Miami Dolphins win Super Bowl VII to cap NFL’s only perfect season

On January 14, 1973, the Miami Dolphins achieve something no NFL team has  repeated: a perfect season. Despite a gaffe by kicker Garo Yepremian that has earned its own place in history, the Dolphins hold on to beat Washington, 14-7, in Super Bowl VII, capping a 17-0 season. 

READ MORE: The NFL’s Longest Game: How a Soccer Player-Turned-Kicker Secured the Win

The Dolphins, 10-3-1 the previous season, were the defending AFC champions. Despite being blown out by the Dallas Cowboys in Super Bowl VI, they were early favorites to win the relatively weak AFC East. Miami survived close calls with the Minnesota Vikings and Buffalo Bills early in the season and lost their starting quarterback, Bob Griese, to injury in Week 5. 

With veteran backup Earl Morrall leading the offense, the Dolphins forged ahead, piling up wins and then turning heads with their 52-0 victory over the New England Patriots—head coach Don Shula’s 100th NFL win. 

The team benefitted from depth at running back, as Larry Csonka and Eugene “Mercury” Morris became the first teammates to rush for 1,000 yards each in a  season. Shula pulled Morrall in favor of Griese midway through the AFC Championship Game against the Pittsburgh Steelers, won 21-17 by the Dolphins in Pittsburgh.

Two weeks later, Super Bowl VII took place before 90,182 fans at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Neither team’s quarterback played well—Griese passed for only  88 yards, and Washington’s Billy Kilmer set a Super Bowl record by throwing three interceptions.

Shula and his kicker nearly combined to ruin the perfect season with a decision the Miami head coach later admitted was based on his desire to cap a 17-0 season with a 17-0 win. 

With just over two minutes left, instead of going for it on fourth-and-4 in Washington territory, Shula had Yepremian attempt a 42-yard field goal. The kick was blocked, and Yepremian’s attempt to salvage the play resulted in a fumble, which cornerback Mike Bass returned 49 yards for a touchdown. 

“I shoulda just fallen on the ball,” Yepremian told reporters. “I shoulda ate it, but I made a mistake.”

Dolphins safety Jake Scott, who had two interceptions, was named MVP of the game. 

The Dolphins were the first team to reach the Super Bowl with a perfect record. The second team to do so, the 2007 Patriots, rode an 18-game winning streak into Super Bowl XLII but lost that game, 17-14, to the New York Giants.

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Benedict Arnold, American traitor, born


Year
1741
Month Day
January 14

Benedict Arnold, the American general during the Revolutionary War who betrayed his country and became synonymous with the word “traitor,” was born on January 14, 1741.

Arnold, who was raised in a respected family in Norwich, Connecticut, apprenticed with an apothecary and was a member of the militia during the French and Indian War (1754-1763). He later became a successful trader and joined the Continental Army when the Revolutionary War broke out between Great Britain and its 13 American colonies in 1775.

During the war, Arnold proved himself to be a brave, skilled leader, helping Ethan Allen’s troops capture Fort Ticonderoga in 1775 and then taking part in the unsuccessful attack on British Quebec later that year, which earned him a promotion to brigadier general. Arnold distinguished himself in campaigns at Lake Champlain, Ridgefield and Saratoga, and gained the support of George Washington. However, Arnold had enemies within the military and in 1777, a group of lower-ranking men were promoted ahead of him. Over the next several years, Arnold married a second time and he and his wife led a lavish lifestyle in Philadelphia, racking up substantial debt. Money problems and the resentment Arnold felt over not being promoted faster were factors in his decision to become a turncoat.

In 1780, Arnold was given command of West Point, the American fort on the Hudson River in New York (and future home of the United States Military Academy, established in 1802). Arnold contacted Sir Henry Clinton, head of the British forces, and proposed handing over West Point and its men. On September 21 of that year, Arnold met with British Major John Andre and made his traitorous pact, in which the American was to receive a large sum of money and a high position in the British army. However, the conspiracy was uncovered and Andre was captured and killed. Arnold fled to the enemy side and went on to lead British troops in Virginia and Connecticut. He later moved to England, though he never received all of what he’d been promised by the British. The former American hero and patriot died in London, in relative obscurity, on June 14, 1801.

READ MORE: Why Did Benedict Arnold Betray America?

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FDR orders “enemy aliens” to register


Year
1942
Month Day
January 14

On January 14, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issues Presidential Proclamation No. 2537, requiring aliens from World War II-enemy countries—Italy, Germany and Japan—to register with the United States Department of Justice. Registered persons were then issued a Certificate of Identification for Aliens of Enemy Nationality. A follow-up to the Alien Registration Act of 1940, Proclamation No. 2537 facilitated the beginning of full-scale internment of Japanese Americans the following month.

While most Americans expected the U.S. to enter the war, presumably in Europe or the Philippines, the nation was shocked to hear of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. In the wake of the bombing, the West Coast appeared particularly vulnerable to another Japanese military offensive. A large population of Japanese Americans inhabited the western states and American military analysts feared some would conduct acts of sabotage on west-coast defense and agricultural industries.

Official relations between the governments of Japan and the United States had soured in the 1930s when Japan began its military conquest of Chinese territory. China, weakened by a civil war between nationalists and communists, represented an important strategic relationship for both the U.S. and Japan. Japan desperately needed China’s raw materials in order to continue its program of modernization. The U.S. needed a democratic Chinese government to counter both Japanese military expansion in the Pacific and the spread of communism in Asia. Liberal Japanese resented American anti-Japanese policies, particularly in California, where exclusionary laws were passed to prevent Japanese Americans from competing with U.S. citizens in the agricultural industry. In spite of these tensions, a 1941 federal report requested by Roosevelt indicated that more than 90 percent of Japanese Americans were considered loyal citizens. Nevertheless, under increasing pressure from agricultural associations, military advisors and influential California politicians, Roosevelt agreed to begin the necessary steps for possible internment of the Japanese-American population.

Ostensibly issued in the interest of national security, Proclamation No. 2537 permitted the arrest, detention and internment of enemy aliens who violated restricted areas, such as ports, water treatment plants or even areas prone to brush fires, for the duration of the war. A month later, a reluctant but resigned Roosevelt signed the War Department’s blanket Executive Order 9066, which authorized the physical removal of all Japanese Americans into internment camps.

READ MORE: Life in WWII Japanese Internment Camps

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George Wallace inaugurated as Alabama governor


Year
1963
Month Day
January 14

On January 14, 1963, George Wallace is inaugurated as the governor of Alabama, promising his followers, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” His inauguration speech was written by Ku Klux Klan leader Asa Carter, who later reformed his white supremacist beliefs and wrote The Education of Little Tree under the pseudonym of Forrest Carter. (The book, which gives a fictitious account of Carter’s upbringing by a Scotch-Irish moonshiner and a Cherokee grandmother, poignantly describes the difficulties faced by Native Americans in American society.)

George Wallace’s ideological journey was not unlike Asa Carter’s. In 1958, Wallace made his first bid for Alabama’s gubernatorial seat. The NAACP endorsed him while the KKK endorsed his opponent in the primary. He was defeated by a wide margin. Four years later, Wallace had become a fiery segregationist and won election to the governor’s office in a landslide victory. He promised “segregation forever” but soon buckled under federal opposition.

In June 1963, under federal pressure, he was forced to end his literal blockade of the University of Alabama and allow the enrollment of African-American students. Despite his failures in slowing the accelerating civil rights movement in the South, Wallace became a national spokesman for resistance to racial change and in 1964 entered the race for the U.S. presidency. Although defeated in most Democratic presidential primaries he entered, his modest successes demonstrated the extent of popular backlash against integration. In 1968, he made another strong run as the candidate of the American Independent Party and managed to get on the ballot in all 50 states. On Election Day, he drew 10 million votes from across the country.

In 1972, Governor Wallace returned to the Democratic Party for his third presidential campaign and, under a slightly more moderate platform, was showing promising returns when Arthur Bremer shot him on May 15, 1972. Three others were wounded in Bremer’s attack on a Wallace rally in Maryland, and Wallace was permanently paralyzed from the waist down. The next day, while fighting for his life in a hospital, he won major primary victories in Michigan and Maryland. However, Wallace remained in the hospital for several months, bringing his third presidential campaign to an irrevocable end.

After his recovery, he faded from national prominence and made a poor showing in his fourth and final presidential campaign in 1979. During the 1980s, Wallace’s politics shifted dramatically, especially in regard to race. He contacted civil rights leaders he had so forcibly opposed in the past and asked their forgiveness. In time, he gained the political support of Alabama’s growing African-American electorate and in 1983 was elected Alabama governor for the last time with their overwhelming support. During the next four years, the man who had promised segregation forever made more African-American political appointments than any other figure in Alabama history.

He announced his retirement in 1986, telling the Alabama electorate in a tearful address that “I’ve climbed my last political mountain, but there are still some personal hills I must climb. But for now, I must pass the rope and the pick to another climber and say climb on, climb on to higher heights. Climb on ’til you reach the very peak. Then look back and wave at me. I, too, will still be climbing.” He died in 1998.

READ MORE: Segregation in the United States

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The first colonial constitution


Year
1639
Month Day
January 14

In Hartford, Connecticut, the first constitution in the American colonies, the “Fundamental Orders,” is adopted by representatives of Wethersfield, Windsor, and Hartford.

The Dutch discovered the Connecticut River in 1614, but English Puritans from Massachusetts largely accomplished European settlement of the region. During the 1630s, they flocked to the Connecticut valley from the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and in 1638 representatives from the three major Puritan settlements in Connecticut met to set up a unified government for the new colony.

Roger Ludlow, a lawyer, wrote much of the Fundamental Orders, and presented a binding and compact frame of government that put the welfare of the community above that of individuals. It was also the first written constitution in the world to declare the modern idea that “the foundation of authority is in the free consent of the people.” In 1662, the Charter of Connecticut superseded the Fundamental Orders; though the majority of the original document’s laws and statutes remained in force until 1818.

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Gold prices soar


Year
1980
Month Day
January 14

After being released from government control, gold reaches a new record price on January 14, 1980, exceeding $800 an ounce.

Gold is scattered sparsely throughout the earth’s crust and since ancient times has been treasured for both its scarcity and metallurgic properties. Before the 19th century, most nations maintained a bimetallic monetary system, which often included gold but consisted mainly of silver. Beginning in Great Britain in 1821, units of currency were redeemable for a fixed quantity of gold, a change that Britain hoped would stabilize its rapidly growing economy. As the Industrial Revolution spread, other countries followed suit, and by the late 19th century most industrialized nations were on the gold standard. In the new global economy, the common standard facilitated international monetary transactions and stabilized foreign exchange rates.

The reign of the full gold standard, however, was short. In 1914, the curbing of gold exports at the outbreak of World War I forced recourse to inconvertible paper currency. After the war, the gold standard returned, but economic growth in the 1920s overtook the gold reserves, and some nations supplemented their reserves with stable currencies like the pound and dollar, which like gold had obtained a measure of permanent abstract value in people’s minds.

In 1930, the world economy collapsed and the gold standard with it. In response, most governments sharply limited the convertibility of paper currency. In the United States in 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt prohibited the circulation of gold coins; though gold was still used in defining the value of the dollar. In the United States and many other countries, currencies remained “pegged” to gold until the 1970s, when dwindling global reserves signaled the final death knell of the gold standard.

In 1971, the United States suspended the free exchange of U.S. gold for foreign-held dollars, then in 1974 lifted its four-decade ban on the private purchase of gold. At that time, gold bullion was being traded in European markets at highs approaching $200 an ounce. In 1975, the U.S. government began to sell some of its holdings on the open market and in 1978, along with most other nations, officially abandoned the gold standard. After being released from government control, the price of gold soared, with its most staggering increase recorded January 14, 1980, when the price jumped to more than $800 an ounce.

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Albert Schweitzer born


Year
1875
Month Day
January 14

The theologian, musician, philosopher and Nobel Prize-winning physician Albert Schweitzer is born on January 14, 1875 in Upper-Alsace, Germany (now Haut-Rhin, France).

The son and grandson of ministers, Schweitzer studied theology and philosophy at the universities of Strasbourg, Paris and Berlin. After working as a pastor, he entered medical school in 1905 with the dream of becoming a missionary in Africa. Schweitzer was also an acclaimed concert organist who played professional engagements to earn money for his education. By the time he received his M.D. in 1913, the overachieving Schweitzer had published several books, including the influential The Quest for the Historical Jesus and a book on the composer Johann Sebastian Bach.

Medical degree in hand, Schweitzer and his wife, Helene Bresslau, moved to French Equatorial Africa where he founded a hospital at Lambarene (modern-day Gabon). When World War I broke out, the German-born Schweitzers were sent to a French internment camp as prisoners of war. Released in 1918, they returned to Lambarene in 1924. Over the next three decades, Schweitzer made frequent visits to Europe to lecture on culture and ethics. His philosophy revolved around the concept of what he called “reverence for life”–the idea that all life must be respected and loved, and that humans should enter into a personal, spiritual relationship with the universe and all its creations. This reverence for life, according to Schweitzer, would naturally lead humans to live a life of service to others.

Schweitzer won widespread praise for putting his uplifting theory into practice at his hospital in Africa, where he treated many patients with leprosy and the dreaded African sleeping sickness. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 1952, Schweitzer used his $33,000 award to start a leprosarium at Lambarene. From the early 1950s until his death in 1965, Schweitzer spoke and wrote tirelessly about his opposition to nuclear tests and nuclear weapons, adding his voice to those of fellow Nobelists Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell.

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FDR becomes first president to travel by airplane on U.S. official business


Year
1943
Month Day
January 14

On January 14, 1943, Franklin D. Roosevelt becomes the first president to travel on official business by airplane. Crossing the Atlantic by air, Roosevelt flew in a Boeing 314 Flying Boat dubbed the Dixie Clipper to a World War II strategy meeting with Winston Churchill at Casablanca in North Africa. With German U-boats taking a heavy toll on American marine traffic in the Atlantic, Roosevelt’s advisors reluctantly agreed to send him via airplane. Roosevelt, at a frail 60 years old, gamely made the arduous 17,000-mile round trip.

The secret and circuitous journey began on January 11, with the plane stopping several times over four days to refuel and for its passengers to rest. Roosevelt and his entourage left Florida, touched down in the Caribbean, continued down the southern coast of South America to Brazil and then flew across the Atlantic to Gambia. They reached Casablanca on January 14. After a successful meeting with Churchill, as well as some sightseeing and visits to the troops, Roosevelt retraced the route back to the United States, celebrating his 61st birthday somewhere over Haiti.

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Diana Ross and the Supremes perform their final concert


Year
1970
Month Day
January 14

They were the most successful American pop group of the 1960s—a group whose 12 #1 hits in the first full decade of the rock and roll era places them behind only Elvis and the Beatles in terms of chart dominance. They helped define the very sound of the 60s, but like fellow icons the Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel, they came apart in the first year of the 70s. The curtain closed for good on Diana Ross and the Supremes on January 14, 1970, at the Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The farewell concert in Vegas was the final act in a drawn-out breakup that didn’t become official until November 1969, but probably became inevitable in July 1967, when Motown Records chief Berry Gordy gave Diana Ross top billing over the Supremes. That move clearly signaled Gordy’s intention to launch Diana on a solo career—something he may have had in mind from the moment he upgraded her first name from “Diane” and upstaged her fellow Supremes by making Diana the group’s official lead singer.

Mary Wilson, Florence Ballard and Diane Ross grew up together in Detroit’s Brewster housing project and started out as co-equals in a singing group they called “the Primettes.” It took them several years of toiling within the hit factory Berry Gordy was assembling before the girls made their breakthrough in 1964. Those years included a Gordy-inspired name change for the group; a Gordy-mandated buffing and polishing in Motown’s in-house finishing school; and, eventually, a Gordy-dictated elevation of Diana over her childhood friends, Flo and Mary.

Yet even into early 1964, the group that would become Motown’s greatest commercial success was known as the “No-Hit Supremes” around Hitsville, U.S.A., the company’s Detroit headquarters. It was “Where Did Our Love Go”—a song written by the soon-to-be-legendary team of Holland-Dozier-Holland and rejected by the soon-to-be-eclipsed Marvelettes—that kicked off a run of success that saw the Supremes score an incredible five straight #1 singles in a 10-month span from July 1964 to May 1965. Five more #1s would come before Motown forced Flo Ballard out of the group she created, and two more would come with Cindy Birdsong as Ballard’s replacement before Diana Ross left the Supremes behind

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Marilyn Monroe marries Joe DiMaggio


Year
1954
Month Day
January 14

It was the ultimate All-American romance: the tall, handsome hero of the country’s national pastime captures the heart of the beautiful, glamorous Hollywood star. But the brief, volatile marriage of Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio–the couple wed on January 14, 1954–barely got past the honeymoon before cracks began to show in its brilliant veneer.

In 1952, the New York Yankees slugger DiMaggio asked an acquaintance to arrange a dinner date with Monroe, a buxom blonde model-turned-actress whose star was on the rise after supporting roles in films such as Monkey Business (1952) and a leading role in the B-movie thriller Don’t Bother to Knock (1952). The press immediately picked up on the relationship and began to cover it exhaustively, though Monroe and DiMaggio preferred to keep a low profile, spending evenings at home or in a back corner of DiMaggio’s restaurant. On January 14, 1954, they were married at San Francisco City Hall, where they were mobbed by reporters and fans. Monroe had apparently mentioned the wedding plans to someone at her film studio, who leaked it to the press.

While Monroe and DiMaggio were on their honeymoon in Japan, Monroe was asked to travel to Korea and perform for the American soldiers stationed there. She complied, leaving her unhappy new husband in Japan. After they returned to the United States, tension continued to build, particularly around DiMaggio’s discomfort with his wife’s sexy image. One memorable blow-up occurred in September 1954, on the New York City set of the director Billy Wilder’s The Seven Year Itch. As Monroe filmed the now-famous scene in which she stands over a subway grate with the air blowing up her skirt, a crowd of onlookers and press gathered; Wilder himself had reportedly arranged the media attention. As her skirt blew up again and again, the crowd cheered uproariously, and DiMaggio, who was on set, became irate.

DiMaggio and Monroe were divorced in October 1954, just 274 days after they were married. In her filing, Monroe accused her husband of “mental cruelty.” She married the playwright Arthur Miller in 1956, but their marriage also ended in divorce in January 1961, leaving Monroe in a state of emotional fragility. In February 1961, she was admitted to a psychiatric clinic; it was DiMaggio who secured her release, and took her to the Yankees’ Florida spring training camp for rest and relaxation. Though rumors swirled about their remarriage, they maintained their “good friends” status. When the 36-year-old Monroe died of a drug overdose on August 5, 1962, DiMaggio arranged the funeral. For the next two decades, until his own death in 1999, he sent roses several times a week to her grave in Los Angeles.

READ MORE: All About Marilyn: A Look at Her Family Tree

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