On This Day: August 26

On This Day for August 26 for Britannica. I'm Kurt Heintz.

Today we’re looking at:
• the life of an activist,
• a hero’s loss, and
• a popped collar.


Today’s first anniversary is an opportunity—an opportunity to recognize the legacy of Amelia Boynton Robinson, a civil rights activist who died on this day in 2015 at the remarkable age of 104. Boynton Robinson was on the front lines at the first Selma March on March 7, 1965, when demonstrators intended to walk from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery, Alabama’s state capital, to protest police brutality and disenfranchisement of African Americans. The group was stopped on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, a bridge out of Selma where a group of white, armed sheriff’s deputies and deputized “possemen” were waiting for them. Boynton Robinson was clubbed unconscious on the bridge, and the photographs of her lying unconscious on the concrete outraged observers upon publication. That day, known as “Bloody Sunday” in the U.S., became a turning point in an increasing national response to racial injustice.

Amelia and her first husband, Samuel Boynton, worked for many years to help African Americans circumvent the obstacles set forth by local and state governments and register to vote. In 1954, they met Martin Luther King, Jr., and began hosting civil rights leaders in their home. Boynton Robinson was a guest of honour when U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law on August 6, 1965, and she was an invited guest when President Barack Obama gave the State of the Union address in January 2015.

To round out this story, on March 7, 2015, Amelia Boynton Robinson crossed the same bridge again. This time it was peaceful, a march made with President Obama to mark the 50th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday.”

On this day in 1429, Joan of Arc and her soldiers arrived on the outskirts of Paris. Joan was a peasant girl who, believing she was acting under divine influence, led the French to an incredible victory at Orléans that repelled an English attempt to conquer France during the Hundred Years’ War. Known for her bravery in battle as well as her kindness and charity to the poor, Joan of Arc became perhaps France’s greatest national heroine.

Today in history, though, marks one of Joan’s few failures in battle. After her win at Orléans, Joan felt it was essential that the dauphin, the King's son, go to Rheims and be crowned king, and then she urged him to proceed to Paris and force the city to recognize him as King Charles VII. But Joan and her troops were beaten back, and Joan herself was injured. She continued to encourage her men from the sidelines, but they were eventually forced to abandon the attack. Though Joan attempted to lead another charge the next day, she was ordered by Charles’s council to retreat.

A year later Joan was captured by the English and their French sympathizers, accused of heresy, and burned at the stake. She was canonized by Pope Benedict XV on May 16, 1920, and the French Parliament declared an annual festival in her honor in June of that year.

And now, some Fast Facts for August 26. I’m Emily Goldstein.

The Beatles released their hit single “Hey Jude” on this day in 1968, which was ranked in 2013 as Billboard’s 10th biggest song of all time.

“It’s not spaghetti, it’s linguini!” Neil Simon was an American playwright, screenwriter, and TV writer. He died at age 91 on this day in 2018. Simon was one of the most popular playwrights in the history of American theatre, known for plays like The Odd Couple—the home of that “linguini” quote—and many more memorable lines.

On this day in 1936, the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty established Egypt as a sovereign state after 50 years of British occupation.

The Nineteenth Amendment became a part of the U.S. Constitution on this day in 1920, officially extending the right to vote to women. The amendment is a short one, and it reads, in full: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” The Nineteenth Amendment was not a perfect fix to sexism by any means. Black women were often prevented from exercising their right to vote, and Native American and Asian American women were long denied citizenship and therefore had no right to vote. Still, the amendment was an important step toward political equality for women in the United States if not the final step.

At 1:00 PM on this day in 1883 came the first blast in a series of increasingly violent explosions in the eruption of the volcano Krakatoa in Indonesia. An hour later the black cloud of ash rose 17 miles (27 km) above Krakatoa, but the climax of the eruption was reached at 10:00 AM the next morning, with tremendous explosions that were heard up to 2,200 miles away in Australia and propelled ash as high as 50 miles up into the atmosphere. Krakatoa’s eruption and the resulting tsunami ultimately killed 36,000 people. And ash from the eruption circled the Earth and is thought to have cooled the planet to some degree. In truth, however, Krakatoa was only the second deadliest volcanic eruption in recorded history. Check out On This Day for April 10th to hear about the number one blast.

Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I—who steered his country into the mainstream of African politics after World War II and oversaw its entrance into the League of Nations and the United Nations—died, possibly assassinated, on this day in 1975.

It wouldn’t be Fast Facts without wishing a few famous figures happy birthday. Today our virtual birthday cake is split between: French chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (born this day in 1743); Albert, Prince Consort of Queen Victoria of Great Britain (1819); American art collector Peggy Guggenheim (1898); mathematical physicist Edward Witten (1951); and comedic and dramatic actress Melissa McCarthy (1970).

On this day in 1934, Dorothy Thompson arrived in Paris, having left Berlin the previous night. She was the first American journalist expelled from Germany by Adolph Hitler.

Thompson had been trying to get an interview with Hitler since 1923, when the Beer Hall Putsch—a failed government coup—landed him in prison. Her wish was fulfilled in 1931, but it couldn’t be the free-flowing or the damning conversation she may have imagined: Thompson was only allowed to ask Hitler three questions, and they had to be approved beforehand. The interview was published in Cosmopolitan magazine.

THOMPSON: "When I finally walked into Adolf Hitler's salon in the Kaiserhof Hotel, I was convinced that I was meeting the future dictator of Germany. In something less than fifty seconds I was quite sure that I was not.…He is formless, almost faceless: a man whose countenance is a caricature; a man whose framework seems cartilaginous, without bones. He is inconsequential and voluble, ill-poised, insecure—the very prototype of the Little Man."

The Cosmopolitan interview gained so much traction that Thompson turned it into a book, called I Met Hitler!, in 1932. Its publication came just in time; a few years later, critique of Hitler was a punishable offense. In 1934 (as we recognize in today’s anniversary) Thompson was required to leave Germany.

And so on this day in 1934, Thompson wrote a piece about her expulsion, which The New York Times published the next day:

THOMPSON: “My offense was to think that Hitler is just an ordinary man, after all. This is a crime against the reigning cult in Germany, which says Mr. Hitler is a Messiah sent by God…if you are a German, you can be sent to jail. I, fortunately, am an American, so I merely was sent to Paris.”

Being exiled from Germany did not stop Thompson from investigating Hitler and fascism. Back in the United States she started a one-woman campaign against Nazism, continually criticizing the German government in her syndicated column “On the Record,” frequent NBC radio broadcasts, and a monthly column in the Ladies Home Journal. In 1939 Thompson protested a rally of the German-American Bund, a pro-Nazi group, by laughing loudly from the crowd and yelling at the speaker; she was escorted out by men who, according to different sources, were either police protecting her against angry audience members or uniformed guards attempting to subdue her.

Dorothy Thompson was one of America’s primary early voices against Nazism and quickly became a national icon. In 1937 she was the first female commencement speaker at her alma mater, Syracuse University; she was also awarded honorary degrees from Tufts, Columbia, and Dartmouth. In 1939 she graced the cover of TIME magazine, where she was named the second most-influential woman in the United States, after First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. And when moviegoers in 1942 watched Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn’s romantic comedy Woman of the Year, they recognized Hepburn’s spitfire journalist as a facsimile of Dorothy Thompson.

Our final story today may be better suited for adults. Listener discretion is advised. 18-year-old Jennifer Levin was found dead in Central Park on this day in 1986, beginning the infamous “Preppy Murder” trial in New York City.

Jennifer had been out with friends in Dorrian’s Red Hand the night before, a bar only a few blocks from the park. She was seen leaving around 4:30 AM with an acquaintance: 19-year-old Robert Chambers. About two hours later that morning a cyclist discovered her body: bruised, cut, bitten, and strangled to death.

When police visited Chambers, wondering about the last person to see Jennifer alive, he answered the door with a scratched face. At first, he said the scratches were from his cat—but as his interrogation continued, his story changed. Chambers claimed that he and Jennifer had been having “rough sex” in the park when she became violent; trying to push her off, he had “accidentally” killed her. Her official cause of death was strangulation.

Chambers’s trial, which lasted almost three months, gripped newspapers and tabloids. The case was presented as an aberrant act of violence between two rich and privileged young people embroiled in a toxic culture of underage drinking and casual sex. Though it was branded as the “Preppy Murder” case, in reality neither Chambers nor Levin were as wealthy as they may been portrayed. Though Chambers had attended several different prep schools, he had done so on scholarship and frequently faced disciplinary action for selling drugs. Jennifer had been working as a restaurant hostess and living with her family while waiting to begin her first term at a junior college in Boston.

Chambers’s defense attorney, Jack Litman, sought to put blame on the victim. He branded Jennifer as promiscuous and sexually deviant, trying and failing to access her private diary, which he claimed was likely quote-unquote a “sex journal.” Media coverage jumped at the chance to include the salacious, alleged details of the case, even if they did originate from Chambers—and even if Chambers and Levin were both teenagers. At times it seemed, from Litman’s and the tabloids’ perspectives, at least, that Jennifer’s sexual history was on trial instead of Chambers’s actions.

After nine days of a deadlocked jury, Chambers was offered a plea bargain. He pled guilty to the charge of manslaughter in the first degree and was sentenced to 5 to 15 years in prison. Does all this sound like a prime-time procedural crime drama to you? Then you may understand how some TV writers get their plots started.

While imprisoned, Chambers was disciplined for drug misdemeanors and assault, and he ultimately served the entire 15 years. In 2007 Chambers was rearrested for selling drugs, pled guilty, and was sentenced to another 19 years in prison.

That’s it for this episode of On This Day. If you’re still curious about Amelia Boynton Robinson, Joan of Arc, or the Preppy Killer, take a look at Britannica.com. We have the balanced and researched stories.

Thanks for listening. The voice of Dorothy Thompson was by Beth Anne Reid. Our program was written by Meg Matthias and edited by yours truly. For Britannica, I’m Kurt Heintz. And I’m Emily Goldstein.

This program is copyrighted by Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.