Today in History: Dec. 30

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

“This Is The Way It Was,” read the tagline for the Hammer Film Productions movie One Million Years B.C. Well, no. The film, which opened in British theaters fifty years ago today, showed Ray Harryhausen-animated dinosaur dolls attacking humans, but it also offered Raquel Welch in a strategically creative (or creatively strategic) fur bikini. (The film opened in American movie theaters in 1967.)

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The Pirates of Penzance; or, The Slave of Duty was performed for the first time on this date in 1879 at the Royal Bijou Theatre in Paignton, Devon, in England. (Poster at top.)
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‘A Renewal’

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

To have love, one must give love; to give love, one must have it to give. That may be life’s deepest catch-22—any of those logical situations whose suppositions exist only to support the logic that requires them. Love is illogical, or at least it has its own logic.

The moment love is not pursued, there it is; advice to a young lover often follows that logic. “When you stop looking for it or needing it, you will find love.” (It only took about three decades of hearing that for it to sink in for me.)
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Today in History: Dec. 29

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

“I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people’s dream died there. It was a beautiful dream … the nation’s hope is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead.”—Black Elk, speaking about the Massacre at Wounded Knee

The Massacre at Wounded Knee took place on this date in 1890. A detachment of the U.S. 7th Cavalry opened fire while disarming two Lakota groups at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. The detachment, some 500 strong, quickly killed 90 Lakota men and 200 women and children. (By some estimates many more were killed.) After a three-day blizzard, the dead, scattered where each man, woman, and child fell and died and now frozen to the ground, were buried without ceremony in a mass grave.
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