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Today in History
The French presented the United States with the Statue of Liberty on this date July 4 in 1884. The statue owes its origins to a comment made by the president of the French Anti-Slavery Society, a man named Édouard René de Laboulaye, in 1865. The American Civil War was in its last stages, and Laboulaye, who was hosting a dinner, suggested that a monument be built to honor America’s commitment to democracy. Sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi was at that dinner, and he began to think about what form a monument like that might take. Inspired by the legendary Colossus of Rhodes, he envisioned a robed woman holding a torch aloft to lead people to freedom. It took 21 years to bring Bartholdi’s vision to fruition. Engineer Gustave Eiffel, of Eiffel Tower fame, built the statue’s metal scaffold. Three hundred sheets of thin copper were hammered into shape and attached to the scaffold in France for the statue’s presentation to the United States, and then it was dismantled and transported to New York’s Bedloe Island by boat, where the statue could greet immigrants on their way to Ellis Island. The American poet Emma Lazarus wrote a sonnet, “The New Colossus,” to raise funds for construction of the statue’s pedestal; the sonnet was inscribed on a plaque and displayed inside the pedestal in 1903.
Source: The Writer’s Almanac
The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
The Statue of Liberty: A Transatlantic Story
Mod
The statue owes its origins to a comment made by the president of the French Anti-Slavery Society, a..."
A wonderful post Antonio - that plaque always moves me!
On July 5th 1994 in Bellevue, Washington, Jeff Preston Bezos founded his company Amazon."Did you know that Amazon patented and trademarked 1-Click purchasing in 1999? The patent US5960411 protects any e-commerce transaction executed with one-click purchasing using stored customer information.
Amazon.com (AMZN) is the largest internet based retailer in the United States. Since inception, Amazon has launched an almost unbelievable selection of products and services, including the Amazon Kindle, Fire Phone, Amazon Web Services, Fire TV, Amazon Local, Amazon Echo, AmazonFresh, Amazon Dash and Amazon Prime (the two day free shipping service). The company is currently empired in South Lake Union, Seattle.
Not surprisingly, Bezos was gifted at a young age. He admired inventors, not athletes. He was able to break-down complicated math problems and even rigged electrical contraptions around the house. Not all was smooth sailing though for the young albuquerque native, however. His biological father left him and his mother at the young age of three. Three years after the divorce, Jacklyn Gise (Bezos’ mom) married Miguel Bezos, a Cuban Immigrant. And according to Business Insider, Jeff Bezos has yet to converse with his biological father.
Amazon has not always been called Amazon. Originally, Bezos incorporated the company in his Bellevue garage (10704 NE 28th St, Bellevue WA 98004, now owned by a T-mobile engineer) as Cadabra.com as in “abra cadabra.” The brand name died shortly after Bezos’ trademark lawyer mistakenly heard “cadaver.” Not exactly a brand that would travel far. Another name Bezos considered was relentless.com, but that also fell short. The search for the new name began. Similar to the founders (Page and Brin) of Google, Bezos looked for a brand name that would align with his vision: the earth’s biggest bookstore. Bezos picked up a dictionary and scanned word after word, page after page.
In 1995, he discovered the word “Amazon” as in earth’s largest river, not in length but in drainage. He liked the homonym for two primary reasons. In the past, websites were listed alphabetically, which meant Amazon would always be higher on the page, giving a slight competitive advantage. And secondly, he picked the largest river in the world to communicate Amazon’s vast selection of books. Amazon is now the largest everything store, selling everything from portable dressing rooms to gardening chaps to Obama nail clippers."
They have it all, from A to Z. They also have us all here at GoodReads ...
Source: www.rewindandcapture.com
The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon
On these days September 1-2 in 1666 The Great Fire of LondonThomas Farriner was a baker who served King Charles II and supplied bread to the Royal Navy. Whether he chose to live in Pudding Lane, London, because he thought of it as an appropriate address for his trade we shall never know. But what we do know is that he went to bed on the night of September 1, 1666 leaving the fire that heated his oven still burning.
In the early hours of the following morning on September 2 sparks from the fire caused flames that soon engulfed the house. Farriner, sometimes spelt Faryner or Farynor, escaped with his family by climbing through an upstairs window, but his maidservant, Rose, perished.
She was one of only six people recorded to have died in what became known as the Great Fire of London, which caused colossal damage to the city's infrastructure. And although official casualties were mercifully few, it is likely that there were many more unknown victims, their bodies being cremated in the blaze.
As the fire spread and raged for four days, 80 per cent of London's buildings were claimed by the flames. They included over 13,200 houses, 87 parish churches, 52 Livery Company halls, the Guildhall, the Royal Exchange and St Paul’s Cathedral. In the words of the great diarist Samuel Pepys: "Medieval London is now all in dust."
His diary entry for September 2 reads: “Jane [his maid] called us up about three in the morning, to tell us of a great fire in the City. So I rose, and slipped on my night-gown, and went to her window; and thought it to be far enough off, and so went to bed again.
"By and by Jane comes and tells me that the fire is now burning all down Fish Street, by London Bridge. So I walked to the Tower [of London]; and there got up upon one of the high places; and did see the houses at that end of the bridge all on fire, and an infinite great fire on this and the other side of the end of the bridge.
"So down, with my heart full of trouble, to the water-side, and there got a boat and there saw a lamentable fire, every body endeavouring to remove their goods, and bringing them into lighters that lay off; poor people staying in their houses as long as till the very fire touched them, and then running into boats, or clambering from one [stairway] by the waterside, to another.
"I saw a fire as one entire arch of fire above a mile long: it made me weep to see it. The churches, houses are all on fire and flaming at once, and a horrid noise the flames made and the cracking of the houses.
"Having staid, and in an hour’s time seen the fire rage every way, and nobody, to my sight, endeavouring to quench it, but to remove their goods, and the wind mighty high and driving it into the City, I to White Hall, and did tell the King what I saw; and that, unless His Majesty did command houses to be pulled down [to create fire-breaks], nothing could stop the fire."
Like so many big events of the late 17th century, Pepys is at the centre of things, according to London museum curator Kristian Martin: "Rudely awakened by his maid, Jane, at 3am with news of the distant fire, perhaps unsurprisingly – being used to seeing fires among the densely packed timber buildings of London – at first he shrugs it off and returns to bed.
"But in true Pepysian style, the diary has a knack of candidly chronicling little details and events about the fire that would otherwise have been lost to history. Pepys records scorched pigeons falling from the skies, people flinging their belongings into the river, a singed cat pulled alive from a chimney, flakes and drops of fire floating across the city, glass melted and buckled by the heat and the ground as hot as coals."
Like Pepys, the Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Bludworth, was initially not too disturbed. “A woman could piss it out,” he allegedly replied when told that the fire was a cause for concern.
After his meeting with Pepys the King took charge of the operation to save the city and create fire-breaks. This meant knocking down perfectly good buildings but starving the fire of the wood it needed to burn. Fortunately, by the fourth day, the wind that had helped the fire spread turned on itself and drove the flames back into what had already been burned. So the fire had nothing to ignite and gradually died out.
Ironically, the conflagration brought a great blessing. It had destroyed the filthy streets associated with the Great Plague of the year before. Slums were simply burned away. And the River Fleet, a tributary that flowed into the River Thames, was nothing more than an open sewer associated with disease and poverty. The fire effectively boiled the Fleet and sterilised it.
The task now was to re-plan and re-build. The architect Christopher Wren was called in to mastermind the project and he made his stunning re-designed St Paul's Cathedral the centrepiece of a new London.
There was one more task for Samuel Pepys. As the fire spread he personally carried items from his home to be taken away on a Thames barge. On the second evening, he records in his diary, "I did dig another [hole], and put our wine in it; and my Parmazan cheese, as well as some other things."
In the end his house was spared from the fire, but as for the fate of his expensive Italian Parmesan cheese, we have no idea, as he did not record in his diary whether he recovered it or not.
Source: www.onthisday.com
The Great Fire of London, in that Apocalyptic Year, 1666
So glad to see you back. I love your interesting posts. Surprised Pepys referred to 'Medieval London' I thought the term 'medieval' was our modern terminology for that period between the dark ages and the Renaissance.
Trish wrote: "So glad to see you back. I love your interesting posts. Surprised Pepys referred to 'Medieval London' I thought the term 'medieval' was our modern terminology for that period between the dark ages..."
Thanks for reading. Very likely Pepys used the term "medieval" for "old"
Anglo-Irish poet Louis MacNeice (1907) dies on September 3, 1963.“House on a Cliff” is a poem about the human condition and, more specifically, the perceptions of that condition in the twentieth century. MacNeice came of age as a poet in the 1930’s when the ideas of thinkers such as Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, and Karl Marx were beginning to gain widespread acceptance. MacNeice realized the importance of these thinkers for his own time. By the time “House on a Cliff” was written, the universe in which many had come to believe was both much older and much larger than previously thought. Suddenly, many people doubted that God had created the universe or, if He had, that He had much to do with its day-to-day operation. Doubts like these are still with us, men of the third millennium ...
Indoors the tang of a tiny oil lamp. Outdoors
The winking signal on the waste of sea.
Indoors the sound of the wind. Outdoors the wind.
Indoors the locked heart and the lost key.
Outdoors the chill, the void, the siren. Indoors
The strong man pained to find his red blood cools,
While the blind clock grows louder, faster. Outdoors
The silent moon, the garrulous tides she rules.
Indoors ancestral curse-cum-blessing. Outdoors
The empty bowl of heaven, the empty deep.
Indoors a purposeful man who talks at cross
Purposes, to himself, in a broken sleep.
Louis MacNeice
September 4On this day in 1893, Beatrix Potter sent an illustrated note to Noel Moore, age five, who was quarantined with scarlet fever. "I don't know what to write you," she began, "so I shall tell you the story about four little rabbits, whose names were Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, and Peter ..." Seven years later, she enlarged the story and submitted it to several publishers, who rejected it. She used her savings to have it privately printed, and was pleased that the 250 copies sold swiftly.
One of the publishers then reconsidered, on condition that Beatrix also provide color illustrations, which she did. In addition to her publishing, Beatrix was keen to license her creations, and it was she, rather than her publishers, who pushed forward these ideas. She designed and created the first Peter Rabbit doll herself in 1903, registering it immediately at the patent office, making Peter Rabbit the world’s oldest licensed literary character.
Beatrix went on to explore other merchandise options, including tea sets and bedroom slippers, and remained closely involved in product development. She also invented a Peter Rabbit board game for two players in 1904, a complex version of which was redesigned by Mary Warne and came to market thirteen years later. In addition to toys and games, Beatrix published books, including Peter Rabbit’s Almanac and painting books for Peter Rabbit and Jemima Puddle-duck. She felt passionately that all merchandise should remain faithful to her original book illustrations and be of the highest quality.
Source: www.peterrabbit.com
Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature
It all started today September 5, 1793.The French National Convention began the Reign of Terror on this date September 5 in 1793. The National Convention was an assembly of 749 deputies — most of them tradesmen and businessmen — that served as a governing body during the French Revolution. It was formed in September 1792, when it promptly abolished the monarchy and established the French republic. A year later, hostile armies surrounded France on all sides. Bertrand Barère, a prominent member of the Convention, gave a rousing speech calling for harsh punishment for enemies of the republic — this included aristocrats, priests, and hoarders — and said, “Let’s make terror the order of the day!” In February 1794, Maximilien Robespierre also defended the use of terror tactics: “Terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is therefore an emanation of virtue; it is not so much a special principle as it is a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied to our country’s most urgent needs.” The Terror lasted until July 1794; by the time it ended, as many as 300,000 people had been arrested. Of these, 17,000 were executed, and 10,000 more died in prison.
Source: www.writersalmanac.org
Decisive Moments in History: The Reign of Terror
On September 6, 1642, by an act of Parliament, all theatres in England were closed. This meant specifically that the great playhouses and theatrical companies of London, many of which had survived since the Elizabethan age, ceased operations for good. The stated reason behind the ordinance was that attending theatre was “unseemly” during such turbulent times. The real reason, of course, was that the playhouses had become meeting places for scheming Royalists. Their Puritan rivals, who controlled Parliament, simply couldn’t have that. So theatre was banned. Within a few years most of the grand old structures, now abandoned, had decayed beyond use or were dismantled altogether–leaving no visible trace of the playhouses of Shakespeare’s day. Theatre would remain illegal until the end of the Interregnum in 1660, when the Puritans lost power and the monarchy was restored. Almost immediately, playhouses reopened and theatrical entertainments resumed. Theatre returned full force with the Restoration leading to a revival of English drama and performance that paved the way for the great age of acting and wit during the 18th century.
Source: Today in Theatre History - https://goo.gl/74Bn45
Shakespearean Playhouses A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration
September 7, 1887It's the birthday of Modernist poet, born in Scarborough, England (1887). Her parents, Sir George and Lady Ida Sitwell, were baffled by their daughter. While Lady Ida was a beauty, Edith was not. She was extremely tall and thin, with a curved spine and a hooked nose. Her parents forced her to wear an iron brace on her back and a contraption on her nose in an attempt to make her more conventionally attractive. Edith was a bright and curious child, but her father decided that formal education made women less womanly, so he refused to let her go to school. When she was a teenager and it came time for her to make her debut in society, she engaged a man in a debate over his classical music preferences, and her parents were horrified and pulled her back out of social gatherings. She left her family on such bad terms that she didn't even attend her mother's funeral. Instead, she made her own life as a Modernist poet and a notable public personality. She published many books of poems, including Rustic Elegies (1927), The Song of the Cold(1948), Gardeners and Astronomers (1953), and The Outcasts (1962). Her poetry has generally been overshadowed by her colorful personality. To accentuate her dramatic features, she wore enormous rings, turbans, and old-fashioned gowns. She befriended T.S. Eliot and Graham Greene, and later in her life, championed Dylan Thomas’ poetry. She considered Marilyn Monroe a soulmate, and the two women read poetry aloud together ...
Source: The Writer’s Almanac
Answers
I kept my answers small and kept them near;
Big questions bruised my mind but still I let
Small answers be a bullwark to my fear.
The huge abstractions I kept from the light;
Small things I handled and caressed and loved.
I let the stars assume the whole of night.
But the big answers clamoured to be moved Into my life. Their great audacity
Shouted to be acknowledged and believed.
Even when all small answers build up to
Protection of my spirit, still I hear
Big answers striving for their overthrow.
And all the great conclusions coming near.
Edith Sitwell
Edith Sitwell: Avant garde poet, English genius
Michelangelo's David was unveiled in Florence 604 years ago today September 8, 1504.It had been commissioned 40 years earlier from another sculptor, to go on the Cathedral roof, but he only got as far as shaping out the torso before downing tools, for reasons unknown. The giant lump of marble lay in the workshop until the 26-year-old Michelangelo persuaded the authorities that he was the man to finish the job. He took two and a half years, and as he neared completion everyone realised there was no chance of heaving it up on to the duomo's east end. It was placed at the entrance to the town hall, a symbol of the proud Florentine Republic, the eyes turned toward Rome with a warning glare. It stayed there until 1873, when it was moved to the city's Accademia gallery and replaced by a replica. Now faux Davids grace casinos the world over.
Source: www.independent.co.uk
From Marble to Flesh. The Biography of Michelangelo's David----
It was on this day September 8 in 1952 that Ernest Hemingway published The Old Man and the Sea.
For years, he had been living in Cuba and working on an epic novel about the sea, but he couldn't quite get it right. So he decided to publish a small piece of it, just 27,000 words long, which he called The Old Man and the Sea. He released it in the September 1st issue of Life magazine, which cost 20 cents. That month, it was published by Charles Scribner's Sons for $3. The Life version sold more than 5 million copies in two days, and it was a best-seller in book form, as well. Hemingway wrote:
"The shark swung over and the old man saw his eye was not alive and then he swung over once again, wrapping himself in two loops of the rope. The old man knew that he was dead but the shark would not accept it. Then, on his back, with his tail lashing and his jaws clicking, the shark plowed over the water as a speed-boat does. The water was white where his tail beat it and three-quarters of his body was clear above the water when the rope came taut, shivered, and then snapped. The shark lay quietly for a little while on the surface and the old man watched him. Then he went down very slowly. 'He took about forty pounds,' the old man said aloud. He took my harpoon too and all the rope, he thought, and now my fish bleeds again and there will be others. [...] It was too good to last, he thought. I wish it had been a dream now and that I had never hooked the fish and was alone in bed on the newspapers. 'But man is not made for defeat,' he said. 'A man can be destroyed but not defeated.'"
The Old Man and the Sea
The month of September is school back time almost everywhere. The First Day Of School
by Howard Nemerov
I
My child and I hold hands on the way to school,
And when I leave him at the first-grade door
He cries a little but is brave; he does
Let go. My selfish tears remind me how
I cried before that door a life ago.
I may have had a hard time letting go.
Each fall the children must endure together
What every child also endures alone:
Learning the alphabet, the integers,
Three dozen bits and pieces of a stuff
So arbitrary, so peremptory,
That worlds invisible and visible
Bow down before it, as in Joseph’s dream
The sheaves bowed down and then the stars bowed down
Before the dreaming of a little boy.
That dream got him such hatred of his brothers
As cost the greater part of life to mend,
And yet great kindness came of it in the end.
II
A school is where they grind the grain of thought,
And grind the children who must mind the thought.
It may be those two grindings are but one,
As from the alphabet come Shakespeare’s Plays,
As from the integers comes Euler’s Law,
As from the whole, inseparably, the lives,
The shrunken lives that have not been set free
By law or by poetic phantasy.
But may they be. My child has disappeared
Behind the schoolroom door. And should I live
To see his coming forth, a life away,
I know my hope, but do not know its form
Nor hope to know it. May the fathers he finds
Among his teachers have a care of him
More than his father could. How that will look
I do not know, I do not need to know.
Even our tears belong to ritual.
But may great kindness come of it in the end.
"September, The First Day Of School” by Howard Nemerov from “The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov”. © University of Chicago Press, 1981.
The Collected Poems
Today September 10, it's the birthday of the original Rin Tin Tin, a German shepherd dog born in Lorraine, France (1918). The dog starred in 23 movies for Warner Brothers, but in many ways his life was more remarkable than any Hollywood plot. An American soldier named Leland Duncan was stationed in the Meuse Valley and had been ordered to search a bombed-out German encampment. Inside one of the ruined buildings, Duncan found a German shepherd cowering with her pups, which were only a few days old. He named the pups Rin Tin Tin and Nanette, after little finger puppets that the American soldiers carried around as good luck charms. Nanette died shortly before Duncan made it home to Los Angeles, but Rinty, as Duncan called him, became a beloved pet.
After the war, Duncan began entering Rin Tin Tin in local dog shows. At one show, an inventor wanted to try out his new slow-motion movie camera, so he filmed the dog scaling a 12-foot wall. It struck Duncan that maybe he had a future movie star on his hands, so he wrote a silent movie script featuring the dog and shopped it around at various studios. He was turned down by all of them. Then one day he was out walking with Rin Tin Tin when he came upon a film crew trying to shoot a scene with a wolf hybrid. The wolf wasn't cooperating, so Duncan suggested that he and his dog could do the scene in one take. He was true to his word, and Rin Tin Tin had his first big break. He later signed a deal with Warner Brothers, and the dog had his first starring role in Where the North Begins (1923).
In addition to 26 feature films, Rin Tin Tin starred in a radio program, The Wonder Dog, in 1930, in which he did his own barking and other sound effects. The original Rinty died in 1932, and his son, Rin Tin Tin Jr., took over the role in his place. The 12th-generation descendant of the original Rin Tin Tin is still making public appearances across the country as a representative of the brand.
Source: The Writer’s Almanac
Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend
On September 11, 2011Today is the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Sixteen years ago on this date, in 2001, 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial airplanes. Two of the planes were crashed into the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center; a third crashed into the Pentagon. On the fourth, which was bound for Washington, D.C., passengers attempted to take control of the plane and it ended up crashing near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Altogether, nearly 3,000 lives were lost — all the passengers and crew on board the planes, thousands of people who worked at the World Trade Center or were near the buildings, more than 100 in the Pentagon building, and hundreds of rescue workers.
On September 11, 2011, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said: "Ten years have passed since a perfect blue sky morning turned into the blackest of nights. Since then we've lived in sunshine and in shadow, and although we can never unsee what happened here, we can also see that children who lost their parents have grown into young adults, grandchildren have been born and good works and public service have taken root to honor those we loved and lost."
And President Obama said, "Even the smallest act of service, the simplest act of kindness, is a way to honor those we lost, a way to reclaim that spirit of unity that followed 9/11."
Source: The Writer’s Almanac
9-11
Event Date: September 12, 1940Location: Montignac, Dordogne, France
A French teenager took his dog for a walk on this day – a simple everyday event, but it was to lead to one of the most stunning archaeological discoveries of all time. Marcel Ravidat, an 18-year-old apprentice garage mechanic, took his dog, Robot, into hills near his home at Montignac in the Dordogne region of southwestern France. There, the story goes, Robot ran into a hole created by a fallen tree. Ravidat threw some stones into the hole and was surprised that they seemed to travel a long, long way down.
Returning with some friends and a teacher he climbed down the hole and began to explore. The boys discovered what were to become known famously as the Lascaux cave paintings – estimated to be between 17,000 to 20,000 years old and excitedly described by experts as “the cradle of art”. In a cave complex arranged around a main cave about 20 metres long and five metres high were what what turned out to be more than 2,000 painted and engraved images of animals and abstract symbols.
A protective layer of chalk had made the caves watertight enabling the artwork to be remarkably preserved in vibrant blacks, browns, reds, and yellows. The paintings are almost all of animals. There is only one human and no flowers, trees or countryside. The meaning of most of the abstract symbols is unknown. The cave complex was opened to the public in 1948 and soon attracted about 1,200 visitors a day. And that’s when the problems began. By 1955, carbon dioxide from the breath of visitors, along with heat and humidity took their toll on the paintings. And the introduction of air conditioning brought with it fungi and lichen.
As a result, the complex was closed to the public in 1963, the prehistoric images returning to the darkness and isolation that they had known for thousands of years. Public interest remained unabated, however, and led in 1983 to the opening of Lascaux II, a meticulously created replica cave. Its main attraction is the Hall of Bulls Chamber. The four large black bulls in it include one that is over five meters (17ft) long – the largest animal painting in prehistoric cave paintings anywhere in the world. Mr Ravidat became an official guardian of the cave and a guide who never lost his initial awe at the sights that he had been the first to see. He died in 1995, aged 72, after a heart attack.
Lascaux became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979. Only a few hundred meters away from the original cave, Lascaux II is a virtually identical replica with 80 per cent of the original images reproduced. It attracts about 250,000 visitors a year.
Source: www.onthisday.com
Lascaux: Movement, Space and Time
Michel de Montaigne (1533) dies on this day September 13 in 1592. He is one of my best essayists of all times.To essay is to “test” or “try,” and Montaigne, thinking of his works as trials of his own judgment and capacities, succeeded in inventing the essay with a personal slant. While often personal, his essays are not confessional or confidential but achieve the universal quality of the greatest literature. He investigates such topics as happiness, names, the education of children, solitude, repentance, and more than a hundred more. In length the essays range from one or two pages to one of more than a hundred pages.
Living in sixteenth century France, Montaigne had many opportunities to observe the disorder and cruelty that arose from intense religious conviction, and although he respected religion, he loathed religious excesses as begetters of vice. He cultivated a contrastingly skeptical approach, illustrated by his motto: “What do I know?” Even more than Socrates, he believed that the awareness of one’s own ignorance is the basis of wisdom. Instead of insisting on the correctness of his ideas, he attempts to see his subjects from other points of view, including those of Mohammedans, cannibals, and even of cats.
His twin sources of ideas are books and experience. An extremely well-read man, he peppers his essays with quotations, but his style is relaxed, informal, and good-humored. At the end of his essay “Of Experience,” Montaigne writes: “The most beautiful lives, to my mind, are those that conform to the common human pattern”.
-----
Some quotes
If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love.
My life has been filled with terrible misfortune; most of which never happened.
Wise people are foolish if they cannot adapt to foolish people.
Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face.
I know what I am fleeing from, but not what I am in search of.
If you don't know how to die, don't worry; Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you; don't bother your head about it.
Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.
He who is not very strong in memory should not meddle with lying.
My home...It is my retreat and resting place from wars, I try to keep this corner as a haven against the tempest outside, as I do another corner in my soul.
Who does not in some sort live to others, does not live much to himself.
Source: www.enotes.com
How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at An Answer
1982: Hollywood princess dead on this day September 14Princess Grace of Monaco has died of the injuries she sustained in a car crash near Monte Carlo yesterday. The Hollywood actress Grace Kelly - who starred in the Alfred Hitchcock hits Dial M for Murder and Rear Window - suffered a brain haemorrhage.
A statement issued by the royal palace said she died at 2130 GMT after her conditioned worsened throughout the morning and become irreversible by the afternoon. It also said the former film star's husband, Monaco's head of state Prince Rainier, and her three children were at her bedside when she died.
The US-born princess' youngest daughter Stephanie was in the car at the time of the accident, but suffered only light bruising. The news of her death was unexpected as previous reports from the palace had indicated that despite broken ribs, leg and collarbone she was in a stable condition.
The Monaco royal family also released an account of yesterday's accident and said the princess had lost control of the car when the brakes failed. After leaving the road her 10-year-old Rover tumbled 100 ft (30.5 m) down a ravine, turning over several times before coming to rest in a garden.
But a witness who was driving behind the two princesses said the car began zigzagging erratically some time before the crash happened. Two engineers from British Leyland are on their way to Monte Carlo to examine the wreckage.
Source: www.news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday
High Society: The Life of Grace Kelly
September 15, in 1889Today is the birthday of the man who wrote, “The freelance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps”: that’s humorist, essayist, actor, and drama critic Robert Benchley, born in Worcester, Massachusetts (1889). He published about 600 essays in all, was managing editor at Vanity Fair, was a drama critic for Life, and contributed to The New Yorker for many years. He wrote and acted in several humorous short films from the late 1920s onward.
“In order to laugh at something, it is necessary (1) to know what you are laughing at, (2) to know why you are laughing, (3) to ask some people why they think you are laughing, (4) to jot down a few notes, (5) to laugh. Even then, the thing may not be cleared up for days. All laughter is merely a compensatory reflex to take the place of sneezing. What we really want to do is sneeze, but as that is not always possible, we laugh instead. Sometimes we underestimate our powers and laugh and sneeze at the same time. This raises hell all around.
The old phrase “That is nothing to sneeze at” proves my point. What is obviously meant is “That is nothing to laugh at.” The wonder is that nobody ever thought of this explanation of laughter before, with the evidence staring him in the face like that. We sneeze because we are thwarted, discouraged, or devil-may-care. Failing a sneeze, we laugh, faute de mieux. Analyze any funny story or comic situation at which we “laugh” and it will be seen that this theory is correct. Incidentally, by the time you have the “humor” analyzed, it will be found that the necessity for laughing has been relieved.
Let us take the well-known joke about the man who put the horse in the bathroom. Here we have a perfect example of the thought-sneeze process, or, if you will, the sneeze-thought process. The man, obviously an introvert, was motivated by a will-to-dominate-the-bathroom, combined with a desire to be superior to the other boarders. The humor of the situation may seem to us to lie in the tag line “I want to be able to say, ‘Yes, I know,’ ” but we laugh at the joke subconsciously long before this line comes in. In fact, what we are really laughing (or sneezing) at is the idea of someone’s telling us a joke that we have heard before.
Let us suppose that the story was reversed, and that a horse had put a man into the bathroom. Then our laughter would have been induced by the idea of a landlady’s asking a horse a question and the horse’s answering an entirely different form of joke. The man would then have been left in the bathroom with nothing to do with the story. Likewise, if the man had put the landlady into the bathroom, the horse would obviously have been hors de combat (still another form of joke, playing on the similarity in sound between the word “horse” and the French word “hors,” meaning “out of.” Give up?). Any joke, besides making us want to sneeze, must have five cardinal points, and we must check up on these first before giving in:
(1) The joke must be in a language we can understand.
(2) It must be spoken loudly enough for us to hear it, or printed clearly enough for us to read it.
(3) It must be about _some_thing. You can’t just say, here’s a good joke” and let it go at that. (You can, but don’t wait for the laugh.)
(4) It must deal with either frustration or accomplishment, inferiority or superiority, sense or nonsense, pleasantness or unpleasantness, or, at any rate, with some emotion that can be analyzed, otherwise how do we know when to laugh?
(5) It must begin with the letter “W.”
Now, let us see just how our joke about the horse in the bathroom fulfills these specifications. Using the Gestalt, or Rotary-Frictional, method of taking the skin off a joke, we can best illustrate by making a diagram of it. We have seen that every joke must be in a language that we can understand and spoken (or written) so clearly that we can hear it (or see it). Otherwise we have this: You will see in Figure 2 that we go upstairs with the man and the horse as far as the bathroom. Here we become conscious that it is not a true story, something we may have suspected all along but didn’t want to say anything about. This sudden revelation of absurdity (from the Latin ab and surdus, meaning “out of deafness”) is represented in the diagram by an old-fashioned whirl.
Following the shock of realization that the story is not real, we progress in the diagram to the point where the landlady protests. Here we come to an actual fact, or factual act. Any landlady in her right mind would protest against a horse’s being shut in her bathroom. So we have, in the diagram, a return to normal ratiocination, or Crowther’s Disease, represented by the wavy line. (Whoo-hoo!)
From then on, it is anybody’s joke. The whole thing becomes just ludicrous. This we can show in the diagram by the egg-and-dart design, making it clear that something has definitely gone askew. Personally, I think that what the man meant to say was “That’s no horse—that’s my wife,” but that he was inhibited. (Some of these jokes even I can’t seem to get through my head.)
Schwanzleben, in his work “Humor After Death,” hits on this point indirectly when he says, “All laughter is a muscular rigidity spasmodically relieved by involuntary twitching. It can be induced by the application of electricity as well as by a so-called ‘joke.’ ”
“ A man who lived in a boarding house brought a horse home with him one night, led it upstairs, and shut it in the bathroom. The landlady, aroused by the commotion, protested, pointed to the broken balustrade, the torn stair carpet, and the obvious maladjustment of the whole thing, and asked the man, confidentially, just why he had seen fit to shut a horse in the common bathroom. To which the man replied, “In the morning, the boarders, one by one, will go into the bathroom, and will come rushing out, exclaiming, ‘There’s a horse in the bathroom!’ I want to be able to say, ‘Yes, I know.’
Gunfy, in his “Laughter Considered as a Joint Disease,” holds that the letter “W” is not essential to the beginning of a joke, so long as it comes in somewhere before the joke is over. However, tests made on five hundred subjects in the Harvard School of Applied Laughter, using the Mergenthaler Laugh Detector, have shown that, unless a joke begins with the letter “W,” the laughter is forced, almost unpleasant at times.
A. E. Bassinette, in his pamphlet “What Is Humor—A Joke?,” claims to have discovered a small tropical fly which causes laughter. This fly, according to this authority, was carried from Central America back to Spain by Columbus’s men, and spread from there to the rest of Europe, returning to America, on a visit, in 1667, on a man named George Altschuh.”
Source: www.newyorker.com ( Read it here in full: https://goo.gl/XSr5NK)
The Best of Robert Benchley
September 16, 1672 dies Anne Bradstreet (1612)Anne Bradstreet, née Anne Dudley, born Northampton, Northamptonshire, England, died September 16, 1672, Andover, Massachusetts Bay Colony, one of the first poets to write English verse in the American colonies. Long considered primarily of historical interest, she won critical acceptance in the 20th century as a writer of enduring verse, particularly for her sequence of religious poems, “Contemplations,” written for her family and not published until the mid-19th century. She wrote her poems while rearing eight children, functioning as a hostess, and performing other domestic duties.
The Bradstreets moved frequently in the Massachusetts colony, first to Cambridge, then to Ipswich, and then to Andover, which became their permanent home. Bradstreet’s brother-in-law, without her knowledge, took her poems to England, where they were published as “The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America” (1650). The first American edition of “The Tenth Muse” was published in revised and expanded form as “Several Poems Compiled with Great Variety of Wit and Learning” (1678).
Most of the poems in the first edition are long and rather dully imitative works based on the standard poetic conventions of the time, but the last two poems—“Of the Vanity of All Worldly Creatures” and “David’s Lamentation for Saul and Jonathan”—are individual and genuine in their recapitulation of her own feelings.
Her later poems, written for her family, show her spiritual growth as she came fully to accept the Puritan creed. She also wrote more personal poems of considerable beauty, treating in them such subjects as her thoughts before childbirth and her response to the death of a grandchild. These shorter poems benefit from their lack of imitation and didacticism. Her prose works include “Meditations,” a collection of succinct and pithy aphorisms. A scholarly edition of her work was edited by John Harvard Ellis in 1867. In 1956 the poet John Berryman paid tribute to her in Homage to Mistress Bradstreet, a long poem that incorporates many phrases from her writings.
To read “To my Dear and Loving Husband”, one of her most loved poems, in modern days, 21st century world, is kind of like stepping into a daydream. In a society where the majority of marriages fail, scandal runs rampant, and divorce is almost expected, this poem by Ann Bradstreet is like a breath of fresh air. Her deep and genuine love for her husband is clear and evident.
To My Dear and Loving Husband
If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me ye women if you can.
I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought but love from thee give recompense.
Thy love is such I can no way repay;
The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.
Then while we live, in love let’s so persever,
That when we live no more we may live ever.
Source: www.britannica.com
Anne Bradsteet America's First Poet Selections From Her Works
September 17, 1883It's the birthday of poet William Carlos Williams, born in Rutherford, New Jersey. His father was a businessman, born in England, and his mother was Puerto Rican. His mother spoke and read to him in Spanish. He went off to school in Switzerland and France and learned French. But then he came back, went to medical school, and settled in Rutherford, where he was born, and lived there more or less for the rest of his life with his wife, Flossie. He practiced medicine full time and wrote his poems during breaks, on scraps of paper, without time to revise. He was often asked how he had the time and energy to pursue two professions, but he loved them both, and he couldn't imagine writing without medicine. In his Autobiography of William Carlos Williams (1951), he said: "I have never felt that medicine interfered with me but rather that it was my very food and drink, the very thing which made it possible for me to write. Was I not interested in man? There the thing was, right in front of me. I could touch it, smell it. It was myself, naked, just as it was, without a lie telling itself to me in its own terms." Williams is best known for his shorter poems like "The Red Wheelbarrow" (1962):
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
"The Red Wheelbarrow" is a single sentence, 16-word poem by William Carlos Williams, originally published in his 1923 collection "Spring and All." The poem is simple and easy to read, but contains deep messages that deal with personal identity and finding your place in the world. Williams states in his autobiography that the four stanzas are like a "piece of cloth, stretched on a frame." The structure creates powerful visual images and gives each word meaning.
Source: www.writersalmanac.org - www.poets.org
The Red Wheelbarrow and Other Poems
September 18, 1709 It’s the birthday of English essayist, poet, biographer, and lexicographer Samuel Johnson. He compiled “A Dictionary of the English Language” (1755), a massive, 21-pound tome that remained the definitive dictionary for 150 years, until the completion of the first Oxford English Dictionary. Among other works he wrote “The Vanity of Human Wishes: The Tenth Satire of Juvenal Imitated”. It is a poem written in late 1748 and published in 1749 (see 1749 in poetry). ... As the subtitle suggests, it is an imitation of Satire X by the Latin poet Juvenal. It consists of twenty-five stanzas of varying lengths, written in heroic couplets. It is also concerned with morality. Its rhetorical style is similar to that of London: It also has a speaker who uses the same kind of personifications, the same kind of pointed sentences, the same kind of figures of speech as Johnson’s earlier poem. Yet The Vanity of Human Wishes is a more philosophical poem than London. Its scope is larger and its manner is more mature …
The Vanity of Human Wishes:
The Tenth Satire of Juvenal, Imitated
by Samuel Johnson
[First theme, lines 1-48: The things we most desire — "Gain and Grandeur" — lead to our ruin.]
Let Observation with extensive View,
Survey Mankind, from China to Peru;
Remark each anxious Toil, each eager Strife,
And watch the busy Scenes of crouded Life;
Then say how Hope and Fear, Desire and Hate,
O'erspread with Snares the clouded Maze of Fate,
Where wav'ring Man, betray'd by vent'rous Pride,
To tread the dreary Paths without a Guide;
As treach'rous Phantoms in the Mist delude,
Shuns fancied Ills, or chases airy Good.
How rarely Reason guides the stubborn Choice,
Rules the bold Hand, or prompts the suppliant Voice,
How Nations sink, by darling Schemes oppress'd,
When Vengeance listens to the Fool's Request.
Fate wings with ev'ry Wish th'afflictive Dart,
Each Gift of Nature, and each Grace of Art,
With fatal Heat impetuous Courage glows,
With fatal Sweetness Elocution flows,
Impeachment stops the Speaker's pow'rful Breath,
And restless Fire precipitates on Death …
Source: https://www.johnderbyshire.com/Readin...
The Life of Samuel Johnson
It was on this day September 19 in 1819 that 24-year-old John Keats wrote the ode “To Autumn". It is one of the most anthologized poems in the English language. He wrote to his friend: “Somehow a stubble plain looks warm, in the same way that some pictures look warm, this struck me so much in my Sunday’s walk that I composed upon it.” Keats was despairing about that year of his poetic life. In November, he wrote to his brother, “Nothing could have in all its circumstances fallen out worse for me than the last year has done, or could be more damping to my poetical talent.” But these days, Keats scholars call 1819 the “Living Year,” the “Great Year,” or the “Fertile Year.” Keats had written almost all his great poetry during that year, including a series of odes during that spring and summer, among them “Ode to a Nightingale,” “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” and “Ode to Psyche.” “To Autumn” was the last of these odes. Keats died from tuberculosis less than two years later, at age 25. “To Autumn,” which the critic Harold Bloom called “as close to perfect as any shorter poem in the English Language,” begins:Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core”.....
Source: www.writersalmanac.org
Articles on Poetry by John Keats, Including: Hyperion (Poem), to Autumn, Ode to a Nightingale, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode on Indolence, on First Looking Into Chapman's Homer, Lamia (Poem), the Eve of St. Agnes
On September 20, 1870 Capture of Rome by Italian army, Pope Pius IX surrenders to King Victor Emmanuel which unifies Italy and ends 1,116 year reign of Papal States. The outbreak of war between France and Prussia in July 1870 marked the end of the secular power of the Church, as the French occupation troops led by Napoleon III had to move back to their homeland. The Italian government assured the Pope compliance with the agreement of September 1864, allowed, however, when the fortunes of war turned for Napoleon III, to besiege the regions belonging to the church by the army of the Kingdom of Italy.
After the defeat at Sedan and the proclamation of the French Republic, the military siege was intensified, and on 20 September 1870 the royal troops stormed, after a brief gun fire, the "Porta Pia" and marched into Rome. Pius IX wanted to avoid bloodshed and ordered the commander of the Papal forces, General Chancellor, to limit the defence to an absolute minimum to prove that one would only avoid brute force. On the following day the papal troops were dismissed, and only the Swiss Guard remained in the Vatican.
Thus ended a centuries-long period, in which an army under the leadership of the Pope was required to secure the secular power of the church. From then on, the Swiss Guards’ only duty was to protect the life of the Pope and to ensure the safety of the Vatican and the Pope's summer residence in Castel Gandolfo. Therefore, Stalin’s question about how many divisions the Vatican required, made no longer any sense. It shows a too "realistic" and short-sighted view of the facts that determined the course of history.
Source: www.guardiasvizzera.va
The Last Days of Papal Rome, 1850-1870
Today is the birthday of Girolamo Savonarola born on September 21 in Ferrara, Italy (1452). When he was 22, he left off studying medicine to join an order of Dominican monks, and he developed a reputation for his prophetic preaching. He settled in Florence in 1490, where he became the scourge of the Medici family, who were then in power. Savonarola's speeches against tyranny made him popular with the people, and the rule of the Medicis came to an end not long after the death of their leader, Lorenzo. Savonarola soon filled the void, setting up a republic and continuing to preach against the corruption of the Catholic Church.
As the head of the Church, the notoriously corrupt Pope Alexander VI was displeased by Savonarola's influence. Alexander tried first to trap him by luring him to Rome, but Savonarola saw through the scheme and refused, claiming illness. The pontiff threatened him with excommunication, and then tempted him with a Cardinalship, to which the reformer replied, "A red hat? I want a hat of blood." Eventually, he got his wish: in 1498, he was arrested, tortured, and executed by hanging and then burning. His ashes were scattered in the Arno River.
Source: The Writer’s Almanac
“The reason why I entered into a religious order is this: first, the great misery of the world, the wickedness of men, the rapes, the adulteries, the thefts, the pride, the idolatry, the vile curses, for the world has come to such a state that one can no longer find anyone who does good; so much so that many times every day I would sing this verse with tears in my eyes: Alas, flee from cruel lands, flee from the shores of the greedy. I did this because I could not stand the great wickedness of the blind people of Italy, especially when I saw that virtue had been completely cast down and vice raised up.” (Letter to his father (25 April 1475), as quoted in ”A Guide to Righteous Living and Other Works (2003) as translated by Konrad Eisenbichler, p. 17”
A Guide to Righteous Living and Other Works
A really interesting bit of history. I've heard and read about the Pope's army but I never knew what happened to it or why. Thanks
Mod
If you've not seen it, do - especially this letter!!!
LauraT wrote: "Whenever I hear Savonarola mentioned, my mind goes immediately to the letter Troisi and Benigni wrote him during one of the most hilarious film made by them "Non ci resta che piangere" (Nothing Lef..."Thanks Laura
Norton wrote: "A really interesting bit of history. I've heard and read about the Pope's army but I never knew what happened to it or why. Thanks"Thanks for reading.
Today September 22 marks the autumnal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere, the first day of fall and the point in which the Sun is directly above the equator and the hours of day and night are nearly equal. In the Southern Hemisphere, today marks the vernal equinox, the first day of spring. We wish our readers of both hemispheres all the best on this fantastic planet named “The Earth”!THE AUTUMN EQUINOX FOR THE NORTHERN HEMISPHERE IS HERE! WAIT, WHAT'S THE AUTUMN EQUINOX?
The equinox comes twice a year and is related to the change in seasons, but a lot of people don't fully understand this celestial alignment. Winter is officially coming. The Northern Hemisphere blew by the longest day of the year with June’s summer solstice and is now coming up on the September equinox—the day when the sun passes directly over Earth’s Equator. (See gorgeous pictures that celebrate the arrival of fall.) For the other half of the planet, September 22 is the vernal equinox, signalling the beginning of spring. Even though an equinox happens twice a year, every year, there are a lot of misconceptions about this seasonal transition.
HERE COMES THE SUN
In a grainy video, a group of newly fledged Harvard graduates are asked why we have seasons. It seems like a pretty simple question. With varying degrees of confidence, the students explain that the Earth gets warmer or colder based on its distance from the sun. After all, the Earth’s orbit isn’t a perfect circle. The Harvard grads—captured forever in 1980s hair and their caps and gowns—were wrong. “The Earth’s orbit is [only] about three percent out of round,” explains Jay Holberg, a senior research scientist at the lunar and planetary lab at the University of Arizona. “So in the northern winter—in December—the sun is actually closest to the Earth by a small amount, and in the summer it’s actually farther away.” So if it’s not the Earth’s changing proximity to the sun, what gives us seasons? It's all in the slant: Earth's axis isn’t straight up and down relative to the sun, but tilted at a slight angle of about 23.5 degrees.
As Earth revolves around the sun, it maintains that tilt, and the sun’s light doesn't hit the entire surface directly. When the planet's Northern Hemisphere is tilted toward the sun, sunlight hits it head on, bringing summer’s heat and longer days. At the same time, the southern half of Earth is tilted away from the sun and catches its rays at an angle, causing the cooler, shorter days of winter. The Earth is bathed evenly in sunlight only twice a year, on the equinoxes.
“What it has to do [with] is the amount of light per square centimetre that’s falling on you,” says Dan Milisavljevic of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. “If the light is angled, it’s not going to be as hot.” So, if the chillier air and crispier leaves have you happily reaching for pumpkin-flavoured everything, thank Earth’s tilt—not its distance from the sun. And if you’re seething about summer’s end, consider moving closer to the Equator.
NIGHT AND DAY
At the solstices in June and December, we celebrate the longest and shortest days of the year. And on the equinox, derived from the Latin for "equal night," day and night are the same length—roughly speaking. “It’s close enough, but not exactly. It's actually different by several minutes in some cases,” says Milisavljevic. Instead, day will seem a little longer than night. This discrepancy is partly due to an optical illusion: Earth’s atmosphere bends light, making the sun look like it’s above the horizon when it’s really below—just like a pencil stuck in a glass of water can look like it’s been split in two at the water line. What's more, the length of daylight is not the same everywhere on Earth. It changes with distance from the Equator—which is why the poles have endless day in summer and months of night in winter. “The equinox is defined as the time of an event. It’s really not when the day and the night are of equal length, although that’s what we think of—it’s really that moment is when the sun is on the Equator at local noon,” says Matthew Holman, an astrophysicist at Harvard University.
CELEBRATING THE EQUINOX
People throughout history have marked the equinox and the solstice. And no one has done it in more spectacular fashion than the Maya, who constructed the El Castillo step pyramid at Chichen Itza in Mexico so that a snake made of light would appear to slither down the pyramid’s steps at the autumnal and vernal equinoxes. “Standing at the corner of the building with the sunset to my right, looking on the left, you see the big stairway going up the side of the building, and you’ll see the light of the un-shadowed portion looks like a snake on the stairway,” says anthropologist James Fox, who has worked at Chichen Itza.
The snaking light connects a sculpted snake’s head at the bottom of the building to its tail at the top. “If that doesn’t make an impression,” Fox says, “nothing will.” Anthony Aveni, Colgate University professor and author of The Book of The Year: A Brief History of Our Seasonal Holidays, says that there’s a legend that the ancient feathered serpent god descends from the sky on the equinox. Today, it draws crowds who hope to catch the light-snake slithering down the steps. Although it’s clear that the Maya built monuments to catch the changing seasons, the archaeological evidence is equivocal about whether there were any rituals around this building. “It’s sometimes very difficult to filter out the truth from the romance of the stones, that’s something you have to look at [in] the archaeological record and legends,” Aveni says.
OUT OF THIS WORLD
Whether equinoxes carry any great cultural significance here on Earth, these celestial alignments link us with the rest of the planets in our solar system—except Mercury, which tilts pretty much perpendicularly to the sun. Mercury is always in equinox, says Matthew Holman. “The equinox is when the sun crosses the equator, but really it’s always on the equator.” So if we were settling another planet, what equinox would feel most like home? “It depends on whether you like seasons or not,” Holman says. “If you like the seasons, you probably want a modest [tilt] so that there’s some variation.” Mars looks pretty attractive. Its tilt exceeds ours by only a degree and a half, and its polar ice caps (made of dry ice rather than frozen water) freeze and thaw with the seasons just like our own. Perhaps the worst: Uranus. With a tilt greater than 90 degrees, it rolls around on its side relative to the sun for its 84-year orbit. This means summers and winters last for 42 years.
Source: www.nationalgeographic.com.au
Autumn Equinox
On this day September 23 in 1641, the 17th-century transport ship The Merchant Royal was caught in rough weather off southwestern England. Less than 40 miles from the jagged coast of Land's End, Cornwall, and leaking badly, she sank, taking with her 18 crewmen, 100,000 pounds of gold (nearly a billion dollars in today's currency), 400 bars of Mexican silver, and nearly half a million pieces of eight and other coins. Skippered by the esteemed Captain John Limbrey, the ship was transporting Spain's colonial loot to Antwerp, where it was to be converted into pay for Spain's 30,000 soldiers. Limbrey refused to leave the ship until the very end, when he and 40 other crewmen were rescued by another merchant ship. Limbrey was so distraught with grief that he refused to be seen in public for several months.
Considered the holy grail of shipwrecks, The Merchant Royal has been the obsession of international treasure seekers for decades, its exact location difficult to pinpoint because of the area's volatile waters and jagged underwater landscape. In 2007, the Odyssey Marine Exploration Company claimed to have recovered more than $500 million in coins from a shipwreck they believed to have been The Merchant Royal. After testing the coins, it is believed that they were recovered instead from another wreck, that of the Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes, sunk in 1804. Spain sued to recover the money; the case has not been resolved. An estimated 3 million shipwrecks, with untold fortunes and stories, languish at the bottom of the world's oceans.
Sources: https://www.writersalmanac.org/index....
https://www.wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?1...
https://wikivisually.com/wiki/Black_S...
The History of Shipwrecks
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY: SEPTEMBER 24, 1991. American alternative rock group Nirvana released its breakthrough album Nevermind, which helped make grunge an international phenomenon and gave voice to Generation X.Grunge, genre of rock music that flourished in the late 1980s and early ’90s and, secondarily, its attendant fashion. The term grunge was first used to describe the murky-guitar bands (most notably Nirvana and Pearl Jam) that emerged from Seattle in the late 1980s as a bridge between mainstream 1980s heavy metal–hard rock and postpunk alternative rock.
Influenced by punk rock, by the hardcore-punk inheritors of its do-it-yourself ethic such as Hüsker Dü, and by the sound of 1970s heavy metal bands such as Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, and AC/DC, grunge came to fruition on Seattle’s independent Sub Pop record label as Mudhoney, Nirvana, Screaming Trees, and Soundgarden followed in the footsteps of the pioneering Northwestern band the Melvins.
Combining guitar distortion, anguished vocals, and heartfelt, angst-ridden lyrics, Nirvana and Pearl Jam won a rapidly increasing audience, moved to major labels, and released multimillion-selling albums. In the wake of their success, Seattle—already experiencing an economic boom as a result of the Microsoft Corporation’s expansive growth—became a magnet for record executives looking for the next big thing. As the media spread the word, grunge became an international fad, and American department stores soon had sections of grunge clothing—knockoffs of the flannel shirts, thermal underwear, combat boots, and stocking hats favoured by Seattle bands and their fans.
Eventually, grunge faded—partly because of the death in 1994 of Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain, who had become a generational spokesman, but also because of the disappointing record sales by many of the bands from Seattle who never did become the next big thing. Nevertheless, grunge played an enormous role in moving alternative rock into the pop mainstream.
Source: www.britannica.com
Grunge Is Dead: The Oral History of Seattle Rock Music
I really enjoy your hIstory posts. Thanks much!
Norton wrote: "I really enjoy your hIstory posts. Thanks much!"Thanks Norton! "Sharing is caring", so they say. We take care of ourselves ....
Holyhead. September 25, 1727 In this poem Jonathan Swift laments the woeful conditions of his unplanned, frustrating delay at Holyhead on his way back to Dublin from London. If he had had a smartphone with Twitter in his days he would have twittered the poem that brings this very title.
He describes in “The Holyhead Journal”, a 2,500 word essay, a five-day period when he had decided to return to Ireland after visiting England for what turned to be his last time. Holyhead is on the north coast of Wales. He describes his efforts to find suitable lodging, suitable food and clean clothes and to maintain his exercises routine. He calls Holyhead a kind of prison ...
Holyhead. September 25, 1727
Lo here I sit at Holyhead
With muddy ale and mouldy bread
All Christian victuals stink of fish
I'm where my enemies would wish
Convict of lies is every sign,
The inn has not one drop of wine
I'm fasten'd both by wind and tide
I see the ship at anchor ride
The Captain swears the sea's too rough
He has not passengers enough.
And thus the Dean is forc'd to stay
Till others come to help the pay
In Dublin they'd be glad to see
A packet though it brings in me.
They cannot say the winds are cross
Your politicians at a loss
For want of matter swears and frets,
Are forced to read the old gazettes.
I never was in haste before
To reach that slavish hateful shore
Before, I always found the wind
To me was most malicious kind
But now, the danger of a friend
On whom my fears and hopes depend
Absent from whom all climes are curst
With whom I'm happy in the worst
With rage impatient makes me wait
A passage to the land I hate.
Else, rather on this bleaky shore
Where loudest winds incessant roar
Where neither herb nor tree will thrive,
Where nature hardly seems alive,
I'd go in freedom to my grave,
Than rule yon isle and be a slave.
Source: www.poetrynook.com/poem/holyhead-sept...
Critical Companion to Jonathan Swift: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work
Antonio, another good story. I sent it to my son whose in the radio business. He'll enjoy it. Thanks
Norton wrote: "Antonio, another good story. I sent it to my son whose in the radio business. He'll enjoy it. Thanks"Thanks again Norton. Let me ask you a question: "Do we make history or history makes us?"
Interesting question. Obviouslyy, what we do ultimately becomes history. But what we've done shapes who we are. So history shapes who we are. It works both ways.
Norton wrote: "Interesting question. Obviouslyy, what we do ultimately becomes history. But what we've done shapes who we are. So history shapes who we are. It works both ways."I agree. It works both ways, you say. There's a beginning and an end, as usual. Have a nice day in your part of history ,,,
Today September 26, It’s the birthday of Thomas Stearns Eliot, born in St. Louis, Missouri (1888). At the age of 27, he wrote “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915), and at 34, wrote “The Waste Land” (1922). At the height of his career, when he was writing poetry, plays, and literary criticism, and serving as director of the British publisher Faber & Faber, he was the 20th century’s single most influential writer. He was dry and enigmatic, and he spoke very, very slowly. Yet, he loved the Marx Brothers and was said to harbor a weakness for squirting buttonholes and exploding cigars. Somebody once said to Eliot that most editors are failed writers. Eliot said: “Yes. So are most writers.”
The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,
The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.
О perpetual revolution of configured stars,
О perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,
О world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!
***
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?...
From a play, The Rock, written and performed in 1934. The Rock was performed as a pageant to raise money for the building of new churches in London. It speaks to mankind’s relation to God, about the implications of a world lived without religion, and, more to the point, what it means to build a church. The famous “Choruses” are spoken by bands of workmen. The Rock is strongly pro-religion with anti-fascist/anti-communist overtones, in reaction to the looming shadow of the totalitarian regimes building in Europe, and the rumblings of the coming Second World War.
Source: https://leavesandpages.com
A Preface to T S Eliot
The most famous equation in the world was born on September 27, 1905.On this day September 27 in 1905, the German physics journal “Annalen der Physik” published Albert Einstein's "Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?" which produced arguably the most famous equation in all of physics, E=mc². The paper was one of four Einstein published that year, papers that subsequently have been nicknamed the Annus Mirabilis papers, four remarkable papers that added up to a miraculous year for both Einstein and physics and changed our views on space, time, and the fundamental nature of matter.
It is the most famous equation in the world. Many can recite it, and attribute it to Albert Einstein, but few know its significance. It tells us that mass and energy are related, and, in those rare instances where mass is converted totally into energy, how much energy that will be. The elegance with which it ties together three disparate parts of nature, energy, the speed of light and mass, is profound.
After his final article, exhausted, he retreated to his bed for two weeks. But, still, as he told a friend in the patent office, "My joy is indescribable."
Sources: www.writersalmanac.org
http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einste...
When Einstein Walked with Gödel: Excursions to the Edge of Thought
September 28 1891: Herman Melville dies. Melville wrote 'Moby-Dick' and several other sea-adventure novels, before turning to poetry later in his literary career. His short story “Bartleby the Scrivener” tells the story of an optimistic lawyer faced with an inscrutable employee named Bartleby. Not long after starting his job, Bartleby moves into the office, stops doing most of his work, and answers the lawyer's every request with, "I would prefer not to." Bartleby later dies of malnutrition in jail.
“I would prefer not to.” “You will not?” “I prefer not.”
“Bartleby, the Scrivener” is a coy document. Part office comedy, part ghost story, part Zen koan, the text seems determined to subvert the expectations of its reader. No wonder some critics have read the story as Herman Melville offering a middle finger to the literary establishment of his day. In 1852, the year before the story’s publication, Melville, once a big seller, had been declared “crazy” in the papers. His kaleidoscopic novel-encyclopedia-poem about whaling had not been a hit; his Gothic romance about incest and the publishing world had not been a hit; he had lost the allegiance of the literary figures he considered his allies; and he was dangerously low on money.
But “Bartleby” is much more than a grave marker (if that) for Melville’s ambitions. It is a searing critique of American capitalism, a protest story, an existentialist paean to the necessity of going on in an absurd world. And, depending on whom you ask, it is also a homoerotic love story, a commentary on the rambunctious labor politics of 1840s New York, or a coded Masonic mystery (long before Dan Brown). Or it is a cipher for some other text in Melville’s vast mental library, Shakespeare, or Emerson, or the Bible. It is all of these things, and none of them. One of this text’s many delights is the elusiveness of its meaning.
Source: www.slate.com
Bartleby the Scrivener
September 29, 1901 it's the birthday of the physicist Enrico Fermi, born in Rome (1901), the man who used Einstein's theories to build the first functioning nuclear reactor. He was studying radioactivity in the 1930s, and if he hadn't wrapped his uranium in tin foil, he might have discovered nuclear fission then, and his work might have fallen into the hands of the Nazis. But he won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1938, and he used the prize as an opportunity to defect with his wife to the United States. He got involved in the Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb, and he moved to the University of Chicago, where he built the first reactor there on a squash court under the stands of the university football field in late 1942. Fermi and his team conducted the first nuclear reaction on the morning of December 2, 1942. His experiment lasted 28 minutes, and it was a complete success. News of the successful experiment was conveyed to Washington, D.C., in a coded message that said, "The Italian navigator has landed in the new world." Three years later, in the desert outside of Los Alamos, New Mexico, Fermi watched as the first atomic bomb was exploded.
Quotes
Experimental confirmation of a prediction is merely a measurement. An experiment disproving a prediction is a discovery.
Before I came here I was confused about this subject. Having listened to your lecture I am still confused. But on a higher level.
Never underestimate the joy people derive from hearing something they already know.
There are two possible outcomes: if the result confirms the hypothesis, then you've made a measurement. If the result is contrary to the hypothesis, then you've made a discovery.
The fact that no limits exist to the destructiveness of this weapon [the 'Super', i.e. the hydrogen bomb] makes its very existence and the knowledge of its construction a danger to humanity as a whole. It is necessarily an evil thing considered in any light. For these reasons, we believe it important for the President of the United States to tell the American public and the world what we think is wrong on fundamental ethical principles to initiate the development of such a weapon.
Source: www.writersalmanac.org
Source: www.azquotes.com
The Pope of Physics: Enrico Fermi and the Birth of the Atomic Age
Antonio, although I don't comment very often, I want you to know that I enjoy reading your Today in History posts. I especially enjoy reading the literary references since my degrees are in Brit. Lit.Thank you for doing this.
Tamara wrote: "Antonio, although I don't comment very often, I want you to know that I enjoy reading your Today in History posts. I especially enjoy reading the literary references since my degrees are in Brit. L..."Thank you Tamara. It is really a challenge for me to chose daily happenings in History every day. I like doing it because the more I search, the more I learn. Sharing with others does the rest.
Today September 30 is the birthday of American poet, essayist, and translator W.S. Merwin (1927), best known for his spare poems about nature and the meaning of life. He once said, “I think a poem begins out of what you don’t know, and you begin not by having a good idea but by hearing something in the language.” “The Essential W. S. Merwin” condenses the poet’s career into a single volume. Merwin’s poems, like his Maui conservancy, make their mark on the world by recording its effacement; they reveal what a person finds when he imagines himself as having been superseded. Here is perhaps his most famous poem, “For the Anniversary of My Death”:
Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveler
Like the beam of a lightless star
Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And the shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what
The poem’s power is clinched by its title and opening line; almost anything could follow that bracing conceit. It must have been a struggle, once Merwin had come to this startling idea, to decide when and how to deploy it. He was in his thirties when the poem was written. It faintly mocks its own stodginess—it is a kind of pleasure, after all, to imagine your own death, provided you’re young and healthy. A pleasure and an opportunity: the poem strongly implies the seduction plot that it doesn’t mention outright. The candles wave, the garments fall away, and this man’s “shamelessness” meets, in the aura of his personal doomsday, “the love of one woman.” Something deep in me resists this sexy self-extinction rhetoric. Soft-core, low-fi, and Aquarian, Merwin’s asceticism has always had about it the prowess of a sophisticate.
Source: www.newyorker.com
The Essential W.S. Merwin
October 1st, 2018 This month is the tenth month of the year and has 31 days. It was originally the eighth month of the Roman calendar until 153 BCE. October's birth flower is Calendula. The month kept its original name from the Roman calendar in which “octo” means “eight” in Latin marking the eighth month of the year. October was named during a time when the calendar year began with March, which is why its name no longer corresponds with its placement in the Julian and Gregorian calendars. In Middle English - octobre. Latin name - October mensis - eighth month. For the Anglo Saxons - Winterfylleth - winter full moon. This month is a very rich month in poetry.
Welsh poet Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) is one of those rare and extraordinary poets whose music can entrance and satisfy the reader even before understanding the significance of his words. This is certainly the case with this particular poem. Rhythm and texture of sound really mesmerise the reader. You have to read it through several times before really getting to grips with its full import. It is a complex piece, difficult, it speaks about poetry, and the process of writing it.
Especially when the October wind
With frosty fingers punishes my hair,
Caught by the crabbing sun I walk on fire
And cast a shadow crab upon the land,
By the sea's side, hearing the noise of birds,
Hearing the raven cough in winter sticks,
My busy heart who shudders as she talks
Sheds the syllabic blood and drains her words.
Shut, too, in a tower of words, I mark
On the horizon walking like the trees
The wordy shapes of women, and the rows
Of the star-gestured children in the park.
Some let me make you of the vowelled beeches,
Some of the oaken voices, from the roots
Of many a thorny shire tell you notes,
Some let me make you of the water's speeches.
Behind a pot of ferns the wagging clock
Tells me the hour's word, the neural meaning
Flies on the shafted disk, declaims the morning
And tells the windy weather in the cock.
Some let me make you of the meadow's signs;
The signal grass that tells me all I know
Breaks with the wormy winter through the eye.
Some let me tell you of the raven's sins.
The Three Lives of Dylan Thomas
Good job as usual Antonio. I'm somewhat familiar with the Fermi story. Gladly the Nazis didn't get hold of him. The world would be a much different place. But his experiments did cost the University of Chicago it's football program.
I haven't read this thread regularly, but the last few posts have been really interesting. Great job Antonio!
All About Books
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War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History: 1500 to Today (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Francesco Guccini (other topics)Paco Ignacio Taibo II (other topics)
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William Shakespeare (other topics)
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Many consider it the finest short story ever written. All of Kafka’s most famous works were published after his death, and all contain surrealistic elements that led to the phrase “Kafkaesque,” as a descriptor for bizarre, dark stories … Her are some of his most loved quotations
1. “Life’s splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come.”
2. “Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.”
3. “It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.”
4. “Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate… but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins.”
5. “May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.”
6. “You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.”
7. “In argument similes are like songs in love; they describe much, but prove nothing.”
8. “How pathetically scanty my self-knowledge is compared with, say, my knowledge of my room…. There is no such thing as observation of the inner world, as there is of the outer world.”
9. “Don’t despair, not even over the fact that you don’t despair.”
10. “He who seeks does not find, but he who does not seek will be found.”