45 BC Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon to start a civil war. The phrase ‘crossing the Rubicon’ entered the popular vocabulary as ‘an irrevocable decision’ in the early 1600s per the OED.
1840 Uniform Penny Post mail system began in Great Britain with distinctive green pillar boxes. It used the first pre-paid postage stamp known as the Penny Black offering safe, speedy, and cheap delivery of letters at a single flat rate. In addition, the Penny Black was the first adhesive state. A mint condition Penny Black today might fetch £3-4000.
1901 A drilling derrick at Spindletop Hill (near Beaumont) Texas, produced an enormous gusher of crude oil beginning the Texas black gold oil boom. Cheap fuel from Texas powered American industrial development for the next three generations.
1927 Fritz Lang’s silent film “Metropolis” premiered in Berlin. It remains a landmark in cinema which we have seen several times, most recently in a near complete restoration from Argentina with orchestral accompaniment at the Sydney Opera House. There are so many remarkable images it was hard to choose one. Lang left Germany when he split with his wife, Brigitte Helm (the robotrix in the film) who was an ardent Nazi. She sicceed the Nasties on him because of his Jewish grandmother, and he ran for it. In Hollywood he proved both his genius and his malignance.
1946 In London at the Methodist Central Hall the United Nations General Assembly convened for the first time with fifty-one nations represented. Inspired by this meeting, Nelson Rockefeller convinced his family to give the land in New York City to the United Nation gratis for a building site. A biography of Rocky is discussed elsewhere on this blog.
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