100 Documents That Changed the World Read online

  whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty….All this will not be finished in the first 100 days. Nor will it be finished in the first 1,000 days; nor in the life of this Administration; nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin….Now the trumpet summons us again – not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need – not as a call to battle, though embattled we are – but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, ‘rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation’, a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.

  Although the address was only 1,364 words long, making it one of the shortest inaugural addresses ever delivered, its abundance of bold concepts, sharp juxtaposition, and strong phrasing made it one of the most powerful speeches Americans had heard in many years.

  Best known for its televised version, John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address is also preserved in its original document form, with drafts and supporting office files kept in the John F. Kennedy Library and National Archives and Records Administration.

  Beatles’ Recording Contract with EMI

  (1962)

  As four fresh-faced, working-class pop musicians from Liverpool sign a recording contract with EMI, two of them requiring a parent’s signature because they are so young, nobody could ever imagine what it will mean for all concerned – and the music world.

  On 1 October 1962, the record producer George Martin of EMI (Electric and Musical Industries Ltd) reached for his pen to sign a new recording contract with the pop group known as – what were they called? Oh, yes, that’s right, ‘the Beatles’ – not realizing that the paper under his nose would later become regarded as ‘one of the most important documents in music history,’ and that he would ultimately be called ‘the fifth Beatle’.

  As a top manager for the well-established and highly successful multinational music recording and publishing company, headquartered at 3 Abbey Road, St John’s Wood, London, Martin had put the group through a rigorous audition process since June.

  Back then the boys’ manager, Brian Epstein, had negotiated the deal for his clients – John Winston Lennon, James Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Richard Starkey (aka Ringo Starr) – to perform on EMI’s Parlaphone label after three other EMI labels had all rejected them. At the time, nobody could have known that the contract would launch what many critics now think of as the most successful commercial partnership in music history. But it did.

  The October contract bears the signatures of the four Beatles, plus the fathers of George Harrison and Paul McCartney who had to consent because their sons were under 21. In it the Beatles agreed to pay Epstein (NEMS Enterprises) 15, 20 or 25 per cent of their revenues, based on how much the band earned. The Beatles would then share any income among themselves after various expenses had been deducted.

  Curiously, the Beatles had already signed a managerial contract with Epstein on 24 January, but Epstein had held back from signing because he didn’t have enough faith in himself to help them. ‘In other words,’ he later said, ‘I wanted to free them of their obligations if I felt they would be better off.’

  The band’s rise was meteoric. Four days after signing the October deal, EMI released their first single, ‘Love Me Do’, which reached number 17 on the UK charts. The follow-up, ‘Please, Please Me’, hit number two, and by year’s end, three more releases – ‘From Me to You’, ‘She Loves You’ and ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ – all shot to number one, later to be followed by 14 more UK number-one hits. And EMI’s other success was also meteoric. In 1963, 15 out of the 19 number-one singles in the UK were EMI’s and the following year eight EMI artists held the number-one position for 41 weeks. The British invasion was underway.

  The eight-page mimeographed typescript of the October contract was auctioned in London in 2008 for £250,000. In 2014, the document was acquired by a reality show actor, Yossi Dina, of Beverly Hills Pawn.

  The signed contract – bearing the signatures of the four Beatles, plus the fathers of two who had to consent because their sons were under 21 – and a photograph of the directors of EMI with the band.

  A handwritten draft of King’s famous speech on display at Sotheby’s, New York. This draft was part of a Martin Luther King collection of papers bought by Morehouse College, Atlanta, for $32 million in 2006.

  (1963)

  Martin Luther King, Jr., ‘I Have a Dream’

  (1963)

  As leader of the biggest peaceful protest in American history, the country’s top African-American civil rights champion implores the nation to make good on its claims of freedom and justice for all people. And what becomes of the original document bearing his rhetorical masterpiece?

  Standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on 28 August 1963, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. took the microphone to voice the case of America’s growing civil rights movement. The crowd of more than 250,000 participants of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and dozens of reporters and broadcasters from all of the major news media followed his every word.

  Nobody in the audience could see the three-page typewritten document from which he was reading; everyone was transfixed by what they were hearing.

  King began with a fitting reference to the Emancipation Proclamation, which had freed millions of slaves a hundred years before, then added: ‘So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.’ Using flourishes from Lincoln, the Bible, the Declaration of the Independence, the Pledge of Allegiance and other classic works, the preacher also employed a bevy of skilful rhetorical devices.

  But sensing that the words lacked power, the impassioned gospel singer Mahalia Jackson cried out, ‘Tell ‘em about the dream, Martin!’ referring to moving passages she had heard King deliver in a recent speech. In fact, the previous night King’s speechwriter Clarence Jones had included the ‘dream’ motif in a draft, but King had apparently cut it out at the urging of another advisor, who thought it would sound trite.

  When the moment was right, King departed from his prepared text to deliver a partly improvised ending built on repetition, which began, ‘So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream.’

  ‘I have a dream,’ he continued, ‘that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!’

  The ad-libbed portion turned out to be the most memorable part of his address, receiving strong applause.

  When he was through, King folded the document and was about to put it into his pocket when one of his young security guards, a basketball player named George Raveling, asked if he could have it. King gave it to him and then was engulfed by well-wishers.

  Later that year, Time magazine named King ‘Man of the Year’, and a few months later he became the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Yet his full speech did not appear in writing until August 1983. A few months after its appearance in print, Raveling fully realized the document’s importance, and he retrieved the historic artefact from his basement. Today he keeps it in a vault for his heirs.

  Surveys have rated the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech as the greatest American oration of the 20th century. But the most famous part is missing from the document.

  Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung

  (1964)

  The ageing Chairman of China’s Communist Party issues a small primer of selected inspirational quotations for soldiers that helps to fuel the Cultural Revolution and quickly becomes the best-selling book in the world – Mao’s ‘Little Red Book’.

  As father of the People’s Republic of China and leader of its ongoing revolution, Mao Tse-tung (Mao Zedong) (1893–1976) wasn’t pleased when the other
leaders of his party sought to push him aside over economic policies. In order to assert himself, in January 1964 Mao had a little booklet prepared containing excerpts from his selected speeches and writings. It offered 200 of his most revolutionary quotations on various topics, ostensibly intended as a motivational primer for soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army.

  Copies were given to delegates of a party conference, asking them to comment on it. Based on their response, the work was expanded and printed as Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung. The revised version was promptly distributed to units of the PLA, who also were asked for their input. The PLA’s chief political organ gave it their enthusiastic approval, issuing a new revised edition that was buttressed with the slogan, ‘Workers of the World, Unite!’

  After still more discussions, in May 1965 another version with 427 quotations was published. Some of the sayings included: ‘We should support whatever the enemy opposes and oppose whatever the enemy supports.’ ‘All wars that are progressive are just, and all wars that impede progress are unjust.’ ‘Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.’

  Pocket-sized, with a durable waterproof cover, the book created such a sensation that the Ministry of Culture set the goal of having 99 per cent of the country’s population read the document. Copies were everywhere. As the catechism of the growing Cultural Revolution, it elevated Mao to godlike status. Citizens were expected to memorize and recite passages and were severely punished if they failed; anyone who allowed the book to be damaged or destroyed could expect harsh imprisonment or worse. The quotations were held up as the standard against which all true revolutionaries were judged.

  The response was so great that in 1966 the party’s Propaganda Department ordered the document printed for foreign consumption and it was translated and distributed worldwide, in a red vinyl cover, gaining the nickname ‘The Little Red Book’. At its peak of popularity, radicals from Havana to Berkeley carried a copy in their back pocket. Estimates of the number of copies printed range from 2 to 6.5 billion, making it the ‘most popular’ book of the 20th century.

  In 2002 the earliest available 1965 copy sold at Sotheby’s, New York, for $13,000.

  A market stall selling copies of the vinyl-covered ‘Little Red Book’ and a poster promoting it. Mao’s face was usually depicted above the masses, emerging from sunshine and leading the people to a bright future.

  The original draft of the Resolution, which claimed that ‘naval units of the Communist regime in Vietnam ... have deliberately and repeatedly attacked United States naval vessels.’

  Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

  (1964)

  A joint resolution of Congress authorizes President Lyndon B. Johnson to use conventional military force in Southeast Asia, thereby providing legal cover for the US to wage war in Vietnam – but the document is based on distortions and lies, showing that Congress and the American people were misled.

  According to the US Defense Department, on 2 August 1964 the USS Maddox, a US destroyer on patrol in the Gulf of Tonkin off Vietnam, exchanged fire with three North Vietnamese Navy torpedo boats. Two days later the Maddox and the destroyer Turner Joy both reported that they had been attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats in another act of aggression.

  Although the communist North Vietnamese government in Hanoi disputed the allegations, US officials cited the incident as an act of military aggression. On 4 August, President Lyndon B. Johnson announced in a televised national address that due to North Vietnam’s attacks on US ships in the Gulf of Tonkin, he would ask Congress to authorize a necessary military response.

  Johnson was facing an election in three months and it seemed likely that many Americans would support such an action; maybe it would even help his campaign against the hawkish Republican nominee, Barry Goldwater.

  The Tonkin Gulf Resolution stated that ‘Congress approves and supports the determination of the President, as Commander in Chief, to take all necessary measures to repeal any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent any further aggression.’ The measure was passed by a unanimous vote of all 416 members in the House and the Senate approved it by 88 to 2, with only Democratic Senators Wayne Morse of Oregon and Ernest Gruening of Alaska casting the nay votes. (Morse warned, ‘I believe this resolution to be a historic mistake.’)

  On 10 August, President Johnson signed the joint resolution that authorized him to use whatever conventional military force he deemed necessary – the equivalent of a declaration of war. Then he began using the resolution to support escalation of US military involvement in South Vietnam.

  Seven years later, the release of a secret Defense Department study would expose that, contrary to the official line, the North Vietnamese had not carried out an ‘unequivocal, unprovoked’ attack on US vessels in Tonkin. By 2005 the release of more previously classified documents and tapes from the National Security Agency, plus other new disclosures, would reveal that high government officials had distorted facts and deceived Congress and the public about what had actually happened. The crucial information that had served as the pretext for America’s decade-long war in Southeast Asia would become deeply discredited.

  The original draft of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution is in the National Archives.

  Apollo 11 Flight Plan

  (1969)

  In preparation for the first manned moon landing, NASA produces a detailed Flight Plan featuring a minute-by-minute timeline of activities by the spaceship and its three-member crew, from the launch at Cape Kennedy to the capsule’s scheduled splashdown in the Pacific four days later – a meticulous astronautical manual for one of the greatest technological achievements in history.

  Eight years after President Kennedy’s pledge to put a man on the moon before the Soviets, America’s state-of-the-art space programme was poised to make history as the whole world watched in awe.

  The Apollo programme had involved 400,000 engineers, technicians and scientists from 20,000 companies and the military in cutting-edge research and logistic activities at a cost of $24 billion. But in July 1969 all of that complex preparation and expense would boil down to a simple question: would the mission succeed or would it fail? Three astronauts’ lives would hang in the balance. And the operation would be broadcast live to a worldwide television audience.

  On 1 July 1969, the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston issued a 363-page Final Flight Plan for NASA’s scheduled launch of the Apollo 11 on 16 July. It spelled out the mission in complete and precise technical detail.

  The spacecraft was to carry its three-man crew – Mission Commander, Neil Armstrong; Command Module Pilot, Michael Collins; Lunar Module Pilot, Edwin E. ‘Buzz’ Aldrin Jr. – on a history-making journey.

  The five-part plan provided a minute-by-minute timeline of activities for each member of the mission crew, starting with the launch and lift-off from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A at 9:32 AM. The detailed instructions and data tracking continued through the flight, lunar orbit, moon exploration, return flight, and reentry and splashdown.

  Apollo 11 was programmed to travel 240,000 miles in 76 hours before entering into a lunar orbit on 19 July. The next day, Armstrong and Aldrin were trained to man the lunar module Eagle while Collins remained behind in the command module. Two hours later, the Eagle would begin its descent to the lunar surface and land on the southwestern edge of the Sea of Tranquility.

  During their 21 hours and 36 minutes on the moon, the astronauts were scheduled to carry out a wide assortment of duties including taking photographs and samples of the terrain, planting a US flag, running various scientific tests and speaking by telephone with President Nixon. Aldrin and Armstrong would sleep that night on the surface of the moon, then return to the command module.

  The Apollo 11 mission proceeded exactly according to plan. Black and white video from the voyage was transmitted to Earth with amazing clarity as 600 million people, one-fifth of the world’s population, watched on television.

  T
he flight plans, officially known as ‘flight data files’, for Apollo 8 to Apollo 17, and other records related to the Apollo programme, are in the custody of the National Archives in Fort Worth, Texas.

  Edwin E. ‘Buzz’ Aldrin Jr.’s copy of the Apollo 11 flight plan, dated 1 July 1969. The 365-page plan provided a minute-by-minute timeline of activities for each member of the mission crew.

  A couple of weeks after Apple Computer Company was founded, Ronald Wayne sold his 10 per cents share for $800. In 2015 Apple became the first US company to be valued at over $700 billion.

  Apple Computer Company

  (1976)

  Starting from a makeshift workshop in a family garage, two young college dropouts in Silicon Valley, California, form their own company to market a do-it-yourself kit for hobbyists to make their own moderately priced microcomputer. Their original partnership agreement and incorporation papers establish a venture that will change the world.

  In 1976 Steve Jobs (1955–2011) was a self-taught computer geek working out of his parents’ garage in Los Altos, California, with a couple of nerdish buddies, ‘Woz’ and ‘Wayne’. Ronald Wayne sold his share to the other two for $800, but Steve Wozniak (1950–) and Jobs mutually agreed to hold all rights, title, and interest in and to their fledgling company ‘for the manufacture and marketing of computer devices, components, and related material.’