Tag: On this day in history

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.

History, Bitter & Twisted October 11

Arrivals:

1844 – Henry Heinz, who founded F & J Heinz Company in 1876.  He processed and preserved vegetables in tins and jars and was soon selling lots more than the ’57 Varieties’ he claimed on his label.  From the beginning, however, he specialized in ketchup and now controls over half the market in the world.  Actually, this was the second company Heinz started.  The first one, Heinz Noble, made horseradish, but it went broke.  Live and learn, and a good thing, too.  Otherwise, we’d all be putting horseradish on our fries.  Bonus trivia question: What’s the difference between ketchup and catsup?  Answer: the spelling.

1884 – Eleanor Roosevelt was the First Lady of the United States from 1932-45.  She was the first, First Lady, since Dolly Madison, who wasn’t shuffled off into the background.  She took an active interest in politics.  She campaigned with her husband and, more importantly had an opinion of her own.  She made her opinion known to the world six times a week from 1936 to 1962 in a syndicated column called My Day.  My Day was not a typical women’s column of the age.  It didn’t have recipes, or helpful hints or cleaning tips, but it did talk about issues that were relevant to women.  It showed American women, who a generation earlier couldn’t even vote, that they were part of the political spectrum.  It dealt with a wide range of issues of particular concern to women of the time: unemployment, education and health care.  Just like her husband’s “fireside chats,” Eleanor’s newspaper column established a connection between ordinary women and the power of the White House.  It gave women a stake in the game more than any amount of rhetoric could do.  Actually, it was Eleanor Roosevelt’s blog. 

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1975 – “Live from New York, It`s Saturday Night.”  George Carlin hosted the first Saturday Night Live broadcast on NBC.  The original cast of “Not Ready For Prime Time” players was Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Chevy Chase, George Coe, Jane Curtin, Garrett Morris, Laraine Newman, Michael O`Donoghue and Gilda Radner.  Thirty-five years ago, the show was cutting edge, funny and cool.  It’s had its ups and downs over the years, and now its part of the established format of network TV.  It’s still kinda funny, but remember it’s been on television longer than Gunsmoke and Bonanza combined.

1986 – President Ronald Reagan and Secretary-General Mikhail Gorbachev met in a hastily thrown together Summit in Reykjavik, Iceland.  The situation was dire. Since Jimmy Carter had publicly ended detente with the Soviets after their invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the Americans had been super funding their military.  The Soviet Union, getting their asses handed to them in the mountains of central Asia, were having trouble finding the matching funds.  The Soviet economy was on a ten year slide, and things were getting worse.  Essentially, Russia was going to go bankrupt, long before they ever lost the Cold War.  Meanwhile, Reagan, an old ‘Cold Warrior’ from the 50s, was putting extra pressure on the Soviets by running around talking about SDI, the Strategic Defence Initiative.  `”Star Wars,” as it was affectionately called, was going to cost more money than even God had.  Gorbachev`s problem was simple: he either had to negotiate an end to the arms race and SDI — or surrender.  The summit failed.  Gorbachev returned to the Soviet Union empty-handed and began instituting various reforms to save Russia from humiliation and financial ruin.  Fortunately, or unfortunately, Perestroika and Glasnost soon discovered they had a life of their own, and, within 5 years, the Soviet Union was gone.

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Departures:

1779 – Casimir Pulaski is a name you probably only just barely remember, if you remember it at all.  Here’s a hint: along with Winston Churchill and Mother Teresa, he is one of only 7 Honorary Citizens of the United States.  Pulaski was a Polish nobleman who came to fight in the American Revolution as a soldier of fortune (read “mercenary”) and was so taken with the cause of freedom that, instead of getting paid for his services, he started using his own money to outfit his men.  He served with Washington and organized the Continental Army’s cavalry, which he led in several engagements before he was fatally wounded in the Battle of Savannah.  Two hundred and thirty years later, Congress finally decided to honour him with more than a plaque and a statue and made him an Honorary Citizen by Act of Congress, signed by President Obama in 2009.

1963 – Edith Piaf, a wild and crazy French girl who could sing like nobody else.  Piaf, which means “sparrow” in French, began her career singing in the streets of the Pigalle district of Paris.  In the 1930s, Pigalle was not a very pleasant part of the world.  Her first manager was a pimp she paid off so he wouldn’t force her into prostitution.  In 1935, she was discovered by Louis Leplee, who hired her to sing at his club, Le Gemy .  In those days the difference between “nightclub” and “brothel” was minimal and mainly had to do with the address.  Le Gemy was just off the Champs-Elysees, a couple of kilometres and several worlds away from Pigalle.  Piaf was discovered again and started making records.  Throughout her life, however, Piaf was haunted by the shadows of her upbringing.  For example, Leplee was found murdered, just as Piaf’s career began to take off (his death nullified her contract with him).  She had several lovers and 3 or 4 or 5 husbands.  There were numerous car wrecks and repeated treatment for alcohol and drug addiction.  But even as the scandal and gossip mounted, nobody cared because Mon Dieu she could sing!  When she died, she was denied a funeral mass by the church, but over 100,000 people came to the ceremony anyway.