On this day in 1948

Marie McDonald McLaughlin Lawrie is better known by her stage name, Lulu. She is a singer and actress who sang, among other things, the theme song to the 1974 James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun. She had been signed to Decca Records while still in her teens, and reached the top 10 with Shout, her performance of which would be remembered throughout her career.

Eurovision Song Contest

Lulu was born in Lennoxtown, Stirlingshire, and in 1969 she represented the United Kingdom in the Eurovision Song Contest, performing Boom Bang-a-Bang at the Teatro Real in Madrid, Spain.

The concert went down in Eurovision history, when four songs got the same number of points and tied for first place. Spain’s Salome, the Netherlands’ De Troubadour, France’s Un Jour, Un Enfant, and Lulu’s Boom Bang-a-Bang each received 18 votes from their rivals. In later years, the winner of a tied contest was decided by counting which of the qualifying entries received maximum points most often, although that rule was not in place in 1969.

Had it been, Lulu would likely have come second, after The Netherlands, with a five, four and three. The Netherlands received a six, four and three. France’s highest score was a pair of fours, and Spain topped out with three threes. The winner of a contest traditionally hosts the event the following year. In 1970, it was indeed hosted by The Netherlands. At that contest, a new rule was introduced so that if two (or more) songs occupied the top spot at the end of the voting, they would each perform again, and be voted on a second time.

In 2014, Lulu was the opening act of the closing ceremony for the Commonwealth Games, which that year had been held in Glasgow.

 

...and on this day in 1974

An American nuclear submarine collided with a Soviet sub, which was waiting to tail it as it left the United States base at Holy Loch. The US berthed several of its submarines at the Scottish base between 1961 and 1992, and this was well known to the Soviets, who stationed their own vessels close by so they could keep watch on American activities.

Collision cabled to Washington

Henry Kissinger was the US secretary of state at the time, and the man who needed to be informed of the incident. He was therefore the man to whom national security advisor Brent Scowcroft sent a cable, informing him of the collision and the fact that both submarines had surfaced. The Soviet craft quickly submerged again and was lost.

The Guardian of 25 January 2017 noted that “the cable [which was released 43 years later] corroborates an until-now unconfirmed report on the incident in the Washington Post on 1 January 1975 by the investigative journalist Jack Anderson. He reported that the collision left a 9ft scratch on the side of the [American submarine] James Madison and that the two submarines came within inches of sinking one another.”