History of the Day: 11/6

On this day in 1962, the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution condemning South Africa's apartheid. It took the U.S. thirty years to do the same.

Happy 157th birthday to the high prophet of Wall Street, Charles Dow (for whom the Dow Jones Industrial Average is named, and who possessed a rockin' beard). In the theology that is modern economics, he figured out a way to gauge the performance of the stock market. And all us ignorant folk, who don't understand the green gods that rule us, listen and do as he says. And we think we're sooooo much better than the people who listened to the people who interpreted entrails.

Three years later, John Philip Sousa, master of the march, was born. I think there's a law somewhere that we're not allowed to shoot fireworks without playing Stars and Stripes Forever. You might not know this, but Sousa wrote lyrics for his song:

Other nations may deem their flags the best
And cheer them with fervid elation,
But the flag of the North and South and West
Is the flag of flags, the flag of Freedom's nation.

Personally, I prefer these lyrics, also meant to be sung to the same tune:

Be kind to your fine feathered friends
For a duck may be somebody's mother
Be kind to your friends in the swamp
Where the weather is very, very damp
Now, you may think that this is the end...
WELL, IT IS!

Sousa, in addition to being a composer and lyricist, was a poet. His most well-known of his all-but-unknown poems is The Feast of the Monkeys. He also hated the budding recording technology, which he called "canned music." Of it, he said:

These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country. When I was a boy...in front of every house in the summer evenings, you would find young people together singing the songs of the day or old songs. Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal cord left. The vocal cord will be eliminated by a process of evolution, as was the tail of man when he came from the ape.

Brittney Spears would beg to differ.

Finally, happy birthday to Edsel Ford, son of Henry Ford. He is primarily remembered for the car named after him (The Edsel), one of the most spectacular failures in the automotive industry. You know, aside from the collapse of the ozone layer.

Ashes to ashes and dust to dust
If it wasn't for Fords, our tools would rust.