Category: Uncategorized

History, Bitter & Twisted October 15

Arrivals:

1924 – Lido “Lee” Iacocca, an American icon and automobile executive.  Iacocca’s career can be summed up quite nicely as The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.  The Good – Iacocca was part of the design team that put together the Ford Mustang, a classic automobile, in league with the 56 Chevy and the T-Bird.  The Bad –In 1979, when Chrysler was going broke, he was the first of the Big Car Maker to go crying to the federal government for money.  His extortion knew no bounds when he threatened every single taxpayer in the country with mass unemployment unless he got what he wanted – loan guarantees.  The government caved, and it set the stage for this most recent robbery by Big Auto.  And The Ugly – Iacocca was the executive behind the Ford Pinto, a car so badly designed it burst into flames whenever anybody touched it.

1930 – FM 2030, a futurist from the 70s who legally changed his name to reflect the future when, he believed, titles, gender and ethnic origin would be irrelevant.  Unlike his colleague Alvin Toffler, FM (I guess, to his friends) was long on theory and short on analysis.  He didn’t really spot trends and take them to a logical conclusion so much as just pronounce: this is the way it’s going to be.  He did have some good lines though.  Things like, “I have a deep nostalgia for the future” and “I’ll never eat anything that had a mother.”  He is currently frozen in cryonic suspension, in Scottsdale, Arizona, waiting for the future.

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1989 – It’s a story that could have been written for Disney.  On the morning of October 15th Wayne Gretzky, the greatest hockey player who ever lived, was on the verge of breaking Gordie Howe’s all-time scoring record.  In fact, he was only one point behind.  That night, Gretzky and his LA Kings were going to play the Oilers in Edmonton.  The Oilers were Gretzky’s old team.  He had played in Edmonton for 9 years, winning 4 Stanley Cups, thrilling the crowds and breaking every hockey record known to man – except one.  Now, Gretzky was back and you could touch the tension as every eye in Edmonton, was focused on Wayne Gretzky one more time.  It was his chance to give his old fans another glimpse at glory, and cool as the other side of the pillow, Gretzky didn’t disappoint them.  At five minutes into the first period, he got an assist: the record was tied.  Then, with less than a minute left to play and the Kings down 2-1, Gretzky whipped a backhand past goalie Bill Ranford to tie the game and break the record.  Gretzky’s hometown fans went mad with delight.  Cue the music?  Cue the credits?  No.  The game went into overtime and Gretzky scored the winning goal just to punctuate his achievement for the fans who had supported him so hard for so long.  Did Wayne Gretzky plan it that way?  Probably.  We don’t call him The Great One for nothing.

1917 – In the spy business, nobody has better brand recognition than James Bond — except maybe Mata Hari.  She is the popular femme fatale in everybody’s fantasy.  In reality, however, she wasn’t much of a spy, if she was a spy at all.  Margaretha (Zelle) Macleod was a Dutch dancer and apparently not a very good one.  She had learned her art in the wilds of Indonesia and her exotic movements were augmented by her inability to keep her clothes on during her performances.  In Paris, in 1905, this got a lot of press.  Very soon, Mata Hari, as she now called herself, was very famous and in demand — not only as a dancer but also a bed partner.   “Promiscuous” is such a hard word, but Ms Macleod took to her newfound celebrity with enthusiasm and spent the better part of the next ten years horizontal.  This is what got her into trouble.  When World War I broke out, Mata Hari remained strictly neutral, sleeping with both French and German officers equally.  The French, never ones to share, thought something nefarious was going on and arrested her for espionage.  The trial was quick, the verdict was a formality, and on October 15th, she was taken out and shot.  It was the making of the girl.  At 41, she was losing her charms and would have simply vanished into history if that French firing squad hadn’t made her immortal.

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Departures:

1930 – Herbert Henry Dow, the guy who started Dow Chemical.  Apparently, according to tons of sources, this is how he turned little itty bitty Dow Chemical into DOW CHEMICAL, a huge international kick-ass company.  It’s long and complicated (and I don’t believe it) but….  In the early 20th Century, Dow discovered a way to produce bromine (don’t ask me what it’s used for) for 36 cents a pound, which he sold in America.  At the same time, a German cartel of companies had fixed the price of bromine in Europe at 47 cents a pound.  They warned Dow not to sell his inexpensive bromine in Europe or they would flood the American market with cheap stuff and drive him out of business.  Dow ignored them, and the Germans retaliated by indeed flooding the market with bromine at 15 a cents pound.  Dow was on the verge of bankruptcy when he came up with a cunning plan.  He bought all the bromine he could, repackaged it and shipped it back to Europe for sale at 27 cents, even lower than his original price.  The Germans never caught on and Dow Chemical made a gabillion dollars.  If nothing else, it’s a cute story.

1964 – Cole Porter, an American song writer from the days of Tin Pan Alley and Broadway theatre.  However, unlike his contemporaries Porter was independently wealthy and so never had to work the music publicizing houses on West 28th in New York.  He spent most of his early years in Paris and only came back to New York when his songs were successful.  Over the years, he wrote some of the most popular songs of the era, including “Night and Day”, “Anything Goes”, “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”, and “Begin the Beguine.”  He also wrote that standard favourite that’s in all the So You Want to Play the Guitar books “Don’t Fence Me In.”  His most successful show was Kiss Me, Kate, a reworking of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew!

History, Bitter & Twisted October 14

Arrivals:

1894 – poet e e cummings who is probably the most widely read and influential poet of the 20th century
he is enjoyed by freshmen and sophomores alike and his style is copied endlessly endlessly
his unconventional uses of English were a fresh of breath air in the 20s and 30s
and absolutely mind blowing when rediscovered in the 60s 70s 80s my sweet et cetera
despite being embraced by hordes of bad wannabe poets
he is good really really good
perhaps the last good poet of his age

1927 – Actor Roger Moore who has played Ivanhoe, The Saint and James Bond — all in one lifetime.  And if that isn’t enough, he was part of the Maverick crowd after James Garner left the series.  While it is widely accepted that, as an actor, Moore has 3 full expressions, it is my considered opinion that he only has two.  They are right eyebrow raised, and left eyebrow raised.  Moore’s fame and his considerable fortune come from looking good in a tuxedo and knowing when to quit.  He still does both extremely well.

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1926 – A.A.  Milne published Winnie-the-Pooh, the most popular of all the children’s bear characters.  Milne actually only wrote two Pooh books, Winnie-the-Pooh and The House on Pooh Corner but he featured Pooh poems in another book, Now We are Six.  Everybody likes Pooh.  Pooh has been translated into just about every language in the world — including Latin.  There is The Tao of Pooh and The Te of Piglet.  Canada has issued Pooh postage stamps and Warsaw named a street after him.  Even the old Soviet Union had a Pooh – Vinni Pukh.  He has been on TV, in movies, in comics and on stage.  There is only one person on earth who didn’t like Pooh – Dorothy Parker.  She panned him in her Constant Reader column in The New Yorker – the witty witch.

1947 – For the first time in history, a man-made sonic boom blasted across the sky over Edwards Air Force Base in California.  Chuck Yeager became the first man to fly faster than the speed of sound.  In simple layman’s terms, he was already gone before you ever heard him go there.  Yeager is responsible for the “Aw shucks” easy confidence and nonchalant attitude displayed by early test pilots and soon taken up by all determined men in difficult circumstances.  More than just The Right Stuff, this attitude separated the serious from the wannabes and came to dominate the second half of the 20th Century.  It is now being replaced by swagger, brag and “trash talk.”  Tom Wolfe’s portrayal of Yeager in his book The Right Stuff is considered accurate — except there is no evidence that he ever called the Mercury astronauts “spam in a can.”

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Departures:

1944 – Erwin Rommel, a World War II German general affectionately known as “The Desert Fox.”  Rommel was a brilliant military tactician and was only ever beaten by overwhelming force and firepower.  Oh, well!  He still lost.  Rommel and his career have always been soft-soaped, glossed over and thoroughly romanticized — even way back to the days when we were still fighting the guy.  He has been praised for such things as not shooting Jewish POWs and not enslaving French workers.  That’s what you’re supposed to do!  It doesn’t deserve extra praise.  The truth is Rommel was an ardent Nazi right up until the time Eisenhower and Montgomery showed up off the French coast with several thousand of their heavily-armed friends.  He only changed his mind after our guys proceeded to beat the snot out of his guys.  It always amazes me that we idolize our enemies so much faster than we applaud our friends.

1959 – Errol Flynn, an actor who would have made a great Indiana Jones.  The problem was Indiana hadn’t been invented yet.  So Flynn had to make do with Captain Blood, Don Juan and Robin Hood.  For 20 years in Hollywood, Flynn had the fastest horse, the sharpest sword, the quickest gun and Olivia de Havilland.  In the movies, he battled the Spanish, the Germans, Surat Khan, John Brown and evil Prince John – and he always won.  He charged the guns at Balaclava, fought a thinly-disguised Red Baron and died with his boots on at the Little Big Horn.  He didn’t always get the girl, but he always loved her.  On screen, he was everything a hero had to be: brave, noble, pure, fair of heart and strong of limb.  Off screen – not so much.  In real life, Errol Flynn did pretty much what he pleased.  He was married 3 times and had numerous girlfriends.  He drank, to excess.  He brawled, when the mood took him.  He was addicted to at least one drug and he liked young women – really young women.  In 1942, he was charged with statuary rape — not once, but twice.  He was acquitted when he argued that he wasn’t necessarily innocent but he was Errol Flynn.  His last girlfriend, Beverly Aadland, was 15 when he met her and had just turned 17 when Flynn died of a big life in Vancouver, Canada, at age 50.

History, Bitter & Twisted October 13

Arrivals:

1925 – Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1979 to 1990.  Much maligned by the popular press at the time and ever since, she has been called, conversely, ‘The Iron Lady’ and ‘Attila the Hen,’ among many other, less printable things.  During her time in office Thatcher generated strong feelings for and against her and is still both loved and hated by large sections of the population.  Either way, no one can dispute the fact that she reinvigorated the British economy and reestablished British prestige and power around the world.  She was absolutely convinced that her policies were the best for Britain.  That was both her strength and her downfall.  In the end, it was she who almost single-handedly jump-started Britain into the 21st Century.

1941 – Paul Simon, one of the pure poets of the modern era.  Simon started writing songs in the 50s but didn’t achieve any great success until he teamed up with Art Garfunkel, in the mid 60s.  They produced some great songs together, like “Sounds of Silence” and “Bridge over Troubled Waters.”  But it was after Simon and Garfunkel broke up, in 1970 that Paul Simon did his best work, with songs like, “Still Crazy After All These Years” and “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” along with albums like Hearts and Bones and Graceland.  What makes Simon more than just a songwriter are his stand-alone lyrics with lines like this, from “Graceland”:

The Mississippi delta was shining like a national guitar,

I am following the river

Down the highway

Through the cradle of the Civil War

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1307 – Yet another conspiracy theory/legend was born on Friday the 13th, 1307, when Philip IV of France (ironically “Philip the Fair”) ordered the simultaneous arrest of all Knights Templar on charges of heresy, idolatry, homosexuality and anything else he could think of.  After 150 years as a charitable order, the Knights were filthy rich, and Philip wanted to get his mitts on some of the money.  He ordered confessions, and after a couple of days of relentless torture, got them.  He then seized all the Templar property, paid off his debts and probably forgot about the whole thing.  History, however, never forgets, and quickly built up a whole pile of stories associated with the Templars.  The two most enduring legends are 1) the Templars’ incredible wealth was never found and still exists today in one enormous cache, and 2) during the Crusades, the Templars found The Holy Grail (see The Da Vinci Code)and have protected it — in secret — ever since.  Tons has been written on both subjects, but not one scrap of evidence has been produced to substantiate either claim.

1884 – On October 13th, 1884 the International Meridian Conference, by a vote of 22 to 1, established the Prime Meridian at Greenwich, England.  Before that, time had been a matter of personal preference.  However, international trade and travel were literally sweeping the globe and the world needed a standard to set its watch by.  Greenwich was chosen mainly because most sailors had already been using it for years to find their longitude on a limitless ocean.  So, who cares?  Mostly bureaucrats and nerds, but the point is without a starting point there wouldn’t be any standard time in the world, and nothing to orient your GPS to.  In other words, without Greenwich Mean Time, you wouldn’t know where you were or when you got there.  By the way, the one country who voted against the proposition was San Domingo, the modern Dominican Republic.

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Departures:

54 – Roman Emperor Claudius, who is thought to be a bit of a dolt.  However, sandwiched between his infamous nephew Caligula and his more flamboyant great nephew Nero, as he is, it’s no wonder history has not treated Claudius very kindly.  History does record that he married his niece Agrippina (the mother of Nero) and she generally took charge of the palace and, therefore, the Empire.  It also records that Agrippina most likely murdered Claudius, with poison mushrooms, to ensure that her son Nero got to the throne.  Claudius was Mark Antony’s grandson.

2002 – Stephen Ambrose, who was discovered as a popular author when his book Band of Brothers was turned into an incredibly good miniseries by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg.

What is less generally known is that Ambrose, a noted historian, is one of the first scholars to put forward the theory that World War I and II were actually one war with a 22 year truce.  In fact, Ambrose went so far as to suggest that it was actually a European Civil War — which might have gone on indefinitely if Europe hadn’t been invaded by the external military forces of Asia and America.  It’s too bad that Ambrose never took the time to expand this theory.