Promotional photo of the Doors in late 1966
(l–r: Densmore, Krieger, Manzarek and Morrison)
In 1967, the Doors were well-known in the Los Angeles music scene. As the house band for Whiskey a Go Go on the Sunset Strip, the Doors had a large local following and were building a strong buzz in the industry.
The Whisky a Go Go on the Sunset Strip
On tour, they typically received third billing but that was soon to change. With their debut album, The Doors, the first song released as a single failed to climb the charts but the follow up release, “Light My Fire” became number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on July 29, 1967. As a result, The Doors and its legendary lead singer, Jim Morrison became international pop stars.
51 countries gathered in San Francisco that year to sign a document.
Before the Second World War, many Americans believed in an isolationist policy. In July 1945, the war was nearly over and the U.S. Senate noted the American change in attitude towards world affairs. On July 28, 1945, with a nearly unanimous vote 89 to 2, the U.S. Senate approved the United Nations charter. A delighted President Harry S. Truman said,
The action of the Senate substantially advances the cause of world peace.
Acting Secretary of State, Joseph Grew was also pleased with the Senate’s actions. He said,
Millions of men, women and children have died because nations took to the naked sword instead of the conference table to settle their differences.
It was believed that the U.N. charter would provide the “foundation and cornerstone on which the international organization to keep the peace will be built.” The attempt at such previously was after the first world war with the League of Nations but this failed due to postwar isolationism and partisan politics.
Although whether the United Nations has achieved its goals is debatable; the U.N. Security Council has been the scene of many heated cold war debates between the United States and the former Soviet Union.
Although there was an earlier version (April 30, 1938), the official version of an iconic American cartoon character, Bugs Bunny, appeared 75 years ago on July 27′ 1940.
“FirstBugs” by Source. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia – http://ift.tt/1ICdFpY
Tex Avert’s Oscar-nominated film, A Wild Hare starred the beloved character and he has appeared in various short films, feature films, compilations, television series, music records, comic books, video games, award shows, amusement park rides and commercials ever since. Bugs Bunny has been in more feature films than any other cartoon character, is the ninth most portrayed film personality in the world and even has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
I’ve written about the Blitz several times on my site. On July 24, 1943, the British turned the tables on the Germans. It was the British in Operation Gomorrah by night and the Americans by day.
In the month of July 1943, the deaths of British civilians by German bombing raids was 167 so on the evening of July 24, British aircraft dropped 2,300 tons of incendiary bombs on Hamburg, Germany. To compare, add together the five most destructive raids during the Blitz and you would have the equivalent of this one night. More than 1,500 German civilians were killed.
Hamburg after the 1943 bombing
The British had a new radar-jamming device called “Window.” With strips of aluminum foil dropped by the bombers as they headed to their target, German radar was confused and diverted from the actual bombers. The British only lost 12 out 791 aircraft in the raid.
While the British launched Operation G0morrah, the U.S. Eighth Air Force began bombing northern Germany which included two raids on Hamburg during daylight hours.
“The first big raid by the 8th Air Force was on a Focke Wulf plant at Marienburg. Coming back, the Germans were up in full force and we lost at least 80 ships – 800 men, many of them pals.” 1943. Army Air Forces. (OWI) Exact Date Shot Unknown NARA FILE #: 208-YE-7 WAR & CONFLICT BOOK #: 1087
The British raids continued until November 1943. While Germans could more easily distinguish the “Window” over time, it was not enough to prevent the devastation of Hamburg and German morale. Here are some statistics:
17,000 British bomber sorties
9,000 tons of explosives
30,000 people killed
280,000 buildings destroyed (including industrial and munition plants)
Hitler would not visit the burned-out cities as they were a symbol of the end of the war and Germany’s loss. History would reveal from diary entries that high German officials were in despair from the defeat.
Video published on Jul 9, 2013: Copyright Disclaimer: Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal
Yesterday was the anniversary of Apollo 11 landing on the moon. The next day, July 21, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first to step onto the lunar surface six hours. Armstrong spent about two and a half hours outside the spacecraft. Also on the mission was Buzz Aldrin who also walked on the moon but for slightly less time. Together they collected 47.5 pounds (21.5 kg) of lunar material for return to Earth. The third member of the mission, Michael Collins, piloted the command spacecraft alone in lunar orbit until Armstrong and Aldrin returned to it just under a day later for the trip back to Earth.
The Assignment: The idea of Photo Fiction is write a story of around 100-200 words (which is also called Flash Fiction) based on a photo as a prompt. In this particular photo fiction, the story must be based on the photo below. You can submit you story as well as read others at the link above.
On Sunday July 12th, I began a multiple part story, Nursery Crhymes which I continue today. To read the story from the beginning, click here.
Credit: Al Forbes
Nursery Crhymes (Part 2)
“He’s in London?” said Agent Bennett.
“No he is still here. To be safe, I’ve briefed London and sent men down to the various Manhattan bridges,” said the Chief.
In the briefing room, Chief addressed his officers.
“Remember your nursery rhymes and be more cunning. Any small detail, speak up.”
After the briefing, Officer Crimson returned to her desk in time to answer a call.
“Hello.”
“Hi mom. I’m home but I have to get back to Madison Square Garden.”
“Home?” Before he could answer, she remembered. “Right you have the engineering competition this week. Can I expect you for dinner?”
“I’m hoping to persuade this girl Kim to go out. I haven’t been able to locate her. You should see her scale model of the London Bridge. Her display was very popular, so I suppose she is taking a break.
“London Bridge?
“Yes. Why?”
“Odd but this may be connected to a serial killer we’ve been hunting.
“What!”
She turned to find the Chief and he looked grave.
“The body of a female student has been found in Madison Square Garden, dressed like a Queen and hidden under a scale model of the London Bridge. Another audio file has been received but this time it’s a few lyrics of a song.”
Throughout history women have made their mark in a wide variety of ways. Each Saturday I plan to highlight one of these remarkable women. There will be no limit to the areas of history that I may include; however as a guide I will look to the month of their birth, the month of their death or the month associated with their mark in history when I select them. Is there an outstanding women in history you would like me to include? I welcome your suggestions. You can access all the previous postings of these remarkable women from the menu at the top of my site.
Today an outstanding woman from literature. Meet Jane Austen.
Jane Austen (1775 – 1817)
My idea of good company is the company of clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.
Jane Austen
According to what I’ve read online, the biographical information about Jane Austen is very limited. She was born on December 16, 1775 in Hampshire, England. Her parents, George and Cassandra Austen were landed gentry. Her father served as the rector of the Anglican parishes at Steventon, Hampshire and he supplemented his income through farming and teaching three or four boys at a time of which the boys boarded with the family. Jane had six bothers [James, George, Edward, Henry Thomas, Frances William, Charles John] and one sister, Cassandra Elizabeth. Both Jane and her sister were never married.
Steventon rectory, as depicted in A Memoir of Jane Austen, was in a valley and surrounded by meadows
At only a few months of age, Jane was sent to be nursed and live with Elizabeth Littlewood, a woman who lived nearby and kept Jane for a year to eighteen months. In 1783, Jane and her sister Cassandra were sent to Oxford to be educated by Mrs. Ann Cawley. While there, both girls caught typhus and Jane nearly died. In 1785, both girls were sent to boarding school to learn French, spelling, needlework, dancing, music and drama but due to finances, both girls returned home by December 1786. Jane never again lived outside the environment of her immediate family.
It was through reading and guidance from her father and brothers that Jane continued her education. She had access to a substantial number of books both in her father’s library and that of a family friend. Jane’s father indulged her interest in writing although is was somewhat risqué at the time. Plays staged by the family and close friends introduced Jane to comedy. As early as 1787 (12 years old), Jane began writing poems, stories and plays to entertain her family. 29 of these early works were later compiled in a publication now referred to as Juvenilia. Among these works was a 34 page manuscript of the History of England of which 13 watercolor miniatures by her sister were included. Austen’s Juvenilia is often considered boisterous and without order and often compared to the 20th-century comedy of the group Monty Python.
BAL3847 Henry IV, c.1790 (w/c) by Austen, Cassandra (c.1772-1845)
Private Collection
English, out of copyright
As an adult, Jane continued to live with her family. This life entailed all that was expected of a woman of that age and social standing. She assisted with the servants and attended to female relatives when they were in childbirth. She attended church and socialized frequently with friends and neighbors including attending balls and assemblies. (Sounds a lot like Elizabeth Bennet of Pride and Prejudice.) During this time, she continued to write and it was in 1789 that she decided to write for profit and become a professional writer. By 1793 she began writing longer more sophisticated works.
Early Novels
Lady Susan is a short epistolary novel (in the form of letters) by Jane Austen, possibly written in 1794 but not published until 1871 (after death). An early complete work that the author never submitted for publication. It describes the schemes of the main character—the widowed Lady Susan—as she seeks a new husband for herself and one for her daughter.
Sense and Sensibility (originally titled Elinor and Marianne) was her first published work when it appeared in 1811 under the pseudonym “A Lady”. A work of romantic fiction, better known as a comedy of manners, Sense and Sensibility is set in southwest England, London and Kent between 1792 and 1797, and portrays the life and loves of the Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne. The novel follows the young ladies to their new home, a meager cottage on a distant relative’s property, where they experience love, romance and heartbreak.
Pride and Prejudice (originally titled First Impressions) is a novel of manners, first published in 1813. Set in England in the early 19th century, Pride and Prejudice tells the story of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet’s five unmarried daughters after the rich and eligible Mr. Bingley and his status-conscious friend, Mr. Darcy, have moved into their neighborhood. While Bingley takes an immediate liking to the eldest Bennet daughter, Jane, Darcy has difficulty adapting to local society and repeatedly clashes with the second-eldest Bennet daughter, Elizabeth.
Northanger Abbey (Original working title Susan) was the first of Jane Austen’s novels to be completed for publication, though she had previously made a start on Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice. The novel was further revised by Austen in 1816/17, with the intention of having it published. Among other changes, the lead character’s name was changed from Susan to Catherine, and Austen retitled the book Catherine as a result. Austen died in July 1817. Northanger Abbey (as the novel was now called) was brought out posthumously in late December 1817. Northanger Abbey is a satire on the popular gothic novel. You can read a plot summary here.
Personal Life
I mentioned before that Jane and her sister Cassandra never married but this did not mean there hadn’t been chances for Jane. When Jane was twenty, Tom Lefroy, a nephew of a neighbor visited Steventon from December 1795 to January 1796. He had just finished a university degree and was moving to London to train as a barrister. Introduced at a ball or other neighborhood social gathering, it was clear from Austen’s letters to Cassandra that the two spent considerable time together. The Lefroy family intervened and sent him away at the end of January. Marriage was impractical as neither had any money, and Lefroy was dependent on a great-uncle in Ireland to finance his education and establish his legal career. If Tom Lefroy later visited Hampshire, he was carefully kept away from the Austens, and Jane Austen never saw him again. The sentimental relationship between Jane and Tom is at the center of the 2007 biographical film Becoming Jane.
Thomas Langlois Lefroy, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, by W. H. Mote (1855); in old age, Lefroy admitted to a nephew that he had been in love with Jane Austen: “It was boyish love.”
In December 1802, Austen received her only known proposal of marriage. While visiting friends in Basingstoke, Alethea and Catherine Bigg, their younger brother, Harris Bigg-Wither, who had recently finished his education at Oxford was at home. Bigg-Wither proposed and Austen accepted. Harris was not attractive. He was a large, plain-looking man who spoke little, stuttered when he did speak, was aggressive in conversation, and almost completely tactless. Jane had known him since both were young and the marriage offered many practical advantages to Austen and her family. He was the heir to extensive family estates located in the area where the sisters had grown up. With these resources, Austen could provide her parents a comfortable old age, give Cassandra a permanent home and, perhaps, assist her brothers in their careers. By the next morning, Austen realized she had made a mistake and withdrew her acceptance. No contemporary letters or diaries describe how Austen felt about this proposal.
Harris Bigg-Wither
Life in Chawton and Publication
Jane’s father died in 1805 leaving his wife and daughters in a difficult financial situation. From 1805 and 1809, the ladies lived in various rented accommodations. In early 1809, Jane’s brother Edward offered them the use of a large cottage in Chawton Village which was part of his estate. The ladies moved in and it brought them a more settled life. Jane would live in this cottage for the remaining eight years of her life. This cottage is now the Jane Austen’s House Museum. It was during this quiet settled life that Jane became published (See the three listed above) and a fourth, Mansfield Park. Later her fifth and sixth, Emma and Persuasion.
The cottage in Chawton where Jane Austen lived during the last eight years of her life, now Jane Austen’s House Museum
Mansfield Park is the third novel by Jane Austen, written at Chawton Cottage between February 1811 and 1813. It was published in May 1814 by Thomas Egerton, who published Jane Austen’s two earlier novels, Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice. In the novel, a young girl named Fanny Price comes to live with her wealthy uncle and aunt, Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram. Fanny’s family is quite poor; her mother, unlike her sister Lady Bertram, married beneath her, and Fanny’s father, a sailor, is disabled and drinks heavily. Fanny is abused by her other aunt, Mrs. Norris, a busybody who runs things at Mansfield Park, the Bertrams’ estate. The Bertram daughters, Maria and Julia, are shallow, rather cruel girls, intent on marrying well and being fashionable. The elder son, Tom, is a roustabout and a drunk. Fanny finds solace only in the friendship of the younger son, Edmund, who is planning to be a clergyman. Fanny grows up shy and deferential, caught as she typically is between members of the Bertram family.
Emma, is a novel about youthful hubris and the perils of misconstrued romance. The novel was first published in December 1815. As in her other novels, Austen explores the concerns and difficulties of genteel women living in Georgian-Regency England; she also creates a lively comedy of manners among her characters.
Persuasion (Originally titled The Elliots) is her last completed novel. She began it soon after she had finished Emma and completed it in August 1816. Persuasion was published in December 1817 (but dated 1818). Persuasion is linked to Northanger Abbey not only by the fact that the two books were originally bound up in one volume and published together, but also because both stories are set partly in Bath, a fashionable city with which Austen was well acquainted, having lived there from 1801 to 1805. Besides the theme of persuasion, the novel evokes other topics, such as the Royal Navy, in which two of Jane Austen’s brothers ultimately rose to the rank of admiral. As in Northanger Abbey, the superficial social life of Bath—well known to Austen, who spent several relatively unhappy and unproductive years there—is portrayed extensively and serves as a setting for the second half of the book.
Illness and Death
Early in 1816, Jane began feeling unwell and she ignored it at first. By the middle of the year, her illness was unmistakable and lead to a long, slow deterioration that ended in her death the following year (July 18, 1817, age 41). There is more than one biographical description of the cause of death. These are: Addison’s disease, Hodgkin’s lymphoma, bovine tuberculosis from unpasteurized milk or Brill-Zinsser Disease, a recurrent form of typhus. She had completed several chapters of a new novel before she died.
In Sanditon, Austen explored her interest in the verbal construction of a society by means of a town – and a set of families – that is still in the process of being formed. The manuscript for Sanditon was originally titled “The Brothers”, possibly after the Parker brothers in the story. After her death, her family renamed it “Sanditon”. The original manuscript includes only the first eleven chapters of the story.
Her brother Henry, through his clerical connections, arranged for his sister to be buried in the north aisle of the nave of Winchester Cathedral. The epitaph composed by her brother James praises Austen’s personal qualities, expresses hope for her salvation, mentions the “extraordinary endowments of her mind”, but does not explicitly mention her achievements as a writer.
Jane Austen is buried in Winchester Cathedral.
Jane Austen’s memorial gravestone in the nave of Winchester Cathedral
There are many resources online to read about her continuing posthumous legacy.
I will end my post today with an unforgettable scene from the A & E Television adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. My favorite adaptation.
Locations of B-29 bomber bases in China and the main targets they attacked in East Asia during Operation Matterhorn
On June 15 and 16, 1944, the United States Army Air Force (USAAF) strategic bombers conducted their first air raid on the Japanese home islands. 75 B-29 Superfortress heavy bombers staged from bases in China. The target was the Imperial Iron and Steel Works at Yawatta in northern Kyūshū but only 47 of the bombers hit the target. Five B-29s were lost in accidents and two were destroyed by Japanese aircraft.
While the raid did not achieve its aims, it had other effects. It raised Japanese civilians’ awareness that their country was being defeated and received unduly positive media coverage in the United States. Intelligence gathered by the B-29s also revealed weaknesses in Japan’s air defenses and the raid was the first of many on Japan. Yawata was attacked again by B-29s operating from China on 20 August 1944 and much of the city was destroyed in a fire bombing raid conducted by B-29s based in the Mariana Islands on 8 August 1945.
Despite that the raid did not achieve its aims, it did have other effects. It raised Japanese civilians’ awareness that their country was being defeated and received unduly positive media coverage in the United States. Intelligence gathered by the B-29s also revealed weaknesses in Japan’s air defenses and the raid was the first of many on Japan. Yawata was attacked again by B-29s operating from China on August 20, 1944 and much of the city was destroyed in a fire bombing raid conducted by B-29s based in the Mariana Islands on August 8 1945.
The unmanned spacecraft, Mariner 4 was launched in November 1964 to study Mars and interplanetary space within the solar system. On board were a television camera and six other science instruments. Mariner 4 reached Mars on July 14, 1965 and just after midnight on July 15, 1965, the spacecraft began sending television images revealing a vast, barren wasteland of craters and rust-colored sand. Though barren, there did appear to be ancient natural waterways of some kind. Mariner 4 journeyed on to the far side of the sun and returned to the vicinity of Earth in 1967. By then the spacecraft was nearly out of power and communication with the spacecraft was terminated in December 1967.
On July 14, 1868, Alvin J. Fellows of New Haven, Connecticut filed a patent for the first attempt at a spring tape measure.
On July 14, 1868, the design of a spring measuring tape in a circular case was patented by a man named, Alvin J. Fellows of New Haven, Connecticut.
Many years later on January 3, 1922, Hiram A. Farrand received his patent filed in 1919 for a spring tape measure. Over the next few years, he and William Wentworth Brown of Brown Company in Berlin, New Hampshire began mass-producing the tape measure. It was later sold to Stanley Works.
On July 13, 1985, at Wembley Stadium in London, Prince Charles and Princess Diana officially open Live Aid, a worldwide rock concert organized to raise money for the relief of famine-stricken Africans.
Princess Diana, Prince Charles and Bob Geldof
Live Aid 1985
Live Aid Wembley Stadium, London England 1985
Continued at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia and at other arenas around the world, the 16-hour “superconcert” was globally linked by satellite to more than a billion viewers in 110 nations. In a triumph of technology and good will, the event raised more than $125 million in famine relief for Africa.
Live Aid JFK Stadium, Philadelphia PA USA 1985
This venue doesn’t exist any more. I didn’t have tickets for Live Aid so I wasn’t there but I had enjoy several other concert events at JFK. This stadium was also used for the…
