Gregory Galloway

Once numbering as many as 5 billion across much of the United States and parts of Canada, the last passenger pigeon died in captivity on 1 September 1914.

By as early as 1856, some naturalists had warned that the excessive hunting of the bird would lead to its extinction. Bills to protect the bird were defeated in Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, and arguments that the bird was in danger were widely dismissed. By 1890, the passenger pigeon was noticeably depleted, and the last bird in the wild was shot less than a decade later.

The Cincinnati Zoo (one of the oldest zoos in the United States) kept passenger pigeons from its beginning in 1875. In 1909, a female named Martha, and 2 males were determined to be the only living passenger pigeons in existence. After the males died without producing offspring, a reward was offered for a male. None were found. When Martha died she was around 29-years-old.

Michael Moore’s debut film was first screened at the Telluride Film Festival on 1 September 1989.

Produced with a budget of $140,000, Warner Bros. purchased the distribution license for $3 million. As part of the license Moore required WB to to pay rent for 2 years for the evicted families appearing in the film and give away tens of thousands of tickets to the unemployed workers. The film went on to earn almost $8 million at the box office.

Dawn of the Dead was released in Italy on 1 September 1978.

Dario Argento had been instrumental in the development of the film, assisting George Romero in writing the screenplay, and securing financing for the film (which was produced for around $1.5 million). Argento also edited the film for all international prints, shortening Romero’s version by almost 10 minutes.

In appreciation, Romero held the film’s premiere in Turin. It would not be released in the US for another 9 months. Dawn of the Dead proved to be a success at the box office worldwide, earning more than $55 million, and making it the most profitable in the “Dead” series.

Ermanno Olmi’s 2nd feature film was released in Italy on 1 September 1961.

Olmi received numerous awards for the film, including the Film Critics Award at the Venice Film Festival and the British Film Institute award. It was not released in the US until October 1963.

The Third Man was released in the UK on 1 September 1949 (it was released in the US in February 1950, with 11 minutes cut from the UK version).

Written by Graham Greene and directed by Carol Reed has been cited as the “greatest British film of all time” and one of the greatest films ever. It received 3 Academy Award nominations, including Best Director and Best Editing (Oswald Hafenrichter), but only received 1 Oscar, for Best Cinematography (Robert Krasker).

Buster Keaton’s first film as writer and director (duties he shared with Eddie Cline) was released on 1 September 1920 (The High Sign had been filmed before One Week, but was not released until 1921).

The 19-minute “two-reeler” was a parody of Home Made (1919), an educational film about building a prefabricated house in seven days, produced by the Ford Motor Company.

John Coltrane’s 8th studio album as a leader was released on 1 September 1961. It was his first album for Impulse! records (and their 6th release overall).

While credited to a “Quartet,” Africa/Brass includes more than 20 musicians, including Bill Barber (tuba), Carl Bowman (euphonium), Jim Buffington (french horn), Paul Chambers (bass), Elvin Jones (drums), Freddie Hubbard (trumpet), and Booker Little (trumpet).

Coltrane initially approached Gil Evans about arranging, but Eric Dolphy (alto sax, bass clarinet, flute) and McCoy Tyner (piano) ultimately provided the orchestration.

The album was initially met with poor reviews (and poor sales) but its reputation has increased over the years, and is considered one of the highlights of Coltrane’s career.

Gene Autry’s recording of “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” was released on 1 September 1949.

Johnny Marks based the song on Robert L. May’s 1939 poem created as a coloring book for Montgomery Ward (Marks was married to May’s sister, Margaret).

The song entered the charts on 25 November and reached #1 for the week ending 7 January 1950 before dropping off the charts entirely. More than 2.5 million copies of the record were bought the first year, and more than 12 million have been purchased since).

Aug. 31, 1973: A day of record-matching heat — 98 degrees — meant voltage cutbacks, deaths and, as residents were opening fire hydrants all over the city, a drop in water pressure that prompted the Water Resources commissioner to declare an emergency. Meanwhile, in Central Park, giant blocks of ice were placed on a path to provide relief. Photo: Neal Boenzi/The New York Times

Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera) was first performed at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm (who had sought out Bertolt Brecht to open the new theatre) in Berlin on 31 August 1928.

Brecht’s mistress at the time, Elizabeth Hauptmann, had been working on a translation of John Gay’s 1728 work, The Beggar’s Opera, and Brecht made significant changes to the text, including the addition of 4 ballads by François Villon.

Brecht had been collaborating with Kurt Weill on a problematic production of 9 songs, The Mahagonny Songspiel (first performed in 1927 in a boxing ring), and interrupted their work on Mahgonny to write The Threepenny Opera.

The production’s most famous number, “Die Moritat von Mackie Messer” (Mack the Knife), was a last-minute addition to the score, due to Harald Paulsen (Macheath) demanding an song at the beginning of the show (the song was sung by Kurt Gerron, playing Police Chief Brown).

The production became an immediate commercial success in Germany, with more than 400 performances in 2 years. By the time Brecht and Weill left Germany in 1933 (for fear of Nazi persecution), The Threepenny Opera had been translated into 18 languages and had appeared on more than 10,000 times.

The Threepenny Opera made its US premiere in April 1933 (the G.W. Pabst film version had been released in 1931) and closed after 12 performances (an Off-Broadway production opened in 1954 and ran for more than 2,700 performances. Lotte Lenya received a Tony Award for her performance as Pirate Jenny, the only time the award was given to an Off-Broadway performer).

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s directorial debut, Accattone, was screened at the Venice Film Festival on 31 August 1961 before being released in Italy in November.

Pasolini had already established himself as one of the leading Italian poets and novelists, and had been sought after to write screenplays (Pasolini collaborated with Federico Fellini on Le notti de Cabria in 1957 and La dolce vita in 1960) before deciding to direct his own work.

Fellini agreed to produce Accattone for his newly-formed production company, Federiz, but after seeing a couple of early sequences, he withdrew from the project.

Pasolini had presented the poverty of post-war Italy in his earlier novels, Ragazzi di vita (1955) and Una vita violenta (A Violent Life, 1959), and Accattone was initially compared to those novels and Italian neo-realist films. It is, however, more aligned with Pasolini’s poetry, as well as Italian Quattrocento painting (whose works Pasolini had studied in his university days) and is more expressionistic than realistic.

The film was controversial at the time, and banned is some parts of Italy. It was not shown in the US until 1968.

20-year-old Bernardo Bertolucci was an assistant director on the film, his first job on a movie set (Bertolucci’s father Attilio Bertolucci, helped Pasolini publish his first novel).

Victim was released in the UK on 31 August 1961.

Screenwriter Janet Green was a proponent of gay rights (when homosexuality was still a crime) and wrote Victim with her husband John McCormick in order to bring attention to the issue and instigate reform.

39-year-old Dirk Bogarde was one of the most popular film stars in the UK, and while it had been rumored that he was gay, he frequently played romantic lead roles. Bogarde quickly agreed to take the lead role of Melville Farr, a married man who is blackmailed for his past gay life (it is said that Bogarde himself wrote the scene in which Farr admits to his wife that he is gay and has continued to be attracted to other men). It was the wisest decision I ever made in my cinematic life,” Bogarde said in a 1988 interview. “It is extraordinary to believe that this modest film could ever have been considered courageous, daring or dangerous to make. It was, in its time, all three.”

Director Basil Deardon described the film as “an open protest against Britain’s law that being a homosexual is a criminal act.”

While the film is incredibly tame (even by the standards of the day), the British Board of Film Censors gave it an X rating ("to the great majority of cinema-goers, homosexuality is outside their direct experience and is something which is shocking, distasteful and disgusting”). When it was released in the US in 1962, the MPAA initially refused to approve the film but later in the year lifted its ban on films “using homosexuality as a plot device.”

Mamma Roma premiered at the Venice Film Festival on 31 August 1962 before wider release in Italy in September.

Mamma Roma was 40-year-old Pier Paolo Pasolini‘s 2nd feature film was seen as both an extension of the post-war neorealism of Italian filmmaking, and a repudiation. It was criticized by both the political Right and the Left (for opposite reasons), momentarily censured after its premiere, when it was charged with obscenity (a charge dismissed 5 days later), and caused a minor riot when a group of neo-Fascist students invaded the premiere in Rome on 22 September.

It was not shown in the US until early 1965.

The Gun Club’s debut album was released on 31 August 1981.

23-year-old Jeffrey Lee Pierce wrote 9 of the 11 songs on the album, which also included Terry Graham (drums), Rob Ritter (bass), and Ward Dotson (guitar).

Fire of Love is frequently cited as a seminal album, with its combination of punk and american roots music (sometimes called “punk blues” or “pyschobilly”), influencing countless bands who came after.

5 years after Thriller, 29-year-old Michael Jackson released his 7th solo studio album on 31 August 1987. It was the 3rd and final collaboration between Jackson and producer Quincy Jones.

The 18-minute music video for the title song, directed by Martin Scorsese, aired on CBS on the same day as the album’s release in the US.

Bad was #1 in 25 countries, and remained at #1 in the US for 6 weeks.

9 of the 11 songs on the album were released as singles, with 7 reaching the Top Ten, and 5 reaching #1.

Despite selling more than 30 million copies worldwide, Bad was considered a “disappointment” by Jackson’s record label (Epic/CBS), since it failed to match the success of Thriller (which remains the world’s best-selling album, with more than 65 million copies purchased).

The Beach Boys’ 16th studio album was released on 31 August 1970.

Brian Wilson’s increasingly erratic behavior, worsening drug use, and the band’s poor sales, prompted their label (Capitol) to drop them in February 1969 (the band sued Capitol in April for unpaid royalties). In November 1969, the band signed with Reprise Records, in a deal brokered by Brian’s friend and collaborator Van Dyke Parks. The group submitted 14 songs for consideration for a new album, which were promptly rejected. Reworked and re-recorded songs were rejected in February 1970 and May 1970, before the label finally agreed, after adding overdubs in July.

Sunflower was the worst-selling Beach Boys record to date; peaking at #151 in the US and only staying on the charts for 4 weeks. It is now regarded as the group’s best album in the period after Pet Sounds (1966).

President Kennedy aboard the Honey Fitz, off Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, 8/31/1963 

via John F. Kennedy Library

Jean-Luc Godard’s 2nd of 3 films released in 1967, opened in France on 30 August.

Filmed in March 1967, La Chinoise, references the Russian revolution 50 years earlier and foreshadows the student revolts in France the following year. The film was not seen in the US until spring 1968, and was not available on DVD in the US until 2008.