All Things in Moderation

1998 – Bill Clinton becomes the first sitting president in history to testify in front of a grand jury. The testimony arises out of an earlier deposition in which Clinton had lied about having a sexual relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, prompting Independent Prosecutor Kenneth Starr to charge Clinton with perjury. Clinton’s grand jury testimony becomes infamous for his parsing the meaning of the word “is”. Asked if he was lying when he had claimed that “there’s nothing going on between us,” Clinton says “It depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is. If the—if he—if ‘is’ means is and never has been, that is not—that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement.” The whole episode leads to Clinton’s becoming only the second president to ever be impeached, although he was eventually acquitted by the Senate.

1987 – Rudolf Hess, the last living member of the Nazi inner circle, asphyxiates himself with a lamp cord in Spandau Prison. He was 93. The third highest ranking Nazi, behind Hitler and Hermann Goring, Hess was captured and imprisoned by the British in 1941 after he parachuted into Scotland in a bizarre and unauthorized attempt to negotiate a peace agreement with the British. Following WWII Hess was tried at Nuremburg with other high ranking Nazis, and was sentenced to life in prison. At the time of his death, he was the only remaining resident of Spandau Prison.

1978 – Ben Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson, and Larry Newman complete the first ever transatlantic balloon flight when they land their craft, the Double Eagle II, in a barley field in France. The flight, covering 3,233 miles and taking 137 hours, had begun in Preque Isle, Maine, and is the 18th attempt to cross the Atlantic in a balloon. The crew itself had tried and failed to achieve the feet a year earlier in the Double Eagle I.

1974 – The Night Chicago Died by UK band Paper Lace tops the US charts. The song tells the story of Al Capone’s defeat at the hands of police in a street battle on the East Side of Chicago. No such battle ever actually took place, as Capone was in fact arrested and imprisoned on tax evasion charges, and indeed there is no “East Side” of Chicago, as the center of downtown Chicago sits on the west coast of Lake Michigan. Still, the song goes Platinum in the US, with more than 1 million in sales. The song is in fact the band’s second big hit, the first being Billy Don’t Be a Hero, although it was a cover version of Billy by Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods that hit number 1 in the US.

1933 – Yankee great Lou Gehrig plays in his 1,308th consecutive game, topping the previous consecutive game record held by Everett Scott. Gehrig, known as the Iron Horse, will go on to play in 2,130 consecutive games, eventually removing himself from the lineup on May 2, 1938, in response to symptoms of what will later be diagnosed as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a rare disease that will go on to take Gehrig’s life and which, as a result, will come to more popularly be known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Gehrig’s streak, which will stand as a record for 57 years, almost came to an end 4 years earlier. Suffering from back pain on July 13, 1934, Gehrig is listed in the away game lineup as a shortstop rather than his normal first base, and after getting a hit in the top of the first inning, Gehrig is removed for a pinch runner having never played in the field.

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