March 21 Birthday
March 21, 1963: The federal prison on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay closed. It had operated for twenty-nine years, housing the most dangerous and escape-prone inmates in the federal system — Al Capone, George "Machine Gun" Kelly, Robert Stroud (the Birdman of Alcatraz). The prison was not closed because it was unsuccessful; it was closed because it was too expensive. The cost of transporting food and supplies to the island, and of maintaining the aging infrastructure, was three times that of a mainland prison. The water surrounding the island was believed to make escape impossible. Thirty-six men attempted escape in fourteen incidents. Twenty-three were caught, six were shot, two drowned, and five were listed as "missing and presumed drowned." The island became a national park in 1972 and receives 1.5 million visitors annually. On March 21, 2006, Jack Dorsey sent the first message on a new platform called Twitter: "just setting up my twttr." The message was sent at 9:50 PM Pacific Time. The platform launched publicly that July. Twitter's 140-character limit was originally imposed by SMS text messaging constraints, not by a belief that brevity was a virtue. The limit forced a style of communication that was both concise and elliptical, and the hashtag — proposed by user Chris Messina in 2007 — became a tool for creating ad-hoc communities around shared topics. Twitter became the platform where revolutions were organized (Arab Spring, 2011), where presidents communicated directly with the public, and where journalists broke news in real time. It also became a vector for misinformation, harassment, and coordinated propaganda. Dorsey's little experiment in microblogging became one of the most consequential communications platforms in history. Johann Sebastian Bach, born this day in 1685 in Eisenach, Germany, was a church organist and choirmaster who was not considered a great composer during his lifetime. He was known as an organ virtuoso. His compositions — over 1,100 works — were considered old-fashioned, dense, and mathematical. His sons, who were more famous than he was in his lifetime, called his music "learned" and "dry." Bach's music was rediscovered in 1829 when Felix Mendelssohn conducted the St. Matthew Passion in Berlin, eighty years after Bach's death. The performance sparked a Bach revival that has never abated. Bach wrote music for the glory of God — every manuscript begins and ends with the initials SDG (Soli Deo Gloria). He was blind at the end of his life and died after a botched eye surgery. Gary Oldman, born this day in 1958, was so convincing as Lee Harvey Oswald in JFK that conspiracy theorists believed he knew something. He played Dracula, Beethoven, Sid Vicious, Sirius Black, and Winston Churchill, transforming himself physically for each role. He was not nominated for an Oscar until 2012, at fifty-three. He won for Darkest Hour. People born on March 21 fall under the zodiac sign of Aries. The birthstone is Aquamarine and the birth flower is Daffodil. Historical events on March 21 include 1963: Alcatraz federal prison closes, last inmates transferred, 1980: President Carter announces US boycott of Moscow Olympics, 2006: Jack Dorsey sends first tweet ("just setting up my twttr"). Famous people born on March 21 include Johann Sebastian Bach (1685), Gary Oldman (1958), Matthew Broderick (1962).