By Edwin Cooney
The intense urgency Americans felt in the wake of the April
15th Patriot’s Day bombing evidenced by the myriad of news stories
explaining it all, invites free people to speculate once again on how the news
reflects and affects the national mood.
Invariably columnists, talk show hosts of all political stripes, big
shots, and everyday folk are expressing their feelings on every aspect of the
Boston tragedy.
There are many among us who will insist that the creators of
the events which are published or broadcast as news are ultimately the ones who
benefit the most. For years,
people have even advocated that we’d be better off if good rather than bad news
dominated the headlines. However, the late commentator Paul Harvey asserted on
numerous occasions that people wouldn’t buy newspapers that publish only good
news. I totally concur with Mr.
Harvey in that observation and assert further that we’re most fortunate that
bad news is really good news.
News, after all, is the reporting of the extraordinary, the shocking and
the abnormal. Hence, so long as
bad news remains newsworthy, we’re still in pretty good shape if you ask me!
Still, since all our nerves are a bit raw in the wake of
such recent news stories as North Korea and Boston, I thought it might be fun
and enlightening to examine only the good news that occurred on a particular
date. So, why not go for today’s
date? Here they are, my top ten
good news stories from April 29ths past:
1707: The Parliaments of England and Scotland create the Act
of Union and Great Britain is born;
1784: Mozart’s Sonata in B Flat premieres in Vienna;
1813: Rubber is patented by J. F. Hummel of Philadelphia;
1845: Macon B. Allen and Robert Morris, Jr. open the first
black law firm in America;
1852: Peter Roget’s first thesaurus is published;
1894: “Coxey’s Army” arrives in Washington, D.C. from
Massillon, Ohio to protest policies of the Grover Cleveland administration it
believes are sustaining unemployment and Jacob Coxey is arrested for
trespassing on the grass of Capitol Hill;
1913: Gideon Sundback, a Swedish born engineer of Hoboken,
New Jersey, patents the
all-purpose zipper;
1927: Construction of the Spirit of St. Louis, the monoplane
Charles Lindbergh will fly across the Atlantic just 22 days later, is
completed;
1983: Harold Washington is inaugurated as the first black
mayor of Chicago;
1991: Wrecking cranes begin destruction of the Berlin Wall
at the Brandenburg Gate.
So, how do you assess what you see above? Is any of the above less than
newsworthy? There are plenty of
mean, violent and despicable occurrences that took place on April 29th. Of course, I’ve just sanitized the
news; however it might interest and even please you to know that it wasn’t
easy. There were three April 29th
new stories that I found difficult to keep out of my top ten.
On April 29th, 1553, a Flemish woman introduced
the English to the practice of starching fine linen garments. Now if you snicker at that, ask yourself
the following question: Could British nobility have been nearly as
self-important in recent years had they not been able to put starch in their
collars?
The second story I struggled to keep out of my top 10 took
place in Taylor, Texas back on April 29th, 1905. On that mid spring day, Taylorites
recorded two separate rainfalls in ten minutes. Now, that’s some Texas weather, wouldn’t you say!
The third news story it was tough to eliminate took place in
1995 in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada.
On that historic day, butchers created the world’s longest sausage. It was 28.77 miles long. It would seem that world hunger must
have been dealt at least a temporary setback that April 29th!
As for the news worthiness of the topics in the stories I
selected (the birth of the United Kingdom, the cultural significance of
Mozart’s genius, the vital uses of rubber in our daily lives, the precision of
language and literacy, the advancement toward opportunity to those once denied
it, the daring of the lone adventurer during the early stages of air travel,
and the satisfying destruction of that outrageous tyranny once practiced by the
Soviets), there isn’t a doubt.
Each is a story of accomplishment absent meanness or violence, in some
cases, in the face of considerable challenge. Even more, the achievements of all of these stories were and
remain in the public interest.
That to me constitutes “good news!”
Since columnists and commentators these days are expected to
single out a top news story for the public to consider, I’d select Gideon
Sundback’s accomplishment.
The New York Times may publish “all the news that’s fit to
print,” but it seems to me, that the very best news is news you can use. Hence
I vote for the invention of the all-purpose zipper as the top story of all
April 29th's. Important
as these other topics are to all humanity, everyday and in every way, it’s
important that my trousers keep me secure. Thanks, Mr. Sundback. Your achievement is not only
newsworthy, it’s personal.
News I can use trumps anybody’s views if you ask me!
Any takers, my fellow potential newsmakers?
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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