All Things in Moderation

1975 – The Scottish pop band The Bay City Rollers makes their US debut on a short-lived ABC television show called Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell. The BCR had already become a teen phenomenon in the UK, inspiring scenes reminiscent of the Beatles from a decade earlier with their biggest hit and number one, Saturday Night. As it turns out, however, neither the Rollers nor the Cosell show have the same staying power of the Beatles, as SNL with Howard Cosell is cancelled after only 3 months (opening the way for NBC’s Saturday Night to change its name and go on to make history) and the Bay City Rollers themselves fade soon thereafter. But their biggest hit still makes the occasional pop culture appearance:

1973 – Wimbledon’s two time reigning women’s champion Billie Jean King defeats former Wimbledon men’s champion Bobby Riggs in a much anticipated exhibition tennis match dubbed “The Battle of the Sexes”. The 55-year old Riggs, who had been openly contemptuous of women’s tennis, had challenged the 28-year old King the previous year, a challenge that King had ignored until Riggs trounced the women’s leading money winner Margaret Court 6-1, 6-2 in the first (and long since forgotten) first battle of the sexes. Once King accepts the challenge, the match quickly becomes one of the most hyped sporting events in history, being staged in the Houston Astrodome in front of a record crowd of over 30,000 people, along with an international television audience. King beats Riggs fairly easily in straight sets, 6-4, 6-3, 6-3. The match has long been hailed as an iconic moment in the history of the women’s liberation movement, but ESPN recently raised question about the event, alleging in an Outside The Lines broadcast that Riggs, a notorious gambler and hustler, was involved with the mob and in fact threw the match.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUCI6jb8YAQ

1519 – Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan sets out from Spain in an effort to find a western passage through the Atlantic to the Spice Islands in Indonesia. Magellan will eventually find the passage after probing the South American coast, becoming the first European explorer to pass through the Atlantic to the Pacific through what will come to be known as the Straits of Magellan at the southern tip of South America. One of Magellan’s 3 ships to pass through the straits will eventually make it all the way back to Spain, the first ship to circumnavigate the globe, although it will do so sans Magellan himself, who is killed in the Philippines, the victim of a poison arrow strike.

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