Calendar: January 22

Year: Day to Day Men: January 22

The Bamboo Grove

The twenty-second of January in 1931 marks the birth date of American singer, songwriter and producer Samuel Cooke who, along with Ray Charles, became one of the most influential Black vocalists of the period after World War II.

Born Samuel Cook in Clarksdale, Mississippi, he was the fifth of eight children born to Reverend Charles Cook of the Church of Christ and Annie Mae Carroll. In 1933, the Cook family relocated to Chicago where Cooke attended Wendell Phillips Academy High School. At the age of six, Cooke sang in the choir of his father’s church and as a member of his siblings’ music group, the Singing Children. He joined the Highway Q. C.’s, an American gospel group, as lead singer at the age of sixteen.

In 1950 at age nineteen, Cooke replaced gospel tenor Robert H. Harris as lead singer of Harris’s gospel group The Soul Stirrers, who had just signed with Los Angeles’s Specialty Records. The group’s first recording under Cooke’s leadership was “Jesus Gave Me Water” in 1950. Other songs recorded by the group included Thomas Dorsey’s “Peace in the Valley” and Mollie Wilson’s “Jesus Paid the Debt”. Cooke was often credited with bringing a younger crowd of listeners to the genre of gospel music.

In 1957, Sam Cooke turned against the traditions of the Black musical community and decided to pursue pop music. To signal this new period in his life, he added the “e” to his surname. Cooke reinvented himself as smooth, romantic singer in the mold of Nat King Cole. He wrote many of his best songs, among which was his first hit “You Send Me” for Keen Records. In 1957, this song was number one on all the charts and established Cooke as a star. Between 1957 and 1964, Cooke had thirty songs in the top of the charts in the United States. Among these were “Chain Gang”, “Another Saturday Night”, “Wonderful World” and “A Change is Gonna Come”.

Cooke was one of the first Black performers and composers who administered the business side of music. He founded his own song publishing and management firm, Kags Music, in 1958 so he could own the copyrights to his music. Cooke also founded a record label, SAR Records, as a place where he could expand his artistic abilities and to give other struggling artists a venue to record. In 1963, he signed a five-year contract for businessman Alan Klein to manage both firms; Klein negotiated a deal with RCA Victor in which the company would get exclusive distribution rights in exchange for 6% royalty payments and payments for the recording sessions. Cooke, as a result, would receive preferred stock as an advance and yearly payments for the following four years.

Sam Cooke, however, was killed on December 11th of 1964 at the Hacienda Motel in South Central Los Angeles. Answering reports of shooting and a kidnapping, police found Cooke’s body with a gunshot wound to his chest, later determined to have pierced his heart. The motel owner, Bertha Franklin, said she shot Cooke in self-defense. There were no other witnesses on the scene; however, the hotel’s owner, Evelyn Carr, said she was talking to Franklin by phone at the time and had heard a conflict and gunshot.

As Carr’s testimony corroborated Franklin’s account and both passed polygraph tests, the coroner’s jury ultimately accepted both accounts and returned a verdict of justifiable homicide. With that verdict, the case was officially closed. Many of Cooke’s family and supporters rejected the verdict. Singer Etta James wrote that she had seen Cooke’s body before the funeral and questioned the accuracy of the official version due to the injuries she saw on Cooke’s body.

After two memorial services, one in Chicago and the second in Los Angeles, Samuel Cooke’s body was interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. Cooke’s album “Shake” and two singles, “Shake” and “A Change is Gonna Come”, were released posthumously. Cooke received multiple posthumous awards which included a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and induction into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the National Rhythm and Blues Music Hall of Fame. The title of his single “A Change is Gonna Come” is written on a wall of the Contemplative Court of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC.

Calendar: January 21

Year: Day to Day Men: January 21

The Small Silver Medallion

The twenty-first of January in 1598 marks the birth date of Matsudaira Tadamasa (松平忠昌), an early to mid-Edo period Japanese samurai and daimyō, a feudal lord. He was noted for his skill in the martial arts and distinguished himself in combat by his prowess with the spear.

Matsudaira Tadamasa was born in Osaka as the second son of Yūki Hideyasu (結城秀康), a respected samurai and daimyō of the Fukui Domain in Echizen. In 1607, he was received in an audience by his grandfather Tokugawa Ieyasu (徳川家康), the First Shōgun of the Tokugawa Shogunate of Japan, and his uncle Tokugawa Hidetada (徳川秀忠), Second Shōgun of the Tokugawa Shogunate. Hidetada arranged to raise the nine-year old Tadamasa in the Tokugawa household with Ieyasu’s tenth son Tokugawa Yorinobu (徳川頼宣), who was four years older.

In 1607, Tadamasa was assigned a fief of ten-thousand koku, and became First Daimyō of the Kazusa-Anegasaki Domain. He accompanied his uncle Hidetada during the 1614 Siege of Osaka; however, he was frustrated that, due to his youth, he was not allowed to participate in the battle. Tadamasa petitioned his uncle to perform his genpuku ceremony, a classical coming of age ceremony, before the start of the Osaka military campaign in the summer. Hidetada agreed and granted him a kanji, which is a script character for his name, and the court rank of Senior Fifth Rank, Lower Grade as well as the courtesy title of lyo-no-kami.

At the 1615 Battle of Osaka, Matsudaira Tadmasa proved his prowess with the spear; his weapon from that battle became an heirloom of the Echizen-Matsudaira clan. As a reward for his service in battle, he was given in 1615 a fief of thirty-thousand koku and transferred as Seventh Daimyō to the Shimotsuma Dormain in Hitachi Province. When Shōgun Matsudaira Tadateru (松平忠輝) was relieved of command and exiled, Tadamasa became Daimyō of the Matsushiro Domain in Fukui with a fief of five hundred-thousand koku.

In 1626, Tadamas’s rank was raised to Senior Fourth Rank, Lower Grade. He accompanied Shōgun Tokugawa Iemitsu (徳川家光), the Third Shōgun of the Tokugawa Shogunate, to Kyoto in 1634. During the Shimabara Rebellion in 1637, he was disappointed that he did not receive orders to lead his troops into battle; he visited the battle as a private citizen with twelve retainers. Tadamasa ordered construction work in 1643 for the rebuilding of the Mikuni Harbor as the main port for shipping in the Fukui Domain.

Matsudaira Tadamasa died at the age of forty-seven in September of 1648 at the domain’s residence in the city of Edo. Upon his death, seven of his senior retainers committed junshi, a honorific suicide ritual for the death of their lord. Matasudaira Tadamasa is buried at the Temple of Eihei-ji in Fukui.

Notes: The koku, a Chinese-based Japanese unit of volume, is equal to about one hundred-eighty liters or one hundred-fifty kilograms of rice. In the Edo period, one koku of rice was considered a sufficient quantity of rice to feed one person for a year.

Calendar: January 20

Year: Day to Day Men: January 20

The Passageway

The twentieth of January in 1929 marks the general release of Raoul Walsh and Irving Cumming’s pre-Code talkie “In Old Arizona”. This film was a major innovation for Hollywood as it was the first major Western to employ the newly developed sound technology and the first “talkie” to be filmed outdoors.

The 1928 film “In Old Arizona” was based on the character of the Cisco Kid in the 1907 story “The Cabellero’s Way” written by William Sydney Porter, better known by his pen name O. Henry. Originally a murderous criminal in O. Henry’s story, the Cisco Kid was depicted as a heroic Mexican caballero or horseman for radio, film and television adaptations.

Raoul Walsh was originally scheduled to play the role of the Cisco Kid; however, an accident on location caused the loss of one eye. Silent film actor Warner Baxter took on the lead role of the film with Edmund Lowe as Sergeant Dunn and Dorothy Burgess as Tonia Maria.

The cinematographers Arthur Edeson and Alfred Hansen extensively used authentic locations for the sets. Filming took place in Utah’s Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, the Mojave Desert area of California, and at the colonial Mission San Juan Capistrano. “In Old Arizona” was the film that began the iconic image of the singing cowboy as its star Warner Baxter does some incidental singing in this first Western talkie.

“In Old Arizona” premiered in Los Angeles on Christmas Day, December 25th of 1928. At the 2nd Academy Awards in 1930, the film was nominated for five awards: Outstanding Picture, Best Actor, Best Director, Best Writing, and Best Cinematography. Warner Baxter won the Best Actor Award for his performance. In 2004, Walsh and Cumming’s “In Old Arizona” was preserved in the Academy Film Archive at the Pickford Center for Motion Picture Study.

Calendar: January 19

A Year: Day to Day Men: 19th of January

Parallel Fences

On January 19, 1955, the television program “The Millionaire” premieres on the CBS channel.

The Millionaire was an American anthology series that aired from 1955-1960 and was sponsored by the Colgate-Palmolive Company. The series, produced by Fred Henry and Don Fedderson, explored the ways that sudden and unexpected wealth changed life, for better or for worse. The show became a five season hit during the “Golden Age of Television”. The series told stories of people who were given one million dollars from a benefactor who insisted that he remain anonymous.

The benefactor was named John Beresford Tipton, Jr. Viewers heard his voice, making observations and giving instructions; they saw only his arm as he reached for a cashier’s check for one million dollars each week and handed it to Michael Anthony, his executive secretary. It was Anthony’s job to deliver that check to its intended recipient.

Invariably, The Millionaire began with a very brief opening theme fanfare behind the ascending title frame, followed by the camera’s training directly upon Michael Anthony, played by veteran character actor and radio and
television announcer Marvin Miller. The unseen John Beresford Tipton was played by another veteran character actor and voice artist, Paul Frees.

The series ran for 206 episodes, and Tipton made 206 millionaires. The beneficiaries were not always poor but could be from any social class or occupation, from secretaries and construction workers to professionals like doctors and lawyers. Nor were they always likely to find their lives changed for the better because of their sudden wealth.

Calendar: January 18

A Year: Day to Day Men: 18th of January

Seaside Shelter

On January 18, 1535, Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro founds Lima, the capital of Peru.

Francisco Pizarro was the illegitimate son of infantry colonel Gonzalo Pizarro and Francisca Gonzalez, a woman of poor means. Little attention was paid to his education and he never achieved literacy.

Reports of Peru’s riches and Cortés’s success in Mexico tantalized Pizarro. He undertook two expeditions to conquer the Incan Empire in 1524 and in 1526. Both failed as a result of native hostilities, bad weather and lack of provisions. Pedro de los Rios, the Governor of Panama, made an effort to recall Pizarro, but the conquistador resisted and remained in the south. In April 1528, he reached northern Peru and found the natives rich with precious metals.

This discovery gave Pizarro the motivation to plan a third expedition to conquer the area. He returned to Panama to make arrangements, but the Governor refused to grant permission for the project. Pizarro returned to Spain to appeal directly to King Charles I. His plea was successful and he received not only a license for the proposed expedition, but also authority over any lands conquered during the venture.

When hostile natives along the coast threatened the expedition, Pizarro moved inland and founded the first Spanish settlement in Peru, San Miguel de Piura. Atahualpa, the ruler of the Inca Empire, refused to tolerate a Spanish presence in his lands, but was captured by Pizarro during the Battle of Cajamarca on November 16, 1532. A ransom for the emperor’s release was demanded and Atahualpa filled a room with gold, but Pizarro charged him with various crimes and executed him on July 26, 1533, overriding his associates who thought he was overstepping his authority.

The same year, Pizarro entered the Inca capital of Cuzco and completed his conquest of Peru. In January 1535, Pizarro founded the city of Lima, a project he considered his greatest achievement. Quarrels between Pizarro and his longtime comrade-in-arms Diego Almagro culminated in the Battle of Las Salinas. Almagro was captured and executed. On June 26, 1541, his embittered son, Diego de Almagro “el mozo”, assassinated Pizarro in Lima. The conquistador of Peru was laid to rest in the Lima Cathedral.

Calendar: January 17

Year: Day to Day Men: January 17

A Sunny Day

The seventeenth of January in the year 1761 marks the birth date of Sir James Hall of Dunglass, 4th Baronet, who was a Scottish geologist and geophysicist. He was the first to use an analogue modeling synthesizer to investigate the formation of folds in the earth’s layers. Hall’s discoveries in this field were published in 1815.

Born at Dunglass Castle in East Lothian, James Hall was the only son and heir of Sir John Hall, 3rd Baronet who had served on the Grand Jury for the 1748 Edinburgh trial of those involved in the 1745 Jacobite uprising. James Hall studied at Christ’s College, Cambridge, and the University of Edinburgh during the 1780s. At Edinburgh, he studied under Professor of Medicine and Chemistry Joseph Black and Regius Professor of Natural History John Walker, one of the main scientific consultants of his day.

From attending Walker’s courses, Hall learned how to use the chemical compositions of minerals to determine the relative age of the earth’s layers. Walker also emphasized in his classes the importance of chemistry to the study of geology. After his studies, Hall travelled Europe to seek book dealers who dealt in works on mineralogy, geology and chemistry. His travels to France brought him into contact with nobleman and chemist Antoine-Laurant de Lavoisier who wrote the first extensive list of elements. Lavoisier was also instrumental in the development of the metric system as well as the reformation of chemical nomenclature through a set of rules for the generation of systematic names.

Upon his return to his home in Scotland, Sir James Hall continued his studies in the fields of chemistry and geology. During the 1780s and 1790s, he was interested in geologist James Hutton’s ‘Theory of the Earth” which suggested that the strata of the planet was continually being worn or melted down, thus making the planet a giant system of circulating material. Hall traveled with Hutton and professor John Playfair in the spring of 1788 on a boat trip to Siccar Point on Scotland’s Berwickshire coast. At Siccar Point, they discovered a rock formation that became known as Hutton’s Unconformity. This geological phenomenon marked the location where rock formations, created at different times and by different forces, joined together. Other locations in Scotland were later identified by Hutton.

Initially skeptical of the chemical viability of Hutton’s theory, Hall soon published several papers on the chemical composition of the strata. He experimented on granite to prove that it was possible for molten rock to form a continuous sequence of deposits, typically in parallel layers. By melting basalt in an iron furnace, Hall demonstrated its return to the original form when cooled; his melted limestone proved that, melted under pressure, limestone did not decompose. These findings were published by Hall in the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s scientific journal “Transactions”.

Sir John Hall traveled throughout Europe to examine the geological formations of Mount Etna and the Alps mountain range, both areas formed from the collision of the planet’s tectonic plates. He also studied the similarity of lava flows in Italy to geological sites in Scotland. Hall, in addition to his works in the field of science, was also the author of various works on architecture among which was his 1797 “Essay on the Origins and Principles of Gothic Architecture”. Sir John Hall, 4th Baronet, died at home in the central area of Edinburgh survived by a wife and six children. He is buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard in central Edinburgh.

Calendar: January 16

Year: Day to Day Men: January 16

The Farm in Early Autumn

The sixteenth of January in 1962 marks the first day of filming for Terence Young’s “Dr. No”, the first film in the James Bond series. Set in London, Jamaica and the fictional Jamaican island of Crab Key, the filming for Ian Fleming’s novel began on location at the Palisaodes Airport in Kingston, Jamaica. The primary scenes shot at that location included the exterior shots of Crab Key and and the city of Kingston.

Fleming had originally written “Dr. No” as a television outline for film producer and author Henry Morgenthau III who wanted to promote the Jamaican tourism industry. When that project did not develop, Fleming met with film producer Harry Saltzman to discuss a screen adaptation. Having reached an agreement with Saltzman, Fleming sold him the rights to all the James Bond novels except “Casino Royale” and “Thunderball” for fifty thousand dollars.

In order to finance the filming of the novels, Harry Saltzman formed a partnership with film producer Albert R. Broccoli. This partnership created two companies: Danjaq which held the rights to the Bond films, and Eon Productions which would handle their production. EON Productions had originally chosen the ninth volume of Fleming’s Bond series, the 1961 “Thunderball”, to be the first adaptation of the Bond films. However , due to a legal battle with the novel’s co-author Kevin McClory, EON Productions decided to film Fleming’s sixth Bond novel, the 1958 “Dr. No”.

After several Hollywood studios passed on the project, United Artists gave Saltzman and Broccoli authorization to produce “Dr. No” with a release date in 1962. Although United Artists agreed to finance “Dr. No”, the studio felt the film was on the same level as Hammer Films productions and was not willing to spend more than one million dollars for the film. United Artist had previously financed British films only to have them fail in U. S. theaters. For the climax scene of the explosion of Dr. No’s base, the producers managed to secure an extra one-hundred thousand dollars from the United Kingdom’s branch of United Artists.

The final choice for director was Terence Young who had previously directed several films for Albert Broccoli’s Warwick Films. In addition to his directorial work, Young made pivotal choices in the development of the James Bond character. Many actors were considered for the role of Bond before Saltzman and Broccoli decided thirty-one year-old Sean Connery would play Bond for first five films of the series. After he was chosen, Connery was taken by Terence Young to Young’s tailor and introduced to the casinos and high life of London. Connery’s role as Jame Bond was officially announced to the media on the third of November in 1961.

Principal photography was completed at the end of March in 1962. Editor Peter R. Hunt used innovative editing techniques of extensive quick cuts, fast motion and exaggerated sound effects on the action scenes to push the fast pacing of the film. Title artist Maurice Binder created the credits which became a signature of all subsequent James Bond films. His highly stylized main title sequence, filmed in sepia by putting a pinhole camera inside the barrel of a .38 calibre gun, and the opening’s music scores became a instantly recognizable symbols of the EON-produced series.

“Dr. No” premiered at the London Pavilion in the northeast side of Piccadilly Circus on the fifth of October in 1962; it was released across the United Kingdom two days later. Although the film did well in the United Kingdom, United Artists were still hesitant to premiere the film in New York City. The first commercial showing in the United States was at Atlanta, Georgia, where it ran successfully for twelve weeks in May of 1963. Despite the successful test run, United Artists did not consider shifting its release strategy. “Dr. No” was next launched in four hundred-fifty theaters in the Midwest and Southwest. The film finally opened in eighteen New York City theaters in June of 1963, nine months after its original premiere.

Notes: Due to the low budget for production, only one sound editor, Norman Wanstall, was hired instead of the usual three or four editors; sets had to be constructed in less-costly ways. The office of M, Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, contained cardboard paintings and a door covered in leather-like plastic. Scenes involving Dr. No’s aquarium were accomplished by using a rear-projection screen and magnified stock film footage of goldfish-sized fish.

Sound editor Norman Wanstall worked on the first five Bond films and won an Oscar for his sound effects on “Goldfinger”. He created the sound effects for the spinning hat of Goldfinger’s servant Oddjob and for Dr. No’s crushing metal hand.

Calendar: January 15

Year: Day to Day Men: January 15

Southern Edge of the Lake

On the fifteenth of January in 1962, the Derveni papyrus was found at a site in Derveni, Macedonia, northern Greece. Discovered among the remnants of a funeral pyre in the necropolis that belonged to the ancient city of Lete, it is the oldest surviving manuscript in the Western tradition and possibly the oldest surviving papyrus written in Greek regardless of provenance.

The papyrus dates to approximately 340 BC, making it Europe’s oldest surviving manuscript. Composed near the end of the fifth-century BC, its text is a mix of dialects, mainly Attic and Ionic Greek with a few Doric forms. Occasionally the same word appears written in different dialectic forms.

The content of the Derveni papyrus is divided between religious instructions on sacrifices to gods and souls, and an allegorical commentary of a genealogical poem of the gods, ascribed to Orpheus. The identification of the papyrus’s author is a matter of dispute among scholars. Names like Euthyphron of Prospalta, Diagoras of Melos, and Stesimbrotus of Thasos have been proposed with varying degrees of likelihood.

The reconstruction of the papyrus involved the exacting job of unrolling and separating the layers of the charred papyrus roll. The surviving two hundred and sixty-six fragments of the papyrus were conserved under glass in descending order of size; however, due to the existence of unplaced smaller fragments, reconstruction is exceptionally challenging. Modern multispectral imaging techniques were used to take digital microphotographs of the papyrus fragments. From this work, twenty-six columns of text were recovered, all with their bottom parts missing, as they had perished on the pyre.

The Derveni papyrus is now included in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register, a compendium of the world’s documentary heritage, such as manuscripts, oral traditions, audio-visual materials and library and archive holdings. The papyrus is noted in this register as being the oldest known European book.

Note: The Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington DC is the location of the Interdisciplinary Research Project for the Derveni Papyrus. Over the last forty-five years, the text of the papyrus has undergone extensive reconstruction and study. Among the leaders of the Imouseion Project have been Theokritos Kouremenos, George M. Parássoglou, and Kyriakos Tsantsanoglou. A user-friendly copy of the latest reconstruction of the papyrus is now available online at: https://chs.harvard.edu/derveni-papyrus-introduction/

An extensive and informative review written by Patricia Curd of Purdue University on the 2004 publication “The Derveni Papyrus: Cosmology, Theology and Interpretation” written by Hungarian academic Gábor Betegh, the eighth Laurence Professor of Ancient Philosophy at Cambridge University, can be found in the University of Notre Dame’s “Philosophical Reviews” located at: https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/the-derveni-papyrus-cosmology-theology-and-interpretation/

Calendar: January 14

Year: Day to Day Men: January 14

Shades of Black and Green

The fourteenth of January in 83 BC marks the birth date of Marcus Antonius who played a critical role in the transformation of the Roman Republic from a constitutional republic into the autocratic Roman Empire.

Born in Rome, Marcus Antonius was the son of Marcus Antonius Creticus and Julia, the daughter of Consul Lucius Julius Caesar and the third-cousin of Gaius Julius Caesar, dictator of the Empire until his assassination in 44 BC. Antonius was a relative and supporter of Julius Caesar and served as a general during the conquest of Gaul and the Civil War of the late Roman Republic. He was appointed administrator to Italy while Caesar eliminated his political opponents in Spain, North Africa and Greece.

There is little reliable information on his younger years. It is known, however, that he was an associate of Publius Clodius Pulcher, a populist Roman politician and street agitator during the First Triumvirate. By the age of twenty, Antonius had accumulated enormous debt and fled to Greece to escape his creditors; during his stay in Greece, he studied philosophy and rhetoric at Athens. Antonius began his military career in 57 BC by joining the military staff of the Proconsul of Syria, Aulus Gabinius, as commander of the calvary. He achieved his first military honors after securing important victories at Alexandrium and Machaerus, both in Jordan.

Antonius’s association with Publius Clodius Pulcher enabled him to achieve prominence in his career. Clodius secured Antonius a position on Caesar’s military staff in 54 BC. Demonstrating military leadership under Caesar, Antonius and Caesar developed a friendship that would last until Caesar’s assassination. It was Antonius who persuaded Proconsul Aulus Gabinius to restore the Ptolemaic pharaoh Ptolemy XII Auletes to the throne of Egypt after Ptolemy’s defeat in a rebellion. With Ptolemy restored as Rome’s client king, Rome exercised considerable power over the kingdom’s affairs. It was during this campaign that Antonius met Ptolemy’s then fourteen year-old daughter Cleopatra.

After a year of military service in Gaul, Caesar sent Antonius to Rome to formally begin his political career as a quaester, or public official, in 52 BC. After a year in office, Antonius was promoted by Caesar to the rank of Legate and was given command of two legions, about seventy-five hundred soldiers. After Caesar’s assassination in 44 BC, Antonius joined with General Marcus Aemilius Lepidus and Galus Octavius, Caesar’s great-nephew, to form the three-man dictatorship known as the Second Triumvirate. This group defeated Caesar’s killers in 42 BC and divided the Republic’s government between themselves. Antonius was assigned Rome’s eastern provinces which included the kingdom of Egypt, ruled then by Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator.

As the members of the Triumvirate sought individual power, relations became strained. Octavius and Antonius averted war in 40 BC when Antonius married Octavia, Octavius’s sister. However despite this marriage, relations were further strained as Antonius continued his love affair with Cleopatra. In 36 BC, Lepidus was expelled from the Triumvirate and a split developed between Antonius and Octavius. This hostility erupted into civil war in 31 BC as the Roman Senate under Octavius declared war on Egypt and proclaimed Antonius a traitor. Later that year, Octavius’s forces defeated Antonius at the Battle of Actium. Cleopatra and Marcus Antonius fled to Egypt where, after losing the Battle at Alexandria in 30 BC, these two historic figures committed suicide.

Roman statesman and orator Cicero Minor, a leading figure of the Roman Republic, announced Antonius’s death to the Senate. Antonius’s honors were revoked and his statues removed; however he was not subject to a complete condemnation of memory, damnatio memoriae. A decree was made that no member of the Antonii family would ever bear the name of Marcus again. Married four times, Marcus Antonius had many descendants and was ancestor to several famous Roman statesmen. Through his lover, Cleopatra VII, he had two sons and a daughter Cleopatra Selene II through whom Antonius was ancestor to the royal family of Mauretania, another Roman client kingdom.

Notes:Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator was Queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt from 51 to 30 BC and its last active ruler. She was a descendant of its founder Ptolemy I Soter, a Macedonian Greek general and companion of Alexander the Great. The Ptolemaic pharaohs, crowned by the Egyptian high priest of Ptah at Memphis, resided in the multicultural and largely Greek city of Alexandria founded by Alexander the Great. Previous Ptolemaic pharaohs spoke only Greek and ruled as Hellenistic monarchs. Cleopatra could speak multiple languages by adulthood and was the first Ptolemaic ruler known to have learned the Egyptian language. Contrary to popular belief, Cleopatra VII did not commit suicide by a bite from an asp but rather through poison.

Calendar: January 13

Year: Day to Day Men: January 13

Armand: Old English

The thirteenth of January in 1886 marks the birth date of Russian-born American entertainer Sophie Tucker who was known for her forceful delivery of comical and risqué songs. She received billing as ‘The Last of the Red-Hot Mammas’ due to the frequent sexual subject of her songs, an unusual topic for female performers after vaudeville’s decline. Tucker became one of the most popular entertainers in the United States during the first half of the twentieth-century.

Born Sofiya Sonya Kalish to a Jewish family in Tulchyn of the Russian Empire, Tucker immigrated to the United States with her family in September of 1887. The family settled in Boston for eight years and then relocated to Hartford, Connecticut where they opened a restaurant. In 1903 at the age of seventeen, Sofiya eloped with Louis Tuck and two years later gave birth to her son Albert. The couple separated after the birth and later divorced in 1913. After leaving her son with her parents, Tucker found work in New York City’s cafés and beer gardens where she sang for food and received tips from customers; most of her earnings were sent to her family for her son’s support.

Sophie Tucker made her first theatrical appearance at a vaudeville venue’s amateur night. A heavy-weight person, she added weight-related humor and songs to her acts. In 1909, Tucker performed in the Ziegfeld Follies and was noticed by William Morris, a theater owner and the future founder of Hollywood’s William Morris Talent Agency. Two years later, she released her first recording of Shelton Brooks’s “Some of These Days” which soon became her signature song; her 1926 version sold a million copies and stayed number one for five weeks. In 1921, Tucker hired songwriter and pianist Ted Shapiro as her musical director and accompanist. He would remain with Tucker for her entire career and often exchanged jokes with her between musical numbers.

Tucker became friends with Mamie Smith, the first African-American woman to make a blues recording, and Ethel Walters, who became the highest paid African-American recording artist at that time. It was Walters who introduced Tucker to jazz, a music form Tucker later introduced to her white vaudeville audiences. In 1925, lyricist Jack Selig Yellen wrote “My Yiddishe Momme” which became another of Tucker’s signature songs. Now a successful singer, Tucker’s fame spread to Europe and she began a tour of England which culminated in a performance at the London Palladium for King George V and Queen Mary.

In 1926 Sophie Tucker re-released her hit song “Some of These Days”. It sold over one million copies and was awarded a gold disc by the Recording Industry Association of America. Tucker made her film debut in 1929 with a lead role in Lloyd Bacon’s Pre-Code musical film “Honky Tonk” which featured a number of her famous songs. This early feature sound film is now considered lost, only the Vitaphone soundtrack and its trailer still exist. When vaudeville was becoming passe in the early 1930s, Tucker turned to nightclubs where she could continue to perform for live audiences.

During 1938 to 1939, Tucker had her own radio show on CBS, “The Roi Tan Program with Sophie Tucker” and made numerous appearances on such programs as “The Radio Hall of Fame” and “The Andrews Sisters’ Show”. In 1945, she created the Sophie Tucker Foundation, which supported various actors’ guilds, hospitals, synagogues, and Israeli youth villages. Tucker appeared on many popular talk and variety shows in the 1950s and 1960s among which were “The Tonight Show” and “The Ed Sullivan Show”.

Sophie Tucker served from 1938 to 1939 as president of the American Federation of Actors, an early trade union originally for vaudeville and circus performers that expanded to include nightclub performers. She continued to perform for the rest of her life with several tours to England; her singing at the Royal Variety Performance aired on the BBC. Tucker’s last television appearance was the color broadcast of the October 3, 1965 “Ed Sullivan Show” in which she sang “Give My Regards to Broadway” and her signature song “Some of These Days”.

Tucker died of lung cancer and kidney failure in February of 1966, at the age of eighty, in her New York, Park Avenue apartment. She had played shows at New York’s Latin Quarter just weeks before her death and had two years of engagements planned. Tucker is buried in Emanuel Cemetery in Wethersfield, Connecticut.

Note: Sophie Tucker’s 1926 version of “Some of These Days”, which featured Ted Lewis and His Band, can be found by entering the title in the search box.

Calendar: January 12

A Year: Day to Day Men: 12th of January

Climbing Walls

Author and storyteller Charles Perrault was born in Paris, France on January 12, 1628. He was one of the first writers in European literature who turned his eyes to folklore, laying the foundation for the literary genre of fairy tales .

In 1695, when he was 67, Perrault decided to dedicate himself to his children. In 1697 he published “Tales and Stories from the Past with Morals”, subtitled “Tales of Mother Goose”. These tales, based on French popular tradition, were very popular in sophisticated court circles. Its publication made him suddenly very widely known and he is credited as the founder of the modern fairy tale genre. Naturally, his work reflects awareness of earlier fairy tales written in the salons, most notably by Marie Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, the Baroness d’Aulnoy, who coined the phrase “fairy tale” and wrote tales as early as 1690.

Some of his popular stories, particularly “Cinderella” and “The Sleeping Beauty”, are still commonly told similar to the way Perrault had written them, while others have been revised over the years. For example, some versions of “Sleeping Beauty” published today are based partially on a Brothers Grimm tale, “Little Briar Rose”, a modified version of the Perrault story. However, the version done by Disney is quite true to the original Perrault tale.

Perrault had written “Little Red Riding Hood” as a warning to readers about men who were trying to prey on young girls who were walking through the forest. He provided the following comment about the lesson provided by the story: “I say Wolf, for all wolves are not of the same sort; there is one kind with an amenable disposition – neither noisy, nor hateful, nor angry, but tame, obliging and gentle, following the young maids in the streets, even into their homes. Alas! Who does not know that these gentle wolves are of all such creatures the most dangerous!” In his story, the girl gets into bed with the wolf and is devoured. There is no happy ending.

He published his collection under the name of his last son, Pierre (Perrault) Darmancourt, probably fearful of criticism from those who favored the classical style of writing as opposed to the new modern writing style common under Louis XIV . In the tales, he used images from around him, such as the Chateau Usse for “The Sleeping Beauty”, and the Marquis of the Chateau de’Oiron as the model for the Marquis de Carabas in “Puss in Boots”. He ornamented his folktale subject matter with details, asides and subtext drawn from the world of fashion.

Calendar: January 11

Year: Day to Day Men: January 11

The Stucco Effect

The eleventh day of January in 1494 marks the death of Italian Renaissance painter Domenico Ghirlandaio from pestilential fever at the age of forty-five.

Born in June of 1448 in Florence, Domenico di Tommaso Curradi di Doffo Bigodi was part of the third generation of Florence Renaissance painters among whom were Sandro Botticelli, Andrea de Verracchio, and the Pollaiolo brothers, Antonio, Piero and Simone. Bigodi was known professionally by the name Domenico Ghirlandaio.

Domenico Ghirlandaio received his initial training as an apprentice in his goldsmith father’s workshop where he often made portraits of the shop’s visitors. Ghirlandaio was later apprenticed to painter Alesso Baldovinetti for training in painting and mosaic work. In Florence, he was apprenticed at the workshop of sculptor and painter Andrea de Verracchio and maintained close associations with both Boticelli and the Umbrian school painter Pietro Perugino, who became the teacher of painter and architect Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, known as Raphael.

Ghirlandaio is predominantly known for his fresco work in which he excelled and a number of important works executed in tempera. Among his fresco works are two depicting the miraculous events at the death of Saint Fina for the city of San Gimignano’s Chapel of Santa Fina; “St. Jerome in His Study”, a companion piece to Botticelli’s “Saint Augustine in His Study” in Florence’s Church of Ognissanti; and several frescoes depicting popes and Biblical scenes at the Palazzo Vecchio.

In 1481, Domenico Ghirlandaio was summoned to Rome by Pope Sixtus IV as part of a team of Umbrian and Florentine painters to create a series of frescoes on the walls of the Sistine Chapel. The foremost of his work there was “The Vocation of the Apostles” that depicts the Gospel narrative of Jesus calling Peter and Andrew to become his disciples. Between 1482 and 1485, Ghirlandaio painted a fresco cycle for the Sassetti Chapel of Santa Trinita that was commissioned by Medici banker Francesco Sassetti and Giovanni Tornabuoni, who later became Ghirlandaio’s patron.

In 1485, Ghirlandaio painted “Adoration of the Shepherds” for the Sassetti Chapel’s altarpiece. Ghirlandaio worked on the Santa Maria Novella, the family chapel of the Ricci family, from 1485 to 1490. For the family, he produced frescoes depicting the lives of the Virgin Mary and St. John the Baptist. In addition to this fresco cycle, he painted no fewer than twenty-one portraits of the Tornabuoni and Tornaquinci families, who provided the finances for the chapel’s restoration.

Domenico Ghirlandaio had a large workshop which included his two brothers, Davide and Benedetto, his brother-in-law Bastiano Mainardi, and later his son Ridolfo, who also became a painter. He had many apprentices over the years, among whom was Michelangelo. Although Ghirlandaio had a long line of descendants, the family name died out in the seventeenth century, when its last members entered monasteries.

Calendar: January 10

A Year: Day to Day Men: 10th of January, Solar Year 2018

A Bed of Green

January 10, 1863 marked the beginning of the London Underground when the Metropolitan Railway, the world’s oldest underground railway, opened its route between Paddington and Farringdon.

The Metropolitan Railway was a goods and passenger railway that served London from 1863 to !933. Its main line headed northwest from the financial heart of the city to what became the Middlesex suburbs. The first section built was beneath New Road between Paddington and King’s Cross and then in tunnel and cuttings besides Farringdon Road to Smithfield, near the city. It opened on January 10 with gas-lit wooden carriages hauled by steam locomotives. It is the world’s first passenger carrying underground railway.

The line was extended from both ends, eventually extending to Verney Junction in Buckinghamshire, more than 80 kilometers from the Baker Street station to the center of London. In 1905, electric traction was introduced and by 1907 electrical multiple units operated most of the services. The Metropolitan developed land near the rail lines, promoting after World War I housing estates using the “Metro-land” brand. In July of 1933, the Met was merged with other railways, tram lines, and bus services to form the London Passenger Transport Board. After the amalgamation in 1933 the “Metro-land” brand was discontinued.

The spirit of “Metro-land” was remembered in a television documentary “Metro-land”, first broadcast on February 26, 1973. A comedy-drama film, starring Christian Bale and Emily Watson, called “Metroland” was released in 1997. That film explored the tension between the youthful idealism of a hedonistic existence and that of the inevitable middle-class establishment. The film title referred to the London suburbs which were served by the expansive London Underground network, an environment that the lead characters had always promised themselves they would escape.

Calendar: January 9

Year: Day to Day Men: January 9

Betty Boop Coffee

On the ninth of January in 1839, French painter and physicist Louis Daguerre presented a full description of his daguerreotype process to a meeting of the Academy of Sciences held by the eminent astronomer and physicist François Arago, the man who proved the wave theory of light.

The first permanent photograph from nature was made by French inventor Nicéphore Niépee in 1826 through his heliographic process; however, the quality of the image was poor and the process required an exposure time of eight hours. Daguerre’s daguerreotype process, the first practical process of photography, improved the quality of the image and reduced to exposure time to thirty minutes.

Born in Cormeilles-en-Parisis, in November of 1787, Louis Daguerre apprenticed in theater design, architecture and panoramic painting under Pierre Prévost. He was originally a revenue officer and later a scene painter for opera sets. In 1822, Daguerre opened the Diorama, an exhibition venue in Paris which presented three-dimensional pictorial views that changed with various lighting effects. He later opened a second establishment in London’s Regent Park.

Born in Chalon-sur-Saône in March of 1765, Nicéphore Niépee initially began experimenting in 1813 in the recently developed printing technique, lithography. Unskilled in drawing and unable to obtain a proper lithographic stone, he sought a way to make images automatically. Niépee made experiments and developed the heliographic process of using light and light-sensitive supports to produce images. He initially used a substrate of light-sensitive bitumen of Judea, which hardened on exposure to light, to obtain an image on glass. With the use of a camera in 1826, he was able to fix an image on a metal plate made of pewter. However, Niépee was unable to reduce the exposure time by either optical or chemical means.

In 1829, Nicéphore Niépee agreed to the repeated requests by Louis Daguerre for a partnership to perfect and exploit his heliography process. After four years of working without any advancement, Niépee died in July of 1833. Deguerre, building upon Niépee’s discoveries, eventually succeeded in greatly reducing the exposure time. He also discovered that exposing an iodized silver plate in a camera would result in a lasting image if the latent image on the plate was developed by exposure to fumes of mercury and then made permanent by a solution of common salt.

For this discovery, Louis Daguerre was appointed an officer of the Legion of Honor. In 1839, he and the heir of Nicéphore Niépee were assigned annuities of six-thousand and four-thousand Francs, respectively, in return for their photographic process.

Notes: Lithography was invented circa 1796 in Germany by the Bavarian playwright Alois Senefelder. By chance, he discovered the ability to duplicate his scripts by writing then in greasy crayon on slabs of limestone and them printing them with rolled-on ink. As the local limestone retained the crayon marks on its surface, multiple images, called lithographs meaning in Latin stone marks, could be printed in large quantities. It was not until 1820 that lithography became commercially popular.

Calendar: January 8

Year: Day to Day Men: January 8

Man on Deck

The eighth of January in 1877 marks the Battle of Wolf Mountain, known by the Northern Cheyenne as the Battle of Belly Butte, a confrontation between the United States Army and warriors from both the Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne. Occurring during the Great Sioux War of 1876, the battle was fought in southern Montana Territory near the Tongue River.

Following Lieutenant Colonel George Custer’s defeat in the Battle of Little Bighorn, a large number of Army reinforcements were sent by the government into the Montana Territory. In autumn of 1876, a few bands of Sioux and Cheyenne tribes were returning to the reservations and agencies, now managed by the army instead of civilian contractors, to acquire food and annuity goods for the winter. These provisions had been promised to the tribes after the government demanded that they cede the Black Hills area to it.

By December, General Nelsen Miles had led a mixed force of infantry, artillery and calvary after Hunkpapa Lakota leader Sitting Bull’s band and effectively defeated them. Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie defeated the Northern Cheyenne under Chief Morning Star after a destructive raid, known as the Dull Knife Fight, that left two hundred lodges destroyed, seven hundred livestock captured, and most of the Cheyenne forced to surrender. The surviving warriors trekked through snow and icy conditions to join the camp of Chief Crazy Horse in the Tongue River Valley.

Concerned about the approaching winter and the situation of the remaining Cheyenne band, Chief Crazy Horse decided to negotiate a peace with the army. However, a group of United States Army Crow scouts murdered Crazy Horse’s delegation. In retaliation, a series of small raids by the Cheyenne tried to draw out Colonel Nelson Miles’s troops from the Tongue River army post. In December of 1876, Miles led most of nine companies from the army post in pursuit of Crazy Horse at Tongue River Valley. On the seventh of January, Miles captured a few Northern Cheyennes and camped with a force of four hundred-thirty six men along the Tongue River. That night fresh snow fell and the temperatures dropped.

After early morning shots were fired. Colonel Miles set up a defensive perimeter along a ridge on the knoll later called Battle Butte. The defensive position had two pieces of artillery beside it and a clear line of fire in front. At seven in the morning, Crazy Horse and Cheyenne Chief Two Moon began a series of attacks. Due the the army’s firepower, the warriors had to regroup and attack several times; however, these attacks failed when Miles shifted his reserves. Miles’s Fifth Infantry units struggled to take the hills occupied by the warriors; despite the deep snow, the units secured seven of the hills, forcing the Sioux and Cheyenne to withdraw.

Although a draw in many aspects, the Battle of Wolf Mountain was a strategic victory for the U.S. Army as the Sioux and Cheyenne saw they were not safe from the army even in winter’s harsh conditions. Many members of the tribes returned to the reservations. By May of 1877, Chief Crazy Horse had led his surviving band to Camp Robinson to surrender.

Notes: Chief Crazy Horse was a Lakota war leader of the Oglala band; his Lakota name was Tȟašúŋke Witkó, literal translation “His Horse is Crazy”. After his surrender, he resided in his village near the Red Cloud Agency, located by Fort Robinson, Nebraska. Crazy Horse had promised he would remain in peace with the army. Due to mistranslation by an Indian interpreter, the army felt that he was a threat and eventually arrested and placed in the guardhouse. Once inside, Crazy Horse attempted to escape and was stabbed with a bayonet by one of the guards. He was tended by the assistant post surgeon but died late on the night of September fifth in 1877. The identification of the guard remains questioned. Crazy Horse’s remains were handed over to his elderly parents; his final resting place remains unknown.

Chief Morning Star was a great chief of the Northern Cheyenne people and the headchief of the Notameohmésêhese band on the northern Great Plains. Known also as Chief Dull Knife, his Lakota Sioux name was Tȟamílapȟéšni. He died in 1883 and is interred at Lame Deer Cemetery on the Northern Cheyenne reservation in southeastern Montana.