February 9 · This Day in America
At eight o'clock on a Sunday night, a man in a gray suit says four young men's name, and a country leans toward its television set. Seventy-three million Americans are watching — a record. Girls in the studio scream so loudly the band can barely hear itself. Three months ago a president was murdered in Dallas and the nation has been walking around stunned and quiet. Then four kids from Liverpool grin into the camera and play three chords like the lights just came back on. Nothing exploded. No law changed. But something in the national mood lifted in a single hour, and millions of people who watched would spend the rest of their lives remembering exactly where they sat. Joy, it turns out, can also be a kind of news.
Source: www.smithsonianmag.com
Also on this day · 1773
He arrives in tidewater Virginia, son of a man who signed the Declaration. Sixty-eight years later he becomes the ninth president — and gives the longest inaugural address ever, hatless in the cold. He catches a chill that becomes pneumonia and dies after thirty-one days, the shortest presidency in American history. A whole life, and the office held for barely a month.
Source: www.nps.gov