History on Air

American History Course on iTunes U

I saw the in the app store and could not resist checking it out. After all it is free. And it seems like more and more people have iPads now.

As you can see from above it’s a completely separate app you will need to download, but it is free so if you have the space go ahead and download it.

That’s what it looks like and you can preview the content that will be available once you download too.

Once you download it will be available in an app that looks just like iBooks.

And here is a look at the content that you get for free.

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Learn More About Thor

You may be into superhero comics, action movies or Norse mythology we will cover it and help you learn more about it in this post. The movie Thor which came out today, May 6, 2011.

You can read the comics in 3 volumes all offered at amazon.com.

• Thor, Vol. 1
• Thor, Vol. 2
• Thor, Vol. 3

So there are the comics and movie, but what about the real mythology? There is a lot to learn there too. Start here with the wikipedia article. If that is not enough you can learn more from these books:

• The Prose Edda: Norse Mythology
• From Asgard to Valhalla: The Remarkable History of the Norse Myths
• Norse Mythology: Great Stories from the Eddas

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Osama Bin Laden is Dead

Tonight the President announced that Osama Bin Laden is dead.  This is just a quick post to thank and congratulate the men and women of our armed forces and intelligence community for their exceptional work!

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Khan Academy

Every once and a while I try to stop by TED because they have really cool presentations there and you can watch them for free. One day a few weeks ago I did that and I stumbled upon this:

I thought this was very cool. He has some great videos up on youtube here are just some of them. Never mind, I can’t embed it here so you will have to use the link above to check it out.

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Vladimir Komarov & Yuri Gagarin

Here is a new category on the blog. Movie reviews! So, Christian (a long time supporter of the website and podcast) sent me a link to an article about the astronaut Vladimir Komarov. So I was reading this and thought really? I guess I wasn’t the only one because quickly after the original post the put up another post addressing all the questions the first one created in the comments section.

So, now we don’t know what happened at all. But one of the comments on another site, I think digg, but I’m not sure said that the whole thing was debunked in the documentary In the Shadow of the Moon. So I rented this from Netflix and they didn’t mention a single thing about Vladimir Komarov. Totally bummed, but on the bright side it was a really good documentary that featured interviews with American astronauts. So, it wasn’t a total loss.

And as mentioned in the NPR articles there is a book coming soon that may unveil some of the questions that we are seeing pop up. I myself, would really like to know what happened. Hopefully, Starman: The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin will provide some answers, or at least give us some interesting history. In the mean time I think I will break out some blu-rays that I have had for a while but have not had the chance to watch, When We Left Earth – The NASA Missions [Blu-ray]. Anybody see this yet?

Oh, and one more thing, on April 12, there is supposed to be a film coming out on youtube that will tell us more. See the link here.

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Elizabeth Taylor Biography

Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor passed away yesterday, Wednesday, March 23, 2011 at the age of 79. The two-time Oscar winner was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in February for symptoms of heart failure. Taylor is one of the most recognized film stars of recent history. She has been in around 50 films and also appeared numerous times in television programs. She is widely known for her 8 marriages and work with AIDS research fundraising.

Elizabeth was born with a mutation that caused double rows of eyelashes, which enhanced her appearance on camera.

Taylor was born in London, England on February 27, 1932 to her American parents Francis and Sara Taylor. Her father was an art dealer with a business in London. Her mother was an actress. Two years before her birth, her brother Howard was born. In 1939 the family moved back to the states, were Taylor began her career as a child actress. She would appear in her first movie, There’s One Born Every Minute at the age of 9.

She is most well known for her roles in:

• Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
• Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
• Giant
• All My Children

Taylor helped raise tens of millions of dollars for AIDS research during her life. She created the Elizabeth Taylor Aids Foundation. Elizabeth had four children with three of her husband’s. She won Oscars for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and BUtterfield 8. She was nominated for three other Oscars. She won the Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute in 1993.

“Though her loss is devastating to those of us who held her so close and so dear, we will always be inspired by her enduring contribution to our world. Her remarkable body of work in film, her ongoing success as a businesswoman, and her brave and relentless advocacy in the fight against HIV/AIDS, all make us all incredibly proud of what she accomplished,” says her son, Michael Wilding.

Further Learning:

• Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and the Marriage of the Century
• How to Be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood
• Elizabeth: The Life of Elizabeth Taylor
• Elizabeth

Books Taylor wrote herself:

• Elizabeth Taylor: My Love Affair with Jewelry
• Elizabeth Taylor’s Nibbles and Me
• Elizabeth Takes Off

Text sources: http://www.notablebiographies.com/St-Tr/Taylor-Elizabeth.html, http://www.cnn.com/2011/SHOWBIZ/03/23/obit.elizabeth.taylor/index.html, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Taylor, http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000072/

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Anti-Chinese Massacre of 1871

On October 24, 1871 a police officer responding to shots fired entered a notoriously bad area of Los Angeles to find a Chinese man shot in the neck. He saw men fleeing the scene and followed them into a building. He was then shot in the shoulder. Hearing his cries a local business owner also rushed into the same building, after firing several shots into it. He too was shot his injury much worse, he died an hour later.

Soon a mob developed and started to lay siege to the building the fleeing men were held up in. 17 Chinese were hung from the local wagon shop roof.

This was the largest mass lynching in American history and I bet, like me, you have never heard of it. Thank you to Christian P. who brought this to my attention. The whole article can be found on laweekly.com.

This story is not over yet. It was later revealed that the officer that went to investigate the shots may have actually been going to rob from a rich Chinese business man. The officer turns out to be not such a great guy, many court cases were filed against him. For example some accused him of stealing valuable roosters to fight in his cockfighting side business. The officer was also a gambler and believed to be manipulating the voting. This thing is so screwed up! Eventually, several people are brought to court for the charges, but the case gets thrown out. Unbelievable.

The story gets better, and it is amazing that there has not been a book published about this incident yet. There is a chapter on it in A Companion to Los Angeles (Blackwell Companions to American History). You can read some of the chapter in this book by googling The Anti-Chinese Massacre of 1871 Victor Jew the 5th link down is a link to the google book preview.

According to Wikipedia it is also briefly covered in The Brick People.

Image credit: Marion Doss unrelated image of lynching.

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History is All Around You

I ran into some local history a few weekends ago while out with my family. We were visiting a popular garden shop here in the orange county and we saw a cool gazebo when I approached it I saw that it had a sign stating its local history. I posted those pictures a while ago on our Facebook page, but here they are for you incase you missed them there.

Originally this gazebo/bandstand sat in the middle of Town Square at Disneyland.   Just before the park opened the bandstand was moved just to the left of the castle, because Walt was afraid it would get in the way of people seeing the castle.  It was there on opening day July 17, 1955.  Later the Carnation Garden’s Plaza would be built to permanent house all the musical performances.  It was then that the bandstand was moved to Adventureland, in an area that would become known as Magnolia Park, near the jungle cruise.  In 1962 the Jungle Cruise had an expansion and the Bandstand was donated to the city of Anaheim.  Its last move was to Roger’s Gardens when the City of Anaheim asked them if they would like to have it.

Here is a cool video I found that gives a great overview:

text source:  http://davelandblog.blogspot.com/2008/05/magnolia-park-bandstand.html, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disneyland

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Youtube Time Machine

Found a cool site and thought you would like it to. This site Youtube Time Machine (YTTM), finds videos from specific years and you can browse through them. I went to 1979, the year I was born and found a cool video with Christopher Reeve on the Johnny Carson show. You can see it below.

He is being interviewed for his role in Superman (only $10 on blu-ray right now!). They talk about the amazing graphics. It was a pretty cool watch. A while back I was asked to do a podcast on Superman and I think I ended up doing the history of the comic book for the most part. Mostly and origin story, but it occurs to me that really for my generation Christopher Reeve was Superman. I want to read his autobiography Still Me, or actually I really want to listen to it since he reads it. It was written in 1999 only four years after his near fatal accident. An amazon.com description says:

Christopher Reeve begins his heroic reading of Still Me with a special introduction, including this message: “Now, this audiobook allows me to communicate with you in a very personal way, second only to being in the same room.” Personal indeed. Hearing Reeve tell his account of the near-fatal riding accident on Memorial Day 1995 is a life-altering experience.

Another book on the to-read list. This blog is really starting to hurt my chances of getting through the ones that are already on there. This one is audio so it should go fast. Reeve followed up Still Me with another book in 2004 called: Nothing is Impossible: Reflections on a New Life. It has 4.5 stars our of 42 reviews. Sounds pretty good too! There is an audio version of this that Reeve reads himself again. I love it when authors do that.

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This weeks New York Times Non-Fiction Bestsellers

Looking for something to read?  We’ve got you covered.  I love reading.  I thought it would be nice and easy to let you all know that bestseller’s this week.  I have unfortunately only read one of the books on the list below.  Outliers was an amazing book and I highly recommend it.  I’ve read all (I think) of Gladwell’s books, and I must say he is a talented writer!  Have you read any of these?  Let us know in the comments.

1. Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

2. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

3. Decision Points

4. Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1

5. Cleopatra: A Life

6. Life

7. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

8. Decoded

9. The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict between America and Al-Qaeda

10. Outliers: The Story of Success

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