On this day 14 July

Football War!

What is it good for?

 

Crazy scenes today in 1969 as fans of Honduras and El Salvador began "La guerra del fútbol", literally, The War of Football. That's right, we know our Spanish. Political tensions between the countries because of immigration issues came to a head after the second North American qualifying round for the 1970 FIFA World Cup, when both sets of fans began rioting after Honduras lost 3-0. The five-day war lasted over 100 hours as the Salvadoran army launched an attack against Honduras. US intervention resulted in a cease-fire on July 20, and eleven years later everyone were friends again as the two nations signed a peace treaty in 1980, the schoolyard equivalent of a forced handshake.

Born on this day in 1912, Woody Guthrie rose from rural Oklahoma to become the spiritual leader of the American folk scene. His guitar - bearing the legend 'This Machine Kills Fascists' - and he traversed America with dirt-poor 'Okies' as they migrated to California for work. A mentor to Bob Dylan and a hero to Johnny Cash and Joe Strummer to name but a few, 'The Dust Bowl Troubador' was responsible for hundreds of songs about human rights issues until his death from Huntington's Disease in 1967.

So it's Janma dhin ko Subha kamana! as they say in Nepal to habitual supporting actor Harry Dean Stanton (82), nephew of JFK Patrick J. Kennedy (41), and Victoria Crown Prince of Sweden (31). And had he not joined the permanent production of a dark, bleak film up above, Ingmar Bergman would have been 90 today.