Anniversary of Pride and Prejudice

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." Jane Austin's second novel, "Pride and Prejudice", was published on January 28, 1813. She completed the first version in 1797 when she was 21. She had challenges during the years in between, including the difficulty of a woman finding a publisher in a male-dominated profession. Even published, she had to accept the convention that a woman author shouldn’t have her own name on the title page. (The Brontë sisters used male-sounding pen names, while Mary Shelley published "Frankenstein" without her name.) These are all immortal authors! Austen’s novels are among the most beloved of all novels. The first American edition of this one, slightly retitled "Elizabeth Bennet; or, Pride and Prejudice", appeared in 1832. Photo from Wikipedia. 

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The Famous Madame X

Born in New Orleans on January 29, 1859, Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau was a Parisian socialite married to a French banker and shipping magnate. She was celebrated for her fashion and beauty routine that emphasized her hair and her pale skin. One of John Singer Sargent's famous paintings is of her: "Portrait of Madame X" (1884). Unfortunately, the painting caused a scandal: her fair complexion was perceived as a symptom of poor health, and her dress (at first with only one strap) was provocative. It's hard not to read moral superiority rather than aesthetic judgment in the reviews. Eventually Sargent sold it to its current place, the Met in New York--and the portrait is considered one of the artist's greatest works. Gautreau had other portraits commissioned, too. She died in 1915.

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Anniversary of an Important Darwin Work

Darwin's long work, "The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication" was published on this day in 1868. Published a little over eight years after "Origin of Species," the book provides Darwin's data about mechanisms of variation among domestic species and the role of environment in species development. Darwin offered his "provisional hypothesis" on what he called "pangenesis," a kind of particle mechanism for how species features are passed among generations. He didn't have the benefit of Mendel's researches on genetics, which only became widely known over thirty years later. So Darwin's provisional hypothesis wasn't as well received as his accumulation of data about variations.

 

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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