Kenneth C. Davis's Blog, page 118

Don't Know Much About® Alfred Hitchcock

Somehow I think Alfred Hitchcock might enjoy knowing his birthday falls on Friday the 13th this year.

As a child of the 50s and 60s, I think Alfred Hitchcock's television series –more than his movies– had a tremendous impact on my sensibilities. Only later did I come to fully appreciate his movie masterpieces.

Here's a quick quiz about the birthday boy born in Leytonstone, England and his remarkable, groundbreaking television series

First there was the music ("Funeral March of a Marionette" by ...

TODAY IN HISTORY: The "Negro Riots" in Watts

It started with a "DWB"– "driving while black." On August 11, 1965, an all-too-frequent stop of a young black man exploded into one of the worst urban riots in American history.

Where: Watts was a rundown district of shabby houses built near the highway approaching Los Angeles International Airport. Ninety-eight percent black, Watts was stewing in a California heat wave. In the stewpot were all the ingredients of black anger. Poverty. Overcrowding. High unemployment. Crime everywhere. Drugs...

Don't Know Much About® Hiroshima

Another day of infamy. Sixty-five years ago on August 6,1945, the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima–

"We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world. It may be the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates valley Ersa, after Noah and his fabulous Ark." (Harry Truman, from his diaries, as quoted in The Making of the Atomic Bomb).

Okay, Mr. President. Here's the situation. You're about to invade Japan's main islands. Your best generals say hitting these beaches will m...

Of "Mosques," Memorials and Burning Convents

In polite society, one supposedly never discusses religion or politics. In America, it seems we can rarely separate the two.

The latest fracas over faith in the public square involves the plans for Cordoba House, an Islamic Center, including a "mosque," to be built two blocks from Ground Zero. Proposed to bridge the differences between Islam and the West, the $100-million project, which includes a prayer room rather than an actual mosque,  has won the backing of Mayor Bloomberg, among others. ...

TODAY IN HISTORY: Don't Know Much About® Tocqueville in America

Happy Birthday, Monsieur Tocqueville (born July 29, 1805; died April 16, 1859)

Observing a Choctaw tribe—the old, the sick, the wounded, and newborns among them—forced to cross an ice-choked Mississippi River during the harsh winter, Alexis de Tocqueville once wrote,

"In the whole scene, there was an air of destruction, something which betrayed a final and irrevocable adieu; one couldn't watch without feeling one's heart wrung." The Indians, he added, "have no longer a country, and soon will...

TODAY IN HISTORY: A Very Significant Amendment

I know. The mere mention of Constitutional Amendments automatically sends most of us for the snooze button. But this one is different. On July 28, 1868, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution was declared in effect.

On July 9, 1868, the state of South Carolina ratified the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, providing the necessary three-fourths of the states to adopt this very significant Amendment as part of the law of the land. One of the "Reconstruction Amendments" ratified in the...

Don't Know Much About Minute #21 – Juneteenth

Don't Know Much About® "Papa"

Ernest Hemingway, the larger-than-life American novelist, was born on July 21 in Oak Park, Illinois in 1899.

They called him "Papa." One of America's most successful and admired novelists, Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) once compared his bare-bones style to an iceberg:

"There is seven-eighths of it under water for every part that shows."

Beneath Hemingway's famously understated prose, which often celebrated such traditionally masculine pursuits as combat, hunting and boxing, his heroes...

Don't Know Much About "Papa"

Ernest Hemingway, the larger-than-life American novelist, was born on July 21 in Oak Park, Illinois in 1899.

They called him "Papa." One of America's most successful and admired novelists, Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) once compared his bare-bones style to an iceberg:

"There is seven-eighths of it under water for every part that shows."

Beneath Hemingway's famously understated prose, which often celebrated such traditionally masculine pursuits as combat, hunting and boxing, his heroes...

TODAY IN HISTORY: Don't Know Much About® Bastille Day!

Vive la France!

On July 14, 1789, an angry crowd stormed a state prison in Paris that stood as a symbol of royal tyranny. They surrounded the Bastille in order to seize the gunpowder stored inside. Troops fired on the rebels, but the people overpowered them. The bloody French Revolution had begun. The people of France have come to mark July 14 as their national holiday, the French version of the Fourth of July.

What else do you know about this celebration of "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity?"

T...