The real Hoosiers...
Gene Hackman gave an Academy Award nominating performance in the 1986 film, "Hoosiers", one of those classic rah-rah sports stories based on a real event that took place on this date in 1954...
The real game featured 2 Indiana high school teams playing for the state championship. It was the Milan Indians against the favored Muncie Central Bearcats despite Milan's 19-2 regular season record and 9 straight post-season wins. With the score tied at 30-all in the final quarter Milan's Bobby Plump held the ball at the top of the key for 4 minutes before missing a shot. The Indians kept Muncie Central from scoring on its next possession, giving Plump a shot at redemption. The senior guard promptly drained a shot at the top of the key with 18 ticks left on the clock and Milan held on for an exciting 32-30 win...
Bobby Plump became a legend with that shot and as president Roger Dickinson of the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame explains , "he could've probably been governor of this state if he wanted to". In 1999 Sports Illustrated named Milan one of the top 20 teams of the century. The sports writers of Indiana named the "Milan Miracle" the #1 sports story in Indiana history...
That's the real story that "Hoosiers" was based on. The coach's name and both schools bore fictious names in the movie and when asked, the star of the game, Bobby Plump had this to add about the authenticity of the film, "the final 18 seconds were the only thing factual in the movie about the Milan-Central game. From the time the ball was in bounds after the final timeout, the movie was accurate"...
More March 20 Memories...
1760) Boston's "Great Fire of 1760" destroys 349 shops and homes along King and Congress Streets (as a result of this fire and several others, Boston would become the 1st town in the nation to have paid fire fighters)...
1852) Harriet Beecher Stowe's book "Uncle Tom's Cabin" (subtitled "Life Among the Lowly") is published...
1865) A plan by John Wilkes Booth to abduct President Abraham Lincoln is ruined when Lincoln changes his plans, deciding not to appear at the Soldier's Home near Washington, D.C. as scheduled...
1899) Martha M. Place of Brooklyn becomes the 1st woman to be executed in the electric chair. She's put to death at Sing Sing for the murder of her stepdaughter...
1954) Milan beats Muncie Central for the Indiana state high school title in the game that the movie "Hoosiers" was based on (see feature story)...
1959) Bobby Rydell makes his TV debut on "American Bandstand"...
1961) Rickey Nelson records "Hello Mary Lou"...
1967) Twiggy makes her U.S. debut and WRKO News Director Roger Allan is one of the 1st to interview her...
1967) The Supremes release "The Happening" (and appear at a WRKO show at the Boston Arena shortly after)...
1969) John Lennon and Yoko Ono rock down the aisle in Gibraltar (to commemorate what would have been their 30th anniversary in 1999 a set of postage stamps is issued in Gibraltar)...
1972) Ringo Starr releases "Back Off, Boogaloo"...
1972) America is #1 with "A Horse with No Name"...
1973) 11 weeks after he's killed on a mercy mission, Roberto Clemente is voted into Baseball's Hall of Fame in a special election (the Puerto Rican superstar made his last hit (#3,000), a double off the Mets John Matlack on September 30, 1972. Clemente was 38 at the time of his death)...
1976) Newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst is convicted of armed robbery for her part in a San Francisco bank holdup...
1981) Jean Harris is sentenced to 15-to-life for the murder of lover Dr. Herman Tarnower (Harris is released, her sentence commuted by NY Governor Mario Cuomo after 12 years in 1992)...
1982) Joan Jett is #1 with "I Love Rock 'n' Roll"...
1987) The Food and Drug Administration approves the sale of AZT, a drug shown to prolong the lives of some AIDS patients...
1990) Gloria Estefan fractures a vertebra when a tractor trailor crashes into her tour bus (Estefan was flown by helicopter to New York City where surgeons implant 2 titanium rods to stabilize her spinal column. Gloria returns with the concept album, "Into The Light" and the hit single "Coming Out of the Dark" in 1991)...
1991) Michael Jackson announces a long-term agreement with SONY Music and Columbia Pictures to the tune of an estimated $1 billion...
1991) Eric Clapton's 4-year old son Conor dies when he falls out the window of a 53rd floor apartment in Manhattan (Clapton would win a Grammy for a song written for Conor, "Tears in Heaven")...
1995) 12 people are killed, more than 5,500 sickened when the nerve gas Sarin is released in the Tokyo subway system (terrorists belonging to a doomsday cult in Japan are responsible for the attack)...
1996) Erik and Lyle Menendez are found quilty of first-degree murder in the killing of their parents (both are serving a lifetime term in prison)...
1997) Liggett, maker of Chesterfields settles 22 state lawsuits by admitting the tobacco industry marketed cigarettes to teenagers and agreed to warn on every pack that smoking is addictive...
2000) Former Black Panther Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin aka H. Rap Brown is captured following a shootout that leaves a sheriff's deputy dead...
2004) The U.S. military charges 6 soldiers with abusing inmates at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq...
(To ensure accuracy of dates and content, multiple reference sources are used in the timeline)...
Happy Birthday To...
1920) Jazz pianist Marian McPartland...
1922) Carl Reiner...
1931) Hal Linden...
1937) Jerry ("When you're hot you're hot") Reed...
1948) Former Bruin and Hockey Hall of Fame great Bobby Orr (#4)...
1950) William Hurt...
1957) Spike Lee...
1958) Holly Hunter...
1963) Kathy Ireland...
Commentary...
Marty Ostrow comments on our weekend timeline memory that had him doing the charts for Spin Magazine: "1985 was the year I left Rolling Stone when my wife got sick. I had joined Rolling Stone in 1978 and helped develop a survey of record shops to determine best sellers in America and after months of testing the survey, the magazine ran the results and it became one of Rolling Stone's most read features". Thanks for straightening that out, Marty...
Rejoice everyone, at 1:26 this afternoon it is officially spring although you would never know it in New York where it's currently 33 degrees...
(Today is the 79th day of 2006 with 286 days remaining in the year, it's the 1st day of Spring and only 12 days until opening day)...
