 History offers
a chance
to truly
understand
how the past
impacts the now.
Follow our
daily timelime
of historical
events to
discover the
role The Beatles
played in changing
the modern world.
THE FOLLOWING EVENTS TOOK PLACE ON AUGUST 4
1693--Dom Perignon invents champagne.
1753--George Washington becomes a Master Mason.
1821--The first Saturday Evening Post magazine, as most readers knew it, appears on this day.
1900--Queen Elizabeth (Elizabeth Angela Marguerite), the Queen Mother, is born.
1927--Radio station 2XAG, later named WGY, the General Electric station in Schenectady, New York, begins experimental operations from a 100,000-watt transmitter. Later, the FCC regulated the power of AM radio stations to not exceed 50,000 watts on ‘clear channels’ (where few, if any, stations would cause interference with each other).
1944--Nazi police discover Anne Frank and her family, hiding in secret quarters above her father’s factory in Amsterdam, Holland. Miss Frank was 15 years old and had kept a diary of her feelings, thoughts, and fears during the two years of hiding from the Nazis. Anne and her sister were taken to a concentration camp following the arrest. Anne Frank died at Bergen-Belsen. Her diary was found later and has since been translated into 30 different languages, adapted as a dramatic play, and made into a Hollywood film. Her diary is a symbol of the strength of the human spirit. She wrote: “I keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would like to be and what I could be, if there weren’t any other people living in the world.”
1946--Maureen Cox is born in Liverpool, England. She would grow up to be the first wife of Ringo Starr.
1956--Elvis Presley’s recording of Hound Dog is released.
1957--The Everly Brothers appear on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” singing Bye Bye Love and Wake Up Little Susie.
1958--The first ever Billboard Hot 100 chart appears. The number one song is Ricky Nelson’s Poor Little Fool.
1961--The Beatles perform at the Cavern Club for a lunchtime show. That night, they appear at Aintree Institute, Aintree, Liverpool.
1962--The Beatles perform at Victoria Hall, Wirral, Cheshire.
1963--The Beatles perform at Queen’s Theatre in Blackpool. So many fans are crowded around the theatre, blocking every entrance, that the Beatles have to go through a construction area, up and across some scaffolding to the roof of the theatre, from where they are lowered inside through a trap door.
1965--On this day, in defense of The Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein, John Lennon affirms: “If Brian says there should be no publicity for ‘Help!’ then that’s the way it should be. The record got to number one didn’t it?”
1966--Several American radio stations pull Beatles records from their playlists following John Lennon’s “more popular than Jesus” comment.
1967--UK re-release of the 1964 album The Beatles First (Polydor). There is no change in the track listing.
1967--Re-release in Sweden of The Beatles’ LP The Beatles First (Polydor).
1969--The Beatles in the recording studio (Studio Two, EMI Studios, London), recording vocal overdubs for Because. Also, George Harrison asks George Martin to arrange an orchestral score for Something. The Beatles Anthology 3 has the vocal overdub track, without any instrumentation, for Because (Disc two, Track 20).
1970--Apple’s press office in London closes down, with the two remaining employees being fired. From now on Apple Corps Ltd’s only task is to collect the ever-flourishig Beatles royalties and deal with the numerous unfinished Beatle problems.
1973--During recording sessions for his Mind Games LP, John Lennon records the song Rock and Roll People. The song will end up being omitted from the album, and John will later give it to bluesman Johnny Winter. Lennon’s recording of the song appears on his posthumous album Menlove Ave.
1980--For the first time in four years, John Lennon re-enters a recording studio (the Hit Factory) to begin the sessions for the Double Fantasy album, as well as for songs that will later make up his posthumous Milk and Honey album. Wearing a large floppy hat and carrying a briefcase, he is photographed by Paul Goresh entering the studio with Yoko Ono. Producer, Jack Douglas, informs the musicians that these are top secret recording sessions and if news leaks out, the sessions will end immediately. Despite this, news of John’s return to studio recording soon becomes a major news story in the press around the world. At the end of every session, John would sit quietly, his feet up on the console, smoking from a 500-year-old opium pipe and softly ask Douglas: “Is it all over?” Jack would reply “It’s over, John.” He also recalls that if a Beatle record ever came over the radio, which played quietly in the background, John would reminisce about it. As an aside, leftover songs from the Double Fantasy album were originally planned to be released in the spring of 1981, when John would perform a concert tour. Jack Douglas recalls: “John pictured a big production tour, including performances of Beatles numbers featured with new arrangements.” What a loss.
1985--Peace Ribbons made by thousands of women are wrapped around the US Pentagon, the White House, and the Capitol. Twenty thousand people participate, and the 27,000 panels making up the ribbon stretched for 15 miles.
1994--Derek Leckenby, guitar player for Herman’s Hermits, dies at age 51.
2000--Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, becomes the royal family’s first centenarian, taking the nation’s 100th birthday salute from the balcony of Buckingham Palace.
For more day-by-day history go to HistoryUnlimited.net
|
