In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on June 19th 1905 Harry Davis opened (almost*) the world's first purpose-built cinema. The entry charge of five cents inspired Davis to christen his auditorium "The Nickelodeon" and its 96 strong audience could delight in watching a mixture of short one-reel "movies" interspersed with vaudeville acts such as Henry Walte, the world's foremost "trick violinist", one Naomi Ethardo, the "famous European Equilibrist", and a certain Marvelous LePage, the "skilful novelty jumper".

Davis was emboldened to embark on his venture after a rather short-sighted strike by Vaudeville performers two years before had meant that theatres around the USA had switched to showing short (one minute) films then beginning to emanate from an obscure piece of real estate outside Los Angeles in California. By the time the strike was over this increased demand had effectively launched the Hollywood film industry, and within ten years of The Nickelodeon opening vaudeville was all but dead. By 1915 however the number of nickelodeons in the USA was estimated at 17,000.




(* the world's first purpose-built cinema had actually opened two months beforehand - the Biografteatret in Copenhagen, brainchild of one
Ole Olsen)

20th June 1895, the Kiel Canal is officially opened by the Kaiser;



SMS Woerth photographed after passing the Levensau High Bridge

21st June 1964, three civil rights workers are murdered in Mississippi.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_civil_rights_workers_murders

The case would become the basis of the film Mississippi Burning

22nd June 1893;

HMS Camperdown collides with and sinks HMS Victoria during fleet maneuvers off the Lebanon coast;

http://cityofart.net/bship/victoria.htm

24th June 1812, Napoleon's Grand Armee begins crossing the River Niemen on it's invasion of Russia.

25th June 1876,

Five companies of the 7th Cavalry led by George Armstrong Custer are wiped out by hostile tribes on bluffs above the Little Bighorn river, Montana Territory

They probably tripped over all those bloody stones someone left scattered around!

That may well be the case.
Around 250 7th Cavalrymen were killed at the Little Big Horn and the US Government sent out headstones for each one, to be used for the battlefield clean up operations in 1877.
The troopers had only been buried in shallow graves and by the time the grave marker detail reached them, the wolves and coyotes had been at work.
The graves were dug and marked as best as possible, but they used up all the markers which had been sent out on the Last Stand battlefield, completely forgetting about the Reno-Benteen battlefield 3 miles up river. Since there were about 220 with Custer and not all of these bodies were found, 30-40 markers placed on the battlefield did not mark any corpses.
In 1881, all of the bodies still on the field were re-interred in a single plot at the National Monument Marker, so now the gravestones don't mark any burials.

26th June 1857,

The first investitures of the Victoria Cross, take place in Hyde Park

http://www.victoriacross.org.uk/aainves1.htm

27th June 1905,

A delivery of maggot infested meat sparks a mutiny aboard the Russian battleship Potemkin

28th July 1586:

More food related history. Sir Thomas Harriot is credited with bringing the potato into Britain. I didn't know this man, but he seems to have had many abilities, as astronomer, scientist, linguist, ethnographer. I can't imagine life without potatoes and tomatoes. And sugar. Our ancestors' diets seem to me rather one-dimensional.

31st July seems to have been a day for communications. 1830 the first hand printing press arrived in New Zealand, brought by Rev William Yates. A Maori catechism, Ko te Katikihama III was the first printed publication in NZ.

1910: Dr Hawley Crippens was arrested for the murder of his wife, Cora, becoming the first person arrested for a criminal offence with the aid of wireless.

1912: The world's first censorship laws were passed in the USA, and bringing joy to lawyers ever since.

1964: The first close-up pictures of the moon were transmitted to Earth.

2003: The Vatican isses a document uring Roman Catholic lawmakers to reject legislation sanctioning same-sex civil unions and adoption rights. (At this moment here policitians are having conscious votes on whether to allow gay marriage in NZ or not. There are civil unions at this stage.)

Heartening to hear that one must be conscious to vote in Antipodean parliaments. It marks a radical departure from the UK system.

Now I wouldn't make that mistake hand-writing. I don't understand why, when typing, I write lots of words that don't make any sense. At least that one starts with the right letters.

And on this day in 1932, for the first time, it was possible to work, rest and play assisted by the nutritional benefits of a Mars Bar.

Our little community newspaper has a recipe from a reader each week and this week's was for Mars Bar Slice. It had 3 Mars Bars, 85gm butter and three cups of rice bubbles. Made me feel sick reading about it.

1040: King Duncan is killed by Macbeth, who then becomes king and rules for 17 years. (A respected NZ children's author has a series of books, starting with Banquo's Son, which takes the Shakespearean version and weaves a story round it. I think it's a rather dangerous way to deal with history, beginning with a false premise.)

23 August 1305: The brutal execution of William Wallace at Smithfield in London.

One should remember that though the manner of his death was indeed brutal, it was in accord with the law at that time. It was also no worse than he himself had committed against captured English soldiers in war. He was condemned after trial at Westminster Hall, on charges not only of treason, but also for atrocities against civilians in war, "sparing neither age nor sex, monk nor nun."^[

Oh, and while we're on brutal murders....

23 August 1572 : The St Bartholomew's Day Massacre - a wave of Catholic mob violence against Huguenots began. It continued for several months resulting in an estimated tens of thousands of deaths across France.

EDIT : I am trying to find something more cheerful than these anniversaries but all I can find are atrocities, hostage takings, executions, transport disasters..... perhaps 23 August is a genuinely inasuspiscious day and we should all just stay at home! Surely someone can find something more uplifting.

Goodness, you're right MM, a catalogue of misery and disaster.

410 - Rome falls to the Visigoths. OK not as bad as often made out but still a bit of a shock to the system.
1793 - France introduces first national conscription
1914 - Battle of Mons
1939 - German - Russian non aggression pact
1940 - Start of the London Blitz

Oh and Rudolph Valentino and Oscar Hammerstein died on this day as well.

Quote :

Surely someone can find something more uplifting.

In another thread I learnt today that Scotland is uplifting, but I know what you mean.

On August 23rd 1803 Dorothy Wordsworth, her brother William and their mate Coleridge were in Glasgow. She didn't find it too uplifting either. This from their morning sojourn to the tenter fields:

"A cold morning. Walked to the bleaching-ground, a large field bordering on the Clyde, the banks of which are perfectly flat, and the general face of the country is nearly so in the neighbourhood of Glasgow. This field, the whole summer through, is covered with women of all ages, children, and young girls spreading out their linen, and watching it while it bleaches. The scene must be very cheerful on a fine day, but it rained when we were there, and though there was linen spread out in all parts, and great numbers of women and girls were at work, yet there would have been many more on a fine day, and they would have appeared happy, instead of stupid and cheerless."

The day didn't get much better and ended in an inn in Dumbarton which, had Dorothy had the internet, would have been a prime candidate for a Trip Advisor dot Com thumbs down from Wordsworth & Co:

"Our room was parted by a slender partition from a large dining-room, in which were a number of officers and their wives, who, after the first hour, never ceased singing, dancing, laughing, or loud talking. The ladies sang some pretty songs, a great relief to us. We went early to bed; but poor Coleridge could not sleep for the noise at the street door; he lay in the parlour below stairs. It is no uncommon thing in the best inns of Scotland to have shutting-up beds in the sitting-rooms."

One is inclined to think even William Wallace had fonder memories of the date.

I assume that Mel's Wallace will get a widespread airing in Scottland just before the 16 yrs old voters get to vote for independence. Media power Rulz. Is there a fillum about Bannockburn?

"They put us into a little parlour, dirty, and smelling of liquors, the
table uncleaned, and not a chair in its place"

I think I've been in that inn in Dumbarton.

Some things have changed though.

"The Trongate, an old street, is very picturesque...."

Quote :

Is there a fillum about Bannockburn?

Give us time, Neil and his old pal Tony are doing a lengthy project there. Well, Tony Pollard, being a proper archaeologist, is doing the work I presume and Neil presenting the associated programme.

It didn't get much better for poor Dorothy and friends the next day either. On the 24th, in Luss:

"I had seen the landlady before we went out, for, as had been usual in all the country inns, there was a demur respecting beds, notwithstanding the house was empty, and there were at least half-a-dozen spare beds. Her countenance corresponded with the unkindness of denying us a fire on a cold night, for she was the most cruel and hateful-looking woman I ever saw. She was overgrown with fat, and was sitting with her feet and legs in a tub of water for the dropsy, - probably brought on by whisky-drinking. The sympathy which I felt and expressed for her, on seeing her in this wretched condition - for her legs were swollen as thick as mill-posts - seemed to produce no effect; and I was obliged, after five minutes' conversation, to leave the affair of the beds undecided. Coleridge had some talk with her daughter, a smart lass in a cotton gown, with a bandeau round her head, without shoes and stockings. She told Coleridge with some pride that she had not spent all her time at Luss, but was then fresh from Glasgow.

It came on a very stormy night; the wind rattled every window in the house, and it rained heavily. William and Coleridge had bad beds, in a two-bedded room in the garrets, though there were empty rooms on the first floor, and they were disturbed by a drunken man, who had come to the inn when we were gone to sleep."

When she earlier that day had lamented that the "Water of Leven" leading up to Loch Lomond was a poor river indeed compared to those back in the Lake District one can almost hear the unscreeched "For f*ck's sake, William, get me out of this dump!" between each tortured line of prose.

So that's where they got the plot lines for



'Take the High Road',

Speaking of cultural atrocities, August 24th was a bad day for the cultures of Pompeii and Herculaneum in 79CE.

Quite a good day for tourists and archaeologists since, though. People always count the number of people deaths, in the immediate aftermath of a disaster or near disaster, and say things like "At least no one was killed", but in the long-term, nobody cares so much about the actual people after a few hundred years. You wouldn't now swop the lives of the people killed at Pompeii for the knowledge and interest the place has given over the centuries, would you? How many ordinary lives would you give up to ensure you kept Shakespeare, for instance? Or Newton? or Einstein? or the Taj Mahal? or Macchu Pichu? (I have arguments about this re the monastery at Monte Cassino.)

Great doc Nordmann, thanks. I must say Mary Beard is a refreshing change from the run of the mill presenters lately, interesting, informative, enthusiastic and blessedly, without the theatrics of smouldering looks and smooth voices in lower register. And not an ancestor scenario nor an offering to a god assumption in sight. Wonderful.

PS I loved the 'No Flash' sign outside the brothel!

She's great, isn't she. You should see if you can access her series 'Meet the Romans' somewhere.
This is her blog which is worth reading too. http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/


1891 - Edison patented the motion picture camera

On this day in 1736 a butcher was reunited with his prize pig that had got lost in the sewers five months earlier. It had put on weight.... somehow. Worth 10 shillings before it was now a £2 porker. Puts you off bacon sarnies for a few days. Speaking of sandwiches......

In 1217, it being St Bartholomew's Day, locals of Kent prayed to him to come to their aid and protect Sandwich from the French. In a battle that involved a mystic English monk steeped in the dark arts - siding with the French - whose ship made 'invisible' by magical arts was tracked by Stephen Crabbe for the English, - one of his expupils... who apparently knew the right spell to track it down. St Bart also intervened apparently and the upshot of all this was a chapel and almshouse were built in his name and a hospital used by the wounded renamed in his honour.

And to round off the Orkney thread, on this day islanders of Rousay used to take a holiday because 'the furrows bled' on this day. Or possibly because they had had enough of the 'blxxdy furrows.'

On this day also, printers in the London area had a payout for a Wayzgoose day ... a goose feast because from that day on for the darkening days they must work by candlelight.

And there is supposed to be a change in the weather it being 40 days after St Swithin's day.... St Bartlemy's mantlewipes dry, All the tears St Swithin can cry.'

I put me washing out in good faith. I dare say you didn't need to know any of this, either.

1012 - The Battle of Cruden although probably not today but sometime in the summer and last night was the chosen time for the party

1752 - or should this entry wait until a week on Friday? The adoption of the Gregorian calendar in Britain.

And we missed one for yesterday :

1666 September 2nd (it was a Sunday then too) Thomas Farriner a baker of Pudding Lane, London, left his oven unattended overnight and burned more than just the morning's bread.

3 September 1939: Britain declares war on Germany at 11am. NZ followed suit, dating it to the same time, though theoretically it must have been the 2nd here, being 11.30pm in actual time, 9.30pm to make it 11am. (British summer time, must have been different from now.)

4 September, 2010: Earthquake struck Darfield just outside Christchurch. This has been a revelation to us, with many people still having no idea if their houses will be allowed to be rebuilt or not, people still having to use outdoor portaloos, insurance premiums soaring throughout the country, and public buildings having to be re-strengthened everyone, even in areas that aren't very earthquake prone (like here).

1962 - Glaswegians were exhorted to "Come oan, get aff" a tram for the final time.

1538 - Thomas Cromwell's 'Injunctions of the Clergy,' required official registration of all births, deaths and marriages to be kept.

September 7th 1533.

1966 - first airing of Star Trek. https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?source=search_app

Now, boldly go!

September 8. A mixed day for women.

1893: The Legislative Council of NZ (we don't have that any more) voted 20 - 18 to give voting rights to women.

But: 1888 Jack the Ripper's second victim Annie Chapman was found disembowelled. The first, Polly Nichols, was killed on August 31.

And in 1906 a women became NZ's first motor vehicle fatality. A newspaper report of the time said, "A distressing fatal motor car accident occurred on Saturday afternoon. Mr and Mrs John Meikle were returning home from Timaru in a car. The wife, an expert driver, was, as usual, in charge. When descending a steep, narrow road on a side cutting near the house the car went over a bank, and over a wire fence. Meikle was pitched out, and had his right thigh broken. Mrs Meikle was pinned under the car, and suffocated by the weight on her chest. Some time elapsed before the husband crawled within hearing of the maid servant at the house. Deceased was about 38 years of age, and leaves one child — a girl of four. Meikle was well-known as a driver of Cobb and Co.'s coaches in the early days, and subsequently as proprietor of the Grosvenor Hotel for many years." I find it interesting that Cobb and Co, which went very long distances over poor roads, employed a woman driver at that time. I've never read about this before today.

And here's what New Zealanders saw when they looked up at ten minutes to eight on the morning of September 8th 1885:

A solar eclipse?

September 9th 1776 -

Congress officially ratifies Richard Henry Lee's resolution that henceforth the "United Colonies" shall now be known as the "United States of America".

The Unicycling Society of America briefly contemplates legal action but is dissuaded when presented with evidence that in fact the unicycle hasn't been invented yet. The rest, as they say ...

Another great American first ...

On September 10th 1945 Mike, a chicken belonging to farmer Lloyd Olsen of Fruita, Colorado, begins a strange odyssey. Here's how Wikipedia describes it:

Quote :

Beheading
On September 10, 1945, farmer Lloyd Olsen of Fruita, Colorado, United States, had his mother-in-law around for supper and was sent out to the yard by his wife to bring back a chicken. Olsen chose a five-and-a-half-month-old cockerel named Mike. The axe missed the jugular vein, leaving one ear and most of the brain stem intact.

Despite Olsen's botched handiwork, Mike was still able to balance on a perch and walk clumsily; he even attempted to preen and crow, although he could do neither. After the bird did not die, a surprised Mr. Olsen decided to continue to care permanently for Mike, feeding him a mixture of milk and water via an eyedropper; he was also fed small grains of corn.

When used to his new and unusual center of mass, Mike could easily get himself to the highest perches without falling. His crowing, though, was less impressive and consisted of a gurgling sound made in his throat, leaving him unable to crow at dawn. Mike also spent his time preening and attempting to peck for food with his neck.

Fame
Once his fame had been established, Mike began a career of touring sideshows in the company of such other creatures as a two-headed calf. He was also photographed for dozens of magazines and papers, featuring in Time and Life magazines.

Mike was on display to the public for an admission cost of twenty five cents. At the height of his popularity, the chicken earned US$4,500 per month ($48,000 in 2010 dollars) and was valued at $10,000.[2] Olsen's success resulted in a wave of copycat chicken beheading, but no other chicken lived for more than a day or two.

Death
In March 1947, at a motel in Phoenix on a stopover while traveling back home from tour, Mike started choking in the middle of the night. As the Olsens had inadvertently left their feeding and cleaning syringes at the sideshow the day before, they were unable to save Mike. Lloyd Olsen claimed that he had sold the bird off, resulting in stories of Mike still touring the country as late as 1949. Other sources say that the chicken's severed trachea could not take in enough air properly to be able to breathe; and therefore choked to death in the motel.[citation needed]

Post mortem
It was determined that the axe had missed the carotid artery and a clot had prevented Mike from bleeding to death. Although most of his head was severed, most of his brain stem and one ear were left on his body. Since basic functions (breathing, heart-rate, etc.) as well as most of a chicken's reflex actions are controlled by the brain stem, Mike was able to remain quite healthy. This is a good example of central motor generators enabling basic homeostatic functions to be carried out in the absence of the cerebral cortex.

Legacy
Mike the Headless Chicken is now an institution in Fruita, Colorado, with an annual "Mike the Headless Chicken Day", the third weekend of May, starting in 1999. Events held include the "5K Run Like a Headless Chicken Race", egg toss, "Pin the Head on the Chicken", the "Chicken Cluck-Off", and "Chicken Bingo", in which chicken droppings on a numbered grid choose the numbers.

And here's the lad himself ...

Oh, and speaking of headless chickens, today of course is the 40th anniversary of this:

People must be a lot less squeamish than me. The photo of chicken Mike turns my stomach; the thought of paying good money to see him 'in person' seems ridiculous. Ditto to two-headed calves. (There was a picture of conjoined twins in the paper the other day and I wasn't all that fussed on what looked like a two-headed person. I suppose that's not very sensitive and tolerant.)

12th September 1885 and in the first round of the Scottish Cup, Arbroath beat Bon Accord 36-0,

the Arbroath team;



in a bad day for Aberdeen teams, 18 miles away, Dundee Harp beat Aberdeen Rovers 35-0

September 15 seems to have been a day for the World Wars in various aspects:

1916: Tanks are used for the first time in war in a British attack near the Somme.

1935: The Nuremberg laws are passed, making discrimination against the Jews official policy in Germany and the swastika its official symbol.

1942: German armies attack Stalingrad.

And much more recently and showing that no matter how low you think politicians can get there is always another rung:

2010: NZ MP (of a minor right-wing party thankfully) admits he has a conviction for using a dead baby's identity to apply for a false passport. (Before he became an MP.)

It is 15yrs today that the search engine Google was launched as well, from a garage in Silicone Valley.

15 September 1830 : The official opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway.

Also the date of the world's first public railway casualty: William Huskisson MP was hit by The Rocket when he disembarked at Parkside Railway station and crossed the lines to greet The Duke of Wellington. He died of injuries that evening. Other than that mishap, miserable weather, several riots, the trains being pelted by rubbish and stones along the route, and the return train arriving back at Liverpool over 6 hours late ... it was a very successful launch!

EDIT : I forgot to mention that the world's first train-on-train collision also occurred on the same day, when one train ran into the back of another, derailing it but with no injuries. All in all it was indeed a memorable day of firsts.

That always seems to be a most ironic death. Not just anyone at the launch dying, but the person there to do the launching. Presumably the news stories concentrated on this rather than the actual opening.

September 20: 1440 Eton opened.

I suppose that was a good thing but I am sure the ghastly event of 1853 when

Elisha Graves Otis began operating the first lift/elevator

is very bad. Only yesterday the lift we were in did not go anywhere for a moment, and just when I was wondering about the best way to panic we pressed a button for a different floor and off it went. Apparently it didn't go to the floor we were pushing. Why not if it was there?

Were there very high-rise buildings before the invention of the elevator?