Every Garage edition closes with Jeremy Cordeaux leafing through the calendar, and 20 August proved a rich one, taking in a famous fleet’s welcome to Sydney, one of Churchill’s greatest lines, the forerunner of the Berlin Wall, and a roll-call of much-loved entertainers.
The Great White Fleet
Jeremy began close to home. On this day in 1908, America’s Great White Fleet arrived in Sydney to an enormous welcome. What caught his imagination was a curious footnote: 221 American sailors deserted to remain in Australia. He wished aloud that someone could follow up the human stories behind that number, how many married Australian girls, how many eventually went home, and how many simply vanished happily into a new country.
So Much Owed By So Many
The date belongs, above all, to the Battle of Britain. On 20 August 1940, Winston Churchill delivered his immortal tribute to the Royal Air Force: never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. On the very same day, Jeremy noted, the first Polish fighter squadrons flew alongside the Allies, hampered at first by a language barrier, the British spoke no Polish, the Poles little English, but formidable in the air. We won the war, Jeremy reflected, not that you would always notice today.
The Wall And The Message
History’s harder chapters featured too. On this day in 1961, East Germany began erecting a five-foot wall along the border with the West, replacing the barbed wire, the beginning of the Berlin Wall that would stand until people power finally brought it down. Jeremy also delighted in a gentler story: a message in a bottle, placed in the sea by the UK’s Marine Biological Association, found on a German beach after 108 years.
The Entertainers
The day is generous with performers Jeremy admired. Isaac Hayes, the soul musician and Oscar-winning composer of the theme from Shaft, was born in 1942. Phyllis Diller, the American comedian Jeremy recalled hosting many times, and who affectionately called her husband “Fang,” is remembered on this date. And Jerry Lewis, of the Martin and Lewis phenomenon and the MDA telethons that raised hundreds of millions, died on this day in 2017.
Authors, Actors And A Star
The ledger rounded out across the decades. Jacqueline Susann, author of Valley of the Dolls, was born in 1918. The actors Andrew Garfield and, from a darker chapter, the former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic also share the date. And Jeremy could not resist an astronomical note: in the year 2, Venus and Jupiter came into conjunction, one possible explanation offered for the Star of Bethlehem.
He gave the last word to a favourite humorist, Will Rogers, who famously said he did not make jokes, he just watched the government and reported the facts. From a fleet in Sydney Harbour to a wisecrack about Washington, it was another reminder, in Jeremy’s hands, that a single date can carry both the weight of history and the lightness of a good line.
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Catch the complete Garage edition of The Court of Public Opinion, recorded live around the dining room table.
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