TODAY IN HISTORY: Elton John performs a re-written “Candle in the Wind” at Princess Diana’s funeral, 1915 First tank produced

1915

First tank produced

        On this day in 1915, a prototype tank nicknamed Little Willie rolls off the assembly line in England. Little Willie was far from an overnight success. It weighed 14 tons, got stuck in trenches and crawled over rough terrain at only two miles per hour.

 However, improvements were made to the original prototype and tanks eventually transformed military battlefields.

The British developed the tank in response to the trench warfare of World War I. In 1914, a British army colonel named Ernest Swinton and William Hankey, secretary of the Committee for Imperial Defence, championed the idea of an armored vehicle with conveyor-belt-like tracks over its wheels that could break through enemy lines and traverse difficult territory. 

The men appealed to British navy minister Winston Churchill, who believed in the concept of a “land boat” and organized a Landships Committee to begin developing a prototype. To keep the project secret from enemies, production workers were reportedly told the vehicles they were building would be used to carry water on the battlefield (alternate theories suggest the shells of the new vehicles resembled water tanks). Either way, the new vehicles were shipped in crates labeled “tank” and the name stuck.

The first tank prototype, Little Willie, was unveiled in September 1915. Following its underwhelming performance–it was slow, became overheated and couldn’t cross trenches–a second prototype, known as “Big Willie,” was produced. By 1916, this armored vehicle was deemed ready for battle and made its debut at the First Battle of the Somme near Courcelette, France, on September 15 of that year. Known as the Mark I, this first batch of tanks was hot, noisy and unwieldy and suffered mechanical malfunctions on the battlefield; nevertheless, people realized the tank’s potential. Further design improvements were made and at the Battle of Cambrai in November 1917, 400 Mark IV’s proved much more successful than the Mark I, capturing 8,000 enemy troops and 100 guns.


Tanks rapidly became an important military weapon. During World War II, they played a prominent role across numerous battlefields. More recently, tanks have been essential for desert combat during the conflicts in the Persian Gulf.


1997


Elton John performs a re-written “Candle in the Wind” at Princess Diana’s funeral

Elton John

          “The people’s princess” was the label Great Britain’s newly elected Prime Minister Tony Blair chose to use in describing the late Princess Diana in his first public statement following her death. It was a sensitive and understated way to refer to Diana’s tremendous popularity among the British public despite her estrangement from England’s royal family.

 Pop legend Elton John chose a more dramatic form of tribute: On September 6, 1997, at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, Elton John—a man not given to understatement—gave a tear-jerking performance of “Candle in the Wind,” his 1973 Marilyn Monroe tribute rewritten in honor of the deceased princess.

It is safe to say that Westminster Abbey had never seen a performance quite like the one Elton John gave on this day in 1997. But then Westminster Abbey had never seen a royal funeral quite like Diana’s, what with her brother, Earl Spencer, openly criticizing the royal family for mistreating her while television cameras beamed a live feed to the hundreds of thousands of mourners gathered directly outside and the millions more watching on television around the world. But it was Elton John’s performance, seated alone at a grand piano, which stole the show.


The version of “Candle in the Wind” that John performed that day included entirely new lyrics–he replaced the opening “Goodbye, Norma Jean…” with “Goodbye, England’s Rose“–hastily rewritten by Elton’s longtime lyricist, Bernie Taupin. Recorded that same afternoon in a London studio with the legendary Beatles producer George Martin, the reworked song was released as a single under the name “Candle In The Wind 1997″ and went on to become a #1 pop hit on both sides of the Atlantic. While the song also managed to take the #4 spot on the “100 Worst Pop Records” list compiled by Britain’s Channel 4 in 2004, “Candle In The Wind 1997″ is one of the biggest-selling singles in the world since formal records have been kept, eclipsed on the all-time list only by Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas.”