On this day in technology...

October 23rd 2001 - The Apple iPod is announced. 

The iPod went on sale with a 5GB capacity (1000 songs) and a $399 (£300) price tag. It was later re-released with a 10GB memory.

October 23rd 2006, My Chemical Romance releases their 3rd studio album, The Black Parade.      The album is the narrative of a dying man. It focuses on his death, the afterlife and his reflections on his life.

October 23rd 1941 - Disney’s 4th animated feature, Dumbo, is released. 

The Movie is based on a roll-a-book of the same name written by Harold Pearl and Helen Aberson. There are no known copies of this however, and there were only 1000 regular book reprints due to the couple’s messy divorce. 

October 23rd 1959 - Weird Al Yankovic is born.    Many artists consider a Weird Al parody to be a rite of passage in the industry. A sign that they have made it.

October 22nd 2012 - Taylor Swift releases her album Red

October 19th 1992 - Chie the Brat/Jarinko Chie/Downtown Story airs its first episode

Today in Art...

October 18th 1961 -  NY Museum of Modern Art hangs Henri Matisse's "Le Bateau" upside-down

This could have been my favourite piece of art in the whole world and I’m still not sure I’d have noticed. Would you have? Because no one else did, not even Matisse’s own son, Pierre, who was an art dealer and one of the 116,000 visitors to see the work in this state.  Le Bateau or The Boat in English, was hung upside down for 47 whole days until a stockbroker named Genevieve Harbert noticed on her 3rd visit to the exhibit and informed a guard as well as the Times who, in turn, contacted the director of exhibitions, Monroe Wheeler. Wheeler corrected the painting immediately calling it ‘careless’.

Call me Ishmael

Herman Melville’s novel was not actually very well received upon its initial publication in 1851. It wasn’t truly appreciated by critics and the public until the 20th century when it was ‘rediscovered’. Sadly, Melville wasn’t alive to witness the book gain fame.

Today in Film...

October 17th 1888 - Thomas Edison files a patent for the ‘Optical Phonograph’.

In October 1888, Edison filed a preliminary claim, known as a caveat, with the U.S. Patent Office announcing his plans to create a device that would do “for the Eye what the phonograph does for the Ear”. His theory was that if the phonograph could record sound vibrations on tracks around the edges of a cylinder then pictures could be recorded in the same way.  In March 1889, a second caveat was filed, in which the proposed motion picture device was given a name, Kinetoscope, derived from the Greek roots kineto- (“movement”) and scopos (“to view”).

However, many believe that Edison stole the idea from Eadweard Muybridge, a photographic pioneer at the time. Sometime in February that year Muybridge gave a lecture that supposedly contained a demonstration of his zoopraxiscope, a device that projected sequential images drawn around the edge of a glass disc, producing the illusion of motion. Muybridge later described how two days later he and Edison met at Edison’s laboratory and discussed his proposal of a collaboration. Edison’s phonograph and Muybridge’s Zoopraxiscope combined to make a device which would play images and sound concurrently. No such collaboration was made and later that year, in October, Edison files for his patent. 

Today in History...

October 17th 1814 - The Great London Beer Flood

The Horse Shoe Brewery stood at the corner of Great Russel Street and Tottenham Court Road and was famous for its porter, a dark brown, bitter beer, producing over 100,000 barrels each year. In order to do this, the brewery had a 22 foot tall wooden vat. For those of you who aren’t too good at envisioning stuff like that, it was around three storeys tall.

On the night of October 17th 1814, one of the iron rings holding the vat together snapped releasing a flood of hot, fermenting ale into the brewery. Not only did this force of the floor blast open several more vats, it also caused the back wall of the brewery to collapse, thus allowing over 1.5million litres (350,000 gallons) of porter to flood into the streets resulting in 8 immediate deaths and many damaged and destroyed buildings. The stench of beer remained in the area for months after but the brewery was soon fixed up and back in production. Despite there only being 8 official deaths, there are reports of people dying in the following days due to alcohol poisoning. 

The Horse Shoe brewery remained open and running until it was finally closed and demolished in 1921, the Dominion Theatre now sits on the site.  Some good did come of the incident however, wooden fermentation tanks were gradually phased put and replaced by much sturdier concrete lined vat. Far less likely to explode.

Today in History...

17th October 1956 - Bobby Fischer wins the Game of the Century

Doesn’t that sound exciting? I’m sure plenty of people are about to be let down with this post because The Game of the Century was, in fact, a chess match between Robert “Bobby” James Fischer (13) and Donald Byrne (26). Fischer (playing Black) wins the game by famously sacrificing his Queen to Byrne. A stupid move you might think? You wouldn’t be alone, everyone else thought so too but from this Fischer gained Byrne’s Rook, two if his Bishops and a Pawn which allowed his to force a checkmate thus winning the match. 

From this match Fischer gained massive amounts of momentum withing the chess community. By 1958 he was US champion (AKA the world’s youngest Grandmaster at 15) and in 1972 he became the World Chess Champion! As someone who is absolutely dreadful at chess, I find that to be an amazing feat.

Sadly Fischer become far more renound in his later life for his anti-semetic diatribes (which seems odd because his own mother was Jewish) and for supposedly celebrating the 9/11 attacks live on a radio broadcast. As his chess prowess grew, his mental health seemed to decline. He became isolated and hateful and eventually was forced to leave the US or be arrested for travelling to play a match in Yugoslavia which violated economic sanctions at the time. In 2005 he was granted a full Icelandic citizenship and remained there before eventually dying of kidney failure in Reykjavik in 2008. 

Some speculate that Fischer had Asperger's while others suggest a personality disorder. No matter what the underlying cause, the former chess champion of the world died alone, paranoid and in exile from his own country. 

Bobby Fischer was 64 when he died. The number of squares on a chess board. 

If you have any interest in following the game that was Fischer’s claim to fame, here’s a link to a site which walks you through it move by move - http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1008361

Today in Science...

October 17th 1956 - Mae C. Jemison is born. 

For those of you who don’t know the name, Jemison holds degrees as both a Chemical Engineer and a Doctor of Medicine and the first African-American woman in space. She was a Science Mission specialist aboard the Endeavour during which she conducted space-sickness experiments and researched bone cells in zero gravity. 

Despite this being Jemison’s claim to fame, she is more than just an astronaut. Before her mission aboard the Endeavour, she spent 2 and a half years in the Peace Corps stationed in Sierra Leone and Liberia where she both taught and conducted medical research. 

Following her time at NASA Jemison went on to teach at Dartmouth Collage as well as found her own company, the Jemison Group, which aims to encourage a love of science in children around the world as well as bring advanced technology to underdeveloped schools.

She is an amazing woman and advocate to science. She was also in Star Trek.

Happy Birthday Dr. Jemison

Today in Literature...

October 16th 1854 - Oscar Wilde is born

Oscar Wilde, born Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde, was an author, playwright, poet and critic. His most notable works are his comedies including ‘Lady Windermere’s Fan’, ‘An Ideal husband’ and ‘Salomé’ which was performed in Paris, as well as his only novel. ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’.

However, Wilde is probably most known for his affair with Lord Alfred Douglas. Despite or more likely due to Wilde’s relationship with his son, Douglas’ father, the Marquis of Queensberry, accused Wilde of homosexuality. Wilde attempted to sue the Marquis for defamation but lost the case and was arrested and tried for ‘gross indecency’ which essentially just means being gay back in the day. He was sentenced to two years of hard labour and when he was released both his reputation and health were ruined and his wife had taken their 2 sons with her to Switzerland. 

Wilde spent the few years he had left in Europe before dying of Meningitis in Paris on November 30th 1900 at the age of 46.  Despite initially receiving a paupers burial, one of Wilde’s friends, Robert Ross, raised money through the sale of Wilde’s works and donations to move his body and commission a monument by Jacob Epstein. 

Today, the monument is viewed by thousands of visitors every year. A tradition developed whereby visitors would kiss the tomb after applying lipstick to their mouth, thereby leaving a "print" of their kiss. However, a glass case has had to be erected due to the grease sinking into the stone and the subsequent cleanings making the rock more porous. 

History Today...

October 16th 1793 - Marie Antoinette is guillotined 

Marie Antoinette was the last Queen of France and is probably most known for saying “Qu'ils mangent de la brioche" or “Let them eat cake” upon finding out the the local peasants had no bread. However, while this quote is attributed to her, there is no actual proof that it was her that said it as it was simply recorded as being said by ‘a great princess’.

But this is not why Antoinette was executed. A year before her death, on September 21 1792, the French monarchy was abolished following the Revolution and the royal family was imprisoned. Exactly 4 months later Louis XVI (16th) was guillotined (the new fad execution of the French Revolution) for treason due to the fact that Louis had failed to address and solve France’s financial problems. He was followed by Marie Antoinette 9 months later. 

Marie Antoinette is said to have gone to the guillotine with poise and deportment unlike many revolutionary leaders who went kicking and screaming. 

Today in Music...

October 16th 2001 - Bob Dylan is barred from entering his own concert.

Due to the fact that barely over a month before the 9/11 attack occurred, America was on high alert and security was at an all time high. Bob Dylan himself had requested that security be tightened on his ‘Love and Theft’ tour. Despite this, Dylan himself was refused entry to his last stop in Oregon due to the fact that he didn’t have a backstage pass of his own. Despite the fact that Dylan and his security manager demanded the security guards be removed, they were later praised by the venue manager for following their orders.

Dylan did eventually get on stage