Chuck Berry .A father of rock & roll and all around lunatic with several stints in prison & scandals HOWEVER a music icon and unlike so many rock stars from the early days must given credit for not letting others steal his money .He died very wealthy with a net worth 20 million dollars
Some more interesting French history ! The Paris Commune/Hitler & Mussolini meeting to go to war against France / The Evian Accords
Jacques de Molay .Burned at the stake .Ouch ! This is the second case of people being burned alive mentioned here .Can anyone else smell something burning ?
Neville Chamberlain . Looked out of touch with the world around him .Did however see while it looked like he was fooled by hitler at Munich in 1938 most people in Britain did not want a war in 1938. He also looked sickly and saw he wud soon die of cancer.
Luc Beeson . I liked his NIKITA & the American re-make with Bridget Fonda.
Fall of Montsegur , killing of 200 Cathars..........People burned alive ? Some people take religion way to far.
Bernardo Bertolucci ........... I liked THE LAST EMPEROR .Goes to show no matter how powerful you are fate can change everything. Joan Chen is a good actress and the Maggie Han's character really was deliciously evil
Jerry Lewis ...........I never saw his appeal .Read he was regarded as a a genius in France ? One of his sons was on TV saying Jerry Lewis had left his entire fortune to his decades younger trophy wife
Louis-Napoleon ...........Never knew of him but see how he was trying to turn the clock back to bringing back a monarchy and be his uncle building an empire .Had a colorful wife
OMG a situation may be developing at the office where I will be forced to be a hypocrite .Something may be developing between a gay guy on my team and a local gay staffer. Wud violate the no office romance policy ( which gets ignored the higher you go up in the corporation ) but still exists .I want to keep my job .
One of my British neighbors had us laffing saying Michael Caine should be made King of the UK .
= EVENTS = Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto receives its première performance in Leipzig with Ferdinand David as soloist.
....Another name & composition I can use to impress music snobs
1954 – The Battle of Điện Biên Phủ begins with an artillery barrage by Viet Minh forces under Võ Nguyên Giáp; Viet Minh victory led to the end of the First Indochina War and French withdrawal from Vietnam.
Wud make a great war movie especially with an anti war theme . In research about this sentence learned about Genevieve de Galard who was at the battle, now one of my heroes
L. Ron Hubbard, American author, founder of Scientology (d. 1986).
A conman with his sciencetology nonsense but has found many followers ( suckers) including in Hollywood .Too hard to believe.
1990 – Bruno Bettelheim, Austrian-American psychologist and author (b. 1903)[219]
Came across him in psych courses.,.Smart man .
Jean Ferrat, French singer-songwriter ................. Likable looking.
Bernie Madoff.According to a Jewish friend despite being Jewish probably the most hated man by Jewish people in the USA since Hitler .Because they were among his biggest victims . Evil man who's stealing led to the financial ruin of 10's of 000's of people as well as some suicides. His own family too, his 2 sons died as a result of his stealing .Happy to learn he died in prison .
Fukushima disaster of 2011 . I worked in China in 2012 and because of Japanese war crimes there in World War Two people wud laff about the disaster, saw it as the gods revenge on Japan . Nuclear energy & tsunami's don't mix !
Jack Kerouac. I see an early champion of beatniks and non - conventional life styles. Good for him , the world needs rebels !
Bombing in Mumbai that killed 00's .Makes me happy my team does not have to do inspections at hotels in India.
Sun Yat-Sen .A good man , we saw his home in Shanghai. One of several important places across the world including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC and St Peters Basilica in Rome the Security told me to put my shoes back on
Liza Minnelli .Loved her in CABARET but on tv she looks an old & burned out drunk . Researching after seeing this post saw she was violent to both a husband & butler hitting them with whisky bottles. Yuch!
Am truly amazed learning about Richard Brooks .Did not know of him but discovered when researching he was the director of LOOKING FOR MR GOODBAR . Knew a radical feminist who taught Film &TV at a university wud go into rage about that movie seeing it as a sexist moralistic attack on female sexuality .From his photo he didn't look so evil
Rudolf Hoss .Yet another war criminal who has popped up , the other day Begin now this nazi who headed a concentration camp .Was happy to read he was executed ( hung ! ) for what he did .I saw a concentration camp in Germany ( Sachsenhausen in Berlin ) and think anyone involved in running those places should have been executed .
Giuseppe Verdi . Knew of him , now know the name of his NABUCCO opera. Will drop that when trying to impress high brow music types
Pancho Villa. The bin laden of his day after he attacked Columbus New Mexico in 1916 .A friend's grandfather from Hungary only in the USA for a month joined the army and ended up in the hunt for Villa. He had no idea about where he was or who Villa was , who Mexicans were . Also a Mexican immigrant I bartended with for fun put a photo of Villa up in the bar with photos of lowlifes we were told to watch out for . Seeing Pancho on the wall a female bartender added a photo of her ex husband who wasn't paying child support .
Barbie .A iconic toy but according to some feminists propaganda aimed at girls to make them sex objects/anorexics
Yuri Gargarin .New, a brave man & real explorer.
Menachem Begin .Complicated guy . From what I read a racist murderer like the Nazi's .In 1948 had a village of 500 some Palestinians all murdered and in 1982 like now in Gaza invaded Lebanon murdering tens of 000's of innocent people including several entire refuge camps .However signed a peace deal with Egypt that is still holding which is very good.
James Levine .Stayed at the hotel where I worked in Louisville
Am still thrilled about yesterday's post seeing how I had a connection with Julius & Ethel Rosenberg even though it is thru the Judge Fred Vinson who helped send them to the chair
1965 Selma .A great day for the civil rights movement .Was not spontaneous but planned and the organizers knew there wud be trouble . A white Protestant minister was killed by the police for helping the black protestors.
Thomas Garrigue Masaryk .Quite a name !From what I read the only democratically elected leader between Switzerland and the USA /Canada in the 1930's .Also was i the USA teaching at the University of Chicago where one of my hero's President Obama also taught .Found he had helped a Jewish guy falsely accused of murder
Anna Magnani. Another earthy Mediterranean women like yesterday's Melina Mercouri !
Anthony Armstrong - Jones.The royal family sure gets some wild ones doesn't it ?
Saint Thomas Aquinas . Interesting man .
Stanley Kubrick .Has made some famous movies , EYES WIDE SHUT was strange but kept your attention .
We had a good bye party for my associate Marcus .He and the wonderful woman he met out here are going home to bigger & better things .Good for them
Some may recall Marcus from last year when I mentioned while in Seoul South Korea for work we went to the DMZ border between South Korea and psychotic North Korea that included getting a picture at the same spot his grandfather stood in a photo of him then a soldier in the Korean War . With help from a some American and South Korean soldiers we found the exact spot and took a picture of Marcus there. It turned out to be a huge deal for Marcus and his family back in the USA
The other woman on the team and I later went out with 2 of the American officers who helped us
The Alamo .Texans really Americans massacred trying to break free of Mexico .In the end Texas won and 10 years later the USA beat Mexico in another war and took in Texas. But the Mexicans won in the end since today all around the Alamo in Houston is full of Mexicans and they won't speak English and hate gringo's
Julius & Ethel Rosenberg .Soviet spies who were caught & executed . A personal connection .The Chief Judge of the US Supreme court Fred Vinson and moi are from Louisa Kentucky , population 3,000 .He refused to block the Rosenberg's execution sending them to the electric chair . In such a small town my ancestors must have known him or his family . Especially since his father was the Sheriff or jailer and the Lawrence County jailhouse has always been a second home for men in my family
Michelangelo . A genius . My neck got very sore from looking at his painting on the Sistine Chapel in Rome but it was worth it.