Film of the Day
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A movie for every day of the year – a good one 3 February Buddy Holly dies, 1959 On this day in 1959, 22-year-old Buddy Holly died in a plane crash. He was in a plane because he had suddenly become insanely popular – his songs That’ll Be the Day, Not Fade Away and Oh Boy! had seen to that – and was hopping between gigs on the Winter Dance Party Tour played with a pick-up band posing as his regular band, The Crickets. With him in the plane were fellow musicians Ritchie Valens and JP Richardson aka The Big Bopper, plus the pilot, Roger Peterson. Peterson was not licensed to fly without … Read more
Daisies
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 30 July The first defenestration of Prague, 1419 Along with the Diet of Worms, the Defenestration of Prague is one of those events that make history students giggle. And as with exsanguination, which dresses up the base act of bleeding to death in a fancy Latinate term, defenestration is nothing more than throwing someone out of the window. It should be the defenestration at Prague, then, logically? Semantics to one side, the most famous defenestration of/at Prague took place in 1618, but the first time it happened was on this day in 1419, when an angry crowd led by a Hussite … Read more
The Million Dollar Hotel
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 7 June Groundbreaking of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, 1993 On this day in 1993, the groundbreaking ceremony of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame took place, in Cleveland, Ohio. It was attended by Pete Townshend, Chuck Berry, Sam Moore (of Sam and Dave), Dave Gardner (the Coasters), Billy Joel, Sam Phillips, Ruth Brown and Dave Pirner (Soul Asylum). The hall had been proposed in 1983 by Ahmet Ertegun of Atlantic Records, with a view to capturing an ephemeral art form – or of confirming that rock and roll wasn’t ephemeral at all, take your pick – and … Read more
Ivansxtc
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 09 September Leo Tolstoy born, 1828 On this day in 1828, Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was born. A gambler, womaniser, brawler and university dropout in his youth, he took a turn to the spiritual as he got older, sometime after having already written War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877). Indeed, he became something of an ascetic anarchist, choosing to live a life of simplicity and pacificism. He was an advocate of non-violence and extremely influential on Mohandas (ie Mahatma) Gandhi, who named his second ashram in South Africa the Tolstoy Colony, and on Martin Luther King Jr. A prodigous essayist … Read more
How to Train Your Dragon
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 8 March Raymonde de Laroche is first woman with a pilot’s licence, 1910 On this day in 1910, Raymonde de Laroche became the first woman in the world to receive a pilot’s licence. The Wright brothers had only invented the heavier than air machine seven years earlier, and Louis Blériot had flown the 21 miles across the English Channel, thus proving that long-distance flight was possible, only the year before. De Laroche had learnt to fly after visiting the factory of the Voisin brothers, who manufactured planes in their factory in Chalons, France, in October 1909, where by force of character … Read more
Pontypool
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 13 January First public radio broadcast, 1910 On this day in 1910, the first public radio broadcast was … heard is probably the wrong word, since almost no one had a radio set and the quality of the 500-watt transmission was so bad. But the first public radio broadcast was made at any rate, from the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, where Enrico Caruso, then the most famous opera singer in the world, sang arias from Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci along with Czech soprano Emmy Destin. Though both had belting voices, the microphones placed in the footlights were not really up … Read more
Splice
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 16 June Lord Byron and house guests read Fantasmagoriana, 1816 While on holiday in Switzerland in 1816, Lord Byron and his house guests grew sick of the weather of the “year without a summer”, as 1816 came to be known. Volcanic activity on the other side of the world and the historically low solar activity were precipitating famine in Europe, flooding in Asia and other weather catastrophes. But for this party it meant excessive rain, gloom and little to do. To entertain each other, they started reading a collection of German and French gothic stories called Fantasmagoriana. Published only three years … Read more
Quartet
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 25 February Enrico Caruso born, 1873 On this day in 1873, the Italian operatic tenor Enrico Caruso was born in Naples. He came from a large family and his father was a manual worker. Enrico was apprenticed to a mechanical engineer aged 11 but also sang in the church choir, where his voice stood out. He took up work as a street singer, performed in cafes and had soon graduated to soirees where he would literally sing for his supper. All the while he was studying singing and eventually made his debut aged 22 at the Teatro Nuovo in Naples. By … Read more
Don’t Look Now
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 25 March The founding of Venice, AD421 On this day in the year AD421, Venice was founded. Sited on 118 islands in a lagoon between the mouths of the rivers Po and Piave, Venice derives its name from the Veneti people who lived in the region in the 10th century BC, though the people who actually founded the city were more likely refugees fleeing the Germanic and Hun invaders who were flooding into Italy as the Roman empire fell apart. Today is traditionally taken as the day of the city’s founding because on this day in 421 the church of San … Read more
Chinatown
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 24 June The Aqua Traiana inaugurated, 109 On this day in 109, the aqueduct the Aqua Traiana was put into service. Built on the orders of the emperor Trajan, it supplied Rome with fresh water. Rome’s appetite for water was huge and among the things the Aqua Traiana did was: help deliver drinking water for Rome’s one millions citizens; water for countless public baths including the massive Baths of Trajan overlooking the Colosseum; spectacular fountains; and other leisure uses including the Naumachia of Trajan, a huge basin used for staging naval displays; not forgetting the importance of water as the motive force … Read more
How to Start a Revolution
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 25 January Police Day, Egypt Today is Police Day in Egypt. It is held annually to commemorate the day when 50 police officers were killed, more wounded, after a spat between local Egyptian policemen and the colonial ruler, Britain, got out of hand. The officers refused to hand over their weapons; the British sent in the army and surrounded the police station where they were holed up. Result: nasty. It was possibly just another day in the life of a colonial power and its variously contented subjects, but the event got wider currency when a local man photographed the melee and … Read more
Battle of Warsaw
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 17 January Soviet forces liberate/capture Warsaw, 1945 On this day in 1945, the Poles swapped one overlord for another as the Germans were finally flushed out of Warsaw by the Soviet Red Army, which promptly took over. The Poles had been hoping that a government of their own, an anti-communist one which had been beavering away in exile for the duration of the war, would take over. No dice. It was a bitter blow for Poland, which had been a battleground for the Second World War since the day it had started, on 1 September 1939. The Germans had treated Warsaw … Read more
