Month: August 2018

This Day in History, August 29, 2005.

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/hurricane-katrina-slams-into-gulf-coast

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The Interstate 90 bridge over St. Louis Bay in Pass Christian, Mississippi, is folded and destroyed from the high wind and waves of Hurricane Katrina, Aug. 30, 2005.  Construction crews worked on the bridge around the clock with bright lights reflecting off the murky Gulf waters at night. When a major thoroughfare like I-90 goes down, you spare no expense to get it operational as quickly as possible.

We (my kids and I) went down to Bay St. Louis Mississippi during Thanksgiving week of 2005. We went along with some friends and fellow church people from Ascension Episcopal in Pueblo. This was a few months after Katrina hit. We stayed in travel trailers that had been set up next to Our Lady of the Gulf Catholic Church. OLG sits right on the shoreline in Bay St. Louis. The walls of the church were all still standing after Katrina, but half the roof was blown off and much of the church’s contents – including most of the pews – were washed out to sea in the storm surge.

The parish priest was our host. In fact, he lived in a trailer next to us since the rectory had been totally destroyed. We went with him to Mass every morning along with about a dozen or so faithful regulars from OLG. I remember his remarkable daily sermons – each just one sentence long – he also wrote a daily blog post where he was slightly less laconic.  How that man held it together during the recovery and rebuilding of OLG which took several years to complete – I have no idea. But I do know that the one-sentence sermons, served with a hearty breakfast each day, definitely helped bolster attendance.

There were also lots of kids in school uniforms coming to the OLG-affiliated parochial school next door every day, despite the fact that 90% of Bay St. Louis had been leveled by Katrina.  The school was in fact the very first institution in Bay St. Louis to get back up and running after Katrina. By that point, a few months on, reconstruction on most residences and businesses had barely begun.

We helped with cleanup on the church grounds. We also did demolition of nearby houses that had been ruined but were still standing. I remember that the priest at OLG let us use his washing machine, a most welcome amenity since, by the end of each day, we were utterly filthy.  (I have found that in times of disaster, having clean clothes and a place to shower is an especially big deal.)  The priest also gave communion to us – Episcopalians, remember – at morning Mass. In other times and in other places a Catholic priest giving communion to non-Catholics would be a big no-no. But under these circumstances, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world. (I do hope he didn’t get in hot water with his Bishop!)

There were big busloads of mostly Catholic youths from parishes mostly in Louisiana and Texas who came and worked alongside us. Many of them made multiple trips, working on cleanup for a week at a time. We and others around town all ate together each evening downtown in a big tent. Dinner was served to hundreds of volunteers from all over the country. Despite the grim circumstances, the atmosphere was almost festive. The food was all donated; the cooking all done by volunteers.  On Thanksgiving the Mayor of Bay St. Louis, Eddie Farve (yes, a relative of Brett) carved the turkey and served us all personally. The spirit of joy, compassion, and camaraderie I witnessed there was nothing short of extraordinary. It’s not something you see every day.

A lot has been written about post-Katrina looting and gunfire, even murders, in New Orleans. How much was written about what my kids and I saw in Bay St. Louis? A lot less. But we were there; we saw it first hand; and I for one will never forget. News producers have a vested interest in shocking people and grabbing attention, probably because people sitting on their couches watching TV or reading papers or surfing the Internet are easily bored. So, naturally, the media want to give their audience the deepest, darkest dirt. Don’t get me wrong: I know plenty of bad stuff happens in this world, no doubt. But it would be a mistake to think that bad stuff is the majority of what happened, even in a place like the Gulf Coast after Katrina, even as bad as things were.

https://olgchurch.net/

More photos, here.

This Day in History, 1996.

After four years of separation, Charles, Prince of Wales and heir to the British throne, and his wife, Princess Diana, formally divorce.

 

On July 29, 1981, nearly one billion television viewers in 74 countries tuned in to witness the marriage of Prince Charles, heir to the British throne, to Lady Diana Spencer, a young English schoolteacher. Married in a grand ceremony at St. Paul’s Cathedral in the presence of 2,650 guests, the couple’s romance was, for the moment, the envy of the world. Their first child, Prince William, was born in 1982, and their second, Prince Harry, in 1984.

Before long, however, the fairy tale couple grew apart, an experience that was particularly painful under the ubiquitous eyes of the world’s tabloid media. Diana and Charles announced a separation in 1992, though they continued to carry out their royal duties. In August 1996, two months after Queen Elizabeth II urged the couple to divorce, the prince and princess reached a final agreement. In exchange for a generous settlement, and the right to retain her apartments at Kensington Palace and her title of “Princess of Wales,” Diana agreed to relinquish the title of “Her Royal Highness” and any future claims to the British throne.

In the year following the divorce, the popular princess seemed well on her way to achieving her dream of becoming “a queen in people’s hearts,” but on August 31, 1997, she was killed with her companion Dodi Fayed in a car accident in Paris. An investigation conducted by the French police concluded that the driver, who also died in the crash, was heavily intoxicated and caused the accident while trying to escape the paparazzi photographers who consistently tailed Diana during any public outing.

Prince Charles married his longtime mistress, Camilla Parker Bowles, on April 9, 2005.

DID YOU KNOW?

In the 7th century, Etheldreda, the queen of Northumbria, renounced her husband and her royal position for the veil of a nun. She was renowned for her saintliness and is traditionally said to have died of a swelling in her throat, which she took as a judgment upon her fondness for wearing necklaces in her youth. Her shrine became a principal site of pilgrimage in England. An annual fair was held in her honor on October 17th, and her name became simplified to St. Audrey. At these fairs various kinds of cheap knickknacks were sold, along with a type of necklace called St. Audrey’s lace, which by the 17th century had become altered to tawdry lace. Eventually, tawdry came to be used to describe anything cheap and gaudy that might be found at these fairs or anywhere else.

My favorite? Fastest milk-bottle mile, of course.

On this day in 1955, the first edition of “The Guinness Book of Records” is published in Great Britain. It quickly proves to be a hit. Now known as the “Guinness World Records” book, the annual publication features a wide range of feats related to humans and animals. To date the book has sold more than 130 million copies. It has been translated into more than two dozen languages and is the top-selling copyrighted title in history.

The inspiration for the record book can be traced to November 1951 when Sir Hugh Beaver, managing director of the Guinness Brewery (founded in Dublin in 1759), was on a hunting trip in Ireland. After failing to shoot a golden plover, Beaver and the members of his hunting party debated whether the creature was Europe’s fastest game bird. They were unable to locate a book with the answer.Thinking that patrons of Britain’s pubs would enjoy a record book which could be used to settle friendly disagreements, Beaver decided to have one produced. He hired twin brothers Norris and Ross McWhirter, the founders of a London-based agency that provided facts and statistics to newspapers and advertisers. The book was intended to be given away for free in pubs to promote the Guinness brand. However, it turned out to be so popular the company started selling it that fall and it became a best-seller. An American edition debuted in 1956. It was soon followed by editions in a number of other countries. The McWhirters traveled the globe to research and verify records. Ross McWhirter was involved in compiling the book until his death in 1975 at the hands of Irish Republican Army gunmen. His brother Norris continued to serve as the book’s editor until 1986.

Today, the thousands of official Guinness records include the oldest person ever (Jeanne Louise Calment of France, who died in 1997 at 122 years and 164 days old); the tallest dog ever (a now-deceased Great Dane from Michigan named Zeus, who in 2011 measured 44 inches from foot to withers); and the largest underwater human pyramid (62 people in 2013 in Thailand). Ashrita Furman of New York holds more records than anyone else on the planet. His numerous accomplishments include the longest continuous distance somersaulted (12 miles 390 yards), most apples cut in midair with a samurai sword in 1 minute (29) and fastest mile with a milk bottle balanced on his head (7 minutes 47 seconds).

On this day in 1909, the first race is held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. It is now the home of the world’s most famous motor racing competition, the Indianapolis 500.

 

Built on 328 acres of farmland five miles northwest of Indianapolis, Indiana, the speedway was started by local businessmen as a testing facility for Indiana’s growing automobile industry. The idea was that occasional races at the track would pit cars from different manufacturers against each other. After seeing what these cars could do, spectators would presumably head down to the showroom of their choice to get a closer look.

The rectangular two-and-a-half-mile track linked four turns, each exactly 440 yards from start to finish, by two long and two short straight sections. In that first five-mile race on August 19, 1909, 12,000 spectators watched Austrian engineer Louis Schwitzer win with an average speed of 57.4 miles per hour. The track’s surface of crushed rock and tar proved a disaster.  It broke up and caused the deaths of two drivers, two mechanics and two spectators.

The surface was soon replaced with 3.2 million paving bricks, laid in a bed of sand and fixed with mortar. Dubbed “The Brickyard,” the speedway reopened in December 1909. In 1911, low attendance led the track’s owners to make a crucial decision. Instead of shorter races, they resolved to focus on a single, longer event each year, for a much larger prize. That May 30 marked the debut of the Indy 500. It was a grueling 500-mile race that was an immediate hit with audiences and drew press attention from all over the country. Driver Ray Haroun won the purse of $14,250, with an average speed of 74.59 mph and a total time of 6 hours and 42 minutes.

Since 1911, the Indianapolis 500 has been held every year, with the exception of 1917-18 and 1942-45, when the United States was involved in the two world wars. With an average crowd of 400,000, the Indy 500 is the best-attended event in U.S. sports. In 1936, asphalt was used for the first time to cover the rougher parts of the track. By 1941 most of the track was paved. The last of the speedway’s original bricks were covered in 1961, except for a three-foot line of bricks left exposed at the start-finish line as a nostalgic reminder of the track’s history.