Day Tripping: May 3
Tragedies of differing sorts
Show Stopper
Alan Freed is a name synonymous with roots for rock and roll in America, and he is credited with coining the term, Rock ‘n’ Roll. In 1958, the famous DJ hosted a rock concert in the hockey arena, Boston Arena, featuring the major stars of the day, including Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, and Jerry Lee Lewis.
The show, however, took a bad turn when fans began rushing the stage and despite Freed’s pleas for calm, the scene spiralled out of control. It didn’t help that Lewis was playing Great Balls of Fire at the time, which only riled the frenzy up more.
As a result, the city of Boston would not host another rock show until 1964 when the Beatles arrived. The ban otherwise stayed in effect throughout the nineteen-sixties.
Missing Child
In one of the strangest and most publicized cases in history, a three-year-old girl named Madeleine McCann disappeared from her parents' vacation suite in the Algarve of Portugal in 2007. The British couple were dining in the nearby restaurant about 50 metres from their ground floor apartment, making regular checks on Madeleine and her two-year-old twin sisters. At around 10:00 p.m., the McCanns discovered their oldest daughter was missing.
The incident garnered worldwide press coverage with British tabloids laying baseless claims that the parents were somehow complicit in the girl’s disappearance. To date, the search for Madeleine McCann who would be a teenager now has been fruitless but new developments have surfaced in Germany regarding people of interest.
Mass Evacuation
Fort McMurray, Alberta is an established community serving the Canadian province’s oil and gas industry for many years. In 2016, after wild forest fires had broken out in the region, the 88,000 residents of the city were ordered to flee with only what they could carry. The fire continued to spread across Northern Alberta and neighbouring Saskatchewan, swallowing over 500,000 thousand hectares of forest.
Twenty-four hundred homes and buildings were destroyed in Fort McMurray, with an estimated value of nearly $10 billion in damage, the costliest in Canadian history. Firefighters continued to fight the spread, but smouldering forest could be found more than a year later, and it was finally doused in August 2017.
Though the cause was never determined, many experts suspect the fire started with humans in a remote area of the forest.
Musical Milestones
A failing amusement park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee called Silver Dollar City, was purchased by Country singer Dolly Parton, and reopened under the name Dollywood in 1986. Rumour has it the park is extremely successful now.
Narratives
Lieutenant Colonel John McCrea, a Canadian soldier and physician wrote the poem In Flanders Fields on this day in 1915. In future years the poem would spark the ‘red poppy’ program as a remembrance to fallen soldiers.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.
Lest we forget!
Remembrance
Wally Schirra was the first astronaut to fly in space three times and was a member of the original seven that began the space program in the United States. He died in 2007 at the age of 84.
Notable Births
1903 —The crooner that gave us White Christmas among others, Bing Crosby
1919 — The folk icon who gave us such important songs as Turn, turn, turn and If I had a Hammer, Pete Seeger
1921 —Ranked as one the greatest pound for pound boxers of all time, Sugar Ray Robinson
1933 — The Godfather of Soul, Mr Dynamite himself, James Brown
K. Barrett Katie Wallace Maria Rattray Maryam Merchant Dr Mehmet Yildiz Tree Langdon Myriam Ben Salem Phil Truman Chelsea Mandler MAT Terry Mansfield Hollie Petit, PhD. Terry Trueman Dr Preeti Singh John Gruber Bill Abbate James G Brennan ScienceDuuude Marcus Liam Ireland Claire Kelly Noorain Hassan, BMS Amy Pierovich David Acaster Nora Thewriteyard
The Story Of Day Tripping Through History What’s Past Is Often Present
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