History

Today in History: July 13

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Five years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur.—Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky. […]—The opening of “Tintern Abbey” by William Wordsworth

The full title of William Wordsworth’s poem is “Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour, July 13, 1798.” The Romantic Movement in English poetry can be dated to July 13, 1798, when Wordsworth and his sister walked near the ruined Cistercian abbey in Wales. (Photo above.)
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Today in History: July 12

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Les Amours de la reine Élisabeth, an hour-long silent film from France starring Sarah Bernhardt, debuted on this date in 1912 in New York City. It is the first foreign feature-length film of note to receive attention in America. It is one of the earliest feature-length films, period.

Adolph Zukor’s film company, Famous Players, imported it. The film was enough of a success that Zukor and other producers started to view feature-length films as viable and foreign films as a worthwhile investment. (Zukor later merged his company with Jesse Lasky’s company, Feature Play, and in 1927, their company became Paramount Pictures, the name the company still employs.)

Les Amours de la reine Élisabeth tells a story that Hollywood told and subsequently re-told (Bette Davis and Errol Flynn, in one example) many times: the affair in the 1590s between Queen Elizabeth I and Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, the affair that Robert Tombs refers to as the “final tawdry drama of Elizabeth’s reign.”
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Today in History: July 11

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The duel between Vice President Aaron Burr and former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton took place 212 years ago today near Weehawken, New Jersey. The illustration above is one I remember from a schoolbook from when I was a kid; I remember losing myself in the scene. Like many dramatic historical renderings, it gets almost every historical detail wrong in favor of drama.

Years of feuding between the two men had come to this: an illegal duel to the death.
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