Eric Hanson's Blog, page 16

Mary Queen of Scots (and son)

On this day in 1567 Mary Queen of Scots was deposed and replaced by her son James VI. James was a year old; Mary was 24.

Scotland had a thing for young monarchs. Mary herself had become queen when she was four days old. She married the king of France when she was 14. She had an eventful but unhappy life, shuttling between France and Scotland, spending the last 20 years of it imprisoned by her former subjects and then by her cousin Queen Elizabeth of England, who had her executed in 1587. Being h

Hard Boiled

Today is the birthday of hard boiled detective novelist Raymond Chandler. He was born in Chicago in 1888, but he moved to England as a boy and spent most of his childhood there. He went to the exclusive Dulwich College, where he was a couple of years behind a kid named Pelham Grenville Wodehouse.

Chandler spent most of his working life as an oil executive in Los Angeles. In his mid-forties he found himself out of a job, and he turned to writing stories for the pulp magazines. Atmospheric thrille

Eudora Welty

Eudora Welty died on July 23rd, 2001, at age 92. She lived in Jackson, Mississippi most of her life, much of it in the house her father built in 1925. She never married. She appears four times in A Book of Ages.

The Marlboro Man

Wayne McClaren, the ruggedly handsome cowboy in Marlboro advertising in the 1970's, died of lung cancer on this day in 1992. He was 51. He'd been a rodeo cowboy, a movie and TV actor of bit parts, and a model for the cigarette company's dream version of American individualism. He smoked a pack and a half a day.

At age 49 he was diagnosed with cancer. Shortly afterwards he began campaigning publicly against cigarettes. In response, Philip Morris denied McClaren had ever appeared in their advertis

Papa's Birthday

Ernest Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois. He learned to fish when he was 3. At age 12 his mother told him her dream was for him to become a concert cellist. At 18 he was serving as an ambulance driver on the Italian front in World War I, and was wounded saving the life of an Italian soldier. While in hospital he fell in love with his nurse, Agnes von Kurowsky, but she wouldn't marry him. At age 22 he moved to Paris, and a year later he ran with the bulls at the Feast of S

Our Man in Havana

In July 1941, Graham Greene became a spy. He was given the number 59200, the same number he later gave to Wormold, the vacuum cleaner salesman and spy in his 1958 satire Our Man In Havana. He was 36 years-old. Greene appears seven times in A Book of Ages.

What's My Line

In July 1962 Bennett Cerf went to Oxford, Missisippi for the funeral of William Faulkner. Both men were 64. The townspeople were sullen and unfriendly, and Faulkner's relatives at the house treated the New York publisher with suspicion bordering on hostility, until one of them recognized Cerf as a panelist on the Sunday evening television program "What's My Line." Suddenly everyone wanted to be his friend. Among the other mourners was novelist William Styron, whose account of the funeral appea

Fitzgerald in Hollywood

In July 1937 F. Scott Fitzgerald traveled to Hollywood on a six-month contract with M.G.M. for a thousand dollars a week. He was 40 years-old, no longer famous and deep in debt. He moved into the Garden of Allah, where he met gossip columnist Sheila Graham. Fitzgerald's last story published in The Saturday Evening Post is titled "Trouble." It was Fitzgerald who said there are no second acts in American life. He would die before his own began. F. Scott Fitzgerald appears seven times in A Book

Uncle Walter

For those of you who haven't looked at a paper today, the last great anchorman died yesterday. When I was a kid I thought Walter Cronkite and Walt Disney were the same man. Both were moustached, avuncular authority figures who appeared on TV. Everybody looked the same in suit and tie.

Cronkite appears four times in A Book of Ages. Joining CBS at age 33, reading a special bulletin on November 22, 1963, and then, in 1968, forever associating the words "Vietnam" and "stalemate," demonstrating the i

Hunter S. Thompson

Gonzo journalist, anti-hero and role model Hunter S. Thompson was born on July 18, 1937 in Louisville, Kentucky. He appears seven times in A Book of Ages. Jailed for robbery at 18; later turning up as a Caribbean correspondent for Time magazine and El Sportivo; purchasing a mail-order doctorate; running for sheriff in Aspen, Colorado; showing up as a recurring character in Doonesbury; being arrested for possession of various drugs and various weapons, including a Gatling gun; and, perhaps most s