December 10, 1967 – Gone too soon: Soul legend Otis Redding dies in a plane crash near Madison, Wisconsin.
on this day
On This Day
December 9, 1854 – The Examiner prints Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” which commemorates the courage of 600 British soldiers charging a heavily defended position during the Battle of Balaklava, in the Crimea, just six weeks earlier.
The Charge of the Light Brigade
I
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!” he said.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
II
“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
Someone had blundered.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
III
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of hell
Rode the six hundred.
IV
Flashed all their sabres bare,
Flashed as they turned in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wondered.
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right through the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reeled from the sabre stroke
Shattered and sundered.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.
V
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell.
They that had fought so well
Came through the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.
VI
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!
On This Day
December 7, 1941 – At 7:55 am local time, Pearl Harbor, located on the Hawaiian island of Oahu was attacked by nearly 200 Japanese warplanes. The attack resulted in the U.S. entering into World War II.
On This Day
December 6, 1933 – A federal judge rules that Ulysses by James Joyce is not obscene. The book had been banned immediately in both the UnitedStates and England when it came out in 1922. With its radical stream-of-consciousness narrative, Ulysses deeply influenced the development of the modern novel.
On This Day
December 4, 1956 – Four young rock-and-roll giants, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins gathered around a piano singing the kind of music they’d all grown up on: gospel. The location was the modest storefront recording studio at 760 Union Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee, owned by Sam Phillips, the legendary producer of Sun Records fame.
The caption under the photo that ran in the next day’s Memphis Press-Scimitar was “Million Dollar Quartet.”
On This Day
December 2, 1972 – the Temptations earn the last of their four chart-topping hits when “Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone” reaches #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
On This Day
December 1, 1955 – In Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks is jailed for refusing to give up her seat on a public bus to a white man, a violation of the city’s racial segregation laws. The successful Montgomery Bus Boycott, organized by a young Baptist minister named Martin Luther King, Jr., followed Park’s historic act of civil disobedience.
Elysian Waters 