Today in History: June 14

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire,
Jack Frost nipping at your nose,
Yuletide carols being sung by a choir,
And folks dressed up like Eskimos.—Bob Wells and Mel Tormé, “The Christmas Song”

According to BMI (Broadcast Music, Inc.), “The Christmas Song” is the most-performed of the many holiday classics one hears every holiday season. My offering a simple phrase (or two) from the song may be enough for readers to supply the rest of the song for themselves, words and music.

Nat King Cole recorded the song for the very first time 70 years ago today. Chances are that it is his version of the song that one is hearing in the MP3 player of one’s mind.

That first recording, the one that is 70 today, is not the Nat King Cole recording of the song that one hears thrown at one’s ears from every storefront during the holiday season. That version, sweetly syrupy-sweet, was recorded in 1961. The original recording of this holiday classic, which was written in the summer of 1945 by two songwriters who were trying “to stay cool by thinking cool,” according to Tormé, is of the The King Cole Trio: Nat King Cole, voice and piano; Oscar Moore, guitar; Johnny Miller, bass; and it is worth hearing, even on a June day (video below the jump):
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An Appalling Arrest in Bahrain

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

When Nabeel Rajab, the president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, was arrested earlier today, he asked the plainclothes police officers who had spent the previous half-hour searching his house and confiscating his cellphone and other electronic devices why they were arresting him.

“We don’t know,” he was told, according to an RT interview with Rajab’s wife Sumaya. “We don’t know, but we have been ordered to do so.” And they took him away. Thirty officers were involved in the raid and arrest, which is believed was led by Bahrain’s Cybercrime Unit.

The arrest comes on the same day that the United Nations Human Rights Council opened its 32nd session in Geneva, Switzerland. Yesterday, six Bahrain human rights activists were prevented from boarding flights from Bahrain to travel to the UNHRC sessions. Bahrain has long employed that tactic of repression: forbidding activists from leaving the country to tell the world what is happening behind closed borders.
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Today in History: June 13

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
 
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
 
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.—William Butler Yeats, “When You Are Old”

William Butler Yeats (above) was born on his date in 1865.
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