Eric Hanson's Blog, page 10

Gandhi

In September 1888, Gandhi sailed from Bombay to England, alone, to study law. He was eighteen years-old and a new father. Gandhi appears seven times in A Book of Ages.

Frida Kahlo

On a rainy September day in 1925, Frida Kahlo was riding a Mexico City bus when it collided with a streetcar. She was treated for a broken pelvis, a dislocated shoulder, two broken ribs and shattered bones in her right leg and foot. A series of operations and painful convalescences were to follow. She put aside her plans to attend medical school and began to paint. She was eighteen. Frida Kahlo appears six times in A Book of Ages.

Ian Fleming

In September 1925 Ian Fleming received seven blackballs when his brother Peter put him up for membership in Pop, the exclusive Eton social club. The future author of the James Bond novels was 17. It must have rankled to be found not up to standard, not the right sort. He got his own back via Bond's arrogant perfection.

Fleming's life reads like a good novel. He was a scoundrel, a lowlife among the uppercrust, a borrower of other men's wives. In 1939, his great coup as a spy went awry when he ...

Paul Meets George

In September 1954, 12 year-old Paul McCartney met 11 year-old George Harrison on a Liverpool bus. A Book of Ages is full of crossed paths and lucky meetings. John Lennon meeting Yoko Ono at a gallery opening when he was 26; Elvis meeting the Beatles when he was 30 (he didn't know their names and couldn't tell them apart). Elvis meeting President Nixon. Che Guevara meeting Castro, Gertrude Stein meeting Alice B. Toklas, Lillian Hellman meeting Dashiell Hammett, J. D. Salinger meeting Ernest He...

Judy Garland

In September 1935 Judy Garland had a personal audition with Louis B. Mayer at MGM and was signed to a contract for $100 a week. She was 13, bright-eyed, pudgy, adorable and enormously talented. The talent came paired with a trembling vulnerability, the eyes almost on the verge of tears, the tremble in the voice. She starred in nine movies opposite Mickey Rooney, usually playing the true-hearted best friend, then in 1939 she played Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz; she was 16.

Louis B. Mayer thought...

Heart of Darkness

On September 6, 1890, Joseph Conrad took command of a small steamship traveling down the Congo River from Stanley Falls to Leopoldville. He was 32. Twelve years later, the experience formed the germ of his novel Heart Of Darkness.

Jesse James

Today is the birthday of Jesse James, born in 1847 in Clay County, Missouri. When he was 15 he rode with Quantrill's Raiders in a raid on the abolitionist settlement of Lawrence, Kansas, during which one hundred and fifty men, women and children were murdered. Shortly after the Civil War he and his brother Frank joined up with the four Younger brothers to form a gang. They robbed banks, businesses and trains across Texas, Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia, shooting...

Buried Treasure

On September 4, 1666, diarist Samuel Pepys dug a hole in his back garden to bury his wine and his best cheese in, and hopefully save it from the Great Fire Of London, which was burning closer by the day. He was 33.

Snap

It was on this day in 1888 that George Eastman received a patent for the camera design he called a Kodak. It used film that unspooled like a strip of flypaper. It required chemicals and enlargers and skill and patience to convert the images to paper. Now we snap pictures with our phones. Thousands of them. Most of them we never develop or print at all. We look at them in miniature form on a tiny screen. We phone them to our friends who do the same before throwing them away. I expect most of t...

"Earth hasn't anything to show more fair"

It was on this day in 1888 that George Eastman received a patent for the camera design he called a Kodak. It used film that unspooled like a strip of flypaper. It required chemicals and enlargers and skill and patience to convert the images to paper. Now we snap pictures with our phones. Thousands of them. Most of them we never develop or print at all. We look at them in miniature form on a tiny screen. We phone them to our friends who do the same before throwing them away. I expect most of the