On this day:
1540
Thomas Cromwell is executed at the order of Henry VIII of England on charges of treason. Henry marries his fifth wife, Catherine Howard, on the same day.
1794
Maximilien Robespierre is executed by guillotine in Paris during the French Revolution.
1864
American Civil War: Battle of Ezra Church – Confederate troops make a third unsuccessful attempt to drive Union forces from Atlanta, Georgia.
1868
The 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is certified, establishing African-American citizenship and guaranteeing due process of law.
1914
World War I: Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia after Serbia rejects the conditions of an ultimatum sent by Austria on July 23 following the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand.
1942
World War II: Soviet leader Joseph Stalin issues Order No. 227 in response to alarming German advances into the Soviet Union. Under the order all those who retreat or otherwise leave their positions without orders to do so are to be immediately executed.
1943
World War II: Operation Gomorrah – The British bomb Hamburg causing a firestorm that kills 42,000 German civilians.
1996
The remains of a prehistoric man are discovered near Kennewick, Washington. Such remains will be known as the Kennewick Man.
2005
The Provisional Irish Republican Army calls an end to its thirty year long armed campaign in Northern Ireland.
***
Thomas Cromwell is executed at the order of Henry VIII of England on charges of treason. Henry marries his fifth wife, Catherine Howard, on the same day.
1794
Maximilien Robespierre is executed by guillotine in Paris during the French Revolution.
1864
American Civil War: Battle of Ezra Church – Confederate troops make a third unsuccessful attempt to drive Union forces from Atlanta, Georgia.
1868
The 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is certified, establishing African-American citizenship and guaranteeing due process of law.
1914
World War I: Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia after Serbia rejects the conditions of an ultimatum sent by Austria on July 23 following the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand.
1942
World War II: Soviet leader Joseph Stalin issues Order No. 227 in response to alarming German advances into the Soviet Union. Under the order all those who retreat or otherwise leave their positions without orders to do so are to be immediately executed.
1943
World War II: Operation Gomorrah – The British bomb Hamburg causing a firestorm that kills 42,000 German civilians.
1996
The remains of a prehistoric man are discovered near Kennewick, Washington. Such remains will be known as the Kennewick Man.
2005
The Provisional Irish Republican Army calls an end to its thirty year long armed campaign in Northern Ireland.
***
Billy Wagner and Whitey Ford are the only pitchers in the Hall of Fame who are shorter than 6 feet tall, and Wagner is the only pitcher from a Division III college (Ferrum College) to get to Cooperstown.
***
Thomas Cromwell was the son of a blacksmith.
***
Tyranny is not freedom just because you voted for it.
***
Tom Lehrer
Tom Lehrer died this weekend at 97. There was little notice of his passing, but he was a witty, irreverent guy who appealed to a segment of the older generation and, after significant success, simply faded away. One wonders if our culture became a self-parody, and there was nothing left to do.
The singer-songwriter died on Saturday at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, according to the New York Times.
Lehrer’s sardonic numbers, backed up by a dazzling prowess at the piano that reflected his love for up-tempo Broadway show tunes, enchanted audiences in the 1950s and 60s.
A child prodigy, he graduated from Harvard at 19 and later taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Well ahead of his time on issues including pollution and nuclear proliferation, Lehrer made his mark with biting humor and zany rhymes.
He was also wickedly funny on random subjects including murder, conjugal discord, chemistry, and his distaste for pigeons.
Poisoning Pigeons in the Park, one of his signature tunes, conjures up a couple enjoying a spring pastime of slaughtering pigeons with strychnine – “It just takes a smidgen!”
Another song, Folksong Army, mocked 1960s protesters.
But his activism was persistent, with songs including Who’s Next about nuclear weapons, and Pollution warning that: “You can use the latest toothpaste, then rinse your mouth with industrial waste.”
The seemingly bottomless well of sly, even cynical creativity captured audiences from 1953 until it appeared to go dry in 1965, although Lehrer briefly returned to performing in 1972 for a children’s public television show, The Electric Company.
Rumor had it that Lehrer stopped composing when his prophecies began coming true, or that he quit in protest over Henry Kissinger being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973.
But Lehrer, in an interview with the satirical news website The Onion in 2000, said he had “quit long before that happened”.
There was nothing abrupt about it, he said. “I figure I wrote 37 songs in 20 years, and that’s not exactly a full-time job. Every now and then I wrote something, and every now and then I didn’t. The second just outnumbered the first.”
He claimed to have gone “from adolescence to senility, trying to bypass maturity”.
While most of Lehrer’s compositions were original, one adaptation stood out for its genius: his dizzying 1959 recitation of the chemical elements in the periodic table (102 at the time) to the tune of A Modern Major General from the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta The Pirates of Penzance.
Born on 9 April, 1928 to a secular Jewish family, Lehrer grew up in Manhattan’s Upper East Side. He attended the prestigious Horace Mann and Loomis Chaffee preparatory schools before entering Harvard at 15, graduating magna cum laude with a degree in mathematics three years later.
He went on to teach mathematics at MIT as well as Harvard, Wellesley College, and the University of California, Santa Cruz. (from The Guardian)
Here are three songs with a little to offend just about everybody:
https://tomlehrersongs.com/wernher-von-braun/
https://tomlehrersongs.com/the-elements/
https://tomlehrersongs.com/the-vatican-rag/
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