, didn't like the design, and had it totally rebuilt. In 1929, a fire gutted the West Wing, and Herbert Hoover had to have it redone. Finally, FDR, wanting to remove every last vestige of Hoover, had it torn down and rebuilt.

That office has been the site of some of the most important speeches broadcast from the White House: FDR's "Fireside Chats" from 1935 to 1944, Dwight D. Eisenhower's announcement of sending federal troops to desegregate Little Rock Central High School in 1957, his Farewell Address warning of the dangers of the military-industrial complex in 1961, John F. Kennedy's announcement of the naval blockade during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, his announcement of a civil rights bill in 1963, Lyndon Johnson's announcement that he wouldn't seek re-election in 1968, Richard Nixon's "Silent Majority" address in 1969, his resignation in 1974, Jimmy Carter's "Crisis of Confidence" speech in 1979, and Ronald Reagan's memorial to the Space Shuttle Challenger victims in 1986.

To this day, people working in the West Wing feel that others measure their influence by how close they are to "The Oval." Its importance is emphasized in its recreation in every Presidential Library from FDR's onward, decorated to look as it did during that President's tenure.

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December 31, 1934 was a Monday. Baseball was out of season. The NFL season had ended 22 days earlier, with the New York Giants beating the Chicago Bears in the Championship Game. No college bowl games were played. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And the NHL had no games scheduled for this date. So there were no scores on this historic day.

December 21, 1970: President Richard Nixon Meets Elvis Presley

December 21, 1970: The President of the United States meets the King of Rock and Roll. It doesn't go quite the way the fans of either would have imagined.

Richard Nixon, who had been Vice President when rock and roll debuted in the mid-1950s, had been elected in 1968 by, essentially, running as "the adult in the room," against youth culture and its running wild in the streets, promoting rock music and civil rights and opposing the Vietnam War.

In contrast, Elvis Presley, who became a star in the South in 1954 and nationally in 1956, was seen as a disruptive figure, pitting teenagers against their parents and other authority figures. And he had made a big comeback with a TV special in 1968 and a Las Vegas residency in 1969.

What people tended to overlook was that Elvis had accepted being drafted into the U.S. Army in 1958 (between the Korean and Vietnam Wars), had served without controversy, and was discharged with the rank of Sergeant, and remained proud of his service, entirely in peacetime though it was.

Furthermore, while he had recorded and had hits with "If I Can Dream" and "In the Ghetto" in 1969, and appeared to be without either racial or religious prejudice, he was not a flaming liberal. He was a man of his time when it came to relating to women. More to the point of this post, he was disturbed by the rise in illegal drug use, including by major rock performers, despite his own rising use of prescription drugs.

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Let's take a step back, to April 24, 1970. Nixon's daughter, Tricia -- who, the following year, would marry lawyer Edward Cox at the White House -- hosted a White House tea party for her fellow alumnae of Finch College, a since-closed all-women's school in New York City. One of the invitees was Grace Wing. (She was of Scandinavian descent, not Chinese.)

That was her maiden name. Legally, she was using the married name Grace Slick. Professionally, she was using the name Grace Slick, as lead singer of The Jefferson Airplane, which was led by guitarist Paul Kantner, who whom she was in a relationship. (Their daughter, actress China Wing Kantner, was born almost exactly 9 months later.)

Grace knew she would never have been invited under her married/show biz name. She decided to take advantage of this by bringing Abbie Hoffman, leader of the Yippies and the recently-acquitted "Chicago Seven" defendant. Together, they intended to spike President Nixon's tea with LSD.

But White House security knew it was an "all ladies" event, and, even before they realized who he was, they told Abbie they wouldn't let him in. So Grace didn't go in, either. What could have been an epic event was thwarted.

*

Elvis had landed in Washington on the morning of December 21, 1970, fresh off a red-eye flight from Los Angeles, on which he had penned a letter to the President on 6 pages of American Airlines stationery. This is what he wrote, without my having changed any spelling or grammar:

Dear Mr. President.

First, I would like to introduce myself. I am Elvis Presley and admire you and have great respect for your office. I talked to Vice President Agnew in Palm Springs three weeks ago and expressed my concern for our country. The drug culture, the hippie elements, the SDS, Black Panthers, etc. do not consider me as their enemy or as they call it the establishment. I call it America and I love it. Sir, I can and will be of any service that I can to help the country out. I have no concern or motives other than helping the country out.

So I wish not to be given a title or an appointed position. I can and will do more good if I were made a Federal Agent at Large and I will help out by doing it my way through my communications with people of all ages. First and foremost, I am an entertainer, but all I need is the Federal credentials. I am on this plane with Senator George Murphy and we have been discussing the problems that our country is faced with.

Sir, I am staying at the Washington Hotel, Room 505-506-507. I have two men who work with me by the name of Jerry Schilling and Sonny West. I am registered under the name of Jon Burrows. I will be here for as long as long as it takes to get the credentials of a Federal Agent. I have done an in-depth study of drug abuse and Communist brainwashing techniques and I am right in the middle of the whole thing where I can and will do the most good.

I am Glad to help just so long as it is kept very private. You can have your staff or whomever call me anytime today, tonight, or tomorrow. I was nominated this coming year one of America's Ten Most Outstanding Young Men. That will be in January 18 in my home town of Memphis, Tennessee. I am sending you the short autobiography about myself so you can better understand this approach. I would love to meet you just to say hello if you're not too busy.

Respectfully,
Elvis Presley

P. S. I believe that you, Sir, were one of the Top Ten Outstanding Men of America also.
I have a personal gift for you which I would like to present to you and you can accept it or I will keep it for you until you can take it.

On the 6th and last page, he included his private telephone numbers, and those of his manager, "Colonel" Tom Parker, at his homes in Memphis, Beverly Hills and Palm Springs, and at his hotel in Washington.

Once they landed, the King directed his limo to Pennsylvania Avenue. He jumped out to hand the note to Secret Service guards, who didn’t immediately recognize him, despite his high-collared topcoat and cane.

What Elvis really wanted was a special badge from the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs -- not so much as to be a real federal agent, but to add to his personal collection of police badges.

Jerry Schilling, a close friend of Elvis' who joined the visit to Washington, later described the King's penchant for flashy signals of authority in a conversation with the Nixon Presidential Library: "It was kind of a James Bond thing to him as well, but with a lot of respect for it."

Dwight Chapin, then a Deputy Assistant to the President, ended up arranging the meeting. He said, “This was a very humorous situation among us. Everybody thought we were joking."

Another Deputy Assistant, Egil "Bud" Krogh, went to the hotel to meet Elvis. "There was an interrogation," Schilling said. "That's a tough word, but, you know, 'Why do you want to meet the President? What do you want to talk about?' And it was a real nice, serious conversation between Bud and Elvis."

And so, Elvis, in purple velvet pants and a matching cape blazer, was led into the Oval Office, and shook hands with the President. It's the most requested photograph from the U.S. National Archives, an item more coveted than copies of the Constitution.

Krogh, the sole staffer who witnessed the Elvis-Nixon exchange in the Oval Office, with Schilling and Sonny West also in the room, later wrote meeting notes that sketched out the conversation: After the legendary photo-op, Elvis told the President that he was on his side, and he wanted to help reach young people to discourage drug use.

He also added a dig at The Beatles, who had broken up 8 months earlier, but whom Elvis told Nixon had promoted "anti-American spirit," much to Nixon's surprise. While Nixon would later try to get John Lennon deported, he had not, as yet, made any negative public statement against the group, or any member thereof, or, indeed, against any musical performer.

At first, Nixon was annoyed by what he saw as a public-relations stunt. But over the course of the meeting, he found that they had much in common: They were both "self-made men," who came from humble beginnings, and worked hard for their success, and both felt under-appreciated by an American culture they no longer understood, and had appeared to have passed them by. (It wasn't brought up, but another thing they had in common was being major "mama's boys.")

As for the gift, it was a gun. Yes, Elvis brought a gun into the White House. It was a Colt .45 pistol made for the U.S. Army during World War II, in what Nixon called a "handsome wooden chest" in the thank-you note he sent, dated on December 31. Elvis and Dick parted on good terms.

And the badge that Elvis so badly wanted? It came in the mail a few days later. This was one occasion on which Richard Nixon kept his word.

Despite the fame of both men, the meeting was not reported in the media at the time, and went unnoticed for more than a year until Jack Anderson's nationally syndicated newspaper column of January 27, 1972.

The revelation of the meeting shocked pretty much everybody. Nixon's supporters couldn't believe that Elvis the Pelvis was allowed in. Elvis' supporters figured he was too liberal to meet with the much-despised Tricky Dick. For Nixon-haters, it got worse: At the 1972 Republican Convention, Nixon was seen on TV getting hugged by Sammy Davis Jr., and applauded by Frank Sinatra, who had publicly supported Democratic Presidential nominees from Franklin Roosevelt in 1940 to Hubert Humphrey in 1968, especially John F. Kennedy against Nixon in 1960.

Dwight Chapin was convicted of perjury for lying to a grand jury over the Watergate case, and served 8 months in federal prison.

The meeting has been the subject of 2 movies. In 1997, Elvis Meets Nixon starred Rick Peters, Bob Gunton, Alyson Court as Priscilla Presley, Denny Doherty of The Mamas & The Papas as Elvis' father Vernon, and Richard Beymer (Tony in the film version of West Side Story) as White House Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman. In 2016, Elvis & Nixon starred Michael Shannon, Kevin Spacey, Tate Donovan as Haldeman, and Johnny Knoxville as West. No one in Elvis' family appears as a character.

Elvis died in 1977, his heart weakened by his prescription drug use. Senator George Murphy died in 1992, Nixon in 1994, Bud Krogh in 2020, and Sonny West in 2022. As of December 21, 2022, Dwight Chapin and Jerry Schilling are still alive.

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December 21, 1970 was a Wednesday. Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek. There were no games scheduled in the NHL.

There was 1 game in the NBA: The Milwaukee Bucks beat the Los Angeles Lakers, 113-88 at the Milwaukee Arena. In 1974, it was renamed the Milwaukee Exposition, Convention Center and Arena, or "The MECCA." Since 2014, it has been named the UW-Panther Arena. Lew Alcindor scored 37 points and grabbed 16 rebounds. He went on to lead the Bucks to the NBA Championship that season. After another year, he changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. In 1975, he was traded to the Lakers, and would lead them to 6 titles.

There were 2 games played in the American Basketball Association, and they were a doubleheader at the Indiana State Fairgrounds Coliseum (now the Corteva Coliseum) in Indianapolis. The Miami Floridians beat the Kentucky Colonels, 125-119. Dan Issel scored 37 in defeat for the Colonels. And the Indiana Pacers beat the Pittsburgh Condors, 144-115. Bill Netolicky scored 36 for the Pacers.

November 4, 1963: The Kennedy Kids In the Oval Office

November 4, 1963: With First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy away, President John F. Kennedy did something she would not have allowed: He let Cecil Stoughton, the official White House photographer, into the Oval Office. He took pictures of JFK playing with his children Caroline and John Jr.

Always protective of her privacy, and her family's, Jackie didn't like it when pictures were taken of the kids, but Jack knew it helped the family's image. Both the photo of Caroline and John dancing, and John under the Resolute Desk, became icons of the "Camelot" era.

The desk was a gift from Britain's Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880, and was built from the oak timbers of the British Arctic exploration ship HMS Resolute, which the U.S. Navy had rescued from its own failed mission to rescue a lost ship. (The ship they were looking for was later found by another ship, but all hands they were looking for had long been lost.)

The 1,300-pound desk was created by William Evenden, a skilled joiner at Chatham Dockyard in Kent, probably from a design by Morant, Boyd, & Blanford. The kneehole panel that John Kennedy Jr. played in was added in 1945.

President Kennedy was assassinated 18 days later. The desk was put in storage, and later became part of a traveling exhibit of items that would later be put into his Presidential Library in Boston. But it never made it there: President Jimmy Carter asked for it to be returned to the White House, which it was, and every President since has used it. Every Presidential Library, including JFK's, has a replica of the Oval Office as it looked during his Presidency, including a replica of the desk then in use.

Interviewed by Oprah Winfrey in 1997, John F. Kennedy Jr., then 36 years old, said that he didn't remember playing under the desk. He also said he didn't remember giving the salute to the coffin at the funeral, which took place on his 3rd birthday. He did say he remembered his father calling him "Sam," which he didn't like.

Apparently, it was the President yelling, "John! John!" after his son that led to John Jr. being nicknamed "John-John," which followed him for the rest of his life.

Cecil Stoughton, the photographer, was an Iowa native, and 43 years old at the time of the photos. He had also taken several photos of JFK on his yacht off the coast of Hyannis Port, Massachusetts; the photo of John and Robert Kennedy with Marilyn Monroe at the old Madison Square Garden in 1962; and the photo Lyndon Johnson's swearing-in aboard Air Force One after the assassination.

From 1967 to 1973, he was the official photographer for the National Park Service. He died in 2008, and, like President Kennedy and his brothers, was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

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November 4, 1963 was a Monday. This was also the day The Beatles played the Royal Variety Show in London, in front of Elizabeth the Queen Mother. I have a separate entry for that date.

Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek: There would be no Monday Night Football for another 7 years. The NBA and NHL seasons were underway, but no games were scheduled for either league on this day. 

November 3, 1969: President Richard Nixon's "Silent Majority" Speech

November 3, 1969: In the face of a massive demonstration against the Vietnam War on October 15 -- during Game 4 of the World Series between the New York Mets and the Baltimore Orioles -- and knowing that he had both lost the election for President in 1960 and won it in 1968 by razor-thin margins, and that he needed support from wherever he could get it, President Richard Nixon delivers a speech from the Oval Office, written by William Safire, later a Pulitzer Prize-winning longtime conservative columnist for The New York Times.

In 1956, when Nixon was Vice President, Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts gave him a copy of his book Profiles In Courage, which included these words in its introduction: "Some of them may have been representing the actual sentiments of the silent majority of their constituents in opposition to the screams of a vocal minority." Nixon took note of those words, and never forgot them, even as the friendship between them was fractured when they ran against each other for President in 1960, and Kennedy won by said slim margin.

In 1967, George Meany, President of America's largest labor organization, the AFL-CIO, gave a press conference in which he said union members who supported the Vietnam War were "the vast, silent majority in the nation." Nixon heard this, and remembered Kennedy having used the phrase.

So, needing support for his his policies, especially the one he announced at the beginning of the speech, called "Vietnamization" -- steadily taking U.S. troops out, and turning responsibility for the war over to South Vietnam -- Nixon gave Safire the phrase, and this section was the result: "And so, tonight, to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans, I ask for your support."

It worked, mostly. In 1966, Time magazine named "The Inheritor" -- or, as they said on the cover, "Twenty-Five and Under" -- as their collective "Man of the Year." People born after 1940 then made up nearly half the American population, and were most of those serving in Vietnam and most of those in the counterculture that, among other things, was opposing that war. In 1969, just 3 years later, as "Man and Woman of the Year," Time chose "The Middle Americans" -- clearly, a synonym for "The Silent Majority."

Despite an even bigger demonstration in Washington on November 15, the protests against Nixon's "Cambodian incursion" the following May, and the "May Day" demonstrations of May 3, 1971, those who opposed the war didn't turn up at the polls to punish pro-war Congressmen in 1970 and 1972, or Nixon himself when he ran for re-election in 1972. Those who supported the war had ceased to be a majority of the people in 1968, but they remained a majority of those who actually voted.

Nixon announced an end to the war within days of his 2nd Inauguration, on January 23, 1973. And when he was forced to resign on August 9, 1974, the war had only a tangential connection to it: Trying to get information on antiwar Congressmen and activists was why the Democratic Party offices at the Watergate were broken into and bugged.

Nixon was probably not aware of this, but the day before the speech, the band Creedence Clearwater Revival released an album titled Willy and the Poor Boys. For it, bandleader John Fogerty, one of the few genuine rock stars to have served in the U.S. armed forces (U.S. Army, 1966-67, before the band hit it big, serving stateside with no combat), wrote the song "Effigy," in which he sang, "Silent majority weren't keeping quiet anymore."

This was also the day on which PBS, the Public Broadcasting Service, was founded. I have a separate entry for that.

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November 3, 1969 was a Monday. The baseball season was over. There was no football: The NFL and ABC began partnering for Monday Night Football the following season. And while the NHL season had begun, no games where scheduled for that day.

Only 1 game was scheduled in the NBA: The New York Knicks beat the Milwaukee Bucks, 109-93 at the Milwaukee Arena. In 1974, it was renamed the Milwaukee Exposition, Convention Center and Arena, or "The MECCA." Since 2014, it has been named the UW-Panther Arena. Willis Reed scored 35 points, Bill Bradley 19, Dave DeBusschere 18, Dick Barnett 14, and Walt Frazier and Cazzie Russell each scored 10. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, then a rookie and still using his birth name of Lew Alcindor, scored 17 for the Bucks.

There was 1 game in the American Basketball Association: The New Orleans Buccaneers beat the Washington Capitols, 125-115 at the New Orleans Municipal Auditorium. Neither team survived to be admitted to the NBA. 

October 22, 1962: "The First Family" Is Recorded Amid the Cuban Missile Crisis

October 22, 1962: Eight days after finding out that the Soviet Union has set up missiles in Cuba, which could reach the United States, and debating what to do about it, President John F. Kennedy addresses the nation from the Oval Office at the White House.

Obviously, JFK couldn't simply do nothing, and let the missiles stay there. It would have been nuclear extortion on America and its allies. He also knew that standard diplomacy, trying to get the Soviets to remove the missiles that way, or to convince Castro to refuse them, wouldn't work.

Most of the President's military advisors had recommended a first strike on Cuba -- not nuclear, but with conventional weapons, meaning planes and bombs. This would be followed by a land invasion.

JFK knew that this would be considered an act of war, not just on Cuba, but on Cuba's ally, the Soviet Union, and might lead to that country launching its missiles on the West, including any missiles that the hypothetical bombing raid failed to take out. If ever there was a President who, as Donald Trump once suggested he did, "knew more than the Generals do," it was Kennedy.

Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara suggested a naval blockade, preventing any more Soviet supplies from arriving in Cuba by sea -- including aircraft carriers whose planes could enforce the blockade by air.

But this, too, was problematic: According to international law, a blockade is an act of war. Admiral George Anderson, Chief of Naval Operations, told JFK to, instead, call it a "quarantine." JFK's Attorney General, his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, told him that this would provide legal justification, under the Rio Treaty, effectively establishing the Organization of American States (OAS) as a NATO for the Western Hemisphere, and also backing up the Monroe Doctrine, prohibiting European interference in the Hemisphere. And so, JFK announced the "quarantine."

For the next week, the world was terrified that this is it: World War III is coming, and, as JFK had said before, "The living would envy the dead."

And while this speech was being broadcast, among the few people not seeing it were in Fine Recording Studio in Manhattan, watching the recording of the comedy album The First Family, a parody of the Kennedy family. Presidents had been portrayed before, and comedians had made jokes about incumbent Presidents. But comedian Vaughn Meader, a fellow New Englander (from Waterville, Maine) had already made a name for himself impersonating JFK, including the accent, the phrasing and the gestures.

Unlike some later Presidential parodies, this was mostly in good fun, riffing on various facets of Kennedy life: JFK's comparative youth and inexperience, his reliance on his brother Bobby's counsel and their father Joe's money, his bad back and the rocking chair he used instead of a stiffer chair, his affinity for cigars, Jackie's redecoration of the White House, the raising of daughter Caroline and baby John Jr., and the family's love of sports, including football and water-skiing.

Naomi Brossart played Jackie. She was a model, and this album was her recording debut. Canadian actress Norma McMillan, an experienced cartoon voice actress, and older than either Meader or Brossart, ironically provided the voices of both Caroline and "John-John."

Also among the cast were Earle Doud and Bob Booker, who co-produced the album; and Chuck McCann, a comedian known for his commercials ("Hi, guy!" for Right Guard antiperspirant, and he was the voice of Sonny the Cuckoo Bird who went "cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs" cereal). McCann also starred in a kids' science-fiction comedy, Far Out Space Nuts, with a post-Gilligan's Island John Denver. That show, too, was produced by Earle Doud, for the Krofft Superstars, as was another McCann vehicle, Magic Mongo. Also for Sid & Marty Krofft, Doud created and produced Wonderbug.

Meader later said, "A lot of people don't know this, but we recorded The First Family on the night of October 22, 1962, the same night as John F. Kennedy's Cuban Missile Crisis Speech. The audience was in the studio and had no idea of the drama that was taking place. But the cast had heard the speech and our throats almost dropped to our toes, because if the audience had heard the Cuban Missile Speech, we would not have received the reaction we did."

"Mr. President, we recently learned that you sent an agent into Cuba.

Did he return with any useful information?"

"Well, I didn't send him for information. I sent him for cigars!"

Cadence Records almost cancelled the distribution of the record, assuming America would be going to war. But the crisis was resolved on October 28, so the album was released a few days later. It rode JFK's post-crisis popularity to became the fastest-selling record in American history, until The Beatles came along a year later, and in 1963 it won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Since the music business is a copycat's business, Jewish comedians Buck Henry, Joan Rivers and George Segal recorded The Other Family, imagining the Khrushchevs at home.

On November 22, 1963, JFK was assassinated. The night before, Meader had done a show in character in Milwaukee. Right after the news of the assassination hit the media, he hailed a taxi to take him to the airport. The driver recognized him, and said, "Did you hear about Kennedy in Dallas?" Since Meader hadn't heard, he presumed this was the setup for a joke, and said, "No, how does it go?" The driver told him, and turned on the radio so Meader could hear.

That night, a far more controversial comedian, Lenny Bruce, was due to go onstage at a nightclub in New York's Greenwich Village. He wondered if it were possible to be funny that night. He wondered if anybody would even show up. He decided to go out, and there were 12 people in the audience. He sat on a stool for a moment, and then, his usual bad taste kicked in, and he said, "Boy, is Vaughn Meader fucked!" And the 12 people laughed like crazy. Bruce walked offstage, knowing it wouldn't get any better than that, and collected his pay from a satisfied club owner.

Sadly, Bruce was right: Nobody wanted to hear from Meader anymore. He couldn't do JFK material anymore, but anything else he tried reminded people of the sadness of those 4 days in November. He went back to Maine, and ran a bar.

Earle Doud, who produced the original album, tried again, with Welcome to the LBJ Ranch and Lyndon Johnson's Lonely Hearts Club Band. But instead of impressionists, they did it as a "cut-in" album, in the style of Dickie Goodman's "Flying Saucer" records: They would ask a question, and then use a recording of LBJ, a figure in his Administration, or another politician, the result intending to be funny. It didn't work.

David Frye was an amazing impressionist, who managed to not only sound like, but use his facial expressions to even look like, not just LBJ, but also Robert Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Nelson Rockefeller, and even William F. Buckley. Sometimes, he would play talk show host David Susskind, interviewing each of them. He recorded the albums I Am the President and Radio Free Nixon.

Of course, once Nixon's own recordings were released, the paradigm was changed: Since the world had heard just how mean a President of the United States could be, it was okay to really skewer him in comedy routines.

Meader had a brief revival in 1981, with The First Family Rides Again! But Doud made him just a supporting player on that album: Rich Little provided the voice of Ronald Reagan. Meader died in 2004, at the age of 68. Norma MacMillan died in 2001, Chuck McCann in 2018. As of October 22, 2022, Earle Doud, Bob Booker and Naomi Brossart are still alive.

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October 22, 1962 was a Monday. Actor Bob Odenkirk was born.

The baseball season ended 6 days earlier, with the New York Yankees winning Game 7 of the World Series over the San Francisco Giants. Football was in midweek: There wouldn't be Monday Night Football until 1970. The NBA and NHL seasons were underway, but no games were scheduled for either. So there were no scores on this historic day.

September 24, 1957: President Eisenhower Sends Troops to Little Rock

September 24, 1957: The President of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, cuts short a vacation in Newport, Rhode Island, then considered a rich man's resort, to come back to Washington, and announce on TV and radio that he has ordered the U.S. Army's famed 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock, Arkansas, and federalized the Arkansas National Guard, to integrate that city's Central High School, to enforce the federal law that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional.

It has been said that he disagreed with the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 decision to strike down public school segregation laws; but that, having sworn an oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States," he had to send the troops in.

And he made a point of leaving his vacation to deliver the address, not just from the White House, but from the Oval Office. He said:

I could have spoken from Rhode Island, where I have been staying recently. But I felt that, in speaking from the house of Lincoln, of Jackson, and of Wilson, my words would better convey both the sadness I feel in the action I was compelled today to make, and the firmness with which I intend to pursue this course until the orders of the Federal Court at Little Rock can be executed without unlawful interference.

It was Ike's finest hour -- since 1945, anyway.

After the 1957-58 schoolyear, Governor Faubus shut Central High down. Those students who hadn't graduated had to go elsewhere. Many of the white students' parents paid through the nose to have their kids attend all-white private schools. Served those bigots right. Central reopened, integrated, for the 1959-60 schoolyear.

The Nine, and what became of them:

* Thelma Mothershed, born November 29, 1940 in Bloomburg, Texas, to parents from Little Rock, where she grew up. Despite the school's closure, she had the credits necessary to graduate. She earned Bachelor of Arts and Master of Guidance and Counseling degrees from Southern Illinois University, and, under her married name of Thelma Mothershed-Wair, taught home economics in East St. Louis, Illinois. (UPDATE: She died on October 19, 2024, a few weeks short of her 84th birthday.)

* Minnijean Brown, born September 11, 1941 in Rogers, Arkansas. She was the only one of the Nine to respond to the racial taunts at Central: After getting hit with a thrown object, she yelled out that the student who did it was "white trash." For this, she was expelled. Students at Central passed a note around which stated, "One down, eight to go." She was taken in by NAACP members in New York City, and graduated from the New Lincoln School. (At the time, naming a school for Abraham Lincoln was code for "school for black kids," the way naming one for Martin Luther King would later.)

She earned a Bachelor of Journalism degree from Southern Illinois University. Under her married name of Minnijean Brown-Trickey, and became a social worker. After her divorce, she moved to Canada and went back to school, earning a Master of Social Work degree at Carleton University in Ottawa. She returned to America, and, under the 1st President from Arkansas, Bill Clinton, she served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Workforce Diversity in the U.S. Department of the Interior.

* Ernest Green, born September 22, 1941 in Little Rock. He graduated from Central in 1958, went to Michigan State University, where he earned Bachelor of Arts and Master of Sociology degrees. He became a social worker, and an Assistant Secretary of Labor under President Jimmy Carter. He later ran a charter school in Washington, D. C. before retiring.

* Elizabeth Eckford, born October 4, 1941 in Little Rock. She was the student photographed, from two different angles, walking into the building, carrying her books and wearing sunglasses, with white student Hazel Bryan screaming behind her, which became the defining image of the whole story. When Central closed, she went to night school, and got her diploma.

She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio, served in the U.S. Army, married, had children, and worked several jobs, including as a history teacher, a welfare worker, and a probation officer.

* Terrence Roberts, born December 3, 1941 in Little Rock. After Central was closed, he moved in with his father in Los Angeles, and graduated from Los Angeles High School. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from California State University, Los Angeles (CSULA), a Master of Social Welfare from UCLA, and a Ph.D. in psychology at Southern Illinois University. He later taught at Pacific Union College and Antioch University, both in California; and served as director of mental health services at a hospital and Assistant Dean of the UCLA School of Social Welfare, before retiring.

* Melba Pattillo, born December 7, 1941, the day of the Pearl Harbor bombing, in Little Rock. With the closing of Central, she and her family moved to the San Francisco suburb of Santa Rosa, California, where she graduated from Montgomery High School. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from San Francisco State University, and a Master of Journalism degree from Columbia University. She married, becoming known as Melba Pattillo Beals, and divorced. She taught journalism, and later went back to school, earning a Doctor of Education degree from the University of San Francisco.

* Jefferson Thomas, born September 19, 1942 in Little Rock. He graduated from Central in 1960, and earned a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from Los Angeles State College. He served in the U.S. Army in the Vietnam War, and worked in civil service in Columbus, Ohio. He was the 1st of the Nine to die, on September 5, 2010, at the age of 67.

* Gloria Ray, born September 26, 1942 in Little Rock. After graduating from Central, she went to Chicago, and got a Bachelor of Science degree from the Illinois Institute of Technology. Under her married name of Gloria Ray Karlmark, she worked for IBM in Sweden and Philips in the Netherlands, where she stayed after retiring. 

* Carlotta Walls, born December 18, 1942 in Little Rock. She outlasted the "Lost Year," and survived being the only one of the Nine to face genuine violence, as her house was bombed on February 9, 1960. Thankfully, damage was minor, and no one was hurt. She graduated from Central 4 months later. She went to Michigan State, but her father was unable to find a job in Little Rock, so the family moved to Denver, where she graduated from what's now the University of Northern Colorado. She became a real estate broker, under her married name of Carlotta Walls LaNier.

*

September 24, 1957 was a Tuesday. This was also the day the Camp Nou stadium opened in Barcelona, Spain. I have a separate entry for that.

No NFL games were played. And the starts of the NBA and NHL seasons were a month away. But a full slate of Major League Baseball games was played:

* The most significant was, as already widely believed but not yet officially confirmed, the last game  at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. I have a separate entry for that.

The Brooklyn Dodgers beat the Pittsburgh Pirates 2-0 on a 5-hit shutout by rookie lefthander Danny McDevitt. The Dodgers would have the next 2 days off, and close their history as a Brooklyn-based team away to the Philadelphia Phillies, losing the finale.

Two nights earlier, Duke Snider had hit the last 2 home runs at the ballpark. The last play was Dee Fondy grounding to short, where, appropriately, Pee Wee Reese, a Dodger since 1940, threw to Gil Hodges for the last out.

* The New York Giants, who had already announced their move to San Francisco for the 1958 season, lost to the Phillies, 5-0 at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia. Curt Simmons pitched a 4-hit shutout. Willie Mays went 0-for-3. Five days later, on Sunday, September 29, the Giants would play their last game at the Polo Grounds, and lost to the Pirates, 9-1.

For the next 4 seasons, New York's National League baseball fans, unwilling to give up baseball, but unwilling to switch to the American League's New York Yankees, took the Pennsylvania Railroad from Penn Station in New York to the North Philadelphia station, and walked the 7 blocks from Broad Street down Lehigh Avenue to 21st Street, and walked into Connie Mack Stadium to watch the Phillies play the Los Angeles Dodgers or the San Francisco Giants.

If they were feeling particularly adventurous, they would drive down, and risk their cars, parking in the North Philly ghetto. Some would cheer their old heroes. Some would boo them.

In 1962, the New York Mets arrived, and the former fans of the Dodgers and the Giants would join in a "marriage of convenience" -- one which produced "The New Breed," the Met fans too young to really remember the former teams.

* The Yankees? They didn't play that night. Nor did the Baltimore Orioles, the Cleveland Indians, or the Detroit Tigers.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Washington Senators, 2-1 at Griffith Stadium in Washington. Ted Williams hit a home run.

* The Cincinnati Redlegs -- from 1954 to 1958, the Reds used that name due to the stupidity of the Red Scare -- swept a doubleheader from the Chicago Cubs, at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. The Reds won the opener 4-3, and the nightcap 11-9. Over the 2 games, Ernie Banks went 2-for-9 with a home run and 2 RBIs for the Cubs; while, for the Reds, Frank Robinson went 1-for-6 with an RBI, and Wally Post homered in both games.

* The Milwaukee Braves, having clinched their 1st NL Pennant the night before on an 11th-inning home run by Hank Aaron, beat the St. Louis Cardinals at Milwaukee County Stadium again, this time 6-1 in the regulation 9 innings. In this game, Aaron went 1-for-5, but the hit was a grand slam. Stan Musial went 1-for-2 with 2 walks.

* And the Chicago White Sox beat the Kansas City Athletics, 7-6 at Kansas City Municipal Stadium.

July 15, 1979: President Jimmy Carter's "Crisis of Confidence" Speech

Carter in his Oval Office address, July 15, 1979

July 15, 1979: President Jimmy Carter gives a speech from the Oval Office at the White House. He had intended to talk about the energy crisis, and he did, in the 2nd half of the speech.

But in the 1st half, he addressed another concern. His pollster, Pat Caddell, told him that, in his words, the American people faced "a crisis of confidence," stemming from the lingering feelings from the assassinations of the 1960s, the Vietnam War, and the Watergate scandal. This stuck in Carter's mind.

In the preceding days, Carter had invited many people to Camp David, the Presidential retreat in the Catoctin range of the Appalachian Mountains, near Thurmont, Maryland, about 62 miles northwest of the White House. There, they shared their concerns with Carter, who explained:

It's clear that the true problems of our Nation are much deeper, deeper than gasoline lines or energy shortages, deeper even than inflation or recession. And I realize more than ever that as president I need your help. So I decided to reach out and listen to the voices of America.

I invited to Camp David people from almost every segment of our society: Business and labor, teachers and preachers, governors, mayors, and private citizens. And then I left Camp David to listen to other Americans, men and women like you.

It has been an extraordinary ten days, and I want to share with you what I've heard. First of all, I got a lot of personal advice. Let me quote a few of the typical comments that I wrote down.

This from a Southern Governor: "Mr. President, you are not leading this nation -- you're just managing the government."

"You don't see the people enough any more."

"Some of your Cabinet members don't seem loyal. There is not enough discipline among your disciples."

"Don't talk to us about politics or the mechanics of government, but about an understanding of our common good."

"Mr. President, we're in trouble. Talk to us about blood and sweat and tears."

"If you lead, Mr. President, we will follow."

Carter did not identify the Southern Governor. In his memoir, former President Bill Clinton, then the 32-year-old Governor of Arkansas, didn't mention the speech, so it probably wasn't him.

But Carter had to admit that the Governor, and the others he was talking to, were right:

I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy... 

I do not refer to the outward strength of America, a nation that is at peace tonight everywhere in the world, with unmatched economic power and military might. The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence.

It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.

That sure sounds like a malaise. The word is French, and it means "ill ease." In English, it's "A feeling of general bodily discomfort, fatigue or unpleasantness," or, more to this point, "An ambiguous feeling of mental or moral depression." A general feeling that things simply aren't right.

And in the 2nd half of 1979, all through the 1980 campaign, and ever since, Carter's opponents -- including Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, who opposed him in the Democratic Presidential Primaries -- used the word "malaise" to describe the feeling that the Carter Administration had given America.

But the President didn't use the word then. Nor did the word appear in any of his public statements during his Administration. So who started using the word "malaise" to describe the situation then? Apparently, it was Hendrik Hertzberg, Carter's chief speechwriter, who wrote this speech, in an interview the next day.

Yes, there was a malaise. But Carter sure as hell didn't cause it. It was brought about by a cumulative effect of things that happened under Presidents of both parties, including, to a degree, Carter himself. In his case:

* The refusal (seen by conservatives) of Carter, and, indeed, every President since World War II, from Franklin Roosevelt to Carter (yes, all of them, including the Republicans Dwight D. Eisenhower, Nixon and Ford) to properly stand up to the Communist and terrorist menaces, anywhere in the world.

* Carter's "giveaway" of the Panama Canal to, you know, the country it was actually in, Panama. Never mind that it was the idea of the preceding President, Gerald Ford, a Republican. (It was one of the big reasons that Reagan ran against Ford in the 1976 Republican Primaries.)

* Carter's own inability to handle a 2nd round of inflation -- in each case, caused largely by Middle Eastern nations raising the price of oil.

All of this happened before the speech, as well as before the Iran Hostage Crisis that began on November 4, 1979, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on December 27, 1979, and Carter's reaction to each: For the former, his dragged-out negotiations to get the hostages out and the failure of the "Desert One" rescue mission on April 25, 1980, which probably gave his re-election campaign a mortal wound; and for the latter, his boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics that were scheduled for Moscow, which did more to effectively depict the Soviets as an "Evil Empire" than anything Reagan ever said his life.

Conservatives, desperate to keep up the image of Ronald Reagan as a great President in the wake of the successes of liberal Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and the failures of both George Bushes and Donald Trump, are determined to show that Carter was "a failed President." They endlessly described first Clinton, then Obama, and now Joe Biden as "another Jimmy Carter." They still do to this today, even though Carter hasn't been President for 41 years. Part of the way they point this out is by using the word "malaise."

When Carter was inaugurated on January 20, 1977, the national unemployment rate was 7.5 percent. That's too high. It inched up to 7.6 percent in February. Then it began to drop. By January 1978, it was 6.4 percent. By January 1979, 5.9 percent. By May 1979, 5.6 percent -- the lowest it had been since August 1974, the month Nixon resigned. I should point out that the factors that would drive it up were already in place by that point. Indeed, unemployment is often a lagging indicator of how good (or bad) the economy is. When Carter gave that speech in July 1979, it was 5.7 percent. Not great, but hardly cause for alarm.

But it jumped to 6.0 percent the next month, was 6.3 percent by January 1980, and then in the Spring, it shot up: 6.9 percent in April, 7.5 percent in May, 7.8 percent in July -- just in time for Reagan to accept the Republican nomination. It was around 7.5 percent for the rest of Carter's Presidency, including when he left office on January 20, 1981 -- in other words, exactly the same as it was when he was inaugurated.

But how was it under Reagan? By the end of 1982, it was 11 percent, because of his stupid tax cut. It didn't get back below the 5.6 percent that it was in May 1979 until... April 1988.

However, it wasn't just the unemployment rate. Inflation was high. So were interest rates. And wages had begun to stagnate. The stagnancy and the inflation were combined into a single word: "Stagflation." That, as much as anything else, created the malaise.

And a generation of working people in their 30s and 40s, who had been activists as young people in the 1960s, were used to standing up to those in power and saying, "Enough! We will not put up with this crap anymore!" And they saw the "malaise," and, as they had been trained to do, they blamed the people in power.

Except they didn't see big business as part of the problem, the way antiwar activists saw Boeing and McDonnell-Douglas building bombers and Dow making napalm as part of the problem in Vietnam. No, these people looked to the government, and only the government, as the problem.

That's why so many of them sided with Ted Kennedy in the Winter and Spring of 1980. It wasn't so much a vote for the insurgent candidate (many people, as it turned out, had a problem with Ted's private life) as it was a protest vote against the incumbent or establishment candidate, as in for Henry Wallace against Harry Truman in 1948, for Gene McCarthy and then Robert Kennedy against Lyndon Johnson and then Hubert Humphrey in 1968, for Reagan against Ford in 1976, and later for Pat Robertson against George H.W. Bush in 1988, for Pat Buchanan against Daddy Bush in 1992, for Ralph Nader against Al Gore in 2000, for Barack Obama against Hillary Clinton in 2008 (the only one of these that went all the way), and for Bernie Sanders against Hillary in 2016.

A United Auto Workers official put it this way:

It's a different generation of workingmen. None of these guys came over from the old country, poor and starving, grateful for any job they could get. None of them have been through a depression. They've been exposed, at least through television, to all the youth movements of the last ten years...

They're just not going to swallow the same kind of treatment their fathers did... They want more than just a job for 30 years.

Compared to his successors, Carter did amazingly well at creating jobs. Under his Presidency, jobs increased by an average of 2.58 million per year; Reagan, 2.01 million; Bush 41, 668 thousand (not million, thousand); Bill Clinton, 2.86 million; Bush 43, 160 thousand; Obama so far, 1.40 million.

Annual rate increase? Carter 3.06 percent, Reagan, 2.06 percent; Bush 41, 0.62 percent; Bill Clinton, 2.48 percent; Bush 43, 0.12 percent; Obama so far, 1.11 percent (keeping in mind that he inherited the Dubya meltdown of 2008). Jimmy Carter created jobs at a greater rate per year than any President since LBJ.

Want that in table form? Jobs per year, in millions:

D Clinton 2.86
D Carter 2.58
R Reagan 2.01
D Obama 1.58
R Bush 41 0.67
R Bush 43 0.16

R Trump -0.75 (lost 750,000 per year, most of that due to COVID in 2020)

Job growth per year:

D Carter 3.06
D Clinton 2.48
R Reagan 2.06
D Obama 1.04
R Bush 41 0.62
R Bush 43 0.12

R Trump -0.52

In other words, Carter was 23 percent better at creating jobs that "job-creating machine" Clinton, and 48 percent better at it than Reagan who "turned the economy around" and brought about "Morning in America."

You know conservatives: As their avatar, Reagan, said, "Facts are stupid things." He was trying to quote John Adams: "Facts are stubborn things."

Conservatives always want you to believe that everything was just fine until noon on Inauguration Day when the Republican President went home; and then went to hell as soon as the Democratic President-elect says, "So help me, God." And that it works the other way: As soon as the Democratic President gives way to the Republican President-elect, everything became fine.

Never mind that Reagan himself, in his Inaugural Address, said that America's problems "will not go away in days, weeks, or months. But they will go away." Which was true: The only questions were how, and when. And then he preceded to tell the biggest lie any President had ever told to that point: "Government is not the solution to the problem. Government is the problem." And then, he spent the next 8 years proving his point.

Why, a conservative born after 1980, not old enough to really remember Reagan as the sitting President, and raised on the myth more than the man, would probably find it hard to believe that the U.S. hockey team that beat the Soviets at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York, could have done so under President Carter, rather than under President Reagan. (Carter wasn't there for that game, but Vice President Walter Mondale, a Minnesotan and a hockey buff, was.)

Or maybe Reagan was just lucky, and Carter wasn't. As someone put it in the Summer of 1981, "If Carter had fired the air-traffic controllers, there would have been a crash the next day."

*

July 15, 1979 was a Sunday. These Major League Baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees lost to the California Angels, 5-4 at Anaheim Stadium. (It was renamed Edison International Field in 1997, and Angel Stadium of Anaheim in 2004.) The Yankees led 4-3 in the bottom of the 9th, but Billy Martin had the exact opposite problem of Yankee managers under Brian Cashman: He left his starters in too long. And Ron Guidry ran out of gas, giving up a walk to Tom Donohue and a walkoff home run to Bobby Grich.

Rod Carew was on the Angels' roster, but did not play in this game. Chris Chambliss and Jim Spencer homered for the Yankees. Reggie Jackson went 0-for-4. Thurman Munson went 2-for-4. Just 18 days later, he would be dead.

* The New York Mets lost to the San Francisco Giants, 4-0 at Shea Stadium. Marc Hill and Mike Ivie homered for the Jints. Three pitchers, starting with Ed Whitson, combined for an 8-hit shutout. Steve Henderson got 3 of those hits for the Metropolitans.

* The Montreal Expos beat the San Diego Padres, 4-0 at the Olympic Stadium in Montreal. Scott Sanderson (5 innings) and Elias Sosa (4) combined on a 5-hit shutout. Andre Dawson hit 2 home runs, and Ellis Valentine hit 1.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 10-3 at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. Mike Schmidt went 1-for-5. Pete Rose went 2-for-4 with an RBI. Bob Boone went 4-for-4 with 2 RBIs.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Atlanta Braves, 7-3 at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. Willie Stargell and Bill Robinson hit home runs for "The Family."

* The Minnesota Twins beat the Toronto Blue Jays, 9-4 at Exhibition Stadium in Toronto.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Chicago Cubs, 7-1 at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati. Tom Seaver outpitched Rick Reuschel. Both Johnny Bench and Joe Morgan were injured, and neither played.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Chicago White Sox, 14-5 at Comiskey Park in Chicago.

* The Milwaukee Brewers beat the Cleveland Indians, 10-4 at Milwaukee County Stadium. Robin Yount went 2-for-4 with an RBI. Paul Molitor did not play.

* The Kansas City Royals beat the Texas Rangers, 4-3 at Royals Stadium in Kansas City. (It was renamed Kauffman Stadium in 1993.) George Brett went 0-for-4.

* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Houston Astros, 3-1 at the Astrodome in Houston.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Oakland Athletics, 3-2 at the Oakland Coliseum. Carl Yastrzemski went 0-for-4.

* And the Baltimore Orioles beat the Seattle Mariners, 6-1 at the Kingdome in Seattle. Ken Singleton went 2-for-5 with a home run and 3 RBIs. Eddie Murray also went 2-for-5, with 1 RBI.

May 10, 2017: Donald Trump Meets Sergey Lavrov & Sergey Kislyak In the Oval Office

Left to right: Sergey Lavrov,

Donald Trump & Sergey Kislyak

May 10, 2017: Just 1 day after firing FBI Director James Comey, Donald Trump invites Sergey Lavrov and Sergey Kislyak to a meeting at the Oval Office in the White House. Lavrov was the Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation. Before the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, he had been a Colonel in their intelligence agency, the KGB. Kislyak was the Russian Ambassador to the United States.

This meeting received significant coverage as it was closed to the U.S. press, but the Russians brought in a photographer from TASS, their state news agency, and released photos of Trump, Kisylak and Lavrov laughing together. 

(The initials had stood for Telegrafnoye agentstvo Sovetskogo Soyuza, or "Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union." After the fall of the Soviet Union, the replacement government, the Russian Federation, officially renamed it Informatsionnoye agentstvo Rossii, or Information agency of Russia, but kept the informal name "TASS.")

On May 15, it was revealed, that during this meeting, Trump disclosed classified information about ISIL's bomb-making capabilities to the men, without taking the appropriate protocols, which was leaked to the press.

And that's what we found out. The really scary part is, what don't we know about this meeting? What else did Trump tell Lavrov and Kislyak -- and, by extension, their boss, President Vladimir Putin?

A friend of a Facebook friend of mine put it this way. I haven't changed a word, including the asterisks:

Remember when the GOP lost their collective shit over President Obama taking off his suit jacket in the Oval office?

Or when he wore a tan suit? Or when he awkwardly saluted with a coffee cup in his hand? Or when he didn't hold his umbrella? Or the fist bump? Or bowing? Dijon mustard? Teleprompters? Celebrity President? Beer summit? Feet on desk? Paper clip-gate? Golfing? Vacations?

Remember all that nonsense? I remember. And I remember the gullible clowns that played along?

Now, remember this: Yesterday, the president* held secret meetings in the White House Oval Office with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, a former COLONEL in Russian intelligence, along with Henry Kissinger. Remember him?

he American press was shut out, and the only press allowed in the Oval Office was the Russian press, the day after the president* fired the FBI director for investigating his collusion with Russia.

Three months after this meeting, Kislyak resigned as Ambassador, and was elected to the Russian Senate. (A payoff from Putin?) As of May 10, 2022, Lavrov is still Russia's Foreign Minister.

UPDATE: On October 7, 2023, Hamas operatives crossed from Gaza into Israel, and committed terrorist attacks, starting a war. This was a massive intelligence failure on Israel's part, as Hamas knew exactly where Israel was weak enough to strike. They got their intelligence from Iran. Iran got it from Russia.

Where did Russia get it from? Did they get it on their own? Maybe. Did they get it from Trump? We cannot rule it out.

*

May 10, 2017 was a Wednesday. Football was out of season. One game was played in the NBA Playoffs: The Boston Celtics beat the Washington Wizards, 123-101 at the TD Garden in Boston.

Two games were played in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. The Pittsburgh Penguins beat the Washington Capitals, 2-0 at the Verizon Center (now the Capital One Arena) in Washington. And the Anaheim Ducks beat the Edmonton Oilers, 2-1 at the Honda Center in Anaheim.

And these Major League Baseball games were played:

* The New York Mets lost to the San Francisco Giants, 6-5 at Citi Field. The Mets led 3-2 going into the 9th, but reliever Jeurys Familia melted down in the top half, allowing the Giants to score 4 runs, and the Mets could only score 2 in the bottom half.

* The Seattle Mariners beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 11-6 at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia.

* The Washington Nationals beat the nearby Baltimore Orioles, 7-6 at Nationals Park in Washington.

* The Tampa Bay Rays beat the Kansas City Royals, 12-1 at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida.

* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Miami Marlins, 7-5 at Marlins Park (now LoanDepot Park) in Miami.

* The Texas Rangers beat the San Diego Padres, 4-3 at Globe Life Park (now Choctaw Stadium) in the Dallas suburb of Arlington, Texas.

* The Houston Astros beat the Atlanta Braves, 4-2 at Minute Maid Park (now Daikin Park) in Houston.

* The Toronto Blue Jays beat the Cleveland Indians, 8-7 at the Rogers Centre in Toronto.

* The Milwaukee Brewers beat the Boston Red Sox, 7-4 at Miller Park (now American Family Field) in Milwaukee.

* The Colorado Rockies beat the Chicago Cubs, 3-0 at Coors Field in Denver. Germán Márquez pitched 8 innings of 3-hit shutout ball, and Greg Holland finished the 3-hit shutout.

* The Arizona Diamondbacks beat the Detroit Tigers, 7-1 at Chase Field in Phoenix.

* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 5-2 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.

* The Oakland Athletics beat the Los Angeles Angels, 3-1 at the Oakland Coliseum.

* The Chicago White Sox and the Minnesota Twins were rained out at Guaranteed Rate Field (now Rate Field) in Chicago. The game was made up as part of a doubleheader on August 21. The Twins won the opener, 10-2. The White Sox won the nightcap, 7-6.

* And the New York Yankees and the Cincinnati Reds were not scheduled.