On This Day: September 14

On This Day, for September 14th, by Britannica.

I’m Kurt Heintz. Today we’re looking into:

• The woman behind the cat eye and black beehive
• The beginning of the “Golden” age of television
• The activist who coined the term birth control

On this day in 1983, Amy Winehouse, the acclaimed British singer-songwriter and a favorite subject of tabloid journalism, was born in London, England.

Winehouse was born to a Jewish family and was raised primarily by her mother, a pharmacist. Early on she demonstrated an interest in the arts, but she was reportedly expelled from Sylvia Young Theatre School for wearing a forbidden nose ring. At the prestigious BRIT School, Winehouse showed ability as an actor as well as a singer, and by age 16 she was performing with jazz groups. On her critically acclaimed debut album, Frank (2003), she proved herself to be a profound lyricist, and her smoky, evocative vocals drew comparisons to legends in jazz and rhythm-and-blues Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington, and Billie Holiday.

A series of tumultuous romances followed for Winehouse, none more fevered than her on-again, off-again relationship with Blake Fielder-Civil, about whom many of the heartbreak songs were written on her next album, Back to Black. Her singing on that album, more in the vein of 1960s Motown and ’70s soul, delighted critics. A very different-looking Winehouse had begun appearing in the tabloids as the new album took off in Britain and broke through in the United States, entering the American charts at number seven, the highest debut position ever for a British woman. Stick-thin and tattooed, Winehouse began piling her jet-black hair in an enormous beehive, accompanied by heavy Cleopatra-style eye makeup.

After marrying Fielder-Civil in May 2007, Winehouse began behaving increasingly erratically and canceling shows. Her very public slide into personal chaos—marked by dramatic anorexic weight loss, drunken performances, an arrest in Norway for marijuana possession, and the incarceration of Fielder-Civil after a bar fight—culminated in January 2008 in the posting on the Internet by the Sun newspaper of a video in which Winehouse appeared to be smoking crack cocaine.

In the midst of the scandal, the 2008 Grammy Awards honored Back to Black a total of five times, including two, for best song and best recording, for the infectious track “Rehab,” written about her refusal to enter treatment for drugs and alcohol. In November 2008 she was named Best Selling Pop/Rock Female at the World Music Awards.

Although she had entered rehab, she had not remained long, and reports of substance abuse continued to follow her. In July 2009 she and Fielder-Civil divorced. Two years later Winehouse attempted a comeback tour, but it was canceled after the singer appeared to be intoxicated at the opening concert. She tragically died from alcohol poisoning on July 23rd, 2011, in London.

Her duet with Tony Bennett, “Body and Soul,” was released posthumously in 2011, and the song ultimately won a Grammy Award for best pop performance by a duo or group. It was followed later that year by Lioness: Hidden Treasures, a collection that included previously unreleased original songs, covers, and demos. The 2015 film Amy chronicled her career through the use of documentary footage and interviews with her colleagues and intimate friends. The film won an Academy Award for best documentary in 2015.

The story of Amy Winehouse is, without a doubt, a tragedy. But her triumphant legacy and beautiful voice have inspired a new generation of singers, while simultaneously acting as a cautionary tale to those who follow in her footsteps.

Stay with us, there’s more after this.

We’re back with more On This Day… I’m Meg Matthias, and these are Fast Facts for September 14th.

On this day in 1849, Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov, known chiefly for his development of the concept of the conditioned reflex, was born. He’s the man who got dogs to drool for treats when he rang a bell.

U.S. General Winfield Scott's advance on Mexico City was marked by an unbroken series of victories that culminated this day in 1847, when he entered Mexico City and ended the military phase of the Mexican-American War.

On this day in 1982, Grace Kelly—the American actress who abandoned her Hollywood career to marry Rainier III, prince of Monaco—died after suffering a stroke and losing control of the car she was driving.

Isadora Duncan was a pioneer of modern expressive dance and something of a rebel in her day, too. On this day in 1927, she died in France while her long scarf became entangled in the rear wheel of the car in which she was riding.

Elizabeth Ann Seton, the first American-born saint, was canonized by the Roman Catholic Church on this day in 1975.

In 1901, U.S. President William McKinley died eight days after being shot in Buffalo, New York. As a result, Theodore Roosevelt was sworn in on this day in 1901, making him the youngest man to serve as U.S. president—six weeks short of his 43rd birthday.

On this day in 1985, The Golden Girls, starring Betty White, Bea Arthur, Rue McClanahan, and Estelle Getty, premiered on NBC.

American dancer and actor Patrick Swayze, who was best known for his performances in the box-office hits Dirty Dancing (1987) and Ghost (1990), died in Los Angeles after battling pancreatic cancer on this day in 2009.

That was a heavy group of Fast Facts. But try this: on this day in 1814, Francis Scott Key was inspired to write The Star-Spangled Banner after witnessing Fort McHenry in Baltimore, Maryland, successfully withstand a British attack. The song is legendary, but this additional legend is also true: the melody was borrowed from a song that dates from the 1770s, called “To Anacreon in Heaven.” While it isn’t exactly a drinking song, as some people have said, there is an association between the song and good food, wine, and lively socializing.

As the story goes, “To Anacreon in Heaven” was sung at a society of well-to-do gentlemen in London who met for good meals, and that included wine. They named their society after Anacreon, and it’s said that the society’s leader often sang the song to the group. So, who was Anacreon? He was a poet from the Classical Greek age. Some of his poems praise love, wine, and revelry. Anacreon’s poetry treats these subjects with elegance. The British song “To Anacreon in Heaven,” therefore, was a celebration of good living without vulgarity. Known to Francis Scott Key, the melody was used throughout the 18th and 19th centuries with lyrics that changed with current events and popular sentiment to celebrate national heroes and political struggles, for example. Francis Scott Key wrote a different song to the same melody before he witnessed the bombardment of Fort McHenry. The tune must’ve been popular with him.

On this day in 1879, Margaret Sanger—originally named Margaret Louisa Higgins—the founder of the birth control movement in the United States, was born in Corning, New York.

The sixth of 11 children, Sanger attended Claverack College and then took a nurse’s training in New York at the White Plains Hospital and the Manhattan Eye and Ear Clinic. After a brief teaching career, she practiced obstetrical nursing on the Lower East Side of New York City, where she witnessed the relationships between poverty, uncontrolled fertility, high rates of infant and maternal mortality, and deaths from botched illegal abortions. Her experiences solidified her feelings as a feminist who believed in every woman’s right to avoid unwanted pregnancies, and she devoted herself to removing the legal barriers to publicizing the facts about contraception.

In 1912 Sanger gave up nursing to devote herself to the cause of birth control and sex education, publishing a series of articles on the topics, including “What Every Girl Should Know” for the New York Call. In 1914 she issued a short-lived magazine, The Woman Rebel, and distributed a pamphlet, Family Limitation, advocating her views. She was arrested that year for mailing materials advocating birth control—the first of many instances of harassment from the U.S. legal system. The charges were dropped in 1916.

On October 16th, in 1916, Sanger opened a birth control clinic in Brooklyn, New York—the first in the United States. She was arrested—again—and charged with maintaining a “public nuisance.” In 1917 she served 30 days in the Queens penitentiary and published the first issue of her periodical The Birth Control Review while she was incarcerated. Her time behind bars helped to publicize her cause, and, ultimately, it crystallized public opinion in favor of the birth control movement.

Sanger’s many run-ins with the law gave the issue weight in the public eye and, therefore, in the court system. In 1936 the federal courts reinterpreted the Comstock Act of 1873, which had originally classified contraceptive literature and devices as obscene materials. This new federal ruling permitted physicians to import and prescribe contraceptives—an enormous win for the time. In 1921 Sanger founded the American Birth Control League, and she served as its president until 1928. The league was one of the parent organizations of the Birth Control Federation of America, which in 1942 became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, with Sanger as honorary chairman.

Margaret Sanger’s legacy was complicated by her support of eugenics, which is the idea that selective breeding for heritable characteristics, and the conscious suppression of unfit ones, could improve future generations of humans. At the time Sanger began her work with birth control, eugenics was championed by well-known and respected scientists. She embraced eugenics, but not without qualification. Sanger went on the record to say she deplored any interpretation where “unfit” would be applied to races or religions.

Sanger believed that access to birth control should be available to people of all races. And so she also worked closely with NAACP leader W.E.B. Du Bois on the so-called “Negro Project,” which brought birth control to African American communities. She emphasized the importance of giving African Americans choices about parenthood and the number of children they wished to have.

Yet, Sanger’s support of eugenics exposed her to criticism. In 1934, Sanger praised Germany for embracing eugenics. But by 1939, she had donated money and support to defeat Hitler’s rise to power. Eugenics became widely associated with the practices of Nazi Germany during the Holocaust.

The issues of birth control and contraceptive access are still hard-fought to this day, but without Margaret Sanger, and her decades-long fight for the right to choose, we might not have anything to choose from at all.

Thanks for listening today. Whether you’re an Amy Winehouse fan, a reproductive rights advocate, or a Golden Girls stan, there’s always more to read and discover at Britannica.com. Our program today was written by Emily Goldstein and edited by myself. For Britannica, I’m Kurt Heintz. And I’m Meg Matthias.

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