Film of the Day
The Great Beauty
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 21 April Romulus founds Rome, 753BC On this day in 753BC, one of the great capitals of world civilisation was founded, or so the story goes. Rome, city of the Caesars, was founded by Romulus, who along with Remus was one of the twin sons of Rhea Silvia, daughter of Numitor, king of Alba Longa (present day Castel Gandolfo, where the Pope has his summer residence). The father of the twins was either Mars, the god of war, or possibly Hercules, the demi-god son of Zeus. Either way, Rhea Silvia’s sons become problematical for her once Numitor’s brother Amulius seizes power … Read more
Mutiny on the Bounty
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 28 April The Mutiny on the Bounty, 1789 On this day in 1789, the year of revolution in France, some sailors on board the British ship HMS Bounty mutinied against their captain, William Bligh, and put him in a boat with 18 other members of his crew. The mutiny was led by Fletcher Christian, who had been promoted to sailing master by Bligh during the course of the ship’s ten-month journey from London to Tahiti. The ship’s mission was to take breadfruit from Tahiti to the West Indies, to see if they could be grown there and used to feed the … Read more
We Live in Public
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 12 November Tim Berners-Lee publishes World Wide Web proposal, 1990 On this day in 1990, Tim Berners-Lee, an employee of the European research organisation CERN, published the formal proposal to create a more efficient information management system which would connect up hypertext documents on different computers running different operating systems, to be viewed by client-server applications (ie browsers). Building on a prediction by Arthur C Clarke that satellites would allow global access via console to vast amounts of information, telephony, video conferencing and so on, Berners-Lee took practical inspiration from the Dynatext electronic book system – which used a rigorous and … Read more
Black Book
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 23 May Netherlands declares independence from Spain, 1568 On this day in 1568, the battle of Heligerlee was fought and won by the rebel army of William I of Orange, against the Duke of Alba, representative of the Hapsburg ruling dynasty. It marked the beginning of the 80 Years’ War for the independence of the Protestant Netherlands from Catholic Spanish rule. Though the rebels won the battle, they lost the campaign, due to lack of funds, and the rebellion sputtered out, only to flame up again in 1572. By 1581 the Netherlands were independent, though it took until 1648 for this … Read more
The Fighter
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 28 June Mike Tyson bites Evander Holyfield’s ear, 1997 On this day in 1997, during a boxing match for the WBA Heavyweight Championship title, one of the fighters, “Iron” Mike Tyson, bit off a chunk of the ear of his opponent, Evander “The Real Deal” Holyfield. The fight was a rematch, after Holyfield had knocked out Tyson in the 11th round seven months earlier, to take the title. Billed as “The Sound and the Fury”, the fight took place at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, and right from the start Tyson was complaining to referee Mills Lane about … Read more
The Apple
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 28 November Navy Day, Iran Today is Navy Day in Iran. It’s the day every year when Iranians remember Operation Morvarid, a tactical strike against the Iraqi Navy in 1980, which resulted in much of the Iraqi Navy being destroyed. The Iranians, using American built F-4 Phantoms and F-5 Tiger aircraft, attacked Iraqi airfields, while a task force of the Iranian navy attacked Iraqi oil terminals, and two missile boats blocked the ports of Al Faw and Umm Qasr and started heavy shelling. Careful planning, lightning deployment, plenty of back-up and the strategic defence of all units involved in the attack … Read more
