Lentorama 2023: It Happened on Holy Saturday

Day 38: Fair achievements

The Paris World Exhibition official opened on Saturday, April 14, 1900, and would run through November, with an estimated 50 million visitors (though it's not clear if that includes people who went to related events, such as the 1900 Olympics). Two things of note from the fair:

* It was for the fair that Michelin published its first guide, though it was more to spur the sale of tires than to direct patrons to the best restaurants. The guide included information on tire repair, the location of garages and gas stations, and road maps.

* The fair was also the debut for the step-type escalator. Previous escalators were more of a conveyor belt with slats or other attachments riders could use for traction. 

The fair also prompted the building of the Gare d'Orsay train station (now the Musee d'Orsay) and Line 1 of the Paris Metro, among other things that may be more important than the escalator. 

 Book Log 2023 #17: The Premonition by Michael Lewis

Continuing the series of books about how things went wrong (The Big Short and to some extent The Fifth Risk), Lewis turns his eyes towards the Covid-19 pandemic. In this case, he profiles a group of US public health officials who could see what was coming and tried to get the word out, but was stymied by political forces in Washington. Not surprisingly the CDC comes in for a lot of criticism, which is wholly justified. 

The book doesn't really get into the ways the White House monkeyed with things, which kind of makes sense given the thesis of the book. Rather than be the umpteenth work to lament suggestions to drink bleach, the idea at play here is that the growing politicization of previously non-partisan agencies is a problem, and will create greater problems if it continues. The US government response to the pandemic certainly argues in favor of that idea.

The book is as readable as anything Lewis has written, and his focus on a few key players helps to keep the narrative manageable. 

 Lentorama 2023: It Happened on Holy Saturday

Day 37: What a long strange trip it was

In the mid-1780s the painter Charles Gainsborough executed a portrait of Georgiana Cavendish, the the Duchess of Devonshire. It then hung in the seat of the Duke of Devonshire, Chatsworth House... briefly. It went missing and its whereabouts were unknown until the 1830s, when it was found in the possession of a schoolmistress (who had cut it down so it would fit over her fireplace).

In 1841 she sold the painting to a dealer, who then gave it to a friend who was also an art collector. When that person died the painting went up for auction at Christie's, where it was sold to art dealer William Agnew for 10,000 guineas (at the time the highest price paid for a painting at auction). 

Three weeks later it was stolen out of Agnew's gallery. Once again, its whereabouts were unknown.

Things would stay that way for nearly 25 years, until it was discovered that Adam Worth, known as the "Napoleon of crime," had stolen it. He intended to sell it to bail his brother out of jail, but when his brother was released Worth decided to keep the painting. 

Which he did until 1901, when the Pinkerton detective agency negotiated the painting's return. In return for $25,000 (paid by Agnew's son), the Pinkertons collected the painting from Worth in Chicago (paying him most if not all of the 25 large) and retuned it to the UK. It made its return to British soil on Saturday, April 6, 1901.

It didn't stay that long. JP Morgan bought the painting soon after for a reported $150,000. The Morgan family held the painting until 1994, when it was sold at auction again. The 11th Duke of Devonshire paid $408,870 for the work, and finally returned it to Chatsworth House more than two centuries after it left.

 Lentorama 2023: It Happened on Holy Saturday

Day 36: You will see the Doctor now

The day after the assassination of John F. Kennedy seems like a bad time to debut a new TV show, even in the UK. But on November 23, 1963, the BBC rolled out the first episode of Doctor Who, albeit 80 seconds late in order to finish news updates about the assassination. Originally intended as a family show that would use time travel to explain scientific concepts and visit moments of historical importance, it soon morphed into the sci-fi hit that attracted fans for decades.

In 1985 the leadership at the BBC tried to cancel the show, but only succeeded in delaying a new season for 18 months. That may have been enough, though, as once the show returned it did not draw as well (a move to a new time slot likely didn't help), and the show was taken off of the scheduled in 1989. There were vague promises that the show would return.

Which it did... eventually. There was new content in various media - books, audio plays, and even a TV movie in 1996 - but no new series, mostly due to attempts to create a feature film. Once it became clear that the film wouldn't happen, the BBC decided to bring back the series with Russell Davies as showrunner.

And so on Saturday, March 26, 2005, the first new episode of Doctor Who in fifteen years aired on BBC One (along with a companion documentary series on BBC Three, which aired directly after the episode). The show drew enough viewers to land in the top ten for the week, and was greenlighted for both a Christmas special and a second season. From there the show built into becoming a TV staple for viewers worldwide, along with a number of spin-off series such as Torchwood. 

 Lentorama 2023: It Happened on Holy Saturday

Day 35: A failure by all accords

As the 1930s progressed, Britain and France became increasingly concerned that fascist Italy would ally with Nazi Germany in the future conflict that was looming over Europe. This led both countries to take a less than forceful approach towards Italy's invasion of Ethiopia and the participation of Italian troops in the Spanish Civil War. 

Italy, for its part, wanted to isolate Britain from Spain so that when it did ally with Germany and start that future conflict, Italy could invade France without worrying about a British response. They also were spreading anti-British propaganda in the Middle East and supplying arms to Palestinian rebeles, who were fighting the British mandate.

These competing interests were addressed at the negotiating table, leading to the signing of the Easter Accords on Saturday, April 16, 1938. In these agreements the two countries agreed (more or less) to respect each other's possessions in the Middle East, which was assumed to include Ethiopia given that the country wasn't mentioned by name. Italy also agreed to remove its troops from Spain once the civil war there ended.

The Easter Accords wound up being an appetizer for the Munich Agreement that came later in 1938, in that the accords, like the agreement, failed to achieve its ultimate goals. Italy allied with Germany in the Pact of Steel, and Britain and France continued to be staunch allies against fascism.  

 Lentorama 2023: It Happened on Holy Saturday

Day 34: Last and first bookings

Saturday, April 5, 1980, marked the final episode of the TV show Hawaii 5-0, in which Honolulu police detective Steve McGarrett finally get his arch-nemesis, Wo Fat, in handcuffs. He'd been chasing after Wo Fat since the first episode in 1968, so you can imagine this final incantation of "Book him, Dan-O" was especially sweet.

Playing at their first booking on the same day was the band that would become R.E.M. They played the birthday part of Kathleen O'Brien, who introduced Michael Stipe and Peter Buck to Bill Berry and Mike Mills. Which seems like the least they could do, in hindsight.

 Lentorama 2023: It Happened on Holy Saturday

Day 33: Toon debut

When Disney started its Silly Symphony series of animated shorts, the folks at Warner Brothers decided that imitation would be the sincerest form of profit-making. This led to the development of their own series of musically-inspired animated shorts, Looney Tunes. The first short released in the series, Sinkin' in the Bathtub, debuted on Saturday, April 19, 1930.

The star of the short was Bosko, who would go on to feature in 39 shorts during the decade. The early description of Bosko notes that he's Black, but his race would be made more ambiguous as the series went on (helped by getting rid of the "blackface" dialect that was only used for this particular short). Bosko had a girlfriend (Honey) and a dog (Bruno); any resemblence to Mickey, Minnie, and Pluto is probably intentional.

In this short, we get to see Bosko prepare for a date with Honey, and the comedic impediments they run into while taking a drive in the country. At the end, Bosko does cap things off with a "That's all, folks!," a line most people would now associate with Porky Pig.

The creators of Bosko moved from Warners to MGM in 1933, where they redesigned the character to the point where his name was about the only thing he shared with his Warners incarnation. MGM pulled the plug on Bosko after only 8 shorts, none of which were particularly popular.

Bosko short occasionally still show up on TV with the more well-known Looney Tunes shorts featuring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and that generation of characters. He does not fare well by comparison. Bosko has made a couple of appearances more recently, in Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs, and the original Space Jam. This did not spark a Bosko renaissance.

 Lentorama 2023: It Happened on Holy Saturday

Day 32: Carry that weight

Pat Casey was born in 1939 in Los Angeles, and seemed to be heading towards juvenile delinquency until he wandered into Redpath's gym, where he discovered weightlifting. He began to spend all of his free time training, and quickly proved adept at powerlifting. By the age of 18 he'd done a 400 pound bench press, a mark only a dozen or so adult lifters had reached.

Casey was known for his marathon training sessions, easily spending up to six hours a day in the gym. He was also known for the voracious appetite that helped fuel those sessions, big meals washed down with up to six quarts of whole milk a day. He would top out at over six feet tall and 330 pounds, almost all of it upper body muscle.

All of this led up to Saturday, March 25, 1967, when Casey went where no lifter had gone before by cracking the 600 pound mark for the bench press by putting up 615 pounds. In his career he'd also record other firsts, such as the first 800 pound squat and the first 2000 pound three lift total (bench, squat, and deadlift).

Casey became a police officer after retiring from competitive lifting, and a private investigator after retiring from the police. He passed away in 2005 from cancer.

 Book Log 2023 #16: Prince of Fire by Daniel Silva

Art restorer/intelligence officer Gabriel Allon is brought back into the fold when the bombing of Israel's embassy in Rome is connected to some highly classified files that would blow Allon's cover. He returns to Israel and officially rejoins the agency known as The Office, where he's put in charge of investigating the attack on the embassy. 

Allon assembles a team of agents, who eventually uncover the connection between a series of attacks, and the likely date of the next one. Allon goes back on the street to find the mastermind of the attacks, at one point meeting with Yassir Arafat for information (Allon apparently saved Arafat's life at some point, so is owed a favor).  But the mastermind of the attacks is one step ahead of Allon, forcing him to make a potentially painful choice if he wants to prevent the next attack.

This is the first book in the series to really focus on terrorism. The previous books were more focused on the lingering aftermath of the Holocaust, and in an interview Silva said he saw this book as the end of the series rather than the beginning of a new one. Given how many books there are in this series overall, I'll be interested to see if that's actually true.

 Lentorama 2023: It Happened on Holy Satuday

Day 31: Take me down to Imperial City

Pedro de Valdivia was a conquistador who was also the first royal governor of Chile. His time in South America was focused mostly on fighting indigenous peoples and founding cities. Two of those cities - Santiago and Concepción - still exist today.

One that doesn't is La Imperial (or Ciudad Imperial), which de Valdivia founded on April 16, 1552. While the plan was for it to be a major city of New Spain, it came under attack during the Mapuche Rebellion of 1598 and during the War of Arauco and was eventually destroyed. The city was finally abandoned in 1600.

In its wake, though, rose two new cities - Carahue and Nueva Imperial - though they weren't established until the late 19th century. 

 Lentorama 2023: It Happened on Holy Saturday

Day 30: Ripple Rocked

Ripple Rock is an underwater mountain in the coastal waters of British Columbia, located in Discovery Passage, the strait between Vancouver Island and the Discovery Islands. It has two peaks, both underwater at low tide, and the presence of these peaks caused significant eddies from currents passing them as water receded. This posed a significant threat to ship traffic, with many ships choosing to wait until slack tide to pass.

The Canadian government decided the best way to solve this problem and open up the passage to shipping regardless of the tides, was to blow Ripple Rock up. Attempts in the 1940s proved unsuccessful, as barges meant to place charges were ripped from their anchoring cables. After studying the problem, it was determined that the best approach to this was to tunnel vertically from Maude Island, and then up into the twin peaks. This process took nearly three years to complete.

Once the tunnels were dug, over 1200 tons of Nitramex explosive were placed within them, and on Saturday, April 5, 1958, the explosives were detonated during a live coast-to-coast broadcast. Water and debris blew nearly 1000 feet into the air, with chunks of rock landing on both sides of the narrows. The height of both peaks had been significantly reduced, with clearance at low tide going from 10-20 feet to 45-50 feet. 

 Book Log 2023 #15: The Shape of Water by Andrea Camilleri

This is not the novelization of the Oscar-winning movie about cross-species romance but rather the first in a series following Sicilian police inspector Salvo Montalbano. In this case, Montalbano refuses to close the case of a local grandee whose body is found by a couple of garbagemen in an area known for prostitution. The case has personal and political dimensions that implicate powerful local families, which puts Montalbano's life at risk as he tries to figure out what really happened.

The book was fine, but ultimately I wasn't particularly taken with it. Hard to say why, though I may have been expecting it to be more like the Bruno, Chief of Police series, which is a bit lighter in tone. Don't know if I'll bother reading on in the series.

 Lentorama 2023: It Happened on Holy Saturday

Day 29: Strike one!

Saturday, April 1, 1972 saw a first in the history of Major League Baseball: all games were cancelled by a strike, which lasted just under two weeks. It ended on April 13, after owners agreed to increase payments into the players' pension fund by $500,000 (which was real money at the time) and add salary arbitration to the collective bargaining agreement.

While the strike started during exhibition season, it did run into the regular season and caused the cancellation of a number of games. They weren't replayed as owners refused to pay players for games they missed due to the strike. This resulted in teams not playing the same number of games, which fit right into the Curse of the Bambino, as the Detroit Tigers won the AL East by a half-game over the Boston Red Sox, who had played one fewer game than the Tigers.

This was only the first of many labor stoppages, from a lockout the following year that only delayed spring training to the 2021-22 lockout that delayed the start of the 2022 season.

 Lentorama 2023: It Happened on Holy Saturday

Day 28: Don't lose your head

Kazimierz Łyszczyński was a minor Polish noble who was also a philosopher and soldier. You would expect the military service to be the danger to his life, but you'd be wrong.

Łyszczyński spent some time studying with the Jesuits, but had left the order by the time he picked up the book Theologia Naturalis, which attempted to prove the existence of divinity. Łyszczyński, finding the arguments complicated and not particularly convincing, took to writing notes in the margin mocking the arguments, including one that said "therefore God does not exist."

Which would have been a reasonable private joke, but when a local nuncio found the book and the comment, he found a way out of having to repay Łyszczyński a significant debt. The nuncio took the book to the bishop of Poznan, claiming it as evidence that Łyszczyński was an atheist. Not helping matters was that the nuncio also had a hand-written draft of a book Łyszczyński was working on that described reality from an atheistic perspective.

So perhaps that margin note wasn't that much of a joke.

Łyszczyński was accused and went on trial, during which he claimed that his book was only part of the work, that was supposed to include the winning rebuttal of a Catholic. He stated that he'd stopped writing the work on the advice of a priest, which in hindsight seems like pretty bad advice.

Łyszczyński was found guilty and executed on Saturday, March 30, 1689. There is some doubt that Łyszczyński was an actual atheist, and over time his killing was seen by some as a case of legalized religious murder. That would change a bit during communist times, as the regime would tout Łyszczyński as a martyr to atheism. The true depths of his feelings will likely never be known, as almost nothing remains of his original writings or the trial transcript.

 Lentorama 2023: It Happened on Holy Saturday

Day 27: Bye, Guy

Guy of Thouars is a minor French noble, who served as the regent of Brittany for his daughter, Alix, who served as duchess from 1203 until her death in 1221 (at least in name; in 1206 the French king Philip II made himself regent, and served in that role until Alix married, at which point her husband became duke).

 
Guy's most notable (infamous?) historic achievement was the 1204 siege of Mont-Saint-Michel, the island community and abbey which is separated from the French mainland at high tide. Guy led troops to take the island away from the Normans, but was unable to take the abbey due to its stout walls and hilltop location. So he chose to slaughter the townsfolk and set fire to the settlement, a blaze that would spread and burn the roofs of the abbey buildings. Which I guess could be seen as a minor victory, except that Philip wound up paying the abbot to replace the roofs.

Guy died on Saturday, April 13 1213, and was buried at Villeneuve Abbey, next to his wife (and the abbey's founder) Constance.

 Lentorama 2023: It Happened on Holy Saturday

Day 26: Hail to the future Chief

James Buchanan, the 15th President of the United States, was born on Saturday, April 23,1791. For a president who didn't appear to be that good at presidenting, there are a number of aspects of his presidency worth noting:

• Buchanan was the last president born in the 18th century.
• He was the only President with military experience who was not an officer
• He was the last President to have fought in the War of 1812
• And, as most people know, he was the only bachelor President (a source of rampant speculation about his sexual orientation, though he did profess sadness at the sudden death of his fiancee Anne Coleman)

Of course, none of this outweighs his performance as President, which saw him consistently act in sympathy with southern slave owners and do little, if anything, to prevent the secession of the states that made up the future Confederacy. This table of Presidential rankings will give you an idea of how he's veiwed relative to the other Presidents. Spoiler alert: it's not good.

Lentorama 2023: It Happened on Holy Saturday

Day 25: Orders countermanded... for what it was worth

If there's any piece of Irish history that non-Irish people know about, it's the Easter Rising of 1916, an attempt at declaring a free Irish state that was put down by the British after a few days. Events of the preceding weekend, including those of Holy Saturday, April 22, made the success of the Rising unlikely at best.

The problems actually started on Good Friday, when rebel leader Sir Roger Casement was arrested and the shipment of 20000 rifles that he was supposed to take was scuttled in Cork harbor. The Rising needed those weapons if it were to have any chance to succeed, and on the following day Eoin MacNeill - founder and chief of staff of the Irish Volunteers - countermanded the plans made by other leaders of the Volunteers to mobilize its members for the Rising (an event MacNeill had only learned about two days before).

While MacNeill's orders had force within the Volunteers, those leaders in the organization who had planned the Rising decided to stay the course. They feared that not going through would be more damaging to the cause of Irish independence than failure. And they were sort of right - the Rising failed and its leaders executed, become martyrs for the cause. Ireland would become free within a decade, though not without further violence.

 Book Log 2023 #14: The Big U by Neal Stephenson

This is Stephenson's first novel, which for a long time was almost impossible to find. He let it go out of print, and was happy to leave it out of print until (according to Wikipedia) he saw how much used copies were going for on eBay, and decided that the only thing worse than people reading this book was how much people were paying to read this book.

And while it doesn't measure up to later works, it's not bad. It's not always good, mind you, but there are hallmarks of later books to be found here. It also helps if you can suspend disbelief enough in the ways the book's satire of college life go off the rails into farce.

The book has a special place in my heart as it was inspired by Stephenson's time at Boston University, which I started at not long after he left.  I don't know that you needed to go to BU in the 1980s to really enjoy this book, but it doesn't hurt. I think it would also help if you were in the sciences, as many of the characters are, and they tend to be drawn the most completely.

Certainly worth a read if you're a fan and haven't yet read it.

Lentorama 2023: It Happened on Holy Saturday

Day 24: Resolved

March 23, 1940 was the middle day of a three day general session of the All-India Muslim League, a political party formed to advance Muslim interests in British India. It was on this day that the session penned what came to be known as the Lahore Resolution, which argued for a unified, indepdendent Muslim state separate from an independent India.

Prior to the resolution, it was generally thought that Muslim areas of India would remain part of India, but have some sort of special status that would grant those areas greater autonomy. However, concerns about how a Hindu majority would actually rule over Muslim-majority areas led the party leaders to pen this resolution, which called for the Muslim areas of northwest and eastern India to be grouped into separate, independent nations.

Which is kind of what happened when India became independent in 1947. India and Pakistan were created as separate independent dominions, with Pakistan having territory on both sides of India. The partition was chaotic - some provinces where split based on religious lines, and the migration of people between the two dominions led to over 14 million people being displaced. 

In time, Pakistan declared itself an Islamic republic - the first country in the world to do so - and did so also on a March 23, this time in 1956. The country had two administrative regions - East and West Pakistan - until 1971, when Bangladesh declared its independence after a nine month civil war.

 Lentorama 2023: It Happened on Holy Satuday

Day 23: April fools?

Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker met at Bible college, and were married on April 1, 1961. After graduation they moved into ministry, but quickly became part of the Christian Broadcasting Network, hosting a kid's show before Jim became the first host of The 700 Club. They would leave CBN and move to California to help launch the Trinity Broadcasting Network, but differences with that network's founder saw the Bakkers relocate to Charlotte.

It was there that Jim was approached to buy two hours of time per day on a local TV station. He did so, launching The PTL Club, a religious-themed talk show much like The 700 Club. The show was a success, and its growth allowed the Bakkers a national audience. The money sent in by that national audience allowed the Bakkers to open Heritage USA, a campus with a theme park, TV studio, and other attractions. At one point it was the third-largest theme park by number of visitors in the US.

And then everything fell apart. The government had been investigating PTL and the Bakkers as far back as 1979, over allegations that church funds were being redirected for personal use. A later IRS investigation suggested taking away PTL's tax exempt status in 1985. But nothing really happned to the Bakkers until the 1987 rape accusation by former church secretary Jessica Hahn. 

Bakker denied the accusation but did admit to an affair and a hush money payment to Hahn. He never was charged for a crime over the accusation, but did wind up facing 24 counts of fraud and conspiracy. He was found guilty on all of them, and sentenced to 45 years in prison (he once had Lyndon LaRouche as a cellmate). That sentence was eventually reduced to eight years, of which he served five.

Once out, Bakker returned to television with a self-named show, offered mostly on sattelite TV. His religious outlook became apocalyptic, focusing on end times prophecy and the sale of bulk freeze dried food. During the Covid-19 pandemic he got into legal trouble for hawking colloidal silver products as a cure.

Tammy Faye would divorce Bakker in 1992, got remarried, and became an unexpected gay icon based on her early support and advocacy for people with AIDS. She would also co-host a talk show with Jim J. Bullock, make other TV appearances, and wrote books. She had a long battle with colon cancer, which eventually claimed her life in 2007.