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 idiosyncrasies. (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. Poor Pheidippides
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. After nearly 200 years, though, 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 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 having suspected that her son had died a decade before.
Friday, Saturday, and Sunday:
Let's talk about pioneers this weekend.
First, there's architect 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 erect 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, who was not the first Western outlaw, but 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-up
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 (not just best-selling comedy album; number-one record, period). 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 one of his most famous compostions.
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