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Today in History
Leslie wrote: "Antonio wrote: "Tom Stoppard's “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” debuted in its full form in 1966 at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe before making its London premiere at the Old Vic on 11th Apr..."Thank you Leslie for your nice "amarcord". I also have old London times memories of Tom Stoppard. I remember when I attended one of his lectures. The "roaring sixties", "Look back in anger" days ...
Is there anybody who remembers this day? April 12, 1961. I do ...On April 12, 1961, aboard the spacecraft Vostok 1, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin becomes the first human being to travel into space. During the flight, the 27-year-old test pilot and industrial technician also became the first man to orbit the planet, a feat accomplished by his space capsule in 89 minutes.
Vostok 1 orbited Earth at a maximum altitude of 187 miles and was guided entirely by an automatic control system. The only statement attributed to Gagarin during his one hour and 48 minutes in space was, “Flight is proceeding normally; I am well.”
After his historic feat was announced, the attractive and unassuming Gagarin became an instant worldwide celebrity. He was awarded the Order of Lenin and given the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
Monuments were raised to him across the Soviet Union and streets renamed in his honor.
The triumph of the Soviet space program in putting the first man into space was a great blow to the United States, which had scheduled its first space flight for May 1961 …
Source: www.history.com
The First Man in Space: The record of Yuri Gagarin's historic first venture into cosmic space
“We are all born mad.” Samuel Beckett, born 13 April 1906, Irish author of prose, fiction and avant-garde plays, who established the contemporary theater of the absurd with his surrealistic "Waiting for Godot." He was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize for literature, and reluctantly accepted it after having lobbied the Swedish Academy not to bestow it.
At a time when much art was being expressed as a persistent cry of aloneness in giant homogenized cultures, few voices were as persistent on the subject as his. His characteristic despair, though laced with humor, was meted out in such plays as "Endgame," and "Krapp’s Last Tape," 1960, and in novels that including "Molloy," 1951, "Malone Dies" and "The Unnamable." Brooding and sardonic, he focused on the most abhorrent aspects of life, molding them into his own style, clearly haunted by spiritual desolation. He found writing difficult, "an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness."
Beckett, who claimed he could remember being a fetus in the womb, was the youngest of two sons of a surveyor and a nurse. He had a conventional Irish Protestant upbringing. He studied classics in high school and attended Trinity College from 1923-1927, earning a B.A. degree in French and Italian. At 21, he moved to Paris, taking a teaching post and falling into the company of other literary expatriates, including James Joyce, a personal friend and inspiration for him.
His first published work was an essay in a collection of Joycean criticism issued by Shakespeare and Company in Paris in 1929 and published in England seven years later. His first published work under his own name was "Whoroscope," 1930. In 1930, he returned to Dublin to earn an M.A. degree at Trinity College and became an assistant in French there. He didn’t like teaching, or the conservative Irish life, and left Ireland, where he returned only for short visits. In 1931, his critical essay, "Proust" was published.
He settled permanently in Paris in 1937, and published a collection of short stories and a book of poems. When Paris was invaded by the Nazis, Beckett and his future wife, Suzanne Deschevaux-Dumesnil, went to the south of France, hiding by day and traveling by night. The trek was likely considered inspiration for his "Godot" character. Yet another dark inspiration - in 1938 - was a panhandler who stabbed him in the chest for no given reason, perforating a lung and just missing his heart. He published his novel "Murphy" the same year.
Throughout the ‘40s, he wrote in two languages, shifting from English to French in 1945. At the end of World War II, he was an interpreter at the Irish Red Cross Hospital, and then settled down in Paris to four years of concentrated writing of the works that would seal his reputation. He labored in obscurity until the 1951-1953 period when three novels appeared. His masterpiece trilogy was formed by the novels "Molloy," 1951, "Malone Muert," 1951, and "L’Innommable," 1953.
Beckett achieved fame and financial security with the success of his play, "Waiting for Godot," produced in Paris, 1953, London, 1955, and New York, 1956. He wrote the plays "Endgame," "Krapp’s Last Tape," and "Happy Days" by the early ‘60s. His last work was "Stirrings Still," published in March 1989 in a limited edition of 200 copies. He was awarded the Nobel Prize on 12/10/1969.
He married Suzanne in England on 3/25/1961, and they lived in separate apartments overlooking a prison exercise yard. Beckett enjoyed the piano, playing Scarlatti and Haydn, and liked to garden and observe wildlife.
In the 1970s, his eyesight deteriorated. In 1986, he was diagnosed with emphysema and moved into a nursing home. After 50 years together, Suzanne died 7/17/1989, and Beckett followed her on 12/22/1989, in Paris.
Source: www.astro.com
The Philosophy of Samuel Beckett
Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language is published today April 14, 1828Noah Webster, a Yale-educated lawyer with an avid interest in language and education, publishes his American Dictionary of the English Language.
Webster’s dictionary was one of the first lexicons to include distinctly American words. The dictionary, which took him more than two decades to complete, introduced more than 10,000 “Americanisms.” The introduction of a standard American dictionary helped standardize English spelling, a process that had started as early as 1473, when printer William Caxton published the first book printed in English. The rapid proliferation of printing and the development of dictionaries resulted in increasingly standardized spellings by the mid-17th century. Coincidentally, Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language was published almost exactly 63 years earlier, on April 15, 1755.
Source: www.history.com
Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary
Samuel Johnson's 'Dictionary of the English Language' is one of the most famous dictionaries in history. First published in April 15, 1755, the dictionary took just over eight years to compile, required six helpers, and listed 40,000 words. Each word was defined in detail, the definitions illustrated with quotations covering every branch of learning. It was a huge scholarly achievement, a more extensive and complex dictionary than any of its predecessors - and the comparable French Dictionnarre had taken 55 years to compile and required the dedication of 40 scholars.
Literary quotations
In all, there are over 114,000 quotations in the dictionary. Johnson was the first English lexicographer to use citations in this way, a method that greatly influenced the style of future dictionaries. He had scoured books stretching back to the 1500s, often quoting from those thought to be 'great works' such as Milton or Shakespeare. Thus the quotations reflect his literary taste and his rightwing political views. However, if Johnson didn't like a quotation, or if a phrase didn't convey the exact meaning he required, he did not hesitate to chop, twist around, or rewrite a few words - Johnson famously scribbled all over his books, underlining, highlighting, altering and correcting the words, much to the horror of acquaintances who had lent him their books!
A tangled mess
A group of London book-sellers had commissioned Johnson's dictionary, hoping that a book of this kind would help stabilise the rules governing the English language. In the preface to the book Johnson writes of the 'energetic' unruliness of the English tongue. In his view, the language was in a mess, and was in desperate need of some discipline: 'wherever I turned my view', he wrote, 'there was perplexity to be disentangled, and confusion to be regulated.' However, in the process of compiling the dictionary, Johnson recognised that language is impossible to fix, because of its constantly changing nature, and that his role was to record the language of the day, rather than to form it.
Johnson's personal touch
Even so, many of Johnson's definitions bear the mark of a rather pompous man (but also quite a humorous one). Many of the words he included were incomprehensible to the average reader - long words such as ‘deosculation’, ‘odontalgick’. He is even believed to have made up some words. His definition of oats is very rude to the Scots. He defines the word as 'A Grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.' Johnson was criticised for imposing his personality on to the book. However, his dictionary was enormously popular and highly respected for its epic sense of scholarship.
Source: https://www.bl.uk/
Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language
Antonio wrote: "“We are all born mad.” Samuel Beckett, born 13 April 1906, Irish author of prose, fiction and avant-garde plays, who established the contemporary theater of the absurd with his surrealistic "Wait..."
Hey Antonio, I've just now discovered this thread. I chuckled when reading that Beckett's appartment was overlooking a prison exercise yard, that's sounds very much like Beckett. Makes me think of one of his short stories, about people living in an 'abode' - a small space, surrounded by high walls, each a square meter to call their own. They take turns trying to climb the walls.
Jenny wrote: "Antonio wrote: "“We are all born mad.” Samuel Beckett, born 13 April 1906, Irish author of prose, fiction and avant-garde plays, who established the contemporary theater of the absurd with his su..."
Thanks Jenny. Keep "chuckling" when reading in this thread. Next Thursday I'll celebrate one year of posting.
Event Date: April 16, 1850. Location: London, England, United KingdomAnna Maria "Marie" Tussaud, the woman behind one of London’s most famous tourist attractions, died on this day at the age of 89. She had spent a lifetime creating lifelike waxworks of the famous and the infamous from murderers to monarchs; from pop stars to politicians; from the beautiful to the beastly.
The seeds of her unlikely destiny were sewn two months before she was born at Strasbourg in 1761 when her father, a German soldier, was killed in battle. His death forced his young widow to find a job and she became housekeeper to a doctor named Philippe Curtius in Berne, Switzerland.
The doctor had a passion for wax modelling and owned a collection of heads and busts. It was a pastime that enthralled the young Marie and she became an enthusiastic pupil of the art.
When Curtius landed a fashionable position in Paris he took with him his housekeeper and his young apprentice, then six years old.
As she grew older Marie was able to move among the members of high society who had taken Curtius under their wing. She met King Louis XVI and in the 1780s was employed as an art teacher to his sister, Madame Elizabeth.
But her connection with the royal circle nearly cost her her life. After the French Revolution broke out she was perceived as a royal sympathiser and held in prison for three months where her head was shaved while awaiting execution.
She was saved by Jean-Marie Collot d’Herbois, a leading revolutionary who was a friend of Curtius. Even so, to prove her allegiance to the Revolution she was forced to make death masks of guillotined nobles, including the King and Queen.
She was particularly distressed when forced to make a cast of the severed and bloodied head of Princess de Lamballe, a friend of Marie’s, who had been hacked to pieces by the mob. She also modelled the guillotined heads of both Marie Antoinette and Robespierre.
Curtis survived the Reign of Terror but died in 1794 when he left his huge collection of waxworks to Marie.
She took them to England in 1802 and earned a living by displaying them at various centres around the country. Eventually, she set up a permanent exhibition centre – Madame Tussaud’s – in London.
A fire in 1925 claimed many of the exhibits and much of the rest were destroyed by German bombs in 1940. But the casts survived, allowing many of the historical waxworks to be re-created.
The oldest is that of Madame du Barry, made by Curtius in 1765 and there is one of King George III. Some sculptures still exist that were done by Marie Tussaud herself.
As she moved into her eighties, Marie, who created a self-portrait that is on display at the entrance to the museum, liked to sit at a table collecting the entrance money from visitors. There is a painting from 1845 showing her doing just that.
Probably the most controversial waxwork is of Adolf Hitler. In 2008 an angry visitor fought off guards and beheaded a life-sized waxwork of the Nazi dictator only minutes after it went on display at a newly opened branch of Madame Tussauds in Berlin.
In London, the Hitler model became a regular target for hate attacks ranging from spitting, egg-throwing and physical damage. A spokeswoman for Madame Tussauds said no other waxwork had ever attracted the level of hatred and abuse that the Hitler model had endured. In 2016 it was finally removed after a campaign on social media.
Madame Tussauds – there is no longer an apostrophe – has branches around the world and is now owned by the Merlin Entertainments group, which also runs Legoland and other theme parks.
Source: www.onthisday.com
Madame Tussaud: A Life in Wax
On April 15, 1967 Antonio De Curtis, more commonly known as Totò passed away at 3 am, at the hour when he used to go to sleep.Though the Italian icon had paid much attention to his health over the years, his heart betrayed him and finally gave in on that sad morning.
Totò passed away at the age of 69 in his own bed, alongside his much-loved partner, Franca Faldini.
Just days before his death Totò stated in an interview, “Chiudo in fallimento. Nessuno mi ricorderà” (I will end in failure. Nobody will remember me).
The beloved Prince’s prophesy couldn’t have been more wrong.
At 11:20 am on April 17, Totò was brought to the Sant’Eugenio Church on Viale delle Belle Arti for his funeral service.
Totò’s coffin was adorned with his signature bowler hat that he made his debut in, and a red carnation.
At 4:30 pm, the famous figure’s body was taken to Naples accompanied, from the highway exit to the Basilica del Carmine Maggiore, by a mass of people from all over.
After the funeral service, Totò’s coffin was transported from the Church through a secondary exit.
The beloved comedian’s body was then escorted by motorcycle police to the Pianto cemetery to be buried alongside his relatives in his family’s chapel.
Shortly after the religious service, Nino Taranto honoured the star, stating that it was not Antonio de Curtis who had passed away, but Totò, a dear friend who had shown only deep connections and sincere affection for his fellow citizens of all social classes and walks of life.
Much like Alberto Sordi, De Sica, Fabrizi and Tognazzi, Totò overcame all regional constraints.
Totò was born illegitimately in Naples and had noble titles, which is ironic given that poverty is the universal theme of his comedic works.
His comedy suggests that you cannot make people laugh if you don’t know pain, hunger, coldness, hopeless love and the despair of loneliness.
During his years in Naples Totò absorbed the pazzarriello (jocular herald) and pulcinella (shrewd lay about) cultures of the region, the art of deception and a taste for trickery, the pernacchia (raspberry-blowing) technique and the skill of sarcasm.
The comedian disdained dialect, and although he was a Neapolitan character, he chose to express himself in a koine language which emphasises the inexpressive stiffness of official Italian rather than find easy shortcuts in idiomatic or slang language.
In addition to the jovial nature of Totò’s character, and to that almost disarming yearning for a perceived or real noble recognition, Antonio De Curtis left, above all, an image of humanity through anecdotes and gestures which were full of immense sensitivity that told of his proverbial generosity.
Between a pirouette and a joke, Totò stealthily delivered his legacy as an extraordinary man, and an honest man that knew how to liquidate abstruse or haughty speeches with a nihilistic proverbial sneer that ridiculed reality, against every seriousness in life: “ma mi faccia il piacere!” (Pur-leez, give me a break!).
Source: www.ilglobo.com.au
Livella e poesie d'amore
April 18,1958. Federal court decides to release Ezra PoundA federal court rules that Ezra Pound should no longer be held at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital for the criminally insane in Washington, D.C. Pound has been held for 13 years, following his arrest in Italy during World War II on charges of treason.
Pound was born in Hailey, Idaho, and grew up in a suburb near Philadelphia, where his father worked at the U.S. Mint. He attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he met William Carlos Williams and had a romance with Hilda Doolittle, later known as the poet H.D. He earned a master’s degree in languages from the University of Pennsylvania in 1906.
He took a job teaching at Wabash College in Indiana but lost it after six months, having been accused of hosting a woman in his room overnight. In 1908, Pound moved to London, where he taught and published reviews. While working as secretary to William Butler Yeats, he met the daughter of one of Yeats’ friends, Dorothy Shakespear, who he married in 1914. The couple later had a child.
During this time, he wrote important works of literary criticism, spelling out the rules for new forms of poetry. He championed young writers such as William Carlos Williams, H.D., T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, Robert Frost, Ernest Hemingway, and Marianne Moore. He also began writing his own poems, including his 116Cantos, which combined his memories, feelings, impressions, and fragments of literature.
In 1920, Pound and his family moved to Paris, where he fell in love with violinist Olga Rudge, with whom he also had child. In 1925, he and his wife moved to Rapallo, Italy. Pound spent the summers with Rudge in Venice until World War II broke out; Rudge then joined Pound and his wife in Rapallo.
Pound strongly supported Benito Mussolini, believing that art flourishes under strong leaders. He worked actively against the Allies until the end of the war, when he was arrested by U.S. forces and held for weeks in an open cage in a prison camp near Pisa. The experience broke his mental health, although he produced one of his most beautiful works, the Pisan Cantos, there. When he was returned to the U.S., he was ruled unfit to stand trial and held at St. Elizabeth’s for 13 years. While in prison, his Pisan Cantos (1948) won an award from the Library of Congress. Poets and authors rallied around him and finally gained his release in 1958. He returned to Italy, where he lived until his death in 1972.
Source: www.history.com
Ezra Pound: The Solitary Volcano
Antonio wrote: "April 18,1958. Federal court decides to release Ezra PoundA federal court rules that Ezra Pound should no longer be held at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital for the criminally insane in Washington, D.C. ..."
Antonio, I just want to say I really enjoy reading your Today in History posts. Thank you for doing them. They are entertaining, educational, and full of interesting tidbits.
Tamara wrote: "Antonio wrote: "April 18,1958. Federal court decides to release Ezra PoundA federal court rules that Ezra Pound should no longer be held at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital for the criminally insane in W..."
Dear Tamara I'm pleased to read your comment. I've been posting on this topic for a year now. It all started tomorrow last year 2017. Please join in for reading tomorrow's item. We'll celebrate. Thanks again
April 19, 2017 - Today in History“I'm starting this topic, so that anyone who is interested can add information about events that have occurred on the particular date we are on. I hope that members of the group find this interesting.”
I accepted Gill’s invitation on this day April 19, last year, and started publishing pieces of historical significance on this topic. Up to this date, there have been 463 items published in this discussion with 134 page views. Not very many people seem interested in History, though I have enjoyed this experience a lot. Please allow me to write briefly about this event. First of all: What is of historical significance? And what is of historical importance? How do we decide what is significant and what is important?
The answer may be easy if we think that almost always what is significant is almost always important. Not the other way round though. As a matter of fact not always what is considered important can be said significant, in sense of having a meaning. The processes used to evaluate about selected events, people, and developments in the past use different criteria to help people to make judgements. These words may be called “the forgotten concept in history” since it can be challenging for both historians and readers, and also for teachers and students.
Writers/teachers often tell readers/students what is important instead of asking them to consider what is significant. The key to understanding significance is to understand the distinction between teaching significant history, and asking readers/students to make judgements about significance. There are a number of criteria that can be applied to establish the significance and importance of events.
Relevance to people living at the time
Resonance to people’s experience, beliefs or situations at the time
Relevance to an increased understanding of the present-day
Remarked on by people at the time and since
Remembered within the collective memory of a group
Revealing of some other aspect of the past
Results that have consequences for the future
Durability – for how long people’s lives were affected
Quantity – how many lives were affected
Profundity – how deeply people’s lives were affected
Profundity– how deeply people’s lives have been affected
Quantity– how many lives have been affected
Durability– for how long have people’s lives been affected
Relevance– something still significant to our present lives
On GoodReads there are people who enjoy reading and perhaps writing too. My choices have always been personal, linked to life experience, culture and interests, possibly connected to day-to-day information. I have enjoyed researching and discussions. Heartily thanks to all those who have participated. I have learned quite a lot. And it is well said that one never stops learning ...
Today in History
Hi Antonio, I just wanted to let you know that I read and enjoy your contributions to this thread daily. I am following it through the digest email so you won't see a page view from me unless I add a comment. Please continue!
I am joining the birthday celebrations ;) I have only recently discovered this thread as I've been absent from GR for a long time but I am looking forward to time-travel a little back through your posts. Thanks Antonio!
Happy Birthday to Today in History! May there be many more birthdays to celebrate.Thank you so much for doing this, Antonio. Keep them coming because they're so much fun to read.
Today in the History of Publishing Edgar Allan Poe’s story, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, first appears in Graham’s Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine on April 20, 1841. The tale is generally considered to be the first detective story.
The story describes the extraordinary “analytical power” used by Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin to solve a series of murders in Paris. Like the later Sherlock Holmes stories, the tale is narrated by the detective’s roommate.
Following the publication of Poe’s story, detective stories began to grow into novels and English novelist Wilkie Collins published a detective novel, The Moonstone, in 1868. In Collins’ story, the methodical Sergeant Cuff searches for the criminal who stole a sacred Indian moonstone. The novel includes several features of the typical modern mystery, including red herrings, false alibis, and climactic scenes.
The greatest fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, first appeared in 1887, in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel A Study in Scarlet. The cozy English mystery novel became popularized with Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple series in the 1920s, when other detectives like Lord Peter Wimsey and Ellery Queen were also becoming popular. In the 1930s, sometimes called the golden age of detective stories, the noir detective novel became the mainstay of writers like Dashiell Hammet, Raymond Chandler, and Mickey Spillane. Tough female detectives such as Kinsey Millhone and V.I. Warshawski became popular in the 1980s.
Source: www.historynet.com
The Oxford Book of Detective Stories
Why does Queen Elizabeth have 2 birthdays? Queen turns 91. Queen Elizabeth II turns 91 today, but her official birthday celebrations are always held in June. Here is why the Queen has two birthdays.Queen Elizabeth turns 91 today, and will celebrate the milestone privately with her family. There will be none of the pomp and circumstance that took place on her 90th birthday last year, though artillery gun salutes in London’s Hyde Park and the Tower of London will mark the occasion.
The date of the Queen’s birth is April 21, but she also has an official birthday on a Saturday in June every year. Last year the Queen’s official birthday was on Saturday June 11, with a weekend of celebrations to mark her turning 90.
The British monarch’s birthday celebrations have often been held on a day that is not their actual birthday. The tradition is linked to the unreliable British weather because the Royal family want to hold the grand royal birthday parade in the summer.
For example, Edward VII was born on November 9, but his official birthday was always marked in May and June during his reign. Where did the tradition come from? It is believed that the tradition started during the reign of King George II in 1748. George II was born in October but the annual summer military cavalcade became a celebration of the king as well as the armed forces.
The Queen’s official birthday is always celebrated with a military parade known as Trooping the Colour on Horse Guards Parade in London. After Trooping the Colour, the Royal family traditionally gather to watch a military fly-past from the balcony of Buckingham Palace.
Source: The Daily Express - https://goo.gl/WpNDPx
The Real Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait of Queen Elizabeth II
Very interesting. Thank you, Antonio.
Tamara wrote: "Very interesting. Thank you, Antonio."My pleasure!
April 22Earth Day, an event to increase public awareness of the world’s environmental problems, is celebrated in the United States for the first time. Millions of Americans, including students from thousands of colleges and universities, participated in rallies, marches, and educational programs.
Earth Day was the brainchild of Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, a staunch environmentalist who hoped to provide unity to the grassroots environmental movement and increase ecological awareness. “The objective was to get a nationwide demonstration of concern for the environment so large that it would shake the political establishment out of its lethargy,” Senator Nelson said, “and, finally, force this issue permanently onto the national political agenda.” Earth Day indeed increased environmental awareness in America, and in July of that year the Environmental Protection Agency was established by special executive order to regulate and enforce national pollution legislation.
On April 22, 1990, the 20th anniversary of Earth Day, more than 200 million people in 141 countries participated in Earth Day celebrations. Earth Day has been celebrated on different days by different groups internationally. The United Nations officially celebrates it on the vernal equinox, which usually occurs about March 21.
Source: www.history.com
Beyond Earth Day: Fulfilling the Promise
Did you know that historians believe Shakespeare was born on this day April 23 in 1564, the same day he died in 1616?Although the plays of William Shakespeare may be the most widely read works in the English language, little is known for certain about the playwright himself. Some scholars even believe the plays were not written by William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon but by some other well-educated, aristocratic writer who wished to remain anonymous.
Shakespeare’s father was probably a common tradesman. He became an alderman and bailiff in Stratford-upon-Avon, and Shakespeare was baptized in the town on April 26, 1564. At age 18, Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, and the couple had a daughter in 1583 and twins in 1585. Sometime later, Shakespeare set off for London to become an actor and by 1592 was well established in London’s theatrical world as both a performer and a playwright. His earliest plays, including The Comedy of Errors and The Taming of the Shrew,were written in the early 1590s. Later in the decade, he wrote tragedies such as Romeo and Juliet (1594-1595) and comedies including The Merchant of Venice(1596-1597). His greatest tragedies were written after 1600, including Hamlet(1600-01), Othello (1604-05), King Lear (1605-06), and Macbeth (1605-1606).
He became a member of the popular theater group the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, who later became the King’s Men. The group built and operated the famous Globe Theater in 1599. Shakespeare ultimately became a major shareholder in the troupe and earned enough money to buy a large house in Stratford in 1597. He retired to Stratford in 1610, where he wrote his last plays, including The Tempest (1611) and The Winter’s Tale (1610-11). Meanwhile, he had written more than 100 sonnets, which were published in 1609. Although pirated versions of Titus Andronicus, Romeo and Juliet and some other plays were published during Shakespeare’s lifetime, no definitive collection of his works was published until after his death. In 1623, two members of Shakespeare’s troupe collected the plays and printed what is now called the First Folio (1623).
Source: www.history.com
Soul of the Age: A Biography of the Mind of William Shakespeare
On April 22, 1864, Congress authorized that all newly minted coins be inscribed with “In God We Trust.”It took the tragedy of the Civil War to induce Congress to act, even though ministers throughout the country had urged for years that American coins bear reference to the Almighty. In a letter to Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase on Nov. 13, 1861, a Pennsylvania minister made a persuasive argument, contending that the inscription “God, Liberty, Law” would appropriately prioritize the nation’s hallmarks.
Congress appeared to take its inspiration from “The Star-Spangled Banner,” a widely popular song that emerged again from its origins during the War of 1812. Although not adopted as the national anthem until 1931, its stanzas were riveting, especially the fourth stanza with the lyrics slightly modified by Congress: “And this be our motto: In God Is Our Trust.”
In spite of the congressional legislation, the subsequent history of the coinage inscription was not uniform, with reference to the Almighty disappearing on the five-cent coin in 1883 and not reappearing until the Jefferson nickel in 1938. Then, too, there was opposition to the federal government’s action on the basis of its alleged violation of the separation of church and state.
Source: www.washingtontimes.com
In God We Trust: But Which One?
April 24, 1800 - The Library of Congress was established in Washington, D.C. It is America's oldest federal cultural institution and the world's largest library. President John Adams approves legislation to appropriate $5,000 to purchase “such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress,” thus establishing the Library of Congress. The first books, ordered from London, arrived in 1801 and were stored in the U.S. Capitol, the library’s first home. The first library catalog, dated April 1802, listed 964 volumes and nine maps. Twelve years later, the British army invaded the city of Washington and burned the Capitol, including the then 3,000-volume Library of Congress.
Former president Thomas Jefferson, who advocated the expansion of the library during his two terms in office, responded to the loss by selling his personal library, the largest and finest in the country, to Congress to “recommence” the library. The purchase of Jefferson’s 6,487 volumes was approved in the next year, and a professional librarian, George Watterston, was hired to replace the House clerks in the administration of the library. In 1851, a second major fire at the library destroyed about two-thirds of its 55,000 volumes, including two-thirds of the Thomas Jefferson library. Congress responded quickly and generously to the disaster, and within a few years a majority of the lost books were replaced.
After the Civil War, the collection was greatly expanded, and by the 20th century the Library of Congress had become the de facto national library of the United States and one of the largest in the world. Today, the collection, housed in three enormous buildings in Washington, contains more than 17 million books, as well as millions of maps, manuscripts, photographs, films, audio and video recordings, prints, and drawings.
Source: www.history.com
America's Library: The Story of the Library of Congress, 1800-2000
Radio inventor Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937) was born in Bologna, Italy, today April 25. Italian inventor and engineer Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937) developed, demonstrated and marketed the first successful long-distance wireless telegraph and in 1901 broadcast the first transatlantic radio signal. His company’s Marconi radios ended the isolation of ocean travel and saved hundreds of lives, including all of the surviving passengers from the sinking Titanic. In 1909 he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for his radio work.
His father was a wealthy landowner and his mother was a member of Ireland’s Jameson family of distillers. Marconi was educated by tutors and at the Livorno Technical Institute and the University of Bologna.
In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi—who was much more a tinkering engineer than a scientist—freely admitted he didn't really understand how his invention worked.
In 1894 Marconi became fascinated with the discovery by German physicist Heinrich Rudolf Hertz of “invisible waves” generated by electromagnetic interactions. Marconi built his own wave-generating equipment at his family’s estate and was soon sending signals to locations a mile away. After failing to interest the Italian government in his work, Marconi decided to try his luck in London ...
Source: www.history.com
Signor Marconi's Magic Box: The Most Remarkable Invention Of The 19th Century & The Amateur Inventor Whose Genius Sparked A Revolution
Marcus Aurelius. Born: April 26, 121 CERoman Emperor from 161 to 180, he was the last of the Five Good Emperors, and is also considered one of the most important Stoic philosophers. During his reign, the Empire defeated a revitalized Parthian Empire in the East. He is considered one of the best Roman Emperors in history.
The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius ruled from 161 to 180 AD, and developed a reputation for being the ideal wise leader Plato termed the "philosopher king." Marcus has remained relevant for 1,800 years largely due to his writings collected as "Meditations.
"Meditations" is not a typical philosophical treatise. It's closer to a diary. Marcus wrote the 12 books that make it up sometime during the last decade of his life. "That this was a dark and stressful period for him can hardly be doubted," Gregory Hays writes in the introduction to his translation of Marcus' original Greek. The emperor was faced with constant fighting, the rebellion of his general Cassius, the deaths of his wife and close friend, and the realization that his son Commodus was destined to be a bad ruler.
He dealt with these hardships by turning to philosophy, specifically the Stoicism of the ancient Greeks and his contemporary Roman philosophers. "Meditations" reveals that Marcus remained in control of his emotions through the beliefs that nature unfolds in a perfect way and that one must accept that they cannot change the past or what other people feel in their hearts.
We went through Hays' translation and picked out some key points on one of the main themes of "Meditations," how to recover from massive setbacks. Here are some of the philosopher king's timeless lessons on how to be resilient:
Don't worry about people whose actions don't affect the common good.
Your energy and time are both limited, so don't waste them on what inconsequential people are doing, thinking, and saying, when you could be focusing on your own issues.
Live in the present.
"Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already, or is impossible to see," Marcus writes.
Refrain from imposing your feelings onto reality.
Your company collapses, your house burns down, you lose all your money — none of these are "bad" (or "good" for that matter), according to Marcus' philosophy. When you see things as what they really are, you're able to avoid succumbing to your emotions and accept what has happened.
Turn an obstacle into an opportunity.
This Stoic fundamental says that we should use inevitable challenges as a chance to become a stronger person. A Stoic is someone who "transforms fear into prudence, pain into transformation, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking."
Find peace within yourself.
Marcus writes that people try to retreat from their problems and responsibilities by going somewhere like the mountains or the beach, but that travel isn't necessary to recollect yourself. He advocates a kind of brief meditation, where you withdraw into yourself and quiet your mind.
Don't resent people for their character.
If someone's character flaw has caused one of your problems, do not exert energy trying to change that person's character. Let things go. "You might as well resent a fig tree for secreting juice," Marcus says.
You are the only person responsible for your happiness.
"Choose not to be harmed — and you won't feel harmed. Don't feel harmed — and you haven't been," Marcus writes. Furthermore, the only way people can truly harm you is if they change your character.
Source:www.businessinsider.com
The Inner Citadel: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius
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Italian inventor and engineer Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937) developed, demonstrated and marketed the first..."
Even if we love our Radio inventor, the 25th of April in Italy is important for another historic reason: the partisan entered Milan and freed it of the last Nazis occupant. It is Liberation Day, one of the most important public holiday we have, together with the 2 June, when we decreed the Republic against Monarchy with a referendum, the first time in Italy with a universal suffrage.
LauraT wrote: "Antonio wrote: "Radio inventor Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937) was born in Bologna, Italy, today April 25. Italian inventor and engineer Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937) developed, demonstrated and ma..."
Quite right. Although, from a correct historical point of view, it should also be remembered that, ahead the Partisans, there were the Allied Forces too ...
The way it was: Today in history - April 28, 1945Mussolini hanged. The bodies of some fascist leaders are hanged by their feet in downtown Milan's Piazzale Loreto on April 28, 1945, the day after the liberation of Milan. At center, face to camera, is Benito Mussolini, who was killed the same day in Dongo, by the Como lake, while trying to escape, and whose body was taken to Milan to be exposed on the same square where the bodies of 15 resistance fighters were left as a warning to the population in August 1944. Claretta Petacci, Mussolini's mistress, is hanged at the right of the Duce. (CREDIT: AP)
Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/toda...
Benito Mussolini: Fascist Italian Dictator
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Italian inventor and engineer Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937) developed, demo..."
Of course we were freed by the Allied Forces. It was Milan that was freed by the partisan thanks also to the general strike started in Genova and Turin.
Where I live, in Perugia, the Allied Forces entered on the 20th of June the year before. And it is also a funny story, because they were close to Perugia some days before, but decided to wait for the 20th to enter because they wanted to coincide with another important date for us.
The Papal Mercenaries, on the XX June 1859, slaughtered citized of Perugia who wanted the city to be free from the centuries old Vatican occupation and to joyn the Italian State that was about to be made by Vittorio Emanuele II.
It took another pair of years before we could do that!
Right close to the Gate of city from where the Allied entered, there are some little public gardens with a statue reminding of this history: it is a Griffin - the symbol of Perugia - grinding in its paw the Papal tiara!
http://www.pasaulineskeliones.lt/trav...
LauraT wrote: "Antonio wrote: "LauraT wrote: "Antonio wrote: "Radio inventor Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937) was born in Bologna, Italy, today April 25. Italian inventor and engineer Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937)..."
Thanks LauraT. The many stories of History ...
Antonio wrote: "Marcus Aurelius. Born: April 26, 121 CERoman Emperor from 161 to 180, he was the last of the Five Good Emperors, and is also considered one of the most important Stoic philosophers. During his re..."
I have been wanting to read his "Meditations" for a while now & your post reminds me why I originally put it on my to-read list!
Leslie wrote: "Antonio wrote: "Marcus Aurelius. Born: April 26, 121 CERoman Emperor from 161 to 180, he was the last of the Five Good Emperors, and is also considered one of the most important Stoic philosopher..."
Thanks Leslie. Marcus Aurelius's in one of those books that seem to have been written only yesterday ... I never stop reading it ...
Today April 28, 1925 in the History of PublishingT.S. Eliot accepts a job at Faber and Faber publishers as editor on today April 28, 1925.The job allows Eliot, who is already recognized as a major poet, to quit his job as a bank clerk at Lloyd’s Bank in London. He holds the publishing position until his death, in 1965.
Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri, to a well-established family. His grandfather had founded Washington University in St. Louis, his father was a businessman, and his mother was involved in local charities. Eliot took an undergraduate degree at Harvard, studied at the Sorbonne, returned to Harvard to study Sanskrit, and then studied at Oxford. After meeting poet and lifelong friend Ezra Pound, Eliot moved permanently to England. In 1915, he married Vivian Haigh-Wood, but the marriage was unhappy, partly due to her mental instability. She died in an institution in 1947.
Eliot began working at Lloyd’s Bank in 1917, writing reviews and essays on the side. He founded a critical quarterly, Criterion, and quietly developed a new brand of poetry. His first major work, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, was published in 1917 and was hailed as the invention of a new kind of poetry. His long, fragmented images and use of blank verse influenced nearly all future poets, as did his masterpiece The Waste Land, published in Criterion and the American review Dial in 1922. While Eliot is best known for revolutionizing modern poetry, his literary criticism and plays were also successful.
Eliot lectured in the U.S. frequently in the 1930s and ’40s, a time when his own worldview was undergoing rapid change as he converted to Christianity. In 1957, he married his assistant Valerie Fletcher. The couple lived happily until his death, in 1965.
Source: www.history.com
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always--
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
“The Little Gidding” is the last of T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets.
A Preface to T S Eliot
April 29 is Zipper Day!From handbags and jackets to trousers and boots, it really is impossible to imagine life without zippers. They are so widespread it is easy to take them for granted. This is where Zipper Day comes along to remind us of the origin and history of this truly omnipresent invention.
The exact birthday of the zipper is debated, but Zipper Day is traditionally celebrated on April 29. On that date in 1913, Swedish-American scientist and inventor Gideon Sundback received a patent for a curious contraption he called “hook-less fastener”. Although similar inventions had been around since the 1850s, his version is widely accepted as the first modern zipper.
The continuous fastening line found numerous applications and grew in popularity, also thanks to the US Army who stepped in as an early adopter. Functional, fashionable, infinitely adjustable – these qualities of Sundback’s design have helped popularize the invention and practically make every day Zipper Day.
Source: /www.daysoftheyear.com
The Evolution of Useful Things: How Everyday Artifacts-From Forks and Pins to Paper Clips and Zippers-Came to be as They are.
On April 30 it will be “Independent Bookstores Day”When most people think of bookstores, if in USA, they think of Barnes and Nobles, or even the long-forgotten and well-missed Borders. In the UK, in London, they would think of Foyles, Hatchards. In Paris of “Shakespeare & Company” and so on. However, there are also those small local bookstores that seem so iconic in your hometown, but never really get the attention they deserve. Thus, Independent Bookstore Day is born. If you’re a fan of the written word, the bound liturgy, the totality of textbooks, the valor of vellum, and the preponderance of parchment sound your battle cry for Independent Bookstore Day “It’s time to get your read on!”
History of Independent Bookstore Day
The first national Independent Bookstore Day was carried out in 2015 by Samantha Schoech, a writer, copywriter and editor, and the Northern California Independent Bookseller’s Association. Over 400 stores participated in the event and the holiday is aimed to help independent bookstores have higher sales in their merchandise and help bring into the spotlight the potential of these indie bookstores. IBD has their own merchandise produced, and thus stores all over the country take the time out to sell this merchandise as part of the celebration.
Much of the aim of these indie bookstores to keep to their roots in traditional print as modern society moves into a digital age. These stores also help advertise new and budding authors in their efforts to sell their novels or works of literature. Last year alone produced an 85 percent increase in profits for the 420 stores that participated in the event and in the media, there were over 201 stories produced online about the holiday. The passion behind this holiday comes from the idea that bookstores aren’t just a place to buy books, but a place where communities gather together and express their love for stories. They become good places for kids to learn about literature and for adults to come in the midst of the day and relax with a good book.
How to Celebrate Independent Bookstore Day
Support your local bookstore by buying books from there. If you enjoy the atmosphere, then help volunteer for events at the bookstore and inspire others to become book-lovers as well. You can also use the hashtags #bookstoreday, #indiebookstoreday, and #independentbookstoreday to get people online interested in reading more. If you’re really daring, maybe create a bookstore of your own and establish contracts with authors and publishers. Or find a job at a bookstore. There are hundreds of books to read, you just gotta pick one up and get reading.
Source: www.daysoftheyear.com
The Haunted Bookshop
May 1 - That was the Day that was in History TodayMay 1, 1707 - Great Britain was formed from a union between England and Scotland. The union included Wales which had already been part of England since the 1500's. The United Kingdom today consists of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
May 1, 1960 - An American U-2 spy plane flying at 60,000 feet was shot down over Sverdlovsk in central Russia on the eve of a summit meeting between President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Soviet Russia's Premier Nikita Khrushchev. The sensational incident caused a cancellation of the meeting and heightened existing Cold War tensions. The pilot, CIA agent Francis Gary Powers, survived the crash, and was tried, convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison by a Russian court. Two years later he was released to America in exchange for an imprisoned Soviet spy. On his return to America, Powers encountered a hostile public which apparently believed he should not have allowed himself to be captured alive. He died in a helicopter crash in 1977.
May 1, 2004 - Eight former Communist nations and two Mediterranean countries joined the European Union (EU) marking its largest-ever expansion. The new members included Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, along with the island of Malta and the Greek portion of the island of Cyprus. They joined 15 countries already in the EU, representing in all 450 million persons.
Birthday - Irish-born American labor leader Mary 'Mother' Jones (1830-1930) was born in County Cork, Ireland. She endured misfortune early in life as her husband and four children died in the yellow fever epidemic of 1867. She also lost all of her belongings in the Chicago Fire of 1871. She then devoted herself to organizing and advancing the cause of Labor, using the slogan, "Join the Union, boys." She also sought to prohibit child labor. She remained active until the very end, giving her last speech on her 100th birthday.
Birthday - World War II General Mark Clark (1896-1984) was born in Madison Barracks, New York. He commanded the U.S. Fifth Army which invaded Italy in September of 1943, fighting a long and brutal campaign against stubborn German opposition.
Birthday - African American Olympic athlete Archie Williams (1915-1993) was born in Oakland, California. Williams, along with Jesse Owens, defeated German athletes at the 1936 Berlin Olympics and helped debunk Adolf Hitler's theory of Aryan racial superiority. Williams won a gold medal in the 400-meter race. After the Olympics, he went on to earn a mechanical engineering degree from the University of California-Berkeley but faced discrimination and wound up digging ditches. He later became an airplane pilot and trained Tuskegee Institute pilots including the black air corp of World War II.
Source: www.historyplace.com
May Day
That Is The Day That Was and Always Will be - May 1 May Day, the first of May, a date that may have more holidays than any other. It's the date when many countries celebrate Labor Day, a tradition with its roots in the 19th-century labor movement in the United States. In 1886, unions around the country went on strike in support of an eight-hour workday. Since many of the organizers of the strikes were communists, socialists, and anarchists, May Day has also come to be associated with communism, and was a big national holiday in the Soviet Union. President Eisenhower tried to take back May Day during the Cold War by declaring it Law Day and Loyalty Day. It remains a day of rallies and protests in many parts of the world, and in 2006, protest returned to the United States on May 1st to call attention to immigrants' rights.
Its roots as a holiday run much deeper than the labor movement, however. It's been a celebration of spring and fertility in places like Egypt and India, and in pre-Christian Rome it was the time of the festival of Flora, the goddess of flowers. In medieval England, people gathered flowers to "bring in the May" and erected a maypole bedecked with garlands. It's also the date of Beltane, a Celtic calendar festival celebrating the start of summer. Beltane was known for its bonfires, and has been revived by neo-pagans all over the world as a major religious holiday. In Germany, May 1st was the date of a pagan festival that was assimilated by the Christians and turned into the feast day of St. Walpurgis. The night before — Walpurgisnacht — is still celebrated in parts of rural Germany as a kind of Valentine's Day, with the delivery of a tree, wrapped in streamers, to one's beloved. It's also a day to celebrate Hawaiian history and culture, and it's known as Lei Day in Hawaii. One of the largest contemporary May Day celebrations in the United States takes place in Minneapolis, with a parade and pageant staged by the Heart of the Beast Puppet Theatre. It's been going on since 1975 and attracts about 35,000 people every year.
Source: www.writersalmanac.org
Old Roses
by Donald Hall
White roses, tiny and old,
flare among thorns by the barn door.
For a hundred years under the June elm,
under the gaze of seven generations,
they lived briefly like this,
in the month of roses, by the fields
stout with corn, or with clover and timothy
making thick hay, grown over, now,
with milkweed, sumac, paintbrush.
Old roses survive winter drifts,
the melt in April, August
parch, and men and women
who sniffed roses in spring
and called them pretty
as we call them now,
walking beside the barn
on a day that perishes.
“Old Roses” by Donald Hall from The Selected Poems of Donald Hall. © Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015.
The Selected Poems of Donald Hall
May 2, 1936. Manuscript of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s "Conversations at Midnight" destroyed in hotel fireEdna St. Vincent Millay’s work in progress, Conversations at Midnight, is burned in a hotel fire on Sanibel Island, Florida, on this day in 1936. She recreated the work, which was published in 1937.
Millay had been a successful poet for more than a decade when the manuscript burned. One of three daughters of a divorced nurse, Millay learned independence and self-reliance early and infused those qualities into her poetry. She began publishing poetry in high school. In 1912, the year she turned 20, her poem “Renascance” appeared in a literary review and drew the attention of a benefactor who made it possible for Millay to attend Vassar. The year she graduated, in 1917, her first volume of poetry, Renascence and Other Poems, appeared.
Millay moved to New York City, where she lived a hectic, glamorous life as a writer and actress in Greenwich Village. One of the first women to write openly and without shame about her lovers, Millay had numerous affairs. In 1920, her famous poem “First Fig” set the tone for the 1920s, with its resounding lines, “My candle burns at both ends, it will not last the night.”
Millay’s fast-paced life took a toll. Exhausted, she traveled to Europe and from 1921 to 1923 took a long rest. Meanwhile, she married Dutch importer Jan Boissevan, who gave up his business to devote himself to Millay. The couple moved to a farm in upstate New York, where Millay continued to write verse and plays. That year, she published The Harp Weaver and Other Poems, for which she won a Pulitzer Prize.
A passionate proponent of civil liberties, she was arrested and jailed for supporting Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, anarchists condemned to death for robbery and murder. In the 1930s, she wrote anti-totalitarian poetry for newspapers, as well as radio plays and speeches. She suffered a nervous breakdown in 1944 and endured two years of writer’s block afterward. She broke down again after her husband’s death, in 1949, and she died of a heart attack a year later.
Source: www.history.com
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Edna St. Vincent Millay in “The First Fig” suggests to both men and women that their lives should be self-regulated candles.
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light!
Edna St. Vincent Millay positioned this poem first and titled it "The First Fig" in her 1922 book of poems called, A Few Figs From Thistles. The poem expresses the dual nature of human beings and the brevity of human life. It is a symbol of the inner and outer journeys that all people take-one end of the candle the soul and the other end of the candle the outward reflection of the soul .....
Source: https://goo.gl/iwJKzZ
Conversation At Midnight
May 3rd 1915: “In Flanders Fields’ written”On this day in 1915, Canadian Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae wrote the famous war poem 'In Flanders Fields’. He wrote it sitting in an ambulance after presiding over the funeral of his friend who had died at the Second Battle of Ypres. Originally he was not happy with his poem, but once it was published it became very popular, and still is today considered one of the great poems of the First World War. Its references to red poppies growing over the graves of soldiers led to the use of the poppy as a symbol of remembrance for fallen soldiers.
“In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.”
In Flanders Fields: The Story of the Poem by John McCrae
May 4, 1990 - An inhumane executionJesse Tafero is executed in Florida after his electric chair malfunctions three times, causing flames to leap from his head. Tafero’s death sparked a new debate on humane methods of execution. Several states ceased use of the electric chair and adopted lethal injection as their means of capital punishment.
As the 20th century came to an end, some states were having difficulty finding experienced executioners while others were unable to find technicians who could repair electric chairs. The move toward lethal injection was also problematic since there were few qualified people who knew how to construct a proper system. If done incorrectly, an injection containing a combination of a paralytic drug and a lethal dose of potassium chloride can paralyze an inmate and result in a painful death.
Tafero’s botched execution was far from an anomaly. In Alabama, Horace F. Dunkins’ execution was prolonged 19 long minutes while sitting in a broken electric chair. In July 1998, Florida inmate Allen Lee “Tiny” Davis, who weighed 344 pounds, screamed in pain during his electrocution while blood poured down his shirt. Authorities later claimed that the blood was a result of a bloody nose.
Source: www.history.com
Race, Class, and the Death Penalty: Capital Punishment in American History
May 5, 1998 - - 5 maggio 2018. Twenty years today.5 Maggio 1998 - 5 maggio 2018. Venti anni oggi.
5 Maggio 1998 - 5 maggio 2018. Venti anni oggi. Quello fu il giorno che fu. Un “Act of God”? - “Una catastrofe naturale?” Io c’ero e per me Dio fu clemente. Non lo fu per tanti altri. Scrissi questo libro qualche mese dopo la catastrofe per lasciare nel tempo le tracce della memoria che da cronaca è divenuta storia.
May 5, 1998 - - 5 maggio 2018. Twenty years today. That Was The Day That Was. They said it was “an Act of God”. I was there and perhaps God saved my life. Not for many others. I wrote this book in order to leave the trace of those days in the trace of History.
Report on the landslides of 5 May 1998, Campania, southern Italy. Following intense rainfall on 4/5 May 1998, over 100 mass movements occurred in the Sarno-Quindici area, some 30 km east of Naples, southern Italy. The movements took place in an area where recent pyroclastic materials mantle a Mesozoic limestone bedrock massif which had already suffered karstification over a long period. The debris from these movements extended 3–4 km into the surrounding lowlands and reached the towns of Sarno, Quindici, Bracigliano and Siano, causing severe destruction. One hundred and sixty-one people lost their lives. This preliminary paper discusses a number of scenarios to highlight the possible causes and mechanisms of the movements. Of particular importance are preceding rainfall patterns, the possible perched water conditions, the physical properties of the recent metastable volcanoclastics and underlying palaeosols and the influence of man-made changes in the morphology. Further studies are being undertaken to elucidate the relative importance of the different contributory factors.
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Dopo intense piogge del 4/5 maggio 1998, si sono verificati oltre 100 movimenti di massa nell'area di Sarno-Quindici, circa 30 km a est di Napoli, nel sud Italia. I movimenti si sono svolti in un'area di materiali piroclastici recenti nel solido substrato calcareo del Mesozoico, che aveva già sofferto per lungo tempo del carsismo. I detriti di questi movimenti si estendevano per 3-4 km nella pianura circostante e raggiungevano le città di Sarno, Quindici, Bracigliano e Siano, causando gravi distruzioni. Centosessantuno persone hanno perso la vita. Questo documento preliminare discute una serie di scenari per evidenziare le possibili cause e i meccanismi dei movimenti. Di particolare importanza sono le possibili precipitazioni, le possibili condizioni di acqua arroccata, le proprietà fisiche dei recenti vulcanoclasti metastabili e dei paleosidi sottostanti e l'influenza dei cambiamenti artificiali nella morfologia. Sono in corso ulteriori studi per chiarire l'importanza relativa dei diversi fattori contributivi.
Source: https://link.springer.com/journal/10064
Dizionario di una Catastrofe
Il figlio del tipografo. Un'idea di vita: da Gutenberg a Google. Scritture cartacee e digitali
The Magna Carta — the “Great Charter” — was sealed on this date June 15 in 1215. England’s King John was facing a political crisis that was approaching civil war. England’s barons felt the Crown had gone too far in its taxation of the noblemen and the church, in order to pay a mercenary army and finance the Third Crusade. The barons drew up a list of grievances. Most of the document dealt with those specific complaints, but there were also some revolutionary ideas in the charter — including the idea that the king should be subject to the same law as everyone else in the land. Other kings had granted charters, but John was the first one to be forced into it. He met with the barons under a yew tree in the meadow of Runnymede, near the River Thames, and there placed his seal on the charter.
John had no intention of upholding the Magna Carta as written, and he wasted no time in heavily editing it. As a peace treaty of sorts, it failed. But it opened up a dialogue about the proper relationship between a monarch and his subjects. Over the centuries, much of it has been repealed, but a few of the clauses remain as a cornerstone of British law — particularly the third clause, which states: “No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land.”
The influence of the Magna Carta and its core principles can be seen in the United States Bill of Rights (1791); the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948); the European Convention on Human Rights (1950); and the constitutions of many modern nations. Four copies of the original charter remain.
Source: The Writer's Almanac
The Magna Charta
June 24, 1842 it’s the birthday of satirist and short-story writer Ambrose Bierce, nicknamed “Bitter Bierce,” born near Horse Cave Creek, Ohio.He was the 10th of 13 children, and his parents were strict Puritan farmers. But his father had a library, and Ambrose said that those books allowed him to pull himself “out of the life of obscurity, privation, and labor in the fields.” Bierce became a journalist, and within a few years, he was labeled “the most irreverential person on the Pacific Coast,” and “the wickedest man in San Francisco.” He started writing dark short stories like “Chickamauga” (1889) and “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” (1890). He is the author of the famous The Devil's Dictionary which was begun in a weekly paper in 1881, and was continued in a desultory way at long intervals until 1906.
“DICTIONARY, n. A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a most useful work.” — Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce’s last words were found in a letter he sent to an intimate friend in the winter of 1913. “As to me,” he wrote, “I leave here tomorrow for an unknown destination.” Then he disappeared in Mexico and was never heard from again. As with all dictionaries, Bierce’s work was a comment on his own time, though some of the best Devil’s Dictionary entries are timeless:
APOLOGIZE, v. To lay the foundation for a future offence.
KILL, v. To create a vacancy without nominating a successor.
YEAR, n. A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.
With a penchant for piercing aphorism, Bierce would have felt right at home on Twitter. (His nihilistic motto, “nothing matters,” has found new life there, at least among bitter writers such as this one.) If reviewed today, his dictionary would be considered a masterwork in trolling.
Over the past century, Bierce’s work has been extensively borrowed and reprinted. Many “unabridged” versions of his dictionary have been published. Following that tradition, we have updated The Devil’s Dictionary for an age that desperately needs it.
Source: www.theverge.com
The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary
June 25, is the birthday of the man who wrote, “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” That’s George Orwell born Eric Blair in Motihari, India (1903). He wrote his first poem — which he dictated to his mother — at the age of four or five. He was 11 when he wrote a patriotic poem after World War I broke out. It was published in the newspaper. He wrote a short story that he described as “a ghastly failure,” and a rhyming play, and helped edit the school’s newspaper. He was also constantly narrating his own actions in a writerly way, in his head. “I had the lonely child’s habit of making up stories and holding conversations with imaginary persons,” he later wrote, “and I think from the very start my literary ambitions were mixed up with the feeling of being isolated and undervalued.”
His father was a civil servant, and the family was, in Orwell’s words, “lower-upper-middle class.” Orwell received a scholarship to Eton, the prestigious boys’ school, but he felt alienated from his wealthy classmates. He opted not to go on to Oxford or Cambridge, but served as a military policeman in Burma instead. His essay “A Hanging,” which he published in 1931, is about his time there; it describes his role in the execution of a prisoner.
He believed there were four great motives for writing prose: sheer egoism, aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse, and political purpose. By “political,” he meant in the widest sense of the word: “Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.”
His writing was pushed even more toward the political after Hitler’s rise to power, and the Spanish civil war. He said, “Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.” In the early 1940s, he began work on a novella about a group of farm animals that decide to stage an uprising against their tyrannical farmer. Orwell called it Animal Farm (1945), and often described it as a satirical tale against Stalin and the Soviet Union.
“What I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years is to make political writing into an art,” he wrote in his essay “Why I Write” (1946). “My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice. When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art.’ I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing. But I could not do the work of writing a book, or even a long magazine article, if it were not also an aesthetic experience. […] Animal Farm was the first book in which I tried, with full consciousness of what I was doing, to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole. I have not written a novel for seven years, but I hope to write another fairly soon. It is bound to be a failure, every book is a failure, but I do know with some clarity what kind of book I want to write.”
His next — and final — novel was Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), about a future in which England has become a totalitarian state run by an anonymous presence known only as Big Brother. Orwell died of tuberculosis just a few months after it was published. Far from being a failure, Nineteen Eighty-Four has been translated into 62 languages, has sold millions of copies, and just this past January it was No. 1 on Amazon.com’s best-seller list.
Source: The Writer’s Almanac
Why I Write: Great Ideas Collection
June 27, 1888.It was on this day that Robert Louis Stevenson set sail for the South Seas. Stevenson’s father was a lighthouse engineer, and his parents had hoped that he would enter the family trade. Stevenson soon left the study of engineering for the study of law, and on his summer breaks he would travel. He suffered from an undiagnosed respiratory illness, most likely tuberculosis. As a result, he usually traveled to warmer climates like the French Riviera, where he hobnobbed with artists and writers. He earned his law degree, but never practiced; he told his parents that he wanted to become a writer instead. His first book was An Inland Voyage (1878), about his canoe trip from Antwerp to northern France. The book set the pattern for much of Stevenson’s later tales of travel and adventure. While in France, he met and fell in love with Fanny Vandegrift Osbourne, an American woman who was separated from her husband. She returned to California, Stevenson followed her, and they were eventually married.
In the 1880s, Stevenson’s health declined. He wrote many of his most famous books — including Treasure Island (1883), Kidnapped (1886), and Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) — from his sickbed in Scotland. In the hope that a warmer climate would be beneficial for his condition, the Stevensons departed San Francisco aboard the schooner yacht Casco for an extended tour of the South Pacific. They arrived in Samoa the following year and decided to settle there. The locals dubbed Stevenson “Tusitala,” the teller of tales. Stevenson wrote journalistic accounts of the region and his attempts to better understand it in his books In the South Seas (1896) and A Footnote to History (1892). Stevenson died of a brain hemorrhage in 1894, at the age of 44. He was buried at the top of Mount Vaea.
Source: The Writer’s Almanac
Robert Louis Stevenson in Samoa
How Did Van Gogh Die?On July 27, 1890, Vincent van Gogh went out to paint in the morning carrying a loaded pistol and shot himself in the chest, but the bullet did not kill him. He was found bleeding in his room. Van Gogh was distraught about his future because, in May of that year, his brother Theo had visited and spoke to him about needing to be stricter with his finances. Van Gogh took that to mean Theo was no longer interested in selling his art.
Van Gogh was taken to a nearby hospital and his doctors sent for Theo, who arrived to find his brother sitting up in bed and smoking a pipe. They spent the next couple of days talking together, and then van Gogh asked Theo to take him home. On July 29, 1890, Vincent van Gogh died in the arms of his brother. He was 37 years old.
www.biography.com
Van Gogh: The Life
On this day July 1, in 1751, the first volume of Diderot’s Encyclopedia was issued. His publishers wanted him to translate Chamber’s Encyclopedia, published in Britain in 1723, but Diderot decided to embark on a bigger project. He set about to catalog all of human knowledge, and included illustrated articles describing the manufacture of common household objects, information that was considered beneath the dignity of educated inquiry. The scholar Voltaire liked the early volumes so much that he started to contribute articles to the project, but his irreverent treatment of religious subjects got the Encyclopedia banned. One night at dinner in the palace of Louis XV, Madame de Pompadour confessed that she had no idea how her silk stockings had been made, and the king’s hidden copy of the Encyclopedia was fetched to answer the question. A servant told Voltaire later that the dinner guests fell upon the volumes “as if they were jewels.”
Source: The Writer's Almanac
Denis Diderot
July 2, 1923. It’s the birthday of Wislawa Szymborska, born in Poland (1923). When she won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1996, few people outside of Poland had ever heard of her. Her first poems were published in the Krakov newspaper, and for almost 20 years she edited a weekly column for the journal Literary Life, for which she also wrote scores of book reviews, as well as translations of French poetry. Her early poems dealt with the horrors of World War II and of the Stalin era. Her later poems are more personal, and her work is celebrated for its candor and gentle humor. When she accepted the Nobel Prize, she said: “They say the first sentence in any speech is always the hardest. Well, that one’s behind me, anyway.”
Source: The Writer’s Almanac
Possibilities
I prefer movies.
I prefer cats.
I prefer the oaks along the Warta.
I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky.
I prefer myself liking people, to myself loving mankind.
I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case.
I prefer the color green.
I prefer not to maintain that reason is to blame for everything.
I prefer exceptions.
I prefer to leave early.
I prefer talking to doctors about something else.
I prefer the old fine-lined illustrations.
I prefer the absurdity of writing poems, to the absurdity of not writing poems.
I prefer, where love's concerned, nonspecific anniversaries that can be celebrated every day.
I prefer moralists who promise me nothing.
I prefer cunning kindness to the over-trustful kind.
I prefer the earth in civvies.
I prefer conquered to conquering countries.
I prefer having some reservations.
I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
I prefer Grimms' fairy tales to the newspapers' front pages.
I prefer leaves without flowers to flowers without leaves.
I prefer dogs with uncropped tails.
I prefer light eyes, since mine are dark.
I prefer desk drawers.
I prefer many things that I haven't mentioned here
to many things I've also left unsaid.
I prefer zeroes on the loose, to those lined up behind a cipher.
I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars.
I prefer to knock on wood.
I prefer not to ask how much longer and when.
I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility
that existence has its own reason for being.
Translated into English by Stanislaw Baranczak & Clare Cavanagh.
Nothing Twice: Selected Poems
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I love this play! I like most of Stoppard's work but this one has a special place in my heart as it is the first professional play that I saw without my parents as a college freshman. I went with a few other students into the city (Philadelphia) and I still remember how "grown-up" it made me feel. Of course, that has nothing to do with the quality of the play! But being a very good play, it encouraged me to see plays even on my own; if it had been a dud, I might have never gone to the theater again.