Film of the Day
Last Train Home
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 8 November Chinese engineers divert the Yangtze river, 1997 On this day in 1997, Chinese engineers diverted the Yangtze River, China’s longest, in order to clear the way for construction of the world’s biggest dam. The Three Gorges Dam was designed to announce the return of China as a player on the world stage – 185 metres high, two kilometres wide, costing $23 billion, able to withstand an earthquake of 7 on the Richter scale, generating the power of 15 nuclear power stations, a tamer of the Yangtze’s catastrophic floods. The project was not just huge in engineering terms but had … Read more
The Gatekeepers
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 13 September Rabin shakes hands with Arafat at the White House, 1993 On this day in 1993, Itzhak Rabin, Prime Minister of Israel, and Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, shook hands at the White House after signing the Oslo Accords. It was a historic moment. These modest proposals put in writing agreements about mutual recognition, the formation of a provisional Palestinian government, and Israel’s agreement to withdraw from some parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. They wisely left thornier issues (the Jewish settlements, the future of Jerusalem, the fate of Palestinian refugees) off the agenda. … Read more
American Gangster
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 11 June John F Kennedy proposes the Civil Rights Act, 1963 On this day in 1963, the US president, John F Kennedy addressed the nation. In his speech he called for legislation with would give all Americans “the right to be served in facilities which are open to the public – hotels, restaurants, theaters, retail stores and similar establishments”. He also called for equality before the law when it came to voting. His proposals would outlaw discrimination based on race, colour, religion, sex or national origin and effectively sounded the death knell for racial segregation – in buses, diners, schools, wherever. … Read more
The Machine Girl
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 25 July Gavrilo Princip born, 1894 On this day in 1894, the man who started the First World War was born, in Obljaj, Bosnia and Herzegovina, to a family of serf farmers, Serbian Orthodox Christians. Gavrilo Princip didn’t go to school till he was nine, but was bright and a quick learner. His brother, sensing a family member who could lift the entire clan out of poverty, encouraged Gavrilo to move to Sarajevo when he was 13, using money earned as a manual labourer to put his younger brother through merchant school. Gavrilo became a passionate campaigner for Yugoslavian unification and … Read more
The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 29 March First batch of Coca Cola made, 1886 On this day in 1886, Colonel John Pemberton made his first batch of Coca-Cola. It was a non-alcoholic version of his popular Pemberton’s French Wine Coca and he introduced it because Atlanta, where he was based, had just announced the prohibition of alcohol. Pemberton’s French Wine Coca contained alcohol mixed with psychoactive coca, caffeine-containing kola nut and the aromatic aphrodisiac damiana. Pemberton had originally formulated it as a way of weaning himself off an addiction to morphine he’d picked up after being injured in the Civil War. Like the European Vin Mariani, … Read more
Big River Man
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 5 November Link Wray dies, 2005 On this day in 2005, one of the legends of rock. Link Wray, born Fred Lincoln Wray Jr in 1929, died. He was most famous for his 1958 instrumental hit Rumble, which added power chords to the blues sound of the overdriven amplifier into the repertoire of rock. If you haven’t heard it, Rumble is an elegant succession of chords played so slowly they’re almost arpeggio, followed by a chiming run down the top notes, repeated and repeated again. It’s simplicity itself. Relying on mood and riff rather than rhythm and tune, it could be … Read more
Carry On Nurse
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 5 July UK National Health Service created, 1948 On this day in 1948, Britain’s National Health Service came into being. Based on the recommendations of 1942’s Beveridge Report, which proposed “comprehensive health and rehabilitation services for prevention and cure of disease” it was designed to be funded through taxation and free at the point of delivery. It is in essence a health insurance and provision system administered and run by the government. It ran as a unified system in the UK until 1998, when its various functions were devolved to the regional “national” governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Total … Read more
The Battle of the Sexes
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 20 September Billie Jean King plays Bobbie Riggs at tennis, 1973 On this day in 1973, a retired 55-year-old male tennis pro who had won Wimbledon in 1939 took on one of the timeless champions of women’s tennis, then in her absolute prime. The media hoopla surrounding this tennis match at the Houston Astrodome cannot be overstated. It is still regularly described as “the most watched tennis match in TV history” which can’t still be true, but nevertheless gives an idea of the interest. Riggs, a showman, gambler and wielder of a huge shit-eating grin, had shown a master’s command of … Read more
eXistenZ
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 14 June Charles Babbage’s difference engine, 1822 On this day in 1822, Charles Babbage presented a paper to the British Royal Astronomical Society. It was called “Note on the application of machinery to the computation of astronomical and mathematical tables”. What he was proposing was, in effect a mechanical computer. First conceived in 1786 by JH Müller, an engineer in the Hessian army, the difference engine was of interest to governments because it allowed them to produce tables (of whatever sort – tides, for instance) much more economically. To this end, in 1823 the British government gave Babbage £1,700 to make … Read more
The Wall
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 1 February Alexander Selkirk rescued, 1709 On this day in 1709, a Scottish sailor named either Alexander Selkirk or Selcraig was rescued from an island in the South Pacific. But the model for Daniel Defoe’s 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe wasn’t the victim of a shipwreck. In fact he’d asked the captain of the privateer (ie pirate) ship he was sailing on, the Cinque Ports, to leave him on the uninhabited island known as Más a Tierra in the Juan Fernández archipelago about 700km off the coast of Chile. Known since his youth as a quarrelsome sort, Selkirk had been loudly protesting … Read more
Defamation
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 25 June Anne Frank’s Diary published, 1947 On this day in 1947, a book originally called Het Achterhuis. Dagboekbrieven 14 Juni 1942 – 1 Augustus 1944 (The Annex: Diary Notes 14 June 1942 – 1 August 1944) was published by Contact publishing in Amsterdam. The annex being the place where the 13-year-old Jew Anne Frank and her family, along with another Jewish family called the Pels, hid in order to avoid arrest by the Nazis. The annex was in the upper, hidden rooms of Anne’s father’s business premises and the family hid there from 6 July 1942 until their discovery and … Read more
The Patience Stone
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 19 August Afghanistan independence, 1919 On this day in 1919, King Amanullah Khan declared Afghanistan a sovereign and independent country. His country had been at war with the British since May of 1919, in what is now called the Third Anglo-Afghan War. Until it started, the British had been attempting to keep Afghanistan out of the Russian military sphere by paying the Afghans huge amount of money. However, the Afghans had been taking money from the Russians too, playing one side off against the other. The First World War had changed everything. For one thing it had made Afghanistan realise that … Read more
