Beyond Rivalry - today_in_history

1918

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 21:16:00 -0500

It was 90 years ago today that the fighting of World War I between the Allies and Germany ceased, on 11 a.m. on 11 Nov. 1918 -- now variously commemorated as Veteran's Day (U.S. only), Armistice Day, Poppy Day, and Remembrance Day. The Treaty of Versailles officially ended the war (and some would say laid the ground for the next one) when it was signed the next year in June.

I started thinking about what else was going on in 1918.

NOTABLE EVENTS

The Spanish Flu epidemic, coming in waves from 4 March 1918 to June 1920, infecting from 500 to 950 million people worldwide and killing 20 to 100 million people, likely quite a bit more than the number of people killed in World War I (8.5-10 million combatants plus about 10 million civilians, mainly of famine and illness other than the flu). The Spanish Flu was unusual in that it killed healthy adults (average age: 33) and spread even to the Arctic. It seems to have started in the U.S. state of Kansas.

The Sedition Act was passed in the U.S. at the behest of Pres. Woodrow Wilson and "forbade Americans to use 'disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language'…

The Intersection of Terror and Glamour

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 06:00:00 -0400

Deep Glamour has a provocative post about the relationships among glamour, heroism, martyrdom, desire, violence, and terror.

It begins by quoting author Salman Rushdie, who, when asked about the causes of terrorism, suggested: "a misconceived sense of mission," a 'herd mentality,' the desire to become 'a historic figure,' an attraction to violence, and -- shocking the interviewer -- glamour. ... 'The suicide bomber's imagination leads him to believe in a brilliant act of heroism, when in fact he is simply blowing himself up pointlessly and taking other peoples lives.'"

Blogger Virginia Postrel continues:

"To someone who thinks 'glamour' means movie stars and designer dresses, the idea that terrorism is glamorous sounds bizarre. But Rushdie is wise to the deeper meaning of glamour, as a form of magic and persuasion. Glamour is in the audience's eyes, and the phenomenon long preceded Hollywood. ... Glamour can sell religious devotion or military glory as surely as it can pitch lipstick or island vacations. All promise a way to transcend our everyday circumstances, to experience more and become better than ordinary life allows. All invite us to imagine escape and transformation. ... Glamour appeals to our desires, whatever they may be."

Glamour, in other words,…

Haunted by What's Not There

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 08:50:00 -0400

David W. Dunlap at the NYT (The Towers of Memory, Before and After) compares views from 1978 and 2008.

(Photo credit: Dunlap/NYT)

Nazis - 75th Anniversary

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 11:00:00 -0500

Tomorrow it will be 75 years since Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party took office in Germany. Nicholas Kulish writes today in the NYT about the continuing struggle of the German people to come to terms with the Holocaust in their country, including "the building of monuments to the Nazi disgrace" that " continues unabated," with new construction beginning in Berlin of two monuments, "one near the Reichstag, to the murdered Gypsies, ...; and another not far from the Brandenburg Gate, to gays and lesbians killed in the Holocaust." These are in addition to the recently opened "Topography of Terror center at the site of the former Gestapo and SS headquarters" and "a huge new exhibition ... at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp," as well as other building projects recently launched or in the works.

Two points that interest me in Kulish's short article (both mentioned briefly and warranting further investigation):

The younger generation of Germans, "who are required to study the Nazi era and the Holocaust intensively," view the Holocaust not as a source of guilt but as motivation for them to be responsible "on the world stage for social justice and pacifism, including opposition to the war in Iraq."

If…

Avoiding Violence of Spirit - Martin Luther King Jr. Tribute

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 18:25:00 -0500

In memory and honour of Martin Luther King, Jr., 1929 -1968 ...

MLK Quotes

MLK Bio Sketch

MLK Birthday Commemoration Resources

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It's not only necessary to know how to go about loving your enemies, but also to go down into the question of why we should love our enemies. I think the first reason that we should love our enemies, and I think this was at the very center of Jesus' thinking, is this: that hate for hate only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe. If I hit you and you hit me and I hit you back and you hit me back and go on, you see, that goes on ad infinitum. It just never ends. Somewhere somebody must have a little sense, and that's the strong person. The strong person is the person who can cut off the chain of hate, the chain of evil. -- 17 November 1957, "Loving Your Enemies," sermon delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, AL

There's another reason why you should love your enemies, and that is because hate distorts the personality of the hater. We usually think of what hate does for the individual hated or…

Atrocity of the Day Calendar

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 14:54:16 -0500

Strangely compelling, the Axis of Evel Knievel ("Another Day, Another Pointless Atrocity") posts details of an historical atrocity most days. Among 'evel' topics are crime, executions, nuclear radiation accidents, birthdays of tyrants and dictators, fires, declaratons of war, war battles, shipwrecks, genocides and other mass slaughters, governmental conspiracies, self-immolation, and so on.

Looking Back: 26 May 2007

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Sat, 26 May 2007 06:00:00 -0400

26 MAY is ...

>>> 15 years since Chuck Geschke (1939-), the co-founder of Adobe Systems Inc., was kidnapped at gunpoint from the Adobe parking lot in Mountain View, California (1992) as he arrived at work around 9 a.m. He was held for four days before being rescued from a house in Hollister, California by the FBI. Geschke retired as president of Adobe in 2000.

Sources: Los Altos Town Crier: Part 1 of A dramatic kidnapping revisited, by Anne Chappell Belden, Oct. 1997: "An exhaustive overview of the five-day ordeal, what has transpired since and the ramifications on the Geschke family." Subsequent articles: Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 / Today in Technology History: May 30 / Geschke's bio at Adobe's website /

Looking Back: 25 May 2007

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Fri, 25 May 2007 22:25:00 -0400

25 MAY is ...

>>> 72 years since George 'Babe' Ruth (1895-1948) hit his record-setting 714th home run (1935), playing with the Boston Braves at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. He went 4-for-4, drove in 6 runs and hit 3 home runs in an 11-7 loss to the Pirates. The last home run cleared the roof at the old Forbes Field. His record stood for 39 years, until Hank Aaron broke it in Atlanta in April 1974, amid death threats and racist hate mail "from people who did not want to see a black man break Ruth's home run record."

Sources: Yesterday's News (Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune): Bambino's Last Home Run / The Official Site of the NY Yankees: The Sultan of Swat / ESPN: Lovable Ruth was Everyone's Babe, by Larry Schwartz / Smithsonian: Breaking Records, Breaking Barriers / BabeRuth.com / The Nation: Bonding with the Babe, by Dave Zirin, May 2006

>>> 486 years since the Edict of Worms was issued by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (1521), "declaring [church reformer] Martin Luther an outlaw, banning his writings, and requiring his arrest: 'We want him to be apprehended and punished as a notorious heretic'." Anyone was permitted to kill Luther…

Looking Back: 24 May 2007

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Thu, 24 May 2007 21:45:00 -0400

24 MAY is ...

>>> 151 years since American slavery abolitionist John Brown (1800 - 1859) staged his first anti-slavery raid, on Pottawatomie, Kansas (1856). "His perennial zeal for the underdog ... drove him to struggle on behalf of the economically vulnerable farmers of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and western Virginia a decade before his guerrilla activities in Kansas." In late winter of 1856, Brown came from his home in Pennsylvania to Kansas, which was hotly divided on the slavery issue. Slave state forces were using violence and terrorism to win the state for their side in an upcoming vote, which inflamed Brown, as did the lack of effective response by free state forces. Brown was also concerned that his family could be the next targets of the terrorists. During the night of 24 May, Brown and a group of others, including some of his sons, took five pro-slavery settlers -- James Doyle, James Doyle's sons William and Drury Doyle, Allen Wilkinson, and William Sherman -- from their cabins on Pottawatomie Creek and hacked them to death with broadswords. He evaded capture in the woods. "This was one of the many bloody episodes in Kansas preceding the American Civil War, which came to…

Looking Back: 23 May 2007

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Wed, 23 May 2007 12:42:40 -0400

23 MAY is ...

>>> 509 years since Girolamo Savonarola (1452 - 1498), aka Jerome or Hieronymus Savonarola, an Italian Dominican priest and leader of Florence, was executed by the state (1498). He spent most of his career preaching against the corruption of the clergy and averred that Christian life involved being good, not accomplishing pompous displays. He hoped to correct the excesses of the church and purge it of immorality and depravity. One of his favourite topics was the Last Days, and he was very popular and influential with the people because of a confluence of current events that made it seem that the last days might really be at hand. He was "venerated by his followers as a prophet." When he replaced Lorenzo Medici as the leader of Florence in 1494, he established what he called a 'Christian and religious Republic,' one whose first acts was to make sodomy a capital offence. His 'Bonfire of the Vanities' in Feb. 1497 was a collection and subsequent burning of "items associated with moral laxity" such as mirrors, cosmetics, pagan books, playing cards, games and chess pieces, musical instruments, finery, and Renaissance artworks. Eventually the citizenry got tired of him, as the…