HIRAM BINGHAM III, REDISCOVERING 'MACHU PICCHU'

Today, The Grandma has received wonderful news of one of her closest friends, Joseph de Ca'th Lon, who is in Peru visiting the Machu Picchu Inca citadel. They have been talking by Meet and Joseph, has been explaining to The Grandma the latest studies about this amazing place that was rediscovered by Hiram Bingham III on a day like today in 1911.

Hiram Bingham III (November 19, 1875-June 6, 1956) was an American academic, explorer, and politician. He made public the existence of the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu in 1911 with the guidance of local indigenous farmers.

Later, Bingham served as Governor of Connecticut for a single day, the shortest term in history, and then as a member of the United States Senate. 

Bingham was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, the son of Clara Brewster and Hiram Bingham II (1831–1908), an early Protestant missionary to the Kingdom of Hawai'i, the grandson of Hiram Bingham I and Sybil Moseley Bingham, earlier missionaries. He attended O'ahu College, now known as Punahou School, from 1882 to 1892.

Bingham went to the United States in his teens in order to complete his education, entering Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1894.

Bingham earned a B.A. degree from Yale College in 1898, a degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1900, where he took one of the first courses on Latin American history offered in the United States, and a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1905.

More information: Smithsonian Magazine

Since Harvard at the time did not have a specialist in Latin American history, Edward Gaylord Bourne of Yale served as the examiner for Bingham's qualifying exams. While at Yale, Bingham was a member of Acacia fraternity. He taught history and politics at Harvard and then served as preceptor under Woodrow Wilson at Princeton University.

Princeton did not much favour Latin American history, so in 1907, when Yale sought a replacement for Bourne, who had died an early death, it appointed Bingham as a lecturer in South American history.

Bingham was one of the pioneers of teaching and research on Latin American history in the U.S. In 1908, he published an assessment of the field's prospects, The Possibilities of South American History and Politics as a Field for Research, in which he surveyed library and archival resources in the U.S. as well as in South America. From 1924, he was a member of the Acorn Club.

Bingham was not a trained archaeologist. Yet it was during Bingham's time as a lecturer and professor in South American history at Yale that he rediscovered the largely forgotten Inca city of Machu Picchu.

More information: Time

In 1908, he had served as a delegate to the First Pan American Scientific Congress at Santiago, Chile. On his way home via Peru, a local prefect convinced him to visit the pre-Columbian city of Choquequirao.

Bingham published an account of this trip in Across South America; an account of a journey from Buenos Aires to Lima by way of Potosí, with notes on Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, and Peru.

Bingham was thrilled by the prospect of unexplored Inca cities, and organized the 1911 Yale Peruvian Expedition, one of the objectives of which was to search for the last capital of the Incas.

Guided by locals, he rediscovered and correctly identified both Vitcos (then called Rosaspata) and Vilcabamba (then called Espíritu Pampa), which he named Eromboni Pampa, but did not correctly recognize Vilcabamba as the last capital, instead continuing onward and misidentifying Machu Picchu as the Lost City of the Incas. 

Decades later, Bingham's oversight was rectified by the Andean explorer Vince Lee, whose detailed researches proved that Vilcabamba was indeed the Incas' last capital.

On July 24, 1911, Melchor Arteaga led Bingham to Machu Picchu, which had been largely forgotten by everybody except the small number of people living in the immediate valley, possibly including two local missionaries named Thomas Payne and Stuart McNairn whose descendants claim that they had already climbed to the ruins in 1906. Also, the Cusco explorers Enrique Palma, Gabino Sanchez, and Agustín Lizarraga are said to have arrived at the site in 1901.

Bingham returned to Peru in 1912, 1914, and 1915 with the support of Yale and the National Geographic Society.

In The Lost City of the Incas (1948), Bingham related how he came to believe that Machu Picchu housed a major religious shrine and served as a training centre for religious leaders.

Modern archaeological research has since determined that the site was not a religious centre but a royal estate to which Inca leaders and their entourage repaired during the Andean summer. A key element of the expeditions' legacy are the collections of exotic animals, antiquities, and human skeletal remains. These objects exposed the modern world to a new view of ancient Peru and allowed 20th-century interpreters to interpret Machu Picchu as a lost city that Bingham scientifically discovered.

Bingham merged his reliance on prospecting by local huaqueros with the notion that science had a sovereign claim on all artefacts that might contribute to the accumulation of knowledge.

Yale University in 2012 began returning to Peru thousands of objects Bingham took to Yale from Macchu Picchu by permission of a decree by the Peruvian government. Peru argued that the objects were only loaned to Yale, not given.

Machu Picchu has become one of the major tourist attractions in South America, and Bingham is recognized as the man who brought the site to world attention, although many others helped. The switchback-filled road that carries tourist buses to the site from the Urubamba River is called Carretera Hiram Bingham (the Hiram Bingham Highway).

Bingham has been cited as one possible basis for the character Indiana Jones. His book Lost City of the Incas became a bestseller upon its publication in 1948.

Peru has long sought the return of the estimated 40,000 artefacts, including mummies, ceramics, and bones, that Bingham excavated and exported from Machu Picchu.

More information: Connecticut History

On September 14, 2007, an agreement was made between Yale University and the Peruvian government for the objects' return.

On April 12, 2008, the Peruvian government said it had revised previous estimates of 4,000 pieces up to 40,000.

Soon after Bingham announced the existence of Machu Picchu others came forward claiming to have seen the city first, such as the British missionary Thomas Payne and a German engineer named J. M. von Hassel.

Recent discoveries have put forth a new claimant, a German named Augusto Berns who bought land opposite the Machu Picchu mountain in the 1860s and then tried to raise money from investors to plunder nearby Incan ruins. An 1874 map shows the site of Machu Picchu.

On June 6, 1956, Bingham died at his Washington, D.C. home. He was interred at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

More information: Machu Picchu Trek

Machu Picchu, Machu Pikchu in Quechua, is a 15th-century Inca citadel, located in the Eastern Cordillera of southern Peru, on a 2,430-metre mountain ridge.

It is located in the Machupicchu District within Urubamba Province above the Sacred Valley, which is 80 kilometres northwest of Cuzco. The Urubamba River flows past it, cutting through the Cordillera and creating a canyon with a tropical mountain climate.

Most archaeologists believe that Machu Picchu was constructed as an estate for the Inca emperor Pachacuti (1438–1472). Often mistakenly referred to as the Lost City of the Incas, it is the most familiar icon of Inca civilization.

The Incas built the estate around 1450 but abandoned it a century later at the time of the Spanish conquest. Although known locally, it was not known to the Spanish during the colonial period and remained generally unknown to the outside world until American historian Hiram Bingham brought it to international attention in 1911.

Machu Picchu was built in the classical Inca style, with polished dry-stone walls. Its three primary structures are the Intihuatana, the Temple of the Sun, and the Room of the Three Windows. Most of the outlying buildings have been reconstructed in order to give tourists a better idea of how they originally appeared. By 1976, 30% of Machu Picchu had been restored and restoration continues.

Machu Picchu was declared a Peruvian Historic Sanctuary in 1981 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983.

More information: UNESCO

In 2007, Machu Picchu was voted one of the New Seven Wonders of the World in a worldwide internet poll.

In the Quechua language, machu means old or old person, while pikchu means either portion of coca being chewed or pyramid, pointed multi-sided solid; cone. Thus, the name of the site is sometimes interpreted as old mountain.

Machu Picchu is believed by Richard L. Burger to have been built in the 1450s. Construction appears to date from two great Inca rulers, Pachacutec Inca Yupanqui (1438-1471) and Túpac Inca Yupanqui (1472-1493).

There is a consensus among archaeologists that Pachacutec ordered the construction of the royal estate for himself, most likely after a successful military campaign.

Though Machu Picchu is considered to be a royal estate, surprisingly, it would not have been passed down in the line of succession. Rather, it was used for 80 years before being abandoned, seemingly because of the Spanish Conquests in other parts of the Inca Empire. It is possible that most of its inhabitants died from smallpox introduced by travellers before the Spanish conquistadors arrived in the area.

More information: Machu Picchu

The ruins of Machu Picchu are perched
on top of a steep ridge in the most inaccessible corner
of the most inaccessible section of the central Andes.
No part of the highlands of Peru has been better
defended by natural bulwarks -a stupendous canyon whose rim
is more than a mile above the river, whose rock is granite,
and whose precipices are frequently a thousand feet sheer.

Hiram Bingham III

CARLOS PAREDES, THE GREAT PORTUGUESE GUITARIST

Today, The Grandma has been relaxing and listening to some music at home. She has chosen Carlos Paredes, the virtuoso Portuguese guitar player and composer, who died on a day like today in 2004. 

The Grandma loves fado, and she is a great fan of Mísia. She discovered Carlos Paredes thanks to the Catalan-Portuguese artist, and she has wanted to remember and enjoy both of them.

Carlos Paredes (16 February 1925-23 July 2004) was a virtuoso Portuguese guitar player and composer.

He is regarded as one of the greatest players of Portuguese guitar of all-time.

Born in Coimbra, Portugal, in a family with a long tradition of guitar playing, he was taught to play the Portuguese guitar by his father, Artur Paredes. He composed numerous soundtracks for cinema and theatre, such as the soundtrack for the Portuguese film Os Verdes Anos (1963), which contains his famous piece Canção Verde Anos. He released several recordings as a solo artist and performed in numerous countries worldwide.

Besides his music career, Paredes also worked in the public service for most of his life. In 1958, during Portugal's dictatorial Estado Novo regime, he was imprisoned for 18 months for joining the Portuguese Communist Party, at the time an illegal organization.

More information: Rate Your Music

Carlos Paredes was born in Coimbra on 16 February 1925. His father was Artur Paredes, an acclaimed player of Portuguese guitar from Coimbra. His grandfather Gonçalo Paredes, his great-uncle Manuel Paredes and his great-grandfather António Paredes were also guitar players.

Around 1934, aged 9, Paredes and his family moved to Lisbon. He did his primary education at the João de Deus School, and after attended the Passos Manuel Lyceum. While attending the lyceum, he had violin and piano lessons. In 1943, he entered the Industrial Course in Instituto Superior Técnico, but was enrolled for only one year.

He started playing guitar when he was 4 years-old, taught by his father. At age 9, he began accompanying his father on the guitar, in his father's concerts. At age 14, Carlos and Artur Paredes started participating on a weekly show in the Emissora Nacional de Radiodifusão, Portugal's public national radio broadcaster, a show that was created by Artur Paredes himself.

In 1949, he became a public service worker, a job he would retire from only later in life, in November 1986. He worked in the radiography archive of the Hospital de São José, in Lisbon, while maintaining his musical career.

Paredes grew up in an environment of discreet resistance and political opposition to António Salazar's Estado Novo regime.

In 1958, he became a member of the Portuguese Communist Party, which at the time was an illegal organization in Portugal.

In the morning of 26 September 1958, he was arrested by PIDE agents in his workplace in Hospital de São José, on the accusation of belonging to an illegal political party opposing the government.

He was kept imprisoned for 18 months. During his time in prison, he composed music in his head. According to some sources, people in the prison thought that Paredes was going insane, walking around his cell pretending to play the guitar, when in fact he was composing. After his release from prison, he was suspended from his job in the hospital and worked for some years as a delegate of medical propaganda.

After the Carnation Revolution in Portugal, like others who had been political prisoners during the Estado Novo regime, Paredes was seen as a hero. He disliked this status and preferred not to talk about his time in prison, saying that there were people who suffered more than him. He was reinstated to his previous job in the Hospital de São José shortly after the revolution.

Paredes remained a member of the Portuguese Communist Party until his death.

Paredes' first release was a self-titled EP in 1957. He was accompanied by Fernando Alvim on the classical guitar. After this first record, the musical partnership between Paredes and Alvim would last for more than 20 years.

During the 1960s, Paredes composed the soundtracks for numerous Portuguese films. He composed the soundtrack for the 1963 film Os Verdes Anos, directed by Paulo Rocha. The piece Canção Verdes Anos, which is part of this soundtrack and was also included in his first studio album, became one of his most recognizable works.

More information: Chicago Reader

In 1970, he released a collaboration album with Cecília de Melo, titled Meu País. 

In 1971, he released his second solo album, Movimento Perpétuo.

In 1982, his piece Danças Para Uma Guitarra was choreographed by Vasco Wellenkamp for the Gulbenkian Ballet.

In 1983, Paredes released the live album Concerto em Frankfurt, recorded in a concert at the Frankfurt Opera.

In 1986, he released a collaboration album with Portuguese composer António Victorino de Almeida, titled Invenções Livres.

In 1987, he released a new solo album, Espelho de Sons, which reached 3rd place in the Portuguese weekly album charts. It was followed by Asas Sobre o Mundo, in 1989.

In 1990, Paredes release an album with American jazz bassist Charlie Haden, titled Dialogues.

His last show was in October 1993 at the Aula Magna, in Lisbon, accompanied by Luísa Amaro.

After retiring from music and public life, he releases two more albums from previously unreleased material: Na Corrente (1996), containing pieces recorded between 1969 and 1973 at the Valentim de Carvalho studios, and Canção para Titi (2000), with recordings from 1993.

In December 1993, Paredes was diagnosed with myelopathy. The disease forced Paredes to stop playing guitar, thus ending his career as a musician. He was interned at the Fundação-Lar Nossa Senhora da Saúde, in Campo de Ourique, Lisbon, until his death.

Paredes died on 23 July 2004, in Lisbon. Following his death, the Portuguese government declared one day of national mourning in his honour. He lays buried at the Prazeres Cemetery, in Lisbon.

More information: Independent

A arte é de facto uma forma única, espantosa, 

de tornar simples e claras coisas extremamente complexas.

 

Art is de facto a unique, frightening way of making

simple and clear things extremely complex.

Carlos Paredes

'MAGDALENENHOCHWASSER', THE EUROPEAN FLOODS

Today, The Grandma has been reading about the latest news of the European flooding. It has been terrible and tragic, and she has remembered how flooding is a phenomenon that appears and is documented in Europe since some centuries ago, exactly, on a day like today in 1342, feast day of St. Mary Magdalene occurred the largest recorded flood in Central Europe.

St. Mary Magdalene's flood, in German Magdalenenhochwasser, was the largest recorded flood in Central Europe with water levels exceeding those of the 2002 European floods. It occurred on and around the feast day of St. Mary Magdalene, 22 July in 1342.

Following the passage of a Genoa low the rivers Rhine, Moselle, Main, Danube, Weser, Werra, Unstrut, Elbe, Vltava and their tributaries inundated large areas. Many towns such as Cologne, Mainz, Frankfurt am Main, Würzburg, Regensburg, Passau and Vienna were seriously damaged. Even the river Eider north of Hamburg flooded the surrounding land. The affected area extended to Carinthia and northern Italy.

It appears that after a prolonged hot and dry period, continuous rainfalls occurred, lasting several consecutive days and amounting to more than half of the mean yearly precipitation. Since the dry soil was unable to absorb such amounts of water, the surface run-off washed away large areas of fertile soil and caused huge inundations, destroying houses, mills and bridges.

In Würzburg, the then-famous Steinerne Brücke was washed away, and in Cologne it is said that a rowing boat could pass over the city's fortifications. A precise number of casualties remains unknown, but it is believed that in the Danube area alone, 6,000 people perished. The results of the erosion can still be noticed today. The volume of the eroded soil during this short incident, a few days, is determined to be more than 13 billion metric tons, a volume that is washed away under normal climate conditions over a period of 2,000 years.

It is assumed that the loss of fertile soil led to a serious drop in agricultural production. In addition, the following summers were wet and cold, so that the population suffered from widespread famine. Whether the spreading of the Black Death between 1348 and 1350, killing at least a third of the population in Central Europe, was facilitated by the weakened condition of the population is a matter of discussion.

More information: Volcano Cafe

In August 2002 a flood caused by over a week of continuous heavy rains ravaged Europe, killing dozens, dispossessing thousands, and causing damage worth billions of euros in the Czech Republic, Italy, Spain, Austria, Germany, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Ukraine and Russia. The flood was of a magnitude expected to occur roughly once a century. Unprecedented flood heights were recorded and at least 110 people died.

In December 2002, total economic damage estimates exceeded 15 billion Euro, of which 15% was insured.

Flooding resulted from the passage of two Genoa low pressure systems, named Hanne and Ilse by the Free University of Berlin, which brought warm moist air from the Mediterranean northwards. The effects of El Niño are believed to have possibly contributed, although others disagree. The floods gradually moved eastwards along the Danube, although the damage in the large cities on its shores was not as severe as in the areas affected by the floods later.

When the rainfall moved northeast to the Bohemian Forest and to the source areas of the Elbe and Vltava rivers, the results were catastrophic water levels first in the Austrian areas of Mühlviertel and Waldviertel and later in the Czech Republic, Thuringia and Saxony. Several villages in Northern Bohemia, Thuringia and Saxony were more or less destroyed by rivers changing their courses or massively overflowing their banks.

The floods that hit Europe during August 2002 were part of a larger system that was also affecting Asia. Several rivers in the region, including the Vltava, Elbe and Danube, reached record highs.

More information: Abrupt Earth Changes

Green roofs, roadside plantings, porous pavement, 

and sidewalk gardens have been proven to reduce flooding.

They absorb rainwater before it swamps

the streets and sewage systems.

Frances Beinecke

THE TEMPLE OF ARTEMIS, THE GREEK PAST IN TURKEY

Today, The Grandma has received a wonderful phone call. One of her closest friends, Tina Picotes is in Turkey, and they have been talking about her travel and, especially, about the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, that was destroyed by arson on a day like today in 356 BC.

The Temple of Artemis or Artemision, also known as the Temple of Diana, was a Greek temple dedicated to an ancient, local form of the goddess Artemis (associated with Diana, a Roman goddess). It was located in Ephesus, near the modern town of Selçuk in present-day Turkey.

It was completely rebuilt twice, once after a devastating flood and three hundred years later after an act of arson, and in its final form was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. By 401 AD it had been ruined or destroyed. Only foundations and fragments of the last temple remain at the site.

The earliest version of the temple (a temenos) antedated the Ionic immigration by many years, and dates to the Bronze Age. Callimachus, in his Hymn to Artemis, attributed it to the Amazons. In the 7th century BC, it was destroyed by a flood. 

Its reconstruction, in more grandiose form, began around 550 BC, under Chersiphron, the Cretan architect, and his son Metagenes. The project was funded by Croesus of Lydia, and took 10 years to complete. This version of the temple was destroyed in 356 BC by Herostratus in an act of arson.

More information: World History

The Temple of Artemis was located near the ancient city of Ephesus, about 75 kilometres south from the modern port city of İzmir, in Turkey. Today the site lies on the edge of the modern town of Selçuk.

The sacred site (temenos) at Ephesus was far older than the Artemision itself. Pausanias was certain that it antedated the Ionic immigration by many years, being older even than the oracular shrine of Apollo at Didyma. He said that the pre-Ionic inhabitants of the city were Leleges and Lydians.

Callimachus, in his Hymn to Artemis attributed the earliest temenos at Ephesus to the Amazons, whose worship he imagined already centred upon an image (bretas) of Artemis, their matron goddess. Pausanias says that Pindar believed the temple's founding Amazons to have been involved with the siege of Athens. Tacitus also believed in the Amazon foundation, however Pausanias believed the temple predated the Amazons.

Modern archaeology cannot confirm Callimachus's Amazons, but Pausanias's account of the site's antiquity seems well-founded. Before World War I, site excavations by David George Hogarth identified three successive temple buildings.

Re-excavations in 1987–88 confirmed that the site was occupied as early as the Bronze Age, with a sequence of pottery finds that extend forward to Middle Geometric times, when a peripteral temple with a floor of hard-packed clay was constructed in the second half of the 8th century BC.

The peripteral temple at Ephesus offers the earliest example of a peripteral type on the coast of Asia Minor, and perhaps the earliest Greek temple surrounded by colonnades anywhere.

In the 7th century BC, a flood destroyed the temple, depositing over half a meter of sand and flotsam over the original clay floor. Among the flood debris were the remains of a carved ivory plaque of a griffin and the Tree of Life, apparently North Syrian, and some drilled tear-shaped amber drops of elliptical cross-section.

These probably once dressed a wooden effigy (xoanon) of the Lady of Ephesus, which must have been destroyed or recovered from the flood. Bammer notes that though the site was prone to flooding, and raised by silt deposits about two metres between the 8th and 6th centuries, and a urther 2.4 m between the sixth and the fourth, its continued use indicates that maintaining the identity of the actual location played an important role in the sacred organization.

Heraclitus deposited his book On Nature as a dedication to Artemis in the great temple.

The new temple was sponsored at least in part by Croesus, who founded Lydia's empire and was overlord of Ephesus, and was designed and constructed from around 550 BC by the Cretan architect Chersiphron and his son Metagenes. It was 115 m long and 46 m, supposedly the first Greek temple built of marble. Its peripteral columns stood some 13 m high, in double rows that formed a wide ceremonial passage around the cell that housed the goddess's cult image. Thirty-six of these columns were, according to Pliny, decorated by carvings in relief. A new ebony or blackened grape wood cult statue was sculpted by Endoios, and a naiskos to house it was erected east of the open-air altar.

In 356 BC, the temple was destroyed in a vainglorious act of arson by a man, Herostratus, who set fire to the wooden roof-beams, seeking fame at any cost; thus the term herostratic fame. For this outrage, the Ephesians sentenced the perpetrator to death and forbade anyone from mentioning his name; but Theopompus later noted it.

In Greek and Roman historical tradition, the temple's destruction coincided with the birth of Alexander the Great (around 20/21 July 356 BC). Plutarch remarked that Artemis was too preoccupied with Alexander's delivery to save her burning temple.

Alexander offered to pay for the temple's rebuilding; the Ephesians tactfully refused, saying it would be improper for one god to build a temple to another, and eventually rebuilt it after his death, at their own expense. Work started in 323 BC and continued for many years. The third temple was larger than the second; 137 m long by 69 m wide and 18 m high, with more than 127 columns. Athenagoras of Athens names Endoeus, a pupil of Daedalus, as sculptor of Artemis' main cult image.

More information: Found The World

This reconstruction survived for 600 years, and appears multiple times in early Christian accounts of Ephesus. According to the New Testament, the appearance of the first Christian missionary in Ephesus caused locals to fear for the temple's dishonour.

In 268 AD, the temple was destroyed or damaged in a raid by the Goths, an East Germanic tribe.

It is unknown how long the building stood after the closure of the temple by the Christians. At least some stones from the temple were eventually used in construction of other buildings. A late medieval legend claims that some columns in the Hagia Sophia were taken from the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, but there is no truth to this story.

After six years of searching, the site of the temple was rediscovered in 1869 by an expedition led by John Turtle Wood and sponsored by the British Museum. These excavations continued until 1874.

A few further fragments of sculpture were found during the 1904-1906 excavations directed by David George Hogarth. The recovered sculptured fragments of the 4th-century rebuilding and a few from the earlier temple, which had been used in the rubble fill for the rebuilding, were assembled and displayed in the Ephesus Room of the British Museum. In addition, the museum has part of possibly the oldest pot-hoard of coins in the world (600 BC) that had been buried in the foundations of the Archaic temple.

Today the site of the temple, which lies just outside Selçuk, is marked by a single column constructed of dissociated fragments discovered on the site.

More information: Istanbul Clues

I love studying Ancient History and seeing

how empires rise and fall,

sowing the seeds of their own destruction.

Martin Scorsese

NATALIA NIKOLAEVNA ZAKHARENKO, AKA NATALIE WOOD

Today, The Grandma has continued watching some films. She has chosen those interpreted by Natalie Wood, one of the greatest actresses who was born on a day like today in 1938 and who died tragically in strange and unknown circumstances.

Natalie Wood (born Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko; July 20, 1938-November 29, 1981) was an American actress who began her career in film as a child actor and successfully transitioned to young adult roles.

She was the recipient of four Golden Globes, and three Academy Award nominations.

Born in San Francisco to Russian immigrant parents, Wood began her acting career at age 4 and was given a co-starring role at age 8 in Miracle on 34th Street (1947). As a teenager, she earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), followed by a role in John Ford's The Searchers (1956).

Wood starred in the musical films West Side Story (1961) and Gypsy (1962), and she received nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performances in Splendor in the Grass (1961) and Love with the Proper Stranger (1963). Her career continued with films such as Sex and the Single Girl (1964), Inside Daisy Clover (1964), and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969).

During the 1970s, Wood began a hiatus from film and had a child with husband Robert Wagner, whom she had previously married and divorced. Wagner and Wood remarried after she divorced her second husband.

She acted in only two feature films throughout the decade, but appeared slightly more often in television productions, including a remake of the film From Here to Eternity (1979) for which she received a Golden Globe Award. Wood's films represented a coming of age for her and for Hollywood films in general.

Critics have suggested that her cinematic career represents a portrait of modern American womanhood in transition, as she was one of the few to take both child roles and those of middle-aged characters.

More information: Indie Wire

Natalie Wood was born Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenkoin San Francisco, California, the daughter of Russian immigrant parents Nikolai Stepanovich Zakharenko and Maria Stepanovna Zakharenko. Natalia's father was born in Vladivostok into the poor family of Stepan Zakharenko, a chocolate-factory worker who joined the anti-Bolshevik civilian forces during the Russian Civil War. Her grandfather was killed in 1918 in a street fight in Vladivostok between Red and White Russian soldiers.

After that, his wife and her three sons fled to their relatives in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Later, they moved to San Francisco, where Nikolai worked as a day labourer and carpenter.

Natalia's mother, Maria, was born in Barnaul, southern Siberia. Maria's father, Stepan Zudilov, owned soap and candle factories, as well as an estate outside the city. With the start of the civil war, his family left Russia, resettling as refugees in the Chinese city of Harbin.

In 1925, Maria married Alexander Tatuloff in China and had a daughter, Olga (1928–2015), before divorcing in 1936. Natalia liked to describe her family as having been either gypsies or landowning aristocrats in Russia.

In her youth, her mother had dreamed of becoming an actress or ballet dancer. Natalia and her sisters were raised Russian Orthodox. As an adult, she stated, I'm very Russian, you know. She spoke both English and Russian with an American accent.

More information: Los Angeles Magazine

Wood appeared in 56 films for cinema and television. In one of her last interviews before her death, she was defined as our sexual conscience on the silver screen. Following her death, Time magazine noted that although critical praise for Wood had been sparse throughout her career, she always had work.

Wood died under mysterious circumstances at age 43 during the making of Brainstorm while on a weekend boat trip to Santa Catalina Island on board Wagner's yacht Splendour. Outside of drowning, many of the circumstances are unknown; it was never determined how she entered the water.

Wood was with her husband Robert Wagner, Brainstorm co-star Christopher Walken, and Splendour's captain Dennis Davern on the evening of November 28, 1981. Authorities recovered her body at 8 a.m. on November 29, 1.6 km away from the boat, with a small Valiant-brand inflatable dinghy beached nearby. 

Wagner said that she was not with him when he went to bed. The autopsy report revealed that she had bruises on her body and arms, as well as an abrasion on her left cheek, but no indication as to how or when the injuries occurred.

In 2018, Wagner was named as a person of interest in the ongoing investigation into Wood's death.

More information: CBS News

I was so young, and making movies,

going to the studio every morning at dawn was magic.

Natalie Wood

JAMES GARNER, FROM BRET MAVERICK TO ZANE COOPER

Today, The Grandma has been watching some western series and films. She has chosen Maverick, the TV Series interpreted by James Garner, the American actor who died on a day like today in 2014.

James Garner (born James Scott Bumgarner; April 7, 1928-July 19, 2014) was an American actor and producer.

He starred in several television series over more than five decades, including popular roles such as Bret Maverick in the 1950s Western series Maverick and as Jim Rockford in the 1970s private detective show, The Rockford Files.

He played leading roles in more than 50 theatrical films, including The Great Escape (1963) with Steve McQueen, Paddy Chayefsky's The Americanization of Emily (1964) with Julie Andrews, Grand Prix (1966) with Toshiro Mifune, Marlowe (1969) with Bruce Dern, Support Your Local Sheriff! (1969), Support Your Local Gunfighter (1971), The Castaway Cowboy (1974), and Blake Edwards's Victor/Victoria (1982) with Julie Andrews, and Murphy's Romance (1985) with Sally Field, for which he received an Academy Award nomination.

Garner's career and popularity continued through another decade in movies like Space Cowboys (2000) with Clint Eastwood, Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) with Michael J. Fox and Cree Summer, and The Notebook (2004) with Gena Rowlands, and his TV sitcom role as Jim Egan in 8 Simple Rules (2003–2005).

More information: Me TV

Garner was born James Scott Bumgarner on April 7, 1928 in Denver, Oklahoma (now a part of Norman, Oklahoma). His parents were German American. Weldon Warren Bumgarner, a widower, and Mildred Scott (Meek), who died five years after his birth. His older brothers were Jack Garner and Charles Bumgarner, a school administrator. His family was Methodist. After their mother's death, Garner and his brothers were sent to live with relatives. Garner was reunited with his family in 1934, when Weldon remarried.

In 1954, Paul Gregory, a friend whom Garner had met while attending Hollywood High School, persuaded Garner to take a non-speaking role in the Broadway production of The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, where he was able to study Henry Fonda night after night. During the week of Garner's death in 2014, TCM broadcast several of his movies, introduced by Robert Osborne, who said that Fonda's gentle, sincere persona rubbed off on Garner, greatly to Garner's benefit.

Garner subsequently moved to television commercials and eventually to television roles. 

In 1955, Garner was considered for the lead role in the Western series Cheyenne, but that role went to Clint Walker because the casting director could not reach Garner in time. 

After several feature film roles, including Sayonara (1957) with Marlon Brando, Garner got his big break playing the role of professional gambler Bret Maverick in the Western series Maverick from 1957-1962.

Only Garner and series creator Roy Huggins thought Maverick could compete with The Ed Sullivan Show and The Steve Allen Show, but for two years it beat both in the time slot. The show almost immediately made Garner a household name.

Garner was the lone star of Maverick for the first seven episodes, but production demands forced the studio, Warner Bros., to create a Maverick brother, Bart, played by Jack Kelly. This allowed two production units to film different story lines and episodes simultaneously, necessary because each episode took an extra day to complete, meaning that eventually the studio would run out of finished episodes to air partway through the season unless another actor was added.

Critics were positive about the chemistry between Garner and Kelly and the series occasionally featured popular cross-over episodes starring both Maverick brothers and numerous brief appearances by Kelly in Garner episodes. 

Although Garner quit the series after the third season because of a dispute with Warner Bros., he did make one fourth-season Maverick appearance, in an episode titled The Maverick Line starring both Garner and Jack Kelly filmed in the third season but held back to run as the season's first episode if Garner lost his lawsuit against Warner Bros. Garner won in court, left the series, and the episode was run in the middle of the season instead.

The studio attempted to replace Garner's character with a Maverick cousin who had lived in Britain long enough to gain an English accent, featuring Roger Moore as Beau Maverick, but Moore left the series after filming only 14 episodes.

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Warner Bros. then hired Robert Colbert, a Garner look-alike, to play a third Maverick brother named Brent Maverick. Colbert only appeared in two episodes toward the end of the season. That left the rest of the series' run to Kelly, alternating with reruns of episodes with Garner during the fifth season.

Garner still received billing during the opening series credits for these newly produced Kelly episodes, aired in the 1961–1962 season, although he did not appear in them and had left the series two years previously. The studio did, however, reverse the billing at the beginning of each show and in advertisements during the fifth season, billing Kelly above Garner.

When Charlton Heston turned down the lead role in Darby's Rangers (1958), before Garner's departure from Maverick, Garner (originally slated to play a large supporting part that was given to Stuart Whitman) was selected and performed well in the role.

As a result of Garner's performance in Darby's Rangers, coupled with his enormous Maverick popularity, Warner Bros. subsequently gave him lead roles in two other major theatrical films during his breaks from shooting the series, Up Periscope (1959) with Edmond O'Brien and Cash McCall (1960) with Natalie Wood.

Garner and Jack Kelly reappeared as Bret and Bart Maverick in a 1978 made-for-television film titled The New Maverick written by Juanita Bartlett, directed by Hy Averback, and also starring Susan Sullivan as Poker Alice. As had often been the case in episodes of the original series, Bret's brother Bart shows up only briefly toward the end.

The New Maverick served as the pilot for a failed television series, Young Maverick, featuring the adventures of Bret and Bart's younger cousin Ben Maverick, portrayed in both The New Maverick and Young Maverick by Charles Frank.

The series itself, which only presented Garner for a few moments at the beginning of the first show, was cancelled so rapidly that some episodes filmed were never broadcast in the United States. Despite the title, Frank was three years older than Garner had been at the launch of the original series.

Garner was nominated for his only Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role for the film Murphy's Romance (1985), opposite Sally Field. Field and director Martin Ritt had to fight the studio, Columbia Pictures, to have Garner cast, since he was regarded as a TV actor by then despite having co-starred in the box office hit Victor/Victoria opposite Julie Andrews two years earlier.

More information: The Stacks Reader

In 1994, Garner played Marshal Zane Cooper in a film version of Maverick, with Mel Gibson as Bret Maverick (in the end it is revealed that Garner's character is the father of Gibson's Maverick) and Jodie Foster as a gambling lass with a fake Southern accent.

Nominated for 15 Emmy Awards during his television career, Garner received the award in 1977 as Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series (The Rockford Files) and in 1987 as executive producer of Promise.

For his contribution to the film and television industry, Garner received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6927 Hollywood Boulevard.

In 1990, he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He was also inducted into the Television Hall of Fame that same year. In February 2005, he received the Screen Actors Guild's Lifetime Achievement Award.

Garner was a private and introverted man, according to family and friends. On July 19, 2014, police and rescue personnel were summoned to Garner's Los Angeles-area home, where they found the actor dead at the age of 86. He had suffered a heart attack caused by coronary artery disease. He had been in poor health since his stroke in 2008.

More information: The Guardian

It wasn't until I'd turned 50 and had been in the business 

25 years that I realized I might actually have a career as an actor.

James Garner

NADIA ELENA COMANECI, THE PERFECT 10 IN GYMNASTICS

Today, The Grandma has been reading about the next Olympic Games in Tokyo and about security in front of COVID19. Thinking about Olympic Games, The Grandma has remembered one of the most successful moments when Nadia Comăneci, the Romanian gymnast, who became the first person in Olympic Games history to score a perfect 10 in gymnastics, on a day like today in 1976.

Nadia Elena Comăneci Conner (November 12, 1961), known professionally as Nadia Comăneci, is a Romanian retired gymnast and a five-time Olympic gold medalist, all in individual events.

In 1976 at the age of 14, Comăneci was the first gymnast to be awarded a perfect score of 10.0 at the Olympic Games.

At the same games (1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal), she received six more perfect 10s for events en route to winning three gold medals.

At the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, Comăneci won two more gold medals and attained two more perfect 10s. During her career, Comăneci won nine Olympic medals and four World Artistic Gymnastics Championship medals.

Comăneci is one of the world's best-known gymnasts and is credited with popularizing the sport around the globe.

In 2000, she was named as one of the Athletes of the 20th Century by the Laureus World Sports Academy. She has lived in the United States since 1989, when she defected from then-Communist Romania before its revolution in December that year. She later worked with and married American Olympic gold medal gymnast Bart Conner, who set up his own school.

In 2001, she became a naturalized United States citizen, and has dual citizenship, also maintaining her Romanian citizenship.

More information: Bart and Nadia

Nadia Elena Comăneci was born on November 12, 1961, in Onești, a small town in the Carpathian Mountains, in Bacău County, Romania, in the historical region of Western Moldavia. She was born to Gheorghe (1936-2012) and Ștefania Comăneci, and has a younger brother. Her parents separated in the 1970s, and her father later moved to Bucharest, the capital. She and her younger brother Adrian were raised in the Romanian Orthodox Church.

In a 2011 interview, Nadia's mother Ștefania said that she enrolled her daughter into gymnastics classes because she was a child who was so full of energy and active that she was difficult to manage.

After years of top-level athletic competition, Comăneci graduated from Politehnica University of Bucharest with a degree in sports education, which gave her the qualifications to coach gymnastics.

Comăneci began gymnastics in kindergarten with a local team called Flacăra, with coaches Duncan and Munteanu. At age 6, she was chosen to attend Béla Károlyi's experimental gymnastics school after Károlyi spotted her and a friend turning cartwheels in a school yard. Károlyi was looking for gymnasts he could train from a young age.

In 1970, Comăneci began competing as a member of her hometown team and, at age nine, became the youngest gymnast ever to win the Romanian Nationals.

In 1971, she participated in her first international competition, a dual junior meet between Romania and Yugoslavia, winning her first all-around title, and contributing to the team gold. For the next few years, she competed as a junior in numerous national contests in Romania and dual meets with countries such as Hungary, Italy, and Poland.

Comăneci's first major international success came at the age of 13, when she nearly swept the 1975 European Women's Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Skien, Norway. She won the all-around and gold medals in every event but the floor exercise, in which she placed second. She continued to enjoy success that year, winning the all-around at the Champions All competition, and placing first in the all-around, vault, beam, and bars at the Romanian National Championships.

On July 18, 1976, Comăneci made history at the Montreal Olympics. During the team compulsory portion of the competition, she was awarded the first perfect 10 in Olympic gymnastics for her routine on the uneven bars.

More information: Worldation

Omega SA, the official Olympics' scoreboard manufacturer, had been led to believe that competitors could not receive a perfect ten, and had not programmed the scoreboard to display this score. Comăneci's perfect 10 thus appeared as 1.00, the only means by which the judges could indicate that she had received a 10.

During the remainder of the Montreal Games, Comăneci earned six additional 10s. She won gold medals for the individual all-around, the balance beam and uneven bars. She also won a bronze for the floor exercise and a silver as part of the team all-around. Soviet gymnast Nellie Kim was her main rival during the Montreal Olympics; Kim became the second gymnast to receive a perfect ten, in her case for her performance on the vault. Comăneci took over the media spotlight from gymnast Olga Korbut, who had been the darling of the 1972 Munich Games.

Comăneci was the first Romanian gymnast to win the Olympic all-around title. She also holds the record as the youngest ever Olympic gymnastics all-around champion. The sport has revised its age-eligibility requirements. Gymnasts must be at least 16 in the same calendar year of the Olympics in order to compete during the Games. When Comăneci competed in 1976, gymnasts had only to be 14 by the first day of the competition. As a result of changes to age eligibility, Comăneci's record cannot be broken.

Comăneci was chosen to participate in the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. As a result of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, President Jimmy Carter declared that the United States would boycott the Olympics, several other countries also participated in the boycott, though their reasons varied. According to Comăneci, the Romanian government touted the 1980 Olympic Games as the first all-Communist Games.

The government did allow Comăneci to participate in the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles as part of the Romanian delegation. Although a number of Communist nations boycotted the 1984 Summer Olympics in a tit-for-tat against the U.S.-led boycott of the Olympics in Moscow four years before, Romania chose to participate.

The Romanian government continued to restrict Comăneci from leaving Romania, aside from a few select trips to Moscow and Cuba. She had started thinking about retiring a few years earlier, but her official retirement ceremony took place in Bucharest in 1984.

Comăneci moved to Oklahoma in 1991 to help her friend Bart Conner, another Olympic gold medallist, with his gymnastics school. She lived with the family of Paul Ziert and eventually hired him as her manager. Comăneci and Conner initially were just friends. They were together for four years before they became engaged.

She returned to Romania for their 1996 wedding, which was held in Bucharest. This was after the fall of the Communist regime and the establishment of a democratic Romania; the government welcomed her as a national hero. The wedding was televised live throughout Romania, and the couple's reception was held in the former presidential palace.

Comăneci became a naturalized US citizen in 2001, while retaining her Romanian citizenship.

More information: Twitter-Nadia Comaneci

 I think gymnastics was associated with the 10.
I thought that belonged to the sport,
and somehow we gave it way.

Nadia Comaneci