History on Air

The Origins of Valentine’s Day

The origins of Valentine’s Day go back to a holy man, just which holy man is unknown though. There are a few different possibilities: He could be a priest from Rome, the bishop of Ineramna (now Terni, Italy) or a martyr in the Roman province of Africa. The feast of St. Valentine was established by Pope Gelasius in 496 he said Valentine was among those, “…whose names are justly reverenced among men, but whose acts are known only to God.” As you can see, even then, they didn’t know much about Valentine.

The first written record of Valentine appears in 1493 in the Hartmann Schedel: Nuremberg Chronicle , which was an illustrated world history written in Latin by Hartmann Shaedel. This text says that Valentine was a Roman priest (maybe just in Rome at that time and could still have been the Valentine form Terni?) beheaded during the reign of Claudius II. Valentine was arrested and imprisoned for marrying couples and aiding Christians in other ways. The marriages at the time were illegal in Rome. Valentine suffered greatly for helping Christians, before his beheading he was beaten with clubs and stoned.

Some make the case that the celebrations of Valentine’s Day did not start until after Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Parlement of Foulys, generally thought to have been written in 1381 – 1382. Could it be the author Chaucer, best known for his work The Canterbury Tales is the originator of Valentine’s Day?

“For this was sent on Seynt Valentyne’s day
Whan every foul cometh ther to choose his mate.”
From Chaucer’s The Parlement of Foulys

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In the video below the creator interviews a priest from Terni.

Text sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Valentine, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Chaucer, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentine%27s_Day, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martyrology, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop_of_Interamna, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Chronicle

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Feb 7, 1964 – Beatles Arrive in New York

The four young men landed in New York on Pan Am Flight 101. Brian Esptien, their manager, friends Mal Evans and Neil Aspinall, Phil Spector, their producer and the group the Ronettes accompanied them. The reason for their visit was their upcoming appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show and a few concert dates.

They were already doing really well. They had the number 1 US single “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” They also knew that Beatlemania was starting in the US. But Lennon was still pensive saying, “The thing is, in America, it just seemed ridiculous – I mean, the idea of having a hit record over there. It was just something you could never do.”

Some might say that the Beatles were so successful because the US just really needed to be happy about something, just 77 days earlier their President, John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. Martin Goldsmith, author of The Beatles Come to America (Turning Points in History) disagrees. “Lennon and McCartney were superb composers – their songs were brilliant and remain brilliant.” He didn’t think it had anything to do with the timing, the Beatles were just good!

But maybe it was the $50,000 that Capitol Records spent on the campaign or the celebrities that wore Beatles wigs. Regardless, they were huge.

Ed Sullivan realized this a few months ago when he and his wife were stuck at London’s Heathrow Airport because of the masses of fans who had come to see the Beatles arrive from Sweden.

“The Ed Sullivan Show” received more than 50,000 requests for its 728 seats — more than it had gotten for Elvis Presley‘s 1956 appearance.

I for one am glad they came. And I think the 14+ million fans (thats just Facebook) are glad too.

Text source: CNN

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Feb 4, 1974 Patty Hearst Kidnapped

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Patty Hearst, the granddaughter of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst was kidnapped on February 4, 1974 by a neo-revolutionary group called the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA). She was taken from her Berkley, California apartment that she shared with her fiance Steven Weed. By her account, she was kept for 2 months and brain washed. In April 1974 the now famous picture of her holding a gun was photographed.

Image Source

On April 15, 1974 she officially became an outlaw.  She was photographed helping a group of SLA members commit a bank robbery.  In September 1974, Patty Hearst was arrested with other members of the SLA in a San Francisco apartment.  On March 20, 1976 she was convicted of the bank robbery and sentenced to 35 years in prison.  After serving 22 months of her sentence Hearst was released in February 1979, when Jimmy Carter commuted her sentence.  President Bill Clinton granter her a full pardon January 20, 2001.  After her release Patty married her former bodyguard, Bernard Shaw. She now lives with her husband and two children, Gillian and Lydia in Garrison, New York.

Patty eventually wrote a autobiography of her ordeal called Patty Hearst Her Story.  Patty also wrote, Every Secret Thing. The book Patty’s Got a Gun: Patricia Hearst in 1970s America is also a popular biography about Patty Hearst.  Movies have also been made about Patty’s kidnapping and include, Guerrilla – The Taking of Patty Hearst and Patty Hearst.  Patty her self is an actress and has been in several films and appears in television series as well.

Below you can watch a Patty Hearst interview from Larry King Live.  It has several parts.

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

Text Sources: http://www.who2.com/pattyhearst.html, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patty_hearst

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Feb 2, 1887 First Groundhog Day

Groundhog Day may be one of may favorite all time movies, but it is also a pretty big deal everyday for Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, the same two depicted in the movie. The movie was actually filmed in Woodstock and it so proud of being the location of the movie that they’ve erected a plaque at the corner with the troublesome puddle and named it “Ned’s Corner.” They also have their own groundhog now, Woodstock Willie, and the local movie theater shows the movie for free every Groundhog’s Day weekend. Despite the terrible weather the midwest and east are getting it all seems to be moving forward.

Here is a great overview of the history of the day. I was going to paraphrase all this, but I liked exactly how it was written:

Groundhog Day, February 2nd, is a popular tradition in the United States. It is also a legend that traverses centuries, its origins clouded in the mists of time with ethnic cultures and animals awakening on specific dates. Myths such as this tie our present to the distant past when nature did, indeed, influence our lives. It is the day that the Groundhog comes out of his hole after a long winter sleep to look for his shadow.

If he sees it, he regards it as an omen of six more weeks of bad weather and returns to his hole.

If the day is cloudy and, hence, shadowless, he takes it as a sign of spring and stays above ground.

The groundhog tradition stems from similar beliefs associated with Candlemas Day and the days of early Christians in Europe, and for centuries the custom was to have the clergy bless candles and distribute them to the people. Even then, it marked a milestone in the winter and the weather that day was important.

source: http://www.groundhog.org/groundhog-day/history/,
http://pittsburgh.about.com/cs/punxsutawney/a/groundhog_day.htm,
http://www.neatorama.com/2009/02/03/movie-trivia-groundhog-day/

Watched this on Monday. I’ve seen this many times and still love it. One of my all-time favorites.

Groundhog Day (15th Anniversary Special Edition) [Blu-ray]

Some of the best parts of the movie:

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Feb 1, 1884 – Oxford Dictionary debuts

In 1857 the members of the Philological Society of London decided that the available english language dictionary were terrible.  They thought they could do better.  They new it was a huge project, but they didn’t know just how bad it was going to get.

The project proceeded at a snails pace.  It wasn’t until 1879 that the Society made a deal with the Oxford University Press and James A.H. Murray to begin on a new English Dictionary.

It was to be a 4 volume work, 6,400 pages in all.  It would include English language vocabulary from Early Middle English Period (1150 AD) to present.  It was estimated that the project would take about 10 years.  But 5 years later, they had only reached ‘ant’.  By Feb 1, 1884 they had published the first part of the dictionary.

In April 1928 the last volume was published.  It was no longer a 4 volume, 6,400 page work.  The project had ballooned into a 10 volume 400,000 page work.

Further Reading:

Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages – This book is about a man who spends a year reading the OED.  This is on my list of books to read and I’m looking forward to it.  From the book description: “Shea shares his year inside the OED, delivering a hair-pulling, eye-crossing account of reading every word.”

Concise Oxford English Dictionary: 11th Edition Revised 2008 – Take a go of it yourself and read the OED cover to cover.  If you do please let me know what you thought of the project.

In this video is the Yale University Library and Oxford University Press sponsored a panel lecture on October 1, 2008 to celebrate the 80th birthday of the Oxford English Dictionary, the comprehensive dictionary of the English language. The speakers were Fred Shapiro, Simon Winchester, Jesse Sheidlower, and Ammon Shea, and each brought unique and engaging insights to this discussion of the history, function, and future of the dictionary.

Source:  http://www.oed.com/public/oedhistory/history-of-the-oed#work

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Bay of Pigs [On This Day]

In 1961, about 1,500 CIA-trained Cuban exiles launched the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in a failed attempt to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro. In the photo, Lawyer James Donovan (R) in Miami after the return of the ransomed Bay of Pigs prisoners, which he arranged. Image credit: LIFE

What Went Wrong
The first major error occurred on April 15, 1961, when eight B-26 bombers left Nicaragua to bomb Cuban airfields. The operation failed to destroy the entire arsenal of planes, leaving most of Castro’s air force intact. The CIA had used obsolete World War II B-26 bombers, and painted them to look like Cuban air force planes. As news broke of the attack and American complicity became apparent after photos of the repainted planes became public, President Kennedy cancelled the second air strike.

On April 17, the Cuban-exile invasion force, or Brigade 2506, landed at beaches along the Bay of Pigs and immediately came under heavy fire. The planes left unharmed in the earlier air attack strafed the invaders, sank two escort ships, and destroyed half of the exile’s air support. Bad weather hampered the ground force, which had to work with soggy equipment and low stores of ammunition.

During the next 24 hours, Castro had 20,000 troops advancing on the beach and the Cuban Air Force continued to control the skies. As the situation grew increasingly grim, President Kennedy authorized an “air-umbrella” at dawn on April 19, which called for six unmarked American fighter planes to help defend the Brigade’s B-26 aircraft flying from Nicaragua. But the B-26s arrived an hour late (most likely due to time zone confusion) and were shot down by the Cubans. The invasion was crushed later that day. Some exiles escaped to the sea, while the rest were killed or rounded up and imprisoned by Castro’s forces. Almost 1200 Brigade members had surrendered and more than 100 had been killed. [jfklibrary.org]

Learn more:

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion
Politics of Illusion: The Bay of Pigs Invasion Reexamined
Decision for Disaster: The Battle of the Bay of Pigs
Decision for Disaster: Betrayal at the Bay of Pigs

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