December 24, 1968: The Earth As Seen From the Moon

December 24, 1968: Apollo 8 becomes the 1st Earth spacecraft to orbit Earth's Moon. It shows 2 images never before seen on Earth: The far side of the Moon, and Earth as seen from the Moon.

The mission was commanded by Colonel Frank Borman, U.S. Air Force. The pilot of the command module was Commander James Lovell, U.S. Navy. This was the first "space reunion": They had flown together on Gemini 7. Lovell was set to fly on Apollo 9, but was moved up to this mission after the intended CM pilot, Michael Collins, required back surgery. The pilot of the lunar module was Colonel William A. Anders, U.S. Air Force. 

It was Borman's 2nd spaceflight, and Lovell's 3rd, and it remains the only U.S. spaceflight on which the commanding officer was not the most-experienced in space. Lovell had also flown aboard Gemini 12. It was Anders' 1st spaceflight, and, as it turned out, his only one.

The entire setup, with command, service and lunar modules, was being sent even though the lunar module was not going to be separated, much less land on the Moon. Unlike later Apollo missions, neither the command module nor the lunar module had a codename.

The mission was launched on December 21. They entered lunar orbit on December 24, Christmas Eve. They became the 1st humans to see the Far Side of the Moon, and the 1st to see not a sunrise, or a moonrise, but an Earthrise, with the Earth in "phase," like the Moon is usually seen in from Earth.

"Look at that picture over there!" Anders called out. "Here's the Earth coming up. Wow, is that pretty!" He then took the photo at the top of this post. Borman called it "the most beautiful, heart-catching sight of my life."

They knew that they would be the 1st people from Earth to spend Christmas away from Earth. They wanted to express a Christmas-style message of "Peace on Earth, good will toward men." But instead of something actually Christmas-related, they instead read back to the people of Earth, through television, the Bible's Creation story.

At 9:30 PM, Eastern Time, Anders said, "We are now approaching lunar sunrise, and for all the people back on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message that we would like to send to you: In the beginning, God created the Heaven and the Earth. And the Earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, 'Let there be light.' And there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness."

Lovell: "And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. And God said, 'Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.' And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament, and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day."

Borman: "And God said, 'Let the waters under the Heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear.' And it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas, and God saw that it was good.' And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth."

After a very hard year, of war, of assassinations, of civil strife, this was a message of hope, a sign that, maybe, just maybe, things would be all right in the years to come. That was not to be, but the people of Earth had reason to believe that it might be. Because of this, in spite of the Vietnam War, and the election of Richard Nixon as the next President of the United States, Time magazine named Borman, Lovell and Anders their Men of the Year.

Apollo 8 was significant for another reason: It made the Soviet Union surrender in the race to the Moon. Their Zond project had originally planned a manned flyby of the Moon in late 1967, and a landing in December 1968. But they fell behind, due to various failures. The success of Apollo 8 showed them that trying to beat the U.S. to a manned Moon landing was pointless, and that their resources would be better spent in other ways.

Michael Collins would become the command module pilot for Apollo 11, the 1st mission to land on the Moon. Borman was offered the role of commanding Apollo 11, which would have made him the 1st human to walk on the Moon. He declined, saying he was done with spaceflights, and retired from the Air Force in 1970. So the 1st Moonwalker was the backup to Borman as the commander for Apollo 8, Neil Armstrong. It happened on July 20, 1969, beating the late President John F. Kennedy's deadline of doing it by the end of the 1960s by 164 days.

Lovell would command Apollo 13, the only Moon landing mission that had to be aborted.

As of December 24, 2022, the entire crew of Apollo 8 is still alive. They are the earliest surviving specific Time Persons of the Year. (Time had named American fighting men in 1950, and would again in 2003; American scientists in 1960, and people age 25 and under in 1966.)

UPDATE: Borman died on November 7, 2023; Anders, on June 7, 2024; Lovell, on August 7, 2025.

None of them lived to see the return of humans to lunar orbit, aboard Artemis II. On April 6, 2026, crewmember Reid Wiseman took a new photo, a companion piece to Anders' Earthrise, naming it Earthset.

It had been so long than none of the Artemis II astronauts had even been born yet when humans last left the Moon on Apollo 17 in 1972.

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December 24, 1968 was a Tuesday. No NBA, ABA, NHL or college football bowl games were scheduled for that Christmas Eve. So there were no scores on that historic day.

December 23, 1947: Bell Labs Invents the Transistor

The 1st working transistor. Yes, it has been preserved.

December 23, 1947: Bell Telephone Laboratories, or Bell Labs for short, announces the invention of the transistor at its headquarters at Murray Hill, in the Township of Berkeley Heights, Union County, New Jersey.

According to Wikipedia:

A transistor is a semiconductor device used to amplify or switch electrical signals and power. The transistor is one of the basic building blocks of modern electronics. It is composed of semiconductor material, usually with at least three terminals for connection to an electronic circuit. A voltage or current applied to one pair of the transistor's terminals controls the current through another pair of terminals. Because the controlled (output) power can be higher than the controlling (input) power, a transistor can amplify a signal. Some transistors are packaged individually, but many more are found embedded in integrated circuits...

The first working device to be built was a point-contact transistor invented in 1947 by American physicists John Bardeen and Walter Brattain while working under William Shockley at Bell Labs. The three shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for their achievement...

Transistors revolutionized the field of electronics, and paved the way for smaller and cheaper radios, calculators, and computers, among other things.

Left to right: John Bardeen, William Shockley, Walter Brattain

In 1960, Shockley was 1 of 15 scientists who were shown on the cover and listed as stand-ins for all American scientists as Time magazine's Men of the Year. Their explanation: "Science is at the apogee of its power for good or evil." It did note that "the 15 men include two or three whose greatest work is probably behind them."

The others were: Geneticist George Beadle, spacecraft engineer Charles Draper, virologist John Enders; biologists Joshua Lederberg, Linus Pauling and Robert Woodward; and physicists Donald Glaser, Willard Libby, Edward Purcell, Isidor Rabi, Emilio Segrè, Charles Townes, James Van Allen, and Edward Teller, co-inventor of the hydrogen bomb.

In 1963, Shockley went west, teaching at Stanford University between San Francisco and San Jose, leading to the region being known as Silicon Valley, for the element used in most transistors. Sadly, he also began to use his brilliant mind to pass off twisted theories of eugenics. He argued that black people were genetically inferior to white people, and that no amount of social assistance from government would make any difference.

In 1981, a science writer for the Atlanta Constitution compared Shockley's beliefs with those of the Nazis. Shockley sued for libel. He won the case, and was awarded one dollar in damages. In other words, the damage done was to his ego, for he had already damaged his own reputation with his statements. He died in 1989.

Nevertheless, we owe these 3 men a great deal, for all the technology that transistors have made possible -- including the transistor radios on which we've listened to sporting events and the Top 40 songs.

Bardeen won a 2nd Nobel Prize in 1972, with Leon Cooper and John R. Schrieffer, for a fundamental theory of conventional superconductivity. He lived until 1991. Brattain died in 1987.

The court-ordered breakup of AT&T led to the 2007 loss of Bell Labs to the company. The Labs are now run by a competitor, Japanese company Nokia.

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December 23, 1947 was a Tuesday. Baseball was out of season. The NFL was leading up to its Championship Game. In the Basketball Association of America, the league that would become the NBA 2 years later, 2 games were played. The New York Knicks lost to the Providence Steamrollers, 66-58 at the Rhode Island Auditorium in Providence. And the Chicago Stags beat the Boston Celtics, 83-75 at the Boston Garden.

Of course, you've heard of the Knicks and the Celtics. In contrast, unless you really know your basketball history, you don't know about the Steamrollers and the Stags -- because they folded in 1949 and 1950, respectively.

One game was played in the NHL, and you'll recognize the names of both teams, even if you're not used to "Black Hawks" being 2 words, as it officially was from 1926 until 1986. The Chicago Black Hawks beat the New York Rangers, 7-1 at the Chicago Stadium. The Hawks got 2 goals each from Metro Prystai and Red Hamill. No, that's not the Moscow subway and a Commie version of Luke Skywalker. 

December 12, 2000: Bush v. Gore

December 12, 2000: The Supreme Court of the United States overrules the Supreme Court of the State of Florida. It is the case of Bush v. Gore.

In the Presidential election of November 7, the Democratic nominee for President of the United States, the then Vice President of the United States, Albert Arnold Gore Jr., got more popular votes than the Republican nominee, the Governor of Texas, George Walker Bush: Gore 50,999,897, Bush 50,456,002, a margin of 543,895 votes. Ralph Nader, famous as a consumer advocate since the 1960s, ran as the nominee of the Green Party. He got 2,882,955 votes. Gore got 48.4 percent of the popular vote; Bush, 47.9 percent, Nader, 2.7 percent.

Bush's brother, Governor John Ellis "Jeb" Bush of Florida, saw how close the vote was in his State, and tampered with the voting process, and that one State held everything up for 5 weeks. The best attempt at a recount, in downtown Miami, was interrupted on November 22 by what became known as the Brooks Brothers Riot. As a result, there were votes that were never counted. I don't mean they weren't recounted, I mean they were never counted, not even once.

On December 8, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that all 61,000 "undervotes" had to be counted. Had that happened, Gore surely would have won. The Bush campaign immediately appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. SCOTUS ruled on December 12:

* Four Justices ruled that the recount had to go forward: John Paul Stevens, appointed by Republican President Gerald Ford; David Souter, appointed by Republican President George H.W. Bush, the current Republican nominee's father; Ruth Bader Ginsburg, appointed by the current President, Democrat Bill Clinton; and Stephen Breyer, also appointed by Clinton.

* Five Justices ruled that the recount had to stop immediately, all of them appointed by Republican Presidents: William Rehnquist, appointed by Richard Nixon, and promoted to Chief Justice by Ronald Reagan; Sandra Day O'Connor, appointed by Reagan; Antonin Scalia, appointed by Reagan; Anthony Kennedy, appointed by Reagan; and Clarence Thomas, appointed by the elder George Bush.

It was pretty easily guessed that all 4 Justices who voted to keep the recount going would do so; and that 3 Justices known for being archconservatives -- Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas -- would vote to stop it.

The question marks were 2 moderates, both known as "swing votes": O'Connor and Kennedy. If either of them had voted to keep the recount going, it would have been kept going, and Gore would have won. Instead, both voted to stop it.

And so, in an election where over 104 million votes had been accepted as counted, only two votes ended up mattering: Those of O'Connor and Kennedy.

It may have been the ghastliest decision in the Court's history, aside from the 1857 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, that said that black people weren't citizens (a decision remedied by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution). It also marked perhaps the 1st time in the nation's history that political conservatives overruled a case based in part on a State's rights.

The editors of Time magazine announced that they were waiting for a winner to be certified before they named their Person of the Year. They named Bush. Had Gore been certified as the winner, they would have chosen him.

UPDATE: It may have been surpassed as the ghastliest decision in the Court's history by Trump v. United States in 2024, when the Court ruled that Presidents have immunity from criminal prosecution.

Gore conceded the election the next day, forever doomed to be "the 42nd 1/2 President of the United States" -- a President-elect, but never a President. On January 6, 2001, in his role as the outgoing Vice President, Gore properly read the Electoral Votes, including the 25 of the State of Florida. Whether those votes were properly arrived at is another matter. Congress then certified the Electoral Votes.

On that January 6, no Democrats stormed the U.S. Capitol Building in an attempt to stop that process.

Twenty years later, of course, when it was Republicans who didn't like the result, they did storm the Capitol, and attempt to stop the process. They only delayed the inevitable.

Rehnquist died in office in 2005. O'Connor retired right before that. Souter retired in 2009. Stevens retired in 2010, and died in 2019. Scalia died in office in 2016. Kennedy retired in 2018. Ginsburg died in office in 2020. Breyer retired in 2022. As of December 12, 2022, O'Connor, Kennedy, Souter, Thomas and Breyer are still alive; while Thomas is the only 1 of the 9 who is still on the Court. (UPDATE: O'Connor died in 2023. Souter died in 2025.)

Bush's 2 terms in office were an unmitigated disaster, both domestically (especially economically) and internationally. Had Gore been allowed to accept his victory, he would have governed completely differently, and most Americans, including the conservatives, would have been better off.

There are elementary schools named after Bush in St. Paul, Texas; and Stockton, California. His Presidential Library is on the campus Southern Methodist University, his wife Laura's Alma Mater, in Dallas. It opened on April 25, 2013.

Statue of the George Bushes,

at George W.'s Presidential Library

Bush remains the only President born in Connecticut. He and his father are the only ones who have lived in Connecticut, not counting time spent attending Yale University, although both also did so. And they are the only ones who lived in Maine. Nevertheless, the State each represented in politics was Texas.

Bush has been played by Timothy Bottoms in a comedic fashion on That's My Bush! in 2001 and The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course in 2002, and in the deadly serious DC 9/11: Time of Crisis in 2003. Steve Bridges played him on JAG in 2002, and in the pilot episode of its spinoff, NCIS, in 2003.

He was played by James Adomian in Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay in 2008, Josh Brolin (himself the son of someone much better in his profession) in Oliver Stone's film W. in 2008, Connor Trinneer in American Made in 2017, and Sam Rockwell in Vice (a film about his Vice President, Dick Cheney) in 2018.

On Saturday Night Live, he was played by Will Ferrell from 2000 to 2002, Chris Parnell in 2002-03, Will Forte from 2004 to 2006, and Jason Sudeikis thereafter. On rival show MADtv, he was played by Christian Duguay in 2000-01, Will Sasso in 2001-02, and Frank Caliendo thereafter.

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December 12, 2000 was a Tuesday. Baseball was in its off-season, and the NFL doesn't play on Tuesday. But there were 8 NBA games played that day. The New York Knicks were not in any of them:

* The New Jersey Nets beat the Minnesota Timberwolves, 116-94 at the Brendan Byrne Arena in the New York suburb of East Rutherford, New Jersey. Stephon Marbury led all scorers with 27 points.

* The Atlanta Hawks beat the Sacramento Kings, 107-99 at the Philips Arena (now the State Farm Arena) in Atlanta. Jason Terry scored 38 points.

* The Toronto Raptors beat the Indiana Pacers, 104-90 at the Air Canada Centre (now the Scotiabank Arena) in Toronto. Vince Carter led all scorers with 33.

* The Cleveland Cavaliers beat the Dallas Mavericks, 92-87 at the Gund Arena in Cleveland. (It is now named the Rocket Arena.)

* The Miami Heat beat the Denver Nuggets, 96-85 at the Pepsi Center in Denver. (It is now named the Ball Arena.)

* The Milwaukee Bucks beat the Los Angeles Lakers, 109-105 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Ray Allen scored 35 in victory, Shaquille O'Neal 26 and Kobe Bryant 25 in defeat.

* The Portland Trail Blazers beat the Golden State Warriors, 101-93 at the Oakland Coliseum Arena (then named The Arena in Oakland). Antawn Jamison scored 30 for the Dubs, but Rasheed Wallace's 29 sent the Blazers to victory.

* And the Seattle SuperSonics beat the Orlando Magic, 97-92 at the Key Arena in Seattle.

And there were 4 NHL games played. The New Jersey Devils were not scheduled: 

* The New York Rangers lost to the San Jose Sharks, 3-2 at the HP Center in San Jose. (It is now named the SAP Center.)

* The New York Islanders beat the Washington Capitals, 3-2 at the Nassau Coliseum in suburban Uniondale (Hempstead), Long Island, New York.

* The Buffalo Sabres beat the Boston Bruins, 3-0 at the FleetCenter in Boston. (It is now named the TD Garden.)

* And the Philadelphia Flyers and the Nashville Predators played to a tie, 2-2 at the Gaylord Entertainment Center in Nashville. (It is now the Bridgestone Arena.) 

December 10, 1936: King Edward VIII Abdicates

The Abdication speech

December 10, 1936: His Majesty, Edward VIII, By the Grace of God, of Great Britain, Northern Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the Seas King, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India, abdicates all of the preceding.

He was born on June 23, 1894 as Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David, of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (the name was changed to the House of Windsor in 1917), as the great-grandson of Queen Victoria. He known as David to his family. Victoria died in 1901, and on the 1910 death of his grandfather, King Edward VII, David's father became King George V. This elevated David to being the heir to the throne, making him Prince of Wales.

Many things in North America, especially in Canada, which to this day is a part of the British Commonwealth, have things named "Prince of Wales," and many of them are named for this particular one, including the Prince of Wales Trophy, awarded to the Champions of the Eastern Conference of the National Hockey League.

He was very popular as Prince of Wales. But there was a problem: He had no Princess. It is now known that Edward/David had lots of affairs, but there was no serious candidate for his hand in marriage. He preferred married women, and his father said, "After I am dead, the boy will ruin himself in 12 months." (As it turned out, George V gave his son 1 month's too much credit.)

One of the married women Edward lured was Thelma Furness, the American wife of a British peer. In 1930, she introduced Edward to her American friend, Wallis Simpson, who had divorced her 1st husband and was now married to a 2nd. The King and his wife, Queen Mary (namesake of the famous British cruise liner), did not approve.

On January 20, 1936, King George V died. At the age of 41, the never-married Edward was now King Edward VIII. And he needed a Queen and at least one legitimate heir.

As things stood, the next person in line for the throne was his brother, Albert Arthur Frederick George, Duke of York. He had married a Scottish noblewoman, Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon. They had 2 daughters, Elizabeth (9 years old at the time) and Margaret (5).

But Edward wanted to marry Wallis. As the year moved on, and his Coronation was set for May 12, 1937, he wanted Wallis to already be his wife and Queen before then. She was always by his side. In October, divorce proceedings were brought, but wouldn't be completed until May 4 -- right before the scheduled Coronation.

The American media reported on the affair. The British media, in respect to the Crown, did not. The general public of the United Kingdom did not know until early December. As far as the average person in London or Liverpool, Cardiff or Newcastle, Glasgow or Belfast knew, "Mrs. Simpson" was simply the King's "friend."

On November 16, the King invited Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin to Buckingham Palace, and said he wanted to marry Wallis as soon as her divorce was final. Baldwin told him he could not. As King, Edward was the head of the Church of England (part of his title: "Defender of the Faith"), and, at the time, in the Church of England, even for its head, remarriage after divorce was unacceptable. Baldwin told him that the Archbishop of Canterbury (the closest thing the Church of England has to a "pope") had determined that, if Edward wanted to marry Wallis, he would have to abdicate as King.

Edward had served in World War I, a conflict often said to have been kicked off by the assassination of the heir to the Austrian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand. He had married someone unacceptable, so it was made a "morganatic marriage": She would not become Queen/Empress when her husband became King/Emperor, and their children would not be in the line of succession. Edward didn't care about producing a future king, he just wanted the woman he wanted. So Edward would still be King, but Wallis would not be Queen, instead having a lesser title.

No go: Baldwin's Cabinet rejected the idea. The heads of government in other dominions within the British Empire hated it, too: Prime Ministers William Lyon Mackenzie King of Canada (ironically, this man named King never married), Joseph Lyons of Australia and J.B.M. Hertzog of South Africa made their opposition clear.

It became clear that if Edward did marry Wallis, the government would resign. This would force an election. And the government that would be elected would be chosen by the people of Britain, most of whom would have been opposed to the King marrying a divorcée -- and an American divorcée, at that. His position would be untenable, and then he would be forced to abdicate. Edward knew that he didn't have the cards, and he knew that Baldwin wasn't bluffing.

On December 10, Edward signed the Instruments of Abdication, in the presence of his brothers: Albert; Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester; and Prince George, Duke of Kent. The next day, December 11, in his last act as King, he gave his royal assent. He had been on the throne for 346 days, the shortest reign of any English or British monarch since Jane Grey in 1553. And 1936 would become retroactively known as "The Year of the Three Kings."

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) allowed him to make a speech over radio, carried to all the Empire, and to any foreign country willing to also broadcast it, including America. Here is the speech, in its entirety:

At long last, I am able to say a few words of my own. I have never wanted to withhold anything, but until now, it has not been constitutionally possible for me to speak.

A few hours ago I discharged my last duty as King and Emperor, and now that I have been succeeded by my brother, the Duke of York, my first words must be to declare my allegiance to him. This I do with all my heart.

You all know the reasons which have -- have impelled me to renounce the throne. But I want you to understand that, in making up my mind, I did not forget the country or the Empire, which, as Prince of Wales, and lately as King, I have for 25 years tried to serve.

But you must believe me when I tell you that I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as King as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love.

And I want you to know that the decision I have made has been mine and mine alone. This was a thing I had to judge entirely for myself. The other person most nearly concerned has tried up to the last to persuade me to take a different course.

I have made this, the most serious decision of my life, only upon the single thought of what would, in the end, be best for all.

This decision has been made less difficult to me by the sure knowledge that my brother, with his long training in the public affairs of this country and with his fine qualities, will be able to take my place forthwith without interruption or injury to the life and progress of the empire. And he has one matchless blessing, enjoyed by so many of you, and not bestowed on me -- a happy home with his wife and children.

During these hard days, I have been comforted by Her Majesty my mother, and by my family. The ministers of the Crown, and in particular, Mr. Baldwin, the Prime Minister, have always treated me with full consideration. There has never been any constitutional difference between me and them, and between me and Parliament. Bred in the constitutional tradition by my father, I should never have allowed any such issue to arise.

Ever since I was Prince of Wales, and later on when I occupied the throne, I have been treated with the greatest kindness by all classes of the people wherever I have lived or journeyed throughout the Empire. For that I am very grateful.

I now quit altogether public affairs, and I lay down my burden. It may be some time before I return to my native land, but I shall always follow the fortunes of the British race and Empire with profound interest. And if, at any time in the future, I can be found of service to His Majesty in a private station, I shall not fail.

And now, we all have a new King. I wish him and you, his people, happiness and prosperity with all my heart. God bless you all. God save the King!

Edward left for Austria, as he could not be seen in public with Wallis until her divorce was final. Albert took the name King George VI. Princess Elizabeth became heir presumptive. Time magazine, acknowledging that their distinction "Man of the Year" was not an honor, but an acceptance that the person in question was the one who most affected the news over the course of the calendar year, made Wallis their 1st-ever Woman of the Year.

The Coronation was held, as scheduled, on May 12, 1937 at Westminster Abbey in London, but for George VI, not Edward VIII. The new King gave his brother the title "His Royal Highness, the Duke of Windsor," after the family name. On June 3, 1937, at a chateau outside Tours, France, Edward and Wallis were married, and she became the Duchess of Windsor. No members of the royal family attended.

The less said about what Edward and Wallis did from that point to the end of World War II, the better.

The brothers never saw each other again. On February 6, 1952, prematurely aged by the effects of The War and his unremittent smoking, George VI died at age 56. The Duke of Windsor -- but not the Duchess -- was invited to the funeral, and, with his remaining brothers, walked behind the horse-drawn coffin, in his Army uniform, wearing a black mourning band on his left sleeve.

Queen Elizabeth II, by this point married to Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten and the mother of Prince Charles and Princess Anne, was crowned on June 2, 1953. Edward stayed at his home in Paris and watched it on television. The Duke and Duchess were invited to the White House by Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1955 and Richard Nixon in 1970.

In 1965, the Queen visited the Duke and Duchess on their visit to London. In 1969, she invited the Duke, but not the Duchess, to attend Charles' investiture as Prince of Wales in Cardiff. Edward declined, saying that Charles would not want his "aged great-uncle" on hand.

On May 18, 1972, the Queen made a state visit to France. The Duke, living at a villa in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, was suffering from throat cancer, and appeared to be at the end of the line. A representative of the Queen said, "The Duke may die before the Queen's visit or after, but not during." Elizabeth and Edward met for 15 minutes. The Queen returned to London. On May 28, a month before his 78th birthday, Edward died. In spite of his estrangement from the family, he was buried at the Royal Burial Ground at Windsor Castle.

It is believed that Wallis was incapable of bearing children. In other words, had Edward VIII stayed on the throne, then, upon his death, Elizabeth would have been bypassed in favor of Edward's closest living male relative. That would have been his grandnephew, who would have become King Charles III in 1972, at the age of 23 -- instead of finally gaining the throne at 73.

Wallis remained at the villa, and died in 1986, with the attention given to Charles' wife at the time, Princess Diana, having made her more of a relic of the past than Edward ever was. Ironically, the villa is owned by the City of Paris, and is now leased by Mohamed al-Fayed, father of Dodi al-Fayed, who was Diana's boyfriend, and died along with her in Paris in 1997. (UPDATE: Mohamed al-Fayed died in 2023, and the villa has been turned into a museum.)

Edward and Wallis have been played by Edward Fox & Cynthia Harris in Edward & Wallis in 1978, Anthony Andrews & Jane Seymour in The Woman He Loved in 1988, Charles Edwards & Amber Rose Sealey in Bertie & Elizabeth in 2002, Steven Campbell Moore & Joely Richardson in Wallis & Edward in 2005, Guy Pearce & Eve Best in The King's Speech in 2010, and Alex Jennings & Lia Williams in The Crown in 2019.

The King's Man tanked at the box office in 2021, leading to the suspension of the Kingsman franchise. The plan was to film Kingsman: The Traitor King, depicting (in the franchise's slightly alternate history) Edward VIII as the Nazi sympathizer he has long been suspected of being, seduced into such feelings by Wallis.

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December 10, 1936 was a Thursday. It was the off-season for baseball. The NBA wasn't founded yet. The NFL season was about to end: Three days later, the Championship Game was held at the Polo Grounds in New York, and the Green Bay Packers beat the Boston Redskins 21-6.

It was the Eastern Division winners' turn to host the game, and Redskins owner George Preston Marshall got permission to move the game from Boston, where the team hadn't been drawing well. Before the next season, he moved them to Washington, and became one of the most successful teams in the League over the next few years, both on the field and at the box office.

There were 2 NHL games played on December 10, 1936. Neither the New York Rangers nor the New York Americans were involved. The Montreal Maroons beat the Chicago Black Hawks, 2-1 at the Montreal Forum. And the Detroit Red Wings beat the Montreal Canadiens, 2-1 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit.

December 7, 1970: The Kneefall In Warsaw

December 7, 1970: The Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany makes a deeply symbolic apology to Poland, a nation that Germany so deeply hurt in World War II.

Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm was born in 1913 in the German Empire. His family survived World War I, and he joined a socialist party as a teenager. To cover his tracks as the Nazi Party took control of Germany, he adopted the pseudonym "Willy Brandt." He escaped the Nazis in 1940, reaching neutral Sweden, and remained there for the duration of World War II, returning in 1946, and adopting "Willy Brandt" as his legal name in 1948.

In 1949, the Allied occupation forces began to draw back. The American, British and French sectors were united as the Federal Republic of Germany, a.k.a. West Germany. The Soviet sector became the German Democratic Republic, known in the West as East Germany. That same year, Brandt was elected to the FRG's national legislature, the Bundestag.

In 1957, he was elected Mayor of West Berlin, and was at the side of President John F. Kennedy at City Hall on June 26, 1963, when Kennedy gave the speech where he declared, "All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin. Therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words, 'Ich bin ein Berliner.'"

In 1965, Brandt ran for Chancellor, but lost. But the victorious government fell apart the following year, and Brandt resigned as Mayor to accept the post of Foreign Minister. In 1969, he ran for Chancellor again, and won.

Brandt wanted to normalize relations between his side of Germany and Eastern Europe, a policy he called Ostpolitik. On August 12, 1970, 25 years after the end of World War II, he signed the Treaty of Moscow with the Soviet Union.

And on December 7, he visited Warsaw, the capital of Poland. He signed the Treaty of Warsaw, and laid a wreath at a monument to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Then he got down on his knees, and knelt there for about 30 seconds.

It became known as Der Kniefall von Warschau (The Kneefall in Warsaw). Brandt later said that he believed, at that moment, "Just laying the wreath is not enough." He added, "At the abyss of German history, and under the weight of millions of murdered people, I did what people do when language fails."

Der Spiegel (The Mirror), Germany's leading news magazine, took a poll: 48 percent thought the gesture was excessive, 41 percent said it was appropriate, and 11 percent had no opinion. But the international reaction was highly supportive. Time magazine named Brandt its Man of the Year. The Nobel Peace Prize for 1970 had already been awarded, to American food scientist Norman Borlaug. But Brandt was awarded it in 1971. And in 1972, Brandt's Social Democratic Party won its biggest election victory ever, to this day.

Brandt had to resign in 1974, when it was revealed that one of his aides had been compromised by East Germany. He lived until 1992, long enough to see the Berlin Wall fall and Germany reunited.

On December 6, 2000, just short of the 30th Anniversary of the event, a monument to Brandt was unveiled near the monument to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

*

December 7, 1970 was a Monday. This was the 1st NFL season of ABC Monday Night Football, and, on that night, the Cleveland Browns beat the Houston Oilers, 21-10 at the Astrodome.

There was 1 NBA game played. The Cincinnati Royals beat the San Francisco Warriors, 124-113. This game was played on neutral ground, at the Civic Auditorium in Omaha, Nebraska. The Royals' organization must have had their interest piqued, because, 2 seasons later, they moved, and became the Kansas City-Omaha Kings, playing most of their home games at the Kansas City Municipal Auditorium, but a few at the Civic Auditorium. This arrangement held for 3 seasons, and then they played only in Kansas City from 1975 to 1985, before moving to Sacramento.

There were no games played in the American Basketball Association. There were 5 played in the NHL:

* The New York Rangers beat the expansion Vancouver Canucks, 4-1 at Madison Square Garden.

* The expansion Buffalo Sabres beat the Minnesota North Stars, 1-0 at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium.

* The Boston Bruins beat the Pittsburgh Penguins, 6-3.

* The St. Louis Blues beat the Detroit Red Wings, 4-2 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit.

* The Chicago Black Hawks beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 6-2 at the Chicago Stadium.

* And the Montreal Canadiens, the Philadelphia Flyers, the Los Angeles Kings and the California Golden Seals were not scheduled. 

December 7, 1941: The Japanese Bomb Pearl Harbor

December 7, 1941: As President Franklin D. Roosevelt said the next day, asking Congress for a Declaration of War against the Empire of Japan, and getting it, it is "a date which will live in infamy." Japanese planes attack the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii.

American casualties and losses: 2 battleships totally lost, 2 battleships sunk and recovered, 3 battleships damaged, 1 battleship grounded, 2 other ships sunk, 3 cruisers damaged, 3 destroyers damaged, 3 other ships damaged, 188 aircraft destroyed, 159 aircraft damaged, 2,403 people killed, 1,178 wounded.

To put that in perspective: In 1941, the U.S. had about 130 million people, and we lost 2,400 in Honolulu that day. In 2001, we had about 300 million, and lost 3,000 on 9/11. Proportionately, we lost about twice as many people at Pearl Harbor as we did at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon combined 60 years later.

The 1970 film Tora! Tora! Tora! -- named for the code given that the attack was on -- is usually still considered the best film about the attack, more so than From Here to Eternity (1953, in which the attack is secondary to the story), The Final Countdown (1980, ditto), and Pearl Harbor (2001, in which the acting has been heavily criticized). Playing the Japanese commander, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Japanese actor Sō Yamamura said, "I fear that all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant, and fill him with a terrible resolve." Yamamoto may have believed this, but there is no record of him actually saying it.

But it was true: For Japan, the attack on Pearl Harbor was a "Pyrrhic victory." The phrase originates from a quote from Pyrrhus of Epirus, whose triumph against the Romans in the Battle of Asculum, in what is now Southern Italy, in 279 BC destroyed much of his forces, forcing the end of his campaign. According to legend, he said, "If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined." The more common translation is, "Another such victory, and I am undone."

About 18,000 people were stationed at Pearl Harbor at the time. In 2013, 2,000 to 2,500 survivors were thought to be still alive, according to Eileen Martinez, chief of interpretation for the USS Arizona Memorial. But I can find no definitive number of how many people who were there who are still alive, only that there are believed to be 3 still alive who served on the Arizona.

UPDATE: An obituary for Lou Conter, the 102-year-old last survivor of the Arizona, who died on April 1, 2024, said that there were only 21 overall survivors left. A CNN report on December 6, 2024 said that 16 were left. A report the next day by Voice of America confirmed that total, and said that only 2 of them made it to a memorial service at the site, 83 years after the attack. One was 104 years old; the other, 102.

A CNN story about the memorial ceremony held at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 2025 said that there were only 12 survivors left, and, for the 1st time, 84 years after the attack, none was able to attend.

*

December 7, 1941 was a Sunday, and 3 games were played in the National Football League. The most notable was at the Polo Grounds in New York, between 2 teams that were named for established baseball teams: The New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers.

The Giants had won the NFL's Eastern Division title, as they had previously done in 1933, 1934, 1935, 1938 and 1939, winning the NFL Championship Game in 1934 and 1938 -- Super Bowl -XXXIII and Super Bowl -XXIX, if you prefer. But before they could face the Chicago Bears in the 1941 edition (having beaten them in 1934 and lost to them in 1933), they had to face the football Dodgers, who, like their baseball namesakes, played home games at Ebbets Field.

It was Tuffy Leemans Day at the Polo Grounds. Alphonse Emil Leemans (1912-1979) was a native of Superior, Wisconsin, and had been an All-American back (offensive and defensive) at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The Giants would later retire his Number 4, and he was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

The Dodgers didn't care. They were going for a season sweep of the Giants, and they got it, winning 21-7. The Giants may have been the official Division Champions, but the Dodgers were the unofficial City Champions.

The Brooklyn Eagle, December 8, 1941

The attack started at 7:48 AM Hawaii time, which was 1:48 PM East Coast time. During the 2nd half, word got to the press box, and announcements began to come over the public address system. In those days, it was rare for someone to get paged at a sporting event. Usually, it was a doctor, who had to go and attend to a medical emergency.

This time, with the draft already in place, and enlistments already well underway as well, military officers attending the game were paged, and told to report to their various bases in and around New York City.

At Comiskey Park in Chicago, home to the Great Lakes Naval Training Center on Lake Michigan, another crosstown battle was held. The Bears beat the host Cardinals 34-24. And at Griffith Stadium in Washington, in the capital so the number of government officials and military officers present was considerably larger than in New York and Chicago, the host Redskins beat the Philadelphia Eagles 20-14.

When the game in New York ended, Dodger fans could not openly celebrate, and Giant fans didn't care, either, because it was then announced to the crowd that Pearl Harbor had been attacked.

The NFL Championship Game was played as scheduled, at Wrigley Field in Chicago on December 21, and, despite a 9-9 deadlock in the 3rd quarter, the Bears went on to beat the Giants 37-9.

This was during Major League Baseball's offseason, so none of their games were played. This was 5 years before the founding of the NBA, so none of their games were played. There were 3 National Hockey League games played on the day that Pearl Harbor was attacked:

* At the old Madison Square Garden, the host New York Rangers beat the defending Stanley Cup Champions, the Boston Bruins, 5-4. Alex Shibicky scored 2 goals.

* At the Olympia Stadium, the host Detroit Red Wings beat the Montreal Canadiens, 3-2.

* And at the Chicago Stadium, the host Chicago Blackhawks beat the Brooklyn Americans, 5-4. Only in this, what turned out to be their last season, were the former New York Americans, or "Amerks," using the Brooklyn name, even though they still played all their home games at The Garden. A plan for a new arena in Brooklyn was proposed for after The War, but it never happened, and the franchise suspended at the conclusion of the 1941-42 season, was officially folded in 1946.

* The Toronto Maple Leafs were not scheduled to play that day.

Time magazine named Roosevelt its Man of the Year for the 3rd time, due to his efforts to aid Britain, France and the Soviet Union without getting Congress to declare war on the Axis Powers, until Pearl Harbor made it unavoidable.

November 16, 1995: The Gingrich Tantrum

November 16, 1995: President Bill Clinton's victory in the federal government shutdown is sealed when the New York Daily News prints a front-page cartoon, showing the Speaker of the House, and the leader of the Republican Party's move to make drastic cuts in the federal budget, as a "cry baby."

After the failure of his health care initiative in 1994, Clinton saw his Democratic Party battered in the midterm elections, with the Republicans taking both houses of Congress. Bob Dole, from Russell, Kansas, regained the office of Senate Majority Leader that he had held in 1985 and 1986, having been the Minority Leader from 1987 to 1994.

And Gingrich, a Pennsylvania native who moved to the Atlanta suburb of Marietta, Georgia to teach at a college, and was first elected to Congress in 1978 and used fiery rhetoric to get into the Republican Party's leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1989, became the Speaker of the House.

Dole was considered mean, a reputation he got in his 1976 Vice Presidential debate with Walter Mondale, and deepened in his 1988 Presidential run. But, politically speaking, he was still a center-right candidate, willing to compromise for the greater good of the country. Gingrich was not: He was frequently called a "firebrand" and a "bombthrower."

Like most politicians, especially Republicans, he wanted to balance the federal budget. But his plan severely cut social services -- and also seriously cut taxes, especially on the wealthy. This didn't work when Ronald Reagan was President in the 1980s, and actually created the harsh economic conditions that led to Clinton's election in 1992. As we have since seen, it didn't work in 2001, and it didn't work in 2017. It would not have worked in 1995.

Every year, the federal budget takes effect on October 1. To put it another way: "Fiscal Year 1996" ran from October 1, 1995 to September 30, 1996. If no deal between Congress and the President is in place by October 1, they can pass a "continuing resolution," or "CR": For the length of the resolution, the proportions of the previous fiscal year continue.

But Clinton and the Republicans controlling Congress couldn't reach a deal by September 30. So they passed a CR that ran until November 13. But the Republicans refused to pass a new budget or a new CR by November 14. So, at 12:00 Midnight on November 13, the federal government shut down, because it was not legally permitted to spend any more money. People were still working for it, but without pay.

And the Republicans went before the media and said it was Clinton's fault. Except Clinton also went before the media, and pointed out that he was still willing to make a deal, and the Republicans weren't. Finally, he called Dole and Gingrich into the Oval Office. So often willing to compromise on things, seemingly desperate to get re-elected, not wanting to be a one-term President like 3 of the last 4 (Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush), but angering many in his own party, Clinton stiffened his spine, and told them, "I don't care if I go down to 5 percent in the polls. If you want that budget signed into law, you're going to have to get somebody else behind this desk."

For once, Clinton held his ground. And polls showed that more people supported his stance than the Republicans' stance. Once the Daily News printed that front page, and blow-ups of it were displayed on the floor of the very House of which Gingrich was Speaker -- by a Representative from Brooklyn, later to be Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer -- their approval rating plummeted. It has never again reached its 1995 height.

Clinton had invited Dole and Gingrich to go with him to the funeral of the assassinated Prime Minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin -- certainly, a gesture of respect, if not reconciliation. But the article accompanying the cartoon alleged that, on the flight back, Gingrich wanted to talk about the budget impasse, Clinton didn't, and Clinton made Gingrich get off Air Force One at the back entrance, and Gingrich got upset about these developments.

As comedian Dick Gregory told Clinton at an NAACP convention the following year, "He got upset because you made him a Negro!" Everybody in the audience laughed at the reference to black people being segregated to the backs of buses up until 1955. Clinton couldn't have made that joke himself, but Gregory could.

Did Clinton "make" Gingrich get off at the back of the plane? Was it true? Only Clinton and Gingrich know for sure. The problem was, given Gingrich's own actions over the 17 years he'd served in Congress to that point, the story was completely believable. He had lived by the persona of a guy who tapped into people's emotions, and now, politically, he was dying by them.

Leading an opposition and leading a majority are two very different things, and while some skills cross over, some do not. Gingrich's tantrums had worked pretty well when he was in the opposition to House Democrats like his predecessors as Speaker, Jim Wright of Texas and Tom Foley of Washington State. They did not work when he had a position of power, and they certainly didn't work against a political talent like Clinton. It was like, "Welcome to the major leagues, Newt."

That front page became the Daily News' 2nd-best-known ever, trailing only the October 30, 1975 front page concerning another budget mess, that of New York City, when President Gerald Ford refused to use federal money to bail the City out. The News' front page read, "FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD." That headline probably cost Ford the State of New York in the 1976 election, and thus the election itself. Having brought down a President, now, 20 years later, the News was bringing down a Speaker. Not yet, though: Time magazine would name Gingrich its Man of the Year for 1995.

Finally, on November 19, the Republicans caved. And when the general election campaign got underway, the Democrats aired commercials showing Dole and Gingrich together so many times, it began to look like Gingrich was Dole's running mate, instead of his actual choice, Jack Kemp, former pro quarterback and Congressman from New York.

Once the Democrats had their convention, Clinton and his running mate, Vice President Al Gore, solidified their lead, and Dole and Kemp never really challenged them. Dole didn't run a bad campaign, but once Clinton won the battle over the budget, Dole never had a chance, unless there was a new "Clinton scandal" bigger than anything that had happened to that point.

What no one yet knew was that the government shutdown, at the same time that it was securing Clinton's win, was also setting the stage for such a scandal: Among the volunteers working in the White House during the government shutdown was a young woman named Monica Lewinsky.

But the public's backlash against the Republicans' effort to impeach Clinton led to the Democrats gaining seats in the 1998 Congressional elections. Gingrich's marital infidelities had been at least as notorious as Clinton's, and the Republicans didn't care. But now, they cared: To the conservative movement, everything is acceptable except losing, and Gingrich was forced to step down, not just from the Speakership but from Congress.

*

November 16, 1995 was a Thursday. The baseball season was over. Football was in midweek. There were 5 games played in the NBA that night:

* The New York Knicks beat the Golden State Warriors, 120-97 at the Oakland Coliseum Arena.

* The Orlando Magic beat the Indiana Pacers, 89-80 at the Orlando Arena.

* The Houston Rockets beat the Milwaukee Bucks, 115-87 at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee. Robert Horry led all NBA players on the night, with 40 points.

* The Los Angeles Clippers beat the expansion Vancouver Grizzlies, 103-98 at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena. (The Grizzlies moved to Memphis in 2001.)

* And the Sacramento Kings beat the Portland Trail Blazers, 105-102 at the Rose Garden in Portland. (It's now named the Moda Center.)

There were 7 games played in the NHL, and all 3 of the New York Tri-State Area teams were in action:

* The New Jersey Devils, the Stanley Cup holders, played the Boston Bruins to a tie, 2-2 at the new FleetCenter in Boston. (It's now named the TD Garden.) The Meadowlands Marauders came from 2-0 down in the 3rd period, to salvage a point thanks to goals from Ricard Persson and Valeri Zelepukin.

* The New York Rangers weren't so lucky: They lost to the Chicago Blackhawks, 3-1 at the United Center in Chicago.

* The New York Islanders weren't even that lucky: They lost to the Los Angeles Kings, 9-2 at The Forum outside Los Angeles in Inglewood, California. Wayne Gretzky only got 1 of the Kings' goals.

* The Philadelphia Flyers beat the Ottawa Senators, 5-3 at The Spectrum in Philadelphia.

* The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Tampa Bay Lightning, 5-4 at the ThunderDome in St. Petersburg, Florida. (It's now named Tropicana Field. The following season, the Lightning moved into what's now named the Amalie Arena.) Former Islander Benoit Hogue scored the winner, just 32 seconds into overtime.

* The Florida Panthers and the Vancouver Canucks played to a tie, 2-2 at the Miami Arena.

* And the St. Louis Blues beat the San Jose Sharks, 3-1 at the Kiel Center in St. Louis. (It's now named the Enterprise Center.) 

November 15, 1971: Intel Releases the World's 1st Microprocessor

November 15, 1971: The computer revolution gets 3 major boosts, although the wider world won't know about any of them for years to come. Intel releases the world's 1st microprocessor, the 4004.

My mother worked in a bank in downtown Newark in 1965. She said they had a computer that took up an entire wall of a building. But computers began to shrink, and after 1971, they would get smaller. By 1977, there would be desktop computers.

It was also around this time, although I can't find an exact date for either, that Ray Tomlinson, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, sent the 1st email (he preferred the unhyphenated spelling over "e-mail"); and that IBM introduced the floppy disk, then 8 inches square.

In 1997, for his work as Chairman of Intel, and guiding it to a leading place in the tech boom, Andrew Grove was named Time magazine's Man of the Year.

*

November 15, 1971 was a Monday. Baseball was out of season. No games were scheduled for either the NBA, the ABA, or the NHL. On ABC Monday Night Football, the San Diego Chargers beat the football version of the St. Louis Cardinals, 20-17 at San Diego Stadium, which would later be renamed Jack Murphy Stadium and Qualcomm Stadium.

November 14, 1965: The Battle of Ia Drang

November 14, 1965: The Battle of Ia Drang is fought, the first major engagement between American and Vietcong troops. Both sides claimed victory. About 1,300 American soldiers were killed.

The battle was part of the Pleiku campaign conducted early in the Vietnam War, in the central highlands of Vietnam, in 1965. It is notable for being the first large scale helicopter air assault, and also the first use of Boeing B-52 Stratofortress strategic bombers in a tactical support role.

General William Westmoreland had been assigned as Commander of Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) on June 20, 1964. President Lyndon B. Johnson assigned him to the post because Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had told him Westmoreland was "the best we have, without question."

The Pentagon, and the Johnson Administration as a whole, treated Ia Drang as a victory. Time magazine named Westmoreland its Man of the Year for 1965. In a later article, Time suggested Westmoreland as a candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination in 1968. After all, successful Generals, even without political experience, were often touted as possible Presidents.

Ia Drang set the blueprint for the Vietnam War with the Americans relying on air mobility, artillery fire and close air support, while the People's Army of Viet Nam (PAVN) neutralized that firepower by quickly engaging American forces at very close range.

In other words, as generals so often do, America's generals were "fighting the last war," and the Vietnam War was not going to be like World War II, because the Vietcong were not the Wehrmacht, nor were they the Imperial Japanese Army. And it wasn't going to be like the Korean War, either. This was guerrilla warfare, and America hadn't been involved in that since... well, since their own Revolution of 1775 to 1783. And the Pentagon didn't know how to handle it. And so, the "quagmire" of Vietnam began.

On July 3, 1968, with the Tet Offensive already well past, and U.S. troop levels in Vietnam having risen from 16,000 to 535,000 under Westmoreland's command, LBJ promoted Westmoreland to Chief of Staff of the Army. At first glance, this would seem to be a reward -- for putting the U.S. in position to win the war, and for not running for President.

In hindsight, it seemed more like "kicking him upstairs," removing him from direct command as a punishment for failure. Westmoreland never achieved a "V-V Day," never got that 5th star, never got serious consideration for President from either major party, never joined the pantheon of legendary American Generals such as George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant, John Pershing, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Douglas MacArthur. Norman Schwarzkopf would eventually join that list, but Westmoreland died in 2005, at the age of 91, remembered as a General who failed.

*

November 14, 1965 was a Sunday. These NFL games were played:

* The New York Giants lost to the Cleveland Browns, 34-21 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium.

* The Philadelphia Eagles beat the Washington Redskins, 21-14 at Franklin Field in Philadelphia.

* The San Francisco 49ers beat the Detroit Lions, 27-21 at Tiger Stadium in Detroit.

* The Chicago Bears beat the football version of the St. Louis Cardinals, 34-13 at Wrigley Field in Chicago.

* The Green Bay Packers beat the Los Angeles Rams, 6-3 at Milwaukee County Stadium.

* The Baltimore Colts beat the Minnesota Vikings, 41-21 at Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota.

* And the Dallas Cowboys beat the Pittsburgh Steelers, 24-17 at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas.

In the American Football League:

* The New York Jets beat the Boston Patriots, 30-20 at Fenway Park in Boston.

* The Kansas City Chiefs beat the San Diego Chargers, 31-7 at Kansas City Municipal Stadium.

* The Denver Broncos beat the Houston Oilers, 31-21 at Rice Stadium in Houston.

* And the Buffalo Bills beat the Oakland Raiders, 17-14 at Frank Youell Field in Oakland.

Baseball was out of season. There was 1 game in the NBA: The Los Angeles Lakers beat the Baltimore Bullets, 129-114 at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena.

And the NHL's entire "Original Six" were in action:

* The New York Rangers beat the Chicago Black Hawks, 4-2 at the Chicago Stadium.

* The Boston Bruins beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 2-0 at the Boston Garden.

* And the Montreal Canadiens and the Detroit Red Wings, played to a tie, 2-2 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit.