Good News in History, July 10

50 years ago today, the Bahamas became a fully independent nation after 344 years of colonial British rule. The archipelago consists of more than 700 islands, cays, and islets in the Atlantic Ocean, and maintains a high degree of natural environment integrity. While not a rich nation, the country flourished from tourism and offshore investment following independence which created a higher standard of living for the country compared to surrounding nations like Haiti. Learn about how the islands were formed… (1973)

Long before Britain’s House of Lords voted to bestow independence to the Bahamas, slavery there had been abolished. After the ban in 1834, the Bahamas became a haven for freed African slaves. The Royal Navy resettled Africans there who were liberated from illegal slave ships and other ships that reached the islands due to weather.

The islands of the Bahamas in the Caribbean Sea are situated on large depositional platforms (the Great and Little Bahama Banks) composed mainly of carbonate sediments ringed by fringing reefs — the islands themselves are only the parts of the platform currently exposed above sea level.

The sediments are formed mostly from the skeletal remains of organisms settling to the sea floor; over geologic time, these sediments will consolidate to form carbonate sedimentary rocks such as limestone. This detailed photograph provides a view of tidal flats and tidal channels near Sandy Cay on the western side of Long Island, located along the eastern margin of the Great Bahama Bank.

MORE Good News on this Day:

• Today is Tesla Day, in celebration of the Serbian-born inventor, physicist, engineer, and futurist, Nikola Tesla, who was born on this day and whose theories and work on the use of electricity, wireless broadcast, and alternating current (AC) is today renown (1856–1943)
• Armistice talks aimed at ending the Korean conflict began at Kaesong (1951)
• Coca-Cola bowed to consumer pressure against New Coke and canceled it (1985)
• The first elected President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, began his 5-year term (1991)
• The South African cricket team was readmitted into the International Cricket Council following the end of Apartheid (1991)
• Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi was freed after nearly six years of house arrest in Yangon, Myanmar (1995)

81 years ago today, Ronnie James Dio was born in New Hampshire. Widely regarded among the greatest of heavy metal singers, Dio fronted several bands throughout his career, including Dio, Elf, and Rainbow with Richie Blackmore, but is perhaps best known for being the man who took over Ozzy Osbourne’s role as frontman to Black Sabbath after his forced departure. READ about his most iconic contributions to heavy metal… (1942)

Regarding his most widely-cited influence on heavy metal and rock, the “devil horns” hand gesture, “Ronald James Padavona” said that since he was born to Italian-immigrant parents, he would occasionally be forced to endure a Sicilian grandmother’s scolding by her placing a fist to her forehead with the index and pinky fingers raised, simulating the horns of the devil. This is what inspired him to use it on stage.

With Black Sabbath, he sang on Heaven & Hell, and Mob Rules, albums that really supported Sabbath’s continuing popularity with the loss of their iconic, bat-munching frontman. Afterwards, Dio’s solo album, Holy Diver, gave heavy metal two iconic singles in Holy Diver, and Rainbow in the Dark.

When Dio passed away in 2010 from stomach cancer, Rolling Stone eulogized that: “It wasn’t just his mighty pipes that made him Ronnie James Dio — it was his moral fervor…what always stood out was Dio’s raging compassion for the lost rock & roll children in his audience. Dio never pretended to be one of the kids — he sang as an adult assuring us that we weren’t alone in our suffering, and someday we might even be proud of conquering it.”

On this day 148 years ago, Mary McLeod Bethune was born to former slaves in South Carolina. She realized as a child, the importance of learning to read and set her sights on becoming a teacher for her family and other black children.

In her 20s, she rented a small house, constructed benches and desks from discarded crates, made ink from elderberries, and opened a rigorous training school for girls in Daytona, Florida. Bethune also courted wealthy white benefactors like John D. Rockefeller to grow her school.

In 1931, it became the Bethune-Cookman College. Later, Bethune became a close adviser to President Franklin Roosevelt and the only black woman present at the founding of the UN. So numerous were her awards, accolades, and accomplishments that she has been called one of America’s greatest women, with “one of the most dramatic careers ever enacted at any time upon the stage of human activity.”

Bethune wrote later about opening her schoolroom with just $1.50, “I considered cash money as the smallest part of my resources. I had faith in a loving God, faith in myself, and a desire to serve.” (1875)

She died in 1955. (CHECK out these Mary McLeod Bethune books.)

Happy Birthday to the gospel and blues singer Mavis Staples, who turns 83 years old today. Born in Chicago, she started singing with her family’s band The Staple Singers as a young girl, and her deep-throated voice catapulted the group to the top of the charts eight times between 1971 and 1975, with songs like I’ll Take You There, Let’s Do It Again, and Respect Yourself.

Her father “Pops’’ was close friends with Martin Luther King, Jr., so the singers marched alongside him while providing the spiritual soundtrack to the civil rights movement. Mavis also worked with Prince for two of her 16 solo albums—Time Waits for No One in 1989, and 1993’s The Voice—and she’s toured with good friend Bob Dylan, and collaborated with dozens of other musical legends from Ray Charles to Arcade Fire. That’s also her voice singing the theme song on National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.

The Grammy-winning Rock-Hall-of-Famer celebrated her 80th birthday recently, taking the mic at the Apollo Theater—with David Byrne and Norah Jones—63 years after first appearing on its stage as a teenager. She has no plans of retiring because she absolutely loves performing. WATCH a video about her birthday… (1939)
NOTE: If you’re outside the US, watch the video on the CBS website here.

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