Histortweet Week in Review - W/E October 10, 2009

[SFX: CHURCHBELL] Greetings, History Lovers! Welcome to This Tweet in History, the Week In Review, podcasting to you on tape delay from our North American Studios.

Here are your top stories for the week ending October 10, 2009:

[SFX: SOUND827]World: DATELINE Chicago, [SFX: Chicago] October 8, 1871 – Mrs. O’Leary’s cow kicks off two-day conflagration in the Windy City: http://bit.ly/3x7efi
The Back-Story: [SFX:Fire] In 1871, Chicago was a tinderbox. In the year before the Great Fire, the city averaged two fires a week. The Great Fire itself may have faded into that statistic itself, were it not for delayed response, the result of mechanical problems with the alarm, and had there not been a strong, southwesterly wind that drove the fire straight to the city’s center. Even after the fire was extinguished, two days later, the city was so hot that the damage couldn’t be assessed for another day or so. [SFX: Burning Down the House]

[SFX: SOUND827]Sports: DATELINE Chicago, [SFX: Chicago] October 6, 1945 – Stinky Billy goat ejected from Wrigley Field; Cubs left to stink up the park by themselves ever since: http://bit.ly/25ljsZ
The Back-Story: [SFX: Take me out to the ballgame] William Sianis had two tickets to the World Series, and elected to take his goat. Evidently, in 1945 Chicago, that wasn’t such an unusual choice. The goat, however, was unusually stinky, and the owner ejected Billy and his goat. [SFX: Get Out of Here] They left, and, as they did, William Sianis uttered a curse in his broken English: The Cubs no win here no more. [SFX: I Put a Spell on You] The Cubs went on to lose the game and the series, and, since that date, despite more than one “goat” ceremony to expunge the curse, it’s the Cubs who have been the goats, stinking up the fields some 65 years since, and never managing to win the big one. [SFX:So you win again]

[SFX: SOUND827]: Things that make you go huh?: DATELINE USSR, October 9, 1989 – Official Soviet paper reports UFO, accompanied by robot, in Voronezh: http://bit.ly/1f2LSy:
The Back-Story: [SFX: Mr. Roboto] TASS, the official Soviet newspaper, picked up an odd story out of Voronezh, by the head of the Vornezh Geophysical Laborator, who asserts that the press took liberties with his story. By the time it went to press, it was the tale of an alien spaceship flown by giant aliens who had small beady heads. Three of these aliens went for a stroll in the park, accompanied by a frightening robot, who never left their side. As incredible as the story sounds, it was picked up and reprinted in the US by the St. Louis Dispatch.

[SFX:Space Oddity; Life on Mars; Starman]

[SFX: SOUND827] This week’s birthdays:[SFX: In the Club]

October 4: US President Rutherford B Hayes
October 5: Actor Larry Fine
October 6: Architect and designer Le Corbusier
October 7: South African Statesman Bishop Desmond Tutu
October 8: Argentine Presidente Juan Peron
October 9:I Ex-Beatle John Lennon
And October 10: Composer Giuseppe Verdi

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