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Today in History
Antonio wrote: "Well said, Karin ... I wonder what men could do without the help of "well suited women" not just in writing ...."Thanks. They might be lost. That was one of the media plays that made me see very young just how manipulative the press can be when powerful people have agendas. There were also ones taking place at the time that had that effect on me, too. I take every article with a grain of salt now and try to check things out myself.
Something interesting that has come up is that Eli Whitney may have invented the cotton gin with his slave owner's wife, but it was better to credit a man, even if he was a slave, as doing it all himself rather than also credit a woman. That said, I think Whitney was bright, but many inventions are actually collaborations, so this could be correct.
On July 6, 1971 Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong, one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, dies in New York City at the age of 69. A world-renowned jazz trumpeter and vocalist, he pioneered jazz improvisation and the style known as swing.Louis Daniel Armstrong was born in New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz, in 1901. He grew up in poverty and from a young age was interested in music. In 1912, he was incarcerated in the Colored Waif’s Home for Boys, allegedly for firing a gun into the air on New Year’s Eve. While there, he played cornet in the home’s band. Upon his release, he dedicated himself to becoming a professional musician and soon was mastering local jazz styles on the cornet. He attracted the attention of cornetist Joe “King” Oliver, and when Oliver moved to Chicago in 1919 he took his place in trombonist Kid Ory’s band, a leading group in New Orleans at the time. He later teamed up with pianist Fate Marable and performed on riverboats that traveled the Mississippi.
In 1922, King Oliver invited Armstrong to Chicago to play second cornet in his Creole Jazz Band, and Armstrong made his first recordings with Oliver the following year. In 1924, he moved to New York City and demonstrated his emerging improvisational style in the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra. In 1925, Armstrong returned to Chicago and formed his own band–the Hot Five–which included Kid Ory, clarinetist Johnny Dodds, and pianist Lil’ Hardin, Armstrong’s second wife.
This band, which later grew into the Hot Seven, recorded some of the seminal pieces in the history of jazz, including “Savoy Blues,” “Potato Head Blues,” and “West End Blues.” In these recordings, Armstrong abandoned the collective improvisation of New Orleans-style jazz and placed the emphasis on individual soloists. He switched from cornet to trumpet during this time and played the latter with unprecedented virtuosity and range. In the 1926 recording “Heebie Jeebies,” he popularized “scat singing,” a style in which jazz vocalists sing musical lines of nonsensical syllables in emulation of instrumental improvisation. His joyous voice, both coarse and exuberant, was one of the most distinctive in popular music.
In 1929, Armstrong returned to New York City and made his first Broadway appearance. His recordings, many of which were jazz interpretations of popular songs, were international hits, and he toured the United States and Europe with his big band. His music had a major effect on the swing and big band sound that dominated popular music in the 1930s and ’40s. A great performer, Armstrong appeared regularly on radio and in American films, including Pennies from Heaven(1936), Cabin in the Sky (1943), and New Orleans (1947). In 1947, he formed a smaller ensemble, the All-Stars, which he led until 1968.
Louis Armstrong had many nicknames, including Satchmo, short for “Satchelmouth”; “Dippermouth”; and “Pops.” Because he spread jazz around the world through his extensive travels and hit songs, many called him “Ambassador Satch.” Although in declining health in his later years, he continued to perform until his death on July 6, 1971.
Source: www.history.com
Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans
Antonio wrote: "On July 6, 1971 Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong, one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, dies in New York City at the age of 69. A world-renowned jazz trumpeter and vocalist, he pionee..."He was brilliant. As I recall he appears in the novel Twelve Bar Blues--as a child.
He was so amazing, he was able to play even though he had a syndrome which made his cheeks puff out so much--most trumpeters couldn't play that way. He even had to take an entire year off due to problems.
Karin wrote: "Antonio wrote: "On July 6, 1971 Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong, one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, dies in New York City at the age of 69. A world-renowned jazz trumpeter and voc..."Yes, quite unforgettable!
According to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories, Dr. John H. Watson is born on this day, July 8. Coincidentally, the author died on this day in England at the age of 71.Conan Doyle was born in Scotland in 1859 and studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh. At the University, he studied with Dr. Joseph Bell, whose extraordinary deductive powers were said to be the inspiration for Conan Doyle’s character Sherlock Holmes.
After medical school, Conan Doyle moved to London, where he practiced medicine and wrote. His first Sherlock Holmes story, “A Study in Scarlet,” was published in Beeton’s Christmas Annual in 1887. Starting in 1891, a series of Holmes stories appeared in The Strand magazine.
The popularity of the stories enabled Conan Doyle to leave his medical practice in 1891 and devote himself to writing. But he grew tired of his character and had him hurled off a cliff, to his presumed death, in “The Final Problem”. He later resuscitated Holmes due to popular demand.
In 1902, Conan Doyle was knighted for his work with a field hospital in South Africa. After his son died in World War I, Conan Doyle became a dedicated spiritualist, attempting to contact his late son through the help of a medium. He died in 1930.
The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
On this day in 1918, Ernest Hemingway is severely wounded while carrying a companion to safety on the Austro-Italian front during World War I. Hemingway, working as a Red Cross ambulance driver, was decorated for his heroism and sent home.Hemingway was born in 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois. Before joining the Red Cross, he worked as a reporter for the Kansas City Star. After the war, he married the wealthy Hadley Richardson. The couple moved to Paris, where they met other American expatriate writers, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and Ezra Pound. With their help and encouragement, Hemingway published his first book of short stories, in the U.S. in 1925, followed by the well-received The Sun Also Rises in 1926. Hemingway would marry three more times, and his romantic and sporting epics would be followed almost as closely as his writing.
During the 1930s and ’40s, the hard-drinking Hemingway lived in Key West and then in Cuba while continuing to travel widely. He wrote The Old Man and the Seain 1952, his first major literary work in nearly a decade. The book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953. The same year, Hemingway was wounded in a plane crash, after which he became increasingly anxious and depressed. Like his father, he eventually committed suicide, shooting himself in 1961 in his home in Idaho.
Source: www.history.com
Ernest Hemingway
In the summer of 1822, the Courier, a leading Tory newspaper in London, carried a brief obituary that began: "Shelley, the writer of some infidel poetry, has been drowned: now he knows whether there is a God or no." From this moment on, the dramatic death of Percy Bysshe Shelley in the Gulf of Spezia was set to become one of the most powerful of all Romantic legends. And also perhaps the most misleading.Shelley drowned in his own sailing boat, the Don Juan, while returning from Livorno to Lerici, in the late afternoon of July 8 1822, during a violent summer storm. He was a month short of his 30th birthday. Like Keats's death in Rome the year before, or Byron's death at Missolonghi two years later, this sudden tragedy set a kind of sacred (or profane) seal upon his reputation as a youthful, sacrificial genius. But far more comprehensively than theirs, Shelley's death was used to define an entire life, to frame a complete biography. It produced not hagiography, but thanatography.
Through an astonishing array of pictures, poems, inscriptions, memoirs and Victorian monuments, this death spun a particular image of Shelley's character more effectively than any modern PR campaign. It projected a writer who was unearthly, impractical and doomed. In Matthew Arnold's notorious summation, Shelley was "a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain". Shelley could always fly, but he could never swim.
The legend of his death transformed his life almost beyond recovery. Here for instance is what was inscribed (in Italian) on the wall of his last house, the skull-like Casa Magni, with its five gaping white arches and open terrace, gazing out to sea at San Terenzo, on the bay of Lerici. "Upon this terrace, once protected by the shadow of an ancient oak-tree, in July 1822, Mary Shelley and Jane Williams awaited with weeping anxiety the return of Percy Bysshe Shelley, who, sailing from Livorno in his fragile craft, had come to shore by sudden chance among the silences of the Elysian Isles. - O blessed shores, where Love, Liberty and Dreams have no chains."
This unearthly legend had been built up steadily throughout the 19th century. Shelley's wife Mary herself launched it, writing immediately after his death: "I was never the Eve of any Paradise, but a human creature blessed by an elemental spirit's company & love - an angel who imprisoned in flesh could not adapt himself to his clay shrine & so has flown and left it."
Source: https://www.theguardian.com ( https://goo.gl/wNegB7 ) (adapted)
On July 10, 1040 a woman named Lady Godiva rode through the streets of Coventry, naked, on horseback. She was accepting the challenge of her husband Leofric, Earl of Mercia, who said that he would lower taxes in return.An enduring myth, it did not emerge until the 13th century, thus we cannot be sure that the protest actually occurred. But, we do know that Lady Godiva lived (990-1067) and she held social justice close to her heart. A series of generous acts during her lifetime–the funds for a Benedictine monastery, gifts of precious metals, and donations of land–are thought to be Godiva's influence over her husband.
The legend says that Godiva repeatedly appealed to her husband to curb excessive taxes, but was ignored time and time again. Finally, exacerbated by her pleas, he challenged her–if she would strip naked and ride through the streets naked, he would comply. She issued a decree that all townspeople stay indoors and shut their windows, while she rode through the streets. (One man, a tailor, chose to have a gander–hence the emergence of the term Peeping Tom.) Lady Godiva won.
Lady Godiva: A Literary History of the Legend
The composer George Gershwin died on this day, July 11 in 1937. In a tribute to Gershwin in The Nation in 1929, Abbe Niles, perhaps the most prominent jazz and blues critic of the 1920s, wrote:“More than any other one person, George Gershwin has reminded his hearers that the division between good and bad cuts across all others. This, it is submitted, is a valuable reminder. If the fallacy to the contrary was a vulgar was, it was—and to a less degree still is—powerful. It is not that Gershwin has written good music; the present writer thinks it good, but the point is that, good or not, it is American, in the popular idiom, and good enough to show that first-rate music, even in the longer forms, can be written in that idiom by anyone with the requisite training and natural gifts.…
That he will write great music, his work to date does not promise. Its spirit is vital but not profound, not elevated, but humorous, witty, ribald; on occasion, pathetic or of a cool, blue melancholy, but not tragic. It is the product of an immense gusto for life, work, and appreciation, which, it may be expected, will not quickly fade. It will continue to arouse pleased surprise in the minds of intelligent hearers, including serious if not solemn musicians, over the world; to raise the general level of American popular music, and to obliterate a snobbish, vulgar, and potent error.” (July 11, 1939)
Source: https://www.scribd.com/document/27074...
George Gershwin: His Life and Work
I am glad Lady Godiva won, I did not know the reason for the famous ride. Thank you for sharing 😊
There are different types of "History". These are the main subfields:* Political history: the story of government, political leaders, electoral activities, the making of policy, and the interaction of branches of government.
* Diplomatic history: the study of the relations between nations, diplomats, and ideas of diplomacy.
* Social history: the study of ways and customs, of family, education, children, demography (population change), and voluntary institutions (churches, for example).
* Cultural history: the study of language and its uses, of the arts and literature, sport, and entertainment, in constructing cultural categories.
* Economic history: the study of how an entire system of production and consumption (or of any of its parts) works, of markets, industry, credit, and working people at all levels of the system.
* Intellectual history: the study of ideology and epistemology, analyzing how ideas affect human actions and how the material world affects human ideas.
What Is Global History?
Antonio wrote: "On July 10, 1040 a woman named Lady Godiva rode through the streets of Coventry, naked, on horseback. She was accepting the challenge of her husband Leofric, Earl of Mercia, who said that he would ..."Hmm, she's have been 50 if and when she did this; hardly the picture we get from depictions of this!
On this day in 1929, the Fascist government in Italy banned the use of foreign words. Regional dialects were still so prevalent when Mussolini came into power in 1922 that no more than 12 percent of the population of the unified state spoke straightforward Italian. The regime wanted to promote unity and a strong national identity, so anything that was seen to undermine these things was a cause for concern. French and English words and phrases were particularly popular; where possible, the government required the use of the Italian equivalent, and if one didn't exist, they made the foreign word as Italian as possible. Wine from Bordeaux became known as Barolo; a movie, formerly known as "il film," was now called "la pellicola."Source: "The Writer's Almanac"
https://goo.gl/BeNnT7
It was on this day July 24, in 1847, that the Mormon leader Brigham Young led his people into the Valley of the Great Salt Lake. He was leading a group of Mormons from Illinois to find a new settlement in the West where they might not be bothered. Brigham Young had gotten sick during the journey and was being carried prostrate in a wagon. But when they reached the edge of the Valley of the Great Salt Lake, the wagon stopped as it came to a natural lookout point. According to legend, Brigham Young was able to describe the scene below without looking. Then he sat up and looked out at the valley and said, "This is the right place. Drive on."
Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet
25 July, 1956 - U.S.A. Ocean Liners Collide: The Italian ocean liner Andrea Doria and the Swedish ocean liner Stockholm collide in a heavy Atlantic fog off the island of Nantucket on the New England coast. Fifty-one passengers and crew were killed in the collision, which ripped a great hole in the broad side of the Italian vessel Andrea Doria all 1,660 survivors were rescued from the ship before it sunk late the next morning. 
Collision Course: The Classic Story of the Collision of the Andrea Doria & the Stockholm
MOSCOW, July 25— A Russian astronaut, Svetlana Savitskaya, became the first woman to walk in space today, the Tass press agency reported.Miss Savitskaya, who is 36 years old, performed welding and soldering operations in the course of her historic excursion in space, which lasted 3 hours and 35 minutes, Tass said.
Her walk today upstages a planned space walk in October by an American woman, Kathryn D. Sullivan. Dr. Sullivan and another astronaut, David C. Leetsma, are to venture outside the space shuttle Challenger to demonstrate techniques for orbital refueling. That flight is scheduled for October.
Miss Savitskaya, who was accompanied on her walk by the mission commander, Vladimir Dzhanibekov, is also the first woman to make two space flights. Here again, she is upstaging American plans. On the same mission with Dr. Sullivan, Sally K. Ride will be returning to space. In June 1983, she became the first American woman to fly in space. Astronauts in Good Health. Miss Savitskaya and her partner worked ''concertedly and confidently,'' Tass said, adding, ''The health of the cosmonauts is good.' ....
Source: www.nytimes.com (https://goo.gl/RF4QYN)
On July 26th, 1887 linguist L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the "Unua Libro". Zamenhof’s goal was to create an easy-to-learn, politically neutral language that would transcend nationality and foster peace and international understanding between people with different languages. Esperanto is a constructed international auxiliary language. It is the most widely spoken constructed language in the world. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto (“Esperanto” translates as “one who hopes”), the pseudonym under which physician and linguist L. L. Zamenhof published the book.
It was first published in Russian on July 26th, 1887 in Warsaw, by Polish oculist L. L. Zamenhof. Over the next few years editions were published in Polish, Russian, Hebrew, French, German, and English. This booklet included the Lord’s Prayer, some Bible verses, a letter, poetry, the sixteen rules of grammar and 900 roots of vocabulary.
In the book Zamenhof declared, “an international language, like a national one, is common property” and renounced all rights to the language, effectively putting it into the public domain.
Zamenhof signed the work as “Doktoro Esperanto” (Doctor One-Who-Hopes). Those who learned the new language began to call it “Esperanto” after Zamenhof’s pen name, and Esperanto soon became the official name of the language.
The first English edition, entitled Dr Esperanto’s International Tongue, was translated by Julian Steinhaus. When Richard H. Geoghegan pointed out that Steinhaus’s translation was in very poor English throughout, Zamenhof destroyed his remaining copies and engaged Geoghegan to produce a fresh translation.
In 1905, Zamenhof re-published the sixteen rules of grammar, in combination with a dictionary and a collection of exercises, in a work entitled Fundamento de Esperanto(Foundation of Esperanto).
Source: http://www.genekeyes.com/Dr_Esperanto...
A Complete Grammar of Esperanto
The most common date given for the arrival of tobacco in England is 27th July 1586, when it is said Sir Walter Raleigh brought it to England from Virginia. Indeed, one legend tells of how Sir Walter’s servant, seeing him smoking a pipe for the first time, threw water over him, fearing him to be on fire.However it is much more likely that tobacco had been around in England long before this date. Tobacco had been smoked by Spanish and Portuguese sailors for many years and it is likely that the habit of pipe smoking had been adopted by British sailors before 1586. Sir John Hawkins and his crew could have brought it to these shores as early as 1565.
When Raleigh arrived back in England in 1586, he brought with him colonists from the settlement on the Roanoke Island and these colonists brought with them tobacco, maize and potatoes.
Rather bizarrely, tobacco was seen as good for your health whereas potatoes were viewed with great suspicion! The use of tobacco by this time was well known on the Continent. The Spaniard Nicolas Monardes had written a report into tobacco, translated into English by John Frampton in 1577 and called ‘Of the Tabaco and of His Greate Vertues’, which recommended its use for the relief of toothache, falling fingernails, worms, halitosis, lockjaw and even cancer.
In 1586, the sight of the colonists puffing away on their pipes started a craze at Court. It is said that in 1600 Sir Walter Raleigh tempted Queen Elizabeth I to try smoking. This was copied by the population as a whole and by the early 1660s the habit was commonplace and starting to cause concern.
In 1604, King James I wrote ‘A Counterblaste to Tobacco’, in which he described smoking as a ‘custome lothesome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black and stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless’.
James imposed an import tax on tobacco, which in 1604 was 6 shillings 10 pence to the pound. The Catholic Church even tried to discourage the use of tobacco by declaring its use to be sinful and banning it from holy places. Despite these warnings, the use of tobacco continued to grow. In 1610 Sir Francis Bacon noted the rise in tobacco use and that it was a difficult habit to quit.
The Great Plague of 1665 saw tobacco smoke widely advocated as a defence against ‘bad air’. Indeed at the height of the plague, smoking a pipe at breakfast was actually made compulsory for the schoolboys at Eton College in London.
Tobacco imports from Virginia and the Carolinas continued throughout the 17th and 18th centuries as the demand for tobacco increased, and the practice of smoking became widely accepted in Britain.
Introduction to Tobacco - Knowing More about Tobacco Abuse and Nicotine
27 July 1694: the Bank of England is created by Royal Charter. The Bank was incorporated by act of Parliament with the immediate purpose of raising funds to allow the English government to wage war against France in the Low Countries. A royal charter allowed the bank to operate as a joint-stock bank with limited liability. No other joint-stock banks were permitted in England and Wales until 1826. This special status and its position as the government’s banker gave the bank considerable competitive advantages.
The bank was located first in Mercers’ Hall and then in Grocers’ Hall, but it was moved to its permanent location on Threadneedle Street in the 1730s. By that time it had become the largest and most prestigious financial institution in England, and its banknotes were widely circulated. As a result, it became banker to other banks, which, by maintaining balances with the Bank of England, could settle debts among themselves. The bank was threatened by the economic instability that accompanied the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, but its standing was also considerably enhanced by its actions in raising funds for Britain’s involvement in those conflicts.
Source: www.britannica.com
t The Bank: Inside the Bank of England
A case of depression. In July of 1883, Henry James, the famed novelist responsible for writing, most notably, The Portrait of a Lady, received a worryingly emotional letter from Grace Norton, a friend of some years and successful essayist who, following a recent death in the family, had seemingly become depressed and was desperate for direction. James, no stranger to depression himself, responded with a stunning letter which, despite beginning, “...I hardly know what to say to you,” contains some of the greatest, most compassionate advice ever put to paper—a feat made all the more impressive on learning that it was written just months after the deaths of his own parents …
131 Mount Vernon St.,
Boston
July 28th
My dear Grace,
Before the sufferings of others I am always utterly powerless, and the letter you gave me reveals such depths of suffering that I hardly know what to say to you. This indeed is not my last word—but it must be my first. You are not isolated, verily, in such states of feeling as this—that is, in the sense that you appear to make all the misery of all mankind your own; only I have a terrible sense that you give all and receive nothing—that there is no reciprocity in your sympathy—that you have all the affliction of it and none of the returns. However—I am determined not to speak to you except with the voice of stoicism.
I don't know why we live—the gift of life comes to us from I don't know what source or for what purpose; but I believe we can go on living for the reason that (always of course up to a certain point) life is the most valuable thing we know anything about and it is therefore presumptively a great mistake to surrender it while there is any yet left in the cup. In other words consciousness is an illimitable power, and though at times it may seem to be all consciousness of misery, yet in the way it propagates itself from wave to wave, so that we never cease to feel, though at moments we appear to, try to, pray to, there is something that holds one in one's place, makes it a standpoint in the universe which it is probably good not to forsake. You are right in your consciousness that we are all echoes and reverberations of the same, and you are noble when your interest and pity as to everything that surrounds you, appears to have a sustaining and harmonizing power. Only don't, I beseech you, generalize too much in these sympathies and tendernesses—remember that every life is a special problem which is not yours but another's, and content yourself with the terrible algebra of your own. Don't melt too much into the universe, but be as solid and dense and fixed as you can. We all live together, and those of us who love and know, live so most. We help each other—even unconsciously, each in our own effort, we lighten the effort of others, we contribute to the sum of success, make it possible for others to live. Sorrow comes in great waves—no one can know that better than you—but it rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us it leaves us on the spot and we know that if it is strong we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain. It wears us, uses us, but we wear it and use it in return; and it is blind, whereas we after a manner see …
Source:
Selected letters
On 27 July 1890, Vincent van Gogh, an unkempt, unknown 37-year-old Dutchman, walked out of his lodgings in the village of Auvers-sur-Oise, just north of Paris, where he had been living and working since May. That day instead of his usual easel and paints, he carried a handgun he had perhaps borrowed from a farmer ‘to scare away the crows’. He intended to kill himself …No one knows exactly where he was when he pulled the trigger. Legend has it he was in the rolling wheat fields at the back of the village. More likely he scurried quietly into a barn. He shot himself in the stomach. Bleeding heavily he somehow managed to stagger back to his lodgings. He went to bed, lit his pipe and waited for the inevitable …
The church at Auvers, which Vincent had only recently painted, refused to host Vincent’s funeral because he had killed himself. So much for god’s mercy. The service took place across the river at Mery-sur-Oise the next day. Vincent’s friend, the young painter Emile Bernard, was there:
“The coffin was already closed. I arrived too late to see the man again who had left me four years ago so full of expectations of all kinds. On the walls of the room where his body was laid out all his last canvases were hung making a sort of halo for him and the brilliance of the genius that radiated from them made this death even more painful for us artists who were there …
“The coffin was covered with a simple white cloth and surrounded with masses of flowers, the sunflowers that he loved so much, yellow dahlias, yellow flowers everywhere. It was his favourite colour, the symbol of the light that he dreamed of being in people’s hearts as well as in works of art. Many people arrived, mainly artists, among who I recognised Lucien Pissarro … also some local people who had known him a little, seen him once or twice and who liked him because he was so good-hearted, so human…
“At three o’clock his body was moved, friends of his carrying it to the hearse, a number of people in the company were in tears. …his brother, who had always supported him in his struggle to support himself from his art was sobbing pitifully the whole time…
“The sun was terribly hot outside. We climbed the hill outside Auvers [towards the cemetery] talking about him, about the daring impulse he had given to art, of the great projects he was always thinking about, and about the good he had done to all of us. We reached the cemetery on the little hill above the fields that were ripe for harvest under the wide blue sky that he loved. Then he was lowered into the grave …
“Vincent has been my teacher and inspiration since the muscular yellows of ‘The Sunflowers’ hit me squarely in my 16-year-old face like a lightening bolt at the National Gallery, London. If you think you know this painting from the zillions of reproductions, I can assure you, you don’t. Make the trek to London and see it for real. And take sunglasses ...
“Every year on 29 July I think of Vincent lying in Theo’s arms as death finally healed him. Heartbroken, 33-year-old Theo followed Vincent to the grave just six months later. Theo’s widow, Johanna, inherited all but a handful of Vincent’s 900 canvases and more than 1,000 drawings. She would spend the rest of her life promoting her brother-in-law’s ground-breakingly colourful, life-affirming paintings …”
Source: https://goo.gl/hohy6 (adapted)
Van Gogh: The Life
On this day July 30 in 1935, Penguin published the first paperback book of substance, bringing popular fiction to the masses. Pickings were slim for bibliophiles in the 1930s. If you were wealthy, you could afford a good book, or have access to an elite library. If not, you might use your precious income on an inexpensive book with cheap binding and yellowed paper was as worthless as its content.
Allen Lane, then director of English publishing house The Bodley Head, was lamenting this fact when he found himself on a platform at Exeter station after a weekend visiting Agatha Christie in Devon. He was searching a bookstall for something to read on his return journey, but found only popular magazines and reprints of Victorian novels. Appalled by his options, Lane determined then and there to make good quality, contemporary fiction available at an accessible price for the masses. He would sell these books not only at traditional bookshops, but also in railway stations, tobacconists, and chain stores. Lane wanted a “dignified but flippant” symbol for his new business and when his secretary suggested a penguin, Lane sent an employee out to the London Zoo to make sketches. Thus the Penguin paperback was born.
The first Penguin paperbacks were published on 30 July 1935 and included works by Ernest Hemingway, Andre Maurois, and Agatha Christie. They sold for only sixpence, the cost of a pack of cigarettes, and were colour-coded for ease: orange for fiction, blue for biography, green for crime. Penguin’s first ten paperbacks were a sensation, selling 3 million the first year in a country of 38 million. Decades later, when D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover was published in 1960, Penguin sold 2 million books in just six weeks.
The paperbacks represented ease, accessibility, and democratization of good literature—a paperback revolution. His bold move democratized literacy, making good reading as accessible as a newspaper, available for everyone from the aristocracy to the common labourer, soldier, student, or housewife. Historically, Penguin’s paperback revolution was as seminal in the world of literature as the digital revolution is today.
Source: www.historychannel.com
The Penguin Story
31 July 1703. Daniel Defoe was placed in a pillory.He was secured in a historic instrument of public humiliation - for the crime of “seditious libel”, after publishing a pamphlet satirising contemporary politicians. The public, however, expressed support for Defoe's opinions by pelting him with flowers rather than rotten fruit.
Best known for the desert island novel Robinson Crusoe, Defoe's hugely varied career included journalism, trade and spying for William III. He was amazingly prolific, writing more than 500 works covering politics, crime, religion, marriage, psychology and the supernatural. Defoe may have considered his day in a pillory as time off.
Defoe was born plain old Foe around 1660, but added "De" for fake aristocratic kudos. Though claiming a posh pedigree, his father was a humble candlemaker. The young Defoe lived through hugely dramatic events, including the Great Fire of London, a Dutch naval attack on the Thames and the Great Plague.
Defoe's later book, A Journal of the Plague Year, is arguably among the first works of "faction" (fictionalised journalism). Defoe's often debt-ridden business life included running a brick factory and keeping civets for perfume making. Variety is the spice of life…
Source: telegraph.co.uk ( https://goo.gl/vkyLkF)
Friday, August 1, marks the anniversary of Anne Frank's final diary entry. Three days later, she was arrested with her family in the "secret annex" of a house in Amsterdam, Netherlands, where they had hidden for two years. She later died at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp when she was 15. In her diary, Anne describes a1942 picture of herself.On Friday, August 4, 1944, a beautiful summer morning, a car pulled up in front of a spice warehouse at 263 Prinsengracht in Amsterdam. Inside the car were an Austrian Gestapo officer and his Dutch subordinates, who, acting on a tip-off (whose source has never been identified), had come to arrest the eight Jews who had been hiding for two years in an attic above the warehouse. The eight prisoners were taken to a deportation camp, from where they were sent to Auschwitz. Only one of them, Otto Frank, would survive.
It is because of one of youngest of those prisoners, Anne -- 15 at the time of her arrest -- that we know the names of the people who endured under those extraordinary circumstances, and who tried heroically to lead normal lives, although, during the daylight hours, they were forbidden to move or make noise.
The diary that Anne had received for her 13th birthday, which she had kept up during their time in the "secret annex," and which she had revised during her family's last few months in hiding, has outlived her by decades. It has become a classic of world literature, translated, reprinted and read throughout the world.
ANNE'S LAST ENTRY
"... Believe me, I'd like to listen, but it doesn't work, because if I'm quiet and serious, everyone thinks I'm putting on a new act and I have to save myself with a joke, and then I'm not even talking about my own family, who assume I must be ill, stuff me with aspirins and sedatives, feel my neck and forehead to see if I have a temperature, ask about my bowel movements and berate me for being in a bad mood, until I just can't keep it up any more, because when everybody starts hovering over me, I get cross, then sad, and finally end up turning my heart inside out, the bad part on the outside and the good part on the inside, and keep trying to find a way to become what I'd like to be and what I could be if ... if only there were no other people in the world."
Source: CNN.com (https://goo.gl/j9ncNS)
Anne Frank : The Biography
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE (1776)America's most cherished symbol of liberty, the Declaration of Independence was drafted by Thomas Jefferson with the assistance of John Adams, Roger Sherman, Benjamin Franklin and Robert R. Livingston. It announced to the world that the 13 American colonies, then at war with Great Britain for more than a year, were no longer part of the British Empire or under the rule of King George III (1760-1820), and provided a formal explanation for their actions.
On June 7, 1776, at the Second Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia, Richard Henry Lee introduced a resolution urging independence which was agreed to July 2, 1776. The Second Continental Congress then approved the Declaration of Independence two days later, July 4, 1776, and it was signed by most delegates August 2, 1776. Five delegates, Elbridge Gerry, Oliver Wolcott, Lewis Morris, Thomas McKean and Matthew Thornton, signed on a later date.
Colonel John Nixon gave the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence July 8, 1776, to a crowd at Independence Square in Philadelphia.
Full text: http://www.greatamericandocuments.com...
The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution of the United States
The first letter from North America. It was at St. John’s, Newfoundland on 3 August 1527 that the first known letter was sent from North America. While in St. John’s, John Rut had written a letter to King Henry VIII on his findings and his planned voyage. The letter in part reads as follows:“Pleasing your Honourable Grace to heare of your servant John Rut with all his company here in good health thanks be to God.“
The conclusion of the letter reads:
“…the third day of August we entered into a good harbour called St. John and there we found Eleuen Saile of Normans and one Brittaine and two Portugal barks all a fishing and so we are ready to depart towards Cap de Bras that is 25 leagues …. In the Haven of St. John the third day of August written in hast 1527, by your servant John Rut to his uttermost of his power.”
John Rut was chosen by Henry VIII to command an expedition to America in 1527. With the ships Mary Guildford and the Samson, his goal was to find a passage to Asia around or through North America and to engage in trade when he had done so.
Henry VIII may have been a bit distracted when he got the letter, he was in the process of quietly trying to annul the marriage to his first wife Catherine of Aragon.
Source: http://archivalmoments.ca/2016/08/the...
John Rut: http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio.php?id...
Today in History August 4th4th August, 1892 : The parents of Lizzie Borden (Andrew and Abby Borden) were found murdered at their home in Massachusetts. And although never found guilty the following rhyme is remembered even to this day:
Lizzie Borden took an ax,
And gave her mother forty whacks,
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.
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4 Aug, 1932 - U.S.A. Warren G. Harding
4th August, 1932 : Warren G. Harding, former president of the United States, lay in a funeral train as people from all stations of life bared their heads and bowed. Some were in groups of hundreds, others in dozens. Military men were to escort Harding’s remains from the White House to Washington for the funeral. Harding’s remains were to lie in state at the White House. His successor was Calvin Coolidge.
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4 Aug, 1941 - Nazi Troops Within 50 miles of Kiev
4th August, 1941 : Nazi troops marched within 50 miles of Kiev. Both Russians and Nazis reported catastrophic casualties in the 44 day battle. Hitler’s high commissioners boasted that 2,300 Soviets were dead, 71 tanks were captured, and 10,000 Russian soldiers were taken captive. Russia claimed that in a counteroffensive they killed 1,000 Nazis, and wrecked 100 tanks. Mussolini summed World War II up to his troops, “the line-up is now complete between the two worlds with Rome, Berlin, and Tokyo on one side and London, Washington, and Moscow, on the other.”
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4 Aug, 1944 - Anne Frank Captured
4th August, 1944 : The Nazi Gestapo captures 15-year-old Jewish diarist Anne Frank and her family in a sealed-off area of an Amsterdam warehouse.
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4 Aug, 1950 - U.S.A. Polio Cases Increase
4th August, 1950 : Both Snyder and Abilene in Texas had a total of six polio cases involving children recently, which indicates and upswing in this disease. One child was so badly affected that she had to be on a respirator.
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4 Aug, 1964 - Three Civil Rights Workers Bodies Found
4th August, 1964 : Three civil rights workers (Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney) were found buried in a partially constructed dam near Philadelphia, Mississippi. after disappearing more than a month before, police are investigating if members of the Ku Klux Klan are responsible.
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4 Aug, 1967 - Nuclear Worries Over China
4th August, 1967 : The world’s nuclear fears were aroused when China exploded an H-bomb on June 17th, 1966, under the presidency of Mao Tse-tung. An editorial a year later in The Ada Evening News focused on fear mongering about nuclear war and remembered the horrors of Nagasaki and Hiroshima 22 years before the Chinese got the bomb.
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4 Aug, 1972 - Governor George Wallace
4th August, 1972 : Arthur Bremer, from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has been found guilty of the shooting and attempted murder of White House hopeful Mr Wallace at a political rally in Laurel, Maryland on 15th May. He has been sentenced to 63 years in jail by a court in Maryland, USA. Mr Wallace, was paralyzed by the shots and three other people were injured in the incident.
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4 Aug, 1972 - Philippines Monsoon
4th August, 1972 : Floodwaters finally recede revealing total devastation and hundreds dead. During July in the monsoon season nearly 70 inches of rain fell causing several dikes to fail and less than a week later, a typhoon dropped even more rain on the already saturated region causing more dikes throughout the area to fail causing many hundreds of thousands of acres to flood and leaving many dead and many more homeless , following on Cholera and typhoid epidemics broke out and because most of the crops had also been damaged food also became scarce.
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4 Aug, 1978 - Lebanon Israeli Attack
4th August, 1978 : An Israeli air attack on southern Lebanon occurred in retaliation for a Palestinian bombing of a Tel Aviv market place. The Israelis claimed that the Palestinian bomb contained nails and ball bearings, killing one and wounding 48. Israelis planes bombed a guerrilla headquarters in Dahar-a-Tutah.
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4 Aug, 1989 - Savings and Loan Crisis
4th August, 1989 : The Savings and Loan crisis which involved more than 500 savings and loan associations led President George Herbert Bush to consider a $150 billion bail out in an unprecedented piece of legislature. The Ways and Means Committee Chairperson, Dan Rostenkowski and his partners, were opposed to the bill. If the bill passed, $75 million a year would go to the Justice Department to be the watch dog for institutional fraud. The reasons believed to cause the problems for the Savings and loan institutions included the issue of the new high-interest money-market funds, long term mortgages at low fixed interest rates (Interest Rates Year End Federal Reserve 10.50% from our 1989), and finally poor lending practices to to risky ventures.
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4 Aug, 1999 - ATM Usage Goes Down
4th August, 1999 : The Bank News Network has discovered that there has been a drop in the usage of ATM machines. Angry consumers are annoyed by the service charges for ATM usage and there is a 2.9% decrease in ATM transactions. This is the first time in a decade that there has been a decrease. Debit card transactions, however, have increased 35%.
Source: http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/index...
This is Global History.
What Is Global History? provides a comprehensive overview of this exciting new approach to history. The book addresses some of the biggest questions the discipline will face in the twenty-first century: How does global history differ from other interpretations of world history? How do we write a global history that is not Eurocentric yet does not fall into the trap of creating new centrisms? How can historians compare different societies and establish compatibility across space? What are the politics of global history? This in-depth and accessible book also explores the limits of the new paradigm and even its dangers, the question of whom global history should be written for, and much more.
What Is Global History?
August 5th is “oyster day”. Oyster Day is a celebration of this most versatile mollusc. Oyster is the common name for a number of different groups of bivalve molluscs. Some species of oysters are commonly eaten, either cooked or raw, as a delicacy. While other types of oyster, such as pearl oysters, are not normally consumed by humans, they are harvested for their pearls.
The history of Oyster Day is unknown, but the history of human’s relationship with oysters is very long, since Roman times there is evidence of people in the United Kingdom and France farming oysters. In the 19th century New York harbour was the largest producer of oysters in the world and provided nutritious food for thousands of people.
Nowadays Oyster Day is most widely celebrated in America and the UK, with many festivals to celebrate this culinary delicacy. People celebrate by eating fresh oysters or buying oyster pearls for loved ones.
The Essential Oyster: A Salty Appreciation of Taste and Temptation
The Savoy Was My Oyster
On this day, August 9, in 1945, at 8:16 a.m. Japanese time, an American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, drops the world’s first atom bomb, over the city of Hiroshima. Approximately 80,000 people are killed as a direct result of the blast, and another 35,000 are injured. At least another 60,000 would be dead by the end of the year from the effects of the fallout.U.S. President Harry S. Truman, discouraged by the Japanese response to the Potsdam Conference’s demand for unconditional surrender, made the decision to use the atom bomb to end the war in order to prevent what he predicted would be a much greater loss of life were the United States to invade the Japanese mainland. And so on August 5, while a “conventional” bombing of Japan was underway, “Little Boy,” (the nickname for one of two atom bombs available for use against Japan), was loaded onto Lt. Col. Paul W. Tibbets’ plane on Tinian Island in the Marianas. Tibbets’ B-29, named the Enola Gay after his mother, left the island at 2:45 a.m. on August 6. Five and a half hours later, “Little Boy” was dropped, exploding 1,900 feet over a hospital and unleashing the equivalent of 12,500 tons of TNT. The bomb had several inscriptions scribbled on its shell, one of which read “Greetings to the Emperor from the men of the Indianapolis” (the ship that transported the bomb to the Marianas).
There were 90,000 buildings in Hiroshima before the bomb was dropped; only 28,000 remained after the bombing. Of the city’s 200 doctors before the explosion; only 20 were left alive or capable of working. There were 1,780 nurses before-only 150 remained who were able to tend to the sick and dying. According to John Hersey’s classic work Hiroshima, the Hiroshima city government had put hundreds of schoolgirls to work clearing fire lanes in the event of incendiary bomb attacks. They were out in the open when the Enola Gay dropped its load.
There were so many spontaneous fires set as a result of the bomb that a crewman of the Enola Gay stopped trying to count them. Another crewman remarked, “It’s pretty terrific. What a relief it worked.”
Source: History Today
Shockwave: Countdown to Hiroshima
Born This Day In History, 7th AugustJimmy Donal Wales, 7th August 1966, Huntsville, Alabama, United States. He is best known as the co-founder of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, which was launched in 2001, together with Larry Sanger and others. You will read many good things and many bad things about the information on Wikipedia, but like any site that offers a massive range of information that has been contributed by users, there will be a few mistakes slip through. But it is a great first port of call when researching a subject, like any research tool always try to check with a second different source (not just copies and rip offs of Wikipedia of which there are many). What many may not know is Wikipedia was started as an offshoot of Nupedia an English-language Web-based encyclopedia whose articles were written by experts and licensed as free content. Wikipedia was initially intended as a collaborative project for the public to write articles that would then be reviewed for publication by Nupedia's expert volunteers, but the experts did not want anything to do with Wikipedia and over the next few years due to clever moderation and control combined with open editing Wikipedia has grown into what it is today.
Source: www.thepeoplehistory.com
The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia
Antonio wrote: "On this day, August 9, in 1945, at 8:16 a.m. Japanese time, an American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, drops the world’s first atom bomb, over the city of Hiroshima. Approximately 80,000 people are ki..."My son and I are listening to the audiobook Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption and it was interesting to hear how the POWs in his camp first saw this and what they wondered, believed and found impossible to believe about this!
The defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 has long been held as one of England's greatest military achievements. This document records the famous speech delivered by Queen Elizabeth to her troops who were assembled at Tilbury Camp to defend the country against a Spanish invasion. The successful defence of the Kingdom against invasion on such an unprecedented scale boosted the prestige of England's Queen Elizabeth I and encouraged a sense of English pride and nationalism. In the speech, Elizabeth defends her strength as a female leader, saying "I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too".Speech by Elizabeth I In present day English:
My loving people,
We have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit ourselves to armed multitudes, for fear of treachery; but I assure you I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear. I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects; and therefore I am come amongst you, as you see, at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live and die amongst you all; to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and my people, my honour and my blood, even in the dust.
I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm: to which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field.
I know already, for your forwardness you have deserved rewards and crowns; and We do assure you in the word of a prince, they shall be duly paid you. In the mean time, my lieutenant general shall be in my stead, than whom never prince commanded a more noble or worthy subject; not doubting but by your obedience to my general, by your concord in the camp, and your valour in the field, we shall shortly have a famous victory over those enemies of my God, of my kingdom, and of my people.
Source: British Library http://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/it...
Elizabeth I
What happened on August 9 today in History? Besides being my birthday, the construction of the Tower of Pisa began today:The construction of the Tower of Pisa began on August 9, 1173. Originally designed to be a bell tower, the tower actually stood upright for over 5 years, but just after the completion of the third floor (1178) it began to lean. The citizens of Italy were shocked as it began to lean ever so slightly. The foundation of the tower, only 3 meter deep, was built on a dense clay mixture and impacted the soil. As it turned out, the clay was not nearly as strong enough as required to hold the tower upright, and so the weight of the tower began to diffuse downward until it had found the weakest point. After this, construction halted for 100 years. The government hoped that the soil would settle, giving it enough strength to hold the weight of the tower. As well, the country was focused on its war with Genoa, which was quite brutal and ravaging at the time.
After the 100 year hiatus, Giovanni di Simone stepped forward in 1272 and began to add four more floors to the tower. He actually managed to cause the tower to lean over more when he tried to compensate for the original lean by making one side of the upper floors taller than the other.
In 1284 construction was halted again, this time because of the Battle of Meloria, in which the Pisans were defeated by the Genoans.
In 1319 the 7th floor was finished. The bell-chamber was added in 1372, and then the tower was left alone until the 19th century.
In 1838 Alessandro Della Gherardesca, an established architect, dug a pathway near the base of the tower so that people could see the intricately crafted base. The tower began to lean even more as a result, likely due to the decreased amount of support available within the soil.
This war was brutal and bloody for the entire world, and its effects were felt everywhere from America to rural Africa. In relation to the leaning tower of Pisa, however, it is pure luck. When the American soldiers invaded, they were ordered to destroy any and all buildings in order to neutralize the thread of enemy snipers. There were no exceptions to this rule, and hundreds of buildings were blown up as the forces steadily advanced over the Italian countryside. The only thing which prevented the leaning tower of Pisa from being destroyed was a retreat that took place shortly after the arrival of the Americans, necessitating no need to destroy the national monument.
In 1964, Italy asked help to prevent the Leaning Tower from toppling. They wanted to keep the lean though, because of its importance for Pisa's tourism. A team of engineers and historians came together on the Azores to discuss the problem. As a temporary measure, a leaden counterweight (800 tonnes) was installed.
In 1987, the Leaning Tower of Pisa was declared a Unesco World Heritage Site, along with the entire Piazza Del Duomo.
In 1990, the Leaning Tower was closed. The bells were removed and the tower was anchored.
Reopened in 2001 for tourists, the leaning tower of Pisa is finally sturdy and safe. Naturally, climbing to the top of the tower has become the most popular tourist activity within reason, and for good reason: with a history as deep and as wrought with unfortunate circumstance as this one, it's hard not to get excited about.
Source: http://www.leaningtowerofpisa.net/his...
Tilt: A Skewed History of the Tower of Pisa
History repeats itself about heatwavesAugust 10, 2003
Britain swelters in record heat. Britain has recorded its hottest day ever as the temperature soared to 38.1C (100.6F) in Gravesend, Kent. The record has actually been broken twice today. The first place to beat the previous record of 37.1C (98.8F), set in Cheltenham in 1990, was Heathrow Airport where the temperature earlier today registered 37.9C (100.2F).
Then an even higher temperature was recorded in Kent, making today the hottest day since records began about 130 years ago in 1875.
Hundreds of thousands joined the mass exodus to the coast to soak up the sunshine. Roads to the south and west were jammed as motorists headed out of the sweltering cities.
Resorts such as Clacton-on-Sea in Essex and Tenby in Pembrokeshire said there were no spare beds at all in hotels or guesthouses.
At Bournemouth, in Dorset, the coastline was crammed with about 100,000 sun lovers, and there was said to be no spare space on the sand. Unfortunately, the hot weather has also had its downside. Speed restrictions to prevent buckled rails have been in force on the railways from noon each day while temperatures continue above 30C.
Commuters endured delays of up to an hour as trains which normally travel at up to 110 mph (177kph) were brought down to 60mph (96.5kph). The chief weather forecaster for the Met Office, Nigel Reed, said summers this hot may become routine within 50 or 70 years.
"In the years to come, as the earth's atmosphere does heat up through global warming, we would expect to see these hot weather events happening with greater frequency," he said.
Scientists are saying that this summer's weather fits a global trend which has seen temperatures higher than average in nine out of the past 12 years.
The heatwave in Britain follows the exceptionally high temperatures recorded across Europe, with several countries hitting 40C in the last week. At least 30 people have died in the hot weather and in the fires which have resulted in some countries.
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk
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The hottest day: August 10, 2017
The long, hot summer of 1976 lingers long in the memory, as do the more recent heatwaves of 1990 and 2006, and the fine, warm summer we enjoyed last year. But in terms of extremes, the top of the charts is 2003, when the Holy Grail of temperature records was finally broken. This happened on 10 August, when the mercury finally rose above 100F. This level had sometimes been claimed, but never officially reached, in the UK since official records began in 1875.
The highest figure that day was 101.3F (38.5C), measured at a weather station at Brogdale near Faversham, Kent. But the moment when the record was actually broken occurred a few hours earlier, when the thermometer at London's Heathrow Airport registered 0.2 degrees over the 100F mark. The previous record, a mere 98.8F (37.1C), had stood for 13 years, since 1990.
The reason behind the record temperatures was, paradoxically, a cold front to the west of Britain, which, according to the Met Office, pulled exceptionally warm air from northern France across the Channel and over southern England.
The Met Office also issued a long-term warning for us to expect more record-breaking summers like 2003. This was based on the now widely accepted principle that extreme weather events will occur in the future with greater frequency as a result of global warming.
But the record highs were short-lived: rising temperatures brought a spate of thunderstorms across the region, with more than 20 people injured by lightning strikes.
• This article was amended on 7 August 2014. An earlier version said that the highest temperature on 10 August 2003 was 100.6F (38.1C), measured at a weather station in Gravesend, Kent, rather than 101.3F (38.5C) measured at Brogdale near Faversham.
Source: www.theguardian.com (https://goo.gl/VVopfs)
The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth
Happy birthday Antonio!
We are certainly not having a heatwave in the UK. Looking at the temperatures and pictures in Southern Europe I am very happy about this. I'm most comfortable around 20 degrees and not much hotter!
We are certainly not having a heatwave in the UK. Looking at the temperatures and pictures in Southern Europe I am very happy about this. I'm most comfortable around 20 degrees and not much hotter!
Heather wrote: "Happy birthday Antonio! We are certainly not having a heatwave in the UK. Looking at the temperatures and pictures in Southern Europe I am very happy about this. I'm most comfortable around 20 de..."
Thanks Heather!
Mod
ANd in Italy such temperatures are quite "normal": these days in the south - Puglia for instance - we've had also over 50°C!
In Perugia about 40°C usually, but iot's hot indeed.
At the moment it looks like it's raining ...
LauraT wrote: "Happy Birthday!ANd in Italy such temperatures are quite "normal": these days in the south - Puglia for instance - we've had also over 50°C!
In Perugia about 40°C usually, but iot's hot indeed.
At ..."
Thanks LauraT!
Total solar eclipsesA total solar eclipse occurred on 11 August 1999 with an eclipse magnitude of 1.029.
A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, thereby totally or partly obscuring the image of the Sun for a viewer on Earth. It occurs when the Moon's apparent diameter is larger than the Sun's, blocking all direct sunlight, turning day into darkness. Totality occurs in a narrow path across Earth's surface, with the partial solar eclipse visible over a surrounding region thousands of kilometres wide.
The path of the Moon's shadow began in the Atlantic Ocean and, before noon, was traversing the southern United Kingdom, northern France, Belgium, Luxembourg, southern Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary, and northern FR Yugoslavia (Vojvodina). Its maximum was at 11:03 UTC at 45.1°N 24.3°E in Romania (next to a town called Ocnele Mari near Râmnicu Vâlcea); and it continued across Bulgaria, the Black Sea, Turkey, Iran, southern Pakistan and Srikakulam in India and ended in the Bay of Bengal.
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On Monday, August 21, 2017, a total solar eclipse will be visible in totality within a band across the entire contiguous United States; it will only be visible in other countries as a partial eclipse.The previous time a total solar eclipse was visible across the entire contiguous United States was during the June 8, 1918 eclipse.
A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, thereby totally or partly obscuring the image of the sun for a viewer on Earth. A total solar eclipse occurs when the moon's apparent diameter is larger than the sun's, blocking all direct sunlight, turning day into darkness. Totality occurs in a narrow path across Earth's surface, with the partial solar eclipse visible over a surrounding region thousands of kilometers wide.
This eclipse is the 22nd of the 77 members of Saros series 145, which also produced the solar eclipse of August 11, 1999. Members of this series are increasing in duration. The longest eclipse in this series will occur on June 25, 2522 and last for 7 minutes and 12 seconds.
Not since the February 1979 eclipse has a total eclipse been visible from the mainland United States. The path of totality will touch 14 states, though a partial eclipse will be visible in many more states. The event will begin on the Oregon coast as a partial eclipse at 9:06 a.m. PDT on August 21, and will end later that day as a partial eclipse along the South Carolina coast at about 4:06 p.m. EDT.
Future total solar eclipse will cross the United States in April 2024 (12 states) and August 2045 (10 states), and annular solar eclipse will occur in October 2023 (9 states) and June 2048 (9 states).
Source: Wikipedia.org
In the Shadow of the Moon: The Science, Magic, and Mystery of Solar Eclipses
Mod
A total solar eclipse occurred on 11 August 1999 with an eclipse magnitude of 1.029.
A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, thereby totally o..."
I remember it well - in Italy it was not total, but we could see it very well. I was pregnant with Marta, and I'm always telling her she's weird because of that!
The reason her brother is as weird as she is, is that, while I was expecting him, the Hale-Bopp comet passed!!!
I remember the 1999 solar eclipse as well, it was the day we walked to register my sons's name, when he was a fortnight old. I remember it being a very eery and strange light as it passed across.
Yes, I do remember that day. We were in Somerset attending a Summer School on a Country Houses Course. We stopped on top of a hill and waited. When the time arrived, the sky got dark, we all felt cold, time almost stopped, it was as if we had reached the end. Nobody said a word, the end seemed at hand. Then slowly the sky returned clear, life was still with us ...
I was on holiday with family Kent and I found the whole thing incredible exciting. I was very into space at that age
On this day, August 12, 1981, 36 years ago the first modern computer was released to the public. It was the IBM 5150 and the pioneer of personal home computing, thanks to its innovative design, specifications and price tag. Costing a hefty $1,565, which is the equivalent of $4,150 today (£3,200), the IBM 5150 wasn't necessarily affordable. But its small size and IBM's ability to produce a a high volume of them made it the first accessible computer on the market.
"This is the computer for just about everyone who has ever wanted a personal system at the office, on the university campus or at home," said C. B. Rogers, then-IBM vice president, at the 5150's launch. "We believe its performance, reliability and ease of use make it the most advanced, affordable personal computer in the marketplace."
Within two years of its release tens of thousands of homes and businesses were fitted with an IBM PC and rival companies such as Dell and HP started to developing the machines that would become the computers of today.
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk (https://goo.gl/ZbLClt)
Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer"I am thankful the most important key in history was invented. It's not the key to your house, your car, your boat, your safety deposit box, your bike lock or your private community. It's the key to order, sanity, and peace of mind. The key is 'Delete".(Elayne Boosler)
Shortly after midnight on this day August 13 in 1961, East German soldiers begin laying down barbed wire and bricks as a barrier between Soviet-controlled East Berlin and the democratic western section of the city.After World War II, defeated Germany was divided into Soviet, American, British and French zones of occupation. The city of Berlin, though technically part of the Soviet zone, was also split, with the Soviets taking the eastern part of the city. After a massive Allied airlift in June 1948 foiled a Soviet attempt to blockade West Berlin, the eastern section was drawn even more tightly into the Soviet fold. Over the next 12 years, cut off from its western counterpart and basically reduced to a Soviet satellite, East Germany saw between 2.5 million and 3 million of its citizens head to West Germany in search of better opportunities. By 1961, some 1,000 East Germans–including many skilled laborers, professionals and intellectuals–were leaving every day.
In August, Walter Ulbricht, the Communist leader of East Germany, got the go-ahead from Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to begin the sealing off of all access between East and West Berlin. Soldiers began the work over the night of August 12-13, laying more than 100 miles of barbed wire slightly inside the East Berlin border. The wire was soon replaced by a six-foot-high, 96-mile-long wall of concrete blocks, complete with guard towers, machine gun posts and searchlights. East German officers known as Volkspolizei (“Volpos”) patrolled the Berlin Wall day and night.
Many Berlin residents on that first morning found themselves suddenly cut off from friends or family members in the other half of the city. Led by their mayor, Willi Brandt, West Berliners demonstrated against the wall, as Brandt criticized Western democracies, particularly the United States, for failing to take a stand against it. President John F. Kennedy had earlier said publicly that the United States could only really help West Berliners and West Germans, and that any kind of action on behalf of East Germans would only result in failure.
The Berlin Wall was one of the most powerful and iconic symbols of the Cold War. In June 1963, Kennedy gave his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” (“I am a Berliner”) speech in front of the Wall, celebrating the city as a symbol of freedom and democracy in its resistance to tyranny and oppression. The height of the Wall was raised to 10 feet in 1970 in an effort to stop escape attempts, which at that time came almost daily. From 1961 to 1989, a total of 5,000 East Germans escaped; many more tried and failed. High profile shootings of some would-be defectors only intensified the Western world’s hatred of the Wall.
Finally, in the late 1980s, East Germany, fueled by the decline of the Soviet Union, began to implement a number of liberal reforms. On November 9, 1989, masses of East and West Germans alike gathered at the Berlin Wall and began to climb over and dismantle it. As this symbol of Cold War repression was destroyed, East and West Germany became one nation again, signing a formal treaty of unification on October 3, 1990.
Source:
The Berlin Wall: A World Divided, 1961-1989
Today August 13, it's the birthday of director Alfred Hitchcock, born in London (1899). His father was a greengrocer, and a strict man. Once, when the five-year-old Alfred misbehaved, his father sent him to the police station and they locked him in a cell for a few minutes to teach him a lesson. Hitchcock was so terrified that he was afraid of the police for the rest of his life, and he rarely drove a car so that he could not be pulled over.Hitchcock directed great suspense and horror films, including Rebecca (1940), Notorious (1946), Rope (1948), Dial M for Murder (1954), Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958), Psycho (1960), and The Birds (1963). He was a notoriously difficult director — he knew exactly how he wanted the entire film to look as soon as he and the writers had finished going through the script, and he was known to refer to his actors as "cattle."
Critics have interpreted Hitchcock's behaviour as a director in countless ways, writing long treatises on how he channelled his own repression, passions, and other psychological issues into his films and his treatment of his actors. But his life off the set seems to have been relatively quiet and uneventful. In 1926, he married Alma Reville, his assistant. They had a close working relationship — Alma went through every detail of each of her husband's films, pointing out whenever the dialogue sounded slightly wrong, or there was a slight flaw in the filming.
Hitchcock was rumoured to fall for many of his blond leading ladies, despite a lack of affection in return; and he often remarked to interviewers and friends that he was celibate, or impotent, or both. Whatever his married life was like, he and Alma were devoted enough to each other that they remained married until Hitchcock's death more than 50 years later. They enjoyed going to art galleries and dining out.
Hitchcock had a legendary appetite. He liked to say, "I'm not a heavy eater. I'm just heavy, and I eat." Apparently, shortly after Hitchcock came to America from England, he went out to New York City's 21 Club. Hitchcock ordered a steak dinner, followed by an ice cream parfait; then he ordered another steak dinner, and another ice cream; and then the entire thing one more time. At the end of his three meals and three desserts, he drank a cup of strong tea and a glass of brandy, and told his companions: "There is as much anticipation in confronting good food as there is in going on a holiday or seeing a good show. There are two kinds of eating — eating to sustain and eating for pleasure. I eat for pleasure."
He had a full wine cellar in his home in Bel Air, and he had a soft spot for Burgundy wines, which is why he featured one so prominently in Notorious. Alma was a great cook. Her husband liked to help in the kitchen, and the couple often hosted large dinner parties. When Hitchcock received the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award in 1979, he said: "I beg permission to mention by name only four people who have given me the most affection, appreciation, and encouragement, and constant collaboration. The first of the four is a film editor, the second is a scriptwriter, the third is the mother of my daughter, Pat, and the fourth is as fine a cook as ever performed miracles in a domestic kitchen. And their names are Alma Reville."
He said, "The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder."
Source: The Writer's Almanac
Alfred Hitchcock
About heatwaves in history, 14 Aug, 2003. 3,000 now believed to have died from heat wave. Following the increased number of deaths caused by the extreme temperatures the during the ongoing heat wave, French health ministry have instituted an emergency hospital plan recalling doctors from holiday and providing additional staff, hospital beds and temporary mortuaries.
Source: http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/augus...
At least 3,000 people are believed to have died as a result of France's heatwave, the government said yesterday as hospitals in Paris were put on an emergency footing. Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the prime minister, ordered hospitals in the capital to adopt "Plan Blanc", under which medical services prepare themselves as if for an epidemic or nuclear attack.
With the long Assumption Day weekend starting today, doctors and nurses have been told to work extra shifts. Cemeteries will break with tradition and perform burials on a religious holiday to make space in overflowing mortuaries in anticipation of further heatwave casualties. Refrigerated lorries, normally used to carry food, have already been called into service to store corpses. According to Le Parisien newspaper, the health ministry's estimates are ridiculously low. It claims that 2,000 people in the Paris region alone have succumbed to the heat in the past eight days.
Though temperatures fell in Paris yesterday after a night of storms, much of France continued to swelter in the high 90s Fahrenheit. It was not until the head of France's emergency doctors' association, Patrick Pelloux, blew the whistle on the rising number of deaths this week that the government paid much attention to the weather. M Pelloux said the weak and elderly were "dropping like flies". Now it is clear that this summer is the hottest in 53 years and the government's failure to react faster to the problems of the elderly is developing into a scandal.
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk ( https://goo.gl/brJYYj)
The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth
15 August 1823: the cremation of Shelley’s body. Edward John Trelawny arranged the cremation of Shelley’s body, after exhuming it from the beach near Viareggio, in Italy, where it had been buried after he drowned while yachting; he had performed the same service for the body of Edward Williams, Shelley’s sailing companion, the day before: 1822. Please be aware that the description may hurt some reader’s sensibility.
“In the meantime Byron and Leigh Hunt arrived in the carriage, attended by soldiers, and the Health Officer, as before. The lonely and grand scenery that surrounded us so exactly harmonised with Shelley’s genius, that I could imagine his spirit soaring over us. The sea, with the islands of Gorgona, Capraji, and Elba, was before us; old battlemented watch-towers stretched along the coast, backed by the marble-crested Apennines glistening in the sun, picturesque from their diversified outlines, and not a human dwelling was in sight.
As I thought of the delight Shelley felt in such scenes of loneliness and grandeur whilst living, I felt we were no better than a herd of wolves or a pack of wild dogs, in tearing out his battered and naked body from the pure yellow sand that lay so lightly over it, to drag him back to the light of day; but the dead have no voice, nor had I power to check the sacrilege—the work went on silently in the deep and unresisting sand, not a word was spoken, for the Italians have a touch of sentiment, and their feelings are easily excited into sympathy.
Even Byron was silent and thoughtful. We were startled and drawn together by a dull hollow sound that followed the blow of a mattock; the iron had struck a skull, and the body was soon uncovered. Lime had been strewn on it; this, or decomposition, had the effect of staining it of a dark and ghastly indigo colour. Byron asked me to preserve the skull for him; but remembering that he had formerly used one as a drinking-cup, I was determined Shelley’s should not be so profaned. The limbs did not separate from the trunk, as in the case of Williams’s body, so that the corpse was removed entire into the furnace.
I had taken the precaution of having more and larger pieces of timber, in consequence of my experience of the day before of the difficulty of consuming a corpse in the open air with our apparatus. After the fire was well kindled we repeated the ceremony of the previous day; and more wine was poured over Shelley’s dead body than he had consumed during his life. This with the oil and salt made the yellow flames glisten and quiver.
The heat from the sun and fire was so intense that the atmosphere was tremulous and wavy. The corpse fell open and the heart was laid bare. The frontal bone of the skull, where it had been struck with the mattock, fell off; and, as the back of the head rested on the red-hot bottom bars of the furnace, the brains literally seethed, bubbled, and boiled as in a cauldron, for a very long time.
Byron could not face this scene, he withdrew to the beach and swam off to the ‘Bolivar.’ Leigh Hunt remained in the carriage. The fire was so fierce as to produce a white heat on the iron, and to reduce its contents to grey ashes. The only portions that were not consumed were some fragments of bones, the jaw, and the skull, but what surprised us all, was that the heart remained entire.” (Chapter XII)
The Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron
Elvis Presley died at Graceland on August 16, 1977. He was 42 years old.Through the early morning of the 16th Elvis took care of last minute tour details and relaxed with family and staff. He was to fly to Portland, Maine that night and do a show there on the 17th, then continue the scheduled tour. Elvis retired to his master suite at Graceland around 7:00 AM to rest for his evening flight. By late morning, Elvis Presley had died of heart failure. In a matter of hours the shock registered around the world. Paramedics were called, but they failed to revive Elvis, and he was taken to Baptist Memorial Hospital where further attempts to resuscitate him failed. He was pronounced dead by his physician, Dr. George Nichopolous, who listed the official cause of death as erratic heartbeat, or cardiac arrhythmia.
As the news of Elvis' death spread across the country, radio stations immediately began to play his records. Some stations quickly organized tributes to Elvis while others simply played his music at the request of listeners, many of whom were in a state of shock over his sudden death.
Some people called their favorite radio stations just because they wanted to tell someone their stories about the first time they'd heard Elvis sing or to talk about how much his talent and his music meant to them.
In the same way that many people remember exactly where they were when they heard President John F. Kennedy had been killed, most of Elvis' fans remember where they were the day Elvis died. Mick Fleetwood, of rock group Fleetwood Mac, recalls, 'The news came over like a ton of bricks. I was driving back from the mountains, and I had the radio on. They were playing an Elvis medley, and I thought, 'Great' --- And then they came back with the news'.
The manner in which the major television networks handled the news of Elvis' death illustrated his enormous popularity and the tremendous impact he had on America, something few realized until he was gone. Data from the television-ratings service Arbitron revealed that on the day Elvis died, there was a huge increase in the number of televisions tuned to evening news programs.
Source: https://biography.elvis.com.au/the-de...
Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley
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Shaw was born in Dublin, Ireland, and left school at the age of 14 to work in a land agent’s office. In 1876, he quit and moved to London, where his mother, a music teacher, had settled. He worked various jobs while trying to write plays. He began publishing book reviews and art and music criticism in 1885. Meanwhile, he became a committed reformer and an active force in the newly established Fabian Society, a group of middle-class socialists.
His first play, Widowers’ House, was produced in 1892. His second play, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, was banned in Britain because of its frank dealing with prostitution. In 1905, when the play was performed in the U.S., police shut it down after one performance and jailed the actors and producers. The courts soon ruled that the show could re-open. Although some private productions were held, the show wasn’t legally performed in Britain until 1926.
Shaw became the theater critic for the Saturday Review in 1895, and his reviews during the next several years helped shape the development of drama. In 1898, he published Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant, which contained Arms and the Man,The Man of Destiny, and other dramas. In 1904, Man and Superman was produced.
In his work, Shaw supported socialism and decried the abuses of capitalism, the degradation of women, and the evil effects of poverty, violence, and war. His writing was filled with humor, wit, and sparkle, as well as reformist messages, and his play Pygmalion, produced in 1912, later became the hit musical and movie My Fair Lady.
In 1925, Shaw won the Nobel Prize for literature and used the substantial prize money to start an Anglo-Swedish literary society. He lived simply, abstained from alcohol, caffeine, and meat, declined most honors and awards, and continued writing into his 90s. He produced more than 40 plays before his death in 1950.
Source: www.history.com