Eric Hanson's Blog, page 19

Begin the Beguine

In July, 1938, Artie Shaw recorded Begin the Beguine for the Bluebird label. He was 28. It quickly became an enormous hit and and Shaw became more and more annoyed when concert audiences began requesting it over and over and over and over and over again in concert halls and dance pavilions. What could he do? It was hummable and you could dance to it. Within a year he would be making $60,000 a week. Then, suddenly, he quit the music business and moved to Mexico. It was the first of several reti

The Little Red-Haired Girl

In July 1950, Charles Schulz discovered that a petite red-haired co-worker he had proposed to had decided to marry someone else. He was 27 and just about to launch a comic strip. In the years to come this disappointment would achieve an immortality far greater than Dante's love for Beatrice, or Petrarch's for Laura. The creator of Peanuts appears 13 times in A Book of Ages, getting a dog, having his cartoons rejected by the high school yearbook, being grand marshal of the Tournament of Roses Par

Amelia Earhart

On July 2nd, 1937, Amelia Earhart and co-pilot Fred Noonan took off from New Guinea headed for Howland Island in the South Pacific. They were never seen again. They had embarked on their round the world flight in their twin engine Lockheed Electra on June 1st. Earhart was 39. She appears three times in A Book of Ages.

Adolf Hitler, Celebrity Memoirist

Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf was published on July 1, 1925. The author, a malcontent and former draft dodger, was 36. Hitler appears 11 times in A Book of Ages.

While Rome Burned

Contrary to popular myth, Nero was actually out of town when Rome caught fire on July 1, 64 A.D. And despite subsequent accounts that he played his fiddle while the city burned, he actually rushed back to Rome and led efforts to put the fire out. In any case, he never played the fiddle; it was the lyre. Nero appears four times in A Book of Ages.

James Joyce Marries Nora Barnacle

On July 4th 1931, James Joyce married Nora Barnacle in a London registry office. He was 49; she was 47. They'd been together for 27 years. Joyce was still opposed to marriage and insisted he only married Nora "for testamentary reasons."

Lena Horne

Jazz singer and film actress Lena Horne was born on this day in 1917, into an upper middle class black family in Brooklyn. When she was 16 she joined the chorus line at the Cotton Club in Harlem, and within the year became a featured performer. She sang with Charlie Barnet's big band in 1940-41, but disliked the travel required and soon began singing on the NBC radio network out of New York.

In 1942 she headed to the West Coast, where she signed a long term contract with MGM. She was 25. Her con

The Little Prince

Today is the birthday of the aviator and author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, born in Lyon, France, in 1900. In 1935, a plane he was piloting from Paris to Saigon crashed in the Sahara. After surviving the crash, he and his navigator lived for four days on grapes, two oranges and a bottle of wine before being rescued by a Bedouin on a camel. This adventure formed the germ of the story that became The Little Prince.

After France surrendered to the Germans in 1940, Saint-Exupéry moved to New York and

Joyce Meets Fitzgerald.

On June 27, 1928, Paris bookseller and publisher Sylvia Beach gave a dinner party so she could introduce F. Scott Fitzgerald to James Joyce. Fitzgerald went down on one knee and kissed Joyce's hand. Beach was 41 and the proprietor of Shakespeare & Co.

Joseph Smith

On June 27th 1844, in Carthage, Illinois, Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon Church, was murdered by an angry mob. He was 38. In his short life he produced many volumes of scripture, and eleven children. Smith appears three times in A Book of Ages.