History of the Day: 9/30

Let's all celebrate 48 years of the Flinstones! It was animated Honeymooners for the kiddies, good wholesome fun from the get-go. Who can forget those bygone days of yore when our cartoon heroes would remind us that, "Winstons taste good, like a cigarette should"? Fortunately, Winston had the moral fortitude to pull their sponsorship in 1963 when Wilma got pregnant. I mean, seriously, how could they show that on TV? How irresponsible! In honor of Fred, Wilma, Barney and Betty; here's Weird Al's Bedrock Anthem.

Rudolf Diesel, inventor of the diesel engine, (presumably) died on this day in 1913. He was last seen on 9/29/1913, late in the evening on a boat in the ocean. Another ship found his body ten days later in such a progressed state of decomposition that they left him in the ocean and took his stuff for later identification. So, next time you're riding on a bus, you can think about that.

Elie Wiesel is an octogenarian today despite the best efforts of Hitler. He's still being persecuted. Just this past year, a 22 year old Holocaust denier named Eric Hunt attacked Wiesel and tried to kill him in San Francisco. Fortunately, Wiesel survived and continues to fight the good fight:

Indifference, to me, is the epitome of evil.
The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.
The opposite of beauty is not ugliness, it's indifference.
The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference.
And the opposite of life is not death, but indifference between life and death.

Today is the feastday of St. Jerome, who translated the Bible into Latin. Remember Bob Dylan's song about St. Augustine? There's a blues singer named Dion who did a similar song about St. Jerome called The Thunderer, based on a poem by Phyllis McGinley. Here's an excerpt:

God’s angry man, His crotchety scholar
Was Saint Jerome, the great name-caller
Who cared not a dime for the laws of Libel
And in his spare time translated the Bible.

Quick to disparage all joys but learning
Jerome thought marriage better than burning;
But didn’t like woman’s painted cheeks;
Didn’t like Romans, didn’t like Greeks,
Hated Pagans for their Pagan ways,
Yet doted on Cicero all of his days.

A born reformer, cross and gifted,
He scolded mankind sterner than Swift did;
Worked to save the world from the heathen;
Fled to a cave for peace to breathe in,
Promptly wherewith for miles around
He filled the air with fury and sound.

In a mighty prose, for almighty ends,
He thrust at his foes, quarreled with his friends,
And served his Master though with complaint.
He wasn't a plaster sort of saint.

This article compares the two songs.