On this day in 1926, the first feature-length motion picture with sound, Don Juan, starring the immortal John Barrymore was being shown at Warner Theatre (a.k.a. Piccadilly Theatre) in New York. A ticket cost $10.00, that’s approximately $130.00 in today’s dollars, to see the nearly three-hour-long spectacular. The first motion picture with sound was actually shown at the Paris Exposition of 1900.
It’s the birthday of Andy Warhol (1928-1987) known as the “Prince of Pop.” Warhol was one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. In 1961 a friend suggested that he paint something like a soup can. He did. In 1962 Warhol had his first art exhibit in a gallery in Los Angeles. He displayed 32 paintings of Campbell soup cans, one for each type of soup. Warhol sold the entire set to an art dealer for $1000. The dealer later sold the 32 small canvases for $15 million. A signed, numbered, and authenticated print of a Campbell Soup can be purchased for around $1,200. “An artist,” said Warhol, “is somebody who produces things people don’t need.”
President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the 1965 Voting Rights Act into law, thus turning the once solid Democratic South over to the Republican Party.
In 1945, the United States carried out what many consider to have been the greatest war crime of the Second World War. A B-29 bomber named the Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. The debate over the motive for dropping the bomb, and a second one on Nagasaki just three days later, will never end. The horror of it is vividly portrayed in John Hersey’s novel Hiroshima and in the graphic novel Barefoot Gen by Keiji Nakazawa, a survivor.
Finally, while thinking about the anniversary of the atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima, I was reminded of a USA program to explode an atomic bomb on the moon. After the Russians launched their Sputnik satellite in 1957, American military leaders became fearful that the Russians might do to us what we did to the Japanese. The result was a project called “A Study of Lunar Research Flights,” nicknamed “Project 119.” It was intended to impress the Soviet leaders with America’s military might. Physicist Leonard Reiffel was placed in charge of the project. He was assisted by a graduate astronomy student by the name of Carl Sagan. The event was to take place in 1959, but was abandoned, when someone suggested that it might possibly harm people on earth, other than the Japanese or Russians, we might assume.
Until next time, be good, do good, and always live under the mercy.
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