Billy Joe McAllister 3 June

On this day, June 3 in 1953, Billy Joe McAllister committed suicide by jumping off the Tallahatchie Bridge on Choctaw Ridge, Mississippi. This, purportedly true event, was immortalised in the song ‘Ode to Billy Joe’ by Bobby Gentry in 1967. The song is noteworthy for the mystery surrounding his reasons for jumping off the bridge, which Ms. Gentry has, suspiciously in my view, never revealed. Some years later, in 1976 Herman Raucher’s film of the story was released and was widely seen as being second only to ‘Convoy’ as the worst film ever made about the American South. For those of you who can’t bear the suspense any longer, I can reveal exclusively that the suicide was probably a reaction to whatever it was that Brother Taylor saw a girl and Billy Joe throw off the Tallahatchie Bridge sometime before the reported suicide. Some observers have intimated that this may have been a baby, others have suggested, probably correctly, the possibility of it being the puppy of Billy Joe’s dog ‘Ol’ Yeller’ (it is the American South, after all). This sad event, of course, had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the marriage of Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David (AKA The Prince Edward, Duke of Windsor and, for a short while, King Edward VIII) to Mrs Wallis Simpson on 3 June 1937. In order to marry Mrs Simpson he abdicated the throne, announcing "I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as king as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love.". Later, when giving his views on marriage he said, "Of course, I do have a slight advantage over the rest of you. It helps in a pinch to be able to remind your bride that you gave up a throne for her." What a nice chap.