1957

On the year of my birth Carlos P. Garcia had just assumed the presidency after Ramon Magsaysay was killed in a plane crash on Mount Manunggal in Cebu. The National Anthem is now sung in Tagalog. It was just a year ago when the Surian ng Wikang Pambansa, upon the urgings of Magsaysay, rendered the Spanish lyrics of Filipinas/La Marcha Nacional Filipina, into Tagalog and replaced Land of the Morning as our national anthem. Some of us may still remember that it was Julian Felipe who composed the music La Marcha Nacional Filipina in 1898, and that a year later Jose Palma wrote the poem Filipinas as lyrics for Felipe’s marching song. In 1920 Palma’s lyrics in Spanish was translated to English by Camilo Osias and A.M. Lane, the duo presumably doing their best to match the translated lyrics with the meter and cadence of Felipe’s march. Old timers would probably agree with me that the Surian’s translation is closer to Palma’s original than Land of the Morning, but what gets my goat is the word silanganan. Now, I don’t claim I know my Tagalog that well (-- just as I don’t claim to know my English that well either, or the Spanish language for that matter), but I don’t believe that silanganan is an accepted usage or variation of the Tagalog word silangan (which means East, or the dated Orient, in English). Well, I guess everybody had deadlines even the geniuses at the Surian so they probably thought it was all right to add an extra syllable to force fit the lyric with the melody much like singers add a yeah or a moan to their song.

In November of the same year, Garcia will win in the general elections and will get a full term as president. Valentin de los Santos ran for president, too; he lost; ten years later, Santos, as Supremo of the Lapiang Malaya, will lead an uprising against Marcos.

It was also the year when wooden rings were sold commercially in stores after their success as an exercise tool in Australian schools. Toymakers Richard P. Knerr and Arthur K. Melvin of Wham-O caught wind of the idea and started selling plastic hoops in the United States (These two also marketed the slingshot, which was originally invented to shoot pieces of meat into the air, as a training device for falcons). Here in the Philippines, the hoops came out as Hula-Hoops; made from rattan vines wrapped with plastic bands.

This year the Soviet Union also launched the Sputnik-- the world’s first man-made satellite. The Russians launched Sputnik from the Baikanor Space Centre in the Republic of Kazakhstan (-- a country later made famous by an abrasive British actor in the film Borat). Sputnik was 58cm in diameter; weighed 83.6 kilograms, and orbited the Earth in 96 minutes and 12 seconds. Here in the Philippines, Sputnik was adopted as a name by a criminal/prison gang whose members have Visayan roots.