July Fifth

Robbie Robertson of The Band is 66.

Julie Nixon Eisenhower, daughter of one president and granddaughter-in-law of another, is 61. (It’s her husband David Eisenhower for whom presidential retreat Camp David is named.)

Huey Lewis is 59. No news on the ages of The News.

Rich “Goose” Gossage is 58.

David Farragut was born on July 5th in 1801. He entered the U.S. Navy as a 9-year-old; as a 12-year-old he took command of a prize ship and brought her to port during the War of 1812. Though a native of Tennessee, Farragut honored his oath to the United States and remained with the Union. A naval force under his command took control of New Orleans in 1862. In August 1864 he led the victory at Mobile Bay where he is reported to have said, “Damn the torpedoes, Full speed ahead!”

Aboard Hartford, Farragut entered Mobile Bay, Alabama, 5 August 1864, in two columns, with armored monitors leading and a fleet of wooden ships following. When the lead monitor Tecumseh was demolished by a mine, the wooden ship Brooklyn stopped, and the line drifted in confusion toward Fort Morgan. As disaster seemed imminent, Farragut gave the orders embodied by these famous words. He swung his own ship clear and headed across the mines, which failed to explode. The fleet followed and anchored above the forts, which, now isolated, surrendered one by one. The torpedoes to which Farragut and his contemporaries referred would today be described as tethered mines.

Famous Navy Quotes

Phineas Taylor Barnum was born on this date in 1810.

In his 80 years, Barnum gave the wise public of the 19th century shameless hucksterism, peerless spectacle, and everything in between — enough entertainment to earn the title “master showman” a dozen times over. In choosing Barnum as one of the 100 most important people of the millennium, LIFE magazine dubbed him “the patron saint of promoters.”
. . .

In 1841, Barnum purchased Scudder’s American Museum on Broadway in New York City. He exhibited “500,000 natural and artificial curiosities from every corner of the globe,” and kept traffic moving through the museum with a sign that read, “This way to the egress” — “egress” was another word for exit, and Barnum’s patrons would have to pay another quarter to reenter the Museum!
. . .

One of Barnum’s biggest successes — literally! — came in 1882 with his acquisition of Jumbo. Dubbed “The Towering Monarch of His Mighty Race, Whose Like the World Will Never See Again,” Jumbo arrived in New York on April 9, 1882, and attracted enormous crowds on his way to his name becoming a part of the language.

The Greatest Show on Earth