1888 At Arles Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh cut off his left ear after argument with fellow painter Paul Gauguin, sending it to a prostitute for safe keeping. We have seen some marvellous paintings by this troubled genius. There is a memorable scene in the film ‘The Night of the Generals’ when one mad man, Peter O’Toole, recognises another in Vincent.
1900 Canadian inventor Reginald Fessenden made the first wireless voice transmission while working for the Weather Bureau. His immortal words were ‘It’s snowing here.’ The reply came by telegraph: ‘Same here.’ Low key or what?
1906 At Bondi Beach the surf life-saving reel was demonstrated. Legend has it that the first person saved by that reel was the eight-year old Charlie Kingsford-Smith (for whom Sydney airport is named due to his later aviation exploits). The reels became standard equipment until 1993 when they were replaced by inflated rubber boats, yellow duckies.
1912 The prestigious ‘Nouvelle Revue Francaise’ in Paris rejected with disdain a self-contained excerpt from ‘À la recherche du temps perdu’ (Remembrance of Things Past) by Marcel Proust. This was Proust’s first attempt to publish this monumental work. I have read most of it. Who can forget the death of Marcel’s grandmother, Gilbertine’s elusive kiss, the Baron de Charlus’s mordant wit, or Monsieur Norpois lighting a cigar to encapsulate European history.
1913 U.S. President Woodrow Wilson signed the Owen-Glass Act to create the Federal Reserve System to regulate banks. Its temple is pictured below. Within it the god of mammon is worshipped, propitiated, mollified, appeased, soothed, and pacified in dark and secret rituals with demand curves and Pareto optima.
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