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Thursday, we noted the anniversary of Route 66 and, until the federal government decommissioned it, the
various highway departments in the states through which the road ran kept it
in good shape. Not every such department is as fastidious, though. For
example, there's the Oregon Highway Division, which on November 12, 1970, decided that the best way to
destroy a rotting sperm whale that had beached itself before dying was to blow it up,
an incident which led to one the greatest memes in Internet history:
"the exploding whale."
While the whale parts made for a gloppy, smelly mess, the resulting patterns
might well have resembled a masterpiece by Sunday's birthday boy, Claude Monet. Born in 1840, Monet was part of the revolutionary school of painting (taking its name - "Impressionism" – from of one of Monet's pictures)
that was notable for depicting the effects of light on objects
and places
and making unique personal statements through their canvases.
Friday must be a day for creatures. In 1933, Hugh Gray took the first known photos of the Loch Ness Monster in Scotland. While some deny the existence of "Nessie," we are convinced she is alive and well.
Not so benign a creature was Joseph McCarthy, the senator who took paranoia, ignorance, and character assassination to new heights.
Sunday would have marked his 102nd birthday. McCarthy was, by all accounts, an unpleasant man, and through his unceasing attempts to smear anyone who opposed him
as a Communist, he managed to give his name to both an era and a political tactic. Censured by the Senate in 1954 for his actions, he eventually drank himself to
death in 1957.
Almost as unpleasant as Sen. McCarthy is Yanni, the New Age musician whose calming tunes
are as soporific as the situation comedies of Sherwood Schwartz. Both men celebrate their birthdays on Sunday, so perhaps
Mr. Schwartz (responsible for such sitcoms as The Brady Bunch and Gilligan's Island) and Mr. Hrysomallis (Yanni's real name) will spend
the night before their 94th and 56th birthdays, respectively, watching
something more energetic, like UFC 122. (The idea of Yanni screaming himself hoarse over
wrestlers is pretty delicious.)
Of course, it's possible that the men might celebrate with a trip, though we
wouldn't suggest one as energetic as that begun on November 14, 1889, when
pioneering female journalist Nellie Bly (aka Elizabeth Cochrane) began her successful attempt to
travel around the world in fewer than 80 days, in emulation of Jules Verne's Phileas Fogg. Bly completed the trip in a mere 72 days; an appropriate feat this week
especially, as National Geography
Awareness Week begins on Sunday.
Newspapers around the world covered Nellie's trip, but the BBC couldn't have - because it didn't yet exist. The venerable
network begin its radio service in 1922, some 33 years after her voyage. They've made up
for it in the decades since with continuous news and entertainment.
One of the stories we're pretty sure they covered was the marriage of actress Carmen Electra and basketball player Dennis Rodman, wed in Las Vegas (where else?) in 1998. Unfortunately, the happy couple
couldn't make a go of it, and they were divorced four-and-a-half months later.
Something else that couldn't last (in spite of surviving about 500 years) was
the Inca Empire,
which saw the beginning of its end in 1533, when Francisco Pizarro's Spanish conquistadors arrived in Cajamarca, Peru, to show the natives who the new bosses were - a feat not
unlike that performed by single women upon single men on Sadie Hawkins Day, which debuted in Al Capp's comic strip, Li'l Abner in 1937. Sadie Hawkins was the "homeliest
gal" in Abner's hometown of Dogpatch.
When she turned 35, her father declared that there would be a race with all
the town's unmarried men being pursued by its unmarried women. Any bachelor
who was caught was doomed to matrimony.
We end the week by noting that Saturday is World Kindness Day, and commemorating the 1952 death of a woman who must have been
one of the kindest people ever: Margaret Wise Brown. Brown was a writer of children's books, who, in
collaboration with such artists as Clement Hurd, turned out such classics as Goodnight, Moon and The Runaway Bunny, which have calmed and enriched the bedtimes of
millions of children.
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