On this day:

[lokie]

Nintendo Was Founded 130 Years Ago Today

Brian Ashcraft

Image: 株式会社灰孝本店 (Creative Commons)
On September 23, 1889, Fusajiro Yamauchi founded Nintendo Koppai (koppai means “cards”) in Kyoto, Japan. Originally a playing card company, the company would go on to revolutionize video games forever.

When the company was first founded, Nintendo made hanafuda playing cards. It was only three years earlier that the Japanese government legalized the cards, which were a favorite of gamblers.

Image: Creative Commons
Today, hanafuda is often played during the Japanese New Year holidays by regular folks, young and old alike.



It is still unclear what the company’s name Nintendo (任天堂) meant to founder Fusajiro Yamauchi. The “leave luck to heaven” translation is most likely incorrect. You can read more about what Nintendo’s name could mean right here.

The top photo is a pre-World War II photo of Nintendo’s headquarters. On the far left is an image of Napoleon that was used in the design of a card in company’s Daitouryou deck. Well over a hundred years later, Nintendo still sells this Napoleon deck.

 

[curious2garden]

Sigmund Freud died 80 years ago.

The College of Rock and Roll Knowledge
11 hrs ·
When the Billboard Chart came out on Sept. 23, 1967, there was a new #1 song in the country. The Box Tops hit the top spot with their single "The Letter". The song knocked "Ode to Billie Joe" by Bobbie Gentry out of the spot.

"The Letter" would remain the #1 song for 4 weeks. The Box Tops lead singer was Alex Chilton. Alex was just 16 years old when he sang / recorded this.

Remember this song from 52 years ago?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIWY8UyW9bw

Yeah, that was the year the hub graduated HS. In short order he was drafted. Before that my first boy friend bought it in VN. Good times, LOL

 

[GreatwhiteNorth]

Sigmund Freud died 80 years ago.

Yeah, that was the year the hub graduated HS. In short order he was drafted. Before that my first boy friend bought it in VN. Good times, LOL

Dad wouldn't talk about VN - I only caught snippets when he would be talking to my uncles - I just can't imagine that daily/continual "wait for it" feeling in rocket city.

 

[BarnBuster]

LTC Peter Dewey, OSS​

This day in history, September 26, 1945, Lt. Col. Peter Dewey, a U.S. Army officer with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in Vietnam, is shot and killed in Saigon.

Once World War II broke out in Europe in May 1940, during the Battle of France, Dewey was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Polish Military Ambulance Corps with the Polish Army fighting in France. Following the defeat of the French army, Dewey escaped through Spain to Portugal. Upon return to the United States, Dewey was selected for OSS.

Dewey parachuted into Southern France in August of 1944 and radioed reports of German troop movements behind enemy lines for six weeks as part of a ten-man OSS "Jedburgh" team. OSS operatives were the forerunners of the US Army Special Forces and CIA.

For his actions in France, General William “Wild Bill” Donovan personally awarded him the Legion of Merit while the French gave him the Legion of Honor and a second Croix de Guerre.

Dewey was then shipped to Saigon in September of 1945 to command a seven-man OSS team “to represent American interests” and collect intelligence. Working with and sympathetic to the Viet Minh and Ho Chi Minh, whom he considered a freedom fighter, during an operation code named Project Embankment, he arranged the repatriation of 4,549 Allied POWs, including 240 Americans, from two Japanese camps near Saigon. Dewey freed the Americans from two Japanese camps in Saigon. The majority of them had been held in Burma for most of the war and employed, as slave labor building a railroad line that was to cross the Kwai River, later made famous by the movie Bridge On The River Kwai.

Camp Poet in Saigon held five POWs, and Camp 5-E, just outside of Saigon, contained 209. Of these, 120 were from the 2nd Battalion, 131st Field Artillery of the 36th Division, a National Guard anti-aircraft outfit from Texas that had landed in Java by mistake and had been captured intact. These POWs would later become known as the “Lost Battalion.” Among the other POWs, 86 were survivors of the cruiser Houston, sunk on the night of 29 February 1942 off the coast of Java. Their fate was also unknown until Dewey liberated them. The other eight were airmen shot down over Indochina.

Because the British occupation forces who had arrived to accept the Japanese surrender were short of troops, they armed French POWs on September 22 to protect the city from a potential Viet Minh attack. The French were wanting to re-establish colonial rule in Vietnam, something the Viet Minh were adamantly against and considered themselves the rightful government.

In taking control of the city, the 1400 freed French soldiers quickly ousted the Viet Minh who had just taken power. The British commander, General Douglas Gracey, was firmly against the Viet Minh and only too happy to assist the French in their quest to re-establish their colonial rule.

He established two distinct zones under his authority, the French and the English, and he flew in 300 Gurkha troops to keep control. Dewey who was quite outspoken, and blasted Gracey for his subjecting the Viet Minh to the French again. Eventually, Gracey took exception to Dewey’s objections and declared him persona non grata.

As with military tradition, Gracey prohibited anyone but general officers from flying their nations’ flags from their vehicles. Dewey had wanted to fly an American flag for easy identification among the Viet Minh, who Dewey claimed were only concerned about attacking the French. The jeep he rode in prior to his death had a flag wrapped around a pole that was unidentifiable.

Because the airplane scheduled to fly Dewey out did not arrive on time at Tan Son Nhut International Airport, he returned for a lunch meeting with war correspondents Bill Downs and Jim McGlincy at the villa that OSS had requisitioned in Saigon as well as visit an American who was wounded by Viet Minh soldiers who ironically enough mistook him for a Frenchman. As he neared the villa, he was shot in the head in an ambush by Viet Minh troops. Dewey’s jeep overturned, and Dewey’s subordinate, Captain Herbert Bluechel, escaped, pursued by Viet Minh soldiers. Bluechel informed OSS HQs of the tragedy. “We were returning to the O.S.S. hostel when we passed through a partial double roadblock. As we drive through, Annamese (Vietnamese) in a ditch beside the road opened with a machine gun not ten yards away. The charge caught Peter in the head.”

“The jeep overturned in the ditch. I saw Peter was dead and I couldn’t help him, so I crawled from under the jeep. While the Annamese still were firing, I crawled along a hedge for 150 yards, firing my .45 back at them, slowing them down. When I reached the house I alerted the other offices and we broke out the arsenal. The Annamese besieged the house for about three hours until British Gurkha troops arrived. The natives had cut our telephone wires and I had to radio O.S.S. headquarters in Kandy, Ceylon, who radioed the British in Saigon to send help.”

The Viet Minh afterward claimed that their troops mistook him for a Frenchman after he had spoken to them in French. Bluechel later recalled that Dewey had shaken his fist and yelled insults for some reason at three Vietnamese soldiers in French while driving back to headquarters.

According to Vietnamese historian Trần Văn Giàu, Dewey’s body was dumped in a nearby river and was never recovered. But other reports had Viet Minh troops dumping his body in a well and then burying it elsewhere in a small village after it was learned that he was an American. Reportedly, Ho Chi Minh sent a letter of condolence about Dewey’s death to U.S. President Harry S. Truman while also ordering a search for the colonel’s body. Ho also offered the large sum of 5000 piasters for the return of the Major’s body.

While it may have been another decade before the US was “officially” involved in Vietnam, Dewey was really the first of the more than 58,000 troops who paid the ultimate price there. Dewey is not listed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. because the United States Department of Defense has ruled that the war officially started, from a U.S. perspective, on November 1, 1955, after the U.S. took over following the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu

Silver Star
Legion of Merit with Oak Leaf Cluster
French Croix de Guerre
French Legion of Honor Chevalier
Tunsian Order of Nicham-el-Oftikhar​

 

[BarnBuster]

"The 888-page Warren Commission report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is released September 27, 1964 after a 10-month investigation, concluding that there was no conspiracy in the assassination, either domestic or international, and that Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin, acted alone. The President’s commission, headed by Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, also found that Jack Ruby, the nightclub owner who murdered Oswald on live national television, had no prior contact with Oswald.

According to the report, the bullets that killed President Kennedy and injured Texas Governor John Connally were fired by Oswald in three shots from a rifle pointed out of a sixth floor window in the Texas School Book Depository. Oswald's life, including his visit to the Soviet Union, was described in detail, but the report made no attempt to analyse his motives.

Despite its seemingly firm conclusions, the report failed to silence conspiracy theories surrounding the event, and in 1978 the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded in a preliminary report that Kennedy was "probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy" that may have involved multiple shooters and organised crime.

The committee's findings, as with the findings of the Warren Commission, continue to be widely disputed. Famed director Oliver Stone highlighted several of the shortcomings of the Warren Report in his highly controversial and disputed film ‘JFK’ (1991) starring Kevin Costner and Gary Oldman."

https://time.com/3422341/the-warren-commission-report/
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-WARRENCOMMISSIONREPORT/pdf/GPO-WARRENCOMMISSIONREPORT.pdf

 

[too larry]

"The 888-page Warren Commission report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is released September 27, 1964 after a 10-month investigation, concluding that there was no conspiracy in the assassination, either domestic or international, and that Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin, acted alone. The President’s commission, headed by Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, also found that Jack Ruby, the nightclub owner who murdered Oswald on live national television, had no prior contact with Oswald.

According to the report, the bullets that killed President Kennedy and injured Texas Governor John Connally were fired by Oswald in three shots from a rifle pointed out of a sixth floor window in the Texas School Book Depository. Oswald's life, including his visit to the Soviet Union, was described in detail, but the report made no attempt to analyse his motives.

Despite its seemingly firm conclusions, the report failed to silence conspiracy theories surrounding the event, and in 1978 the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded in a preliminary report that Kennedy was "probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy" that may have involved multiple shooters and organised crime.

The committee's findings, as with the findings of the Warren Commission, continue to be widely disputed. Famed director Oliver Stone highlighted several of the shortcomings of the Warren Report in his highly controversial and disputed film ‘JFK’ (1991) starring Kevin Costner and Gary Oldman."

https://time.com/3422341/the-warren-commission-report/
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-WARRENCOMMISSIONREPORT/pdf/GPO-WARRENCOMMISSIONREPORT.pdf

I have a copy. {I used to have a real bad thrift store problem, but I'm doing better now}

But the best explanation of the actual shooting {which I read in a book who's name eludes me at the moment. Writer was a ballistics expert hired by the Warren Commission, maybe named Lee or Lane} But anyway, the secret service in the follow car had the prototype M16's, including their habit of discharging when bumped. The two agents were sitting on the top of the back seat. When the first shot was fired, they both jumped up, then sat down hard as the driver took off. Agent George Hickey's rifle discharged, blowing the top of JFK's head off. The xrays show little balls of metal through out the brain, meaning the bullet shattered on impact, some of it melting into round balls. So a high speed projectile from the M16, not the big bulky slow bullets fired by LHO's old bolt action carbine.

Johnson made the SS ride a quarter mile behind him when he was on his ranch.

 

[too larry]

^^^^^ Years after I read that, there was a movie and maybe a book with the same plot line. George Hickey sued and won an undisclosed amount of money.

 

[lokie]

1803

Ohio became the 17th state in the United States





1867

Nebraska became the 37th state in the United States.

 

[too larry]

The College of Rock and Roll Knowledge
9 hrs ·
Picturesque Matchstickable Messages from the Status Quo, the debut UK album by Status Quo, was released on Sept. 27, 1968. The US album title was shortened to “Messages from the Status Quo”.

The album's lead single, “Pictures of Matchstick Men", was originally intended to be a b-side to “Gentleman Joe's Sidewalk Café". They made the right choice as it remains the band's major hit single in the US, where it reached #12. It reached #7 in the UK and #8 in Canada. The second and third singles, "Black Veils of Melancholy" and "Ice in the Sun", didn’t do nearly as well.

Despite the success of its lead single, the album failed to make the charts. How many of you bought the LP because of the single? What were your impressions of the rest of the album?

Happy 51st Birthday to Status Quo’s debut album!! RIP Rick Parfitt.

 

[too larry]

The College of Rock and Roll Knowledge
13 hrs ·
Yusuf / Cat Stevens released his sixth LP "Catch Bull at Four" on Sept. 27, 1972. In the US it spent three weeks at number one on Billboard's album chart. The title is taken from one of the Ten Bulls of Zen.

The album only had one top 20 singles which was the song "Sitting." It reached #16 on the Hot 100 Charts. It was song about meditation, and the apprehensions that may result from the experiences involving Self-Realization.

Some people were very surprised that the LP did so well without having a huge single. Do you remember the first time you heard this record and what your thoughts of it were?

Happy 47th Birthday to Cat Stevens LP "Catch Bull at Four"!!

 

[BarnBuster]

​

The discovery of penicillin, one of the world’s first antibiotics, marks a true turning point in human history — when doctors finally had a tool that could completely cure their patients of deadly infectious diseases.

Many school children can recite the basics. Penicillin was discovered in London in September of 1928. As the story goes, Dr. Alexander Fleming, the bacteriologist on duty at St. Mary’s Hospital, returned from a summer vacation in Scotland to find a messy lab bench and a good deal more.

Upon examining some colonies of Staphylococcus aureus, Dr. Fleming noted that a mold called Penicillium notatum had contaminated his Petri dishes. After carefully placing the dishes under his microscope, he was amazed to find that the mold prevented the normal growth of the staphylococci.

It took Fleming a few more weeks to grow enough of the persnickety mold so that he was able to confirm his findings. His conclusions turned out to be phenomenal: there was some factor in the Penicillium mold that not only inhibited the growth of the bacteria but, more important, might be harnessed to combat infectious diseases.

As Dr. Fleming famously wrote about that red-letter date: “When I woke up just after dawn on September 28, 1928, I certainly didn’t plan to revolutionize all medicine by discovering the world’s first antibiotic, or bacteria killer. But I guess that was exactly what I did.”

Fourteen years later, in March 1942, Anne Miller became the first civilian patient to be successfully treated with penicillin, lying near death at New Haven Hospital in Connecticut, after miscarrying and developing an infection that led to blood poisoning.

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1945 was awarded jointly to Sir Alexander Fleming, Ernst Boris Chain and Sir Howard Walter Florey "for the discovery of penicillin and its curative effect in various infectious diseases."

https://www.sciencehistory.org/historical-profile/alexander-fleming
https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/flemingpenicillin.html
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/the-real-story-behind-the-worlds-first-antibiotic

 

[tangerinegreen555]

I have a copy. {I used to have a real bad thrift store problem, but I'm doing better now}

But the best explanation of the actual shooting {which I read in a book who's name eludes me at the moment. Writer was a ballistics expert hired by the Warren Commission, maybe named Lee or Lane} But anyway, the secret service in the follow car had the prototype M16's, including their habit of discharging when bumped. The two agents were sitting on the top of the back seat. When the first shot was fired, they both jumped up, then sat down hard as the driver took off. Agent George Hickey's rifle discharged, blowing the top of JFK's head off. The xrays show little balls of metal through out the brain, meaning the bullet shattered on impact, some of it melting into round balls. So a high speed projectile from the M16, not the big bulky slow bullets fired by LHO's old bolt action carbine.

Johnson made the SS ride a quarter mile behind him when he was on his ranch.

You have a copy of the Warren report?



It's not just 1 book and it's 99.9% accurate, what they messed up was later proven by computer animation in the '80's.

There are really no mysteries left. Oswald was a nut kinda like all the mass shooters.

 

[Singlemalt]

On Sept. 22, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued a preliminary draft of the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves in territory that remained in rebellion on Jan. 1, 1863.

Though he was personally opposed to the institution of slavery, Abraham Lincoln had no intention of abolishing it when he became president. He believed the Constitution “forbade me to practically indulge my primary abstract judgment on the moral question of slavery,” and he knew that any abolitionist act would likely be struck down by the courts.

His original aim for the Civil War was simply to preserve the Union rather than end slavery. But as the war dragged on, Lincoln “came to the conclusion that the only way to restore the Union was to wage war not only against Confederate armies, but also against slavery itself,” according to Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer.

Lincoln drafted an act to free the slaves and introduced it to his Cabinet in a July 22, 1862, meeting. Lincoln was determined to issue it; he “wanted the advice of his Cabinet on the style of the Proclamation, not its substance,” according to the Library of Congress.

Secretary of State William Seward suggested that Lincoln wait until a Union victory to announce the Emancipation Proclamation so that it wouldn’t be interpreted as “a cry for help—our last shriek on the retreat.”

Lincoln continued revising the proclamation over the next two months. Finally, on Sept. 22, five days after the Union won an important victory at Antietam, Lincoln released the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. It called for slaves in rebelling states to be freed effective on Jan. 1, 1863; it effectively gave rebelling states 100 days to surrender or have slavery abolished.

It stated “all person held as slaves within any State, or any designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever, free.”

Lincoln issued a revised Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1. As no rebelling states had surrendered, it ordered that all 3 million slaves there be freed. It exempted slaves states fighting for the Union (Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware, plus the counties that were forming West Virginia) and rebel territory that was already under Union control (Tennessee and parts of Louisiana, including New Orleans).

The Emancipation Proclamation therefore had little immediate impact because it covered almost exclusively territory where the Union had no authority. Seward remarked, “We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free.”

Lincoln made this decision because he did not wish to upset border states loyal to the Union and because he knew that he did not have the constitutional authority to emancipate slaves in Union territory, explains Allen C. Guelzo for the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. The proclamation was carefully worded as a war powers act under which Lincoln invoked his authority as commander-in-chief; this authority could only be applied to rebelling states. Had Lincoln attempted to free slaves in Union territory, the proclamation likely would have been struck down by the Supreme Court.

Knowing the Emancipation Proclamation was not strong enough to permanently end the institution of slavery, Lincoln pushed the Radical Republican-controlled Congress to pass a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery. Congress passed the amendment before the end of the war, and it was ratified in December 1865.

The Emancipation Proclamation is sometimes criticized as an empty gesture that did not immediately free a single slave or change the status of blacks in America. However, upon its signing, it did free tens of thousands of slaves in areas occupied by Union troops, such as the Sea Islands off South Carolina and parts of Florida. Furthermore, slaves would be freed anytime Union forces took control of rebel territory.

It also authorized the Union army to recruit black soldiers, which had previously been unofficially practiced by some commanders, but not on a large scale. Nearly 200,000 blacks would fight in the war, representing about a tenth of the overall army.

The most lasting legacy of the Emancipation Proclamation is its symbolic importance. “Although the Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery in the nation, it did fundamentally transform the character of the war,” says the National Archives’ Our Documents project. “After January 1, 1863, every advance of Federal troops expanded the domain of freedom. … From the first days of the Civil War, slaves had acted to secure their own liberty. The Emancipation Proclamation confirmed their insistence that the war for the Union must become a war for freedom. It added moral force to the Union cause and strengthened the Union both militarily and politically.”

Do you know anything about this painting? Artist, etc? Absolutely bizarre, makes Abe look like a psycho hoarder, lol

 

[BarnBuster]

You have a copy of the Warren report?

View attachment 4401067

It's not just 1 book and it's 99.9% accurate, what they messed up was later proven by computer animation in the '80's.

There are really no mysteries left. Oswald was a nut kinda like all the mass shooters.

I think the "report" was one volume and the "hearings/testimonies/evidence/etc" were the other 20 some volumes

 

[BarnBuster]

Do you know anything about this painting? Artist, etc? Absolutely bizarre, makes Abe look like a psycho hoarder, lol

lol, bizarre was why I chose it

https://www.friendsofthelincolncollection.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/LL_1969-03.pdf
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1542-734X.1998.00059.x

 

[too larry]

You have a copy of the Warren report?. . . . .

Not the whole thing, just the main volume.

 

[too larry]

The College of Rock and Roll Knowledge
6 hrs ·
Hey Jude” by The Beatles began a nine week run at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart on Sept. 28, 1968. This would be the longest run on top of the American singles chart a Beatles single achieved.

And the history behind the song….In May 1968, John Lennon and his wife Cynthia Lennon separated because of John's affair with Yoko Ono. The following month, Paul McCartney drove out to visit Cynthia and Lennon's son, Julian, at Kenwood, the family's home in Weybridge. Cynthia had been part of the Beatles' social circle since before the band's rise to fame in 1963. McCartney has said that he found it "a bit much for them suddenly to be personae non gratae and out of my life". Cynthia Lennon recalled of McCartney's surprise visit: "I was touched by his obvious concern for our welfare ... On the journey down he composed 'Hey Jude' in the car. I will never forget Paul's gesture of care and concern in coming to see us."

The song's original title was "Hey Jules", and it was intended to comfort Julian Lennon from the stress of his parents' separation. McCartney has also said, "I knew it was not going to be easy for him", and that he changed the name to "Jude" "because I thought that sounded a bit better".

It was the #1 song, 51 years ago today. Is "Hey Jude" one of your favorite Beatles' songs?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_MjCqQoLLA

 

[pabloesqobar]

Do you know anything about this painting? Artist, etc? Absolutely bizarre, makes Abe look like a psycho hoarder, lol

And made a poor choice when it came to hanging the flag. Same with the bust of that poor bloke.

Maybe he had it coming.

 

[BarnBuster]

"Early on the morning of Sept. 29, 1982, a tragic, medical mystery began with a sore throat and a runny nose. It was then that Mary Kellerman, a 12-year-old girl from Elk Grove Village, a suburb of Chicago, told her mother and father about her symptoms. They gave her one extra-strength Tylenol capsule that, unbeknownst to them, was laced with the highly poisonous potassium cyanide. Mary was dead by 7 a.m. Within a week, her death would panic the entire nation. And only months later, it changed the way we purchase and consume over-the-counter medications.

That same day, a 27-year-old postal worker named Adam Janus of Arlington Heights, Illinois, died of what was initially thought to be a massive heart attack but turned out to be cyanide poisoning as well. His brother and sister-in-law, Stanley, 25, and Theresa, 19, of Lisle, Illinois, rushed to his home to console their loved ones. Both experienced throbbing headaches, a not uncommon response to a death in the family and each took a Tylenol extra-strength capsule or two from the same bottle Adam had used earlier in the day. Stanley died that very day and Theresa died two days later.

Over the next few days, three more strange deaths occurred: 35-year-old Mary McFarland of Elmhurst, Illinois, 35-year-old Paula Prince of Chicago, and 27-year-old Mary Weiner of Winfield, Illinois. All of them, it turned out, took Tylenol shortly before they died.

It was at this point, early October of 1982, that investigators made the connection between the poisoning deaths and Tylenol, the best-selling, non-prescription pain reliever sold in the United States at that time. The gelatin-based capsules were especially popular because they were slick and easy to swallow. Unfortunately, each victim swallowed a Tylenol capsule laced with A lethal dose of cyanide.

McNeil Consumer Products, a subsidiary of the health care giant, Johnson & Johnson, manufactured Tylenol. To its credit, the company took an active role with the media in issuing mass warning communications and immediately called for a massive recall of the more than 31 million bottles of Tylenol in circulation. Tainted capsules were discovered in early October in a few other grocery stores and drug stores in the Chicago area, but, fortunately, they had not yet been sold or consumed. McNeill and Johnson & Johnson offered replacement capsules to those who turned in pills already purchased and a reward for anyone with information leading to the apprehension of the individual or people involved in these random murders.

The case continued to be confusing to the police, the drug maker and the public at large. For example, Johnson & Johnson quickly established that the cyanide lacing occurred after cases of Tylenol left the factory. Someone, police hypothesized, must have taken bottles off the shelves of local grocers and drug stores in the Chicago area, laced the capsules with poison, and then returned the restored packages to the shelves to be purchased by the unknowing victims.

To this day, however, the perpetrators of these murders have never been found.

One man, James Lewis, claiming to be the Tylenol killer wrote a “ransom” letter to Johnson & Johnson demanding $1 million in exchange for stopping the poisonings. After a lengthy cat and mouse game, police and federal investigators determined that Lewis lived in New York and had no demonstrable links to the Chicago events. That said, he was charged with extortion and sentenced to 20 years in prison. He was released in 1995 after serving only 13 years.

Other “copy-cat” poisonings, involving Tylenol and other over-the-counter medications, cropped up again in the 1980s and early 1990s but these events were never as dramatic or as deadly as the 1982 Chicago-area deaths. Conspiracy theories about motives and suspects for all these heinous acts continue to be bandied about on the Internet to this day.

Before the 1982 crisis, Tylenol controlled more than 35 percent of the over-the-counter pain reliever market; only a few weeks after the murders, that number plummeted to less than 8 percent. The dire situation, both in terms of human life and business, made it imperative that the Johnson & Johnson executives respond swiftly and authoritatively.

For example, Johnson & Johnson developed new product protection methods and ironclad pledges to do better in protecting their consumers in the future. Working with FDA officials, they introduced a new tamper-proof packaging, which included foil seals and other features that made it obvious to a consumer if foul play had transpired. These packaging protections soon became the industry standard for all over-the-counter medications. The company also introduced price reductions and a new version of their pills — called the “caplet” — a tablet coated with slick, easy-to-swallow gelatin but far harder to tamper with than the older capsules which could be easily opened, laced with a contaminant, and then placed back in the older non-tamper-proof bottle.

Within a year, and after an investment of more than $100 million, Tylenol’s sales rebounded to its healthy past and it became, once again, the nation’s favorite over-the-counter pain reliever. Critics who had prematurely announced the death of the brand Tylenol were now praising the company’s handling of the matter. Indeed, the Johnson & Johnson recall became a classic case study in business schools across the nation.

In 1983, the U.S. Congress passed what was called “the Tylenol bill,” making it a federal offense to tamper with consumer products. In 1989, the FDA established federal guidelines for manufacturers to make all such products tamper-proof.

Sadly, the tragedies that resulted from the Tylenol poisonings can never be undone. But their deaths did inspire a series of important moves to make over-the-counter medications safer (albeit never 100 percent safe) for the hundreds of millions of people who buy them every year."

https://www.thecriminalcode.com/index.php/2019/01/29/the-tylenol-murders-unsolved-or-looking-in-the-wrong-places/
https://patch.com/illinois/chicago/tylenol-murders-still-unsolved-after-34-years

 

[too larry]

The College of Rock and Roll Knowledge
6 hrs ·
Billy Joel released his fifth LP "The Stranger" on September 29, 1977. His four previous albums had been moderately successful, but "The Stranger" became Joel's true critical and commercial breakthrough, spending six weeks at #2 on the U.S. album charts. (It could never beat out the soundtrack from "Saturday Night Fever"). It is his best-selling non-compilation album to date, and was ranked number 70 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

Singles released from the album include "Just the Way You Are" (which won the Grammy for both Record of the Year and Song of the Year), the acoustic ballad "She's Always A Woman," the mildly controversial "Only the Good Die Young," and "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)," which later lent its title to Movin' Out, an acclaimed hit Broadway musical based on Billy Joel's work. This album overtook Simon and Garfunkel's Bridge over Troubled Water to become the best-selling album on the Columbia Records imprint at the time.

For many this was the first album by Billy that they ever heard let alone bought. We gotta ask, were you a fan of his work prior to this LP?

Happy 42nd Birthday to "The Stranger"!!