Kelly's Heroes (1970)

Kelly's Heroes by #BrianGHutton starring #ClintEastwood and #TellySavalas, "only go for this one if its familiarity is appealing to you",

BRIAN G. HUTTON Bil’s rating (out of 5): BB.5 USA/Yugoslavia, 1970. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Katzka-Loeb, Avala Film, The Warriors Company. Screenplay by Troy Kennedy-Martin. Cinematography by Gabriel Figueroa. Produced by Sidney Beckerman, Gabriel Katzka. Music by Lalo Schifrin. Production Design by John Barry. Costume Design by Anna Maria Feo. Film Editing by John Jympson. A platoon of American…

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INDIES 8 GREATEST WORLD CRICKET XV's OF ALL TIME !

I. INDIES 1ST CRICKET WORLD XV.....OF ALL TIME ! I.E 'CRICKET'S FOREVER UNBEATABLE XV' ! 1. Sachin Tendulkar 2. Don Bradman 3. Rahul Dravid (wk) 4. Mohammad Azharuddin 5. Brian Lara 6. Garfield Sobers (C) 7. Kapil Dev 8. Shane Warne 9. Bishen Singh Bedi 10. Dennis Lillee 11. Joel Garner 12. Viv Richards 13. Anil Kumble 14. Mohinder Amarnath 15. BS Chandrashekhar II. INDIES 2ND CRICKET WORLD XV....OF ALL TIME ! 1. Wally Hammond (wk) 2. Virender Sehwag 3. Zaheer Abbas (wk) 4. Vijay Merchant (C) 5. George Headley 6. Vijay Hazare 7. Sanath Jayasuriya 8. Richard Hadlee 9. Colin Croft 10. Erapalli Prasanna 11. Jeff Thompson 12. S. Venkataraghavan 13. Malcolm Marshall 14. Courtney Walsh 15. Curtly Ambrose III. INDIES 3RD CRICKET WORLD XV....OF ALL TIME ! 1. Saeed Anwar (wk) 2. Sunil Gavaskar 3. Martin Crowe (C) 4. Clive Lloyd 5. Javed Miandad 6. VVS Laxman 7. Imran Khan 8. Wasim Akram 9. Allan Donald 10. Waqar Younis 11. Muttiah Muralitharan 12. Hashim Amla 13. Javagal Srinath 14. Manoj Prabhakar 15. Saqlain Mushtaq IV. INDIES 4TH CRICKET WORLD XV....OF ALL TIME ! 1. Desmond Haynes 2. David Warner 3. Kumara Sangakkara (wk) 4. Ricky Ponting (C) 5. Jacques Kallis 6. Greg Chappell 7. David Gower 8. Ian Botham 9. Lance Gibbs 10. Andy Roberts 11. Glenn McGrath 12. Mohammad Nissar 13. Michael Holding 14. Venkatesh Prasad 15. Mushtaq Ahmed V. INDIES 5TH CRICKET WORLD XV....OF ALL TIME ! 1. Gordon Greenidge 2. Adam Gilchrist (wk) 3. Greg Chappell 4. Aravinda de Silva 5. Sourav Ganguly 6. Kane Williamson 7. Denis Compton (C) 8. Chaminda Vaas 9. Dale Steyn 10. Ian Bishop 11. Pervez Sajjad 12. Dimuth Karunaratne 13. Leary Constantine 14. Khan Mohammad 15. Mushtaq Mohammad VI. INDIES 6TH CRICKET WORLD XV....OF ALL TIME ! 1. Len Hutton 2. David Boon 3. Mark Waugh 4. Michael Bevan (wk) 5. Ross Taylor 6. Angelo Mathews (C) 7. Shaun Pollock 8. Asif Iqbal 9. Chris Cairns 10. Wes Hall 11. Rangana Herath 12. Mohammad Farooq 13. Iqbal Qasim 14. Ijaz Faqih 15. Farooq Hamid VII. INDIES 7TH CRICKET WORLD XV....OF ALL TIME ! 1. Navjot Singh Sidhu 2. Geoff Marsh 3. Mahela Jayawardene 4. Dean Jones 5. Arjuna Ranatunga 6. Inzamam ul Haq (C) 7. Karsan Ghavri 8. Harold Larwood 9. Sydney Barnes 10. Fred Trueman 11. Nathan Lyon 12. Intikhab Alam 13. Graeme Swann 14. Sarfaraz Nawaz 15. Mike Hussey VIII. INDIES 8TH CRICKET WORLD XV....OF ALL TIME ! 1. Alastair Cook 2. Graham Gooch 3. Kepler Wessels (C) 4. Matthew Hayden 5. Mohammad Yousuf 6. Marcus Trescothick (wk) 7. W G Grace 8. Mohammad Rafique 9. Aaqib Javed 10. Mitchell Johnson 11. Abdul Qadir 12. AB DeVilliers 13. Colin Cowdrey 14. Clyde Walcott 15. Frank Worrell

Truss learns the hard way that Britain isn’t America

Reaganism is a good idea, but Reaganism without the dollar isn’t

Into Brideshead Revisited, near the middle, Evelyn Waugh crowbars a scene on a cruise ship for the express purpose of mocking Americans. There is a character named “Senator Stuyvesant-Oglander”. Each and every drink has ice in it. No one is able to tell friendship from desperate bonhomie. The crustiest of England’s great novelists wrote better stuff, no doubt, but the passage is an illuminating fragment of a time when anti-Americanism was a Tory thing.

And one that had its uses. If nothing else, Britain’s establishment was clear back then that America was a different country. A midsized archipelago couldn’t look to a resource-rich market of continental magnitude for governmental ideas.

If anti-Americanism was bad, look what its opposite has done. Britain is in trouble because its elite is so engrossed with the US as to confuse it for their own nation. The UK does not issue the world’s reserve currency. It does not have near-limitless demand for its sovereign debt. It can’t, as US Republicans sometimes do, cut taxes on the hunch that lawmakers of the future will trim public spending. Reaganism was a good idea. Reaganism without the dollar isn’t. If UK premier Liz Truss has a programme, though, that is its four-word expression.

So much of what Britain has done and thought in recent years makes sense if you assume it is a country of 330mn people with $20tn annual output. The idea that it could ever look the EU in the eye as an adversarial negotiator, for instance. Or the decision to grow picky about Chinese inward investment at the same time as forfeiting the European market. Or the bet that Washington was going to entertain a meaningful bilateral trade deal. Superpowers get to behave with such presumption. Why does Britain think that it can, too? Don’t blame imperial nostalgia. (If it were that, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium and Portugal would show the same hubris.) Blame the distorting effect of language. Because the UK’s governing class can follow US politics as easily as their own, they get lost in it. They elide the two countries. What doesn’t help is the freakish fact that Britain’s capital, where its elites live, is as big as any US city, despite the national population being a fifth of America’s. You can see why, from a London angle, the two nations seem comparable. Reaganism without the dollar: this isn’t one woman’s arbitrary whim. It is the culmination of decades of (unreciprocated) US focus in a Robert Caro-hooked Westminster. You would think from British public discourse that Earth has two sovereign nations. If the NHS is fairer than the US healthcare model, it is the world’s best. If Elizabeth II was better than Donald Trump, monarchy beats republicanism tout court. People who can’t name a cabinet member in Paris or Berlin (where so much that affects Britain, from migrant flows to energy, is settled) will follow the US midterms in November. The EU is a, perhaps the, regulatory superpower in the world. UK politicos find Iowa more diverting. The left is as culpable as Truss. From 2010 to 2015, critics of “austerity” urged the Tories to take the softer US approach. The cross-Atlantic comparison implied that then prime minister David Cameron had King Dollar behind him. Soon after came the importation of identity politics from a republic with a wholly different racial history. The anti-Americanism of the Waugh generation was petulant. It was sourness at the imperial usurper dressed up as high taste. But at least it had no illusions. The snobs understood that America was alien, and inimitable. Tories who patronised the US — Harold Macmillan, Ted Heath — were quicker than much of the Labour party to see that Britain belonged with Europe. Truss and her cohort of Tories have none of that snide but ultimately healthy distance from the US. Take her vaunted supply-side revolution. Like all armchair free-marketeers (she has never set up a business) she believes her nation is a blast of deregulation away from American levels of entrepreneurial vim. It isn’t. The creator of a successful product in Dallas can expand to LA and Boston with little friction. The UK doesn’t have a market of hundreds of millions of people. (It did, once, but the present chancellor of the exchequer voted to leave it.) Someone who glides over that point is also liable to miss the contrasting appeal to investors of gilts and Treasuries. Some readers balked last month when I wrote that Truss might not last until the next election. Even I didn’t think she would trip so soon. It is a kind of patriotism, I suppose, to mistake your nation for a superpower.

some original london cast jellicles!!

PLUS: Sarah Brightman

Happy 40th birthday, CATS!

11 May 2021 marks the 40th anniversary of the opening night of the original London production. If I can, I'll be posting all this week clips from each of the major productions from the first two decades of the musical's life - starting, of course, with the original itself!

Here is a photo of the opening night cast, and a three-minute medley of clips of rehearsals with Gillian Lynne, including snippets of dress rehearsals of 'Jellicle songs' and 'Jellicle Ball'. In the pas de deux, Victoria is Finola Hughes, her partner is Coricopat (not Plato/Admetus) played by Donald Waugh, and Skimbleshanks is Kenn Wells. Who, by the way, goes hard in the dancing. Skimble is a little terrifying. 👀

(Excerpted from a 20-minute documentary, which can be found here.)

And here is a TV performance of the original 'Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer' - so, of course, not on the proper stage, but in front of a TV audience. Bonnie Langford and John Thornton.

Engraved Crystal by Steuben Glass, 1st Ed. w/ DJ, Illustrated, 1961

BUY ON ETSY

Engraved Crystal By Steuben Glass FIRST EDITION ILLUSTRATED — Publisher: Steuben Glass, New York Copyright: 1961 __ This book contains the work of designers such as: Sidney Waugh, Don Weir, George Thompson, Donald Pollard, Bruce Moore, Lloyd Atkins, Pavel Tchelitchew, Shiko Munakata, and more. Condition: This book is in fair condition. Hardcover w/ DJ. Dust jacket is torn along edges and had been repaired with tape. Blue cloth boards have minimal wear to edges and corners. Text pages and plates are bright, clean, and tight. 39 full-page plates. Includes an appendix giving biographical sketches of the artists and designers. Quarto, 10" x 12"

Over the years, both India and Australia have produced some excellent players who have dominated the opposition in International cricket.

Do you, by any chance, have a book account? I’m really curious about what kind of books a great writer like you read & enjoy

i don't have a book account but here are a few favorite novels:

blood meridian by cormac mccarthy (this is my absolute favorite novel because the prose and the mutated american mythology are harrowing and unparalleled but it is extremely disturbing and graphic so please read with care)

paul takes the form of a mortal girl by andrea lawlor

days without end by sebastian barry (made me believe in love)

confessions of the fox by jordy rosenberg

borne by jeff vandermeer (made me believe in love)

white tears by hari kunzru

utopia avenue by david mitchell (i like most of his novels but the deeper into his catalog you get the more you have to be an existing fan for anything to make sense; this one is his most recent but it is also obviously my favorite because it's about a band)

the crying of lot 49 by thomas pynchon

brideshead revisited by evelyn waugh (also will put in a plug for decline and fall / vile bodies / the loved one)

the day of the locust by nathanael west (i also recommend the very scary 1975 movie adaptation by john schlesinger starring karen black and donald sutherland)

the savage detectives and 2666 by roberto bolano (i've read the translations by natasha wimmer)

the goldfinch by donna tartt

sometimes a great notion by ken kesey (prose prose prose prose prose prose prose prose, also this is the ultimate family melodrama and one of the best stories about the northwest)

regeneration and series by pat barker (a great model for a kind of revisionist historical fiction)

geek love by katharine dunn

Forgiveness (Commission For WeirdKev27)

Scrooge's Office at the Manor: Two Weeks after Moonvasion

Scrooge: (Sips a cup of tea and genuinely enjoys his morning.. before loud waughing noises are heard outside)

"Sigh" The kids must be fighting again

Della: (Kicks the door open. She's hodling a strugggling donald over her head with both hands, stomps over and throws him on the desk)

Donald: What's the big idea?!

Scrooge: What is it this time? Did he steal your walkman? Take the last slice of Pizza? Did he..

Della: (Pulls a newspaper out of her jacket pocket and shoves it in his face.. then another.. then another.. then you get the idea. The headlines read as follows

Flying Solo?: Donald Duck seen fleeing Duckburg manor after Sister lost in crash> whereabouts unknown.

Never Again: Donald Duck announces retirment from adventuring severs all ties with Scrooge. Blames her for incendet

Museum Madness: McDuck removes all traces of both adopted children from museum.

Mailman Goes Missing: Local Mailman seen missing after asking questions about Della Duck

Whatever Happened to Della Duck?: Local child details exaustive search for mother over the last 6 months. But where did she Go.

Della: (Tears in her eyes, sstorms off)

Scrooge and Donald: (Saddened) Oh...

Two Hours Later: The Family Room.

Della: Okay Dewey I got your text let the cheeseburger party comm.... aw phooey.

Everyone Else in the Main Cast: (Sitting around, clearly waiting for her)

Della: I should've known there was no such thing as a cheeseburger party! Then again I also didn't think my fav....one of my faviorite children would betray me.

Louie: Mom you don't need to spare our feelings we know Dewey's the faviorite, Huey's in the middle and i'm a distant third.

Della: Not DISTANT persay....

Dewey: Look that's not important no... oh who am I even kidding? (Claps and streamers and balloons fall from the celing and a banner saying "#1 Brother" in blue unveils) I knew this day would come if I loved my mother hard enougH!

Scrooge: (To Beakley) How did you not notice all that?

Beakley: Oh I did, we just have an understanding.

Dewey: I clean all this up and I get to keep living hear.

Webby: (Blows an air horn)

Scrooge: I thought I destroyed all of those

Della: And your saying I don't restock.. impressed you found them though

Webby: Eeeeeee... okay okay center self. We're not here to talk about faviororite children or cleanup or air horns! Our family is at stake. So we're going to hash this out like the rational people we are.

Louie: (chuckles) It's cute you think our family is rational.

Della: Look Webby things are okay.. it's not like i'm going to LEAVE for ten years and never go for help with my sister's kids or you know NEVER try and actually MEET said kids and have to have them shoved on your doorstep. I'm a GOOD PERSON.

Scrooge: Subtle. Look I didn't feel right telling you till Donald got back from his Scrooge. it wasn't my story alone to tell.

Della: You two have had TWO WEEKS! And i've gone around months not knowing my children didn't even know who I was!

Donald: It was complicated

Della: No it wasn't! You could take them on adventures and show them the world?

Donald: And loose them too?!

Beat:...

Donald: I didn't

Della: No.. I deserved that one

Donald: I didn't... want to loose anyone else.

Huey: (puts a sympathetic arm on his uncle's shoulder)

Donald: Thank you. So I held on as hard as I could and tried to avoid my old life. Tried not to loose the only thing I had left. But.. I was wrong. I was wrong to you and I was wrong to you boys

Huey: You did fine uncle donald

Donald: I did OK... but I tried to hard to fence you boys in instead of letting you be who you were and I was so resentful of Scrooge.. I kept him out of your lives when we needed him most. I screwed up... and i'm sorry.

Della: (Hugs him) Look i'm not going to pretend i'm not mad.. but i'm sorry too. if I hadn't left none of this would've happened. So i'ts my fault

Scrooge: No i'ts my fault too... I was so obssed with finding you.. I lost what I had and held onto my anger because... well like Donald said... easiest target.

I Should've told you but.. ah was ashamed too.

Della: I'm not going to say this was okay.. because it wasn't.. it really hurts my own kid had to go on a death defying adventure to find out who I was. But.. if anyone can understand being too stubborn to actually talk things through it's me... so... I CAN forgive you guys.. I just need time okay?

Donald: Of course

Group Hug: (enuses with the kids slowly joning in)

Dewey: this calls for a celebration! Cheeseburge rparty! (pulls rope stashed behind a piatning raining cheeseburgers one veryone) don't worry I put them in an ahour ago

Everyone: is pelted by cheeseburgers)

Della: Ow.. Dewey... read the.. ow.. room... (Bites into one) .. excellent choice though. Nice flavor profile. This is why your my faviorite.

Dewey: I know...

Book Corner – August 2019 (4)

Book Corner – August 2019 (4)

England, Their England – A G Macdonell

Writing a book that is actually and consistently funny is a tricky business. A comic idea is difficult to sustain and humour can date very quickly. But some writers manage to pull it off and the likes of P G Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh and Jerome K Jerome are firm favourites amongst aficionados of the genre. One author who has fallen by the wayside somewhat in…

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The PGA of America will strip Donald Trump of the 2022 PGA Championship, which is scheduled to be held at Trump National Bedminster golf club in New Jersey.

In a blistering column that says the golf world must sever all ties with Trump, Golfweek’s Eamon Lynch said the PGA has been debating for two years the need to move the major championship and, once Trump is out of office, will announce the tournament will be played elsewhere

Seth Waugh, the PGA of America’s CEO, was a banker and has an alert eye for high-risk exposure. He knows that Trumpism is likely to be an equally incendiary force in the ’22 midterm elections and that any affiliation is poisonous. Waugh will be forced to move the event and face down a small but vocal faction of his membership who remain true believers. Moving its major from Trump National has been debated internally at the PGA for more than two years, but executives have been reluctant to antagonize a famously vindictive man who controls the Internal Revenue Service. Such concerns melt away in 10 days, if not sooner.

Lynch, like Washington Post columnist Barry Svrluga, says professional golf -- including some of its biggest celebrities, like Tiger Woods, Nancy Lopez, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Annika Sorenstam -- has angered many fans by cozying up to Trump. But, Lynch says, “the events of January 6 that left five people dead ought to make him a pariah everywhere. Including in golf.”

Look for Trump to drag out some new con soon to keep the donations coming, he needs to increase the amount of funds he;s embezzling from it to pay his looming debts.

What do you think the most important trait is for each muse, and would that muse agree with you? (for any or all of the muses you want to answer this for!)

               FOR KIRA, the most important trait for her is her kindness. Kira is unfailingly kind, and this comes from her isolation as a child. The fact that her mother was the only person in her childhood who really cared that she was around –– and then, when Katrina died, she only had Matty until she met Thomas and Jo –– made Kira very in-tune with loneliness. This manifests itself in two different ways in people: they can become guarded, unsure of how to let people in or how to trust them. Or, in Kira’s case, she is unceasing in her openness and willingness to let others in. Even Vandara, who wanted Kira dead and who Kira was afraid of, was shown a dignified respect by Kira. 

Kira would agree to an extent, but she also thinks that her PRIDE has gotten her further than her kindness. Her mother told her to take pride in her pain, and she did. Regardless of how long it would take her to walk somewhere with her twisted leg, or regardless of how many people openly showed her disdain. –– Or, when she moved to The Village… if Kira made up her mind, she would get it done. So for her, she thinks that that is the most important part of her. 

               FOR BECKY, the strength of her character comes from her… normalcy. Let me explain. Becky comes from the Marvel universe. Her brother is an assassin-slash-super-solder-slash-super-hero. Her childhood-friend-slash-childhood-crush is one of the most famous super heroes in history. She is surrounded by exceptionality. And she is an artist, and a boxer, and very, very human. This isn’t a PERSONALITY TRAIT by any means, but it is incredibly important to her, how she views the world, and how she views herself. She knows that she can get hurt more easily than Jimmy or Steve. She knows that people could hurt her in order to get to them. BUT SHE STILL FIGHTS. She still glares up at her million-feet-tall super soldiers and sends a vicious left hook at them when they’re being idiots. It has always been incredibly important to me to keep Becky human as well. She isn’t a super soldier. She isn’t an agent, either. She is a person existing in the midst of exceptionality, and that makes her different, ironically. She is shaking her head at me, but she also agrees. 

               FOR TARENE, her most important trait to understanding her is her sheer force of WILL. This is an alien of unknowable power who WILLED herself into changing SPECIES. She made herself Asgardian simply by her will and the ability of her power. Tarene is someone with an IRON will, and who will do absolutely anything she sets her mind to, even if it is impossible. …Especially if it’s impossible. She agrees. She wonders if I could also add on that she can be very kind, but she knows that, in reality, the most important part of her is her will. It is indomitable. 

               FOR JULIA, her resilience is her most important trait. She isn’t bulletproof ( I mean… physically she is sometimes! ), but she has proven to herself that she can survive anything. She really feels that what doesn’t kill me makes me want to die but also makes me stronger sort of mentality. Her kindness –– especially the developed, transcendent kindness we see directly before and as a consequence of her apotheosis –– is rooted ( hah ) in her resilience. The fact that she experienced all that she has and found a place where she still felt kind was incredibly important, not only to her character, but also to her. And she agrees. 

               FOR ETHAN, his most important trait is his curiosity and his wanderlust. From the mundane –– being pulled toward banned books and wanting to travel away from Gatlin –– to the supernatural –– the guiding pulls he feels as a Wayward –– the biggest part of Ethan’s personality is defined by how much he is willing to explore and allow into his schema. There is very little that he rejects out of hand, even if it’s hard to understand. He is radically openminded in that sense, and loves understanding. The thrill of the unknown, however… it’s sort of fun. 

               FOR TREVOR, he is very obviously shaped by his EXPERIENCE. He is the oldest human in recorded history. He has lived several lives, his consciousness being shifted and turned, and that informs a lot of his personality. He is both a grumpy grandpa and someone who is so wide-eyed: it’s a dichotomy which is fascinating both to analyze and really dive deeper into. The fact that Trevor has lived as long as he has –– well over a century –– and still came into past with a naïveté and enthusiasm for life… man. His experience is just amazing, and it’s the biggest part of who he is and how we know him. 

               FOR PETER, the biggest trait that best informs his character is his sense of RESPONSIBILITY, and how that ties into just how low-key neurotic he is. Peter is, usually, a QUIET PANICKER. By that, I mean that he doesn’t pace in front of crowds of people and worry himself and bite his nails, but MAN, on the inside, that is exactly what is happening. He takes on so much, even if he doesn’t have to do it all alone. He INTERNALIZES what he feels is his responsibility –– which is to him… everything –– and feels great guilt if things don’t pan out just right. He is EVERYONE’S big brother, essentially, and feeling like he is taking care of everyone has left him an absolute disaster of a human.

               FOR DON, the most informing part of his character is his developing sense of humility. After all, that was why he was CREATED. He was humbled by his crippling accident, finding himself forced to walk with a cane for the rest of his life. He had defined himself by ability for so long –– hotshot med student, hotshot athlete in high school and college, hotshot everything –– that having to redefine himself was incredibly difficult for him to do. In fact, sometimes, that humility sours into self-loathing, and he has to check himself ( or someone around him has to ) and he has to stop defining himself by his ability to walk. It’s something that has been incredibly hard-earned for him, and ultimately made him a far better, far kinder person. He is still brilliant, but his empathy with pain made him a better man and a better doctor. 

               FOR JAVI, his biggest defining trait is his ability to, by and large, remain CAVALIER in the face of pretty much anything. While his devil may care attitude has gotten him into tons –– TONS –– of trouble, it’s also a large part of his charm. It’s where his heart lives, as well. He’s optimistic, and that can be fairly infectious. He likes having FUN, and while he doesn’t always think that people need to be quite as SERIOUS as they are, it’s because he has survived for SO LONG and doesn’t want people wasting what little time they have –– especially if they’re mortal –– worrying about things that don’t, ultimately, matter. 

               AND FINALLY, FOR TED, his biggest defining characteristic is his WANDERLUST. Similar to Ethan, Ted doesn’t have many things in his life that he is closed off to right away. He’ll always try something ONCE ( and twice if he likes it ), and that spills over into his personality as well. He is the type of person who automatically gives his trust, and only takes it away if someone betrays that trust. He PREFERS to live his life in the open like that. While he may have secrets –– and while he doesn’t always think it’s necessary for him to share his secrets or someone to share theirs with him in order to feel close –– he is eminently open to new experiences, to new homes, to new people. 

history-of-solitaire-card-game

History Of Solitaire Card Game Like the origin of playing cards, the origin of solitaire is largely unknown as there are no historical records to support it. There is much conjecture and controversy about the history of Solitaire as to where it actually began. However the first written documentation of solitaire doesn't show up until the end of the 16th century and since then Solitaire has had a long history and at one time had a less than stellar reputation. Around the 12th century the game "Al-qirq" (the mill, in Arabic), which later became the game of "Alquerque", was the most prevalent game until around the end of the 12th century in Europe. Playing cards were first introduced in Italy in the 1300s. During that time they also became popular in Northern Europe. There is a card game called Tarok that was invented around that time that is still played to this day. It is also believed that solitaire games were first played with tarot cards, which would indicate that solitaire most likely preceded traditional multi-player card games. The French engraving of Princess de Soubise showing her playing a card game, dates from 1697. Legend says that Solitaire was invented by Pelisson, a French mathematician, to entertain Louis XIV - known as "Roi Soleil" (Sun King). Another legend says that a unfortunate French nobleman, while imprisoned in the Bastille, devised the game using a Fox & Geese Board (the Fox & Geese Board has been used for a variety of board games in Northern Europe since the Vikings). There is doubt about these legends, since Ovide wrote about the game and described it in his book "Ars Amatoria". The end of the sixteenth century was an active period for the invention of various card games. This was when the ace first appeared as high instead of low in the rankings of the cards. Several new card games were invented during this time and new variations were added, so this is likely a time when solitaire games were invented and named as well. The first known solitaire game rules were recorded during the Napoleonic era. The author of War and Peace, Tolstoy, enjoyed playing solitaire and mentioned it in a scene from his famous novel. Tolstoy sometimes used cards to make decisions for him in a somewhat superstitious way. Most early literature mentioning patience is of French origin. Even the very word 'solitaire' is of a French origin, and it means 'patience'. The names of most early solitaire games are French names as well, with the most well known being La Belle Lucie. When Napoleon was exiled to St. Helena in 1816 he used to play Patience to pass the time. Deported to the island lost in the ocean, knew what confinement felt like fully; he also knew how cards could solace one sentenced to solitude. During his exile at St Helena, Napoleon Bonaparte played patience in his spare time. Some solitaire games were named after him, such as Napoleon at St. Helena, Napoleon's Square, etc. It is not known whether Napoleon invented any of these solitaire games or someone else around that same time period. Publications about solitaire began to appear in the late nineteenth century. Lady Adelaide Cadogan is believed to have written the first book on the rules of solitaire and patience games called "Illustrated Games of Patience" just after the Civil War (1870) containing 25 games. It is still reprinted occasionally even today. Other non English compilations on solitaire may have been written before that, however. Before this, otherwise there was no literature about solitaire, not even in such books as Charles Cotton's The Compleat Gamester (1674), Abbé Bellecour's Academie des Jeux (1674), and Bohn's Handbook of Games (1850), all of which are used as reference on card games.In England "Cadogan" is a household word for solitaire in the same manner that "Hoyle" is for card games. Lady Cadogan's book spawned other collections by other writers such as E.D.Chaney, Annie B. Henshaw, Dick and Fitzgerald, H. E. Jones (a.k.a. Cavendish), Angelo Lewis (a.k.a. Professor Hoffman), Basil Dalton, and Ernest Bergholt. E.D. Chaney wrote a book on solitaire games called "Patience" and Annie B. Henshaw wrote a book with an interesting title "Amusements for Invalids". Several years later Dick and Fitzgerald in New York published "Dick's Games of Patience" in 1883, followed by a second edition that was published in 1898. Author, Henry Jones, wrote a fairly reliable book on solitaire called "Patience Games". Another Jones, not related to Henry, Miss Mary Whitmore Jones wrote 5 volumes of solitaire books over a twenty year period around the the 1890's. Several other publishers of various game books also added solitaire to their long lists of games in their titles. One of the most complete solitaire books was written by Albert Morehead and Geoffrey Mott-Smith. Their latest edition contains rules to over 225 solitaire games and was used in this writing. Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace" mentions a scene that took place in 1808 where the characters were playing patience. Charles Dickens "Great Expectations" mentions solitaire in its story. In Evelyn Waugh's "A Handful of Dust", a character plays patience while waiting for news of a death to reach London. In Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel [The Brothers Karamazov], the character Grushenka played a solitaire game called "Fools", a Russian equivalent of "Idiot's Delight", to get through times of crisis. A very popular solitaire game, spider solitaire, was played by Franklin D. Roosevelt. Somerset Maugham's "The Gentleman in the Parlour" mentions Spider solitaire and quotes playing solitaire as "a flippant disposition. In John Steinbeck's novella Of [Mice and Men], protagonist George Milton often plays Solitaire on the road and on the farm. In "Peter Duck", one of the books in Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons series, Captain Flint keeps himself occupied by playing Miss Milligan. In the 1962 movie "The Manchurian Candidate", Raymond Shaw is compelled to perform specific actions through a brainwashing trigger, which often includes a game of traditional solitaire and finding the queen of diamonds. In the Finnish TV-series "Hovimäki" Aunt Victoria is very fond of playing solitaire. Several solitaire games have gained fame through literature and other avenues. Some solitaire games were invented in unexpected places. A notable inventor of solitaire games was Bill Beers. He was in a mental asylum when he invented a variation of Cribbage Solitaire. Prisoners had plenty of time to play solitaire, but were unable to use traditional cards because they could be used as an edged weapon. They were forced to use thicker tiles for cards that were bulky and hard to handle. http://e-sports.icu/

A famous casino is responsible for the invention of a very popular solitaire game. Mr. Canfield, who owned a casino in Saratoga, invented a game where one would purchase a deck of cards for $52 and obtain $5 for every card played to the foundations. He gained an average of $25 per game, however, each game required a dealer of sorts to watch the player, so the profit was not as high as one might think. The actual name of this popular game was Klondike, but the name Canfield has stuck and is almost as commonly used as the word patience. Due to its difficulty to win, the time needed to play and the lack of choices along the way, Klondike has lost some popularity to other popular solitaire games. Today most people refer to Klondike as simply Solitaire. Both solitaires and reasons why people enjoy playing with these patchworks of cards have, of course, changed since the old times the solitaires appeared. In the contemporary world, we sometimes need a break from an everyday hustle and tedious treadmill. Solving solitaires is not only a way of time-killing distraction; it is also a sure way to relax after work. Long winter nights, it helped Jack London's characters to amuse their leisure. A great musician, Nicolo Paganini was also in favor of solving solitaires; his best-liked solitaire was later called after his name. A good solitaire not only helps you relax and kill time; it is a great mental gymnastic as well. This is why solitaires were appealing to mathematicians like Martin Gardner and Donald Knut. As his contemporaries witnessed, Prince Metternich, an eminent 19-century diplomat, used to sit and ponder over knotty solitaires before starting most difficult negotiations. Today most people refer to Klondike as simply 'Solitaire'. Due to its difficulty to win, the time needed to play and the lack of choices along the way, Klondike has lost some popularity to other popular solitaire games. When we think of solitaire games today, many people would immediately think of the digital versions for computers, for example solitaire for mac and solitaire games for PC, however, there are still millions of people that play the "old-fashion way" with a standard deck of cards, perhaps much like the deck of cards Napoleon played with nearly 200 years ago.