Calendar: February 21

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

Formation of a Decision

The first International Pancake Race was held on February 21, 1950 in Liberal, Kansas.

A Shrove Tuesday competition began February 21, 1950, between people in Liberal, Kansas, and Olney, Buckinghamshire, England, creating International Pancake Day. Each year the communities hold a 415-yard race to determine the fastest runner who can also flip a pancake.

Commemorated elsewhere as Mardi Gras, Pancake Day, and Carnival, Shrove Tuesday is the day before Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, a 40-day fasting period in preparation for Easter. The verb “shrove” is Old English and relates to judgment or penance in preparation of Lent. Observers of Lent traditionally quit eating richer foods with ingredients such as eggs, milk, and sugar.

The Olney, England tradition dates to around 1445. Legend holds that a woman in Olney was making pancakes when the church bells began ringing to announce the service. Carrying her frying pan and wearing an apron, she raced to arrive at church on time. In subsequent years, others in the community joined in the race. The prize was the “Kiss of Peace” from the verger, or bell ringer.

The Liberal/Olney competition began when members of the Liberal Junior Chamber of Commerce learned about the Olney race and proposed a friendly competition with the English community. The contest, which continues today, requires that runners wear a traditional apron and scarf and carry a frying pan in which they toss a pancake at the beginning and ending of the race. The event concludes with presentation of awards and a church service.

A competitor from Liberal, Kansas, has won the 2018 International Pancake Day Race against the top runner from Olney, England. Gaby Covarrubias of Liberal ran the course on Shrove Tuesday with a time of 1:08.85, about 2.5 seconds faster than Olney’s Katie Godof at 1:11.4. It’s Liberal’s first win in the annual contest since 2015; Liberal now leads the all-time series 38-29.

Calendar: February 20

Year: Day to Day Men: February 20

This Old House

The twentieth of February in 1906 marks the birth date of American character actor Gale Gordon. He had a long and prolific career in both radio and television series. Gordon’s portrayal of grumpy and arrogant characters made him the comic foil on “Our Miss Brooks” and three Lucille Ball series.

Born Charles Thomas Aldrich Jr. in New York City, Gale Gordon was the son of vaudevillian Charles Thomas Aldrich and English actress Gloria Gordon. His first appearance on radio broadcast was the roles of Mayor La Trivia and Foggy Williams on the 1935 “Fibber McGee and Molly”. Gordon was the first actor to play the role of Flash Gordon on the 1935 radio serial “The Amazing Interplanetary Adventures of Flash Gordon”.

From 1937 to 1939, Gordon starred as The Octopus in the “Speed Gibson” radio series. During the years of World War II, he enlisted in the United States Coast Guard where he served for four years. At the end of the war, Gordon returned to radio and played the role of Rumson Bullard on “The Great Gildersleeve”, one of the earliest spin-offs in the entertainment industry. In 1946, he had one of his most dramatic roles on radio, the bachelor amateur detective Gregory Hood on the popular 1946-1947 “The Casebook of Gregory Hood”. The series was originally just a summer replacement for the canceled “The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes”; the network had failed to reach a contractual agreement with the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle estate.

In 1950, Gale Gordon played John Granby, a former city dweller turned farmer, in the radio series “Granby’s Green Acres”, which was the model for the 1960s television series “Green Acres”. He created the role of principle Osgood Conklin on the 1948 radio series “Our Miss Brooks” and later carried the role to the 1952 television series. Gordon also worked at this time on the radio show “My Favorite Husband” in which he played Rudolph Atterbury opposite Lucille Ball as Liz Cugat. He and Ball had previously worked together from 1938 to 1939 on “The Wonder Show” with actor and singer Jack Haley, later known as the Tin-Man in “The Wizard of Oz”

Gordon was the first choice for the role of Fred Mertz on the 1951 television situation comedy “I Love Lucy”. However, he had made a commitment to his role in “Our Miss Brooks”, in addition to his other concurrent radio shows. Gordon did appear in two guest roles on “I Love Lucy” as Ricky Ricardo’s boss, Alvin Littlefield, the owner of the Tropicana Club. In the late 1950s, he was a regular on the 1957 NBC sitcom “Sally” and also appeared on ABC’s “The Real McCoys” with Walter Brennan and Richard Crenna. Other appearances included a guest role on the 1960 ABC “Harrigan and Son” and roles in two episodes of “The Donna Reed Show” and seven episodes of “The Danny Thomas Show”.

Lucille Ball created “The Lucy Show” in 1952 and planned to hire Gale Gordon for the role of the banker Theodore J. Mooney. However, after the death of actor Joseph Kearns who played George Wilson on “Dennis the Menace”, Gordon had signed a contract to play John Wilson on the show. When “Dennis the Menace” ended its run in the spring of 1963, Gordon joined “The Lucy Show” for the 1963-1964 season. After the sale of Desilu Studios in 1968, Lucille Ball discontinued the show and remade it into “Here’s Lucy” with herself as producer and distributor. Gordon took on the role of her boss, Harrison Otis.

When “Here’s Lucy” ended in 1974, Gordon basically retired from acting. His friend and acting cohort, Lucille Ball persuaded him to take a role in her new series “Life with Lucy”, which ran for three months. Gordon’s final acting appearance was a 1991 reprise of Mr. Mooney for the first episode of”Hi Honey, I’m Home”, a thirteen episode television comedy.

Gale Gordon and his wife Virginia Curley lived on a 150 acre ranch he had helped construct in Borrego Springs, California. Gordon wrote two books in the 1940s: “Leaves from the Story Trees” and “Nursery Rhymes for Hollywood Babies” and two one-act plays. He was also one of the few carob growers in the United States. Gordon’s wife of nearly sixty years died in May of 1995; he died of lung cancer one month later on the thirtieth of June. Gordon was inducted posthumously into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1999 and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Second Insert Image: Publicity Photo, Gale Gordon and Eve Arden, “Our Miss Brooks”, September 1955

Third Insert Image: Publicity Photo, Gale Gordon and Jay North, “Dennis the Menace”, circa 1962-1963

Calendar: February 19

Year: Day to Day Men: February 19

The Coffee Table Book

The nineteenth of February in 1913 marks the birth date of Francis Frederick von Taschlein who was an American animator and filmmaker. Best known as Frank Tashlin, he worked on the Warner Brothers Studio’s series of animated shorts, “Looney Tunes” and “Merrie Melodies”, as well as many successful comedy feature films.

Born in Weehawken, New Jersey, Frank Tashlin left high school at the age of thirteen and began working through a series of various jobs. In 1930, he started working as a animator for film director John Foster on the “Aesop’s Fables” cartoon series. Tashlin joined producer Leon Schlesinger’s cartoon studio at Warner Brothers in 1933 as an animator; the studio had achieved its success with the production of the “Looney Tunes” and later “Merry Melodies” series of shorts.

Tashlin worked with Schlesinger for one year before he joined the Ub Iwerks studio in 1934. Iwerks had worked as a character designer for Walt Disney and refined Disney’s sketch for Mickey Mouse; he would do much of the animation on Disney’s “Silly Symphony” cartoons which included “Steamboat Willie” and “The Skeleton Dance”. Tashlin stayed with Iwerks until 1934 and then worked for one year with Hal Roach’s studio.

In 1936, Frank Tashlin returned to Schlesinger as the head director for the animation department at Warner Brothers. With his knowledge of the industry and his diverse interest in animation, he brought a new understanding of camera techniques to the department. Animated shorts began to use montages, vertical and horizontal pan shots, and shots taken from different camera angles. From 1936 to 1938, Tashlin directed almost twenty shorts. After an argument with studio manager Henry Binder, he resigned and worked for a few years in Disney’s story department.

Tashlin joined Columbia Pictures’s Screen Gems animation studio as production manager in 1941. He was effectively in charge of the studio and hired many former Disney artists who had left as a result of the Disney animators’ strike over pay inequities and unionization efforts. Tashlin launched one of the better products of the studio, “The Fox and Crow” series which ran until the studio closed in 1946. His stay at Columbia lasted only one year as he was fired after an argument with Columbia executives.

In 1942, Frank Tashlin rejoined the Warner Brothers animation studio as a director. Among the cartoon shorts he directed were “Porky Pig’s Feat” in 1943 and two Bugs Bunny features, the 1945 “Unruly Hare” and 1946 “Hare Remover” which was Tashlin’s last credited film at Warner Brothers. Tashlin worked on the studio’s wartime shorts during the years of World War II. Before he left Warner Brothers, he directed some stop-motion puppet films for producer John Sutherland. Tashlin’s 1947 puppet animation film “The Way of Peace” was selected in 2014 for entry into National Film Registry.

From 1946 until 1951, Tashlin became a gag writer for such comedians as Lucille Ball and the Marx Brothers; he also worked as a screenwriter for Bob Hope and comedian Red Skelton. Tashlin began his career as a director of feature films when he was asked to finish directing Bob Hope’s 1951 “The Lemon Drop Kid”. His successful streak of box-office successes began in 1956 with “The Girl Can’t Help It” starring Jane Mansfield and Tom Ewell. This was followed by the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis 1956 “Hollywood or Bust” and the 1957 “Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter” that starred Jane Mansfield, Tony Randall, Betsy Drake and Joan Blondell. Tony Randall received a Golden Globe nomination for his role and the film was selected in 2000 for entry into the National Film Registry.

Frank Tashlin was the director for six of Jerry Lewis’s early solo films, among which were the 1958 “The Geisha Boy”, the 1960 “Cinderfella”, and “The Disorderly Orderly” in 1964. He also directed the 1965 “The Alphabet Murders” and the 1966 “The Glass Bottom Boat’ with Doris Day, Rod Taylor, Arthur Godfrey, Paul Lynde, and Dom DeLuise. Tashlin’s last directorial work was the 1968 comedy “The Private Navy of Sgt. O’Farrell” with Bob Hope, Phyllis Diller and Jeffery Hunter.

Over the course of his career, Tashlin worked on four dozen animated shorts, including a dozen of Porky Pig’s earliest appearances, and forty-four feature films, either as director, writer, or producer. Frank Tashlin was stricken with a coronary thrombosis in his Beverly Hills home on the second of May in 1972. He died three days later on the fifth of May at Los Angeles’s Cedar-Sinai Medical Center at the age of fifty-nine. Tashlin is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.

Calendar: February 18

Year: Day to Day Men: February 18

The Pose

The eighteenth of February in 1838 marks the birth date of Austrian-Czech physicist and philosopher Ernst Waldfried Josef Wenzel Mach. Due to his contributions to the physics of shock waves, the ratio of the speed of flow or object to the speed of sound is named the Mach number in his honor.

Born at the village of Brno-Chrlice in South Moravia, a part of the Austrian Empire, Ernst Mach was educated at home by his parents until the age of fourteen. He studied for three years at a secondary school in the city of Kroměříž. In 1855, Mach enrolled at the University of Vienna where he studied physics and medical physiology. In 1860, he received his doctorate in physics under Austrian physicist and mathematician Andreas von Ettingshausen, the first to design an electromagnetic machine which used its electrical induction for power generation.

In 1864, Mach turned down the chairman of surgery position at the University of Salzburg to accept a professorship of mathematics at the University of Graz, the second largest and oldest university in Austria. Two years later, Mach was appointed Professor of Physics at the university. In that position, he continued his work in psychophysics, a field that investigates the relationship between physical stimuli and the sensations and perceptions they produce. In 1867, Mach became the chair of experimental physics at Prague’s Charles-Ferdinand University, a position he held for twenty-eight years before returning to Vienna.

Ernst Mach’s primary contribution to the science of physics were his photographs and descriptions of spark shock waves as well as the later studies of ballistic shock waves. Using the technique of schlieren photography, Mach and his son Ludwig photographed the shadows of the invisible shock waves. Invented in 1864 by German physicist August Toepler, schlieren photography is, essentially, a process of photographing fluid flows by measuring the spatial variations in the intensity of a light source shining on or from behind the target object.

Mach’s initial studies in experimental physics was primarily on the refraction, polarization, diffraction and interference of light in different media and under external influences. Further explorations dealt with supersonic fluid mechanics. In a collaboration with photographer Peter Salcher, Mach presented a 1887 paper on his research that correctly described the sound effects observed during the supersonic motion of a projectile. They confirmed the existence of a shock wave of conical shape with the projectile at the apex. The ratio of the speed of a fluid to the local speed of sound (Vp/Vs) is called the Mach number in honor of his work in the field. This ratio is a critical parameter in the description of high-speed fluid movement in the fields of aerodynamics and hydrodynamics.

Ernst Mach also made many contributions to the fields of psychology and physiology. Among these are his discovery of the oblique effect, the relative deficiency in the perception of oblique contours as compared to vertical or horizontal contours. Mach formed an experiment in which he placed a line to make it appear parallel to an adjoining one. Errors in the observer’s perception occurred least for horizontal or vertical orientations and largest when the lines were set at an incline of forty-five degrees. Mach’s experiment showed a perceptible change in the appearance of an object occurs with a forty-five degree rotation.

Another contribution by Mach to the field of sensory perception was the study of effects caused by the optical illusion known as Mach bands. Through this illusion, he explored the edge detection ability of the human visual system. The Mach bands exaggerate the contrast between edges of slightly differing shades of gray as soon as they touch. From this study, Mach made a distinction between what he called the physiological space, specifically visual, and geometrical space.

Ernst Mach survived a paralytic stroke in 1898. He retired form the University of Vienna three years later and received an appointment to the upper chamber of the Austrian Parliament. In 1913, Mach left Vienna and moved to his son Ludwig’s home in Vaterstetten in Upper Bavaria near Münich. Ernst Mach continued his writing and correspondence until his death in February of 1916 at the age of seventy-eight.

Calendar: February 17

Year: Day to Day Men: February 17

Attention Caught

The seventeenth of February in 1674 marks the date of the Ambon earthquake in the Maluku Islands, the first detailed documentation of a tsunami in Indonesia and the largest ever recorded in that country.

The geological area of the Indonesian North Maluku Islands is located in the zone of convergence between the Eurasian, Indo-Australian and Pacific tectonic plates. This area is dominated by a complex mixture of tectonic elements, including collision, subduction and vertical fractures which shift horizontally. In the search for the cause of the Ambon earthquake, immediate to deep-focus earthquakes with a depth of sixty kilometers or more were ruled out as the source.

Known historical events of that type did not generate the scale of tsunami that struck the islands. The 1938 Banda Sea earthquake, which had a magnitude of 8.5 and Rossi-Forel intensity of VII (very strong tremors), generated a minor tsunami of only 1.5 meters (5 feet). Researchers ruled out faulting as a source because the Ambon earthquake had an extreme run-up height of at least 100 meters on the northern shore of Ambon,

The likely source of the tsunami appears to have been an earthquake generated undersea-landslide. Although never confirmed, two faults are seen as likely sources of that landslide; the South Seram Thrust and an unnamed fault found on the island of Ambon. Published research journals have not assigned a magnitude to the event; however, from collected databases, it has been estimated as an earthquake with the magnitude of 6.8 at a depth of 40 kilometers (25 miles).

A German botanist employed by the Dutch East India Company in 1652, Georg Eberhard Rumphius was assigned in 1654 to the Ambon archipelago. Accompanied by his wife and two daughters, he assumed the position of merchant in 1662 and, on his own time, undertook a study of the Spice Islands’ flora and fauna. Rumphius and his family were present on the island at the time of the 1674 earthquake; his account of the earthquake is the first detailed documentation of a tsunami in Indonesia.

The Ambon earthquake occurred on Saturday evening, between 19:30 and 20:00 Eastern Indonesian Time, when the island inhabitants were celebrating the Chinese Lunar New Year. The shaking earth rang the large bells on the local Victoria Castle and knocked people off their feet.

The collapse of seventy-five stone buildings killed eighty-four people and injured another thirty-five. Water spurted into the air from wells and the ground, some upwards to 6 meters (20 feet). Clay and sand also erupted from the ground. Among the dead from the earthquake were Rumphius’s wife and two daughters, killed by a collapsing stone wall.

Immediately after the earthquake, a mega-tsunami swept through the coastal areas of Ambon Island. The earthquake produced a tsunami which reached heights as much as 100 meters (330 feet) and nearly crested the coastal hill areas. This tsunami resulted in the additional deaths of over two thousand individuals.

Notes: The translated summary notes of Georg Everhard Rumphius on the 1674 Ambon and Seram earthquake are recorded in the files of UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. These notes are located at: https://iotic.ioc-unesco.org/1950-ambon-tsunami/1674-tsunami-in-ambon-and-seram/

Calendar: February 16

Year: Day to Day Men: February 16

A Daydream Moment

The sixteenth of February in 1923 marks the opening of the sealed door to the burial chamber of the Eighteenth Dynasty Pharaoh, Tutankhamun. During his reign of ten years, Tutankhamun restored the traditional polytheistic form of the ancient Egyptian religion from the religious-political changes enacted by the former pharaoh Akhenaten.

Born in May of 1874, British archaeologist and Egyptologist Howard Carter was from an early age interested in Egyptian artifacts; he would often visit and draw illustrations of specimens in the collection owned by the Amherst family. Impressed by his skills, Lady Amherst made arrangements for seventeen year-old Carter to assist British Egyptologist Percy Newberry in an excavation at Middle Kingdom tombs on the Lower Nile River.

After training under Egyptologists Flinders Petrie and Édouard Naville, Carter was appointed in 1899 as Inspector of Monuments for Upper Egypt by the Egyptian Antiquities Service. Based at Luxor, he oversaw excavations at nearby Thebes and supervised American archaeologist Theodore Davis’s systematic exploration of the Valley of the Kings. During his service, Carter improved the protection and accessibility to existing excavations and developed a grid-block system for tomb searching.

In 1907, Carter began his employment with George Edward Herbert, 5th Lord of Carnarvon, a financial backer for Egyptian antiquities research. Lord Carnarvon received in 1914 the concession to dig in the Valley of the Kings. Carter led a systematic search for any tombs that were missed in previous expeditions, including that of Tutankhamun. The search was halted during the years of the First World War and resumed in 1917. After five years with no major finds, Carnarvon became dissatisfied with the project; howver, after a discussion with Carter, he agreed to fund one more season of work in the Valley of the Kings.

On the fourth of November in 1922, a water boy discovered a buried flight of stairs cut into the bedrock. After partially digging out the steps, a mud-plastered doorway was found stamped with indistinct cartouches. Howard Carter had the staircase refilled and notified Lord Carnarvon of the find by telegram. On November twenty-third, Carnarvon arrived accompanied by his daughter Lady Evelyn Herbert. The full extent of the stairway was cleared on the next day; it revealed Tutankhamun’s cartouche on the outer doorway. The doorway was removed and the corridor behind it was cleared of rubble.

With Lord Carnarvon, Lady Evelyn and Carter’s assistant Arthur Callender present, Howard Carter opened a tiny breach in the door of the tomb and was able to see the many gold and ebony treasures within. Carter had in fact discovered the burial tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun. The site was secured until the morning of the twenty-seventh of November, at which time the tomb was officially opened in the presence of a member of the Egyptian Department of Antiquities.

Tutankhamun’s tomb was virtually intact with all its furnishings and shrines, in spite of previous ancient break-ins. Two life-sized statues of Tutankhamun guarded the sealed doorway to the inner burial chamber. Assisted by staff members of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art which included archeologist Arthur Mace and photographer Harry Burton, Howard Carter over the next several months catalogued and preserved the contents of the chambers.

On the sixteenth of February in 1923, Howard Carter opened the sealed inner doorway and confirmed it led to a burial chamber that contained the sarcophagus of Pharaoh Tutankhamun. His tomb was considered the best preserved and most intact pharaonic tomb ever found in the Valley of the Kings. Carter’s meticulous assessing and cataloguing the thousands of objects in the tomb took nearly ten years; the final work was completed in February of 1932.

Despite the significance of the find, Howard Carter received no honors from the British government. In 1926, he received the Order of the Nile, third class, from Egypt’s King Fuad I. Carter was also award an honorary Doctor of Science from Yale University and a honorary membership in Madrid’s Real Academia de la Historia.

Calendar: February 15

Year: Day to Day Men: February 15

The Edge of the Known World

The fifteenth of February in the year 1472 marks the birth date of Piero di Lorenzo de’ Medici, who was the eldest son of Lorenzo de’ Medici and Clarice Orsini, a daughter from the noble Roman house of Orsini. Piero was the lord of Florence from 1492 until his exile in 1494.

Piero di Lorenzo de’ Medici was raised alongside his younger brother Giovanni, who would later be installed as Pope Leo X, and his cousin Giulio who later became Pope Clement VII. As the eldest son, he was educated to succeed his father as the head of the Medici dynasty. Piero studied under classical scholar and poet Angelo Poliziano and Catholic priest Marsillo Ficino, the head of the newly restored Florence Academy.

Piero de’ Medici was arrogant, disruptive and had an undisciplined character. He was constantly at odds with his older and richer cousins Lorenzo and Giovanni, the two sons of Pierfrancesco de’ Medici. Piero was also a suspect in his teacher Angelo Poliziano’s death by poisoning in September of 1494. .

In 1486, Piero’s uncle Bernardo Rucellai, a member of Florence’s social and political elite, arranged a political marriage between Piero and Tuscan noblewoman Alfonsina Orsini. The marriage took place with Rucellai standing as proxy for the groom; Piero finally met Alfonsina in 1488. Their union produce three children: two daughters Luisa and Clarice, and a son named Lorenzo who later became the Duke of Urbino. Baptism records show that Piero had a third daughter named Maria in February of 1492.

Upon the death of his father Lorenzo de’ Medici in 1492, Piero de’ Medici became the leader of Florence. The peaceful existence between the Italian states, established by his father, collapsed in 1494 with King Charles VIII of France’s decision to assert hereditary claims to the Kingdom of Naples. After settling issues with the city-state of Milan, King Charles VIII sent envoys to Florence to ask for support for his claims. After five days, Piero de’ Medici responded that Florence would remain neutral, an answer that was unacceptable to King Charles who subsequently threatened Florence.

Piero attempted to form a resistance but received little support from the Florentine elite who had fallen under the influence of the fanatical Dominican priest Girolamo Savonarola. Piero’s own cousins allied themselves with both pledges and funds to King Charles VIII. At the end of October in 1494, Piero, without consulting the governing Signoria of Florence, visited King Charles at his camp and acceded to all of the king’s demands by surrendering the cities of Pisa and Lvorno as well as four fortresses in the area.

Upon his return to Florence to report his actions to its Signoria, Piero de’ Medici encountered strong public outrage. King Charles VIII, following his conquest of the Kingdom of Naples, made his entrance as ruler into Florence on the seventeenth of November. Because of his isolation and lack of allies, Piero de’ Medici had not sent an army to stop the invasion, thus fuelling the resentment of the Florentine people who finally forced him and his family into exile. Their palazzo was looted, and the Republic of Florence was re-established.

Piero and his family fled to Venice with the aid of French diplomat Philippe de Commines, a servant of King Charles VIII. They supported themselves by the sale of the Medici jewels. Piero tried several times to reinstate himself in Florence but he was rejected. After the French lost the Battle of Garigliano, Piero de’ Medici drowned in the Garigliano River on the twenty-eight of December in 1503 while attempting to flee the battlefield. He was buried in the Abbey of Monte Cassino.

A member of the Medici family would not rule Florence again until 1512, when Giovanni de’ Medici forced the city to surrender. In the next year, he was elected Pope Leo X which solidified the Medici’s power.

Calender: February 14

A Year: Day to Day Men: 14th of February

Sports Attire

On February 14, 1931, the film “Dracula” directed by Tod Browning is released throughout the United States.

“Dracula”, starring Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula, was produced by Universal Studios and is based on the 1924 stage play “Dracula” written by Hamilton Deane and John L Balderston. The play was based loosely on the novel by Bram Stoker.

Bram Stoker’s novel had already been filmed without permission as “Nosferatu” in 1922 by the German expressionist film maker F.W. Murnau. Bram Stoker’s widow sued for plagiarism and copyright infringement, and the courts decided in her favor, essentially ordering that all prints of “Nosferatu” be destroyed. Enthusiastic young Hollywood producer Carl Laemmie, Jr. also saw the box office potential in Stoker’s gothic chiller, and he legally acquired the novel’s film rights.

Decision on casting the title role proved problematic. Initially, Laemmle was not at all interested in Lugosi, in spite of good reviews for his stage portrayal. Lugosi had played the role on Broadway, and to his good fortune, happened to be in Los Angeles with a touring company of the play when the film was being cast. Against the tide of studio opinion, Lugosi lobbied hard and ultimately won the executives over, thanks in part to him accepting a paltry $500 per week salary for seven weeks of work.

Due to the limitations of adding a musical score to a film’s soundtrack during 1930 and 1931, no score had ever been composed specifically for the film. The music heard during the opening credits, an excerpt from Act II of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, was re-used in 1932 for another Universal horror film, “The Mummy”. During the theatre scene where Dracula meets Dr. Seward, Harker, Mina and Lucy, the end of the overture to Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Numberg can also be heard.

Today, “Dracula” is widely regarded as a classic of the era and of its genre. In 2000, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. It was ranked 79th on Bravo’s countdown of The 100 Scariest Movie Moments. To many film lovers and critics alike, Lugosi’s portrayal is widely regarded as the definitive Dracula.

Calendar: February 13

A Year: Day to Day Men: 13th of February

Red Bell Peppers

On February 13, 1961, the Coso artifact is discovered near the town of Olancha, California.

The Coso artifact is an object claimed by its discoverers to be a spark plug found encased in a lump of hard clay or rock. It was found by Wallace Lane, Virginia Maxey and Mike Mikesell while they were prospecting for geodes near the town of Olancha. It has been long claimed as an example of an out-of-place artifact. Such an artifact is an object of historical, archaeological, or paleontological interest found in an unusual context, that challenges conventional historical chronology by being “too advanced” for the level of civilization that existed at the time.

Following its collection, Mikesell destroyed a diamond-edged blade cutting through the rock containing the artifact and discovered the item. In a letter written to “Desert Magazine of Outdoor Southwest” a reader stated that a trained geologist had dated the nodule as at least 500,000 years old and it had contained a manmade object. The identity of the alleged trained geologist and means of geologic dating were never clarified, nor the findings ever published in any known periodical.

At the time that Virginia Maxey reported the Coso artifact being dated at 500,000 years old, there was no known method, including the use of guide fossils, by which either the artifact or concretion could have been dated as being this old. The nodule surrounding the spark plug may have accreted in a matter of years or decades, as demonstrated by examples of very similar iron or steel artifact-bearing nodules, which are discussed and illustrated by J. M. Cronyn’s “Elements of Archaeological Conservation”, a reference work for the conservational excavation of materials at sites.

An investigation carried out with the help of members of the Spark Plug Collectors of America, suggested that the artifact is a 1920s Champion spark plug. Chad Windham, President of the Spark Plug Collectors of America, identified the Coso artifact as a 1920s-era Champion spark plug, which was widely used in the Ford Model T and Model A engines. Other spark plug collectors concurred with his assessment.

The location of the Coso artifact is unknown as of 2008. Of its discoverers, Wallace Lane has died, Virginia Maxey is alive but avoids public comment, and the whereabouts of Mike Mikesell are not known.

Calendar: February 12

Year: Day to Day Men: February 12

Construction Site

The twelfth of February in the year 1554 marks the death of Lady Jane Grey, also known as Lady Jane Dudley after her marriage and as the ‘Nine Days’ Queen. A first cousin once removed of Edward VI, King of England and Ireland, Lady Grey was an English noblewoman who claimed the throne of England and Ireland from the tenth to the nineteenth of July in 1553.

Lady Jane Grey was the great-granddaughter of King Henry VII through his daughter Mary Tudor and was thus a grandniece of King Henry VIII. She was well educated in the humanities and considered one of the most learned women of her time. In May of 1553, Lady Grey married Lord Guildford Dudley, one of the younger sons of King Edward VI’s chief minister John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland.

In June of 1553, the dying King Edward VI wrote his will and testament in which he nominated Lady Jane Grey and her male heirs as successors to the Crown. Edward VI, who had laid the foundation for the reformed Church of England, removed his half-sister Mary Tudor from the succession, partly due to the fact she was Catholic, and nominated Lady Grey, a committed Protestant who would support the reformed church.

King Edward VI’s will and testament also removed Elizabeth I, the only surviving child of King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, Henry’s second wife. Elizabeth had been declared illegitimate after Anne’s marriage to Henry was annulled. Although Elizabeth had been reinstated under the Third Succession Act of 1543, King Edward ignored those statutes of reinstatement in favor of Lady Grey as successor.

After Edward VI’s death on the sixth of July in 1553, Lady Jane was officially proclaimed Queen on the tenth of July and waited for her coronation in the Royal Palace and Fortress of the Tower of London. Jane’s father-in-law John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, made an attempt to consolidate his power through the capture of Mary Tudor on the fourteenth of July. The attempt failed and Dudley was accused of treason; he was executed less than a month later.

Support for Mary Tudor grew rapidly and most of Lady Jane’s supporters abandoned her. The Privy Council of England, a body of advisors to the sovereign, gave their support to Mary Tudor and proclaimed her queen on the nineteenth of July. Lady Jane and her husband Lord Guildford Dudley were arrested and held prisoner in the Tower of London. Queen Mary I originally had decided to spare Lady Jane’s life; however she was soon viewed as a threat to the Crown. Lady Jane’s fate was sealed after her father, Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Suffolk, led a rebellion against the marriage of Queen Mary and King Phillip II of Spain.

Referred to by the court as Jane Dudley, wife of Guildford, Lady Jane was charged with hight treason as were her husband, two of his brothers, and the former archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer. They were tried on the thirteenth of November in 1553 at London’s Guildhall. As expected, all were found guilty and sentenced to death. Jane was guilty of treason as she had assumed the title and power of the monarch, as presented in the documents she had signed as Queen. Her sentence was to be beheaded or burned alive on Tower Hill as the Queen pleases.

Scheduled for the ninth of February in 1554, Lady Jane’s execution was postponed for three days to give her a chance to convert to the Catholic faith. On the morning of the twelfth of February, Lord Guildford Dudley was beheaded and the remains were brought inside the tower where Jane was staying. Lady Jane was taken outside to the Tower Green where she blindfolded herself and was beheaded with one stroke. At the time of her death, Jane was no more than seventeen years old.

Lady Jane Grey and her husband Lord Guildford Dudley are buried in the Chapel of Saint Peter ad Vincula on the north side of the Tower Green. No marker was ever erected on their gravesite. Her father Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk, was executed for treason on the twenty-third of February in 1554, eleven days after his daughter and son-in-law.

Calendar: February 11

Year: Day to Day Men: February 11

The City’s Pier

The eleventh of February in 1938 marks the first televised broadcast of a science fiction program. The British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC, adapted Karel Čapek’s seminal play, “R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots)” into a thirty-five minute production which aired at 3:30 in the afternoon.

Born in January of 1890, Karel Čapek was a Czech writer, playwright and journalist. He became best known for his science fiction works, most notably the 1936 “War with the Newts”, a satirical work of exploitation and human flaws, and his “R.U.R.”, a three-act play with prologue that introduced the word robot to the English language. Although nominated seven times for the Nobel Prize in Literature, Čapek never received the award. Several awards, however, commemorate his name among which is the Karel Čapek Prize that is awarded to those who contribute to the reinforcement and maintenance of democratic and humanist values in society.

The robots in Čapek’s 1920 “R.U.R.” are not robots in the popularly understood sense of an automaton or a mechanical device. They were artificially biological organisms that were similar to humans. These robots more closely resembled more modern conceptions such as replicants ( 1982 Blade Runner ) or android hosts ( 2016 Westworld television series ). Their skin and brains were produced in vats, their bones in factories, and their nerve fibers, arteries and intestines were spun on factory bobbins. The robots, themselves living biological beings, were finally assembled on factory lines as opposed to grown or born.

“R.U.R.” had its first theatrical premiere on the twenty-fifth of January in 1921 at Prague’s National Theater. English writer Paul Selver translated the play into English and sold it to St. Martin’s Theater in London. The translation was adapted for British theater by actor Sir Nigel Ross Playfair in 1922. Performance rights for the United States and Canada were sold in the same year to the New York Theater Guild. The American premiere of “R.U.R.” took place in October of 1922 at New York City’s Garrick Theater on 35th Street in Manhattan where it ran for one hundred and eighty-four performances.

In April of 1923, actor and director Basil Dean produced “R.U.R.” in Britain for the Reandean Company at London’s St. Martin’s Theater. This version was based on Playfair’s adaptation and included several revisions from the New York Theater Guild. During the 1920s, the play was performed in several British and American theaters. In June of 1923, Karel Čapek sent a letter to translator Edward March with the play’s final lines that had been omitted from previous translations. A copy of this final and complete translation of Čapek’s play later appeared in the 2001 journal of “Science Fiction Studies”.

The BBC airing of Čapek’s “R.U.R.” occurred just two years after England launched the broadcasting service; it is unclear whether any recordings of the event survived. The play’s effects, though very rudimentary by today’s standards, made it very suitable for showing on the new television medium. Although its popularity peaked in the 1920s, Čapek’s “Rossum’s Universal Robots” became the foundation of many of science fiction’s modern franchises, both film and television.

Calendar: February 10

Year: Day to Day Men: February 10

Bricks and Gecko

The tenth of February in 1939 marks the premiere of John Ford’s western film “Stagecoach” at the Lincoln Theatre in Miami Beach, Florida. The film was the first of many Westerns shot by director John Ford in Monument Valley, a region of the Colorado Plateau characterized by its cluster of sandstone buttes. The site, considered sacred by its inhabitants, lies within the land of the Navajo Nation.

“Stagecoach” is Dudley Nichols’s adaptation of the 1937 short story,”The Stage to Lordsburg”, written by author Ernst Haycox, a prolific writer of Western fiction. The story follows a group of individuals, primarily strangers, who journey by stagecoach through dangerous territory ruled by Apache warriors. John Ford bought the rights to the story soon after its publication in Collier’s magazine. He presented the “Stagecoach” project to several studios in Hollywood. However, none were interested in a big-budget Western film or Ford’s placing B-film actor John Wayne in the lead role.

David O. Selznick, an independent producer with his own studio, Selznick International Pictures, agreed to finance the production of “Stagecoach”. However, he had doubts about the casting choices and was frustrated about Ford’s indecision on the initial date of shooting. Ford withdrew the film from Selznick and approached independent producer Walter Wanger about the project. Although he had reservations about the project, Wanger agreed to finance the project with a proviso. He would provide two hundred-fifty thousand dollars to finance the film. However, though Ford could still cast John Wayne in the film, he had to give the lead credit to Clair Trevor. an already established actress.

At the time of the filming, Clair Trevor had already starred in twenty-nine films, often in the lead role or the role of the heroine. After her role in “Stagecoach”, Trevor would be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in the 1937 “Dead End” and win that award for her role in the 1948 “Key Largo”. John Wayne, however, had played leading roles throughout the 1930s in numerous B-movies, mostly Westerns, without achieving stardom. His role as the Ringo Kid in “Stagecoach” became the breakthrough role that began Wayne’s career as a mainstream star. Over the course of his fifty year acting career, Wayne appeared in one hundred sixty-nine feature films and numerous documentary and television appearances.

The film’s supporting cast included such experienced actors as stage and screen actor John Carradine; radio and character actor Andy Devine; Thomas Mitchell, the first male actor to gain the Triple Crown of Acting- an Oscar, an Emmy, and a Tony Award; theatrical actress Louise Platt; stage and film actor Donald Meek; and established western film stars Tom Tyler and Tim Holt.

Ford’s “Stagecoach” was first released in Los Angeles on the second of February in 1939. It opened in Miami Beach on the tenth of February and had its nationwide release on the third of March in 1939. Met with immediate critical praise, the film is considered one of the most influential films ever made. The roles presented in “Stagecoach” have become archetypical characters for the Western film genre. In 1995, the United States Library of Congress considered “Stagecoach” to be culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant for preservation in the National Film Registry.

Calendar: February 9

Year: Day to Day Men: February 9

The Tufted Red Bench

The ninth of February in 1912 marks the birth date of Futabayama Sadaji, a Japanese professional sumo wrestler from the Oita Prefecture on the island of Kyūshū. He entered sumo in 1927 and became, from 1937 until he retired in 1945, the sport’s thirty-fifth yokozuna, a person of sumo’s highest rank. Futabayama won twelve yūshō, top division championships, and won sixty-nine consecutive bouts, an all-time record.

Born Akiyoshi Sadaji, Futabayama worked as a young boy on fishing boats. At the age of fifteen, he was recruitedin March of 1927 by the Tatsunami stable, one of the most prestigious in sumo. Futabayama entered the top makuuchi division at the beginning of 1932. The makuuchi is the top division of six divisions in sumo and is fixed at forty-two wrestlers ordered into five ranks according to their performance in previous tournaments. After many top division wrestlers went on strike, Futabayama was promoted from the middle of the second-ranked division, jūryō, to maegashira 4, a listing that placed him into the lowest rank of the top makuuchi division. He finished as runner-up in his second top-division tournament, proving himself worthy of his promotion.

Futabayama Sadaji is known for achieving the longest run of consecutive victories in sumo, sixty-nine victories over a period of three years, a record still standing as of 2020. This was a major achievement as a match may only last a few seconds and a wrestler’s concentration must constantly be at its highest level. During those three years, Futabayama was awarded increasingly higher rankings and finally achieved the ranking of yokozuna. On the third of January in 1939, he was finally defeated by maegashira Akinoumi Setsuo, a professional sumo wrestler from Hiroshima.

Futabayama won a total of twelve championships at a time when there were two tournaments held each year. He held the record until the number of tournaments per year were increased to six in the 1950s. Futabayama left the June 1945 tournament held in the bomb-damaged city of Kokugikan after the first day. He did not participate in the November 1945 tournament but, while attending it, announced his retirement. Futabayama had made the decision to retire a year earlier after suffering a loss to Azumafuji Kin’ichi, a sumo wrestler from Taitō, Tokyo. After his retirement, Futabayama’s victories were considered more remarkable as he revealed that he was blind in one eye.

In 1941, Futabayama Sadaji became the head of his own stable, the Futabayama Dojo, while he was still an active wrestler. Upon his retirement, he adopted the Tokitsukaze elder name and renamed his heya, Tokitsukaze stable. It became by the 1950s one of sumo’s largest stables and the source of many strong wrestlers. Futabayama was chairman of the Japan Sumo Association from 1957 and remained in charge of his stable until his death from hepatitis in December of 1968 at the age of fifty-six.

Notes: At 1.79 meters (5 feet 10 inches) and 128 kilograms (282 pounds), Futabayama was known for his exceptional tactics in the tachi-ai, the initial phase of the sumo match. He was an expert at the gonosen no tachi-ai, the immediate countering of an opponent’s charge. Futabayama had excellent balance and was feared for his uwatenage, or overarm throw.

Bottom Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Futabayama Sadaji Performing the Yokosuna Dohyō, the Ring-Entering Ceremony”, Date Unknown, Vintage Print

Calendar: February 8

Year: Day to Day Men: February 8

Spring’s in the Air

The eighth day of February in 1865 marks the day the House and Senate of the State of Delaware declared their unqualified disapproval of the 13th Amendment which would have abolished slavery in all the states. Despite Governor William Cannon’s recommendation for its passage, the House and Senate refused to adopt and ratify it as it was ‘contrary to the principles upon which the government was framed’.

Delaware was a slave state on the Mason-Dixon Line. This demarcation line was part of a resolution to end the border dispute between Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware and West Virginia which was part of Virginia until 1863. Drawn between 1763 and 1767 by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, it separated those states and established part of their borders. The largest portion of the line, along the southern Pennsylvania border, became informally known as the boundary between the Southern slave states and the Northern free states.

All efforts to abolish slavery in Delaware prior to the Civil War failed due to a few politically influential Delawareans who were slave owners. As the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation only liberated slaves in the Confederate States, President Abraham Lincoln knew that an amendment to the Constitution was needed to totally abolish slavery in all the states. Thus, the proposal of the 13th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution.

Governor William Cannon sent the 13th Amendment to the General Assembly on the seventh of February with a recommendation of approval. This occurred two months before the surrender of General Robert E. Lee at Appomattox. The Delaware House and Senate refused passage. Even after the end of the Civil War, Delaware took no action to make slavery unlawful. Slaves in Delaware remained in bondage until the sixth of December in 1865, when the 13th Amendment was ratified without Delaware’s approval.

In early January of 1867, the newly elected Delaware Governor Gove Saulsbury lamented, during his address to the General Assembly, the ratification of the 13th Amendment. On the sixteenth of January, the General Assembly was presented with the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. This would provide due process, equal protection, and the counting of formerly enslaved people as full persons under the law. Since the 1787 Constitutional Convention, only three out of every five slaves were counted to determine a state’s total population for taxation and legislative representation.

On the sixth of February in 1867, the Delaware House of Representatives rejected the proposed 14th Amendment using the same language as their previous refusal for the 13th Amendment. The 14th Amendment was ratified on the ninth of July in 1868 without Delaware’s acceptance. The last of the three post-Civil War Racial Justice Amendments was the 15th Amendment which gave Black males the right to vote. Again, the Delaware General Assembly refused ratification. This Amendment was declared part of the U. S. Constitution on the third of February in 1870 without Delaware’s approval.

In January of 1901, the new Governor John Hunn called for the General Assembly to dismantle laws passed after the Civil War that impeded voting including the poll tax on voter registration. On the thirty-first of January and the sixth of February in 1901, the Delaware General Assembly dismantled previous restrictive laws and passed a joint resolution which ratified the 13th, 14th and 15th civil rights Amendments of the 1860s.

Calendar: February 7

Year: Day to Day Men: February 7

Late Morning Riser

The seventh of February in 1497, Shrove Tuesday, marks the day on which supporters of the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola lit the bonfire of the vanities in the public square of Florence, Italy.

Born in the Duchy of Ferrara in September of 1452, Girolamo Savonarola was an ascetic Italian Dominican friar and an active preacher in Renaissance Florence. He was known for his prophecies of civic glory and his advocacy for the destruction of secular art and culture, as well as his denunciation of both clerical and papal corruption. Savonarola’s education was overseen by Michele Savonarola, his grandfather and a successful physician. He earned an arts degree at the University of Ferrara and prepared for medical school; however at some point, he decided on a life in religion.

In April of 1475, Savonarola traveled to Bologna and entered the Friary of San Domenico of the Order of Friars Preacher. After a year, he was ordained to the priesthood and studied scripture, logic, Aristotelian philosophy and Thomistic theology. In 1476, Savonarola was sent to the Dominican priory of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Ferrara as an assistant master of novices. Six years later, he was sent to the Convent of San Marco in Florence where, assigned as a teacher of logic, he wrote manuals on ethics, philosophy and prepared sermons. It was during this period that Savonarola, while studying scripture, became to broach apocalyptic themes.

Girolamo Savonarola lived for several years as an itinerant preacher with messages of repentance and reform. In 1490, he was again assigned to San Marco. Italian philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, who due to his unorthodox views of the Church was living in Florence under the protection of Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici, persuaded de’ Medici to bring Savonarola to the city. Savonarola arrived in Florence in the middle of 1490 and began drawing large crowds with his preaching. He made pointed allusions to tyrants who usurped the people’s freedom and railed against the rich who exploited the poor.

Calling for repentance and renewal before the arrival of a divine scourge, Savonarola wanted to establish Florence as the New Jerusalem, the center of the Christian world. The people of Florence embraced his extreme moralistic campaign to rid the city of vices. New laws were passed against public drunkenness, sodomy, adultery, and other moral transgressions, including immodest dress and behavior. Savonarola saw sacred art as a tool for his worldview and, therefore, was opposed to secular art which he saw as worthless.

Pope Alexander VI for some time tolerated Savonarola’s criticism of the Church, an undercurrent theme that had slowly been increasing in Savonarola’s sermons over the years. After he refused to appear before the pope in Rome, the Vatican banned him from preaching. Seeing his influence wane, Savonarola resumed his sermons which were becoming more violent in tone. He attacked secret enemies at home whom he suspected in league with the papal Curia and condemned conventional Christians who were slow to respond to his callings. Savonarola held special Masses for the youth, processions, bonfires, and religious theater in San Marco.

The phrase “Bonfires of the Vanities” refers historically to the bonfire of the seventh of February in 1497 when Savonarola’s supporters gathered and burned thousands of objects in Florence’s public square. Held on Shrove Tuesday, an initial day of the religious observance Lent, the focus of this destruction was on objects that might tempt one to sin, including vanity items such as mirrors, cosmetics, fine dresses, playing cards and musical instruments. Other objects that burned in the bonfire included books Savonarola thought immoral, manuscripts of secular songs, and artworks including paintings and sculptures that were not sacred in nature. Anyone who raised objections against the destruction were forced to contribute by teams of Savonarola supporters.

Notes: Girolamo Savonarola, invited to Florence at the request of Lorenzo de’ Medici, eventually became one of the foremost enemies of the House of Medici and assisted in their downfall in 1494. Campaigning against what he saw as the excesses of Renaissance Italy, Savonarola’s power grew so much that he became the effective ruler of Florence with soldiers assigned for his protection.

In 1495, Savonarola refused to join Pope Alexander VI’s Holy League against the French. When summoned by the Vatican to Rome, he refused to go and continued preaching under a ban imposed by the Vatican. After describing the Church as a whore, Savonarola was excommunicated in May of 1497 for heresy and sedition. He was executed in May of 1498 in Florence’s Piazza della Signoria, the site of his bonfires of the vanities; his body was burnt. By papal authority, Savonarola’s writings were to be given to a papal agent within four days for destruction. Anyone who did not comply faced excommunication.