Today in History: Nov. 19

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The Soldier’s National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, was dedicated on this date in 1863, a few months after the Civil War battle was waged there. Senator Edward Everett was the keynote speaker, as it were, and he delivered a two-hour-long oration.

President Abraham Lincoln immediately followed Senator Everett’s with his own speech, one that took only two minutes to deliver. His ten sentences, the Gettysburg Address, is the one remembered to this date.

The photo at top was taken on that day by Matthew Brady. President Lincoln is seen at center, surrounded by onlookers. The website this is from highlighted him in light brown.

The address:
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From To-Do to Tah-Dah!

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The perfect to-do list: The one where the act of putting a task on the to-do list completes the task. It doesn’t exist.

There are websites for one to use to make to-do lists, apps for shopping lists (I own a not-very-smart phone, so I am an outsider to the world of apps), websites on which you can compile top 10 lists with friends. After one creates an account and logs in, not a single one of these websites offers “get a notepad or a scrap of paper and a pen and start writing your list” as the first item listed, so I guess they are indeed serious.
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65 Freed in Egypt; Shawkan Remains in Prison

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

A journalist’s job is to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

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The “Detained Youth Committee” that was established by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi this fall to “look into the conditions of pre-trial detainees arrested in cases related to freedom of expression” gave him a list of 83 detainees to grant early releases or pardons. Today, 82 were pardoned, and as of this morning, 65 were freed, but the Egyptian photojournalist Mahmoud Abu Zeid (“Shawkan”) was not among them.

He was not freed and his name was not on the list the committee submitted.
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