séance on a wet afternoon

Via our faithful chronicler, Doctor Caligari’s Cabinet, we are reminded that on this day—shared with many other anniversaries of the good and the great—that the 1964 British drama from film-maker Bryan Forbes starring co-producer Baron Richard Attenborough (*1923 – †2014) and Kim Stanley (*1925 – †2001), who plays a medium haunted and obligated by the memory of the couple’s departed son and concocts a plan to establish her reputation as a psychic, involving the kidnapping and ransom of the daughter of a wealthy family and lead authorities to the child through revealed through her second-sight. Stanley’s character cows her husband (Attenborough, originally the screenplay called for a same-sex couple played by Tom Courtenay and Alec Guinness but the latter turned down the role, prompting a major rewrite) into committing the crime, which goes awry.

iww

Marking the heightening tension between labour organisers and business executives in the US Pacific Northwest, the Everett Massacre, occurring on this day in 1916 was a flashpoint exacerbated by global economic downturn and depression. Dock workers and police authorities in service of commercial interests regularly clashed, and International Workers of the World members (Wobblies) were dispatched in support of an ongoing strike action and rally for fairer pay and better working conditions. In response to these demonstrations, local business enlisted and deputised more union-busting mercenaries and the standoff quickly escalated into armed conflict. The culpability for the violence and death is yet questioned, with some describing the IWW as a radicalised and over-zealous advocate for political and labour reform with other scholars and historians placing the blame on agents provocateur and corporate spies infiltrating the union members’ ranks.

catholicon

First printed in Tréguier on this day in 1499 with editions and updates continuing until 2001, the trilingual dictionary—in the sense of universal—was the sum of the complied entries by Bretagne priest Jehan Lagadeuc over the course of some three decades and was the first published Breton and French dictionary, referent to Latin. Sometimes referred to as the Catholicon Armoricum (from the Roman name for Brittany) to distinguish it from the Catholicon Anglicum—an English-Latin grammar—that emerged around the same time.

i got an empty cup, pour me some more

Though attested in the figurative sense to mean unfinished business since the nineteenth century and associated with the deleterious effects of too much drink until the turn of the century and the end of the Victorian-era, it is most likely a folk etymology, a backronym popularised by George Orwell’s 1933 Down and Out in Paris and London that the term hangover came from the Two Penny Hangover—the reported practise of draping the homeless or inmates of workhouses over a length of rope for a night’s accommodations. More comfortable that sitting up for the night or on resting on the cold stone floor—also maximising the number of lodgers per square metre—but the rope was promptly severed at five in the morning with the unfortunates tumbling and sent on their way. Language check and illustration both bookendings from Messy Nessy’s latest peripatetic internet journeys—with a lot more to discover at the link above.

if i concentrate hard enough, i can move things

Released in theatres in the US on this day in 1976, horror writer Stephen King only received twenty-five hundred dollars for the rights to his novel (in epistolary form)—which seems rather nominal compared to the thirty-four-million-dollar box office performance for North America and the continued franchise—but at age twenty-six was happy to receive that sort of recognition for his first published book, first in print just two years prior. Directed by Brian De Palma, the award-winning film stars Sissy Spacek as a shy high school student with a religiously fanatical mother who is relentlessly tormented by her peers—unaware of her telekinetic abilities.

novemberrevolution

Lasting through August of the following year, the revolt and uprising that replaced the constitutional monarchy of Germany and led to the formation of the Weimar Republic (previously) began on this day in 1918 with the Kiel Mutiny (Kieler Matrosenaufstand)—a revolt by a sailors of the High Seas Fleet (Hochseeflotte) demoralised and defeated in a senseless war. As testament to the social tensions between the general population and the aristocracy, the movement expanded outward from the city’s port and garnered some forty thousand rebels from the ranks of the navy, the army (which had been dispatched to quell the situation) and sympathetic workers, and by the next day they were able to organise articulate fourteen points outlying the revolutionary council’s demands: resolutions and demands including the release of political prisoners, complete freedom of the press, halting censorship of correspondence, cessation of fighting and the separation of being on- and off-duty (see also). By the seventh, King Ludwig III of Bavaria capitulated and announced the creation of a People’s Free State, and by the ninth, Emperor Wilhelm II abdicated and went into exile and Germany was declared a republic.

a very special episode

Via Boing Boing, we are treated to an expertly stitched together comparison of West Wing’s original third season televised episode Hartfield’s Landing with the reprised roles of most of the cast producing a stage version to raise awareness and support the non-profit, non-partisan organisation for voter advocacy. The pacing is perfect and the message resounding.

pause for station identification

Reflagged as BBC1 in 1964, the British Broadcasting Corporation launched its television service, the first regular and “high-definition” (a resolution of two hundred lines at the time) on this day in 1936. It has been continually airing programming (see also) since with the exception of a nearly seven-year hiatus during World War II, the station being taken off air with little warning just under three years later due to concerns that transmissions would act as a homing beacon for enemy aircraft and bring the fighting right to the heart of London. The final programme aired before the suspension was a Disney short (the cartoon Mickey’s Gala Premier) and reshown once transmissions returned one June day in 1946, preceded with one of the original presenters coming on the air: “Good afternoon everybody. How are you? Do you remember me, Jasmine Bligh?”