Welcome back to The Spark, your weekly guide to Yahoo! Directory
resources for the week's events. It’s not a jam-packed week, we’ll admit, but
in the words
of Spencer Tracy, there’s not much meat on it, "but what’s there is
cherce."
Monday:
In the late 1890s, Fannie Farmer wrote a wildly-popular and influential cookbook; a book which virtually guaranteed results by standardizing
measurements. On this day in 1902, she opened her own cooking school, "Mrs. Farmer's School of Cookery," beginning a
mania for cooking, food,
and recipes in America that continues to this day.
In 1912, dancer Gene Kelly was born in Pittsburgh. Kelly was (in our opinion) the second-greatest dancer in
the golden age of movie musicals. Not content to be merely a hoofer, Kelly soon moved into
co-directing (with Stanley Donen) his films in an attempt to make dance in film not just
entertainment, but art. And in such films as Singin' in the Rain, The Pirate,
and An American in Paris, he succeeded.
As popular as Kelly was, his fame paled in comparison to that of Rudolph Valentino, though. Valentino emigrated from Italy in 1913 with
virtually no money, and by 1921, he was one of the biggest stars in the history
of the movies, and certainly one of the greatest screen lovers ever. He died of
peritonitis in 1926, setting off a frenzy that makes Michael Jackson's death look like a Chamber of Commerce picnic. 100,000
people showed up at the funeral,
and when the body was taken to Los Angeles by train, probably hundreds of thousands more turned out in
hopes of getting a look at the coffin.
Two championships this week, one ending and one beginning. In Las Vegas, the Miss Universe pageant will name its winner (still no word if extraterrestrials will show up), and in Paris, the World Badminton
Championships will begin in an attempt to find the greatest shuttlecock artist
of them all.
Tuesday:
A day for noting historical events. In 79, Mount Vesuvius erupted in Italy,
with an explosive force some 10,000 times the force of the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. Although the explosion wiped out the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, it was a boon for modern archaeologists, since those cities were almost perfectly preserved in
cocoons of lava and ash.
In 1456, Johannes Gutenberg finished printing his first edition of the Bible. That Bible was double-edged: movable type made knowledge
easier to disseminate to the masses, but those masses couldn’t afford to buy
such expensive books.
Speaking of double edges, in 1891, Thomas Edison applied for a patent for the movie camera, but it couldn’t
have been of much use, since he didn't apply for the patent for film until
1897.
In other patent news, in 1869, Cornelius Swarthout received his for inventing the waffle iron, making sure
Southerners can enjoy breakfasts any time of the day. And while they were never patented, it
was around this day in 1853, that chef George Crum
invented potato chips at Moon's Lake House in Saratoga Springs, New York. (Which is why you'll still sometimes see them
referred to as "Saratoga chips."
And if you want a way to work off the calories from all those waffles and
chips, you can emulate Duke Kahanamoku, whose 120th birthday this is. Kahanamoku was the native
Hawaiian native who, if he didn't invent surfing,
certainly popularized it.
Wednesday:
More food events today. In Buñol, Spain, La Tomatina begins, as thousands gather to, yes, throw tomatoes at each
other. Why this is considered a good idea, we can't say. For those in a mood
for a less-messy celebration, we point you to Mitchell, SD, where the annual Corn Palace Festival kicks off with a concert by Kenny Rogers. Every year,
Mitchellites decorate their Moorish Corn Palace with husks and cobs of corn to create fabulous edible murals.
This year’s theme is "Through the Ages."
In birthdays today, we begin with two men who are best known for two sentences.
The first is actor Michael Rennie (1909). Rennie had a reasonably distinguished film career
after World War II, but it was his performance in 1951's The Day the Earth Stood
Still that cemented his iconic
status. Starring as the alien Klaatu, his instructions to the late Patricia Neal to give to the robot Gort, "Klaatu Barada Nikto," are known to even those who never saw the movie.
The
second is Walt Kelly (1913). In the 1950s and '60s, it would have been hard to
find any American who was better-known than Kelly. A writer and cartoonist, he
created the Pogo comic strip that, for years, poked fun at American
society and politics. In 1970, to commemorate the first Earth Day, he pictured the strip's eponymous possum hero confronting
the disaster his swamp home had become and proclaimed,
"We have met the enemy, and he is us ..."
Two other birthdays are for men who are known for their overall bodies of work
rather than for individual utterances: Composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein (1918) and Sean Connery
(1930). Bernstein had a fairy-tale beginning to his career when, in 1943, he
took over conducting the New York Philharmonic on a national radio broadcast as a last-minute substitute
for music director Bruno Walter. The reception was overwhelming, and over the next
half-century, Bernstein turned out symphonies, operas, and musicals like West Side Story, and spanned the globe conducting orchestras and
educating the public about the power of classical music.
Connery had a brief career as a stage actor and bodybuilder before
landing the role of James Bond in 1962. Although he's been mostly retired from acting
since 2005 (not wanting to deal with the "idiots in Hollywood"), his
role as Bond ("...James Bond")
will forever define him -- well, that and his appearances on Jeopardy! ...
In these days of controversy of the 51 Park center in New York, we were struck that on this day in 1902, the
first Arabic daily newspaper in the U.S., Al-Hoda, began publication in New
York City.
Thursday:
Today would have been the 70th birthday of Don LaFontaine, whom you know, even if you think you don't. LaFontaine was
the movie trailer voice-over guy, who transformed the phrase "In a world where ..." from a cliché to a monument.
In 1946, George Orwell's Animal Farm was published, much to the chagrin of schoolkids
everywhere. Not that it's not a fine and important book, but it's gotten
classified as just another notch in the summer reading belt and lost a lot of
its power.
Speaking of animals, there's that old saying that every dog has his day? Well, since today is National Dog Day, we guess this is it.
And speaking of dogs, it was on this day in 1957 that the Ford Motor Company rolled the first Edsel off of the assembly line.
And speaking of disasters, we
can't help but think that the recent oil gusher in the Gulf was made possible at least in part by the good folks of Titusville, PA, who began operating the world's first oil well on this day
in 1859.
Readers of a certain age will feel ancient as we note that Macaulay Culkin
turns 30 today.
Friday:
The only things to note today are the birthdays of two men who couldn't be more
different. In 1912, the King of the Jungle was "born" when Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan of the Apes was published. And it's the 58th birthday of Paul Reubens -- better
known in his persona of Pee-Wee Herman
(and need we mention that Pee-Wee will open on Broadway in October?)
Saturday and Sunday:
This is a weekend to celebrate the births of groundbreaking creative artists.
In 1828, it was Leo Tolstoy, who's best known for his long and complex novels like War and Peace and Anna Karenina that deeply explore human psychology and
relationships.
In 1898, writer and director Preston Sturges was born. Sturges had a streak of cinematic creativity in
the 1940s that has never been matched, turning out a string of ten comedies
that remain unrivaled for their characters, dialogue, and sheer lunacy. By
1948, he was all but washed up, but in the years before, he was unrivaled.
Actress Ingrid Bergman was born in 1915. After acting in 11 Swedish films in the
1930s, she was signed by American producer David O. Selznick, and spent the next 40 years making film classic after
classic. From Casablanca
to Notorious to Murder on the Orient Express
(for which she won an Oscar), she left a series of indelible performances.
In 1917, comic writer and artist Jack Kirby was born. Kirby was "the King" of comics, with an
imagination that was as limitless as the cosmic stories he illustrated. The
list of characters he created or co-created -- Captain America, the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, the Challengers of the
Unknown, and Darkseid -- is enough to make any other creator
wish they'd have come up with just one of them.
1920 saw the birth of saxophonist Charlie Parker. Although deviled by drugs and alcohol in his brief 34
years, his postmodern method of playing jazz and bebop has influenced players ever since. Unfortunately, his
genius came at a great cost. He lived high and hard, and when he died in 1955,
the coroner estimated his age at between 50 and 60.
Speaking of War and Peace, we should mention that, in the former
category, Saturday will see UFC 118 and in the latter, Sunday is the 47th anniversary of Dr, Martin Luther King Jr.'s March on Washington for
Jobs and Freedom.
And, finally, we note that on this weekend in 1922, the world heard its first
radio commercial. The ad, which aired on New York station WEAF,
was for the Queensboro Realty Corporation of Jackson Heights,
who was trying to sell folks on their Hawthorne Court apartment complex in
Queens.
Who knew then that one company's $50 investment would later turn into a
multi-billion-dollar industry that would
influence us all -- or try to?
Suggested Sites...
- The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book - cook with Fannie Farmer.
- World Badminton Championships - follow the action.
- Miss Universe Pageant - it's owned by Donald Trump. We can only hope they have better hair.
- La Tomatina - duck!
- National Dog Day - celebrating our four-legged friends.
No comments:
Post a Comment