Poem: "Love's Emblems," by John Fletcher (1579 - 1625).
On this day in 1933, the Nazis held a huge BOOK BURNING near the University of Berlin. Hitler had only been in power a few months, and his propaganda minister Josef Goebbels staged the fire to rid libraries of books he said struck "at the root of German thought." Near midnight on May 10th he and hundreds of University of Berlin students raided the library of books by authors such as Bertolt Brecht, Thomas Mann, Freud, and Einstein, threw them in a pile, and burned them.
It's the anniversary of the ASTOR PLACE RIOT, in New York City, 1849. It grew out of a feud between two actors, William Macready from England, and Edwin Forrest, an American, who had a difference of opinion about which one of them was the better actor. The feud simmered from 1836 to 1849 when, on the evening of May 10, a mob stormed the Astor Place Opera House in New York, where Macready was appearing in Macbeth. The militia was called in and in the end 23 people were killed in the melee. The Museum of the City of New York has an exhibit on the Astor Place Riot through October.
Broadcast Date: TUESDAY: May 11, 1999
Poem: "Berryman," by W. S. Merwin, from Opening the Hand (Atheneum, 1983).
It's the birthday in 1904, Figueras, a town in northeastern Spain, of surrealist painter SALVADOR DALI. His parents had a boy before him, also named Salvador, but he died at the age of two, and Dali once said, "All the eccentricities that I commit, I do because I wish to prove to myself that I am not the dead brother, but the living one."
It's the birthday in rural Sheridan county, in the sandhills of northwestern Nebraska, 1901, of MARI SANDOZ, author of the six-volume Great Plains series. Her parents were Swiss immigrants who settled in Sheridan county in the late 1800s. In the 1920s she began working for the Nebraska state historical society and researching the lives of Native Americans. She wrote the Great Plains series of books that made her famous, a series that included the 1942 biography, Crazy Horse, and the 1954 Buffalo Hunters.
It's the birthday of IRVING BERLIN, the man who wrote "Blue Skies," "God Bless America," "White Christmas," and about 1,500 other songs. He was born Israel Baline in 1888, in the Russian village of Tyumin. He published his first song when he was 19. Because of a printing error, his name appeared on the sheet music as "I. Berlin" and he kept it. He died in 1989 at the age of 101.
Broadcast Date: WEDNESDAY: May 12, 1999
Poem: "The Jumblies," by Edward Lear (1812 - 1888).
It's the birthday in Belleville, Ontario, 1921, of FARLEY MOWAT, author of Never Cry Wolf, People of the Deer, and other books about the Canadian north.
It's the birthday in 1828, London, of poet and painter DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI, founder of the group of artists called the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which sought to reform the sentimental style of Victorian painting by returning to the realism of the style dominant in the period before the 16th-century painter Raphael.
It's the birthday in 1812, London, of the painter and poet EDWARD LEAR, best known for his nonsense poems and limericks. Lear was the youngest of 21 children, and began drawing animals for illustrated books when he was a teenager. He became one of Victorian England's favorite painters, particularly of landscapes, and only started writing poems so he'd have something to go along with the sketches he made for the grandchildren of his patron, the Earl of Derby.
Broadcast Date: THURSDAY: May 13, 1999
Poem: "The Sleepy Giant," by Charles E. Carryl (1841-1920).
It's the birthday in Washington, D.C., 1944, of ARMISTEAD MAUPIN, author of Tales of the City, a series of novels about life in a San Francisco rooming.
It's the birthday in 1940, Boston, of short-story writer and novelist, RACHEL INGALLS, author of The Pearlkillers, The End of Tragedy, and her best-known book, Mrs. Caliban, about a woman who escapes her deteriorating marriage for an affair with an amphibious creature named Larry.
DAPHNE DU MAURIER was born in London this day in 1907, the author of the 1938 novel Rebecca, a romance set in a Cornwall mansion, as well as Jamaica Inn, Frenchman's Creek, and her short story "The Birds".
ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY, outside the nation's capital, opened up on this day in 1864 on property once belonging to the Civil War general Robert E. Lee. When Lee refused command of the Union army and sided instead with the Confederacy, Northerners seized his home, and Arlington was set aside as a burial ground for Union soldiers.
The MEXICAN-AMERICAN WAR began on this day in 1846, a dispute that actually began the year before when the U.S. annexed Texas. Mexico viewed the annexation as a land grab, and immediately severed relations with the U.S.. President James Polk sent an emissary to Mexico City, but the Mexicans refused to see him, and Polk then ordered the U.S. army southward. Shooting started in April, 1846, and when it ended about two years later, Mexico ceded to the U.S. the land now in New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, California, Texas, and western Colorado.
It's the birthday in London, 1842, of SIR ARTHUR SULLIVAN, one-half of the operetta-writing team of Gilbert and Sullivan. Sullivan tried his hand at comic opera when he was in his mid-20s, and had a little success at it, which led him to hook up with the writer W.S. Gilbert in 1871. Their first collaboration, Thespis, flopped on opening night. Four years passed before they worked together again, and their next operetta, Trial by Jury, was a hit, and they went on to create H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, Patience, Iolanthe, Princess Ida, The Mikado, Ruddigore, and others — about one a year through the 1870s and '80s.
Broadcast Date: FRIDAY: May 14, 1999
Poem: "To Daffodils," by Robert Herrick (1591 - 1674).
It was on this date in 1948, 51 years ago, that David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the STATE OF ISRAEL, just eight hours before the British Mandate over Palestine was set to expire.
It's the birthday of jazz drummer ZUTTY SINGLETON, born in the little town of Bunkie, Louisiana, 1898, about 120 miles northwest of New Orleans. His real name was Arthur James, but he picked up the name Zutty when he was still an infant, a Creole word that means "cute."
LEWIS AND CLARK set out from St. Louis on this day in 1804 on their great exploration of the West, which was, at the time, a big blank spot on the map. The idea to explore it came from President Thomas Jefferson, who picked Meriwether Lewis, and Lewis' friend, William Clark, to lead the 40-man group he dubbed "The Corps of Discovery". Lewis and Clark planned to travel up the Missouri as far as the Rocky Mountains, then cross to the Columbia and descend to the Pacific-they thought it would take about a year, but in the end it took two and a half years to make the round trip.
It's the anniversary of the 1607 founding of JAMESTOWN, the first permanent British settlement in North America, when 104 men landed on a peninsula in the James River, 60 miles upriver from the Chesapeake Bay.
Broadcast Date: SATURDAY: May 15, 1999
Poem: "Virtue," by George Herbert (1593 - 1633).
It's the birthday in Augusta, Georgia, 1930, of the Pop artist, JASPER JOHNS. He grew up in South Carolina and moved to New York in the 1950s, where he started making a series of paintings of the American flag.
It's the birthday in Indian Creek, Texas, 1890, of KATHERINE ANNE PORTER, author of the 1962 novel, A Ship of Fools, and dozens of short stories that earned her the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award in 1966. Out of all her writing, she said her favorite was "Flowering Judas," a 12-page short story about a young woman named Laura living in Mexico after a political revolution.
It's the birthday of EMILY FOLGER, in Ironton, Ohio, 1858, who with her husband Henry Folger founded the Shakespeare archive in Washington, D.C., the Folger Library. Henry was head of the Standard Oil Company from 1911 to 1928, and in their spare time, he and Emily collected manuscripts and artwork. When Henry died in 1930, Emily oversaw the construction and management of the Folger Shakespeare Library, including nearly 100,000 pieces they donated to it.
It's the birthday in Syracuse, New York, 1856, of the creator of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, FRANK BAUM. He came from a wealthy oil family, but lost the family fortune in the 1880s and moved out to Aberdeen, South Dakota. He had three sons, and used to amuse them by making up stories, including The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which came out in 1900. He wrote more Oz books in the next decade, and disappointed his readers in 1910 by saying The Emerald City of Oz was the last one he'd write. But in 1914 he picked up the series again, and turned out one Oz book a year till he died in 1919.
Broadcast Date: SUNDAY: May 16, 1999
Poem: "Home on the Range," folksong.
It's the birthday in 1804, Billerica, Massachusetts of the teacher and publisher, ELIZABETH PALMER PEABODY, who opened her own school and began teaching when she was just 16. Two years later she opened another in Boston, and made her name by bringing the whole notion of early childhood education to America. In 1860 she began opening kindergartens, and wrote and edited a magazine called the Kindergarten Messenger.
It was on this day in 1868 that PRESIDENT ANDREW JOHNSON escaped impeachment by a single vote. Johnson took office when Lincoln was killed in April, 1865. After the Civil War, he battled with Republicans over reconstruction policy, and the whole thing came to a head when Johnson fired his Secretary of War, the Republican Edwin Stanton, allegedly breaking a law which required the president to get Congressional approval for such a dismissal. The House voted eleven articles of impeachment against him, the first time in the nation's history. The Senate tried Johnson in the spring of 1868 and on May 16 acquitted him by a single vote.
It's the birthday in the Bronx, 1912, of writer and broadcaster STUDS TERKEL, known for his many books of oral history—interviews with everyday people about their experiences, such as Hard Times; The Good War (which won a Pulitzer); and probably his best-known book, the 1974 Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do. He got his start doing radio interviews in the 1930s on WGN in Chicago, and moved to WFMT in the 1940s. Right now he's a scholar-in-residence at the Chicago Historical Society.
