Good News in History, June 1

Good News in History, June 1

70 years ago today, Namco Limited, maker of the most popular and successful arcade game systems in history was founded. With titles like Pac-Man, Tekken, Ridge-Racer, and Galaga, Namco is broadly considered to have laid the foundations for most video gaming for all time. Today, Namco no longer exists as such. It merged with the toy maker and animation studios Bandai to create Bandai Namco Entertainment. READ some milestones in the company’s history… (1955)

In 1974, Namco was able to purchase the failing Japanese subsidiary of the American arcade game company Atari for a cut-rate offer that catapulted Namco to the pre-eminent position in Japanese arcades. In 1980, Pac-Man was released, and broke through the popularity of gamers and emerged into popular culture at large, due to its abstract characters and challenging simplicity.

Galaxia, another Namco release shortly before, is historically recognized for major innovations in gaming such as RGB color graphics. In the 1980s, more hits followed, including Family Baseball, and Final Lap, one of the best-selling coin-operated arcade games ever made, as it allowed players to link together.

This dominance continued into the 1990s, even as home video gaming consoles by Nintendo, Sony, and Sega were becoming available. As these became more and more commonplace, Namco began creating titles for the Playstation and Super Nintendo consoles. However, its success gradually declined along with the waning popularity in arcade gaming, leading to a merger with Bandai in 2005 for $1.7 billion.

MORE Good News on this Day in History:

• James Clark Ross discovered the magnetic North Pole (1831)
• Andy Griffith, the actor, comedian, television producer, and writer (Andy Griffith Show, Matlock), was born in North Carolina (1926–2012)
• Marilyn Monroe, the film actress known for her sex appeal brought to life in the comedy Some Like It Hot, was born as Norma Jean Mortenson in Los Angeles (1926–1962)
• The Heimlich maneuver for rescuing choking victims was published in the journal Emergency Medicine (1974)

530 years ago today, a Scottish friar named John Cor received payment for the making of Scotch whisky, the oldest reference to the famous drink in existence. On the Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, a large collection of financial records dating from 1326 to 1708, there reads alongside an entry for a sum of money the memo “to John Cor by order of the King, to make aqua vitae VIII bolls of malt.”

Eight bolls of whisky would have been the equivalent of 1,500 bottles, suggesting that whisky production would have been in advanced stages even at this early date. Today, there are 141 whisky distilleries operating in Scotland, making Scotch whisky one of the most renowned geographical indications worldwide. (1495)

158 years ago today, the Treaty of Bosque Redondo was signed between the US and the Navajo, allowing them to return to their ancestral lands from the squalid conditions on the Bosque Redondo Reservation. No American today should be under any illusion that a steadily growing imperialist streak in America was to give the Navajo a fair shake, but compared to many of the other treaties signed with other tribes, the Bosque Redondo Treaty was a major moment in US-Indian relations and is still celebrated on their lands today as a public holiday called Treaty Day.

It was costing the US government 2 million gold-backed dollars to support the Navajo nation’s 9,000 captive members on the Bosque Redondo Reservation by 1865, just one year after their arrival there. The squalid conditions didn’t match the expenditure, and so the Doolittle Committee was formed in Congress, taking authority over the situation from a general named James Carleton.

To that end, General William Sherman and Samual Tappan visited Bosque Redondo to negotiate a treaty with the Navajo, who presented a list of serious grievances. The conditions in the reservation appalled the two men, and eventually Sherman telegraphed the Congress informing them that “the Navajos were unalterably opposed to any resettlement in Texas, or any place further east, and would not remain at the Bosque Redondo without the use of overwhelming military force.”

On June 1st, 29 Navajo leaders made their mark on a treaty that was to allow them to go back to around 10-20% of their ancestral lands, where they would make their homes, and where they would be permitted to leave for hunting and trading.

The newly established reservation consisted of 3,500,000 square miles (9,100,000 km2) on the border between New Mexico and Arizona, excluding the best grazing and farming lands. But the treaty was headed by the terms “an agreement between two nations.” In their “Long Walk Home”, the Navajo became a rare example in US history of native people successfully returning to their ancestral lands after being forcibly removed.

Perhaps because of this, there are 400,000 members of the Navajo tribe today—the largest federally registered tribal community in the country. (1868)

Happy Birthday to actor and narrator Morgan Freeman who turns 88 years old today. Raised in Mississippi and acting since he was in junior high school, Freeman won an Academy Award for his role in Million Dollar Baby, and wide acclaim for performances in Driving Miss Daisy, The Shawshank Redemption, Glory, Unforgiven, Bruce Almighty, and The Dark Knight.

Known for his distinctively smooth, deep voice, he got his first acting gig as a cast member in the 1970s children’s program The Electric Company. Today, Freeman is ranked the 3rd highest Hollywood box office star because his films have earned over $4.316 billion in total gross receipts.

While residing on the Gulf Coast in Charleston, Mississippi, Freeman owns and operates Ground Zero, a blues club in nearby Clarksdale and has stayed busy with films—co-starring in a just-released 7-part anthology series on Amazon Prime called Solos, as well as an action-thriller called Vanquish. WATCH a new interview and see him dance in the trailer… (1937)

68 years ago today, an American ran a sub-4 minute mile for the first time when Dan Bowden passed the line with a time of (3:58.7) at the Pacific Association AAU Meet in Stockton, California. He was inducted into the Track and Field Hall of Fame in 2008.

35 years ago today, President George H.W. Bush joined the leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, to sign a pact to end chemical weapons production and destroy their nation’s stockpiles.

The two countries began the historic process with on-site inspectors from both nations monitoring compliance. And, in 1993, the US and Russia, along with another 150 nations, signed a comprehensive treaty outright banning chemical weapons. (1990)

And, on this day in 1969, John and Yoko recorded Give Peace a Chance, Lennon’s first solo single, while in a bed surrounded by celebrities and the press in Montreal, Canada.
The song was written in Room 1742 of the Queen Elizabeth Hotel during their famous “Bed-In For Peace”, when a reporter asked what he was trying to achieve by staying in bed. Lennon answered spontaneously “All we are saying is, give peace a chance”. He liked the phrase and set it to music, singing the song several times during the week-long bed-in.

Finally, on June 1st, they rented an 8-track tape machine and recorded it while still in bed. The recording session (published under the name Plastic Ono Band) included Timothy Leary, Rabbi Abraham Feinberg, Petula Clark, Dick Gregory, Allen Ginsberg, Paul Williams, and Murray the K, some of whom are mentioned in the lyrics. Lennon and Tommy Smothers played acoustic guitars while everyone joined in on vocals for the chorus. Forever after, room 1742 in the Queen Elizabeth Hotel has been their most frequently requested room.