Two Historic Battles, Three Years Apart, on the Same Day.

Again, my apologies for another digression from music; however, you know by now that certain dates that pass through my memory bank must be discussed, however mundane or just plain boring they may be:
In 1938, the most acclaimed sports event in sports history occurred in New York. Over 100,000,000 people all over the world were grouped around their radios to listen to this event.
It was the second time that these two athletes had met. One was the German boxer Max Schmeling, the other the American boxer Joe Louis.
Schmeling had defeated Louis two years earlier. Since that bout in 1936, Louis had become the World's Heavyweight Champion, and eventually went on to establish a record that may never be equaled; that is, the longest period in history that a heavyweight champion remained just that.
Joe Louis, in his own mind, felt that he could never be REAL champion unless he exacted revenge upon the only man to have defeated him during this period.
Schmeling had become a national hero in Nazi Germany with his 1936 defeat of Joe Louis, and although he never joined the Nazi party, he was feted in Germany, became a friend of Hitler, and mingled with the Nazi elite.
The second bout in 1938, however, was quite different.
In about a two minute period of the first round, Joe Louis overwhelmed Max Schmeling, breaking two ribs, damaging one of his kidneys, and knocking him almost senseless. In Germany, the broadcast was cut off when it was becoming apparent that Schmeling was being destroyed by a man who arguably had the greatest punching power of any boxer in the history of the sport.
The argument that the Master Race was invincible had been proven wrong. Hitler was apoplectic, and Schmeling ended up as a paratrooper in the German army.
It might also be more than possible to suggest that the first consciousness of the civil rights movement took form at this point, followed a few years later by way of Marian Anderson, the great Contralto and the first black to be allowed to join the Metropolitan Opera; followed, finally, by the courage of Martin Luther King, with Jackie Robinson wedged between.
Another example of how the arrogance of the Nazi Superman theory was put to the test and ultimately demolished, was when the Nazi Horde invaded Mother Russia.
The second Louis-Schmeling fight took place on June 22, 1938.
The Nazi invasion of Russia took place on June 22, 1941.
How utterly beguiling Coincidence can be.