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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Starved for Attention

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

What I Did for ‘Like’

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In this social media-saturated (and social-media-about-social-media-saturated) era, in which both of my parents, one of them an octogenarian, have active Facebook accounts, and in which people who have told me to my face that they do not understand Twitter themselves have a couple thousand followers apiece on that very service, drawing attention to one’s writing or art or craft or charitable work without purchasing advertising time on the radio to scream for 30 continuous seconds can seem daunting. For me, a naturally quiet sort, sharing the publication of a new piece feels unnatural, like actually recording that 30-second Janovian advertisement. Screaming is so unseemly.

(Perhaps I will go ahead and record that.)

In the Peter Cook-Dudley Moore film, “Bedazzled,” poor Stanley Moon (Moore) wants the affection of Margaret (Eleanor Bron). The Devil, George Spigott (Peter Cook), offers him seven wishes to win her. In one, Stanley is a gold-lamé-costumed rock star whose new hit song “Love Me!” drives all the young women, including Margaret, wild. The lyrics, and Moore’s performance, are little more than him screaming for 30 seconds, “LOVE ME!”

The very next act, Drimble Wedge and the Vegetations, wins the entire screaming audience over to the Devil, George, as he speak-sings his dripping contempt for their affections towards him. “I’m self-contained. Leave me alone,” goes the new hit, and his dry loathing for them makes the women in the audience desire him all the more. Stanley gets run over by the crowd that once briefly adored him as it rushes to the Devil at the end of his song. (The video clip that follows below the fold here both takes up too much space and is set too loud. Brace your ears.)
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Today in History: July 10

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Today is the semi-official anniversary of the founding of the city of Dublin, Ireland, which is said to have happened on this date in 988.

Of course, there had been a large settlement on the River Liffey for centuries by 988, and some historians think that the mention of a place called “Eblana polis” in the Geographia by Ptolemy, the Greek astronomer and cartographer, written around the year 140 AD, is a mention of a settlement with a similar name to the modern name on what is now the land that Dublin occupies. Other historians argue that this theory is incorrect.
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