July 14, 2008
LACO’s 40th anniversary season is all about commemorating the past and celebrating the future. In honor of our anniversary season, we will periodically take a nostalgic look at what happened this week 40 years ago.
The week of July 14 through July 20, 1968 marked a series of milestone events and fun pop culture firsts.
On July 14, 1968, Atlanta Braves baseball great Hank Aaron hit his 500th home run in a game against the San Francisco Giants. At that time, he was only the eighth baseball player ever to hit 500 career home runs. He was also the second youngest player ever to have reached that home run benchmark.
While sports fans wildly cheered on Hank Aaron’s athletic feat, soap opera enthusiasts excitedly awaited the July 15, 1968 premiere of ABC’s “One Life to Live.” This show portrayed the socioeconomic divide between a rich family and a poor family in a Philadelphia suburb. Forty years later, “One Life to Live” is still broadcast on the ABC network.
This week in July was a particularly eventful one for the masses caught up in Beatlemania. The Beatles quirky animated film “Yellow Submarine” premiered in London on July 17, 1968. According to Beatles lore, the Fab Four were initially unenthusiastic about the animated film and participated very little in its production; actors imitated the Beatles’ voices for the film. After John, Paul, George and Ringo saw and enjoyed a rough-cut screening of “Yellow Submarine,” however, they agreed to be in a live-action epilogue sequence at the end of the film. Five days after the London premiere of the film, on July 20, 1968, Paul McCartney’s fiancée Jane Asher officially announced the end of their engagement on national TV.
Stay tuned for more installments of “this week 40 years ago.”
1 comment
Great idea -- I love this kind of stuff and will keep looking for more!