The tragic death of Paul Vaessen, and the arrival of Rosicky, the Ox, the Park and the gate

Here are the Anniversaries from 8 August – part of our regular daily look at Arsenal’s history.  You might also be interested in our in-depth analysis of the first days at Highbury which continues with When Highbury opened, and “Victoria Concordia Crescit” was introduced

Details of the whole list of 5000 Arsenal anniversaries and other activities undertaken by the Arsenal History Society are at the end of today’s list.


 

8 August 1962: Bristol Select v Arsenal – Joe Baker’s first game having signed for £70,000 from Torino.  He stayed for four years and for three of these was Arsenal’s top scorer.

8 August 1977:  Jimmy Rimmer played his last game v Aldershot in pre-season friendly having played 124 leagues, before moving on to Aston Villa with whom he won the European Cup, for the second time (having won it with Man U)

8 August 2001: Death of Paul Vaessen.  He had been a drug addict for several years and had a significant amount of drugs in his bloodstream at the time of his death.  His passing went unrecorded in the local paper.

8 August 2004: Arsenal 3 Man U 1 Charity Shield.  Gilberto Silva, Reyes, and Silvestre scored, and Reyes was awarded the “man of the match accolade”

8 August 2006: Tomas Rosicky first game v Dinamo Zagreb.  He transferred from Borussia Dortmund for whom he had played 149 league games.

8 August 2009.   At the AISA AGM, held in Highbury House, the Arsenal History Society was established as a body in its own right within AISA.  It quickly launched a series of books which transformed Arsenal’s history.

8 August 2011: Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain signed from Southampton for £12m.  He had played 36 games for Southampton in the 2010/11 season.

8 August 2012: Park Chu Young given squad number 30.  In three years at Arsenal he only played one league game.

8 August 2013: Gervinho sold to AS Roma after merciless barracking by the anti-Wengerians – descendents of the detested boo-boys.  He played 46 league games with Arsenal in two seasons.

8 August 2016: Mesut Özil, Laurent Koscielny and Olivier Giroud return to Arsenal long after the rest of the team having played through to the final of Euro 2016.  It is announced that all three would be missing from the squad for the opening match of the season as would be Mertersacker who had been injured in the summer and would be out for “months”.  He did however return to play brilliantly in the cup final in May.


And beyond football, on this day in 1974…

Richard Nixon resigned – the first President of the United States so to do, four days after admitting complicity in the break in at the Democratic Party Convention at the Watergate Building.  The event led to endless corruption scandals having the word “gate” tagged on the end.  For example, on October 7, 2016, The Washington Post released a video and accompanying article about Donald Trump and Billy Bush having “an extremely lewd conversation about women” in 2005 with Trump saying that “when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything…grab them by the pussy”.  It became known as pussygate.

So far no one has stolen enough gates from a gate manufacturers warehouse to create gategate.


The current series from the Arsenal History Series being developed on this site is Henry Norris at the Arsenal, covering all aspects off the life and work of the man who rescued Arsenal from extinction, secured the club’s future by moving it to Highbury, and then brought in Herbert Chapman as manager.

The most recent article is When Highbury opened, and “Victoria Concordia Crescit” was introduced

The previously untold tale of how it was that Norris came to choose Highbury as the suitable location for Arsenal’s new ground.

The series is being worked on daily, and the articles thus far are here.

Among the many other series we have run are…

There are details of many other series covered by this site on our home page.

2 Replies to “The tragic death of Paul Vaessen, and the arrival of Rosicky, the Ox, the Park and the gate”

  1. Thank you JSP. I think most readers recognise a slip when typing numbers but thank you for the eight question marks, I was running rather low.

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