31st October

The musical revue Boys And Girls Together, with music by Sammy Fain, is playing at The Broadhurst Theatre, Broadway, New York City, USA, during a run of 191 performances.

The USS Reuben James, a four-funnel Clemson-class destroyer, is torpedoed and sunk by German U-boat U-552, commanded by Kapitanleutnant Erich Topp, near Iceland, Europe. Of the 159-man crew, only 44 survive. Reuben James thus becomes the first United States Navy ship sunk by hostile action in World War II. Woody Guthrie will write his song The Sinking Of The Reuben James in memory of this incident. The song will also be recorded by The Kingston Trio.

The USS Reuben James is torpedoed and sunk by a German U-Boat near Iceland, Europe, with the loss of almost 100 crew members. The incident will inspire Woody Guthrie to write the song The Sinking of the Reuben James which will be released in 1942, and will be covered by The Weavers, Johnny Horton, The Kingston Trio, Country Joe McDonald and many others.

Work on carving the four massive heads of US Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln is completed at Mount Rushmore, near Keystone, South Dakota, USA. The work will become an iconic American National Monument, recorgnised throughout the world, and it will inspire a number of music-related tributes. In 2011, musical comedy artist Jesse Goldberg will co-write and sing the novelty song Mount Rushmore Rocks - complete with an animated video in which the stone heads sing the song. A similar idea by The Mount Rushmore Singers, features the presidents performing a medley of Sing A Song/I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing. Other Rushmore-oriented music trivia include a 1967 psychedelic rock band from San Francisco named Mount Rushmore, and the fact that the cover of Deep Purple's 1970 album Deep Purple In Rock was inspired by Mount Rushmore, depicting the five band members' faces instead of the four presidents.