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Posts Archived Under Berlin
"That's "Hedy," not "Hedley!" |
Tuesday:
As mysterious as Dorothy Kilgallen's death on November 8, 1965, is the 1965 blackout that overtook much of the Northeast United States and Ontario, Canada on this day. While the official cause was a series of mistakes and blown relays, there were also reports of UFOs near some of the power stations. We don't necessarily believe the reports; we're just saying ... Not all of the Northeast was affected, however, and a full moon that night kept things surprisingly safe, with New York City reporting only five instances of looting.
When one speaks of New York, it's difficult to not think of Stanford White (whose 157th birthday falls on this day). White's distinctive architectural fingerprints can still be found all over Manhattan more than a century after his death. Such structures as the Municipal Building, the Washington Square Arch, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art – not to mention many of the millionaires' mansions on Fifth Avenue - were his designs.
While White's firm designed things to be built, it's a demolished object that we take special notice of today, as it's the 21st anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The wall itself was the literal dividing line between East and West Berlin, constructed to keep East Germans from escaping the Communist regime. When that government fell, so did the wall.
Something that irriatated those killjoy East German officials was rock music, and on this day in 1967, the first issue of "Rolling Stone" was published. While "Rolling Stone" was originally dedicated to rock, pop, and blues music and musicians – and those are still its primary focus – it's expanded in the decades since to become one of America's most respected magazines, known for its reporting on politics and entertainment.
Speaking of respect, we throw a little of it to the creative community today as it's Inventor's Day, celebrated today because it's the birthday of actress Hedy Lamarr. Lamarr was not only one of the most glamorous and beautiful actresses of the 1930s and '40s, but was also something of a scientific genius. In 1942, she was granted a patent for a communication system that would "hop" frequencies in order to make radio-guided torpedoes harder to detect. While the technology went basically unused until the '60s, today it forms the basis for wi-fi networks and cell phones.
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Alex had a vocabulary of 150 words.
That's more than some people we know. |
Welcome once again to The Spark, your guide to the week's events, anniversaries, and commemorations.
We'll be frank about this week in particular, though; it's always tough to find events around September 11. It's not easy to maintain our (hopefully) snarky tone around such an anniversary, but we'll do our best.
Monday:
Well, obviously, it's Labor Day, which leads us to ask just where in the world the summer went. Wasn't it Memorial Day about ten minutes ago?
We also look at a couple of deaths today. In 1901, anarchist Leon Czolgosz went to the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, NY, and shot President William McKinley. McKinley didn't die right away; he lingered for a couple of days before passing. Czolgosz never expressed remorse for the murder and was electrocuted on October 29, 1901. So outraged were people by the murder, though, that his family was refused the right to take the body for interment, and it was buried in the prison grounds, where it was dissolved with a combination of quicklime and acid.
In 2007, Alex, the African Grey parrot who was trained by Dr. Irene Pepperberg, died of sudden and unexplained causes. Alex had a vocabulary of about 150 words, and his intelligence was rated at about the level of a five-year-old human. He could distinguish between shapes, colors, and numbers; had an understanding of the concepts of "zero," and personal pronouns; and could lie and joke.
Two TV premieres tonight. One is "The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That" on PBS. It's another one of those public television shows that teaches things to kids, but we have to ask when the Cat, who's nothing but a disruptive anarchist in his books by Dr. Seuss, became an authority figure to be listened to. The other premiere is a show on Cartoon Network based on "Mad" Magazine. Guess there's just not enough content out there for adolescents with undeveloped senses of humor. What hath Judd Apatow wrought?
Tuesday:
In 1921, 16-year-old Margaret Gorman won the Golden Mermaid pageant in Atlantic City, NJ. The pageant was a publicity stunt designed to keep tourists in the city after Labor Day, and officials, no slouches when it came to hyperbole, named Gorman "Miss America." The pageant, which morphed from a beauty contest to a scholarship event, used to be a major part of American pop culture, but in recent years has faded to become a failed reality show followed by yet another Vegas spectacle. Sic transit gloria mundi. (Though we don't know if she ever won the crown.)
On this day in 1930, the "Blondie" comic strip debuted. We've all run across "Blondie" in our time, but we'll wager you didn't know that Blondie's maiden name was Boopadoop, that she started out life as a gold-digging flapper, or that Dagwood was the son of a millionaire, who disowned him for marrying Blondie. Regardless, the Bumsteads have been married since 1933. That’s a heckuva lot of sandwiches.
Wednesday:
So, Monday, we were talking about Leon Czolgosz, and today we'll mention the 169th birthday of Charles J. Guiteau, who shot President James Garfield in 1881. Guiteau was probably the craziest of all Presidential assassins, shooting Garfield because he had never been appointed consul to France, despite his lack of any qualification.
Speaking of unusal political figures, Lyndon LaRouche turns 88 today. LaRouche, is a perennial Presidential candidate who holds, shal we say, "unique" views, including his belief that Queen Elizabeth is the head of an international drug cartel.
While it’s easy to laugh at LaRouche for the wrong reasons, it's also the birthdays of two men at whom it's easy to laugh for the right reasons: Sid Caesar (1922) and Peter Sellers (1925). Caesar was a television superstar in the 1950s, headlining two comedy programs that, thanks to writing staffs that included Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Woody Allen, and Larry Gelbart, turned out 90 minutes of classic live comedy every week -- just like "Saturday Night Live," only funny!
Sellers came to fame as a writer and actor on the legendary "Goon Show," whose crazy comedy paved the way for "Monty Python’s Flying Circus," among others. He soon moved on to films, playing multiple roles in such classics as "The Mouse That Roared" and "Dr. Strangelove," before finding film immortality as the blithely incompetent Inspector Clouseau in the "Pink Panther" films.
A couple of musical anniversaries today. In 1932, Patsy Cline was born. Her soulful singing style made her one of the first country singers to cross over to the pop charts. Unfortunately, she was killed in a plane crash at the age of 30. In 1935, a 19-year-old Frank Sinatra made his radio debut as part of the "Hoboken Four" on "Major Bowes' Amateur Hour." The Amateur Hour was a fixture of American entertainment for nearly 40 years and was the "American Idol" of its day; the only difference being that Major Bowes’s contestants were usually talented.
Speaking of talent, it was on this day in 1504 that Michelangelo's "David" was unveiled in Florence. The 17-foot-tall statue on a naked male soon became iconic, and has probably been as mocked and imitated as any work of art since.
While the David was quite an invention, it's not quite as useful as Scotch tape, which made its debut in 1930, when Richard Drew was trying to come up with a product that would allow the painting of sharp lines on automobiles.
In 1892, an early version of the Pledge of Allegiance appeared in "The Youth's Companion" magazine. Suffice it to say, the original did not include the phrase, "One nation under God," which was added by Congress in 1954 at the height of the Red Scare, in order to distinguish America from the Godless Communists of the Soviet Union. Those very Communists were provided with some kind of help -- divine or not -- starting in 1941, when the Siege of Leningrad began. For 872 days, the second-largest city in the Soviet Union was held under siege by the German army. No supplies got in or out, and Leningrad's citizens were forced to scavenge everything they could in order to survive harsh winters and constant bombardment. There are stories that they even had to resort to cannibalism. Regardless, their withstanding of the Nazis is one of the great stories of perseverance in world history.
Not as heroic, but certainly persistent and hard to avoid is "Star Trek," which premiered in 1966. Trekkies may be nerdish and obsessed (for example, we're sure there are those of them who would object to not being called "Trekkers"), but they're certainly literate. And they may well be celebrating International Literacy Day today.
Finally, we note that it's Rosh Hashanah and the beginning of the Jewish high holidays.
Thursday:
A number of birthdays today, including two that run from the sublime to the ridiculous -- which man fits into which category, we leave to you. Colonel Harland Sanders, the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken was born in 1890, and Mario Batali, the chef who revolutionized American cooking, by, for nothing else, his use of offal and internal organs in his recipes.
To our uncultivated palates, such a diet would lead to a mutiny, which is ironic in that it's also the 256th birthday of William Bligh, whose harsh treatment of his crew led to the mutiny on HMS Bounty. On the other hand, such victuals may well have appealed to Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, the diminutive French artist who died in 1901. (We can’t speak as to whether such a diet led to either his diminished stature or his death. We just report 'em.)
In more baffling events, the NFL season begins tonight with the Minnesota Vikings taking on the New Orleans Saints. (It's baffling because football is a sport for the fall and winter months, and we're still a couple of weeks from the Autumnal Equinox). Also, the new season of "The Vampire Diaries" begins tonight, and we have to wonder just what we have to do to stop this mania for vampires and zombies! Enough already! (Although, maybe Viking quarterback Brett Favre's eerie longevity is due to his being either a vampire or a zombie. Just sayin'.)
Friday:
It's a day for things we like and admire. For example, it's Raymond Scott's 102nd birthday. Scott was a composer and bandleader in the 1930s and '40s who wrote avant-garde songs, many of which (most notably "Powerhouse") were used by composer Carl Stalling when writing the scores for Warner Bros. cartoons. We're also glad to celebrate the big 5-0 with actor Colin Firth, who always turns in good work, but who especially endeared himself to many a Janeite with he portrayal of Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy in the 1995 version of "Pride and Prejudice." Musician Jerry Lee Lewis will perform on Broadway tonight with the cast of "Million Dollar Quartet."And we like the "Stand Up to Cancer" telethon, which will take over the television airwaves tonight in order to raise funds to beat cancer.
Of course, not everything today is likeable. For example, you may recall that last week we mentioned the anniversary of the shooting of Louisiana politician Huey Long. Well, after a couple of days of being hospitalized, Long died-- though whether the fatal bullet came from the alleged assassin or his own bodyguards, no one knows.
Saturday:
As we alluded to earlier, it's hard to be snarky this week, and this day, especially, but we'll try.
First of all, we note the coincidence of ground being broken on this day in 1941 for the construction of the Pentagon, when 60 years later, it would be attacked along with the World Trade Center.
When we were kids, we all knew the words to "Oh, Susanna." (You know, "I come from Alabama with a banjo on my knee ...") Well, it was first performed by its composer, Stephen Foster, in 1847 at the Eagle Saloon in Pittsburgh, PA. And how was Foster paid for the song? With a bottle of whiskey, which is an ending appropriate for the work of O. Henry, the writer who specialized in twist endings, and who was born in 1862.
Sunday:
We have a mixed bag to end the week.
First, the birthdays of two groundbreaking men. In 1880, H.L. Mencken was born. Mencken, "the Sage of Baltimore," was a reporter, critic, and etymologist, who acid coverage of politics and the Scopes "Monkey Trial" alone would have assured him immortality, but who crowned those accomplishments with his investigations into the roots of American English and by coining such maxims as "No one in this world, so far as I know -- and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me -- has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people." -- usually misquoted as "No one ever went broke underestimating the good taste of the American public."
The other is Jesse Owens, born in 1913, Owens won four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, forever destroying Hitler's dream of using the games to establish his myth of Aryan superiority.
As groundbreaking as those men were, though, their accomplishments fade in contrast to the French artisans who, 17,000 years ago created a series of cave paintings in Lascaux, France, that were discovered in 1940. The paintings, which depict thousands of human and animals, give paleontologists irreplacable insights into the lives and psychology of paleolithic humans.
Speaking human psychology, we’ll note that today in Russia is the Day of Conception. The Russian government is encouraging citizens of the Motherland to propagate today in hopes that there will be a baby boom on Russia Day, which is nine months from now on June 12.
We'll close this somewhat somber week by noting the 1995 death of actor Jeremy Brett. Brett labored in relative obscurity until in 1985, when he was cast as Sherlock Holmes. Almost overnight, he became the definitive Holmes for many of us, as his strong and quirky characterization matched the downright oddness of the literary Holmes.
See you next time.
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The most famous shot in "A Trip to the
Moon." Special effects have gotten
slightly better in the century since. |
Welcome once more to The Spark, your weekly digest of events and happenings and information in the Yahoo! Directory to help you appreciate them more.
As we begin this last Spark before the Labor Day holiday, we have to ask just where in the heck the summer went. Seems like it was Memorial Day about five minutes ago, and now kids are back in school and Fall is lurking around the corner.
Anyway, let's look at the week ahead.
Monday:
It's a day for monsters and creators. In the former category, we have Benedict Arnold, who on this day in 1780, secretly promised to surrender the Continental Army's fort at West Point, NY, to the British. Arnold was an egomaniac, who was frustrated with the lack of attention he had received, and what better way to get attention than to commit treason?
Speaking of outsized egos, we note that today would have been the 127th birthday of Huey Long, the "Kingfish" who ran Louisiana like a private fiefdom until he was gunned down in 1935. Long ruled the state as both governor and senator, and his campaign slogan of "Every Man a King" mixed populism and fascism in equal measure.
But let us not mention only those who destroy, let's celebrate those who create. When thinking of monsters, one almost automatically turns to thoughts of Dr. Frankenstein and his creation, for which we owe thanks to Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, born in 1793, she wrote her novel, "Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus," at the tender age of 18.
And where would kids (and parents) be today without Babar? Laurent de Brunhoff (born in 1925), is son of Jean de Brunhoff, who created the elephant king, and who continued his adventures when his father died.
Of course, those kids grow up to be teenagers and young adults, and where would they be without Robert Crumb, who turns 73 today? Crumb was in the vanguard of the underground comix movement of the 1960s, and he’s still active and creative, and his influence on modern pop culture is incalculable.
And what would pop culture be without the Beatles? One hesitates to guess, but you can try to get a handle on it this week at the International Beatle Week in Liverpool, England.
Of course, the Beatles played in the Ed Sullivan Theatre in New York when they made their American debut in 1964, and that theatre is today home to the Late Show with David Letterman, which made its own debut in "the Ed" in 1993.
A nice contrast to end the day. Gazillionaire Warren Buffett hits the big 8-0 today, and out in the Nevada desert, Burning Man begins. The best thing we can say about Burning Man is that it gets all those people who want to go to Burning Man in one spot away from the rest of us.
Tuesday:
More monsters. In 12, Gaius Caligula was born. Though the surviving sources are incomplete, Caligula was one of the most notorious Roman emperors of them all, known for the stories of his cruelty, instability, and sexual perversion. (We won’t deal with them here, but you can find the stories easily enough.)
But Caligula isn't the only monster we note. On this date in 1888, Mary Ann Nichols was murdered and became the first of known victim of Jack the Ripper.
And, of course, in 1928, Berlin saw the premiere of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s "Die Dreigoschenoper" (known in English as "The Threepenny Opera"), with its main character, the vicious murderer Captain Macheath, better known as "Mack the Knife." In 1959, Bobby Darin had a huge hit with that song (which is really odd, when one considers it's about a mass murderer killing people), and Friday will see the 51st anniversary of that song being banned by WCBS radio in New York City. At the time, there had been a series of teenage stabbings in the city, and the station didn't want to those crazy teens any ideas.
And while marijuana possession is small potatoes compared to all of the above, we see that, in 1948, actor Robert Mitchum was arrested in a Hollywood drug bust, and was eventually sentenced to 60 days in prison, a scandal which in those days threatened to kill his career, but nowadays would rate only a passing mention on "Entertainment Tonight."
All this talk of criminals and murderers makes us long for a hero, and fortunately, in 1942, "The Adventures of Superman" radio series began airing on the Mutual Broadcasting System.
Wednesday:
All we have for today is that in 1902, George Melies’s "A Trip to the Moon," was released in France and became the world’s first science fiction film.
Thursday:
So, in 490 BCE, the Athenian army was at Marathon, battling with Persia. The herald Pheidippides was sent to Sparta for help. He ran the 150 miles in two days, but because of religious laws, the Spartans couldn't send any help, so he ran back. In spite of not having the extra troops, Athens won the battle. And poor Phidippides took off again, this time running the 26.2 miles from Marathon to Athens to carry the news of the victory. He gasped out his last words, "We have won," and dropped dead of exhaustion. The lesson: do not underestimate the usefulness of warm-ups and warm-downs.
In 1666, the Great Fire of London began in the wooden house of King Charles II's baker. By the time it ended three days later, more than 13,000 houses, including St Paul's Cathedral, had burned to the ground -- but amazingly, only six people had died.
If you were living in England in 1752, tomorrow would have been September 14th. While most of the rest of the world had switched from the Julian Calendar to the Gregorian Calendar in 1582, the stubborn Brits had stuck to their guns. But, after nearly 200 years, there was an eleven-day discrepancy between the two calendars, and the English had no choice but to convert. There were actual riots, as people cried, "Give us back our eleven days!" But it was to no avail. Great Britain and her colonies were dragged kicking and screaming into the 18th century.
Speaking of fighting against reality, in 1934, singer Russ Columbo accidentally shot himself to death. Columbo was a wildly popular singer and actor, and when he killed himself (with an antique gun that was supposedly unloaded), his friends thought the news would prove fatal to his mother, so for the last years of her life, those friends created an elaborate ruse, sending postcards and letters from far-off locations, and using his records to simulate a radio show. In 1944, Mrs. Columbo died, never suspected that her son had died a decade before.
Friday, Saturday, and Sunday:
Let's talk about pioneers this weekend.
First, there's Louis Sullivan, born in 1856. Sullivan is, for all intents and purposes, the man who invented the skyscraper. Since Chicago had had its own giant fire in 1871, Sullivan had the opportunity and the laboratory to erest steel-framed buildings that towered over anything built before.
In 1833, 10-year-old Barney Flaherty answered an ad in "The New York Sun" and became the first world's first newsboy, which is why we celebrate Newspaper Carrier Day today -- at least for those relatively few Americans who still have newspapers carried to them.
Sunday would have been the 163rd birthday of Jesse James. Jesse was not the first Western outlaw, but he was the first to become world famous while plying his dubious trade.
1885 saw the opening of the Exchange Buffet in New York City. It was the first self-service restaurant (read, "cafeteria") in the United States. We don't know if they served chocolate (we'd guess yes), but whether they did or not, it's World Chocolate Day Friday, so you can serve yourself and indulge.
In 1888, George Eastman registered the trademark "Kodak" (for the clicking sound a camera's shutter makes) and received a patent for his camera that used rolled film. Eastman's "Brownie" camera came from the factory loaded with enough film for 100 photos. When the roll was complete, the customer would mail the whole camera back to the factory in Rochester, NY, where the pictures would be developed and sent back along with a new camera.
Sunday is the 81st birthday of comedian Bob Newhart. Newhart is a two-time pioneer, having been in the forefront of the stand-up comedy revolution of the 1950s, when he transformed himself from "button-down accountant" to a comedian with the top-selling album in America. Then, in the '70s, his sitcom, "The Bob Newhart Show," set new standards for writing, ensemble acting, and just plain goofiness.
The weekend before Labor Day always marks the annual Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon. While it's easy to criticize the telethon for its corniness and out-of-date show business aesthetic, it's impossible to deny Lewis's commitment and ability to raise money -- nearly a billion-and-a-half dollars since 1966.
Lastly, we'll note the 98th birthday of the late avant-garde composer John Cage with 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence.
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1936 Olympics poster |
Hitler thought it was a good idea. So did Goebbels. The rest of the world? Not so much. We speak today of the Berlin Olympics, which opened on this day in 1936.
To be fair, getting the Olympics for Germany wasn't originally a Nazi idea -- the Games were awarded in 1931, before Hitler came to power. Still, the National Socialist Party saw the Olympic Games as an opportunity to show off the alleged superiority of the Aryan race. There were calls for a boycott, which was opposed by worthies as different as Franklin Roosevelt and United States Olympic Committee President Avery Brundage (whom many suspected was a Nazi sympathizer). There was even an alternate competition set up in Spain, though it was canceled due to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.
Despite the controversy, the games went on as scheduled -- and were even televised (granted, it was a limited broadcast, but there's no telling who was watching). Hitler's celebration was spoiled, however, when his German supermen were upstaged by a young African American from Alabama named Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals (thanks to tips from a German competitor and Brundage's demand that Jewish sprinter Marty Glickman be replaced on the 4x100 meter relay team), shattering Hitler's scheme.
Of course, history being what it is, not everything went as we in the 21st century might have hoped. Germany did indeed win the most medals, but more interestingly, Owens had a freedom in Germany that he didn't in America, and was able to frequent the best hotels and restaurants with no worries about segregation. When he returned to America, not only did he not get so much as a telegram from FDR, but he had to take the freight elevator to attend his own welcome-home celebration at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel.
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