Film of the Day
Hitman
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 26 June First barcode scanned, 1974 On this day in 1974, a packet of Wrigley’s chewing gum became the first product to be scanned by a barcode reader for commercial purposes. The so-called Universal Product Code had been in development since the late 1940s, when Bernard Silver, a Pennsylvania graduate student at Drexel Institute of Technology had overheard a local supermarket owner bemoaning the fact that there wasn’t a system for automatically scanning items through a checkout. Drexel went to work, first using ultra-violet inks (they faded), then Morse code in which the dots were stretched to become lines, fatter ones … Read more
Since Otar Left
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 15 August Cave city of Vardzia consecrated, 1185 On this day in 1185, the cave monastery of Vardzia, on the slopes of the Erusheti Mountain in Southern Georgia, was consecrated by Queen Tamar of Georgia. Building on the site, about 19 tiers high, had started a couple of years earlier, but excavation shows that people had been living there since the Bronze Age. Tamar was a warrior queen and dedicated the site to the Virgin Mary after successes against the Muslim invader. Because of its height and its construction in the rock, the site was held to be as impregnable “as … Read more
Downfall
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 1 October Nazi leaders sentenced at the Nuremberg Trials, 1946 On the afternoon of this day in 1946, the individual sentences were read out at the conclusion of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. The defendants were all political and military leaders of the Third Reich, and were charged with a) crimes against peace, b) planning and waging wars of aggression, c) war crimes and d) crimes against humanity. Several notable Nazis were not present – Adolf Hitler, Martin Boorman, Heinrich Himmler and Joseph Goebbels. Three were already known to be dead; it was assumed Boorman was still alive. He was … Read more
We Have a Pope
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 11 October Second Vatican Council convenes, 1962 On this day in 1962, Pope John XXIII formally opened the Second Vatican Council. The first Vatican Council had been held nearly 100 years before, the most remembered of its declarations being that the Pope was infallible, when speaking ex cathedra. But back, or forward, to the Second, its aim being, broadly, to work out what the hell to do with the 20th century. The solution was to modernise. Out went the insistence that the Catholic church was the only way to sanctification and truth. Out went the Latin mass. In came a renewed … Read more
The Snowtown Murders
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 17 February Jeffrey Dahmer sentenced, 1992 On this day in 1992, Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer, aka the Milwaukee Cannibal, was sentenced for the murder of 15 men and boys. Dahmer had pleaded guilty at the trial and the case had revolved around the question of his sanity. The jury had found him sane, and that his cannibalism and necrophilia were a result of badness rather than madness, a verdict Dahmer entirely agreed with. Dahmer had committed his first murder aged 18, and over the following years was frequently arrested on charges of indecent exposure and sexual assault, all the while luring men … Read more
Zero Dark Thirty
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 27 December Benazir Bhutto assassinated, 2007 On this day in 2007, Benazir Bhutto, leader of the Pakistan People’s Party and a former Prime Minister of Pakistan, died in a bomb attack at a political rally in Rawalpindi. She was campaigning in the upcoming general election. A glamorous figure in Pakistani politics, she was the daughter of former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and had been elected Prime Minister at the age of 35, in 1989, the first woman to lead a Muslim country. Though because of the presidential system, Bhutto was constantly in a struggle for executive power with President Ghulam … Read more
Russian Ark
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 18 May International Museum Day Today is International Museum Day, held annually by museum professionals as a way of highlighting the work that museums do in preserving the past. It was created in 1977 and has gained in popularity ever since, participating numbers rising from 20,000 museums in 2009 to 30,000 in 2012. Each year a theme is chosen: in 2002 it was “Museums and Globalisation”; in 1993 it was “Museums and Indigenous Peoples”. In 2012, the organisers, the International Council of Museums, encouraged people to take selfies of themselves at their local museum, under the rubric “Me and My Museum”. … Read more
Teeth
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 3 June Valerie Solanas tries to kill Andy Warhol, 1968 On this day in the 1968, the feminist writer Valerie Solanas went to the Factory, artist Andy Warhol’s studio in New York, and fired three shots at him from a gun she had just bought. Two missed and one wounded him. She also shot the art critic Mario Amaya and attempted to shoot Warhol’s manager, Fred Hughes, but the gun jammed. She then turned herself in to the police. Solanas had in fact set out to shoot Maurice Girodias, owner of the Olympia Press – who had offered to publish her … Read more
Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 27 July Vincent Van Gogh shoots himself, 1890 What is it that everyone knows about the painter Vincent Van Gogh? That he cut off his ear. And perhaps a lot of people also know that he killed himself. But it seems to have been forgotten that he shot himself. But he did, on this day in 1890. Having lived in a variety of places in his native Netherlands, London and Paris, Van Gogh had finally moved to Arles in 1888, where he was to have the artistic breakthrough and produce the work he is still remembered for. He was also behaving … Read more
Steve Jobs The Lost Interview
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 20 December NeXT merges with Apple, 1996 On this day in 1996, Apple Computer Inc agreed a deal with Next Computer Inc to buy Next for $429 million, plus 1.5 million Apple shares. Next had been set up by Steve Jobs after he had been ousted in 1985 from Apple, the company he had co-founded in 1976. The deal involved the return of Jobs to Apple, which was seen as something of a second coming for Apple, whose fortunes had been languishing since Jobs had left (and before he had left too). The deal was brokered by Gil Amelio, who had … Read more
Solaris
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 12 April Yuri’s Night Today marks the anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s first flight by a human –a “man” back then – into space and the first orbital flight of a manned (humanned?) vehicle, on 12 April 1961, on board the Soviet spaceship Vostok 1. It is celebrated across the world as Yuri’s Night, in the astronaut’s honour. It’s also used to applaud similarly momentous space exploration milestones. Yuri’s Night was first held in 2001, on the 40th anniversary of human spaceflight, though the Soviet Union had been honouring Cosmonautics Day since 1962, which since 2011 has been called the International Day … Read more
The Infidel
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 21 March New Year’s Day, Bahá’í calendar If you’re a member of the Bahá’í faith, today is the first day of the new year. A religion that believes in one god, one spiritual source for all religions – Jewish, Christian, Muslim, whatever – and the equality of mankind, Bahá’í was only founded in the 19th century but has around five- to seven-million followers worldwide, spreading outwards from its foundational source in Iran. The largest grouping of Bahá’ís is in India. Right now it is probably the fastest growing religion in the world. It uses a solar calendar of 19 months of … Read more
