926 Caliphate of Cordoba was established by Emir Abd-ar-Rahman III. It occupied all of Southern Spain. We have been to Cordoba.
1547 Ivan (the Terrible) IV crowned himself the Czar of Russia in the Assumption Cathedral in Moscow. We have seen this church within the walls of the Kremlin. Sergei Einstein’s movie about Ivan is memorable.
1793 Port Jackson, NSW, the supply ship Bellona arrived carrying the first group — thirteen in number — of free setters to arrive in Australia. They were granted land at what they called Liberty Plains (Strathfield today.)
1883 The Pendleton Act created the professional US Civil Service. It is discussed elsewhere on this blog in connection with a biography of Chester Arthur. It was one of the most significant achievements on the Nineteenth Century. Regrettably, it has largely been forgotten.
1909 Australian geologists Douglas Mawson and Edgeworth David become the first people to reach the magnetic South Pole. The Edgeworth Davis building was a feature of the University of Sydney campus for fifty years until the wrecker came to the ball. I have been fascinated by Antarctic museums in Christchurch and Hobart.
15 January
1759 The British Museum opened in Montague House as a “universal museum.” Physician and naturalist Sir Hans Sloane had gathered a collection of curiosities of around 71,000 objects of all kinds including some 40,000 printed books, 7,000 manuscripts, extensive natural history specimens including 337 volumes of dried plants, prints and drawings including those by Albrecht Dürer and antiquities from Sudan, Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Ancient Near and Far East and the Americas. He wanted the collection to remain whole. Sloane was an Ulsterman. We have been through the Museum many times.
1777 Vermont declared its independence of Britain and New York colony. The subsequent Vermont constitution is the first written one in North America with universal male suffrage and the abolition of slavery. During the Revolutionary War, it was a co-belligerent with the colonies but in no way united with them. After the end of the War, for two years Vermont was an independent and sovereign state. It became the fourteenth state in 1792 (admitted to balance the slave site of Kentucky).
1797 The first Top Hat was worn by haberdasher James Heatherington in England. When Heatherington stepped from his shop wearing his unusual headgear, a crowd quickly gathered to stare. The gathering soon turned into a crowd crush as people pushed and shoved against each other. As a result, Heatherington was summoned to appear in court and fined £50 for breaching the peace. He was also charged with appearing “on the public highway wearing a tall structure of shining lustre and calculated to terrify people, frighten horses and disturb the balance of society.” However, within a month, he was overwhelmed with orders for the new headwear.
1933 ‘The Change’ at Amana Iowa ending communism in the United States. After a vote in 1932 the Amana colonies became a joint stock company in a corporation. The colonists began using the US dollar among themselves for the first time. The Amana Colonies were founded in 1843. We have been there a number of times for eye filling. Amana turned itself into a manufacturer of refrigeration.
2001 Wikipedia went on line. Not even twenty years old and already a know-it-all. At the time there were so many pointless and amusing discussions at university committees about banning Wikipedia. No doubt there had been earlier committee discussions in the very same room about banning pencils with erasers.
14 January
1559 Elizabeth I was crowned queen of England. Long did she reign. There is a discussion of Lisa Hliton’s biography of Queen Lizzie elsewhere on this blog.
1794 Dr Jesse Bennet of Edom, Virginia, performed first recorded successful Cesarean section operation in the U.S. It was on his wife Elizabeth. Both daughter and mother survived. The attending physician had refused to intervene, because God told him not to do so. Dr. Bennet stepped in.
1873 John Wesley Hyatt registered “Celluloid” as a trademark in US patent 50359. Hyatt had formed the Albany Dental Plate Company using celluloid to produce billiard balls, false teeth, and piano keys to substitute for ivory ( which was expensive and hard to get).
1953 Josip Broz, code name Tito, became president of Yugoslavia. Tito had been his nom de guerre during World War II in the Balkans. When he died in 1980 Yugoslavia gradually disintegrated into internecine and endless ethnic violence which had been preserved in amber since 1953.
1973 The Miami Dolphins defeated the Washington Redskins in the Super Bowl, becoming the first and only team in National Football League history with an undefeated season of 17 wins and no losses.
‘Corner Gas: The Movie’ (2009)
IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 3 minutes, rated 6.8 by 1529 cinematizens.
Genre: droll and catatonic.
Verdict: Nice and easy reprise.
In the town of Dog River — population few, location distant — on the Canadian Prairies nothing ever changes because nothing ever happens. Then it does. The Global Financial Crisis ate the town’s budget in a single gulp. Electricity, water, police, trash collection, and schools stop. No more nanny state for these survivalists.
Tim Horton’s proposes to buy all the real property in the town and pay all outstanding debts to build an All-Canadian donut factory that will supply the entire country with bad donuts to go with the legendary bad coffee. ‘It may be bad but it’s ours,’ cry the Ca-nationalists!
Residents react by blaming each other, drinking, and gambling. That part was social realism. Then they rally together to save the town. That part was Disney.
There is a series of sit-com vignettes to stretch it out to feature length. Some are amusing, others are funny, and most are neither. At the start and finish are nice shots of the landscape with fields of mustard seed, wheat, and sorghum. I wanted more of that at sunrise and sunset on the vastness of the flat lands.
It was, of course, a reprise of the eponymous television series that ran for six years and one hundred and seven episodes of thirty minutes each on CTV. Watched them all, more than once.
What I learned: pregnant women should not watch film noir because of all the smoking. Horsepower can take several forms. There are no Canadiens in Canada West. It was all so low key that the fraternity brothers passed out before the first word of dialogue.
N.B. In the end credits the entire population of Saskatchewan including expatriate is listed.
13 January
532 In Constantinople the Nika riots began against Emperor Justinian I. The riots grew out of a chariot races in the Hippodrome. The emperor always appeared at the races, and the crowd would shout questions, demands, requests at him between races. This shouting became organised into factions, wearing distinctive colours and supporting horses in the same livery. They were the most violent riots in the city’s history, with nearly half of Constantinople being burned or destroyed and tens of thousands of people killed. Justinian was ready to scarper but his wife, Theodora, convinced him to man up. We have been there and seen that. The obelisks remain.
1128 Pope Honorius II gave papal sanction to the military order known as the Knights Templar, declaring it to be an army of God. Full name: Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon. The Templars built forts and posts along the route of the crusades and sold goods and services, including protection to crusaders and pilgrims. It became one of the first international corporations and began lending money to kings, who were unaccustomed to paying back loans and that led to conflict.
1785 John Walter published first issue of “The Times” of London. He started printing books written by others and notices, brochures, pamphlets, and screeds, and decided to cobble together his own in the the Daily Universal Register which he later renamed The Times. Read it many times when it was a newspaper.
1898 French writer Emile Zola published “J’accuse.” He alleged an extensive perversion of justice and subsequent cover-up in the trial of Captain Alfred Dreyfus. Zola was at the height of his renown and he took a considerable chance in this publication. He was attacked in the street, sued, and evicted and went into voluntary exile in London for a time. However, he was right in every detail in a world where facts counted.
1989 The ruins of Mashkan-shapir (occupied 2050-1720 BC) were found in Iraq about 140 kilometres south of Baghdad. It was a Babylonian city from the time of Hammurabi who had the code of laws carved on the walls for all to see. The site is nearly unique because it was not built over in subsequent years nor was it scavenged for building materials and so much remains in situ as it was left. However in the aftermath of the Gulf War it was virtually destroyed by looters.
‘The Affairs of Jimmy Valentine’ (27 March 1942)
IMDb meta-data is one hour and twelve minutes, rated 6.5 by 73 cinematizens
Genre: Mystery.
Verdict: A misfire.
Affable but cynical Dennis persuades the sponsors of his failing radio mystery program to offer a reward for a notorious cracksman name of Jimmy Valentine. The search narrows his location down by means of the script to Smallville, where everyone suspects everyone else of being Jimmy. Or do they?
Meanwhile, Dennis finds a squeeze, gets to like the town, and, oh incidentally, finds Jimmy but does not. Huh? Yeah, that is what the fraternity brothers said.
It turns out Jimmy has company. The first half is farce and the second half is more serious and there is a nice denouement if the viewer can last that long.
Though radio precipitates the action no further use is made of it. Too bad.
The original story came from that master of irony, O’Henry in ‘Retrieved Reformation.’ Director Bernard Vorhaus handled it well. His HUAC blighted career is described elsewhere on this blog. This film was cut to fit a fifty minute television spot as ‘Unforgotten Crime’ which made it memorably incomprehensible.
Contextual note: In April 1942 the Bataan Death March began when 80,000 exhausted and starving Filipino and American prisoners of war were marched 100 kilometres with neither food nor water. As many as a third died en route. The subsequent surrender of the bastion on Corregidor yielded another 15,000 prisoners. Filipino officers were singled out for torture, abuse, and murder. The defence at Bataan and on Corregidor threw off the Japanese timetable by three months which significantly slowed and impaired the descent on New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. While news of the defeat figured in the newsreels in theatres before movies like this were shown, the story of the death march was suppressed until late in 1944.
‘Roar of the Press’ (18 April 1941)
IMDb meta-data is runtime of one hour an eleven minutes, rated 5.9 by 86 cinematizens.
Genre: Mystery
Verdict: Oh hum.
The irrepressible Wallace Ford returns from a media assignment in the sticks with a naive bride and sets up house in glamorous New York City. She is agog. The wives of other journalists visit her to tell her the bad new about being married to a hack. Her head spins.
Meanwhile Ford is rushing back and forth. After all it is not everyday that a well known public figure falls out of high window to his death — splat — in front of his very eyes. Off he goes in pursuit of this scent and that leaf like a dog in the park.
The date is important. The faller was the chair of an America First Committee. Was his death an accident or murder? If the later did it have to do with his seedy private life, or the Committee? Ford tangles all these questions up, observed by some stereotypes.
The stereotypes try to mislead Ford but without success so a more direct approach is taken. It seems the faller had disrupted some criminal plans and Ford, being the first upon the body, may have taken an important piece of paper from the dead man.
These villains erred in bringing Sheriff Micah into their scheme and he turns coat and joins forces with Ford. Meanwhile the naive wife makes dinner and watches it go cold. Night after night.
The villains are Nasties bent of disrupting rubber supplies to the US Army, and the faller had sniffed them out. Ford never does seem to know what is happening. Typical journalist, a lot of noise and little substance.
The ingredients are there for a good story and the players could do it. But the story is incomplete and while the directing is lethargic, the elastic is stretched too thin.
12 January
1616 Captain Major Francisco Branco founded the Brazilian city Belem on the Amazon River delta. It has ever after been the portal to the vast region of the Amazon. It is much storied in Brazilian literature. Then there was Klaus Kinski. When Henry Ford set up a rubber planation in the Amazon, Belem was the base. Two books about this effort are discussed elsewhere on this blog.
1836 HMS Beagle with Charles Darwin aboard landed in Sydney, Australia. He went for a walk in the Blue Mountains where legend has it that he realised the sedimentary layers of rock not he escarpment could be read downward like a book into the past.
1895 The National Trust was founded in Britain with the purpose of preserving the best of the past.
1932 Ophelia Wyatt Caraway was elected to the U.S. Senate from Arkansas. The first woman to be so elected. She the active support of Huey Long whose national ambitions were in full flower. Caraway was the widow of the previous incumbent. She campaigned as hard as Huey always did.
1969 In Miami quarterback Joe Namath led the New York Jets to a 16-7 upset victory over the heavily favoured Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III. When the Jets were deprecated in a press conference, Namath angrily retorted that ‘We will win. I guarantee it.’ The assembled representatives of the media mocked him, mimicked him, laughed at him, and hissed their derision. Not so at the end of the game. The Jets defence stopped the most prolific scoring team of the NFL. The game was not as close as the score indicates. There the historic NFL and the upstart AFL came level in the public mind. NFL owners had refused to expand the League for fear of diminishing income, leading others to found the rival AFL.
11 January
1787 William and Caroline Herschel identified two moons of Uranus’s, Titania and Oberon. Uranus has twenty-seven moons in all and counting.
1908 U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt declared the Grand Canyon a national monument. TR had seen it on his travels in the West and never forgot it. He was green avant le mot. We’ve been there and saw why. A Park Ranger I talked to pointed out a plaque honouring Teddy for his long campaign to protect the Canyon.
1922 Insulin was first used to treat diabetes in fourteen year-old Leonard Thompson. The discovery of the insulin is credited to London Ontario GP Frederick Banting who moonlighted at the University of Toronto where he was allowed to use the laboratory. Though the National Library of Canada web site on this day in history has not mentioned this achievement.
1935 Amelia Earhart flew solo from Honolulu to Oakland, California. A $10,000 had been offered to the first person to make the flight non-stop and she did it, flying 2,400 miles in 18 hours. The aim of the sponsor was to promote air travel to Hawaii. It was her first solo flight of any distance.
1964 U.S. Surgeon General Luther Terry reported that smoking is associated with major health problems including lung cancer. The tobacco industry’s pressure on the Surgeon General before, during, and after this report was unremitting but successive presidents stood by the facts. Ah, the good old days when facts counted. His example inspired later Surgeons General like Charles Everett Koop to assert the facts, making Sergeant Friday proud.
10 January
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.
