The Ford Model T was famous for being the car the general public could afford, for being pretty reliable for its day, and for being available in “any color you wanted, as long as it was black.” On July 20, 1903, when the very first Ford was offered for sale, things were slightly different. The Ford was the first Model A — there was another twenty-five years later that came after the T. The 1903 Model A looked a little bit like the Model T, but it was expensive, costing twice an average annual salary. And there was one other thing. It was available in “any color you wanted, as long as it was red.”
The Ford Motor Company managed to sell the first Model A (to a dentist), and continued to sell about 1750 other ones before coming out with an updated model in 1904. It was lucky they did, because on July 20 when the 1903 Model A appeared in showrooms (or, well, they didn’t have showrooms yet, but you know what I mean), the company had only $223 in the bank. On the other hand, in 1903 you could start a whole car company with only $28,000, which would probably fund Tesla for about eight seconds.
There were plenty of Fords around in California on July 20, 1940, for the opening of the first freeway; the Arroyo Seco Parkway. Most people call it the Pasadena Freeway, which was its official name from 1954 to 2010. There was already a road there before 1940, and in fact the same route was used forty years before that for an elevated bike path — it was designed for commuting to work by bicycle, and was a toll road. Or a toll bike path. But the bicycle craze of the 1890s was already fading. The California Cycleway never made any money and was demolished and sold for scrap (lumber) about ten years later.
Although there had been extravagant plans for the California Cycleway, it was only ever about a mile and a quarter long. That distance barely counted as a rounding error in the journey that brought Apollo 11 to its moon landing on July 20, 1969. People around the world, from ordinary folks to heads of state, celebrated the landing. One of the heads of state was Sirimavo Bandaranaike, the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka. She’d been elected on July 20, 1960 — the first elected female head of state in modern history.
Buzz Aldrin, photo by Neil Armstrong
Or at least that’s what they want us to believe! It was July 20, 1977 that a Freedom of Information Act order forced the CIA to admit its role in mind-control experiments from 1953 to 1973. The code name of the operation was MKULTRA, and it was completely illegal from the start. Just like some of the CIA’s other projects, including MKNAOMI (biological weapons research) and MKDELTA, the operation to use MKULTRA tools (like LSD) and MKNAOMI bioweapons internationally. So who’s to say, now, whether what we think we know is [this information has been redacted; return to your daily activities].
The residents of Johnstown, Pennsylvania didn’t pay much attention to the July 20, 1977 headlines about the CIA, though. They were coping with a flood — the Johnstown Flood. But this wasn’t the most famous Johnstown Flood; that happened in 1936. By 1977, the Army Corps of Engineers had built six dams, erected levees, and assured everyone that Johnstown wasn’t going to be flooded again. All it took was a thunderstorm on the night of July 19, 1977, and by the next morning all the dams had failed and the city was under six feet of water. July 20 is Engineers Day in Costa Rica, but they might feel differently about engineers in Johnstown.
Aftermath of another Johnstown Flood, the 1889 one.
The 1977 flood in Johnstown was almost deep enough for the battleship USS Constitution to set sail again, which it did on July 20, 1997, to celebrate its 200th birthday. The ship only gets sailed around Boston Harbor these days, but it could probably have made it to Havana, Cuba on its birthday in 2015 — the day the US and Cuba resumed full diplomatic relations after fifty years. That means Tony Oliva, the 1964 American League batting champ, might have traveled home to Pina del Rio to celebrate his birthday today. His home town might even have a baseball game in his honor, even though the rest of the world is celebrating a different game today. It’s International Chess Day.
