January 19th is
National Neon Day *
Popcorn Day
Tin Can Day *
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MORE! Edgar Allan Poe, Janis Joplin and Yasser Arafat, click
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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS
Roman Catholic: World Day of Migrants and Refugees
Canada – Vancouver:
Winter Lights at Lafarge
Eritrea – Timkat
(Coptic Epiphany)
Georgia – Natlisgeba
(Orthodox Epiphany)
Finland – Feast Day of St. Henry
(patron saint of Finland)
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On This Day in HISTORY
1419 – Rouen surrenders to Henry V of England, completing his conquest of Normandy
1607 – San Agustin Church in Manila is officially completed, the oldest church still standing in the Philippines
1676 – John Weldon born, English composer, theatrical music and church organ music
1736 – James Watt born, Scottish-English chemist-engineer, steam engine pioneer
1764 – Englishman John Wilkes, radical politician and member of the infamous Hellfire Club, is expelled from the British House of Commons after being tried and found guilty in absentia of obscene and seditious libel when the 4th Earl of Sandwich, also a Hellfire member, read aloud in the House of Lords a pornographic poem Wilkes co-authored called “An Essay on Woman,” a parody of Alexander Pope’s “An Essay on Man”
1795 – The Batavian Republic is proclaimed in the Netherlands, bringing to an end the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands
1809 – Edgar Allan Poe born, American author and poet
1812 – In the Peninsular War, after a 10-day siege, British Field Marshal Wellington orders his troops to storm Ciudad Rodrigo, held by the French under Marshal Ney
1817 – General José de San Martín leads his army of more than 5.000 men across the Andes from Argentina, to liberate Chile and Peru from Spain
1825 – Tin Can Day * Ezra Daggett and Thomas Kensett patent the first canned food storage process
1829 – The first full production of Faust, Part One, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s tragic play, a masterwork in two parts, debuts in Braunschweig, Germany
1839 – Paul Cézanne born, French Impressionist painter
1851 – Jacobus Cornelius Kapteyn born, Dutch astronomer, made extensive studies of the Milky Way and discovered galactic rotation
1853 – Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Il trovatore premieres in Rome
1861 – Georgia announces it is seceding from the Union
1883 – The first electric lighting system with overhead wires, built by Thomas Edison, begins service at Roselle, New Jersey
1889 – Sophie Taeuber-Arp born, Swiss painter and sculptor, one of the most important 20th century geometric abstraction artists
1893 – Magda Tagliaferro born, Brazilian pianist, soloist and guest artist with celebrated orchestras, taught at the Conservatoire de Paris
1903 – Boris Blacher, German composer-librettist, is born
1905 – Oveta Culp Hobby born, first secretary of the US Department of Health, Education and Welfare, first commanding officer of the Women’s Army Corps
1907 – The first film reviews appear in Variety magazine
1915 – National Neon Day * Frenchman George Claude is issued a U.S. patent for neon tubes for advertising signs
1920 – The United States Senate votes against joining the League of Nations
1921 – Patricia Highsmith born, American author of psychological thrillers; her first novel was Strangers on a Train, also wrote ground-breaking novel The Price of Salt
1937 – Howard Hughes sets a new air record, flying from Los Angeles to New York City in seven hours, 28 minutes, 25 seconds
1943 – Janis Joplin born, American singer-songwriter, solo artist and member of the band Big Brother and the Holding Company
1946 – General Douglas MacArthur establishes the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo to try Japanese war criminals
1946 – Dolly Parton born, American singer-songwriter-actress
1949 – The salary of the U.S. President is increased from $75,000 to $100,000 with an additional $50,000 expense allowance for each year in office
1949 – Cuba recognizes the nation of Israel, before it is admitted to the U.N. in May
1953 – Almost 72% of all television sets in the United States are tuned into I Love Lucy to watch Lucy give birth
1956 – UN Security Council Resolution 111 calls on Israel and Syria to met their obligations, acknowledging Syrian provocation, but declaring Israel in direct violation of the General Armistice Agreement
1960 – Japan and the United States sign the US–Japan Mutual Security Treaty
1971 – The revival of No, No Nanette opens in NY’s 46th Street Theatre
1977 – President Gerald Ford gives last-minute pardon to “Tokyo Rose” (Iva D’Aquino)
1978 – The last Volkswagen Beetle made in Germany leaves VW’s plant in Emden, but Beetle production in Latin America continues until 2003
1981 – U.S. and Iranian officials sign an agreement to release 52 American hostages after 14 months of captivity
1981 – Styx releases their album Paradise Theater
1983 – Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie is arrested in Bolivia
1983 – The Apple Lisa, Apple’s first commercial personal computer with a graphic user interface and computer mouse, is announced
1993 – Fleetwood Mac reunites to perform at Bill Clinton’s inauguration
1993 – Czech Republic and Slovakia join the United Nations
1997 – Yasser Arafat returns to Hebron after more than 30 years and joins celebrations over the handover of the last Israeli-controlled West Bank city
2006 – NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft launches on first mission to investigate Pluto
2010 – Republican Scott Brown captures the U.S. Senate seat held by liberal champion Edward Kennedy for nearly half a century, defeating Democrat Martha Coakley in a special election
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Visuals
- Popcorn
- Old postcard of Neon signs on a street in Montreal, Canada
- International flags
- 1419 siege of Rouen – illustration from Vigiles de Charles VII
- Edgar Allan Poe – quote from To One in Paradise
- Tin Cans Day poster
- Paul Cézanne – self portrait
- Sophie Taeuber-Arp with Dadahead 1920
- Patricia Highsmith-quote from The Price of Salt
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The conquest of Normandy is kinda funny… as William the Conqueror invaded the British Isle, deposing the Roman Rule. The inside story as I believe is correct, William was the Bastered son of elite Court of Normandy, who had no right to inherit from his father, so with his fathers legancy to uphold, as he was a male son, he raised an army to invade England.
Janis Joplin,
Love her music, I can identify with her pain. A side note “Me and Bobby McGee” was written by Kris Kristofferson as a request by the recording house he was trying out for, it was a tribute to the VP of the recording houses Secretary. Needless to say, he got a recording contract. Kristofferson was also a member of the military and loved flying helicopters, however, the Rhodes Scholar was given a commission to teach English at West Point. He wanted to fly helicopters, so he quit the Army and went to Nashville. This was against all family values, his father was a General in Brownsville, Texas. His mom disapproved of th new life, disavowed him. They would not speak for more than 20 years. By then he had established himself as an excellent musician with recording on both Rock and County…. the rest is history…
Hi Russell –
The intertwined history of England and France is like the most extreme version of sibling rivalry to me.
I was lucky enough to be in San Francisco during Joplin’s heyday there, before her voice was trashed – her version of ‘Summertime’ gave me chills every time I heard it. That t-shirt slogan, ‘I may be old, but I got to see all the cool bands’ is so true for anybody who went to the Avalon Ballroom and the Fillmore back then.
Thanks for the background on “Me and Bobby McGee” – knew Kristofferson wrote it, but not the story behind it.
I missed the California venues, but not the Armadillo….. The Drug Czar for the State of Texas, Ross Perot, bought it and tore it down….good stoners use to run Austin… Not anymore….
It’s the only city that a council member gets high, thinks his garden hose is a snake and opens fire on the hose… no charges were file…
Filed
Quicksilver (Messenger Service) and Big Brother played at my high school
“I was lucky enough to be in San Francisco during Joplin’s heyday there, before her voice was trashed – her version of ‘Summertime’ gave me chills every time I heard it. That t-shirt slogan, ‘I may be old, but I got to see all the cool bands’ is so true for anybody who went to the Avalon Ballroom and the Fillmore back then.”
I saw some really great bands, once I saw BB King for the bar cover charge of 1$. He had come to 6th while he was in town and played for about 45 minutes… not a bad deal.
I’d say that was a once-in-a-lifetime deal!
My husband is a UT-Austin grad, so I got all his stories about the Austin music scene – There were a lot of great places to live for music lovers in those days – there’s some good music today, but that era was just an explosion of creativity.
As a devout Jim Morrison fan…. I hear you. However, there are somethings I remember, something’s I would like to forget… you used to be able to get anything you wanted in Austin…. you just had to know the right folks…
Waiting 90 minutes for Morrison to appear as the rest of the Doors vamped is a highlight
Do you think Morrison could play like he did if he wasn’t Vamped? I wonder if he had not met Pamela Courson would he be alive today? If my understanding is correct, she introduced him to heroin… the band and his manager wanted him to get clean. Courson, had such an influence on him that she was his undoing.
I had the same reaction the first time I saw Janis Joplin, Jimi Hedrix and Jim Morrison – I knew they were going to self-destruct. You can’t keep giving all that raw intensity and naked feeling to audiences night after night without flaming out.
If Courson hadn’t given Morrison the needle, he’d just have found a different way to go.
All of them lasted a few years longer than I thought they would – I think the music kept them going as long as they did.
Good point. I was lucky to see as many concerts as I had. I saw Stevie Ray Vaughan 11 times. No better venue than Austin, in my opinion. The city used to spend about 250k on out door concerts at Auditorium Shores, at Town Lake. Willie twice at his ranch, I know the song quite well, “I’ll Never Smoke Weed with Willie Again.” Pardon my language, but that’s for damn sure. I woke up in a fetal position…. other than that I survived the late 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and the first half of the 2000’s. So I can’t complain. As Joe Walsh had said, Lifes been good to me do far…
Jack Burton: “It’s like I told my first wife, ‘Honey, I never drive faster than I can see and besides that it’s all in the reflexes.'”
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
LOL!
Thanks Gene