Christopher Marlowe on This Day in History

 

This day in history: Christopher Marlowe was born on this day in 1564.

Christopher Marlowe, also known as Kit Marlowe was an English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe is among the most famous of the Elizabethan playwrights. Some scholars believe that he greatly influenced William Shakespeare, who was baptised in the same year as Marlowe and later succeeded him as the pre-eminent Elizabethan playwright.

Did you know: Christopher Marlowe and Sir Walter Raleigh among others were in a group called The School of Night. The School of Night was a group of atheists. Anyone who was an atheist at that time were considered enemies of God and the state, by association.

One wonders if the Elizabethan occultist John Dee and Christopher Marlowe knew each other. Shakespeare, who knew Dee, hints in Love's labours Lost of a "School of Night". Shakespeare learned of Giordano Bruno from Dee, and made him the model for magus in the Tempest.

 Marlowe died violently in 1593 at the young age of 29.

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"Theme from a Summer Place" on This Day in History

 

This day in history: "Theme from A Summer Place", by Percy Faith's orchestra, hit No. 1 on this day in 1960 and stayed there for nine weeks, making it the most popular song of 1960.

The song is an instrumental pop song composed by Max Steiner. In 1960, Billboard ranked Faith's version as the number one song of the year. The song remains the longest-running number one instrumental in the history of the Hot 100. It is also the first instrumental and movie theme to win a Grammy's Record of the Year award.

Steiner passed away in 1971, and Percy Faith passed away in 1976.

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Guitarist Tony Iommi on This Day in History

 

This day in history: Tony Iommi was born on this day in 1948. He co-founded the pioneering heavy metal band Black Sabbath, and was the band's guitarist, leader, primary composer, and sole continuous member for over five decades. Iommi was ranked number 13 in Rolling Stone magazine's 2023 list of greatest guitarists of all time.

On his last day of work in a sheet metal factory, as a teenager, Iommi lost the tips of the middle and ring fingers of his right hand in an accident. This led to him having to create makeshift thimbles and tuning his guitar down making it easier to play while also giving the band a unique sound. He briefly left Black Sabbath (then known as Earth) in 1968 to join Jethro Tull, but did not record any material with the band, and subsequently returned to Black Sabbath in 1969. In 2000, he released his first solo album Iommi, followed by 2005's Fused, which featured his former bandmate Glenn Hughes. After releasing Fused, he formed Heaven & Hell, which disbanded shortly after the death of Ronnie James Dio in 2010 (they toured on Black Sabbath songs when Dio was in the band but changed the name for legal reasons).

In 2011, Iommi published his autobiography, entitled Iron Man: My Journey Through Heaven and Hell with Black Sabbath. 

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Pluto on This Day in History

 

This day in history: On this day in 1930, Pluto was discovered by Arizona Observatory astronomer Clyde Tombaugh.

The name 'Pluto' was mythologically appropriate: the god Pluto was one of six surviving children of Saturn, and the others had already all been chosen as names of major or minor planets (his brothers Jupiter and Neptune, and his sisters Ceres, Juno and Vesta). Both the god and the planet inhabited "gloomy" regions, and the god was able to make himself invisible, as the planet had been for so long.

The name 'Pluto' was soon embraced by wider culture. In 1930, Walt Disney was apparently inspired by it when he introduced for Mickey Mouse a canine companion named Pluto, although Disney animator Ben Sharpsteen could not confirm why the name was given. In 1941, Glenn T. Seaborg named the newly created element plutonium after Pluto, in keeping with the tradition of naming elements after newly discovered planets, following uranium, which was named after Uranus, and neptunium, which was named after Neptune.

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Libertarian Thinker Frank Chodorov on This Day in History

 

This Day In History: Frank Chodorov, a libertarian thinker, was born on this day in 1887. He wrote a book that became an American classic, _Income Tax: The Root of All Evil_. 

He also wrote: "Freedom is essentially a condition of inequality, not equality. It recognizes as a fact of nature the structural differences inherent in man – in temperament, character, and capacity – and it respects those differences. We are not alike and no law can make us so."

Mises.org writes: "Frank Chodorov was an extraordinary thinker and writer, and hugely influential in the 1950s. He wrote what became an American classic arguing that the income tax, more than any other legislative change in American history, made it possible to violate individual rights, one of the founding principles.

He argues that income taxes are different from other forms because they deny the right of private property and presume government control over all things."

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Heating Homes with Coal on This Day in History

 

Jesse Fell burned anthracite on an open grate as an experiment in heating homes with coal on this day in 1808.

Anthracite, also known as hard coal and black coal, is a hard, compact variety of coal that has a submetallic lustre. It has the highest carbon content, the fewest impurities, and the highest energy density of all types of coal and is the highest ranking of coals.

Anthracite was first experimentally burned as a residential heating fuel in the US on 11 February 1808, by Judge Jesse Fell in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on an open grate in a fireplace. Anthracite differs from wood in that it needs a draft from the bottom, and Judge Fell proved with his grate design that it was a viable heating fuel. In spring 1808, John and Abijah Smith shipped the first commercially mined load of anthracite down the Susquehanna River from Plymouth, Pennsylvania, marking the birth of commercial anthracite mining in the United States. From that first mine, production rose to an all-time high of over 100 million tons in 1917.

These days, "coal is enjoying a renaissance the likes of which it has not seen since the industrial revolution. In addition to soaring coal power use in the US (after the sector was left nearly for dead under Obama), China, the world’s biggest coal consumer, is expanding production of the fuel and its use in power generation, spooked by shortages last year that caused electricity cuts and outages throughout the country, energy experts say.

India is also leaning hard on coal as energy demand increases. The nation’s coal-power generation hit a record in April, said Rahul Tongia, a senior fellow at New Delhi-based think tank the Centre for Social and Economic Progress.

Domestic coal production in China and India helped drive a 10% increase in global investment in 2021, the International Energy Agency reported last month. The IEA projects another 10% increase this year as China and India try to stave off shortages." Source

“The developing world overwhelmingly uses fossil fuels because that is by far the lowest-cost way for them to get reliable energy. Unreliable solar and wind can’t come close. That’s why China and India have hundreds of new coal plants in development.” Alex Epstein on Twitter

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The St. Scholastica's Day Riot on This Day in History

 

This day in history: The St Scholastica Day riot took place in Oxford, England, on this day in 1355, Saint Scholastica's Day. The disturbance began when two students from the University of Oxford complained about the quality of wine served to them in the Swindlestock Tavern, which stood on Carfax, in the centre of the town. The students quarreled with the taverner; the argument quickly escalated to blows. The inn's customers joined in on both sides, and the resulting melee turned into a riot. The violence started by the bar brawl continued over three days, with armed gangs coming in from the countryside to assist the townspeople. University halls and students' accommodation were raided and the inhabitants murdered; there were some reports of clerics being scalped. Around 30 townsfolk were killed, as were up to 63 members of the university.

Violent disagreements between townspeople and students had arisen several times previously, and 12 of the 29 coroners' courts held in Oxford between 1297 and 1322 concerned murders by students. The University of Cambridge was established in 1209 by scholars who left Oxford following the lynching of two students by the town's citizens. 

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