Sunday, November 19, 2017

Historical Horseshit

Today in History
November 19
1620: The Pilgrims sight Cape Cod.
1828: In Vienna, Composer Franz Schubert dies of syphilis at age 31. [Why he never finished that symphony? — M.B.]
1861: Julia Ward Howe writes "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" while visiting Union troops near Washington.
1863: Lincoln delivers the "Gettysburg Address" at the dedication of the National Cemetery at the site of the Battle of Gettysburg.
1885: Bulgarians, led by Stefan Stambolov, repulse a larger Serbian invasion force at Slivinitza.
1873: James Reed and two accomplices rob the Watt Grayson family of $30,000 in the Choctaw Nation.
1897: The Great "City Fire" in London.
1905: 100 people drown in the English Channel as the steamer Hilda sinks.
1911: New York receives first Marconi wireless transmission from Italy.
1915: The Allies ask China to join the entente against the Central Powers.
1923: The Oklahoma State Senate ousts Governor Walton for anti-Ku Klux Klan measures.
1926: Leon Trotsky is expelled from the Politburo in the Soviet Union.
1942: Soviet forces take the offensive at Stalingrad.
1949: Prince Ranier III is crowned 30th Monarch of Monaco.
1952: Scandinavian Airlines opens a commercial route from Canada to Europe.
Would've been 100 today: Indira Gandhi, prime minister of India from 1967 to 1977 and 1978 to 1984, who was assassinated by her own guards.

Historynet missed this catastrophic flood.

Disaster

1824

Thousands perish in St. Petersburg flood

On this day in 1824, a flood on the Neva River in Russia claims an estimated 10,000 lives.
And Billy Strayhorn, composer, arranger and pianist who wrote “Take the ‘A’ Train” would've been 102.

2 comments:

Feline Mama said...

Damn Pilgrims! What was wrong with their country!?!
OBTW, M, I like these timelines. Makes for conversation, NO?!

Frank Wilhoit said...

Schubert's "unfinished" symphony -- what there is of it -- was composed in 1822, six years before his death, but at a time when he was re-inventing himself (as we would now say). He began, but did not finish, many works in various genres between 1820 and 1823. Many of the challenges of the new style that he was groping towards had to do with the handling of tempos and tempo contrast. The B-minor symphony was probably put aside because its two completed movements are in essentially the same tempo and meter, and thus are not sufficiently contrasted.