"Because ignorance of your culture is considered uncool"
News for this day in 1939 had to do with the sudden scuttling and sinking of the German Battleship Graf Spee, after an intense sea battle off the Uruguayan coast. The battleship, discovered and chased by British Naval forces, sustained considerable damage and was granted safe harbor by Uruguay, who...
December 1945 – Report from Don Bell, Mutual correspondent in Tokyo – Gordon Skene Sound Collection – Once the War was declared over on both fronts, the painful process of rebuilding would take place. But as much as history has recorded the grand, sweeping efforts of changing political landscapes, as...
News on this December 17th in 1999 that, on the surface like another in a series of promised mayhem for the turn of the Century coming up. But we didn’t know at the time just how sinister this thing was going to go. The latest was the arrest of Ahmed...
BBC World Service News + From Our Own Correspondent – December 16, 2001 – BBC World Service Seems like another lifetime ago, but on this December 16th in 2001 we were just getting our feet wet in what was to become the mess, the gift that keeps on giving, the...
A world of unease, this December 15th in 1981. Starting with news of a purported calm descending over Poland in wake of the latest and growing set of strikes sweeping the country. The State News agency also took steps to cut off all communications between Warsaw and the rest of...
Over to Austria this week for a concert by the legendary Drummer/Percussionist Max Roach, recorded live at the Vienna JazzFest on July 8, 1994. In the early 1980s, Roach began presenting solo concerts, demonstrating that multiple percussion instruments performed by one player could fulfill the demands of solo performance and...
KFWB – Joe Yocam – Gene Weed – January 11, 1968 – Gordon Skene Sound Collection – Here’s the deal – 1968 was going to be a big year for you. You decided you weren’t going to be one of life’s great watchers – the world was changing and you...
There was a time when radio had a habit of mixing things up – going from serious news or conversation to festive holiday music didn’t seem that much of a jarring stretch at the time. The assumption was, the audience would adjust accordingly. Case in point – here is a...
When U.S. Army Air Corps Captains Albert W. Stevens and Orville A. Anderson landed their Explorer II High-altitude balloon on the ground near White Lake South Dakota, they were the first Scientific Observers to reach a distance of some 72,395 feet above the earth, the highest anyone had gone before....
December 10, 1999 – CBS World News Roundup – Late Edition – Gordon Skene Sound Collection – December 10, 1999 – Many months until election 2000, the race to the White House was already scoring its first potential drop-out. Democratic hopeful Bill Bradley cancelled his upcoming appearances, owing to a...
Gordon Skene, two-time Grammy Nominee and archivist runs The Gordon Skene Sound Archive and this website, which is dedicated to preserving and encouraging an interest in history and historic news, events, and cultural aspects of our society. Past Daily is the only place on the Internet where you can hear a Nixon speech, listen to an interview with John Cassavettes or play a broadcast of Charles Munch rehearsing the Boston Symphony in 1950, all in the same place. It's living history and it's timeless.
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