September #6th in History

September 26th

1580 The Devonshire born seaman Francis Drake returned to Plymouth, in the Golden Hind, becoming the first British navigator to circumnavigate the earth. Drake plundered a few Spanish ships en-route to keep morale high!

1687 The city council of Amsterdam voted to support William of Orange's invasion of England, which became the Glorious Revolution. King James II of England (James VII of Scotland and James II of Ireland) was overthrown and William ascended the English throne as William III of England, jointly with his wife Mary II of England.

1687 The Acropolis in Athens is attacked by the Venetian army in an attempt to expel the Turks, damaging the Parthenon.

1789 Thomas Jefferson is appointed the 1st US Secretary of State.

1938 Concerned about the prospect of war with Germany (which turned out to be a year away) British civilians were issued with gas masks.

1944 Soviet forces occupy Estonia.

1949 Groundbreaking ceremony for the Hollywood sign in Hollywood, Los Angeles; old Hollywoodland sign is torn down, and reconstruction of a replacement begins with just Hollywood.

1955 Frozen Birdseye fish fingers first went on sale in Britain.

1960 Cuban leader Fidel Castro delivers a 4-hour and 29-minute long speech at the United Nations.

On 26th September 2006, facebook was opened to the general public. Users had to be aged 13 years or older and have a valid email address. Although the minimum age requirement does now vary in accordance with local laws. It was first launched to a limited membership of Harvard students on 4th February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and four of his fellow students. Its name derives from the U.S. university students directory called a face book.

26 Sep 1968
Rolling Stone Brian Jones was fined £50 with 100 guineas cost after being found guilty of possession of cannabis. The jury found him guilty, but the judge had sympathy for Jones; instead of jailing him, he fined him.

26 Sep 1967
Pink Floyd played the first of three nights at the Fillmore in San Francisco, the groups first ever live dates in the US with the original lineup featuring Syd Barrett. This initial American promotional trek had to be cut short due to Barrett's deteriorating mental health and increasingly unpredictable behaviour on stage.

ArishMell · 70-79, M

1687: Wasn't it really more of a coup than an invasion? It didn't result in a war.

Fined £50, 100 guineas cost...(Brian Jones).

That reference to guineas certainly dates it! That was a strange unit, typically used for large household furniture and appliances, but not much else. I think the "guinea" is still used in horse sales, although of course now £1.10. The Hand has not been metricated or decimalised, either, as far as I know. It's good to maintain a few eccentricities!

On Syd Barrett, I recall an interview in which one of the other band members (Dave Gilmour I think) admitted how they dropped him - rather unceremonially. he had become so unreliable thanks to alcohol and illicit drugs that one evening they simply decided not to pick their founder-member up from his home on their way to a gig.

His own career in music did not go anywhere. He released two albums but neither were successful. I do not know what he did after that; whether he found work as a session musician or themne-music composer, for example. Or worked entirely outside of music. He would presumably have received royalties from his compostions for Pink Floyd up to 1968, and they might have been enough to live on, but not in stereotypical rock-star style.

He died in his Cambridge home-town twenty years ago, in 2006, from cancer and diabetes.