History of the Day: 9/19

Ahoy, me Beauties! Avast and arrrrrr and all that. Today be International Talk Like a Pirate Day! And remember, they make clear rum. Verrrrrry hard to detect. I'm just sayin', is all. Speaking of pirates, did you know they beat the U.S. to establishing a democracy? Not kidding! Perhaps that's one reason why St. Augustine noted that empires are little more than large scale piracy. Read the very short Book IV, Chapter 4 from his City of God. To make it REALLY fun, exchange "Alexander" for "Bush" and "Pirate" for "Bin Ladin." Or "Alexander" for "Obama" and "Pirate" for "Somali." Or, you can just watch this fun and entertaining "Schoolhouse Rock" version of the same reading.

The Continental Congress passed their first budget on this day in 1778. We've been waiting for them to do it again ever since. In other governmental history, Tipper Gore and her possets formed the Parents Music Resource Center as Frank Zappa and other musicians testified in Congress about obscenity in rock music. See, censorship is for ALL political parties!

Lots of important musicians to remember today. On this day in 1981, Simon and Garfunkel reunited for a free concert in Central Park. And it was sooooo good! Why is this important? Because they're my favorite, secular group. Why are they my favorite, secular group? Because I'm a geek.

Paul Simon is brilliant in his own right, but the two of them together are sublime. Who else could take composition by the medieval composer Orlando di Lassi and make it even more awesome (Benedictus)? Probably, their most well known song is Sound of Silence. By the way, if you haven't heard of Emiliana Torrini, you should. Here's her cover of the same song. Here's a couple of other good ones from Simon and Garfunkel:

• For Emily (one of the most beautiful love songs ever)
• The Boxer

He's not a singer, but Adam West was born in 1928. You know ... Batman? Bam, biff, pock, zam? Holy campy cheesfest? Have you ever seen the Batman movie, the original one? You need to, if you haven't.

Back to music, Cass Elliot, of the Mamas and the Papas, was born in 1941. She wasn't always a singer, you know. She was at a party the rest of the members of the band were attending and was ... how shall I say ... in an expanded state of mind. Then, a piece of bronze pipe fell and hit her in the head. After waking up from the concussion, she found herself in an expanded state of voice. When the group heard her, they signed her up! She died nine years later. Their two most famous songs are Monday, Monday (also known as "The Anthem for Public School") California Dreamin'.

My favorite singer of all time is Rich Mullins. He died on this day in 1997, and it was a sad day. There are few like him in the CCM scene. Most just ape popular secular music or churn out vapid, bland tapioca. (As one wise woman once put it, "It's like Bon Jovi, but more repetition and less meaning.") But there was real heart and soul and ... reality, in Rich's songs. And he lived what he sang. For instance, when he heard that the average income of an American is $25,000; he told the elders of his church to manage his funds. They paid him a $25,000 stipend, and the rest went to charities. He didn't even know how much he made. If you want to be inspired, find a video called Homeless Man: The Life of Rich Mullins.

I wish I could have found some of his best songs, like Calling Out Your Name or Hard to Get, but these are good, too.

• Hard to Get (one of my top favorite songs of all time)
• Screen Door (this is a fun one, the video, too)
  
• We Are Not As Strong As We Think We Are
• Hold Me Jesus

Happy Birthday to the Emoticon! :-) It has a longer history than you'd expect. The National Telegraphic Review and Operators Guide in April 1857 documented the use of the number 73 in Morse code to express "love and kisses" (later reduced to the more formal "best regards"):

--... ...--

Typographical emoticons were published in 1881 by the U.S. satirical magazine Puck.

Later, in 1912 Ambrose Bierce (who wrote the hilarious Devil's Dictionary) proposed...

... an improvement in punctuation - the snigger point, or note of cachinnation: it is written thus \___/! and presents a smiling mouth. It is to be appended, with the full stop, to every jocular or ironical sentence.

But the official birthday is today, based on this proto-e-mail sent in 1982:

19-Sep-82 11:44 Scott E Fahlman :)
From: Scott E Fahlman

I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers:

:-)

Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark
things that are NOT jokes - given current trends. For this, use

:-(

And, finally, HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! Tonight we're gonna party like it's 5767! Why? Because it's Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. This is slightly different than other new year celebrations because, in this one, God judges the year to come, not the year that has already been. How's that for pressure? For more on Rosh Hashanah, read this. Or you can listen to Leonard Cohen's song Who by Fire which is, itself, a lyricization of the Unetanah tokef, a Rosh Hashanah prayer.

History of the Day: 9/12, 13

Happy birthday to Henry Hudson, born on September 12th in 1575. On his 32nd birthday, he began exploring of the Hudson River. He must have been so surprised when he found out it was named after him!


In 1847, the Battle of Chapultepec began in the War of Southwestern Expansion (that is, Mexican-American War). In this battle, Los Niños Héroes, nine military school students, held off a vastly superior U.S. force for some time. When the last one realized he was the only one left, he wrapped himself in the Mexican flag and leapt from his tower. The U.S. general saluted his corpse.


Even more important, Mexicans commemorate the execution of the Batallón de San Patricio, or St. Patrick's Battlion, an Irish-American military unit. They had come to this country for a better life and had, almost immediately, been drafted into service for the U.S. The movie Gangs of New York has a moving depiction of this (skip to the six minute mark) featuring a traditional Irish song, Paddy's Lamentation. As they fought, they began to wonder why they were warring with the majority Protestant Americans against their Catholic brothers from Mexico. So, they defected en masse. Eventually, they were captured and sentenced to death.


They were hanged on this day in 1847. General Scott specified that they were to be hanged with Chapultepec in view and that the precise moment of their death was to occur when the U.S. flag replaced the Mexican tricolor atop the citadel. He was so thoughtful!


You know, all this talk of the Irish and the recent release of Beatle's Rock Band (which is AWESOME!) makes me wonder, what if the Beatles had been Irish?


In 1933, Leó Szilárd conceived the idea of the nuclear chain reaction while waiting for a red light. The idea bulb that appeared over his head blew off the top of his car.


Ben Folds was born on this day in 1966. He's amazing. If there happens to be someone whom you really love a lot, you should play this song for them. Johnny Cash died on this day in 2003. He's also amazing. He didn't write this song, but he was meant to sing it.

On September 13th, 122; Rome began building Hadrian's Wall to keep out the unwashed rabble from the North. In 1814, Francis Scott Key wrote the lyrics to the Star Spangled Banner. Now, we can commemorate our own wall AND our flag all on the same day!


On this day in 1848, Vermont railroad worker Phineas Gage incredibly survived a 3 foot iron rod being driven through his head. The reported effects on his behavior and personality stimulated thinking about the nature of the brain and its functions. Henry Bliss, the first person killed in an auto accident (1899), was slightly less fortunate. On the bright side, no one would have remembered his name had he not expired.

Happy Holy-Crap-It's-Hot Day! In 1922, the temperature in Al 'Aziziyah, Libya (Arabic for "snowball's chance") reached 136.04°F.

And, finally, the 13th is the official end of "Beard Week" with the death of Ambrose Burnside. In addition to being a truly inept military leader, he also gave his name to sideburns. No, I'm not kidding. Look at him! You could kill someone with those things!!! Except Confederates.

History of the Day: 9/11

Today is 9/11. Of course, we can't even say those two numbers any more without thinking of 2001. Rather than demean it with my words or use it for political fodder, I'll just let you listen to Faure's In Paradisum.

Lots of musical birthdays today. Arvo Pärt, a minimalist composer from Estonia, was born in 1935. Here are two of his songs, very simple and beautiful. Anti-Mozart.

• The Hanging Man
• Silouan's Song

Tommy Shaw, the lead singer of Styx, was born in 1953. He is the modren man ...

• Mr. Roboto
• Come Sail Away

Harry Connick Jr. (of SunCom ... and we get it fame) was born 14 years later. He plays about twenty instruments. After Katrina, his rendition of the following song became the anthem of New Orleans: Do You Know What It Means. He also sings one of my theme songs: If I Only Had A Brain. And this ditty which deserves to be on everyone's album of happy songs: Kiss Me.

Peter Tosh, the Rastafarian, was murdered on this day in 1987. I was going to link to one of his songs, but they were all about legalizing something and not criticizing it. He must have been talking about the 19th Amendment. Right? Or Health Care?

And, Remember Pinochet, the dictator of Chile? It was on 9/11/73 that he came into power in a military coup aided by the CIA. Let's do a quick roll call: Pinochet, Saddam Hussein, the Taliban ... and George W. Bush, a complete set of crazy, destructive despots we've put into power around the world. I had hope for Obama, but since he's still hiding information for "National Security," and his Secretary of State is talking about "extending our umbrella of protection in the Middle East," that hope is fading fast.

(Note: I'm re-reading this in 2023 and thinking about how fondly I recall the days of normal presidential ridiculousness like George Bush.  Make America 2001 again?)

History of the Day: 9/10

In 1977, the last man executed by guillotine was beheaded. It puts me in mind of the Monty Python song "Oliver Cromwell" which begins:

The most interesting thing about King Charles I is that he was 5' 6" at the beginning of his reign, but only 4' 8" at the end of it ...

For those of a feminist bent, Mary Wollstonecraft died 9/10/1797. She authored several books, the most famous of which, "Vindication of the Rights of Woman," she wrote only five years before her death. Here are some quotes from her which, if you do a journal activity, might be useful:

• No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.
• Virtue can only flourish amongst equals.
• Every political good carried to the extreme must be productive of evil.
• It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world.

Finally, and most importantly, twelve years ago an 11lb 7oz baby boy was brought into the world, the best thing that's happened since Gregorian chant gave way to polyphony.

History of the Day: 9/8, 9/9

This is my self-proclaimed "Beard Week" in remembrance of Tsar Peter of Russia who in 1698, in an attempt to move people into modern times, imposed a tax on beards. I'll not shave these mournful seven days in protest! Also, in celebration of Beard Week, you can transfer all measurements to beard seconds or "the length an average physicist's beard grows in a second." For instance, 100 meters = 20,000,000,000 beard seconds.

September the 8th is the birthday of Richard Strauss, one of my favorite composers largely due to his fantastic rendering of Don Quixote as a cello. Here is Yo Yo Ma performing a piece from the work. And happy birthday to Mary (Jesus' mom), whose birthday is celebrated on this day by Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches.

But perhaps most important, Star Trek TOS (the Original Series) first aired on this day in 1966. Did you know there were lyrics to the original theme song?

Beyond the rim of the star-light
My love is wand'ring in star-flight
I know he'll find in star-clustered reaches
Love, strange love a star-woman teaches.
I know his journey ends never
His star trek will go on forever.
But tell him while he wanders his starry sea
Remember, remember me.

I wish this were a hoax, but it's not. The story behind it is even more disturbing. Well, almost as disturbing, but not quite. DS9 definitely had the best Star Trek intro by far. To celebrate, you can take the Star Trek Personality Test!

September 9th is the anniversary of the Battle of Svolder, in which Olaf of Sweden and Sven Forkbeard (no kidding) ambushed Olaf of Norway and soundly defeating him. There's a popular folk song (Omurin Langi or "The Long Serpent") in case you want to sing all 84 verses to commemorate it with your students. Or, you can recite The Musician's Tale/Saga of King Olaf from Longfellow's American version of the Canterbury Tales. 'Cause, you know, how often are you really going to have the chance to say "Forkbeard" in your lifetime, right?