Happy 200th, U.S. Grant

Ulysses S. Grant was born on this day (as Hiram Ulysses Grant) in Ohio 200 years ago today. According to the National Park Service website where I got this picture, he graduated from West Point in 1843 and was ordered to join the 4th U.S. Infantry at Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis. While there, he met Julia Dent, the sister of Grant's West Point roommate's younger sister, Julia Dent. Julia lived nearby on the White Haven estate. She and Ulysses were married in 1848. This picture is from the mid 1840s. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/ulysses-s-grant-in-st-louis-1854-1860.htm?fbclid=IwAR27K8gOvLwmru_pvFpwirAq05vWob5LO_RoLgtnKBuSDovg3wUE1sUUiag

Yom Hashoah

Yom Hashoah begins this evening and continues till tomorrow evening. As this says: "The full name of the day commemorating the victims of the Holocaust is “Yom Hashoah Ve-Hagevurah“– literally the “Day of (Remembrance of) the Holocaust and the Heroism.” It is marked on the 27th day in the month of Nisan — a week after the seventh day of Passover, and a week before Yom Hazikaron (Memorial Day for Israel’s fallen soldiers)." 27 Nisan, which is a lunar date, falls on April 27-28 this year. As I understand it, the Israeli government first established the day to coincide with the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in the spring of 1943, when 35,000 Jews staged a resistance against the Nazis that lasted nearly a month.

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/yom-hashoah-holocaust-memorial-day/?fbclid=IwAR2QL6OZxIlqNJw3IwMRengDzZAHtcXh-rwthVqWbEzhFIuiMHGXkuJkQ60

Jack Klugman

A wonderful actor! Jack Klugman was born 100 years ago today. (He died in 2012.)

Landscape: Robert Newton Hurley

"Prairie Landscape" by Robert Newton Hurley (1894-1980), from: https://www.mutualart.com/Artist/Robert-Newton-Hurley/A1BF3551CC9D3F07/AuctionResults?Type=Sold_Unsold&action=filter

Death of the Red Baron

Manfred von Richthofen, the "Red Baron", was killed on this day in 1918, aged only 25. He was credited with 80 air victories, the most among World War I pilots. He was fatally wounded as he chased a Sopwith Camel flown by a Canadian pilot. Richthofen's death was at first credited to another Canadian pilot, pursuing from behind. That pilot modestly only ever claimed to have fired at a red triplane. Through eyewitness accounts and analysis of the angle of the Baron's wound, researchers have determined that he died from ground fire from an Australian anti-aircraft gunner. There is speculation that a previous head wound, or perhaps combat stress impaired the usually careful Richthofen's judgment in engaging in an air battle over a risky area. On the other hand, the changing areas of the western front in April 1918 made military intelligence difficult to gather and relay. 

I have a book, "Who Killed the Red Baron?" (1969), in which the author investigates the circumstances of his death: fascinating though sad reading. Another book that I enjoyed when I was in junior high: "The Red Knight of Germany. The Story of Baron von Richthofen, Germany's Great War Bird" (1927). I checked it out of Vandalia's library several times! I also enjoyed putting together models of World War I planes. At the time, Vandalia had a lovely little hobby shop, on North Sixth Street just south of Orchard. 

 

Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun

Here's an interesting artist whose birth anniversary was this past Saturday. Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun was born April 16, 1755. She painted 660 portraits and 200 landscapes, many of which are in the Met, the Louvre, Versailles, Uffizi, the Hermitage, London's National Gallery, and others. Here are two self-portraits, one of her portraits of Marie Antoinette, and the landscape "La fête des bergers à Unspunnen" (The Shepherds' Festival at Unspunnen). "There is also a long tradition of great artists– Rubens and Velázquez, John Singer Sargent and Tina Barney – who served as courtiers to the elites of the day, and used the power that intimacy afforded to remake the rules of representation. Vigée Le Brun was an artist at that lofty level, at a moment women weren’t supposed to be artists at all" (https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/feb/12/vigee-le-brun-metropolitan-museum-of-art-woman-artist-revolutionary-france).

Bergen-Belsen Anniversary

This anniversary is tomorrow but I'm reading about it today. This is very hard to read and comprehend but it's so important, if you can. Allied forces liberated the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on April 15, 1945. This was the camp where Anne and Margot Frank died in February 1945, among the perhaps 50,000 persons, mostly Jews, who died there during the first months of 1945.

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/bergen-belsen?fbclid=IwAR0mI23k7qirOS5kLA3dheBL6_Ov3PlWQ7KsV6gaCz1gMWYuePeiVy0Pugk

Christiaan Huygens

Multitalented Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens was born on this day in 1649. He is considered the first theoretical physicist; he derived the formulae for centripetal and centrifugal force; identified the laws of elastic collision; developed a wave theory of light; invented the pendulum clock; made improvements to the telescope; discovered Saturn's moon Titan and also the rings of Saturn.

The Grapes of Wrath

".. the people are in flight, and they come into 66 from the tributary side roads, from the wagon tracks and the rutted country roads. 66 is the mother road, the road of flight." 

Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" was published 83 years ago today. It was a great book to read for our "American Highways and American Wanderlust" honors class at UAkron, back in the '00s. 

Lincoln's Assassination

157 years ago this evening, April 14, 1865, Lincoln and his wife Mary and two others went to Ford’s Theatre to see the comedy “Our American Cousin.” April 14 was Good Friday that year. John Wilkes Booth and his co-conspirers had plotted to assassinate Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State William Seward. The would-be assassin of Johnson got cold feet.  Although Seward was seriously injured, he was not killed. But Booth entered Lincoln’s theatre box, at a moment in the play where Booth knew the gunshot would be drowned out by audience laughter: "Don’t know the manners of good society, eh? Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal — you sockdologizing old man-trap." At that, Booth fatally wounded Lincoln with a single shot and jumped onto the stage, breaking his leg in the process. He escaped, and a few days later he was located and killed. Lincoln was carried to the house across the street from the theatre, where he died at 7:22 AM Saturday morning, April 15. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton is reported to declared, "Now he belongs to the ages."

King Philip's War Treaty Anniversary

King Philip's War was a bloody colonial conflict between the New England English and several Native tribes who had tired of English encroachment upon tribal lands in spite of earlier treaties. Wampanoag chief Massasoit had negotiated a peace treaty with the colonists at Plymouth Plantation in 1621. By 1675, his son Metacom, angered by the hanging of three Wampanoags at Plymouth, led attacks against English settlements, destroying some, including Providence, RI, Simbury, CT, and others.... English militia responded by attacking native villages, including a Narragansett fort in Rhode Island, although the Narragansetts had been trying to stay neutral. ... Some of my relatives lived in Bridgewater, MA at the time; at least one and maybe 3 participated in the fighting. ....The murder of Metacom  in August 1676 effectively ended much of the war, although a formal treaty wasn't signed until April 12, 1678. The war was the bloodiest war per capita in American history and tragically set the template for future attitudes and policies toward Native tribes: the ugly characterization of them, the sense of entitlement to their lands, broken treaties, and the erasure of their histories from later accounts of Euro-American history. Even the Declaration of Independence, with its vision of "all men are created equal," characterizes Native tribes as "the merciless Indian Savages." .... The town of Metamora, IL is named for a popular 19th-century play, a fictionalized story of Metacom that did make him a heroic, tragic figure... Here's the grave of my 7th-great-uncle who is on record as a soldier in the war:  https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/10749663/john-washburn

My ancestor James Carson, 1819-1859

My ancestor James Carson--the father of my dad's maternal grandfather--died on this day in 1859, after being accidentally shot during a hunting trip. He and his father and his aunt are buried in the Lorton Cemetery \in northeastern Fayette Co., IL. I wrote a long poem in which I used April 12 as a theme: so much happened on April 12. President Franklin Roosevelt died (1945), journalists began to report from Buchewald (1945), the first human went into space (1961), Dr. King was arrested in Birmingham, occasioning his famous Letter (1963), Lee's army folded their battle flags and received their parole papers (1865), and Lincoln told a friend about his troubling, portentous dream that he (Lincoln) was dead and lying in state in the White House. (Lincoln died three days later.) In 1859, John Brown was raising money on April 12th, Dickens was about to publish "A Tale of Two Cities," Darwin was rushing to finish "On the Origin of Species," and Darwin's friend, botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker, was horrified that his children had used sheets of Darwin's manuscript for their coloring. What fun to discover all these facts and correlations! (Shameless commerce, LOL: https://www.finishinglinepress.com/.../walking-lorton.../)

Edward Everett Beyond Gettysburg

It's kind of sad that Edward Everett is remembered for giving a two-hour speech for the dedication of the Gettysburg Cemetery, followed by President Lincoln's much more famous two-minute speech. But Everett was one of the great orators of his time, serving also as a U.S. Senator, U.S. Representative, Govenror of Massachusetts, Minister to Great Britain, U.S. Secretary of State, and president of Harvard, where he also taught. He was born April 11, 1794.

Dr. Percy Julian

Research chemist Percy Lavon Julian pioneered the chemical synthesis of medicinal drugs from plants. He was the first to synthesize physostigmine for glaucoma treatment. He also pioneered the  large-scale chemical synthesis of the human hormones progesterone and testosterone, and helped establish the industrial production of cortisone, other corticosteroids, and birth control pills. The grandson of slaves, he was the first African-American chemist inducted into the National Academy of Sciences. He was born April 11, 1899. 

Picture copied from internet under fair use principles. 

Bart Giamatti

A. Bartlett Giamatti was born on April 4, 1938. He was Yale University's president in 1978-1986 and then National League Baseball president and later Commissioner of Major League Baseball, during which he negotiated Pete Rose's withdrawal from baseball. The actor Paul Giamatti is his son--such a great actor! During a Yale festival of some sort in the early 1980s, I noticed Pres. Giamatti and took his picture while he was chatting with the mayor of New Haven.

Commodore Perry and Japan

Emily got me interested in this history. During the Edo period of Japanese history (1603-1867), the shogunate enforced a policy of "Sakoku" ("locked country"), which restricted trade and international relations. Trade still happened with China via the port of Nagasaki, as well as access to technology and information from the Dutch. During that period, there were numerous attempts from Western nations to open relations with Japan. Then, Commodore Matthew C. Perry and his squadron visited Japan in 1853. His ability and promise to use force happened to coincide with a weak moment in the shoganate, which equivocated concerning Perry's threats. This, in turn, led to popular distrust in the shoganate. Long story short, key Japanese leaders saw this as the chance to strengthen Japan with Western technology and influence. The end of the shoganate and the restoration of imperial rule, with the 1867 Meiji Restoration, resulted from these developments. Matthew Perry was born April 10, 1794. He is also notable as a commander in the War of 1812 and the Mexican War, and in leading efforts to modernize Navy ships with steam engines. Here he is in a photo by Matthew Brady, a Japanese portrait, and a Japanese picture that portrays him with goblin features. http://visualizingcultures.mit.edu/.../bss_essay02.htmlstill

Joseph Pulitzer's Birthday

Joseph Pulitzer was a Hungarian-Jewish immigrant to America. After serving in the Union army toward the end of the war, he moved to St. Louis. Poor and speaking little English, he met many German immigrants in St. louis with whom to communicate. Several years later, he invested in two dying newspapers, merging them as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He also purchased the New York World. He left Columbia University a large bequest, from which the university established the Pulitzer Prizes. He was born April 9, 1847.

Jim Bowie

Frontiersman and folk hero Jim Bowie was born on March 10 or April 10, 1796. Among his exploits was a duel in which he killed a sheriff with a large knife that Bowie's brother designed. Jim Bowie moved to Texas in 1830 where he became a Mexican citizen and joined the Texas militia during the Revolution. He was killed at the Alamo. This is the only portrait from life. The British musician David Jones changed his name to David Bowie became he liked stories of Jim and his knife. David Bowie, though, pronounced his name as BOH-ee, unlike Jim BOO-ee.

Happy 200th birthday, Christopher Smart!

English poet Christopher Smart was born April 11, 1722, 200 years ago. He wrote a considerable amount of poetry during his 49 years, much of it with religious themes and imagery. While confined to an asylum in 1759-1763 he wrote a very long poem, "Jubilate Agno" (Rejoice in the Lamb), which was discovered in 1939. The poem became influential for 20th century poets like Allan Ginsberg, Wendy Cope, and others. The composer Benjamin Britten wrote a beautiful piece "Rejoice in the Lamb" with selections from Smart's poem. The "Jubilate Agno" section that begins "For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry" is popular with cat lovers and has been published in its own books. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45173/jubilate-agno

Alberto Ginastera, 1916-1983

This cat looks like it's thinking, "far out, man!".... The Argentinian composer Alberto Ginastera is considered one of the most important 20th century composers from the Americas. His music is influenced by Argentinian folk music and also composers like Bartók and Copland. Ginastera got on the wrong side of the Perón regime and lived abroad for many years, especially the U.S. and Switzerland. In 1973, the prog rock group Emerson, Lake, and Palmer did a version of one of his pieces on their "Brain Salad Surgery" album. Ginastera's works include three operas, two piano concertos, a harp concerto and a violin concerto, numerous vocal and chamber works and works for piano. A few years ago the St. Louis Symphony performed his lovely "Variaciones concertantes." Ginastera was born April 11, 1916.

Elihu Yale

Elihu Yale was an American-born British colonial administator who served as President of the British East India Company settlement in Fort St. George, at Madras. He does not seem to have been a slave owner himself. (His financial records are not extant.) But he oversaw economic operations, including slave trading, while supervising Fort St. George. Historians debate whether he opposed or encouraged the slave trade. Two paintings of him, however, show a young enslaved man, apparently Tamil, with a locked collar around his neck. ... Yale retired to Wales. Back in America, in 1718, a small place in Connecticut called Collegiate School was struggling financially. New England clergyman Cotton Mather approached Yale about a gift to the school. Yale sent over £800 worth of books and goods--maybe $100,000 or more today. Collegiate School was soon named Yale College in his honor. Yale College became Yale University in 1887. ... During the past several years, there have been many discussions about the fact that the school's namesake had some involvement in the slave trade, and what was the school's early history in relation to slavery. Should the school be renamed after over 300 years? It seems unlikely, although one of the colleges was recently renamed for Rear Adm. Grace Hopper, rather than the slavery-supporting alum John C. Calhoun. The most recent alum magazine had an article about slavery at Yale and in New Haven in the early years. Good that it's being acknowledged and discussed... As for Elihu Yale, he was born April 5, 1649. The 300th anniversary of his death was last summer.

Darwin's Notebooks Are Back!

Quite a story!.... I have an interesting book, "Darwin: Discovering the Tree of Life" by Niles Eldredge, who was Stephen Jay Gould's colleague. Eldredge goes through Darwin's notebooks to explain Darwin's process of thinking.

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-60980288