Calendar: July 5

A Year: Day to Day Men: 5th of July

Aerial Flora

July 5, 1893 was the birthdate of the Wing Chun master Yip Kai-man, known as Yip Man.

Yip Man grew up in a wealthy family in Guangdong and received a traditional Chinese education. Hie started learning Wing Chun for Chan Wah-shun, a teacher and a healer, when he was twelve. Chan, at that time seventy years old, trained Yip Man for three years until his death; Chan’s second eldest disciple, Wu Chung-sok, continued Yip Man’s training.

At the age of sixteen, Yip moved to Hong Kong with the aid of a relative and attended Saint Stephen’s College, a school for wealthy families. It was at this period in his life that he started learning martial arts from Leung Bik. When he was twenty-four, Yip returned to his hometown, Foshan, and became a policeman. He taught Wing Chun to subordinates, friends and relatives informally and did not open an official martial arts school.

Yip went to Hong Kong later to live with his student Kwok Fu during the second Sino-Japanese War, returning after the war to Foshan to continue his career as a police officer. After the Chinese Communist Party won the Chinese Civil War he left for Hong Kong and started a school there. Some of his students attained proficiency in Wing Chun and were able to start their own schools. Students and descendants sparred with other martial artists to compare their skills; and their victories helped increase Yip’s fame.

Yip died on December 2, 1972 in his Hong Kong apartment from throat cancer, only seven months before the death of one of most famous pupils, Bruce Lee. Yip’s legacy is the spread of the Wing Chun style of martial arts through the world. A number of films based on the life of Yip Man were made; the first one “Ip Man” focusing on his life in the 1930s and 1940s was released in 2008 starring Donnie Yen. “Ip Man2” and “Ip Man3” were released in the following years and again starred Donnie Yen.

Wong Kar-wai’s 2013 film about Yip Man titled “The Grandmaster” is one of the better films. It was created in an almost biographical style, highlighting parts of Asian history. It concentrated more on the end of an era in Chinese martial arts history as the second Sino-Japanese War broke out. Tony Leung, one of Asia’s most successful and recognizable actors, played the role of Yip Man. “The Grandmaster” focused also on the philosophies between martial arts and life, as well as the Yip Man’s life from the 1930s to the 1950s.

Calendar: July 4

A Year: Day to Day Men: 4th of July

Seeking New Horizons

July 4, 1924 was the birthdate of American actress and producer, Eva Marie Saint.

Eva Marie Saint’s introduction to television began working as an NBC page, the internship program where pages rotate through assignments in the media environment. She appeared in the very early live NBC TV show “Campus Hoopla” in 1946. Her performances on this program are recorded on rare kinescope and audio recordings of these telecasts are preserved in the Library of Congress.

Eva Marie Saint won the Drama Critics Award for her Broadway stage role in the 1953 Horton Foote play, “The Trip is Bountiful”, in which she co-starred with such experienced actors as Lillian Gish and Jo Van Fleet. She received her first Emmy nomination, a Best Actress award, for playing the young mistress of E. G. Marshall in “Middle of the Night”. She won another nomination for her role in the 1955 television musical “Our Town”, co-starring with Paul Newman and Frank Sinatra.

In the 1954 “On the Waterfront”, Eva Marie Saint made her first feature film appearance in the role of Edie Doyle- a performance for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She was also nominated by the British Academy of Film in the category of ‘Most Promising Newcomer’ for this role of Edie Doyle. “On the Waterfront” starring Marlon Brando was a major success and launched Saint’s movie career.

Director Alfred Hitchcock surprised many by choosing Eva Marie Saint over dozens of candidates for the femme fatale role in the 1959 suspense classic “North by Northwest” starring Cary Grant and James Mason. The change in Saint’s screen persona, coupled with her adroit performance as a seductive woman of mystery who keeps Cary Grant off balance, was widely heralded. The film became a box office hit and an influence on spy films for decades.

In the 1960s, Eva Marie Saint continued to distinguish herself in both high-profile and offbeat pictures. She co-starred with Paul Newman in the1060 “Exodus”, directed by Otto Preminger, a historical drama about the founding of the state of Israel adapted from Leon Uris’ novel. She also portrayed a tragic beauty in John Frankenheimer’s 1962 film “All Fall Down”, with Warren Beatty, Karl Malden and Angela Lansbury.

Eva Marie Saint has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for motion pictures at 6624 Hollywood Boulevard, and one for her television work at 6730 Hollywood Boulevard. Born in Newark, New Jersey, she is now 94 years old.

Calendar: July 3

A Year: Day to Day Men: 3rd of July

A Luxurious Sprawl

July 3, 1945 was the birthdate of American actor, Michael Cole.

Michael Cole was born in Madison, Wisconsin. He has appeared in numerous films and television shows, beginning with his first role in the 1961 film drama “Forbid Them Not”. In 1966 Cole had the role of Mark in the 1966 science fiction film “The Bubble”, later re-titled “Fantastic Invasion of Planet Earth”, which introduced the Space-Vision 3-D system. He played the character Spivey in the 1967 western “Chuka”, known for Cole’s military-fort flogging scene. He later starred in the 1971 science fiction movie “The Last Child” which was nominated for a Golden Globe Award.

Cole also appeared in many television shows. He played Kipp in the 1966 season of “Gunsmoke”. During the 1970s, he made guest appearances on “Wonder Woman”, “The Love Boat” and “CHiPs. He also worked on “Murder, She Wrote”, “Fantasy Island”, and Diagnosis Murder”. Cole later appeared in Stephen King’s 1990 two-part television movie “It”, playing the older version of Henry Bowers.

The role that made Michael Cole an international celebrity was his role as Pete Cochrane, a troubled youth turned crime fighter in the 1968-1973 “The Mod Squad”. Cole’s boyish good looks and brooding, deep voiced personality meshed perfectly with his character’s background. Aaron Spelling, the executive producer of the show, thought Cole was perfect for the part of Pete. Cole, however, originally balked at taking the part; but he was persuaded to do it after reading the script and realizing the show’s potential appeal. “The Mod Squad” resonated with the counter-culture-era viewers and ran for a total of 123 episodes over five seasons.

Michael Cole is also known for an incident in 1973 which was broadcast live on Australian television during the annual TV Week Logie awards. Stepping on stage to accept an award, Cole, described later as drunk or “emotionally tired”, gave a barely coherent “thank you” speech that ended with the actor saying, “Oh, shit.” This was the first time this profanity had been heard on Australian television.

Michale Cole continues to act in film and television projects. He appeared as Charles Hadley in a 2006 episode of the television series “ER”. He also made an appearance in the 2007 psychological thriller “Mr. Brooks” as the attorney for Demi Moore’s character Tracy Atwood. The film was directed by Bruce Evans and showcased performances by Kevin Costner, Demi Moore, Dane Cook, and William Hurt.

Calendar: July 2

A Year: Day to Day Men: 2nd of July

The Magic of Buoyancy

On July 2, 1816, the French frigate Méduse struck the Bank of Arguin, a sandbar off the Atlantic shore of Mauritania.

The mission of Méduse was to ferry French officials to the port of Saint-Louis in Senegal and to formally re-establish French occupation of the colony. Viscount Hugues Duroy de Chaumareys was appointed Captain of the frigate and given command of the Méduse, even though he had hardly sailed in 20 years. On the 17th of June of 1816, a four ship convoy under the command of Chaumareys and with the appointed French Governor of Senegal, Julien Schmaltz, on board, departed for the port of Saint-Louis.

Governor Schmaltz wanted to reach Saint-Louis as fast as possible, by the most direct route, though this would take the fleet dangerously close to the shore, where there were many sandbars and reefs. Experienced crews sailed further out. Méduse was the fastest of the convoy and, disregarding his orders, Captain Chaumareys quickly lost contact with the other ships. As she closed on the coast of Africa, the course of Méduse became dangerous. Realizing the danger at last, Chaumareys ordered the ship brought up into the wind, but it was too late, and Méduse ran aground on a sandbar and stuck fast thirty-one miles from the coast.

On July 5th, a gale developed and the frigate showed signs of breaking up. The passengers and crew panicked, and Chaumareys decided to evacuate the frigate immediately, leaving no time to enact the original plan of making multiple ferry trips to shore. Instead, it was suggested that the raft they had built for ferrying the supplies could be used to carry passengers and Méduse’s longboats could tow the raft to safety. One hundred and forty-six men and one woman boarded the woefully unstable raft. The raft had few supplies and no means of steering or navigation. Much of its deck was underwater.

The towing proved impractical, however, and the boats soon abandoned the raft and its passengers in the open ocean. Without any means of navigating to shore, the situation aboard the raft rapidly turned disastrous. Dozens were washed into the sea by a storm, while others, drunk from wine, rebelled and were killed by officers. Stormy weather threatened, and only the center of the raft was secure. Dozens died either in fighting to get to the center or because they were washed overboard by the waves.

Rations dwindled rapidly; by the fourth day there were only 67 people left alive on the raft, and some resorted to cannibalism to survive. On the eighth day, the fittest decided to throw the weak and wounded overboard, leaving just 15 men remaining, all of whom survived another four days until their rescue on July 17 by the brig Argus, which accidentally encountered them.

Calendar: July 1

A Year: Day to Day Men: 1st of July

Sitting with Clasped Hands

July 1, 1535 is the starting day of the trial of Sir Thomas More.

Thomas More began his studies at Oxford University in 1492, at the age of fourteen, receiving a classical education and becoming proficient in both Latin and Greek. At his father’s insistence he left Oxford after two years to study law at New Inn, a place of initial training for barristers. More became a student in 1496 at Lincoln’s Inn, a professional association for barristers, until 1502 when he was deemed qualified as a barrister.

Thomas More lived for a year near the Carthusian Monastery, joined the monks’ spiritual exercised and contemplated joining the order. However, he decided to remain a layman, standing instead for election to a position in Parliament in 1504 and marrying Jane Colt the following year. More was elected to Parliament to represent Great Yarmouth, a coastal area in Western England, and later elected in 1510 to represent London.

Thomas More was knighted and made under-treasurer of the Exchequer in 1521, becoming increasingly influential as a personal advisor to King Henry VIII. More succeeded to the office of Lord Chancellor in 1529 when that post became vacant. He strongly supported the Catholic Church and saw the Protestant Reformation as heresy and a threat to the church, particularly the theology of Martin Luther and William Tydale.

More opposed King Henry VIII’s separation from the Catholic Church: he refused to acknowledge King Henry as the Supreme Head of the Church of England, Henry VIII established the church after Pope Paul III had excommunicated the king over his divorce from his wife Catherine of Aragon. After refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy to Henry as required, Thomas More was put on trial for treason.

More was an experienced judge and lawyer who had prepared himself for his final trial over several years. At this trial, he was determined to bring all of his experience and training to bear—to defend not only himself and his family, but also his country, his church, the English tradition of law, and the future of Christendom.

On July 1, 1535, he appeared before fifteen judges and twelve jurors. Despite the impressive numbers, however, this trial was not to be impartial. Thomas More aptly discredited all of the government’s evidence and established the credibility of his own character. The total lack of viable evidence against More proved to be totally irrelevant. The jury took only fifteen minutes to render its verdict: “Guilty.” He was sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered; but the King commuted this to execution by decapitation. The execution took place on 6 July 1535.

Calendar: June 30

A Year: Day to Day Men: 30th of June

Beauty in a Form

June 30, 1908 is the date of the Tunguska Event in Siberia.

The Tunguska event was a large explosion that occurred near the Stony Tunguska River In Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia on the morning of June 30, 1908. This event is the largest impact event on Earth in recorded history. The explosion over the Easter Siberian tiaga, a very large ecoregion of forests and wildlife, flattened 770 square miles of forest, yet caused no known human casualties.

The explosion is generally attributed to the air burst of a meteoroid, It is classified as an impact event, though no impact crater has been found. The object is thought to have disintegrated at an altitude of 3 to 6 miles rather than to have hit the Earth’s surface. Studies have yielded estimates of the meteoroid’s size from 200 to 600 feet. Estimates of the energy of the downward airburst range from three to five megatons of TNT (three to five million tons). The explosion knocked down some 80 million trees over the affected area.

Natives and Russian settlers in the hills north-west of Lake Baikal observed a column of bluish light, nearly as bright as the sun, moving across the sky. About ten minutes later, there was a flash and a sound similar to artillery fire. Eyewitnesses closer to the explosion site reported the sound moved from the east to the north. The sounds were accompanied by a shock wave that knocked people off their feet and broke windows hundreds of miles away.

The explosion registered at seismic stations across Euroasia; in some places, the shock wave registered equivalent to an earthquake of 5.0 magnitude. Fluctuations in atmospheric pressure were detected in Great Britain. Over the next few days, night skies in Asia and Europe glowed. The theory for this was light passing through high-altitude ice particles that had formed at extremely low temperatures. Suspended dust particles caused a month-long decrease in atmospheric transparency, according to observers at the Mount Wilson Observatory in Los Angeles County, California.

It is believed that the passage of the asteroid through the atmosphere caused pressures and temperatures to build up to a point where the asteroid abruptly disintegrated in a huge explosion. The destruction would have to have been so complete that no remnants of substantial size survived, and the material scattered into the upper atmosphere during the explosion would have caused the glowing skies.

Calendar: June 29

A Year: Day to Day Men: 29th of June

The Amazing Technicolor Man

June 29, 1995 marks the passing of one of MGM’s biggest stars: Lana Turner.

Born to working-class parents in northern Idaho, Lana Turner spent her early life there before her family relocated to San Francisco. In 1936, while still in high school, she was discovered while purchasing a soda at the Top Hat Malt Shop in Hollywood. At the age of 16, she was signed to a personal contract by Warner Brothers director Mervyn Le Roy who took her with him when he transferred to MGM in 1938.

Turner attracted attention playing a murder victim in her first film in 1937, LeRoy’s crime drama “They Won’t Forget”. During the early 1940s, Turner established herself as a leading actress and one of MGM’s top performers, appearing in such films as the film noir “Johnny Eager”, the musical “Ziegfeld Girl”, and the horror film Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”, all in 1941. She starred in the 1942 romantic war drama “Somewhere I’ll Find You”, one of several films opposite Clark Gable.

At the advent of World War II, Turner’s increasing prominence in Hollywood led to her becoming a popular pin-up girl and her image appeared painted on the noses of U.S. fighter planes, bearing the nickname “Tempest Turner.” In June 1942, she embarked on a ten-week war bond tour throughout the western United States with her co-star Gable. Throughout the war, Turner continued to make regular appearances at U.S. troop events and area bases.

Turner’s reputation as a glamorous femme fatale was enhanced by her critically acclaimed performance in the 1946 film “The Postman Always Rings Twice”, a role which established her as a serious dramatic actress. Her popularity continued through the 1950s in dramas such as “The Bad and the Beautiful” and “Peyton Place”, the latter of which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.

Turner’s 1959 film, “Imitation of Life”, proved to be one of the greatest financial successes of her career. Her last starring role in the 1966 “Madame X” earned her a David di Donatello Award for Best Actress. Turner spent most of the 1970s and early 1980s in semi-retirement, making her final feature film appearance in “Witches’ Brew”, released in 1980. She accepted in 1982 a much publicized and lucrative recurring guest role in the television series “Falcon Crest”, which afforded the series notably high ratings.

Turner maintained her glamorous image into her late career; a 1966 film review characterized her as “the glitter and glamour of Hollywood.” While she consistently embraced her glamorous persona, she was also vocal about her dedication to acting and attained a reputation as a versatile, hard-working actress. One of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s biggest stars, Lana Turner earned the studio over $50 million during her eighteen-year contract with them.

Calendar: June 28

A Year: Day to Day Men: 28th of June

Iced Coffee

On June 28, 1911 the Nakhla meteorite falls to earth and lands in Egypt.

The Nakhla meteorite is a prototypical example of the Nakhlite type meteorite of the SNC Group of Mars meteorites. These meteorites are considered to have been ejected by the impact of another large body colliding with the Martian surface. They orbited through the solar system before penetrating the Earth’s atmosphere. This Nakhla meteorite landed in the Abu Hommos district near the village of El Nakha El Bahariya, Egypt.

Many people witnessed the descent, approaching from the north-west, with an inclination of about 30 degrees. It was trailed by a column of white smoke. Several explosions were heard before it fell to earth into an area of about three miles in diameter. About forty fragments were discovered, some buried in the ground up to a meter deep. The original weight of the meteorite was estimated at twenty-two pounds (ten kilograms); fragments weighed from 20 grams to eighteen hundred grams.

The Nakhla meteorite is especially significant because it is the first Martian meteorite to show signs of aqueous processes on Mars. The rock contains carbonates and hydrous minerals, formed by chemical reactions in water. In addition, the rock was exposed to water after it formed, which caused secondary accumulations of minerals. The carbonates contain more ¹³C than rocks formed on Earth, indicating Martian origin.

London’s natural History Museum, which holds several intact fragments of the meteorite, allowed NASA researchers to break one open in 2006, providing fresh samples, relatively free from Earth-sourced contamination. These NASA scientists found an abundance of complex carbonaceous material occupying branching structural pores and channels in the rock, resembling the effects of bacteria observed in rocks on Earth.

Side Note: One fragment of the meteorite was said to have landed on a dog, as observed by a farmer named Mohammed Ali Effendi Hakim in the village of Denshal. It supposedly vaporized the animal instantly. Since no remains of the dog were recovered and there were no other eyewitness to the dog’s demise, this story remains apocryphal. However, the story of the Nakhla dog has become something of a legend among astronomers.

Calendar: June 27

A Year: Day to Day Men: 27th of June

Searching a Field of Tigers

June 27, 1927 was the birthdate of Robert James Keeshan, an American television producer and actor.

In television’s early days, nearly every town with a station launched its own local kids’ program. These local kids’ programming generated indelible characters, entertained and educated countless youths, and launched the careers of a host of talented actors and broadcasters. An early show that premiered in 1947 on the National Broadcasting company was “Howdy Doody”.

On the “Howdy Doody Show”, Bob Keeshan played Clarabell the Clown, a silent Auguste clown who communicate by honking horns attached to the belt around his waist. Clarabell often spayed seltzer water at Buffalo Bob Smith, the lead character played by Robert Schmidt who had created the character of Howdy Doody and voiced the puppet on television. Keeshan gave up his role in 1952 after having played the role of Clarabell for three years..

By September of 1953, Keeshan was back on the air for the New York City station WABC, in its new children’s show “Time for Fun”. In this show he played a talking clown named Corny the Clown. At the same time in a separate series, Keeshan also played the title role of a grandfather figure named Tinker, in a pre-school show called “Tinker’s Workshop”.

Developing ideas from the “Tinker’s Workshop” show, Keeshan and his friend, Jack Miller, submitted the concept of “Captain Kangaroo” to the CBS network which was looking for children’s television programming. CBS approved the show; the show premiered in October of 1955 with Keeshan as the lead character Captain Kangaroo.. The show was an immediate success and Keeshan served as its host for 9000 programs over thirty years.

The recurring characters on the show included the Captain’s sidekick (and a fan favorite) Mr. Green Jeans played by Hugh Brannum, and puppets Bunny Rabbit and Mr. Moose. The show had a loose format with cartoons, the reading of books such as ‘Curious George”, and guest appearances such as Bob Newheart, William Shatner as Kirk, and Dr. Joyce Brothers. “Captain Kangaroo” finished on December 8, 1984, making it the longest-running nationally broadcast children’s program of its day.

Keeshan suffered a sever heart attack in July of 1981, pushing the start of the show for the season back to August. Following the heart attack Keeshan received three Emmy awards for Outstanding Performer in 1982, 1983, and 1984. Despite these awards, his program was shortened from one hour to a half hour and given changing time slots. Keeshan left “Captain Kangaroo” when his contract ended at the end of 1984. In the 1990s, Keeshan attempted to revive the show but was unable to obtain permission from the company who owned the rights to “Captain Kangaroo”.

Calendar: June 26

A Year: Day to Day Men: 26th of June

The Art of Concentration

June 26, 1925 marks the release of the Charlie Chaplin film “The Gold Rush”.

The 1925 American comedy “The Gold Rush” was in every respect the most elaborate undertaking of Charlie Chaplin¹s career. For two weeks the unit shot on location at Truckee in the snow country of the Sierra Nevada. Here Chaplin faithfully recreated the historic image of the prospectors struggling up the Chilkoot Pass. Six hundred extras, many drawn from the vagrants and derelicts of Sacramento, were brought by train, to clamber up the 2300-feet pass dug through the mountain snow.

For the main shooting the unit returned to the Hollywood studio, where a remarkably convincing miniature mountain range was created out of timber (a quarter of a million feet, it was reported), chicken wire, burlap, plaster, salt and flour. The spectacle of this Alaskan snowscape improbably glistening under the baking Californian summer sun drew crowds of sightseers

In addition, the studio technicians devised exquisite models to produce the special effects which Chaplin demanded, like the miners’ hut which is blown by the tempest to teeter on the edge of a precipice, for one of the cinema’s most sustained sequences of comic suspense. Often it is impossible to detect the shift from model to full-size set.

“The Gold Rush” abounds with now-classic comedy scenes. The historic horrors of the starving 19th century pioneers inspired the sequence in which Charlie and his partner Big Jim are snowbound and ravenous. Charlie cooks and eats his boot, with all the airs of a gourmet. In the eyes of the delirious Big Jim, he is transformed into a chicken – a triumph both for the cameramen who had to effect the elaborate trick work entirely in the camera; and for Chaplin who magically becomes a bird.

The lone prospector’s dream of hosting a New Year dinner for the beautiful dance-hall girl provides the opportunity for another famous Chaplin set-piece: the dance of the rolls. The gag had been done before, by Chaplin’s one-time co-star Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle; but Chaplin gave unique personality to the dancing legs created out of forks and rolls. When the film was first shown audiences were so thrilled by the scene that some theaters were obliged to stop the film, roll it back and perform an encore.

“The Gold Rush” was the first of his silent films which Chaplin revived, with the addition of sound, for new audiences. For the 1942 reissue he composed an orchestral score, and replaced the inter-titles with a commentary which he spoke himself. The film today is accepted to be one of Chaplin’s most perfectly accomplished films and declared by him to be the one by which he wanted to be remembered.

Calendar: June 25

A Year: Day to Day Men: 25th of June

The Hidden Balcony

June 25, 1903 is the birthdate of the British author, George Orwell.

George Orwell was born Eric Arthur Blair on June 25th of 1903 in eastern India, the son of a British colonial civil servant. Educated in England at Eton, he joined the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, then a British colony. In 1928, Orwell moved to Paris where lack of success there as a writer forced him into a series of menial jobs. He described these experiences in his first book, “Down and Out in Paris and London”, published in 1933. It was shortly before the book’s publication that he changed his name to George Orwell.

An anarchist in the late 1920s, by the 1930s Orwell had begun to consider himself a socialist. In 1936, he was commissioned to write an account of poverty among unemployed miners in northern England, which resulted in his 1937 published non-fiction work “The Road to Wigan Pier’” documenting his experience of working class life in the north of England.

Late in 1936, Orwell had travelled to Spain to fight for the Republicans against Franco’s Nationalists. He was forced to flee in fear of his life from Soviet-backed communists who were suppressing revolutionary socialist dissenters. The experience turned him into a lifelong anti-Stalinist. The account of his experiences in the Spanish Civil War, “Homage to Catalonia” was published in 1938.

In March of 1943 George Orwell started work on his new book, which turned out to be “Animal Farm”. By April of 1944 the book was ready for publication; however, publishing houses refused to publish it, considering it an attack on the Soviet regime which at that time was a crucial ally in the war. Orwell’s allegorical novella “Animal Farm” was finally published in Britain on August 17, 1945, and a year later in the United States on August 26, 1946. A political fable set in a farmyard but based on Stalin’s betrayal of the Russian Revolution, it made Orwell’s name and ensured he was financially comfortable for the first time in his life.

His book “Nineteen Eighty-Four” was published four years later. Set in an imaginary totalitarian future, the book made a deep impression, with its title and many phrases – such as “Big Brother is watching you”, “newspeak”, “thoughtcrime”, and “doublethink” – entering popular use. Orwell’s health had continued to decline since a diagnosis of tuberculosis in December of 1947. In the early morning of January 21, 1950, an artery burst in Orwell’s lungs, killing him at the age of 46. His body is buried in All Saints Churchyard, Oxfordshire, under his birth name Eric Arthur Blair.

Calendar: June 24

A Year: Day to Day Men: 24th of June

Window Seat on Life

June 24, 1865 was the birthdate of the American Realism painter and teacher, Robert Henri.

In 1886 Robert Henri enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and studied under Thomas Anshutz and Thomas Hovenden. He traveled to Paris in 1888 to enroll at the Academie Julian, where he studied under William-Adolphe Bouguereau and embraced the Impressionist movement. At the end of 1891, he returned to Philadelphia to study and began teaching at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women in 1892.

By 1895, Henri reconsidered his earlier love of Impressionism and urged his friends and proteges to create a new, more realistic art that spoke to the present time and experience. He believed artists should seek out fresh, less genteel subjects in the modern cities of America. The paintings produced by Henri, John Sloan, William Glackens, George Luks, Everett Shinn and others became known as the Ashcan School of American Art. They spurned academic painting and Impressionism as the art of “surface” painting.

Art critic Robert Hughes, known for his television series on modern art, “The Shock of the New” and for his position as art critic with Time magazine, stated that “Henri wanted art to be akin to journalism. He wanted paint to be as real as mud, as the clods of horse-shit and snow, that froze on Broadway in the winter, as real a human product as sweat, carrying the un-suppressed smell of human life.”

In 1908, Henri was one of the organizers of a landmark show entitled “The Eight” at the Macbeth Galleries in New York. The exhibitors included, besides Henri, the artists John Sloan, Everett Shinn, George Luks and William J. Glackens, as well as three artists of a less-realistic style, Maurice Prendergast, Ernest Lawson and Arthur B. Davies. The goal of the exhibition was to celebrate America and American art, particularly those artist who depicted regional subjects such as cityscapes, urban dwellers, and the cinema and cabaret.

The exhibition was also intended as a protest against the exhibition policies and narrowness of taste of the National Academy of Design. Although it emphasized American art, “The Eight” became a vehicle for the dissemination of the new French modernist styles, due to Maurice Prendergast’s daring, vibrantly colored contributions to the show. The exhibition later traveled to several cities from Newark to Chicago, prompting further discussion in the press about the revolt against academic art and the new ideas about acceptable subject matter in painting.

In the spring of 1929, Henri was named as one of the top three living American artists by the Arts Council of New York. Henri died of cancer that summer at the age of sixty-four. He was eulogized by colleagues and former students and was honored with a memorial exhibition of seventy-eight paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Fittingly, among Henri’s most enduring works are his portraits of his fellow painters, exhibiting the classic elements of his style: forceful brushwork, intense dark color effects, evocation of his and the sitter’s personality, and generosity of spirit.

Calendar: June 23

A Year: Day to Day Men: 23rd of June

The White Alcove

On June 23, 1868 Christopher Latham Sholes patents the typewriter with the QWERTY keyboard.

In 1837, at the age of eighteen, Christopher Latham Sholes moved to the new territory of Wisconsin where he initially worked for his elder brothers, who published a newspaper in Green Bay. Shortly thereafter Sholes became editor of the “Wisconsin Enquirer”, in Madison. After a year, he moved to Kenosha to take charge of the newspaper there and soon entered politics, serving in the state legislature. In 1860 Sholes became editor of the “Milwaukee News” and later of the “Milwaukee Sentinel”.

In 1864 Sholes and a friend, Samuel W. Soulé, were granted a patent for a page-numbering machine. A fellow inventor-mechanic, Carlos Glidden, suggested to Sholes that he might rework his device into a letter-printing machine and referred him to a published account of a writing machine devised by John Pratt of London. Reading the article in the 1867 issue of the journal “Scientific American”, he was inspired to construct what became the first practical typewriter.

It was the second model attempt by Sholes that received a patent, US 79265, on June 23 in 1868. The working prototype was made by the machinist Matthias Schwalbach. It wrote faster than a pen and had the first QWERTY setup of the keyboard. The first typewriter had no shift-key mechanism though: it wrote in capital letters only because of the problem of printing both capitals and small letters without increasing the number of keys. Later improvements in the machine Sholes made brought him two more patents; however, he developed difficulty in raising working capital for future development.

Sholes sold his patent rights for $12,000 to Densmore and Yost, who made an agreement with the sewing machine and arms manufacturer E. Remington and Sons, a firm with the machinery and skill to carry out the development and marketing. Remington began production of its first typewriter on March 1, 1873, in Ilion, New York, placing the first typewriters on the market in 1874.

Among its original features that were still standard in machines built a century later were the cylinder, with its line-spacing and carriage-return mechanism; the escapement, which causes the letter spacing by carriage movement; the arrangement of the type bars so as to strike the paper at a common centre; the actuation of the type bars by means of key levers and connecting wires; printing through an inked ribbon; and the positions of the different characters on the keyboard in a QWERTY format, which conform almost exactly to the arrangement that is now universal.

Mark Twain purchased a Remington model and became the first author to submit a typewritten book manuscript.

Calendar: June 22

A Year: Day to Day Men: 22nd of June

A Horticultural Marvel

June 22, 1920 was the birthdate of the American voice actor and comedian Paul Frees.

Paul Frees was born Solomon Hersh Frees in Chicago, Illinois. He had an unusually wide four-octave voice range. In the 1930s, he first appeared on vaudeville as an impressionist, under the name of Buddy Green. He began his career in radio in 1942; but it was cut short when he was drafted into World War II. Frees was wounded in action and returned to the United States for a year of recuperation.

Frees appeared frequently on Hollywood radio series, playing lead roles and alternating with William Conrad as the announcer on the 1940’s “Escape”. One of his starring roles on radio was as Jethro Dumont (the Green Lama) in the 1949 Series “The Green Lama”, a show about a caped crime fighter with mystical powers. Frees in that year voice all the parts in the “The Player” syndicated anthology series.

Frees was often called upon in the 1950s and 1960s to “re-loop” the dialogue of other actors, often to correct for foreign accents, lack of English proficiency, or poor line readings by non-professionals. These dubs extended from a few lines to entire roles. Frees read fo Toshiro Mifume’s performances as Admiral Yamamoto in the movie “Midway. He also provided much of Tony Curtis’ female character in the film “Some Like It Hot”. Frees also dubbed Humphrey Bogart in his final film “The Harder They Fall”. Bogart was suffering at the time from what would be diagnosed as esophageal cancer and thus could barely be heard in some takes, hence the need for Frees to dub in his voice.

Frees worked extensively with at least nine of the major animation production companies of the 20th century. He was a regular presence in the Jay Ward cartoons, providing the voices of Boris Badenov in “The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show”, Inspector Fenwick in “Dudley Do-Right”, commissioner Alistair and Weevil Plumtree in “George of the Jungle”, Fred in “Super Chicken”, and many others. Frees portrayed the radio-reporter in the 1953 film “War of the Worlds”, where he is seen dictating into a tape recorder as the military prepares the atomic bomb for use against the invading Martians. Memorably, his character says that the recording is being made “for future history… if any”

Although Frees was primarily known for his voice work (like Mel Blanc, he was known in the industry as “The Man of a Thousand Voices”), he was also a songwriter and screenwriter. His most notable screenwriting work was the little-seen 1960 film “The Beatniks”, a screed against the then-rising Beat counterculture in the vein of “Reefer Madness.

Calendar: June 21

A Year: Day to Day Men: 21st of June

Pastel Study in Blues and Pinks

The original Ferris wheel opened to the public on June 21, 1893 at the World’s Columbian Exposition.

George Washington Gate Ferris Jr. was a graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a Pittsburgh bridge-builder. He began his career in the railroad industry and then pursued an interest in bridge building. Ferris understood the growing need for structural steel and founded G.W.G. Ferris & Co. in Pittsburgh, a firm that tested and inspected metals for railroads and bridge builders.

The buttressed steel wheel that Ferris designed was truly original—so much so that the structure’s design had to be derived from basic assumptions because no one actually had experience constructing a machine of this size. By the winter of 1892, Ferris had the acquired the $600,000 in funding he needed but had just four months of the coldest winter in living memory to complete construction before the expo opened. To meet the deadline, Ferris split the wheel’s construction among several local machine shops and constructed individual component sets congruently and assembled everything on-site.

Construction crews first struggled with laying the wheel’s foundation. The site’s soil was frozen solid three feet deep overlaying another 20 feet of sand that exhibited liquefaction whenever crews attempted to drive piles. To counter the effects of the sand, engineers continually pumped steam into the ground to thaw it, then drove piles 32 feet deep into the bedrock to lay steel beams and poured eight concrete and masonry piers measuring 20 x 20 x 35 feet.

These pylons would support the twin 140-foot towers upon which the wheel’s central 45-ton, 45-foot-long, 33-inch-wide axle would rest. The wheel section measured 250 feet across, 825 feet around, and supported thirty-six enclosed wooden cars that each held up to sixty riders. Ten-inch steam pipes fed a pair of one thousand horsepower engines—a primary and a reserve—that powered the wheel’s movement. Three thousand of Edison’s new-fangled light bulbs lit up the wheel’s supports.

The Ferris Wheel opened on June 21, 1893 on the first day of the Exposition and ran until November 6th of that year. A fifty cent fare entitled the rider to an initial six-stop revolution as the passengers filled the cars and then a nine-minute continuous revolution with views across Lake Michigan and parts of four states. The attraction was a success, earning $726,805 during the Exposition. By 1906, after operating for thirteen years in three locations, the original Ferris Wheel had fallen into disrepair and was slated for demolition. It required three hundred pounds of dynamite to completely level the wheel and shatter its foundations.