Christmas Every Day

1914 The birth of Hedy Lamarr

Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler was born in Vienna and from a young age attracted attention because of her good looks. In her teens she began getting parts in movies, most notable of which was 1933’s Ecstasy with its notorious sexually-charged scenes. By 1937 she had ditched Europe, her rich husband (she would ditch five others before she gave up matrimony), and her birth name, henceforth adopting “Hedy Lamarr”.

In Hollywood, Lamarr was billed as “the world’s most beautiful woman” and most of her roles were meant to capitalize on that claim. Among a number of duds and flops, she acquitted herself well in Algiers (1938) with Charles Boyer, and Samson and Delilah with Victor Mature (1949). Her stardom faded in the 1950s and by 1958 she had made her last film.

These days Lamarr is mostly remembered for a spiteful little lawsuit against Mel Brooks for naming one of his characters Hedley Lamarr, and for her invention of a frequency-hopping guidance system for a torpedo, a discovery which led to secure WiFi, GPS and Bluetooth. Her last years were spent in sad isolation.

Despite her classic features, Ms Lamarr never set my heart aflutter. There was something a little too artificial and reserved about her screen presence. If I were to list film goddesses in order of swoon-worthiness I would do it thusly:

1. Merle Oberon, The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934)
2. Anita Ekberg, La Dolce Vita (1960)
3. Monica Bellucci, Malèna (2000)
4. Sophia Loren, Sunflower (1970)
5. Ewa Aulin, Candy (1968)

644 The Assassination of Caliph Umar

The death of Muhammed, the founder of the Islamic faith, in 632 led to a period of succession quarrels within the young movement. The claims of Ali, nephew and son-in-law of Muhammed, were set aside in the election of the first three caliphs”, or “Successors”. Abu Bakr, Muhammed’s father-in-law, was the first chosen; he was successful in expanding Islam throughout the Arabian peninsula. By the time he died in 634, he had appointed Umar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb as the next caliph.

Umar was born c. 583 in Mecca and initially resisted Muhammed and his new religion. After his conversion in 616, he became a firm follower and was among those who migrated from his home town to Medina in 622. He rose high in the estimation of the Muslim elite and helped secure the choice of Abu Bakr. As caliph he proved an excellent administrator; under his guidance Islam continued its rapid expansion.

While worshipping in a Medina mosque, Umar was attacked by Abu Lu’lu’a Firuz, a Persian slave who stabbed him seven times with a poison knife before committing suicide. The motives for the killing are still a subject of debate. In some accounts the assassin was a resentful Christian; in others he was a “fire-worshipper” or Zoroastrian. Some say he was the tool of a larger group of conspirators; others say he hated Umar for supporting the confiscation of too large a proportion of his wages; still others say that Persian animosity to Arabs propelled the deed.

The death of Umar did not end the turbulence of early Islamic politics. The next two caliphs, Uthman and Ali, were also murdered.

Britain abandons France

On the 5th of November 1800, it was settled by the privy-council, that in consequence of the Irish Union, the royal style and title should be changed on the 1st of January following—namely, from “George III, by the grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith;” to “George III, by the grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith.” And thus the title of king of France, which had been borne by the monarchs of England for four hundred and thirty-two years—since the forty-third year of the reign of Edward III —was ultimately abandoned.

It was the Salic law [forbidding a female to inherit or pass on a claim to the French throne] which had excluded Edward from the inheritance of France; but Queen Elizabeth I claimed the title, nevertheless, asserting that if she could not be queen, she would be king of France. During the war between England and Spain, in the time of Queen Elizabeth, commissioners were appointed on both sides to discuss peace. The Spanish commissioners proposed that the negotiations should be carried on in the French tongue, observing sarcastically, that “the gentlemen of England could not be ignorant of the language of their fellow-subjects, their queen being queen of France as well as of England.” “Nay, in faith, gentlemen,” drily replied Dr. Dale, one of the English commissioners, “French is too vulgar for a business of this importance; we will therefore, if you please, rather treat in Hebrew, the language of Jerusalem, of which your master [Philip II] calls himself king, and in which you must, of course, be as well skilled as we are in French.”

Despite the abandonment of the claim to France the motto of the British monarch outside of Scotland (where the motto is different) is in French – “Dieu et mon droit” – as is the motto of the Order of the Garter – “Honi soit qui mal y pense”.

1818 Death of Sir Samuel Romilly

Samuel Romilly was born in London in 1757 to descendants of French Protestants who had fled the persecutions of Louis XIV. He entered the legal profession in which he rose to renown and wealth. Romilly’s sympathies were always on the side of reform. During the 1780s he made the acquaintance of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Denis Diderot and he had high hopes for the French Revolution but its increasing radicalism and violence ultimately dismayed him.

Romilly’s brilliance and oratorical skills won him the patronage of influential politicians and when he entered Parliament in 1808 he was made Solicitor General. He was a fierce opponent of the slave trade and a firm supporter of the attempts by William Wilberforce to abolish that institution but his main contribution as a reformer was to amend laws to which the death penalty was attached.

Since the sixteenth century England had passed legislating mandating execution not just for crimes of murder or treason but for far more trivial offences. By 1800 there were over 200 offences for which death was the mandatory sentence: theft of goods worth more than 12 pence, wrecking a fish pond, cutting down a young tree, keeping the company of gypsies, or impersonating a Chelsea Pensioner. Romilly’s efforts resulted in a gradual abolition of many of these statutes. (Britain’s last execution was in 1964 though the death penalty was abolished only in 1998.)

In October 1818 Romilly’s wife Anne died and a few days later, in a paroxysm of grief, he cut his own throat.

2008 Death of Yma Sumac

Zoila Augusta Emperatriz Chávarri del Castillo was born in 1922 to mixed-race Peruvian parents. She chose a career in singing South American folk music and after limited success in that field she was discovered by an American impresario who marketed her as an Incan princess with a phenomenal vocal range. Her stage name Yma Sumac became synonymous with exotic sounds and backdrops. She appeared in film, on Broadway, and in night clubs with extensive foreign tours to her credit.

Sumac’s vocal range may have been 6 octaves and she was revered for her vocal athleticism as much as for her interpretation and glamorous appeal. The clip below demonstrates her virtuosic novelty.

All Hallows’ Eve

November 1 is All Saints’ Day or Hallowmas and the night preceding is thus All Hallows’ Eve or Hallowe’en. Together with November 2, All Souls’ Day, it constitutes Allhallowtide, a period to commemorate the Christian dead.

Halloween has become a secular festival dedicated to the distribution of unhealthy food to costumed children and to the indulgence by their elders in thoughts of the macabre. October television is dedicated to films about chainsaw homicide, haunted mansions, and the grisly dispatch of teenagers who violate the prime directive of sticking together when threatened by serial killers. October marketing focuses on novel ways to sell pumpkin-, witch-, skeleton- and zombie-related foodstuffs and clothing. Halloween has become the holiday on which more discretionary income is expended than any other save Christmas.

What this says about North American culture in the twenty-first century is uncertain. Is it a healthy interest in human mortality or a morbid fascination with the unholy and forbidden? Are we mocking evil or temporarily embracing it? Here are some thoughts on the subject:

I think if human beings had genuine courage, they would wear their costumes every day of the year, not just on Halloween. Wouldn’t life be more interesting that way? And now that I think about it, why the heck don’t they? Who made the rule that everybody has to dress like sheep 364 days of the year? Think of all the people you’d meet if they were in costume every day. People would be so much easier to talk to, like talking to dogs. – Douglas Coupland, The Gum Thief

It is as if French society were looking for a kind of civil religion capable of replacing Christian symbolism. At Halloween the dead are imitated and their ‘ghosts’ come back to frighten us and threaten us with death. On All Saints’ Day, in contrast, we affirm that the departed are alive and that we are promised to rejoin them in the City of God. – Hippolyte Simon, bishop of Clermont-Ferrand, Vers une France païenne? (Toward a Pagan France?)

Over time Halloween became an important night for customers, as well; for whereas children of the interwar years constructed their costumes from old clothes in the attic; for or closet and simply blackened their faces with burnt cork or soot, children in the more affluent 1950s and 1960s were more likely to buy Halloween masks and perhaps other articles of their costume from retail stores. By making Halloween consumer-oriented and infantile, civic and industrial promoters hoped to eliminate its anarchic features. – Nicholas Rogers, Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night

 

1618 The execution of Sir Walter Raleigh

Politics was a blood sport in early-modern England. Men and women paid with their lives for choosing the losing side in a dynastic or religious quarrel. Their posthumous reputations often depended on how they behaved in their last moments when they faced their public execution. No one forgot the stubborn refusal of the Countess of Salisbury to cooperate with the headsman, the last words of Bishop Latimer as he was burned alive, or courage of Walter Raleigh dealing with his unjust fate, the victims of  spineless James I.

Raleigh died nobly. The bishop who attended him, and the lords about him, were astonished to witness his serenity of demeanour. He observed calmly: “I have a long journey to go, therefore must take leave!” He fingered the axe with a smile, and called it “a sharp medicine, a sound cure for all disease”. He laid his head on the block with these words in conclusion:

‘So the heart be right, it is no matter which way the head lies.’

The following is Raleigh’s last poem, written the night before his death, and found in his Bible, in the Gate house, at Westminster:

Even such is time, which takes in trust
    Our youth, our joys, and all we have,
And pays us nought but age and dust;
    Which in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days!
And from which grave, and earth, and dust,
The Lord shall raise me up, I trust.’

1886 Dedication of the Statue of Liberty

To celebrate the centenary of American independence, and to mark their own contribution to that effort, the French were determined to make the USA a splendid gift. The anniversary present would prove to be  La Liberté éclairant le monde, the gigantic Statue of Liberty (more properly “Liberty Enlightening the World”). 

Work began on Liberty years before the centenary but the difficulty of the task and financing problems meant that by 1876 only the statue’s arm bearing the torch could be sent to Philadelphia for the festivities. It was designed by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi and built by Gustave Eiffel. Made of copper, it depicted the Roman goddess Libertas carrying a torch and a law tablet inscribed with “1776”; at her feet is a broken chain signifying freedom from oppression. The statue was shipped in pieces to New York where it was erected on an island platform in the harbour, towering 305′ above the ground.

On this date in 1886 President Grover Cleveland dedicated the statue after a grand ticker-tape parade (the first ever) through the streets of New York.

1911 The assassination of General Feng-shan

Early in the twentieth century China was in political turmoil. The Qing (or Manchu) dynasty that had ruled the country since 1644 was on its last legs, rebels and warlords were making bids for power, and rival political theories were being tried on for size. Monarchist loyalists, reformed monarchists, Ming dynsty revivalists, republicans, ethnic nationalists, Muslims, socialists, regional separatists, etc., etc., all vied for influence – and even anarchism, usually associated with Europe, played a part.

One curious anarchist expression was the Chinese Assassination Corps. This small group of revolutionaries was fiercely anti-Qing and dedicated to the overthrow of the 2,000-year-old Chinese empire. Having been unsuccessful at building a mass movement, they adopted the tactic of “propaganda by deed”, individual terrorism, and murder. They aimed, and failed, to kill the Prince Regent, various Qing officials, and military officers but in October 1911 during an uprising in Guangdong, they finally brought down their target.

General Feng Shan had been sent to southern China to replace another assassinated Qing administrator and to suppress armed uprisings but his tenure was a very short one. Five members of the Assassination Corps devised a way to penetrate the heavy cordon of Manchu guards protecting the officer. As Feng Shan’s cavalcade moved down the street toward his headquarters on a palanquin, a bomb was slid from a window on a wooden plank, landing directly in front of his chair. The explosion killed the coolies carrying the general, a dozen of his guards, and Feng Shan himself.

The Assassination Corps would soon disband itself, burning most of its documents and membership lists.

1648 The Treaty of Westphalia

The treaty (or rather treaties) of Westphalia brought a merciful finish to the worst conflicts in European history prior to the 20th-century, ending the Thirty Years War and the Eighty Years War. Historians often credit these agreements as the basis of the system of modern nation states. Significant aspects of the treaties include:

• A religious settlement which determined that the national religion of the signatory countries should be that of the ruler in place in 1624. Those not of that religion (Catholic, Lutheran, or Calvinist) were allowed to practise their own faiths in private.

• The independence of the Netherlands from Spain was recognized.

• The independence of Switzerland from the Holy Roman Empire was recognized.

• Territorial adjustments gave fortresses to France, Baltic territories to Sweden, and expanded Prussia.

Fry and Laurie explain the diplomatic difficulties: