HistorTweet Week in Review - W/E March 20, 2010

[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 March 20, 2010:

[SFX: SOUND827]World: DATELINE Stockholm, March 16, 1793 - Masked assassin shoots Sweden's masked king: http://bit.ly/bZSSIr
The Back-Story: [SFX: You Give Love a Bad Name; Point Blank;]At dinner on the fateful night, Sweden’s King Gustav III was passed a note containing a death threat. These were not unusual in his experience, and he ignored it. Later that evening, he made his way to the Royal Opera House for a masquerade party. Gustav, easily recognizable by the royal star on his cape, was surrounded by three men and shot through the heart from the back in a conspiracy aimed at coup d’etat. Gustav was not die immediately, and continued to carry out his duties for another two weeks before succumbing to the wound, which had become infected. [SFX: Dead On Time; The Party's Over;]

[SFX: SOUND827]Sports: DATELINE Philadelphia, March 20, 1934 - Philly's pitcher's a Babe! http://bit.ly/chtElL
The Back-Story: [SFX: You’re Fabulous, Babe; Babe] Mildred “Babe” Didrikson found success in many sports, from bowling to boxing; softball to basketbal. She won championships in tennis and golf, and olympic medals in track and field. Didrikson parlayed her fame into stunts on stage and in the athletic field, and, although she was not the first woman to pitch in a major-league baseball exhibition game, she was, at the time, the most famous, when she pitched for the Philadelphia Athletics in the first inning of a game against the Brooklyn Dodgers., hitting the first batter she faced and walking the second before the side was retired without a hit on a triple play. [SFX:Centerfield; Take Me Out to the Ballgame;]

[SFX: SOUND827]: In other news: DATELINE South Pole March 16, 1912 - Oates steps outside, in noble but ultimately vain effort to save his comrades: http://bit.ly/DZpTd
The Back-Story: [SFX:Baby, it’s cold outside; Don't Leave Me This Way] Captain Lawrence Edward Grace Oates was selected for Robert Falcon Scott’s expedition to the South Pole in 1910. party of 14 advanced steadily during the journey 895-mile journey, with various support members sent back at pre-determined stages until five men, including Oates, remained to walk the last 167 miles. The men reached the pole, only to find a tent that Roald Amundsen and his team had left behind 35 days earlier when they won the race to become the first to reach the pole. Disheartened, the men began their ill-fated trip back to base camp, marked by bad weather, lack of food, injuries from falls, and scurvy, exacerbated by frostbite. The men needed to average nine miles a day to get to the two-week supplies of food that the team had emplaced at 65-mile intervals. Captain Oates, frostbitten and with his war wounds opened by scurvy, realized that he was not able to keep. The team refused his request to leave him behind in his sleeping bag, although he was causing them to fall behind schedule. On the morning of March 17th, he told his three surviving companions, “I am just going outside and may be some time.” They tried to talk him out of it, but in the end, Scott’s diary records, he persisted in “the act of a brave man and English gentleman,” into -40 degree termperatures to his death. Sadly, the rest of polar explorers passed away nine days later, without making it back to base.[SFX:Thank You for Being a Friend;What I Did For Love; Wind Beneath My Wings; Toughest Street In Town ]

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

March 14: Physicist Albert Einstein
March 15: Blues musician Lightnin’ Hopkins
March 16: US President James Madison
March 17: Dancer Rudolf Nureyev
March 18: South African President FW de Klerk
March 19: , US Marshal Wyatt Earp, and
March 20: Children’s TV’s beloved Mr. Rogers http://pbskids.org/rogers/


[SFX:GENERIC1MOTION]Thank you for joining us for This Tweet in History, the Week in review. Be sure to follow us on Twitter.com/histortweet, and check our archives at histortweet.blogspot.com.