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“When you go back hundreds of years and look at what people were wearing, one word that might come to mind is uncomfortable.”From the transcript
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This Day in History — History Today - Oct. 4. Machine-transcribed; use the interactive transcript above to jump the player to any line.
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And see why thousands of guys have given them five stars. That's jackarcher.com slash this day for 15% off your first order. And welcome to history today. It's October 4th, and here's a brief look at a few things that happened on this day throughout history. On this day in 1582, the Gregorian calendar went into effect, named for Pope Gregory the 13th. The Gregorian calendar was adopted after an official papal decree seven months earlier. It was designed to correct a small error in the Julian calendar that calculated a year as 365 and a quarter days, and every four years was a leap year. But this led to a little calendar creep. And after a century, the calendar would be off by about a day. And over several centuries, that could add up, throwing the dates of the equinoxes and religious dates, such as Easter off-kilter. But here's the thing. Pope Gregory did not have influence beyond the Catholic Church. And so the new calendar was not universally accepted or adopted on this day.
England resisted until 1752, Sweden followed in 1753, and Saudi Arabia did not switch over until 2016. So are there any countries that still follow the old Julian calendar? And the answer to that is, yes. The African countries of Ethiopia and Eritrea still use the Julian calendar. And many Eastern Orthodox churches still follow that calendar for religious holidays. On this day in 1957, the Soviet Union launched the satellite Sputnik. It circled the planet every hour and 36 minutes. It could be seen with binoculars before sunrise or after sunset. It transmitted radio signals strong enough to be picked up by amateur radio operators who listened in all as the beeping Soviet spacecraft passed over. It was quite a shock and cold war fears made Americans a bit nervous that the Soviets would use this new technology for malevolent purposes.
The US government and American scientists were called off guard by the Soviets. It led to a concerted effort to focus on achievements beyond our stratosphere and ushered in the beginning of the space race. In 1927, sculptor Goodson Borglum took chisel to granite for the first time embarking on a 12-year task to carve the faces of four presidents into the side of Mount Rushmore in South Dakota's Black Hills National Forest. The monument was the idea of a South Dakota historian named Don Robinson. Who was looking for a way to attract more tourists to his state? Robinson's original plan for the sculpture was to honor the Old West with depictions of John C. Fremont, Lewis and Clark, their guide, Zakajuea, the Lakota Chief Red Cloud and Crazy Horse. Borglum rejected that idea and decided on the four presidents. Now, he did not do all the work by himself. He used a team of 400 artisans to bring it to life.
Interestingly, Thomas Jefferson's face was originally sculpted to the right of Washington. But within a couple of years, the face said become badly cracked and so it was blasted off the mountain with dynamite and Borglum put Jefferson on Washington's left side. On this day in 1970, singer Janice Joplin died of a heroin overdose. Her album Pearl had already been recorded and was released in January of 1971. It rose all the way to number one on the Billboard chart. And in 1955, the underdog Brooklyn Dodgers beat the New York Yankees to win the World Series for the first time after losing in their previous seven appearances. An amazing catch and left field by Sandy Amaro's and the sixth inning kept the Yankees off the scoreboard. Brooklyn won the game to nothing and the series for Games to Three. That's all for now. Come back tomorrow for another look around History's Calendar. Thanks for joining me today and I hope you have an excellent day.
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