history

Today in History: September 22

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

He was an unlikely spy. Perhaps the best spies are supposed to be “unlikely,” unsuspectable, but Nathan Hale probably was too honest to be a spy. Sent by the Continental Army to Lower Manhattan to track and report on British Army movements, he was caught within days of his arrival. Arrested on September 21, 1776, he was executed by hanging the next day.

Not one contemporary account has an exact description of the scene on the gallows, because the hanging, which did not follow a trial, was not a public event. All of the contemporary accounts, all written by the British, describe the calm composure of the 21-year-old spy as he faced death, however. What he said was close enough to, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country,” that that may indeed have been what he said 240 years ago today. (Some millennials have offered this as America’s first-ever mic drop.)
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Today in History: ‘Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus’

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, ‘If you see it in The Sun it’s so.’ Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?—Virginia O’Hanlon, a question published in the New York Sun on September 21, 1897

Virginia O’Hanlon, an eight-year-old girl, asked her father one day in the summer of 1897 whether Santa Claus is real.

He suggested she write to the city newspaper, the New York Sun, so she did. Virginia wrote: “I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, ‘If you see it in The Sun it’s so.’ Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?”

Francis Pharcellus Church, a 58-year-old editor who had been a Civil War reporter and had not married and was not a father, was tasked with composing a reply to Virginia.

On this date in 1897, Church’s unsigned reply, “Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus,” was published in the Sun. It remains the most widely reprinted newspaper editorial in history. It is perhaps the only one that has been set to music. He wrote:
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Today in History: September 19

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,–
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.—John Keats, the final stanza of “To Autumn”

John Keats composed “To Autumn,” one of his masterpieces, on this date in 1819.

* * * *
It is the birthday of singer/songwriter/actor/friend of Kermit the Frog/President of ASCAP/recovery advocate Paul Williams today. He is a personal hero of mine.

Whatever one may call a 76-year-old who is still winning awards for new music, is an advocate for recovery, and also testifies before Congress on behalf of song creators, you may as well call that “Paul Williams” from now on, because that is still his day-to-day life.

Further, Mr. Williams appears to have set for himself a personal goal of speaking with (in-person or online) every human being he possibly can meet. That is the only way I can explain him saying kind things to me on my Instagram account via his Instagram account.

I am as awkward around famous people as I am around people people. Even the clunkiness of that sentence captures my general social clunkiness.

It is entirely likely that anyone within reading distance of this blog has met more famous people (and more-famous people) than I have. A well-balanced person treats the waiter like a prince and talks with royalty like they’re the next-door neighbors; I am well-balanced, but not in a good way: famous, infamous, or unknown, I usually treat everyone like he or she is a teacher who has announced a pop quiz that I have not studied for.

Social media has made it easier for people to have certain kinds of encounters with the famous among us; many celebrities and politicians personally run their online fan clubs. Many do not. This has not made these encounters any less attention-grabbing for me when they do happen. (Three of my all-time favorite writers followed my Twitter account, two of them within a week of each other; I was a six-foot-tall cliché of self-importance that week. Two of them have since “unfollowed” me. I was a six-foot-tall cliché of crushed.)

If you have not seen Stephen Kessler’s excellent documentary Paul Williams Still Alive from 2012, you ought to. It is still on Netflix. The trailer (after the jump):
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