Joe's Daily U.S. History Lesson -- June 8

JUNE 8 -- 1966 Ameican Football League merges with National Football league; 1776 Battle of Trois-Riveres; 1867 Happy birthday Frank Lloyd Wright, architecture; 1963 american Heart association goes against tobacco company

JUNE 8 1966 – The American Football League …merges with the National Football League.

Although it maintained separate regular season schedules for the next four seasons from 1966 through 1969, it officially merged before the 1970 to form one league with two conferences. This of course led to the first super bowl! Let me back up a bit.

In 1958, the NFL championship game between the Baltimore colts and New York giants drew 45 million viewers on MNCBC and established pro football as an entertainment commodity to rival baseball. The NFL suddenly had a line of business men waiting to purchase new franchises in new markets, but most were turned away.

Lamar Hunt, the son of an oil tycoon, recruited seven businessmen from cities hungry for pro-football to for a league that would rival the NFL. NFL Commissioner Bert Bell welcomed the idea of a rival, saying that competition would stimulate both leagues.

The NFL expanded just as quickly as the AFL and teams got placed in Minneapolis, Oakland, Los Angeles, Dallas, Kansas City, New York, Buffalo, Boston, Denver and Houston as the original eight AFL cities. In 1965 the New York Jets got Joe Namath from the University of Alabama with the biggest contract in pro football history.

The two leagues started competing over fans, players and coaches, but not players. At least until 1966 when the New York Giants signed kicker Pete Gogolak away from the AFL’s Buffalo Bills. Neither league could afford a bidding war, so owners began talking about a merger. That’s now the NFL became a new league with two separate conferences; the AFC and the NFC. The first two Super Bowls proved the NFC to be the better league, with Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers winning both games.

However in Super Bowl 3, Joe Namath and the Jets upset the favored Baltimore Colts, giving legitimacy to the AFC. These days the Super Bowl is the most watched televised sporting event in the WORLD with more than140 million viewers.

In Canadian news…

1776 – Battle of trios-Rivieres. …And thanks for nothing canuckleheads on this one. A British army under Quebec Gov. Guy Carleton defeated an attempt by units from the Continental Army under the command of Brig. Gen. William Thompson to stop a British advance up the St. Lawrence River Valley.

The battle occurred as a part of the American colonists’ invasion of Quebec, which had begun in September 1775 with the goal of removing the province from British rule.

Legend, or probably more like folklore, says that Molly Pitcher was there bringing water to the men in battle. But since her existence was never verified, she sits in the folklore category. These days, a site near the Le Jeune Bridge was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1920 in order to commemorate the battle.

1867 – Happy birthday Frank Lloyd Wright, …one of our great architects, interior designer, writer, and educator. He designed more than 100 structures, 532 of which were completed. Wright believed in designing structure that was in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture.

This philosophy was best exemplified by Fallingwater in 1935, who has called Wright the best all-time work of American architecture. Wright was a leader of the Prairie School movement of architecture and developed the concept of the Usonian home, his unique vision for urban planning in the US.

1963 – American Heart Association, …led by Edward R. Annis, is the first agency to campaign against cigarettes. Yeah, 1963. He went against the King Anderson bill, which would authorize the use of Social Security taxes to pay for heal care benefits for retirees.