When they were kings

The rumble in the jungle occupied most of the press on this day in 1974 – if you haven’t seen When We Were Kings, here’s a bit of the original rope-a-dope – and it’s well worth the first three  and a half minutes to see the last ten seconds:

And how nice – my first YouTube embed worked!

Even if you’re not at all a fan of boxing, you can still be a fan of Muhammad Ali.  He lost his boxing license in 1967 for refusing induction into the army and had to wait three years to get it back.  It took another four years to get the fight with heavyweight title holder George Foreman.  Ali was 32, Foreman was 25.

After the fight, Ali and Foreman became friends and twenty years later, when Ali, ill with Parkinson’s, won an Oscar for When We Were Kings, it was Foreman who helped him up to the dais to get his award.

Airless in Donora

During the night of October 26, 1948, a warm air mass from the west drifted toward the Monongahela River in southwest Pennsylvania, stalling at a loop in the river and resting on the town of Donora.  People woke up on the morning of the 27th to a heavy yellow smog  – so heavy that lights had to be kept on all day.

Noon in Donora

Donora was a small mill town of about 14,000, most of whom worked for the American Steel and Wire plant or the Donora Zinc works.  Because it sits in a shallow depression near the river and was subject to temperature inversions, residents were used to smog days in the spring and fall, but there had never been anything quite like this.

This smog was not only especially heavy and reluctant to move, but it smelled rank.  Some residents asked the zinc factory to shut down, but the company refused.

Smokestacks of the steel and zinc works

By the third day, Friday, hundreds of people were sick.  The second floor of the little hotel had become a hospital and the basement had become a morgue.  By Saturday, 20 people had died.

On Sunday, it rained, and the smog was gone.  But what had happened in Donora had made headlines.  People started thinking about clean air, about ways to eliminate contaminants and how to regulate heavy industry.

The US Department of Public Health came in and studied Donora for nearly a year.  They confirmed that an additional 50 people had died from the smog after it had lifted and that about half the population had suffered permanent health effects ranging from moderate to severe.

And the report pointed out that while it had gone unnoticed in the past, Donoran mortality rates had always doubled in months with smog days.

For years, residents of Donora had refused to talk about the Killer Smog of 1948 – best forgotten, apparently.  But a few years ago, on the 60th anniversary of the smog, the town opened the Donora Smog Museum. People think maybe the smog event was a catalyst for the Clean Air Act, and certainly it became part of the growing body of evidence that contaminated air wasn’t good for living things.

For a long time, sulphur dioxide was thought to be the main cause of death for the residents, but scientists are reevaluating autopsy evidence – fluoride levels were as much as 20 times normal, making it likely that it was the fluoride gas from the zinc plant that was really lethal.

Mighty Cyrus

Today is international Cyrus the Great day – mark your calendar.

Photo by Truth Seeker (fawiki).

Cyrus the Great (c. 600 BC-536 BC) was the founder of the Persian Empire, which ultimately spanned three continents and included the modern countries of Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Macedonia, parts of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, Syria and the major cities of Egypt.

His capital was Pasargadae, just west of Persepolis, and that is where archaeologists found a column inscribed with this carved into the marble: ‘I am Cyrus the king, an Achaemenid.’ (Achaemenid was his dynasty.)

First, Cyrus conquered the Medes, then the Lydians, then the Babylonians.  Each time, he allowed the subjugated peoples to retain their culture and language, and in the case of Babylonia, he freed the captive Jews and allowed them to return to their own province.  In Hebrew, he is known as Koresh.

So, historically, he is considered a benevolent tyrant.  One of the few written sources of information about Cyrus is shown – it looks kind of like a loofah, but it is called the Cyrus Cylinder.  It is clay, inscribed in Akkadian cuneiform and it describes how bad the Babylonian king was and what a good ruler Cyrus is, repatriating refugees and restoring temples and sanctuaries.

Ishtar Gate

Sounds like propaganda, but it provides an opportunity to use a picture of the Ishtar gate, the eighth gate of Babylon that led to the inner city.  The Ishtar gate is in the Berlin Museum.  Normally, the theft of national treasures by archeologists is disturbing, but not in this case.  Far down the list of recent tragedies in the Near East – but a tragedy nonetheless – is the fate of the many outstanding archaeological sites in what is still called the birthplace of civilization.

* * *

Many happy returns to Dan Castellaneta  - where would Homer Simpson be without him? And Robert Hardy celebrates his 85th birthday today.  He is one of that core group of actors who have been a mainstay of British television from the early days.  He is probably most familiar to Americans as Siegfried Farnon, the vet in All Creatures Great and Small or Sir John Middleton in Sense and Sensibility or Cornelius Fudge in the Harry Potter series, but his career goes back to his role as David Copperfield in a tv mini-series in 1956.  Thanks for all the good work, Mr. Hardy.

 

Puttin’ on the Ritz

Today we celebrate the birth of Auguste Escoffier, arguably the first celebrity chef.  Born in 1846 (he lived to the age of 88), Escoffier learned to cook in his uncle’s restaurant, where he was apprenticed at the age of thirteen. Eventually he rose to become chef at the Savoy Hotel restaurant in London, where he met the redoubtable Cesar Ritz.  The pair left the Savoy and Cesar opened the Ritz in Paris with Escoffier in the kitchen.

Escoffier’s great contribution to haute cuisine was actually the reorganizing of the restaurant kitchen into a much more efficient operation, but he also simplified the tradition of haute cuisine begun by Antoine Careme a century earlier.

Simplify in this case, of course, is a relative term – here is a sample luncheon menu from his book, Le Guide Culinaire, published in 1903:

Anchois de Collioure
Tomates marinées
Oeufs a la reine
Whitebait diablé
Tournedos béarnaise
Pommes soufflées
Faisan en casserole
Salade d’endive
Paté de fois gras
Apple charlotte
Creme Chantilly

Anchovies from Collioure

Not your average Rachel Ray lunch – anchovies, marinated tomatoes, eggs on potato cakes with minced chicken and white sauce, fish seasoned with cayenne, tournedos, puffed potatoes, pheasant casserole, endive salad, pate and finally, apple charlotte with whipped cream.

No doubt you’d like to try this tasty menu, but be warned – the anchovies will have to be imported from Collioure on the Mediterranean, whitebait isn’t currently in season and pheasant is pretty pricey.  But to get you started, here’s the recipe for tournedos:
5 Beef filets mignon - ½ cup Butter -2 tablespoons Peanut oil - 5 slices Bread

Sauce:
1 tablespoon Minced onion (shallots, if available) - ½ teaspoon Dried tarragon –  -1 teaspoon Fresh parsley - 1 pinch Salt - 1 teaspoon Ground pepper - 1 tablespoon Wine vinegar - 3 Egg yolks - ½ pound Butter; melted

Pheasant casserole

Pan fry the filets, put them in the oven to stay warm.  Butter the bread on both sides and brown in frying pan.  Filets go on rounds of fried bread with a little sauce, which involves a lot of whisking.

Keep up your strength while whisking by having some oeufs a la reine.  The faisan en casserole is a little more complicated and don’t forget the puffed potatoes have to be fried twice at two different temperatures.

Recipes from Le Guide Culinaire can be found on line at Googlebooks – 30 pages just on eggs!

Hotel Ritz in Paris.

Burn after reading

In 1945, Enrico Mattei, a left-center Christian Democrat,was given the task of dismantling the Fascist-created state oil company Agip (Azienda Generale Italiana Petroli).

Enrico Mattei

Mattei took the job, but instead of shutting Agip down, he worked diligently to restore the company and make it a national asset.  In 1949, he decided to increase the company’s economic viability.  He announced that soon Italy would be able to meet all its own energy needs thanks to substantial fields of oil and methane discovered in northern Italy.

It was nonsense, of course, but in a country devasted by the war, his promise of riches was well-received.  Agip, a state-owned company that nevertheless operated like a private one, did well on the stock exchange and quickly became financially solid.

Mattei’s problem was the big seven – Shell, Gulf, Standard Oil (New York and California), Exxon, BP and Texaco.  They monopolized the best fields and weren’t about to share.  So Mattei did an end run;  he went to the poorest countries in the Middle East – Like Tunisia and Morocco – and promised them a 50-50 share.  He went into the Soviet bloc to make deals and he went to Africa.  In 1953, Italy created the Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi or ENI which became the parent company of Agip.  ENI acquired refineries and pipelines – and for some reason a news agency – and was soon competing with the big seven.  Mattei used some of the company’s profits to support the independence movement in Algeria.

In 1960, Mattei made deals with the Soviet Union and China.  Finally a real player, ENI was invited by the big seven to take part in a divvying up of the Sahara, but Mattei demanded they all support Algerian independence.  No agreement was reached.

On October 27 in 1962, Mattei boarded his company jet to fly from Sicily to Milan. Somewhere over Lombardy, in a storm, the plane crashed and Mattei, his pilot and an American journalist were all killed.

Oshie flare photo from Niger Delta Watch.

It was officially declared an accident.

But in 2001 a German documentary claimed that evidence of an explosion had been destroyed at the crash site.

Previously, in 1970, an Italian filmmaker had asked investigative journalist Mauro de Mauro to look into Mattei’s last days.  Not long after, de Mauro disappeared.  His body was never found.

ENI, btw, operates the Oshie field in Nigeria, where the natural gas produced by oii drilling is burned in what’s known as the Oshie flare.  The flare has been burning since 1972, raising the temperature in the area by as much as 15 degrees.  The area, home to a village of 1700 Nigerians, has been devasted by the drilling operation. ENI and the Nigerian government have promised improvements for years, but to date nothing has been done.

Electing the elect

Sweden and Norway dissolved their union on this date in 1905 – they, and Denmark, had been involved in various combinations for centuries, but a Denmark-Norway pairing fell apart when Denmark took the wrong side in the Napoleonic Wars and as part of the Treaty of Kiel had to give Norway to Sweden.  So they were linked from 1814 to 1905.

Prince Carl, aka King Haakon VII, arriving in Norway to be king. He's carrying King Olav V.

Norwegians began to agitate for independence around the turn of the century and the Swedish king, Oscar II, was willing to go along with it. The parliament voted for dissolution and Oscar said fine, whatever.  Then the Norwegians asked Oscar if he would send one of his younger sons to be their king.  He wasn’t willing, so the Norwegians then turned to Denmark and asked Crown Prince Frederick if they could have Prince Carl.  He said fine, but Carl said he would come be the king only if a public referendum approved of him. (Isn’t this the most adorable, civilized thing you ever heard?)

So the king was elected (!) and took the name Haakon from the 14th century king Haakon VI.  Haakon VII reigned for 33 years and was followed by his son Olav V, who reigned for 21 years.  Haakon’s grandson Prince Harald is currently the King of Norway.

* * *

Scanning the list of famous birthdays on this date for someone worth mentioning, I noticed a curious pattern – it seemed like every other name was that of a composer. Here they are:

• 1483 – Hans Buchner, composer
• 1685 – Domenico Scarlatti, Naples Italy, composer/harpsichordist
• 1694 – Johan Helmich Roman, Finnish/Swedish composer/conductor/violinist
• 1719 – Joaquin de Oxinaga, composer
• 1740 – Ernest Louis Muller, composer
• 1758 – Louis-Charles-Joseph Rey, composer
• 1789 – Joseph Mayseder, composer 1795 – Nicolaos Mantzaros, composer
• 1813 – Henry Thomas Smart, composer
• 1818 – Stefano Golinelli, composer
• 1830 – Polibo Fumagalli, composer
• 1845 – Hendrick Waelput, Flemish composer/conductor (Forest, Stella)
• 1859 – Arthur Friedheim, composer
• 1864 – Joseph Moorat, composer
• 1871 – Hermann Lohr, composer
• 1886 – Gustav Hermann Unger, composer
• 1898 – Beryl Rubinstein, composer
• 1907 – Giovanni Salviucci, composer
• 1915 – Golfredo Corradetti, conductor
• 1929 – Hans Peter Haller, composer
• 1934 – Hans-Joachim Rödelius, German composer and musician
• 1942 – Dietmar Polaczek, composer

That’s a lot of composers.  Is it that the planets align on this date to produce musicians?  The bulk of them are in the 19th century – nine composers, in fact, out of 37 entries.  That is essentially 25%, a statistically significant number.  Was music a growth industry in that era? Curiouser and curiouser.

The Adams family

This is the day John Adams and Abigail Smith were married in 1764 – he was about to celebrate his twenty-ninth birthday, she was just nineteen.  Their marriage lasted  54 years until his death and her last words were, ‘John, it won’t be long now.’

Abigail had been a sickly child, not strong enough, her parents thought, for formal schooling.  Her mother taught Abby and her sisters to read and write and they were then allowed the freedom of their father’s and grandfather’s  large libraries.

Abigail was an autodidact who educated herself so well that John Adams was both surprised and impressed by her grounding in literature, philosophy and politics.

Abigail was a feminist, a highly competent farm manager, and apparently a pretty handy contractor.  When the Adamses returned from his missions in France and England, they bought a small farmhouse in Quincy, Mass., known as the ‘Old House.’  Two rooms up and two down.  It was quite, she said “like a wren’s nest.’  While John was away in Philadelphia much of the time, she took matters in hand and soon the house looked as it does today.

The Old House

She had quite a radical view of women’s place, telling the Continental Congress that ‘Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.’

They were an impressive pair, the Adamses. It’s all in David McCullough’s book or you can read Lynn Withey’s Dearest Friend: A Life of Abigail Adams on Google Books.

It’s sometimes hard to believe that there were so many outstanding Americans when there were so few of them.

* * *

Many happy returns to author Anne Tyler, Helen Reddy and the fabulous Barbara Cook.

A bridge to somewhere

Today is the 79th anniversary of the dedication of the George Washington Bridge connecting New York and New Jersey.  The day after the dedication, it was opened to traffic.

Photo by Toshinori Tanaka

Cass Gilbert was the architect and Othmar Ammann, whose family emigrated to the US from Switzerland, was the engineer.  Ammann spent the early part of his career studying the collapse of the Quebec Bridge in 1907.  His report on the collapse impressed the Port Authority and Robert Moses gave him a job.  He wound up building six of the eleven bridges that tether New York to the rest of the country.

Several things are notable about the GW.  First, without even knowing Ammann’s name, we all thought pretty highly of him when we learned – at the time the lower level was proposed – that the bridge had been designed from the beginning to carry the additional level.

Othmar Ammann

The addition increased traffic capacity by 75 percent and the GW is still the only suspension bridge in the world with 14 traffic lanes.

Ammann really knew his stuff.  He brought the project in ahead of schedule by six months and under budget.  Let’s think about that.  Ahead of schedule and under budget. Are you listening, Boston?

Granted, the suspension towers were supposed to  be clad in concrete, a plan that was shelved, doubtless adding to speed while lowering the price.  But the result is much more aesthetically pleasing.  Here’s Le Corbusier’s paean to its design:

“The George Washington Bridge over the Hudson is the most beautiful bridge in the world. Made of cables and steel beams, it gleams in the sky like a reversed arch. It is blessed. It is the only seat of grace in the disordered city. It is painted an aluminum color and, between water and sky, you see nothing but the bent cord supported by two steel towers. When your car moves up the ramp the two towers rise so high that it brings you happiness; their structure is so pure, so resolute, so regular that here, finally, steel architecture seems to laugh…’

Thanks, Othmar.  All together now:  George Waa-shing-ton Bridge, Geo-orge Washington Washington Bridge…

Convenience food

Appert bottle. Photo by Jean Paul Barbier

Sometime around 1796 a 27-year-old French chef and confectioner named Nicolas Appert began messing about with glass bottles and jars and various foodstuffs to see if foods could be stored for weeks or even months.

It took a while, but eventually he succeeded.  In 1810, he won a prize for his method and also published a book – The Art of Preserving Animal and Vegetable Substances.

Since my date-in-history site gives Oct. 23 as his birthdate, I did some research and learned immediately that his birthday is probably Nov. 17, but never mind.  He’s actually quite interesting.  One wonders first of all what prompted his experiments and, second, what kept him pursuing his goal for more than ten years.  Bottles and jars, after all, had no lids when he started.  Sealing the containers required sealing wax and corks.

And how did he guess that boiling the filled bottles in hot water would make the food safe for human consumption?  Appert developed his method almost a century before Louis Pasteur proved that heat killed bacteria.

If it was trial and error, did he sample the contents himself or feed them to the dog and wait to see if it fell over?

Appert opened the first food-bottling factory in a suburb of Paris and made comestibles available in wide-mouth glass jars.  He preserved vegetables, fruits, beef, eggs, chicken and even once a whole sheep.

The Institute of Food Technology presents the Nicolas Appert Award for achievement in food technology each year and while most of the winners work in fairly esoteric areas of food science, it seems appropriate the award in 1955 went to Karl F. Meyer for his work on botulism.  When home canning became popular during WWI, quite a few housewives were turning out some pretty lethal product.  Meyer convinced the canning industry to fund research into canning safety and he spent many years developing safe procedures for both home and commercial canning.

Appert’s method was so simple that Peter Durand tried it immediately with tin cans and had great success, but tin can production was slow to catch on.  It took another 40 years – until the can opener was invented – for mass production of tin cans.  Before that, cans had to be opened with a hammer and chisel, considerably reducing the convenience factor.

War games

This is the day  in 1962 that we went to DEFCON 3 for the first time ever.  Not thanks to Matthew Broderick, but because Krushchev would not take his missiles out of Cuba.

While John F Kennedy spoke to the nation about the missile crisis, the military raised the DEFCON  level.

JFK

Given that it is one of the most extensively researched and written about events, both of JFK’s presidency and the Cold War, going into detail about the crisis seems superfluous.  You can follow a calendar of events, from October 17 to October 28.

Two things struck me, however, as I looked into it and again – sorry to belabor the point – YouTube is just so fabulous.  John Kennedy courteously notified Hoover, Eisenhower and Truman about what was going on, but in the case of Eisenhower, he was really asking for an expert opinion and you can hear their conversation here.  Ditto Truman.  Hoover, not so much.

The second surprise involves JFK’s secretary, Evelyn Lincoln.  Shocking misbehavior – she took a whole bunch of stuff from the White House and kept it, eventually selling a lot of it to a collector named Robert White.  The Kennedy Library finally got this back in 2005 – before it was sold for $750,000 on eBay:

This is Kennedy’s own annotated map of Cuba which he used in his discussions with the military, CIA, NSC and so on.

There was a lot of back channel stuff that finally got things resolved.  On Oct. 28, Krushchev gave a radio speech declaring the missiles would be removed because the US had sworn not to invade Cuba.

JFK, without waiting for official confirmation, wrote to Krushchev:

‘I am replying at once to your broadcast message of October twenty-eight even though the official text has not yet reached me because of the great importance I attach to moving forward promptly to the settlement of the Cuban crisis. I think that you and I, with our heavy responsibilities for the maintenance of peace, were aware that developments were approaching a point where events could have become unmanageable. So I welcome this message and consider it an important contribution to peace…’

I sense real relief in that.

Finally, just a word about those crazy Russians – we had been busy deploying missiles in the UK and Europe since 1958. More than 100 IRBMS were pointed at Moscow.