Jan. 24, 2000
How Many Nights
Poem: "How Many Nights" by Galway Kinnell from his Selected Poems published by Houghton Mifflin Co.
January 24 is the feast day of Saint Francis de Sales, the patron saint of writers and journalists. At 35 he was appointed Catholic bishop of Geneva, which in those days was dominated by followers of John Calvin. De Sales is said to have won half the city back to Catholicism by the eloquence of his writings.
In 1984 on this date, the Apple company unveiled its long-awaited Macintosh personal computer. It weighed 17 pounds, had 128 kilobytes of internal memory, and sold for $2,495 without a printer. It was completely incompatible with IBMís personal computers.
On this day in 1962, Franco is Truffautís film Jules and Jim premiered in Paris. Part of the "Nouvelle Vague" (or new wave) of French cinema, Jules and Jim starred Oskar Werner and Henri Serre, both in love with Jeanne Moreau.
On this day in 1935, beer was first marketed in cans, rather than bottles. It was prepared by the Krueger Brewing Company of Newark, New Jersey.
Itís the birthday of zoologist Desmond Morris, born in Purton, Wiltshire, England (1928), who popularized the field of zoology with his book The Naked Ape (1967).
Itís the birthday of novelist Edith Wharton, born in New York City (1862)who wrote psychological novels that observed her high-society world with stinging irony. After 28 years of unhappy marriage, she divorced, never remarried, and spent the rest of her life in France. During World War One, she made heroic efforts to help orphans and the homeless there. She was buried in Versailles. Her novels include The House of Mirth (1905), Ethan Frome (1911), and The Age of Innocence (1920Pulitzer Prize).
On this day in 1848, gold was discovered along the American River in northern California by carpenter James Marshall, who was helping build a sawmill for John Sutter. The two men tried keeping their find a secret, but word soon got out, and the gold rush of 1849 was underway. The influx of desperate gold speculators, far from making Sutter rich, served only to overrun his holdings with squatters. They stole his goods and livestock, and within 3 years he was bankrupt.
Itís the birthday of writer and composer ĎAmadeusí (Ernst Theodor Wilhelm) Hoffmann, born in Konigsberg, Prussia (1776). Although trained as a lawyer, he soon turned to writing, and became known for creating supernatural, sinister characters. His stories inspired opera composer Jacques Offenbach, who used them in The Tales of Hoffmann (1881), taking the writer as his central character. Tchaikovskyís ballet The Nutcracker (1892) is also based on a Hoffmann story.
Itís the birthday of comedic playwright Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, born in Paris (1732)who wrote The Barber of Seville (1775) and The Marriage of Figaro (1784)both featuring a scheming valet named Figaro.
Itís the birthday of playwright and poet William Congreve, born in West Yorkshire, England (1670)who gave us such comedies of manners as The Old Bachelor (1693), The Double Dealer (1693), and his best known play, The Way of the World (1700), with its line, "Say what you will, ítis better to be left than never to have been loved."
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