Good morning viewers,
LOVE Quote of the Day - Nov. 30
"I must join issue with your correspondent in some instances. First, I assert that of whatever the Scotch eleven may have been composed the right to play was open to every Scotchman [Alcock's italics] whether his lines were cast North or South of the Tweed and that if in the face of the invitations publicly given through the columns of leading journals of Scotland the representative eleven consisted chiefly of Anglo-Scotians ... the fault lies on the heads of the players of the north, not on the management who sought the services of all alike impartially. To call the team London Scotchmen contributes nothing. The match was, as announced, to all intents and purposes between England and Scotland".[4]
Alcock then proceeded to offer another challenge with a Scottish team drawn from Scotland and proposed the north of England as a venue. Alcock appeared to be particularly concerned about the number of players in Scottish football teams at the time, adding: "More than eleven we do not care to play as it is with greater numbers it is our opinion the game becomes less scientific and more a trial of charging and brute force... Charles W Alcock, Hon Sec of Football Association and Captain of English Eleven".[4]. One reason for the absence of a response to Alcock's challenge may have been different football codes being followed in Scotland at the time. A written reply to Alcock's letter above states: "Mr Alcock's challenge to meet a Scotch eleven on the borders sounds very well and is doubtless well meant. But it may not be generally well known that Mr Alcock is a very leading supporter of what is called the "association game"... devotees of the "association" rules will find no foemen worthy of their steel in Scotland"[5]. Despite this the FA were hoping to play in Scotland as early as February 1872[6].
In 1872, Queen's Park, as Scotland's leading club, took up Alcock's challenge, despite the fact there was as yet no Scottish Football Association to sanction it as thus. In the FA's minutes of 3 October 1872 it was noted "In order to further the interests of the Association in Scotland, it was decided that during the current season, a team should be sent to Glasgow to play a match v Scotland".
Appropriately enough, the match was arranged for St Andrew's Day, and the West of Scotland Cricket Club's ground at Hamilton Crescent in Partick was selected as the venue.
The Scots wore dark blue shirts. This match is, however, not the origin of the blue Scotland shirt, as contemporary reports of the 5 February 1872 rugby international at the Oval clearly show that "the scotch were easily distinguishable by their uniform of blue jerseys.... the jerseys having the thistle embroidered." The thistle had been worn previously in the 1871 rugby international. The English wore white shirts. The English wore caps, while the Scots wore red cowls.
The match itself illustrated the advantage gained by the Queen's Park players "through knowing each others' play" as all came from the same club. Contemporary match reports clearly show dribbling play by both the English and the Scottish sides, for example: "The Scotch now came away with a great rush, Leckie and others dribbling the ball so smartly that the English lines were closely besieged and the ball was soon behind""Weir now had a splendid run for Scotland into the heart of his opponents' territoryand "Kerr.. closed the match by the most brilliant run of the day, dribbling the ball past the whole field." Although the Scottish team are acknowledged to have worked better together during the first half, the contemporary account in the Scotsman newspaper acknowledges that in the second half England played similarly: "During the first half of the game the English team did not work so well together, but in the second half they left nothing to be desired in this respect. There is no specific description of a passing maneouvre in the lengthy contemporary match reports, although two weeks' later The Graphic reported "[Scotland] seem to be adepts at passing the ball"There is no evidence in the article that the author attended the match, as the reader is clearly pointed to match descriptions in "sporting journals". It is also of note that the 5 March 1872 match between Wanderers and Queen's Park contains no evidence of ball passing
On a pitch that was heavy due to the continuous rain over the previous three days, the smaller and lighter Scottish side pushed their English counterparts hard. The Scots had a goal disallowed in the first half after the umpires decided that the ball had cleared the tape which was used before crossbars were introduced in ScotlandThe latter part of the match saw the Scots defence under pressure by the heavier English forwards. The Scots played two full backs, two half backs and six forwards. The English played only one full back, one half back and eight forwards. Since three defenders were required for a ball played to be onside, the English system was virtually a ready-made offside trap. Scotland would come closest to winning the match when, in the closing stages, a Robert Leckie shot landed on top of the tape which was used to represent the crossbar. At some point in the game, the England goalkeeper, Robert Barker, decided to join the action outfield when he switched places with William Maynard
2) 1936 – In London, the Crystal Palace is destroyed by fire.
The Crystal Palace was a cast-iron and glass building originally erected in Hyde Park, London, England, to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. More than 14,000 exhibitors from around the world gathered in the Palace's 990,000 square feet (92,000 m2) of exhibition space to display examples of the latest technology developed in the Industrial Revolution. Designed by Joseph Paxton, the Great Exhibition building was 1,851 feet (564 m) long, with an interior height of 128 feet (39 m).
After the exhibition, the building was moved to a new park in Penge Common next to an affluent area of London called Sydenham Hill, a suburb full of large villas. The Crystal Palace was enlarged and stood in the area from 1854 to 1936, when it was destroyed by fire. It attracted many thousands of visitors from all levels of society. The name Crystal Palace (the satirical magazine Punch usually gets the credit for coining the phrase) was later used to denote this area of south London and the park that surrounds the site, home of the Crystal Palace National Sports Centre.
Full-size, living elm trees in the park were enclosed within the central exhibition hall near the 27-foot (8 m) tall Crystal Fountain. Sparrows became a nuisance; Queen Victoria mentioned this problem to the Duke of Wellington, who offered the famous solution, "Sparrowhawks, Ma'am".
The Crystal Palace was built by about 5,000 navvies (up to 2,000 on site at once)
The ironwork contractors were Sir Charles Fox's Fox and Henderson. The 900,000 square feet (84,000 m²) of glass were provided by the Chance Brothers glassworks in Smethwick, Birmingham. They were the only glassworks capable of fulfilling such a large order and had to bring in labour from France to meet it in time. The final dimensions were 1,848 feet (563 m) long by 456 feet (139 m) wide. The building was 135 feet (41 m) high, with 772,784 square feet (71,794.0 m2) on the ground floor alone.
The Crystal Palace had the first major installation of public toilets the Retiring Rooms, in which sanitary engineer George Jennings installed his "Monkey Closet" flushing lavatory (initially just for men, but later catering to women). During the exhibition, 827,280 visitors paid one penny each to use them. This is often given as the origin of the British euphemism "to spend a penny", although John Maskelyne's penny lock for pay toilets (used from 1855) is a commonly cited alternative origin. The euphemism did not appear in print until the 1940s.
3) 1982 – Michael Jackson's Thriller, the best-selling album of all time, is released.
Thriller is the sixth studio album by American recording artist Michael Jackson. It was released on November 30, 1982, by Epic Records as the follow-up to Jackson's critically and commercially successful 1979 album Off the Wall. Thriller explores similar genres to those of Off the Wall, including pop, R&B, rock and post-disco music.
Recording sessions took place between April and November 1982 at Westlake Recording Studios in Los Angeles, California, with a production budget of $750,000, assisted by producer Quincy Jones. Of the nine tracks on the album, 4 of them were written by Jackson himself. Seven singles were released from the album, all of which reached the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100. "Baby Be Mine" and "The Lady in My Life" were the only tracks that were not released as singles. In just over a year, Thriller became—and currently remains—the best-selling album of all time, with 110 million copies sold worldwide[3][4], and is also tied for the best-selling album in the United States. The album won a record-breaking eight Grammy Awards at the 1984 Grammys.
Thriller enabled Jackson to break down racial barriers via his appearances on MTV and meeting with President Ronald Reagan at the White House. The album was one of the first to use music videos as successful promotional tools—the videos for "Thriller", "Billie Jean" and "Beat It" all received regular rotation on MTV. In 2001, a special edition issue of the album was released, which contains additional audio interviews, a demo recording and the song "Someone In the Dark", which was a Grammy-winning track from the E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial storybook. in 2008, the album was reissued again as Thriller 25, containing re-mixes that feature contemporary artists, a previously unreleased song and a DVD.
Thriller ranked number 20 on Rolling Stone magazine's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list in 2003,[7] and was listed by the National Association of Recording Merchandisers at number three in its Definitive 200 Albums of All Time. The Thriller video was preserved by the Library of Congress to the National Recording Registry, as it was deemed "culturally significant".
Jackson confided in Branca that he wanted to be "the biggest star in show business" and "the wealthiest". The singer was upset about what he perceived to be the under-performance of Off the Wall, stating, "It was totally unfair that it didn't get Record of the Year and it can never happen again."[14] He also felt undervalued by the music industry; in 1980 when Jackson asked the publicist of Rolling Stone if they would be interested in doing a cover story on him, the publicist declined, to which Jackson responded, "I've been told over and over that black people on the cover of magazines doesn't sell copies ... Just wait. Someday those magazines are going to be begging me for an interview. Maybe I'll give them one. And maybe I won't."[14]
Jackson reunited with Off the Wall producer Quincy Jones to record his sixth studio album. The pair worked together on 30 songs, nine of which were eventually included.[15] Thriller was recorded at Westlake Recording Studios in Los Angeles, California, with a production budget of $750,000. The recording for Thriller commenced on April 14, 1982 at 12:00 noon with Jackson and Paul McCartney recording "The Girl Is Mine", and the album was completed with the final day of mixing on November 8, 1982.[16] Several members of the band Toto were also involved in the album's recording and production.[15] Jackson wrote four songs for the record: "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'", "The Girl Is Mine", "Beat It" and "Billie Jean".[17] Unlike many artists, Jackson did not write these songs on paper. Instead, he would dictate into a sound recorder; when recording he would sing from memory.[18][19]
The relationship between Jackson and Jones became strained during the album's recording. Jackson spent much of his time rehearsing dance steps alone.[19] When the album's nine songs were completed, both Jones and Jackson were unhappy with the result and remixed every song, spending a week on each.[19]
Jackson was inspired to create an album where "every song was a killer," and developed Thriller with that in mind.[20][21] Jones and songwriter Rod Temperton gave detailed accounts of what occurred for the 2001 reissue of the album. Jones discussed "Billie Jean" and why it was so personal to Jackson, who struggled to deal with a number of obsessed fans. Jones wanted the long introduction on the song to be shortened; however, Jackson insisted that it remain because it made him want to dance.[17] The ongoing backlash against disco made it necessary to move in a different musical direction from the disco-heavy Off the Wall.[21] Jones and Jackson were determined to make a rock song that would appeal to all tastes and spent weeks looking for a suitable guitarist for the song "Beat It", a song Jackson wrote. Eventually, they found Eddie Van Halen of the rock band Van Halen.[17][19]
When Rod Temperton wrote the song "Thriller", he originally wanted to call it "Starlight" or "Midnight Man" but settled on "Thriller" because he felt the name had merchandising potential.[19] Always wanting a notable person to recite the closing lyrics, Jones brought in actor Vincent Price who was an acquaintance of Jones' wife, who completed his part in just two takes. Temperton wrote the spoken portion in a taxi on the way to the recording studio. Jones and Temperton said that some recordings were left off the final cut because they did not have the "edginess" of other album tracks.[17]
Songs recorded by Jackson for consideration included "Carousel" (written by Michael Sembello), "Nite Line" (written by Glen Ballard), "Trouble" (aka "She's Trouble", written by Terry Britten, Bill Livsey and Sue Shifrin) and "Hot Street" (written by Rod Temperton, and aka "Slapstick"). Jackson also cut a version of "Starlight". Demos of all these songs exist and have leaked onto the internet. "Carousel" and "Hot Street" were completed but left off the final version of the album. A short clip of "Carousel" appeared as a bonus track on the 2001 reissue of the album.
Despite the light pop flavor of these two records, Thriller, more so than Off the Wall, displayed foreshadowings of the contradictory thematic elements that would come to characterize Jackson's later work.[30] With Thriller, Jackson would begin his association with the subliminal motif of paranoia and darker themes, including supernatural imagery in the album's title track.[23] This is evident on the songs "Billie Jean", "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" and "Thriller".[26] In "Billie Jean", Jackson sings about an obsessive fan who alleges he has fathered a child of hers; in "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" he argues against gossips and the media.[23][25] In the former song, Jones had Jackson sing vocal overdubs through a six-foot-long cardboard tube, and brought in jazz saxophonist Tom Scott to play a rare instrument, the lyricon, a wind-controlled analog synthesizer. Bassist Louis Johnson ran through his part on a Yamaha bass guitar. The song opens with a long bass-and-drums introduction.[31] In the song "Thriller", sound effects such as creaking door, thunder, feet walking on wooden planks, winds and howling dogs can be heard.[19]
The anti-gang-violence "Beat It" became a homage to West Side Story, and was Jackson's first successful rock cross-over piece.[25][32] Jackson later said of "Beat It", "the point is no one has to be the tough guy, you can walk away from a fight and still be a man. You don't have to die to prove you're a man".[29] "Human Nature" is moody and introspective, as conveyed in lyrics such as, "Looking out, across the morning, the City's heart begins to beat, reaching out, I touch her shoulder, I'm dreaming of the street".[29]
By the late 1970s, Jackson's abilities as a vocalist were well regarded; Allmusic described him as a "blindingly gifted vocalist".[8] Rolling Stone compared his vocals to the "breathless, dreamy stutter" of Stevie Wonder. Their analysis was also that "Jackson's feathery-timbred tenor is extraordinary beautiful. It slides smoothly into a startling falsetto that's used very daringly".[9] With the release of Thriller, Jackson could sing low—down to a basso low C—but he preferred to sing higher because pop tenors have more range to create style.[33] Rolling Stone was of the opinion that Jackson was now singing in a "fully adult voice" that was "tinged by sadness".[34] "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)", credited to James Ingram and Quincy Jones, and "The Lady in My Life" by Rod Temperton, both gave the album a stronger R&B direction; the latter song was described as "the closest Jackson has come to crooning a sexy, soulful ballad after his Motown years" by Taraborrelli.[29] The singer had already adopted a "vocal hiccup" which he continued to implement in Thriller. The purpose of the hiccup—somewhat like a gulping for air or gasping—is to help promote a certain emotion; be it excitement, sadness or fear.[35]
Thriller was released on November 30, 1982, and sold one million copies worldwide per week at its peak.[33] Seven singles were released from the album, including "The Girl Is Mine"—which was seen as a poor choice for the lead release and led some to believe that the album would be a disappointment, and to suggestions that Jackson was bowing to a white audience.[29] "The Girl Is Mine" was followed by the hit single "Billie Jean", which made Thriller a chart-topper.[42][43] Success continued with the single "Beat It", which featured guitarists Eddie Van Halen and Steve Lukather.[44] The title track "Thriller" was released as a single and also became a hit internationally.[29]
Thriller was mostly well received by critics. A four-star Rolling Stone review by Christopher Connelly described it as "a zesty LP" with a "harrowing, dark message". Despite the positive response, the title track came under strong criticism. Rolling Stone expressed a negative sentiment, criticizing its "degenerat[ion] into silly camp". The magazine expressed confusion at the use of Vincent Price over Count Floyd for the track's concluding rap.[23] The New York Times gave a positive review of the album, and dedicated a large amount of its coverage to the song "Human Nature". They described it as the most "striking" song on the record, and wrote, "this is a haunting, brooding ballad by Steve Porcaro and John Bettis with an irresistible chorus and it should be an enormous hit". Concluding their review The New York Times added; "there are other hits here, too, lots of them. Best of all, with a pervasive confidence infusing the album as a whole, Thriller suggests that Mr. Jackson's evolution as an artist is far from finished".[39]
Robert Christgau published a positive (A−) graded overview of the album a few days before its release. He acknowledged that there were "fillers" on the record but still labeled it "almost classic". He expressed the opinion that "Beat It" was the album's best track, calling it "the triumph and the thriller", but criticized "The Girl Is Mine" as "Michael's worst idea since "Ben"". He was of the opinion that the collaboration did not work well, but still praised it for "getting interracial love on the radio".[36] A year after the album's release, Time summed up the three main singles from the album, saying, "The pulse of America and much of the rest of the world moves irregularly, beating in time to the tough strut of "Billie Jean", the asphalt aria of "Beat It", the supremely cool chills of "Thriller".[33] Conversely, in a Melody Maker review, Paolo Hewitt stated "[t]his is not a good LP"; in his opinion there were only "two songs worthy of mention". "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" was praised as an "exciting", "uptempo electro-funk song", as was "Billie Jean". Hewitt's stance was that as a whole, the album could only be described as "bland", particularly the closing tracks. He summed up: "Jackson seems to have lost his talent for turning gross into gold".[38]
The album won Jackson a record-breaking eight Grammy Awards in 1984, including Album of the Year. The eighth Grammy went to Bruce Swedien.[45][46] That same year, Jackson won eight American Music Awards, the Special Award of Merit and three MTV Video Music Awards.[47] Thriller was recognized as the world's best-selling album on February 7, 1984, when it was inducted into the Guinness Book of World Records.[48] It is one of only three albums to remain in the top ten of the Billboard 200 for a full year, and spent 37 weeks at number one out of the 80 consecutive weeks it was in the top ten. The album was also the first of three to have seven Billboard Hot 100 top ten singles, and was the only album to be the best-seller of two years (1983–1984) in the US.[49][50]
On August 21, 2009 Thriller was certified 29x Multi-Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America, for shipments of at least 29 million copies in the US.[51][52] The album topped the charts in many countries, sold 3.7 million copies in the UK,[52][53] 2.5 million in Japan[54] and went 15x Platinum in Australia.[55] Still popular today, Thriller sells an estimated 130,000 copies in the US per year; it reached number two in the US Catalog charts in February 2003 and number 39 in the UK in March 2007.[47] As of 2010, the album is estimated as having sold approximately 65-110 million copies worldwide.
Blender described Jackson as the "late twentieth century pre-eminent pop icon", while The New York Times gave the opinion that he was a "musical phenomenon", and that "in the world of pop music, there is Michael Jackson and there is everybody else".[31][56] Jackson changed the way the industry functioned: both as an artistic persona, and as a financial, profitable entity. His attorney John Branca observed that Jackson achieved the highest royalty rate in the music industry to that point: approximately $2 for each album sold. As a result, Jackson earned record-breaking profits from compact disc sales, and from the sale of copies of the documentary, The Making of Michael Jackson's Thriller, produced by Jackson and John Landis. Funded by MTV, the film sold over 350,000 copies in its first few months. In a market then driven by singles, Thriller raised the significance of albums, yet its multiple hit singles changed perceived notions as to the number of successful singles that could be taken from an individual album.[57] The era saw the arrival of novelties like the Michael Jackson doll, that appeared in stores in May 1984 at a price of $12.[33] Thriller retains a position in American culture; biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli explains, "At some point, Thriller stopped selling like a leisure item—like a magazine, a toy, tickets to a hit movie—and started selling like a household staple".[58]
At the time of the album's release, a press statement from Gil Friesen, the then President of A&M Records, read that, "The whole industry has a stake in this success".[33] Time magazine speculated that "the fallout from Thriller has given the [music] business its best years since the heady days of 1978, when it had an estimated total domestic revenue of $4.1 billion".[33] Time summed up Thriller's impact as a "restoration of confidence" for an industry bordering on "the ruins of punk and the chic regions of synthesizer pop". The publication described Jackson's influence at that point as, "Star of records, radio, rock video. A one-man rescue team for the music business. A songwriter who sets the beat for a decade. A dancer with the fanciest feet on the street. A singer who cuts across all boundaries of taste and style and color too".[33]
When Thriller and “Billie Jean” were searching to reach their market demographic, MTV and cable TV had a smaller market share than the much larger reach of broadcast television stations in the U.S. A national broadcast TV audience on ABC, NBC, and CBS affiliate stations, as well as major independent TV stations, was desired by CBS/Epic Records to promote Thriller. The national broadcast TV premiere of the Thriller album’s first video, “Billie Jean”, was during the week of Halloween in October 1984 and was the idea of Video Concert Hall executive producers Charles Henderson and Jerry Crowe. [59][60] Video Concert Hall, the first nationwide music video TV network, taped the one-hour special in Hollywood and Atlanta, where the TV studios of Video Concert Hall were located. [61] [62] [63] [64] The Thriller TV special was hosted by Thriller video co-star Vincent Price, distributed by Henderson-Crowe Syndications, Inc., and aired in the top 20 TV markets and much of the U.S., including TV stations WNEW (New York), WFLD (Chicago), KTTV (Los Angeles), WPLG (Miami), WQTV (Boston), and WXIA (Atlanta), for a total of 150 TV stations. [59] [60]
Before the success of Thriller, many felt Jackson had struggled to get MTV airing because he was black.[65] In an effort to attain air time for Jackson, CBS Records President Walter Yetnikoff pressured MTV and declared, "I'm not going to give you any more videos and I'm going to go public and fucking tell them about the fact you don't want to play music by a black guy".[31]
His position persuaded MTV to begin airing "Billie Jean" and later "Beat It", which led to a long partnership and later helped other black music artists to gain mainstream recognition.[66] MTV denies claims of racism in their broadcasting.[67] The popularity of his videos, such as "Beat It" and "Billie Jean", helped to place the young channel "on the map", and MTV's focus shifted in favor of pop and R&B.[66][68] Jackson transformed the medium of music video into an art form and promotional tool through the use of complex story lines, dance routines, special effects and cameo appearances by well known personalities.[25] When the 14-minute-long Thriller video aired, MTV ran it twice an hour to meet demand.[69] The short film marked an increase in scale for music videos and has been routinely named the best music video ever.[70] The popularity of the video sent the album back to number one in the album chart, but Jackson's label did not support the release of the third music video from the album. They were already pleased with its success, so Jackson convinced MTV to fund the project.[19][69] Author, music critic and journalist Nelson George wrote in 2004, "It's difficult to hear the songs from Thriller and disengage them from the videos. For most of us the images define the songs. In fact it could be argued that Michael is the first artist of the MTV age to have an entire album so intimately connected in the public imagination with its imagery".[22] Short films like Thriller largely remained unique to Jackson, while the group dance sequence in "Beat It" has been frequently imitated.[17] The choreography in Thriller has become a part of global pop culture, replicated everywhere from Bollywood to prisons in the Philippines.[71][72]
For a black artist in the 1980s to that point, Jackson's success was unprecedented. According to The Washington Post, Thriller paved the way for other African-American artists such as Prince.[73] "The Girl Is Mine" was credited for getting interracial love on the radio.[74] Time noted, "Jackson is the biggest thing since The Beatles. He is the hottest single phenomenon since Elvis Presley. He just may be the most popular black singer ever".[33]
The author Nelson George wrote that Jackson "has educated R. Kelly, Usher, Justin Timberlake and countless others with Thriller as a textbook".[75] As a sign of the album's longevity, in 2003 Thriller was ranked at number 20 on the Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list, and was listed by the National Association of Recording Merchandisers at number three of the Definitive 200 Albums of All Time.[76][77] In 2008, 25 years after its release, the record was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and, a few weeks later, was among 25 recordings preserved by the Library of Congress to the National Recording Registry as "culturally significant".[78][79] In 2009, music critics for MTV Base and VH1 both listed Thriller as the best album released since 1981.[80] Thriller, along with other critic favorites were then polled by the public. 40,000 people found Thriller to be the Best Album of all time by MTV Generation, gaining a third of all votes.[80][81]
In February 2008, Epic Records released Thriller 25; Jackson served as executive producer.[52] Thriller 25 appeared on CD, USB and vinyl with seven bonus tracks, a new song called "For All Time", a snippet of Vincent Price's voice-over, and five remixes featuring American artists Fergie, will.i.am, Kanye West, and Akon.[52][87][88] It also included a DVD featuring three music videos, the Motown 25 "Billie Jean" performance, and a booklet with a message from Jackson.[52] The ballad "For All Time" supposedly dates from 1982, but is often credited as being from Dangerous sessions.[89] Two singles were released from the reissue: "The Girl Is Mine 2008" and "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' 2008".
Thriller 25 was a commercial success and did particularly well as a reissue. It peaked at number one in eight countries and Europe. It peaked at number two in the US, number three in the UK and reached the top 10 in over 30 national charts. It was certified Gold in 11 countries including the UK, received a 2x Gold certification in France and received platinum certification in Poland.[90][91][92] In the United States, Thriller 25 was the second best-selling album of its release week, selling one hundred and sixty six thousand copies, just fourteen thousand short of reaching the number one position. It was ineligible for the Billboard 200 chart as a re-release but entered the Pop Catalog Charts at number one (where it stayed for ten non-consecutive weeks),[93] with the best sales on that chart since December, 1996.[94][95][96] With the arrival of Halloween that November, Thriller 25 spent an eleventh non-consecutive week atop the US catalog chart. This brought US sales of the album to 688,000 copies, making it the best selling catalog album of 2008.[97] This was Jackson's best launch since Invincible in 2001, selling three million copies worldwide in 12 weeks.[98]
After Jackson's death in June 2009, Thriller set additional records. It sold more than 100,000 copies, placing it at number two on the Top Pop Catalog Albums chart. Songs from Thriller also helped Jackson become the first artist to sell more than one million song downloads in a week.[99] According to Nielsen Soundscan, Thriller was the 14th best selling album of 2009 in the United States with 1.27 million copies sold.
Born during the British Raj, Bose graduated from St. Xavier's College, Calcutta. He then went to the University of London to study medicine, but could not pursue studies in medicine due to health problems. Instead, he conducted his research with the Nobel Laureate Lord Rayleigh at Cambridge and returned to India. He then joined the Presidency College of University of Calcutta as a Professor of Physics. There, despite racial discrimination and a lack of funding and equipment, Bose carried on his scientific research. He made remarkable progress in his research of remote wireless signaling and was the first to use semiconductor junctions to detect radio signals. However, instead of trying to gain commercial benefit from this invention Bose made his inventions public in order to allow others to further develop his research.
Bose subsequently made a number of pioneering discoveries in plant physiology. He used his own invention, the crescograph, to measure plant response to various stimuli, and thereby scientifically proved parallelism between animal and plant tissues. Although Bose filed for a patent for one of his inventions due to peer pressure, his reluctance to any form of patenting was well known.
He has been recognised for his many contributions to modern science.
Speaking in New Delhi in August 2006, at a seminar titled Owning the Future: Ideas and Their Role in the Digital Age, Dr. V S Ramamurthy, the Chairman of the Board of Governors of IIT Delhi, stressed the attitude of Bose towards patents:
Rajiv Dixit was born on 30 November 1967 in Naah village, Atrauli tehsil of Aligarh district, Uttar Pradesh . Under the tutelage of his father RadheShyam Dixit he was educated till the 12th grade in the village schooling system in Firozabad district. In 1994, he moved to Allahabad (Prayaag) for higher studies. He pursued his M.Tech degree in Satellite Telecommunications from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur and pursued his doctorate in telecommunications in France. Subsequently, he worked at CSIR as a scientist. But his passion for his motherland made him give up a paid-position for the sake of Indian culture and Swadeshi movement, serving the cause of "Rashtra Dharma". His audio cassettes on Indian Nationalism and greatness of India's past did well in 1999. He had been recording them over months traveling across India spreading his message of great optimism about India and its enormous contributions to the human civilization. He was a Brahmachari and never married. He was influenced by the ideologies of Indian revolutionaries like Chandrashekhar Azad, Bhagat Singh and Udham Singh. Later in life, he began to appreciate the early works of Mahatma Gandhi. His life was dedicated to not just ideas with high ideals, but also causes like stopping alcohol and "gutka" production, cow-butchering and social injustices. On the 9th of January 2009, he became one of the founders of "Bharat Swabhiman" movement. On 30 November 2010, while in Bhilai in Chattisgarh he died of a heart attack. In his memory, the constructed Bharat Swabhiman building in Haridwar has been named "Rajiv Bhawan". He refused to take any modern medicine on his death bed, insisting instead on Ayurvedic medicine.
November 30 is the 334th day of the year (335th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 31 days remaining until the end of the year.
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- – The first-ever international football match takes place at Hamilton Crescent, Glasgow, between Scotland and England.
Scotland v England (1872) was the first ever official international football match to be played. It was contested by the national teams of Scotland and England. The match took place on 30 November 1872 at West of Scotland Cricket Club's ground at Hamilton Crescent in Partick, Scotland. The match finished in a 0–0 draw and was watched by 4,000 spectators
Background
Following public challenges issued in Glasgow and Edinburgh newspapers by The Football Association (FA) secretary Charles Alcock the first encounter between teams representing England and Scotland took place on 5 March 1870 at The Oval, London.[1] The last of these five matches took place at the Oval on 24 February 1872[2] All players selected for the Scottish side in these early "internationals" were from the London area. The only player affiliated to a Scottish club was Robert Smith of Queen's Park FC, Glasgow, who played in the November 1870 match and both of the 1871 games. Robert Smith and James Smith (both of the Queen's Park Club) were both listed publicly for the February 1872 game, but neither played in the actual match.[3]Robert Smith
After the 1870 matches there was resentment in Scotland that their team did not contain more home grown players. Alcock himself was categorical about where he felt responsibility for this fact lay, writing in the Scotsman newspaper:"I must join issue with your correspondent in some instances. First, I assert that of whatever the Scotch eleven may have been composed the right to play was open to every Scotchman [Alcock's italics] whether his lines were cast North or South of the Tweed and that if in the face of the invitations publicly given through the columns of leading journals of Scotland the representative eleven consisted chiefly of Anglo-Scotians ... the fault lies on the heads of the players of the north, not on the management who sought the services of all alike impartially. To call the team London Scotchmen contributes nothing. The match was, as announced, to all intents and purposes between England and Scotland".[4]
Alcock then proceeded to offer another challenge with a Scottish team drawn from Scotland and proposed the north of England as a venue. Alcock appeared to be particularly concerned about the number of players in Scottish football teams at the time, adding: "More than eleven we do not care to play as it is with greater numbers it is our opinion the game becomes less scientific and more a trial of charging and brute force... Charles W Alcock, Hon Sec of Football Association and Captain of English Eleven".[4]. One reason for the absence of a response to Alcock's challenge may have been different football codes being followed in Scotland at the time. A written reply to Alcock's letter above states: "Mr Alcock's challenge to meet a Scotch eleven on the borders sounds very well and is doubtless well meant. But it may not be generally well known that Mr Alcock is a very leading supporter of what is called the "association game"... devotees of the "association" rules will find no foemen worthy of their steel in Scotland"[5]. Despite this the FA were hoping to play in Scotland as early as February 1872[6].
In 1872, Queen's Park, as Scotland's leading club, took up Alcock's challenge, despite the fact there was as yet no Scottish Football Association to sanction it as thus. In the FA's minutes of 3 October 1872 it was noted "In order to further the interests of the Association in Scotland, it was decided that during the current season, a team should be sent to Glasgow to play a match v Scotland".
Appropriately enough, the match was arranged for St Andrew's Day, and the West of Scotland Cricket Club's ground at Hamilton Crescent in Partick was selected as the venue.
The match
All eleven Scottish players were selected from Queen's Park, the leading Scottish club at this time. Scotland had hoped to obtain the services of Arthur Kinnaird of The Wanderers and Henry Renny-Tailyour of Royal Engineers but both were unavailableThe teams for this match were got together "with some difficulty, each side losing some of their best men almost at the last momentThe Scottish side was selected by goalkeeper and captain Robert W. Gardner. The English side was selected from nine different clubs and was selected by Charles Alcock, who himself was unable to play due to injury. The match, initially scheduled for 2pm was delayed for 20 minutes due to fog. The 4,000 spectators paid an entry fee of a shilling, the same amount charged at the 1872 FA Cup Final.The Scots wore dark blue shirts. This match is, however, not the origin of the blue Scotland shirt, as contemporary reports of the 5 February 1872 rugby international at the Oval clearly show that "the scotch were easily distinguishable by their uniform of blue jerseys.... the jerseys having the thistle embroidered." The thistle had been worn previously in the 1871 rugby international. The English wore white shirts. The English wore caps, while the Scots wore red cowls.
The match itself illustrated the advantage gained by the Queen's Park players "through knowing each others' play" as all came from the same club. Contemporary match reports clearly show dribbling play by both the English and the Scottish sides, for example: "The Scotch now came away with a great rush, Leckie and others dribbling the ball so smartly that the English lines were closely besieged and the ball was soon behind""Weir now had a splendid run for Scotland into the heart of his opponents' territoryand "Kerr.. closed the match by the most brilliant run of the day, dribbling the ball past the whole field." Although the Scottish team are acknowledged to have worked better together during the first half, the contemporary account in the Scotsman newspaper acknowledges that in the second half England played similarly: "During the first half of the game the English team did not work so well together, but in the second half they left nothing to be desired in this respect. There is no specific description of a passing maneouvre in the lengthy contemporary match reports, although two weeks' later The Graphic reported "[Scotland] seem to be adepts at passing the ball"There is no evidence in the article that the author attended the match, as the reader is clearly pointed to match descriptions in "sporting journals". It is also of note that the 5 March 1872 match between Wanderers and Queen's Park contains no evidence of ball passing
On a pitch that was heavy due to the continuous rain over the previous three days, the smaller and lighter Scottish side pushed their English counterparts hard. The Scots had a goal disallowed in the first half after the umpires decided that the ball had cleared the tape which was used before crossbars were introduced in ScotlandThe latter part of the match saw the Scots defence under pressure by the heavier English forwards. The Scots played two full backs, two half backs and six forwards. The English played only one full back, one half back and eight forwards. Since three defenders were required for a ball played to be onside, the English system was virtually a ready-made offside trap. Scotland would come closest to winning the match when, in the closing stages, a Robert Leckie shot landed on top of the tape which was used to represent the crossbar. At some point in the game, the England goalkeeper, Robert Barker, decided to join the action outfield when he switched places with William Maynard
The Crystal Palace was a cast-iron and glass building originally erected in Hyde Park, London, England, to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. More than 14,000 exhibitors from around the world gathered in the Palace's 990,000 square feet (92,000 m2) of exhibition space to display examples of the latest technology developed in the Industrial Revolution. Designed by Joseph Paxton, the Great Exhibition building was 1,851 feet (564 m) long, with an interior height of 128 feet (39 m).
After the exhibition, the building was moved to a new park in Penge Common next to an affluent area of London called Sydenham Hill, a suburb full of large villas. The Crystal Palace was enlarged and stood in the area from 1854 to 1936, when it was destroyed by fire. It attracted many thousands of visitors from all levels of society. The name Crystal Palace (the satirical magazine Punch usually gets the credit for coining the phrase) was later used to denote this area of south London and the park that surrounds the site, home of the Crystal Palace National Sports Centre.
Original Hyde Park building
The huge, modular wood glass and iron structure at the top of Sydenham Hill was originally erected in Hyde Park in London to house The Great Exhibition of 1851, showcasing the products of many countries throughout the world.
The Crystal Palace's creator, Joseph Paxton, received a knighthood in recognition of his work. Paxton had been the head gardener at Chatsworth House. There he had experimented with glass and iron in the creation of large greenhouses, and had seen something of their strength and durability, knowledge that he applied to the plans for the Great Exhibition building. Planners had been looking for strength, durability, simplicity of construction and speed—and this they got from Paxton's ideas. The project was engineered by Sir William Cubitt.
Full-size, living elm trees in the park were enclosed within the central exhibition hall near the 27-foot (8 m) tall Crystal Fountain. Sparrows became a nuisance; Queen Victoria mentioned this problem to the Duke of Wellington, who offered the famous solution, "Sparrowhawks, Ma'am".
The Crystal Palace was built by about 5,000 navvies (up to 2,000 on site at once)
The ironwork contractors were Sir Charles Fox's Fox and Henderson. The 900,000 square feet (84,000 m²) of glass were provided by the Chance Brothers glassworks in Smethwick, Birmingham. They were the only glassworks capable of fulfilling such a large order and had to bring in labour from France to meet it in time. The final dimensions were 1,848 feet (563 m) long by 456 feet (139 m) wide. The building was 135 feet (41 m) high, with 772,784 square feet (71,794.0 m2) on the ground floor alone.
The Crystal Palace had the first major installation of public toilets the Retiring Rooms, in which sanitary engineer George Jennings installed his "Monkey Closet" flushing lavatory (initially just for men, but later catering to women). During the exhibition, 827,280 visitors paid one penny each to use them. This is often given as the origin of the British euphemism "to spend a penny", although John Maskelyne's penny lock for pay toilets (used from 1855) is a commonly cited alternative origin. The euphemism did not appear in print until the 1940s.
3) 1982 – Michael Jackson's Thriller, the best-selling album of all time, is released.
Recording sessions took place between April and November 1982 at Westlake Recording Studios in Los Angeles, California, with a production budget of $750,000, assisted by producer Quincy Jones. Of the nine tracks on the album, 4 of them were written by Jackson himself. Seven singles were released from the album, all of which reached the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100. "Baby Be Mine" and "The Lady in My Life" were the only tracks that were not released as singles. In just over a year, Thriller became—and currently remains—the best-selling album of all time, with 110 million copies sold worldwide[3][4], and is also tied for the best-selling album in the United States. The album won a record-breaking eight Grammy Awards at the 1984 Grammys.
Thriller enabled Jackson to break down racial barriers via his appearances on MTV and meeting with President Ronald Reagan at the White House. The album was one of the first to use music videos as successful promotional tools—the videos for "Thriller", "Billie Jean" and "Beat It" all received regular rotation on MTV. In 2001, a special edition issue of the album was released, which contains additional audio interviews, a demo recording and the song "Someone In the Dark", which was a Grammy-winning track from the E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial storybook. in 2008, the album was reissued again as Thriller 25, containing re-mixes that feature contemporary artists, a previously unreleased song and a DVD.
Thriller ranked number 20 on Rolling Stone magazine's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list in 2003,[7] and was listed by the National Association of Recording Merchandisers at number three in its Definitive 200 Albums of All Time. The Thriller video was preserved by the Library of Congress to the National Recording Registry, as it was deemed "culturally significant".
Background
Jackson's previous album Off the Wall (1979) received strong critical acclaim[8][9] and was also a commercial success, eventually selling over 20 million copies worldwide.[10] The years between Off the Wall and Thriller were a transitional period for the singer, a time of increasing independence.[11] The period saw the singer become deeply unhappy; Jackson explained, "Even at home, I'm lonely. I sit in my room sometimes and cry. It's so hard to make friends ... I sometimes walk around the neighborhood at night, just hoping to find someone to talk to. But I just end up coming home." [12] When Jackson turned 21 in August 1979, he hired John Branca as his manager.[13]Jackson confided in Branca that he wanted to be "the biggest star in show business" and "the wealthiest". The singer was upset about what he perceived to be the under-performance of Off the Wall, stating, "It was totally unfair that it didn't get Record of the Year and it can never happen again."[14] He also felt undervalued by the music industry; in 1980 when Jackson asked the publicist of Rolling Stone if they would be interested in doing a cover story on him, the publicist declined, to which Jackson responded, "I've been told over and over that black people on the cover of magazines doesn't sell copies ... Just wait. Someday those magazines are going to be begging me for an interview. Maybe I'll give them one. And maybe I won't."[14]
Recording
The relationship between Jackson and Jones became strained during the album's recording. Jackson spent much of his time rehearsing dance steps alone.[19] When the album's nine songs were completed, both Jones and Jackson were unhappy with the result and remixed every song, spending a week on each.[19]
Jackson was inspired to create an album where "every song was a killer," and developed Thriller with that in mind.[20][21] Jones and songwriter Rod Temperton gave detailed accounts of what occurred for the 2001 reissue of the album. Jones discussed "Billie Jean" and why it was so personal to Jackson, who struggled to deal with a number of obsessed fans. Jones wanted the long introduction on the song to be shortened; however, Jackson insisted that it remain because it made him want to dance.[17] The ongoing backlash against disco made it necessary to move in a different musical direction from the disco-heavy Off the Wall.[21] Jones and Jackson were determined to make a rock song that would appeal to all tastes and spent weeks looking for a suitable guitarist for the song "Beat It", a song Jackson wrote. Eventually, they found Eddie Van Halen of the rock band Van Halen.[17][19]
When Rod Temperton wrote the song "Thriller", he originally wanted to call it "Starlight" or "Midnight Man" but settled on "Thriller" because he felt the name had merchandising potential.[19] Always wanting a notable person to recite the closing lyrics, Jones brought in actor Vincent Price who was an acquaintance of Jones' wife, who completed his part in just two takes. Temperton wrote the spoken portion in a taxi on the way to the recording studio. Jones and Temperton said that some recordings were left off the final cut because they did not have the "edginess" of other album tracks.[17]
Songs recorded by Jackson for consideration included "Carousel" (written by Michael Sembello), "Nite Line" (written by Glen Ballard), "Trouble" (aka "She's Trouble", written by Terry Britten, Bill Livsey and Sue Shifrin) and "Hot Street" (written by Rod Temperton, and aka "Slapstick"). Jackson also cut a version of "Starlight". Demos of all these songs exist and have leaked onto the internet. "Carousel" and "Hot Street" were completed but left off the final version of the album. A short clip of "Carousel" appeared as a bonus track on the 2001 reissue of the album.
Composition
According to Steve Huey of Allmusic, Thriller refined the strengths of Jackson's previous album Off the Wall; the dance and rock tracks were more aggressive, while the pop tunes and ballads were softer and more soulful.[25] The album includes the ballads "The Lady in My Life", "Human Nature", and "The Girl Is Mine"; the funk pieces "Billie Jean" and "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'"; and the disco set "Baby Be Mine" and "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)"[23][25][26][27] and has a similar sound to the material on Off the Wall. "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" is accompanied by a bass and percussion background and the song's centerpiece, a climaxing African-inspired chant (often misidentified as Swahili, but actually syllables based on Duala),[28] gave the song an international flavor.[29] "The Girl Is Mine" tells of two friends' fight over a woman, arguing over who loves her more and concludes with a spoken rap.[19][29]Despite the light pop flavor of these two records, Thriller, more so than Off the Wall, displayed foreshadowings of the contradictory thematic elements that would come to characterize Jackson's later work.[30] With Thriller, Jackson would begin his association with the subliminal motif of paranoia and darker themes, including supernatural imagery in the album's title track.[23] This is evident on the songs "Billie Jean", "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" and "Thriller".[26] In "Billie Jean", Jackson sings about an obsessive fan who alleges he has fathered a child of hers; in "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" he argues against gossips and the media.[23][25] In the former song, Jones had Jackson sing vocal overdubs through a six-foot-long cardboard tube, and brought in jazz saxophonist Tom Scott to play a rare instrument, the lyricon, a wind-controlled analog synthesizer. Bassist Louis Johnson ran through his part on a Yamaha bass guitar. The song opens with a long bass-and-drums introduction.[31] In the song "Thriller", sound effects such as creaking door, thunder, feet walking on wooden planks, winds and howling dogs can be heard.[19]
The anti-gang-violence "Beat It" became a homage to West Side Story, and was Jackson's first successful rock cross-over piece.[25][32] Jackson later said of "Beat It", "the point is no one has to be the tough guy, you can walk away from a fight and still be a man. You don't have to die to prove you're a man".[29] "Human Nature" is moody and introspective, as conveyed in lyrics such as, "Looking out, across the morning, the City's heart begins to beat, reaching out, I touch her shoulder, I'm dreaming of the street".[29]
By the late 1970s, Jackson's abilities as a vocalist were well regarded; Allmusic described him as a "blindingly gifted vocalist".[8] Rolling Stone compared his vocals to the "breathless, dreamy stutter" of Stevie Wonder. Their analysis was also that "Jackson's feathery-timbred tenor is extraordinary beautiful. It slides smoothly into a startling falsetto that's used very daringly".[9] With the release of Thriller, Jackson could sing low—down to a basso low C—but he preferred to sing higher because pop tenors have more range to create style.[33] Rolling Stone was of the opinion that Jackson was now singing in a "fully adult voice" that was "tinged by sadness".[34] "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)", credited to James Ingram and Quincy Jones, and "The Lady in My Life" by Rod Temperton, both gave the album a stronger R&B direction; the latter song was described as "the closest Jackson has come to crooning a sexy, soulful ballad after his Motown years" by Taraborrelli.[29] The singer had already adopted a "vocal hiccup" which he continued to implement in Thriller. The purpose of the hiccup—somewhat like a gulping for air or gasping—is to help promote a certain emotion; be it excitement, sadness or fear.[35]
Thriller was released on November 30, 1982, and sold one million copies worldwide per week at its peak.[33] Seven singles were released from the album, including "The Girl Is Mine"—which was seen as a poor choice for the lead release and led some to believe that the album would be a disappointment, and to suggestions that Jackson was bowing to a white audience.[29] "The Girl Is Mine" was followed by the hit single "Billie Jean", which made Thriller a chart-topper.[42][43] Success continued with the single "Beat It", which featured guitarists Eddie Van Halen and Steve Lukather.[44] The title track "Thriller" was released as a single and also became a hit internationally.[29]
Thriller was mostly well received by critics. A four-star Rolling Stone review by Christopher Connelly described it as "a zesty LP" with a "harrowing, dark message". Despite the positive response, the title track came under strong criticism. Rolling Stone expressed a negative sentiment, criticizing its "degenerat[ion] into silly camp". The magazine expressed confusion at the use of Vincent Price over Count Floyd for the track's concluding rap.[23] The New York Times gave a positive review of the album, and dedicated a large amount of its coverage to the song "Human Nature". They described it as the most "striking" song on the record, and wrote, "this is a haunting, brooding ballad by Steve Porcaro and John Bettis with an irresistible chorus and it should be an enormous hit". Concluding their review The New York Times added; "there are other hits here, too, lots of them. Best of all, with a pervasive confidence infusing the album as a whole, Thriller suggests that Mr. Jackson's evolution as an artist is far from finished".[39]
Robert Christgau published a positive (A−) graded overview of the album a few days before its release. He acknowledged that there were "fillers" on the record but still labeled it "almost classic". He expressed the opinion that "Beat It" was the album's best track, calling it "the triumph and the thriller", but criticized "The Girl Is Mine" as "Michael's worst idea since "Ben"". He was of the opinion that the collaboration did not work well, but still praised it for "getting interracial love on the radio".[36] A year after the album's release, Time summed up the three main singles from the album, saying, "The pulse of America and much of the rest of the world moves irregularly, beating in time to the tough strut of "Billie Jean", the asphalt aria of "Beat It", the supremely cool chills of "Thriller".[33] Conversely, in a Melody Maker review, Paolo Hewitt stated "[t]his is not a good LP"; in his opinion there were only "two songs worthy of mention". "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" was praised as an "exciting", "uptempo electro-funk song", as was "Billie Jean". Hewitt's stance was that as a whole, the album could only be described as "bland", particularly the closing tracks. He summed up: "Jackson seems to have lost his talent for turning gross into gold".[38]
The album won Jackson a record-breaking eight Grammy Awards in 1984, including Album of the Year. The eighth Grammy went to Bruce Swedien.[45][46] That same year, Jackson won eight American Music Awards, the Special Award of Merit and three MTV Video Music Awards.[47] Thriller was recognized as the world's best-selling album on February 7, 1984, when it was inducted into the Guinness Book of World Records.[48] It is one of only three albums to remain in the top ten of the Billboard 200 for a full year, and spent 37 weeks at number one out of the 80 consecutive weeks it was in the top ten. The album was also the first of three to have seven Billboard Hot 100 top ten singles, and was the only album to be the best-seller of two years (1983–1984) in the US.[49][50]
On August 21, 2009 Thriller was certified 29x Multi-Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America, for shipments of at least 29 million copies in the US.[51][52] The album topped the charts in many countries, sold 3.7 million copies in the UK,[52][53] 2.5 million in Japan[54] and went 15x Platinum in Australia.[55] Still popular today, Thriller sells an estimated 130,000 copies in the US per year; it reached number two in the US Catalog charts in February 2003 and number 39 in the UK in March 2007.[47] As of 2010, the album is estimated as having sold approximately 65-110 million copies worldwide.
Blender described Jackson as the "late twentieth century pre-eminent pop icon", while The New York Times gave the opinion that he was a "musical phenomenon", and that "in the world of pop music, there is Michael Jackson and there is everybody else".[31][56] Jackson changed the way the industry functioned: both as an artistic persona, and as a financial, profitable entity. His attorney John Branca observed that Jackson achieved the highest royalty rate in the music industry to that point: approximately $2 for each album sold. As a result, Jackson earned record-breaking profits from compact disc sales, and from the sale of copies of the documentary, The Making of Michael Jackson's Thriller, produced by Jackson and John Landis. Funded by MTV, the film sold over 350,000 copies in its first few months. In a market then driven by singles, Thriller raised the significance of albums, yet its multiple hit singles changed perceived notions as to the number of successful singles that could be taken from an individual album.[57] The era saw the arrival of novelties like the Michael Jackson doll, that appeared in stores in May 1984 at a price of $12.[33] Thriller retains a position in American culture; biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli explains, "At some point, Thriller stopped selling like a leisure item—like a magazine, a toy, tickets to a hit movie—and started selling like a household staple".[58]
At the time of the album's release, a press statement from Gil Friesen, the then President of A&M Records, read that, "The whole industry has a stake in this success".[33] Time magazine speculated that "the fallout from Thriller has given the [music] business its best years since the heady days of 1978, when it had an estimated total domestic revenue of $4.1 billion".[33] Time summed up Thriller's impact as a "restoration of confidence" for an industry bordering on "the ruins of punk and the chic regions of synthesizer pop". The publication described Jackson's influence at that point as, "Star of records, radio, rock video. A one-man rescue team for the music business. A songwriter who sets the beat for a decade. A dancer with the fanciest feet on the street. A singer who cuts across all boundaries of taste and style and color too".[33]
When Thriller and “Billie Jean” were searching to reach their market demographic, MTV and cable TV had a smaller market share than the much larger reach of broadcast television stations in the U.S. A national broadcast TV audience on ABC, NBC, and CBS affiliate stations, as well as major independent TV stations, was desired by CBS/Epic Records to promote Thriller. The national broadcast TV premiere of the Thriller album’s first video, “Billie Jean”, was during the week of Halloween in October 1984 and was the idea of Video Concert Hall executive producers Charles Henderson and Jerry Crowe. [59][60] Video Concert Hall, the first nationwide music video TV network, taped the one-hour special in Hollywood and Atlanta, where the TV studios of Video Concert Hall were located. [61] [62] [63] [64] The Thriller TV special was hosted by Thriller video co-star Vincent Price, distributed by Henderson-Crowe Syndications, Inc., and aired in the top 20 TV markets and much of the U.S., including TV stations WNEW (New York), WFLD (Chicago), KTTV (Los Angeles), WPLG (Miami), WQTV (Boston), and WXIA (Atlanta), for a total of 150 TV stations. [59] [60]
Music videos and racial equality
His position persuaded MTV to begin airing "Billie Jean" and later "Beat It", which led to a long partnership and later helped other black music artists to gain mainstream recognition.[66] MTV denies claims of racism in their broadcasting.[67] The popularity of his videos, such as "Beat It" and "Billie Jean", helped to place the young channel "on the map", and MTV's focus shifted in favor of pop and R&B.[66][68] Jackson transformed the medium of music video into an art form and promotional tool through the use of complex story lines, dance routines, special effects and cameo appearances by well known personalities.[25] When the 14-minute-long Thriller video aired, MTV ran it twice an hour to meet demand.[69] The short film marked an increase in scale for music videos and has been routinely named the best music video ever.[70] The popularity of the video sent the album back to number one in the album chart, but Jackson's label did not support the release of the third music video from the album. They were already pleased with its success, so Jackson convinced MTV to fund the project.[19][69] Author, music critic and journalist Nelson George wrote in 2004, "It's difficult to hear the songs from Thriller and disengage them from the videos. For most of us the images define the songs. In fact it could be argued that Michael is the first artist of the MTV age to have an entire album so intimately connected in the public imagination with its imagery".[22] Short films like Thriller largely remained unique to Jackson, while the group dance sequence in "Beat It" has been frequently imitated.[17] The choreography in Thriller has become a part of global pop culture, replicated everywhere from Bollywood to prisons in the Philippines.[71][72]
For a black artist in the 1980s to that point, Jackson's success was unprecedented. According to The Washington Post, Thriller paved the way for other African-American artists such as Prince.[73] "The Girl Is Mine" was credited for getting interracial love on the radio.[74] Time noted, "Jackson is the biggest thing since The Beatles. He is the hottest single phenomenon since Elvis Presley. He just may be the most popular black singer ever".[33]
Contemporary appeal
Today, the album is still viewed in a positive light by critics some three decades later. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic gave the album the maximum five stars and wrote that the record had something to interest everyone. He believed it showcased harder funk and hard rock while remaining "undeniably fun". He went on to compliment "Billie Jean" and "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" and said, "The record's two best songs: 'Billie Jean, ...and the delirious 'Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'', the freshest funk on the album [but] the most claustrophobic, scariest track Jackson ever recorded." Erlewine gave the opinion that it was an improvement on the artist's previous album, although Allmusic was critical of the title track, describing it as "ridiculous" and as having the effect of "arriving in the middle of the record and sucking out its momentum".[26] Slant Magazine gave the album five stars and, like the Allmusic review and the original Rolling Stone review, paid compliment to the lyrics of "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'".[27]The author Nelson George wrote that Jackson "has educated R. Kelly, Usher, Justin Timberlake and countless others with Thriller as a textbook".[75] As a sign of the album's longevity, in 2003 Thriller was ranked at number 20 on the Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list, and was listed by the National Association of Recording Merchandisers at number three of the Definitive 200 Albums of All Time.[76][77] In 2008, 25 years after its release, the record was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and, a few weeks later, was among 25 recordings preserved by the Library of Congress to the National Recording Registry as "culturally significant".[78][79] In 2009, music critics for MTV Base and VH1 both listed Thriller as the best album released since 1981.[80] Thriller, along with other critic favorites were then polled by the public. 40,000 people found Thriller to be the Best Album of all time by MTV Generation, gaining a third of all votes.[80][81]
Reissues and catalog sales
Thriller was reissued on October 16, 2001, in an expanded set titled Thriller: Special Edition. The original tracks were remastered, and the album included a new booklet and bonus material, including the songs "Someone In the Dark", "Carousel", and Jackson's original "Billie Jean" demo, as well as audio interviews with Jones and Temperton discussing the recording of the album.[17][82] Sony also hired sound engineer and mixer Mick Guzauski[83][84] to work with Jackson on creating 5.1-channel surround sound mixes of Thriller, as well as all his other albums, for release on the then-new Super Audio CD format. Despite numerous retries, the artist never approved any of the mixes.[85] Consequently, Thriller was issued on SACD only in a stereo version.[86]In February 2008, Epic Records released Thriller 25; Jackson served as executive producer.[52] Thriller 25 appeared on CD, USB and vinyl with seven bonus tracks, a new song called "For All Time", a snippet of Vincent Price's voice-over, and five remixes featuring American artists Fergie, will.i.am, Kanye West, and Akon.[52][87][88] It also included a DVD featuring three music videos, the Motown 25 "Billie Jean" performance, and a booklet with a message from Jackson.[52] The ballad "For All Time" supposedly dates from 1982, but is often credited as being from Dangerous sessions.[89] Two singles were released from the reissue: "The Girl Is Mine 2008" and "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' 2008".
Thriller 25 was a commercial success and did particularly well as a reissue. It peaked at number one in eight countries and Europe. It peaked at number two in the US, number three in the UK and reached the top 10 in over 30 national charts. It was certified Gold in 11 countries including the UK, received a 2x Gold certification in France and received platinum certification in Poland.[90][91][92] In the United States, Thriller 25 was the second best-selling album of its release week, selling one hundred and sixty six thousand copies, just fourteen thousand short of reaching the number one position. It was ineligible for the Billboard 200 chart as a re-release but entered the Pop Catalog Charts at number one (where it stayed for ten non-consecutive weeks),[93] with the best sales on that chart since December, 1996.[94][95][96] With the arrival of Halloween that November, Thriller 25 spent an eleventh non-consecutive week atop the US catalog chart. This brought US sales of the album to 688,000 copies, making it the best selling catalog album of 2008.[97] This was Jackson's best launch since Invincible in 2001, selling three million copies worldwide in 12 weeks.[98]
After Jackson's death in June 2009, Thriller set additional records. It sold more than 100,000 copies, placing it at number two on the Top Pop Catalog Albums chart. Songs from Thriller also helped Jackson become the first artist to sell more than one million song downloads in a week.[99] According to Nielsen Soundscan, Thriller was the 14th best selling album of 2009 in the United States with 1.27 million copies sold.
4) 1858 – Jagdish Chandra Bose, Indian physicist (d. 1937)
Acharya Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose,[1] CSI,[2] CIE,[3] FRS[4] (Bengali: জগদীশ চন্দ্র বসু Jôgodish Chôndro Boshu) (30 November 1858 – 23 November 1937) was a Bengali polymath: a physicist, biologist, botanist, archaeologist, as well as an early writer of science fiction.[5] He pioneered the investigation of radio and microwave optics, made very significant contributions to plant science, and laid the foundations of experimental science in the Indian subcontinent.[6] IEEE named him one of the fathers of radio science.[7] He is also considered the father of Bengali science fiction. He was the first person from the Indian subcontinent to receive a US patent, in 1904.Born during the British Raj, Bose graduated from St. Xavier's College, Calcutta. He then went to the University of London to study medicine, but could not pursue studies in medicine due to health problems. Instead, he conducted his research with the Nobel Laureate Lord Rayleigh at Cambridge and returned to India. He then joined the Presidency College of University of Calcutta as a Professor of Physics. There, despite racial discrimination and a lack of funding and equipment, Bose carried on his scientific research. He made remarkable progress in his research of remote wireless signaling and was the first to use semiconductor junctions to detect radio signals. However, instead of trying to gain commercial benefit from this invention Bose made his inventions public in order to allow others to further develop his research.
Bose subsequently made a number of pioneering discoveries in plant physiology. He used his own invention, the crescograph, to measure plant response to various stimuli, and thereby scientifically proved parallelism between animal and plant tissues. Although Bose filed for a patent for one of his inventions due to peer pressure, his reluctance to any form of patenting was well known.
He has been recognised for his many contributions to modern science.
Bose and patents
The inventor of "Wireless Telecommunications", Bose was not interested in patenting his invention. In his Friday Evening Discourse at the Royal Institution, London, he made public his construction of the coherer. Thus The Electric Engineer expressed "surprise that no secret was at anytime made as to its construction, so that it has been open to all the world to adopt it for practical and possibly moneymaking purposes."[8] Bose declined an offer from a wireless apparatus manufacturer for signing a remunerative agreement. It might be interesting to note here that although Sir J. C. Bose did not see the merit of patenting, Swami Vivekananda disagreed. However, prior to his trip to USA, Swami Vivekananda visited Prof. J. C. Bose and tried to convince him to patent this invention of his. Since he knew that it would be futile to try convince him do such an act, he instead made copies of this ground breaking work and carried it with him to USA. Besides, delivering his world famous talk at the conference on World Religions, Swami Vivekananda asked one of his disciples, Sara Chapman Bull, to file a patent application for "detector for electrical disturbances" in the absence of Sir J. C. Bose. The application was filed on 30 September 1901 and it was granted as US 755840 on 29 March 1904. This act of Swami Vivekananda has finally garnered an Indian scientist with the recognition for being one of the founding fathers of wireless communication. Prof. J. C. Bose never visited USA.Speaking in New Delhi in August 2006, at a seminar titled Owning the Future: Ideas and Their Role in the Digital Age, Dr. V S Ramamurthy, the Chairman of the Board of Governors of IIT Delhi, stressed the attitude of Bose towards patents:
"His reluctance to any form of patenting is well known. It was contained in his letter to (Indian Nobel laureate) Rabindranath Tagore dated 17 May 1901 from London. It was not that Sir Jagadish was unaware of patents and its advantages. He was the first Indian to get a US Patent (No: 755840) in 1904. And Sir Jagadish was not alone in his avowed reluctance to patenting. Roentgen, Pierre Curie and others also chose the path of no patenting on moral grounds." However, it is necessary to mention that Roentgen is not the original inventor of X-rays. It was Nikolai Tesla's invention. Tesla had patented this technology prior to Roentgen inventing it. Roentgen had eventually met Tesla and had long conversations with him regarding Tesla's inventions, and might have realized that he could never patent his invention as it was prior art at that point.
Bose also recorded his attitude towards patents in his inaugural lecture at the foundation of the Bose Institute on 30 November 1917.Honors
- Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire (CIE) (1903)
- Companion of the Order of the Star of India (CSI) (1912)
- Knighthood, 1917
- Fellow of the Royal Society (1920)[4]
- Member of the Vienna Academy of Sciences, 1928
- President of the 14th session of the Indian Science Congress in 1927.
- Member of Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters in 1929.
- Member of the League of Nations' Committee for Intellectual Cooperation
- Founding fellow of the National Institute of Sciences of India (now renamed as the Indian National Science Academy)
- The Indian Botanic Garden was renamed as the Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden on 25 June 2009 in honor of Jagadish Chandra Bose.
5) 2010 – Rajiv Dixit, Indian scientist and Swadeshi movement figure (b. 1967) born
Rajiv Radheshyam Dixit Hindi:राजीव राधेश्याम दीक्षित was an Indian orator. He started social movements in order to spread awareness on topics of Indian national interest through the Swadeshi Movement, Azadi Bachao Andolan, and various other works.[1] He served as the National Secretary of Bharat Swabhiman Andolan he is the founder of bharat swabhimaan andolan ][2] He was a strong believer and preacher of Bharatiyata.[3] He had also worked for spreading awareness about Indian history, issues in the Indian constitution and Indian economic policies.[4]Rajiv Dixit was born on 30 November 1967 in Naah village, Atrauli tehsil of Aligarh district, Uttar Pradesh . Under the tutelage of his father RadheShyam Dixit he was educated till the 12th grade in the village schooling system in Firozabad district. In 1994, he moved to Allahabad (Prayaag) for higher studies. He pursued his M.Tech degree in Satellite Telecommunications from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur and pursued his doctorate in telecommunications in France. Subsequently, he worked at CSIR as a scientist. But his passion for his motherland made him give up a paid-position for the sake of Indian culture and Swadeshi movement, serving the cause of "Rashtra Dharma". His audio cassettes on Indian Nationalism and greatness of India's past did well in 1999. He had been recording them over months traveling across India spreading his message of great optimism about India and its enormous contributions to the human civilization. He was a Brahmachari and never married. He was influenced by the ideologies of Indian revolutionaries like Chandrashekhar Azad, Bhagat Singh and Udham Singh. Later in life, he began to appreciate the early works of Mahatma Gandhi. His life was dedicated to not just ideas with high ideals, but also causes like stopping alcohol and "gutka" production, cow-butchering and social injustices. On the 9th of January 2009, he became one of the founders of "Bharat Swabhiman" movement. On 30 November 2010, while in Bhilai in Chattisgarh he died of a heart attack. In his memory, the constructed Bharat Swabhiman building in Haridwar has been named "Rajiv Bhawan". He refused to take any modern medicine on his death bed, insisting instead on Ayurvedic medicine.
Work
Rajiv Dixit suggested that the Indian supreme court should declare money held by Indians in Swiss banks as national property so that foreign banks would have to legally hand over this money to India.Initiated and supported movements
- Dixit supported the movement of opening a chain of Swadeshi General Stores, where only Indian-made goods are sold.
- He demanded decentralization of taxation system, saying that the current system is the core reason for the corruption in bureaucracy. He said that 80% of taxes is being used to pay the politicians and bureaucrats and just 20% for development purposes for the people. He compared the current budget system of the Indian government to the earlier British budget system in India, presenting statistics to show that they are the same. Recently he was working with Swami Ramdev in Bharat Swabhiman Trust as national secretary.[8]
- He also doubted the terrorist attack on the United States Twin Towers, claiming that it was stage managed by U.S. Government itself, and supported the claims of the Lone Lantern Society of the U.S.[9]
- He also said that "liberalization, privatization and globalization, the three evil faces staring at us today, have pushed us towards a suicidal state."[1]
- He argued that modern thinkers have neglected agricultural sectors and farmers have been left to feed themselves and commit suicide.[1] Expressing his views on the Indian judiciary and legal system, he said that India is still following the laws and acts enacted during the British era and had not taken the burden of changing them as per the requirement of Indian people.[2]
Sudden death
Rajiv was in Bhilai to deliver lecture as a part of his Bharat Swabhiman Yatra, where he died on 30th November 2010. His death was unexpected. The cause of death is still unknown, though it was initially believed that he died of a cardiac arrest.
