Saturday

Nov. 20, 1999

Paradise Lost, lines 639-656 "With thee Conversing"

by John Milton

Broadcast Date: SATURDAY: November 20, 1999

Poem: lines 639-656 from Paradise Lost: "With Thee Conversing" by John Milton.

On this day in 1945 the NAZI WAR CRIMES TRIALS AT NUREMBERG began. There were actually 12 Nuremberg trials in all, but the most famous was the Military Tribunal where the biggest names of Nazi Germany were on trial, including Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess, Martin Bormann, and others. Their trial lasted 10 months, and 12 death sentences were handed down, and three life imprisonments.

It was on this day in 1929 that Leo Reisman and his orchestra recorded "HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN" for Victor Records — three weeks after the stock market crashed and plunged the nation into the Great Depression.

On this day in 1929, the NBC Blue network began broadcasting the 15-minute show "THE RISE OF THE GOLDBERGS" with Gertrude Berg as Molly, the quintessential Jewish mama, famous for one-liners like "Button up your neck. It's cold outside." It was on the air until 1945 and was eventually titled just "The Goldbergs". When it made the jump to TV, Mrs. Berg opened each show with, "Yoo hoo, Mrs. Bloom," a phrase that became a national cliché.

It's the birthday in Springs, South Africa, 1923, of writer NADINE GORDIMER, who won the 1991 Nobel Prize for her 16 short story collections and 13 novels — nearly all of which condemned the South African government's former racial policies of apartheid. "I was brought up in that little mining town of Springs, and if you have any intelligence at all, you begin to question your values. Do I go to the cinema and we're all white? Do I use the library, and no blacks do? Is it really because they don't read or they can't read? Is it really because they wouldn't like to go to the movies? You realize this isn't natural." Unlike most South African writers after the war, Gordimer got all her schooling in South Africa, not in England, and from her very first work began criticizing apartheid — rare for anyone at the time, but particularly so for a white woman in her country.

It's the birthday of astronomer EDWIN POWELL HUBBLE, born in the town of Marshfield, in southern Missouri, 1889 — the man who discovered that other galaxies are receding from ours, that the universe is expanding, and for whom the Hubble Space Telescope is named.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®

 

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