It was 9th February 1964 when 73 million viewers watched the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show. They proceeded to take the good ol' USA by storm, although I've never quite understood why. At the time, girls of all ages were swooning over the mop top four in Europe and I must say that even in the Maxwell household, not exactly a cutting edge sort of place musically, rang to the sounds of their music. When somebody asked John Lennon how he had found America, he replied, 'It's easy, you turn left at Greenland.'
Now, who did he pinch that from?
In other news ...
The Boxer Rebellion kicked off today in 1899 with pamphlets telling everybody how much the Chinese hated Europeans. The Boxers were actually called the Fists of Righteous Harmony and they were the forerunners of all those terrible Kung Fu/Martial Arts films of the 70s and 80s. European churches apparently, got in the way of Heaven; Christianity was disrespectful to the ancient Gods; and worst of all, Europeans' (barbarians') eyes were so disgustingly blue.
Nothing for the Commission for Racial Equality to get its knickers in a twist there, then.
And in yet other news ... I have to include this third item because today in 1865 Mrs Patrick Campbell was born. She was the first Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion and had a bit of a fling with George Bernard Shaw (she was obviously very short sighted). What I've never understood about her is a) what happened to Mr Patrick Campbell or b) why were her parents so cruel as to call her Patrick in the first place?
