Today in History: Oct. 22

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The International Meridian Conference of 1884 established on this date that year the Greenwich Meridian as an international standard for zero degrees longitude so that time zones around the globe could be established.

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Harry Houdini (above) broke his ankle while performing his famous Water-Torture Escape in Albany, New York, in October 1926, but he did not allow this injury to keep him from an engagement he had scheduled in Montreal, Canada.

Ninety years ago today, some art students from McGill University met with Houdini backstage so that one of the students could draw a sketch of the magician and the students and he could discuss one of his lecture topics: exposing frauds, especially fraudulent spiritualists.
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Oct. 22: Where is Shawkan?

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Update, October 21/22, 2016: A source close to Mahmoud Abou Zeid, the Egyptian photographer known as “Shawkan,” reported to me today that there is less that is known with certainty about Shawkan’s whereabouts than what has been reported in the media in the last 48 hours, including in this website.

What is known this Friday night/Saturday morning is that when Shawkan’s brother, Mehmet, visited Tora Prison to see his brother earlier this week, he was informed that Shawkan was not at the prison. (Mehmet confirmed that himself to this website and to other publications.) This was the first time that anyone had learned of Shawkan’s transfer. To the best that I have been able to ascertain, even Shawkan’s lawyers had not been contacted in advance or advised about any changes in Shawkan’s status.

It is understood that about 300 prisoners were moved from Tora Prison recently (even the date is not yet known) and Shawkan is believed to be one of the prisoners. Because no one has been in contact with Shawkan himself, it is not known where he is tonight: he could be back in Tora Prison or still be at another location.
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Today in History: Oct. 21

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Within the next generation I believe that the world’s rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience. In other words, I feel that the nightmare of Nineteen Eighty-Four is destined to modulate into the nightmare of a world having more resemblance to that which I imagined in Brave New World. The change will be brought about as a result of a felt need for increased efficiency. Meanwhile, of course, there may be a large scale biological and atomic war—in which case we shall have nightmares of other and scarcely imaginable kinds.—Aldous Huxley, a letter to George Orwell

Aldous Huxley and George Orwell not only wrote two of the twentieth century’s best-regarded dystopian novels—Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four—but they knew each other as well: Huxley, a decade older than Orwell, taught French at Eton when Orwell was a student there and Orwell was one of his pupils.
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