Landscape: Bazille

"Paysage au bord du Lez" (Landscape by the River Lez) from 1870.  French impressionist painter Frédéric Bazille was born on this day in 1841. 

Pow! Bam! Thunk!

"Batman" premiered 60 years ago. The show was on ABC, with 120 episodes. The show ran from January 12, 1966, to March 14, 1968, twice weekly during the first two seasons, and weekly for the third. The show was such a big deal!

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Sergei Korolev and the Soviet Space Program

 Born January 12, 1907, Soviet engineer Sergei Korolev (on the right) was the lead designer and engineer in the Soviet space program of the '50s and '60s. Here he is with Yuri Gagarin, the first human to go into space. Korolev invented the R-7 rocket, the first artificial satellite Sputnik 1, and the satellite Sputnik 3. He worked on the missions that sent dogs into orbit, and also Gagarin's mission and that of Alexi Leonov, who made the first spacewalk. A successful manned mission to the moon remained out of reach for the Soviet space program. In 1938-1944 Korolev--at the time an engineer at a research institute in Leningrad--was incarcerated and sent into the Gulag system as a consequence of Stalin's Great Purge. It's likely that some of Korolev's health issues leading to his death in 1966 stemmed from that awful period.

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John DeLorean and His Famous Car

Back in the late '90s, I was filling up my car at Burnt Prairie, IL, a little place along I-64, way out in the country. A DeLorean pulled up for gas, and I thought, That's neat!  Then a second one arrived, and a third, and a fourth. What's going on? It was a DeLorean car club, traveling together. No flux capacitors.... John DeLorean was born 100 years ago, January 6, 1925, (He died in 2005.) He was a General Motors executive who oversaw the development of the Pontiac GTO, Pontiac Firebird, Pontiac Grand Prix, and the Chevrolet Cosworth Vega. He left GM to found the DeLorean Motor Company. But the production of the cars was long delayed. The first DMC DeLorean sports car was completed on January 21, 1981. They had quality issues resulting in recalls, and they arrived amid an economic downturn. DeLorean was caught cocaine trafficking, to pay his company's debts, but he was ultimately acquitted with the defense of police entrapment. The Back to the Future movies helped his car gain immortality.

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