For the last few years, when the holiday season has come around, I've looked back to previous centuries for the newsworthy events of the year. Today, please join me on a whistle stop tour through 1811 ....
If you thought that 2011 was an interesting year to live through, you should try 1811!
The Great Comet
The Great Comet draws the eyes of many to the night sky, including artist and poet William Blake who incorporates it into one of his most famous paintings, "The Ghost of a Flea" (which is also one of his smallest at less than 9x7 inches). The comet would be sufficiently memorable that Tolstoy, writing War and Peace almost 60 years later, has the character of Pierre observe this "enormous and brilliant comet [...] which was said to portend all kinds of woes and the end of the world."
Good Year for Wine
1811 was also an exceptional year for wine, a fact that winemakers of the time (and perhaps even today) would say is not coincidental as some of the strongest vintages of the last two centuries have been in years with visible comets. But it is a bad year for the 41-year-old Beethoven who, having lost his patron and most of his hearing, enters a period of physical illness and low output.
Meanwhile, in Germany, Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué begins the peak period of his popularity with the publication of Undine - the much translated and retold story of a water spirit who marries a knight in order to gain a soul, which is considered one of the earliest German romances.
Austen and Shelley Jane Austen's first book, Sense and Sensibility, is published. She will see three more books published before her untimely death six years later at the age of 42.
Percy Bysshe Shelley is in fine form, publishing a novel and a treatise on atheism. The latter results in him being expelled from Oxford. Married twice (having run away with both women when they were 16), fathering at least six children by three women, and burning through all his money, Shelley will drown eleven years later in dubious circumstances.
The English language is a wonderful thing. For a whistle stop tour through it's 1500 year (or thereabouts) history, sit back and enjoy The History of English in 10 Minutes produced by Britain's Open University:
For the last few years, when the holiday season comes around, we've looked back to previous centuries for the newsworthy events of the year. Today, please join me on a whistle stop tour 100 years back in time to 1910 ....
As Haley's Comet makes its stately way across the night skies, the monarchies of Europe are in flux:
While Britain celebrates the coronation of George V, the last king of Portugal flees his country; further east, the Balkan country of Montenegro begins a shortlived period as an independent kingdom under the rule of Nicholas I, while in neighboring Albania, the weakened Ottoman empire attempts to quell an uprising.
Africa is a patchwork of European colonies with just Liberia and Ethiopia remaining independent. Before the year is ended, Egypt will have seen Boutros Ghali, its first native-born prime minister, assassinated; France will be at war with the Ouaddai Kingdom over parts of what are now Chad and Sudan; and the newly created Union of South Africa will be established as a dominion of the British Empire.
In North America, the Mexican Revolution to oust dictator Porfirio Díaz begins, leading to a decade of civil war. In the USA, race riots erupt across much of the country on July 4, following African-American heavyweight boxer Jack Johnson's win against his white contender James J Jeffries.
For the last few years, when the vacation and holiday seasons come around and
the news stories start to dry up, I've looked back in time to previous centuries
to find something newsworthy. Today, please join me on a whistle stop tour 300
years back in time to the year 1709 ....
An usually cold weather front hit Northern Europe on January 6 (believed to be
the coldest period for 500 years). The Great Freeze lasted three months but the
effects were felt all year. The seas around the coast of Britain and Northern
France froze over, crops failed and in Paris alone 24,000 died. In London, the
Thames froze solid and markets took place on the ice. Some suggest that the
freeze was caused by volcanic eruptions of Mount Fuji in Japan and, to a lesser
extent, Santorini and Vesuvius in Europe.
Although
it was a very cold winter it was not entirely out of character – 1709 was one of
the 24 winters between 1408 and 1814 (a period broadly known as the "Little Ice
Age") in which the Thames froze in London. Although the people at the time
probably didn't think much of the weather, music lovers have reason to be
grateful for the Little Ice Age as Antonio Stradivari created his finest
instruments between 1698 and 1725 and it has been proposed that the particularly
cold climate caused the wood used in his violins to be denser than in warmer
periods, contributing to the tone of his instruments.
For the last few years, when the vacation and holiday seasons come around and
the news stories start to dry up, I've looked back in time to previous centuries
to find something newsworthy. Today, please join me on a whistle stop tour
400 years back in time to the year 1609 ....
The Renaissance is in full swing. While Galileo demonstrates his first
telescope to Venetian lawmakers and Cornelius Drebbel invents the thermostat,
Johannes Kepler is busy publishing his first two laws of planetary motion.
Meanwhile Henry Hudson is off adventuring, becoming the first European to see
Delaware Bay and the Hudson River. Not far away, seven ships arrive at the
Jamestown colony reporting the sad demise of their flagship, the Sea Venture,
wrecked off the coast of the uninhabited island of Bermuda. The
survivors, including writer William Strachey, eventually reach Virginia ten
months later in two small ships they built while marooned on the island.
Strachey's account of the wreck is believed to be the inspiration for
Shakespeare's The Tempest (1610-11).
Each year, as the holiday season comes around and news becomes thin on the ground, we look back into history for a snapshot of the news in centuries past .....
Each year, as the holiday season comes around and news becomes thin on the ground, we look back into history for a snapshot of the news in centuries past. This time we travel to 1808:
In the USA, the Theatre
St Philip opened in New Orleans. In Germany, Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe published the first part of Faust. In Britain, the
first
Royal Opera House in Covent Garden was destroyed by fire and Sir Walter
Scott published Marmion,
an epic poem about the Battle of Flodden Field. In France,
Francois Marie Charles
Fourier (credited by modern scholars with originating the word feminisme)
argued in his
Theory of the Four Movements that the extension of the liberty of women
was the general principle of all social progress, though he disdained 'equal
rights'. Followers of Fourier would go on to establish about 30 socialist
colonies based on his principles in various parts of the USA.
Each year, as the holiday season comes around and news becomes thin on the ground, we look back into history for a snapshot of the news in centuries past .....
1708 was a rather dull year for literature, at least from the perspective of modern-day readers looking for works by authors still well known today, but it was an important year for three historians who used their retirement to produce
notable works:
The first volume of Theologian Joseph Bingham's 10 volume Antiquities of the Christian Church was published; on its completion in 1722 it provided an exhaustive and methodical account of the antiquities of the Christian Church.
Theater critic and theologian Jeremy Collier published the first volume of his Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain - which, while controversial, became widely used.
Each year, as the holiday season comes around and the news stories start to dry up, we look back into history for a snapshot of the news in centuries past. This year, we start in 1608 ....
While the early settlers at Jamestown struggled for survival, London was a hive of dramatic endeavor:
Ben Jonson's The Masque of Beauty
and The Hue and Cry After Cupid were both published and performed for the first time. Thomas Heywood published The Rape of Lucrece; Thomas Middleton published The Family of Love, A Mad World, My Masters and A Trick to Catch the Old One;and William Shakespeare
published King Lear - to name but a few.
Elizabethan dramatist and pamphleteer, Thomas Dekker, was also in fine voice, publishing two tracts: The Dead Term and The Bellman of London; and considering that he claimed credit for 240 plays during his 60-year lifetime, it seems likely that he turned out a few plays as well.
By the time election day arrived, my election-habit had reach chronic
proportions. In the normal course of events I'm happy to catch up on the
news daily at most, and find that the world gets along perfectly well without me
following its every movement, but by November 4th this year I was an addict.
Not content with picking up the news every day or so, I'd moved to hourly, even
minute by minute checks - keeping screens open to key sites and refreshing them
feverishly every few minutes, just in case something, anything, had happened.
Book Club: Isn't that an Oxymoron?
Sandra Hofsommer said: I am much like you and often struggle to finish a book
I have to read when I have several others I w...
[More]
The Great Comet
Jane Austen's first book, Sense and Sensibility, is published. She will see three more books published before her untimely death six years later at the age of 42.
Percy Bysshe Shelley is in fine form, publishing a novel and a treatise on atheism. The latter results in him being expelled from Oxford. Married twice (having run away with both women when they were 16), fathering at least six children by three women, and burning through all his money, Shelley will drown eleven years later in dubious circumstances.
Africa is a patchwork of European colonies with just Liberia and Ethiopia remaining independent. Before the year is ended, Egypt will have seen Boutros Ghali, its first native-born prime minister, assassinated; France will be at war with the Ouaddai Kingdom over parts of what are now Chad and Sudan; and the newly created Union of South Africa will be established as a dominion of the British Empire.
An usually cold weather front hit Northern Europe on January 6 (believed to be
the coldest period for 500 years). The Great Freeze lasted three months but the
effects were felt all year. The seas around the coast of Britain and Northern
France froze over, crops failed and in Paris alone 24,000 died. In London, the
Thames froze solid and markets took place on the ice. Some suggest that the
freeze was caused by volcanic eruptions of Mount Fuji in Japan and, to a lesser
extent, Santorini and Vesuvius in Europe. 
Although
it was a very cold winter it was not entirely out of character – 1709 was one of
the 24 winters between 1408 and 1814 (a period broadly known as the "Little Ice
Age") in which the Thames froze in London. Although the people at the time
probably didn't think much of the weather, music lovers have reason to be
grateful for the Little Ice Age as Antonio Stradivari created his finest
instruments between 1698 and 1725 and it has been proposed that the particularly
cold climate caused the wood used in his violins to be denser than in warmer
periods, contributing to the tone of his instruments.
