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Happy anniversaries in 2009
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One of many anniversaries in 2009
This new year offers so very much to celebrate going forward -- including anniversaries going waaaay back. A sampling:
400th Anniversary
From New York to Canada, much of the Northeast will be celebrating the 400th anniversary of its exploration by both Henry Hudson and Samuel de Champlain in 1609.
Hudson once said, “I pray with all my heart … that my name be carved on the tablets of the sea.” The English explorer's prayer was most certainly answered in 1609 when he sailed into the river now known as the Hudson River. New York’s entire Hudson Valley Region is celebrating the 400th anniversary of Dutch exploration, led by Hudson who'd been hired by the Dutch East India Company.
A life-size replica of Hudson's ship "Half-Moon" is docked on the Hudson River In Albany, which is celebrating its Dutch history
and Hudson River Valley arts throughout the year.
Vermont began its quadricentennial celebrations of Champlain, “father of New France”, with a December 31, 2008 first night in Burlington. Vermont, part of the old "new France" before the state became part of New England, is holding dozens of festivities throughout 2009. July 2-14 in the Champlain Burlington Waterfront Festival, artists from across Vermont, New York, Quebec, and France will perform blues, rock, classical, Franco-American and Native American music. For other events, click here.
Bermuda was founded by accident, literally. The vessel Sea Venture, sent to Jamestown by the Virginia Company of London, shipwrecked at what's now St. Catherine's Beach. The violent storm was "The Tempest" in which Shakespeare refers to "the still-vexed Bermoothes". Thus began not only Bermuda, but also the so-called Bermuda triangle.
300th Anniversary
Birth of the ever-quotable Samuel Johnson, whose biography by James Boswell is better known than Johnson ever was. Stay tuned for celebrations of both throughout London.
Eau de cologne was created by Johann Maria Farina, an Italian living in Germany but used French to name his creation ("water of Cologne"). So why's it called "toilet water"? According to the manufacturer, Napoleon enjoyed the 1709 scent and in 1801 decreed that its "recipe" must be publicized. To keep the ingredients secret, Farina pronounced it mere "eau de toilette". Cologne is celebrating at the oldest fragrance factory still operating and Farina House, opposite Jülichs-place.
250th Anniversary
Birth of “Auld Lang Syne” (old long ago) poet Robert Burns. “O what a panick’s in thy beastie…” to go to Scotland for a myriad of events celebrating what its national poet termed “the fire of native genius”. Burns suppers are held across Scotland on his birthday January 25. Haggis, anyone? (Sorta like Scots chitterlings.) The year-long “Homecoming Scotland” festival highlights Burns, golf, and of course Scotch whiskey. The “Burns an’ a’ that! festival May 16-24 in his birthplace Alloway, Ayr will feature an “Ayrstrike” fishing contest, with about 200 anglers competing for a 4,000 pound sterling prize, and an “Ayrplay” battle of the bands. For “The Gathering 2009” festival July 25, clans will parade along Edinburg’s Historic Mile from the Palace of Holyrood to the Edinburgh Castle for the first time since Sir Walter Scott’s Royal Pageant of 1822.
200th Anniversary
Birth of Abraham Lincoln, as we all know by now and certainly should know. A few of the most notable observances, aside from Obama's Lincoln-esque train ride to Washington to be sworn in, Obama's using one of the Lincoln Bibles for the swearing in, there's the Library of Congress (LOC) exhibition, and the re-opening of Ford's Theater where Lincoln was assassinated. Ford's re-opening begins on February 3 with the world premiere of "The Heavens Are Hung In Black" that Ford's commissioned from award-winning playwright James Still. Ford's official re-opening ceremonies begin on February 11, the eve of Lincoln's birthday. The LOC exhibition opens on February 12.
The Lincoln Bible, in the Library of Congress collections, will be on display there in an exhibition entitled "With Malice Toward None: The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibition." After May 9, 2009, it will travel to five other U.S. cities.
Birth of Charles Darwin who devised the theory of evolution. He wrote "The Origin of Species" and "The Descent of Man" --and shares Lincoln's birthdate.
Birth of Edgar Allan Poe -- parties, exhibits, performances, will be held in Richmond at the Poe Museum where his birthday party will begin when the clock strikes midnight on January 19, throughout Virginia, in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and the Bronx, NY. Poe, who wrote of the “melancholy House of Usher”, spent some of his most prolific years in what he termed a “rose covered cottage” in Philadelphia’s Spring Garden section. He received a $100 prize for “The Gold Bug” penned there in 1843, but only $9 for “The Raven.” Poe wrote "Annabel Lee" in a wee Bronx cottage where he lived with his wife Virginia, who was 13 when she married her first cousin, and his mother-in-law. Poe-esquely creepy.
Birth of Mendelssohn. Child prodigy considered the 19th century equivalent of Mozart. Best known for "Wedding March", "Midsummer's Night Dream" Overture, and "Hark! the Herald Angels Sing", taken from one of Mendelssohn's contatas. Hark! he was Jewish. Nazis banned his music.
Death of Haydn. His "Creation Mass" will be played on the 200th anniversary of his death May 31 at the Bergkirke Church where he is buried in Eisenstadt, about 30 miles south of Vienna.
100th Anniversary
Explorer Adm. Robert Peary became the first person to reach the North Pole. If you can't take one of the many North Pole tours, perhaps you'll partake of the April 6 celebration in Peary's hometown Cressen, PA.
Serge Diaghilev, the world’s greatest ballet impresario, began his “Ballet Russes” which spread classical ballet throughout the world. If you can't go to Russia for a celebration, grand jete to Boston May 16-23 for its "Ballets Russes" festival.
90th Anniversary
The Versailles Treaty was signed, ending World War One. The treaty was drawn up at the Trianon Palace, now an elegant hotel that has just changed hands from Westin to Hilton Waldorf-Astoria Collection as Trianon Palace Versailles. The treaty's terms, many believe, helped lead to World War Two. So it's no surprise that the Trianon Palace served as Luftwaffe headquarters in German-occupied France, but later it became headquarters for the U.S. Army. Trianon Palace served as my headquarters the last time I visited Versailles. I felt like Marie Antoinette, or Queen Elizabeth who slept there. Even if you don't stay there, experience acclaimed chef Gordon Ramsay au Trianon or his brasserie La Veranda chez Trianon Palace.
The Bauhaus design school, considered avant-garde even today, will celebrate its 90th anniversary in Berlin, Weimar, and Dessau. An extensive exhibition “Model Bauhaus” (“Building School”) will run from July 22 to October 4 at the Walter Gropius Building in Berlin before moving to New York’s Museum of Modern Art where it will open on November 8 as "Bauhaus 1919-1933: workshops for modernity". Nazis forced the school to close in 1933, and several of its leaders emigrated to the U.S. Key Bauhaus members were its founder Gropius who designed Harvard's Graduate Center; Mies van der Rohe, best known for designing the Seagram Building in New York City and Lake Shore Drive Apartments in Chicago as well as the "Barcelona" chair; artists Vassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee whose retrospective exhibition "Cult of the Artist: the Klee Universe" continues through February 8 at Berlin's National Museum, and Lyonel Feininger.
Prohibition began with ratification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. Hope you celebrated the 75th anniversary of its repeal last December 5.
80th Anniversary
Valentine's Day gangland massacre in Chicago seems a slightly exaggerated harbinger of Governor Blagojevich’s demolishing Illinois Democrats. Anyway, forget Bugsie Moran and Scarface Capone, the best version of the Valentine’s Day Massacre is in “Some Like It Hot”, which celebrates its own 50th anniversary this year. As Osgood tells Jerry/Daphne, "Well, nobody’s perfect."
Stock market prices plummeted. U.S. securities lost $26 billion, marking the first financial disaster of the Great Depression. I wonder how that toto in 1929 dollars compares to last year’s $6.9 trillion wipe-out on Wall Street, according to a “Washington Post” story New Year’s Day 2009.
70th Anniversary
World War Two began when German soldiers attacked a Polish military base near Gdansk on September 1. Polish leaders and officials of other European nations are to meet at the Westerplatte base to commemorate the war’s outbreak at 4:45 A.M. on September 1. A monument on the site is inscribed, “No More War”.
Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refused to allow opera singer Marian Anderson to perform at the DAR's Constitution Hall. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the DAR in protest, writing “I am in complete disagreement with the attitude taken in refusing Constitution Hall to a great artist.” She wrote a milder version in her “My Day” newspaper column. The First Lady, the NAACP, and famed impresario Sol Hurok intervened, and Marian Anderson sang famously at the Lincoln Memorial before more than 75,000 people. Contralto Anderson said that she had not agreed to the Lincoln Memorial appearance “easily or quickly…I had become, whether I like it or not, a symbol, representing my people.”
“Gone with the Wind” premiered in Atlanta. Some'll think, “Great balls of fire” while others frankly won’t give a damn. If you do, Atlanta, Marietta, and Clayton, GA offer “Gone With the Wind” themed tours. Atlanta’s Gone With the Wind Museum even has the original set’s front door of Tara.
Sigmund Freud died. Pay homage to Big Sig, the "father of psychoanalysis" at his museum homes in Vienna and/or London with, of course, the couch used by all his psychoanalytic patients. To visit the Sigmund Freud Archives, go no farther than the Library of Congress in Washington.
60th Anniversary
Communist People's Republic of China formally proclaimed by Chairman Mao Zedong.
South Africa institutionalized apartheid. The sole parliamentarian to protest was Helen Suzman, for years the sole woman in South Africa's Parliament. For 13 years, she remained the only anti-apartheid member of its Parliament, and endured anti-semitic as well as anti-female insults. Suzman stood beside Nelson Mandela, the country's first black president, when he signed the new constitution in 1996. Suzman died January 1, 2009 at the age of 91.
Britain recognized the independence of the Republic of Ireland; Northern Ireland remained a part of the United Kingdom.
50th Anniversary
Fidel Castro’s Cuban revolution succeeded. He descended from the montanas near Santiago and proclaimed victory in the wee horas of January 1, 1959. Will President Obama tear down these trade and travel sanctions? Meanwhile, if you’re planning to visit, buena suerte, and here’s the State Department’s latest info.
Postmaster General A. E. Summerfield, who had dropped out of school at age 13, banned D. H. Lawrence’s “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” from the mails on grounds of obscenity. His ruling was reversed in 1960 by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Hello to "Goodbye Columbus", Philip Roth's first book, a novella with five short stories. It won the National Book Award and extensive critical acclaim, but also enmity among some Jews who resented his depiction of Jewish American society.
“Some Like It Hot” premiered, and is still one of the hottest films ever made.
Ditto "North by Northwest".
40th Anniversary
Woodstock concert in Woodstock, NY. Sex, drugs, rock ‘n roll, ‘n mud took over Woodstock, until then a quiet arts colony that dated back to the 19th century.
The "Stonewall Riots" in Greenwich Village sparked the gay rights movement. Celebrate at the Stonewall Inn on 53 Christopher Street. Whether or not you go, and whether or not you’re gay, you gotta read “Queer Street: The Rise and Fall of an American Culture, 1947-1985” (W.W. Norton) by James (Jimmy, not “Angela’s Ashes” James) McCourt.
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy pleaded guilty to leaving scene of fatal accident at Chappaquiddick, MA in which his former secretary Mary Jo Kopechne drowned. Kennedy pleaded guilty and received a two-month suspended sentence. The accident scene at Dyke Bridge attracts rubber-necking tourists.
Death of Jack Kerouac, co-founder of the Beat Generation and author of “On the Road”. But archives of the “Beatific Soul” live on, on-line in the “Treasures of the New York Public Library Video Series”.
Philip Roth’s “Portnoy’s Complaint” came out, bringing Jewish angst to a new high, or low. Oy vey.
30th Anniversary
Two of the world’s most infamous regimes – Pol Pot in Cambodia and the Shah of Iran -- fell in January 1979.
On January 7, Pol Pot’s genocidal rule in Cambodia ended. An estimated 1.5 million Cambodians were murdered or died of forced labor and starvation in Pol Pot’s “Killing Fields”. Even the area around wondrous Angkor Wat temple was a killing field. Monks chanted at each of the killing fields, and at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh, on January 7.
On January 16, the Shah fled Iran and Ayatollah Khomeini's radical Islamic revolutionary forces took over. In November, hundreds of Islamic militants stormed the U.S. Embassy in Teheran and took hostages. About 50 hostages were held for 444 days, before they were released on January 20, 1981. The State Department’s travel warning advises U.S. citizens "to carefully consider the risks of travel to Iran.”
20th Anniversary
Fall of Berlin Wall. Berlin celebrations continue from New Year’s Eve through the November 9 official anniversary. The fall of the wall, a crucial part of the Communist “Iron Curtain”, marked the end of the Cold War in Germany. At least 136 people had been killed at the 96-mile-long wall dividing East and West Germany. But these days, you can tour the wall on foot, on bicycle, or even in an old East German car, Trabant, called "Trabi". Almost a mile of the wall is emblazoned with commemorative paintings by 106 artists from around the world. Dubbed the "East Side Gallery", it's one of the world's largest open-air galleries. Among Berlin's fascinating museums dedicated to this history are the Mauer Museum at the former "Checkpoint Charlie" and the Stasi Museum of the former East German security police.
Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution. Communists relinquish political power.
Communism continues in China, where thousands were killed at Beijing's Tiananmen Square during a massive demonstration for democracy.
10th Anniversary
The US Senate, in impeachment proceedings against President Clinton, acquitted him and rejected censure. Visit the Capitol Building and its newly opened Capitol Visitor Center. Hope returns with the January 20 inauguration of President-elect Obama.
For more information, please click:
“The Timetables of History” by Bernard Grun (Simon and Schuster)
Year in History websites
infoplease 1900-2008
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