VITTORIO DE SICA, LEADING THE NEOREALIST MOVEMENT

Today, The Grandma has been reading about Vittorio de Sica, the Italian film director and actor, who was born on a day like today in 1901.

Vittorio De Sica (7 July 1901-13 November 1974) was an Italian film director and actor, a leading figure in the neorealist movement.

Widely considered one of the most influential filmmakers in the history of cinema, four of the films he directed won Academy Awards: Sciuscià and Bicycle Thieves (honorary), while Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow and Il giardino dei Finzi Contini won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Indeed, the great critical success of Sciuscià (the first foreign film to be so recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) and Bicycle Thieves helped establish the permanent Best Foreign Film Award. These two films are considered part of the canon of classic cinema.

Bicycle Thieves was deemed the greatest film of all time by Sight & Sound magazine's poll of filmmakers and critics in 1958, and was cited by Turner Classic Movies as one of the 15 most influential films in cinema history.

De Sica was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for playing Major Rinaldi in American director Charles Vidor's 1957 adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, a movie that was panned by critics and proved a box office flop. De Sica's acting was considered the highlight of the film.

More information: BFI

De Sica was born on 7 July 1901 in Sora, Lazio.

In 1914, the family moved to Naples. Upon the outbreak of the First World War, they moved to Florence. Eventually, they settled down in Rome. At the age of 15, De Sica started performing as an actor in amateur plays staged in hospitals for the recovering soldiers. He started studying to become an accountant when in 1917 through a family friend Edoardo Bencivenga he got a small part in the Alfredo De Antoni film The Clemenceau Affair.

De Sica laureated in 1923. Described as strikingly handsome, already in the early 1920s he began his career as a theatre actor and joined Tatiana Pavlova's theatre company in 1923.

In 1933, De Sica, Rissone, and Tofano founded their own company. The period of Tofano-Rissone-De Sica was notable also due to De Sica's acquaintance to Aldo De Benedetti and Gherardo Gherardi, the screenwriters with whom he had a long and fruitful collaboration.

In the early years, De Sica combined his theatre and cinema careers: in the summer months he was engaged in filmmaking and spent the winters performing on stage.

In cinema, his first notable role was in 1932 Gli uomini, che mascalzoni directed by Mario Camerini. The song Parlami d'amore Mariù became a hit and remained his signature song for many years.

In the 1930s his credits included many notable performances such as in I'll Give a Million (1935), Il signor Max (1937), Department Store (1939), Manon Lescaut. Overall in 1931-940, he starred in and directed 23 productions.

During 1934 in Verona, De Sica first met screenwriter Cesare Zavattini, for many years they would become the inseparable collaborators and created some of the most celebrated films of the neorealistic age, like Sciuscià and Bicycle Thieves (released as The Bicycle Thief in America), both directed by De Sica.

In 1940, supported by producer Giuseppe Amato, De Sica debuted as a director and created Rose scarlatte.

In 1944, De Sica received an invitation from Goebbels to make a film in Prague, but fortunately managed to refuse, using as an excuse an offer from the Catholic Film Centre in Rome.

De Sica's 1946 drama Sciuscià won the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film in 1947, however, in Italy it failed in the box office as the public craved easier films and mostly went to comedies, and was heavily criticized by the Ministry of Justice and the Department of Correction. This alienation of the authorities resulted in major difficulty with financing following projects. To produce Bicycle Thieves, De Sica had to invest own money and rely on the support of several Italian businessmen. The film brought De Sica his second Oscar as well as multiple other awards and accolades, however, again the success in Italian box office was tepid. The relationship with the government remained bad, after the release of Umberto D. prime minister Giulio Andreotti sent De Sica a letter accusing him of 'rendering bad service for the country'.

In 1951, De Sica co-authored (with Alberto Sordi) and played in Mamma Mia, What an Impression!

In 1952, he played along Gina Lollobrigida in In Olden Days and then again in 1953 in the comedy Bread, Love and Dreams. De Sica's character, Marshal Antonio Carotenuto, immediately became the public's favourite. The film was an enormous success, it was nominated for Academy Awards and won the Silver Bear at Berlinale. It was followed with three sequels: Bread, Love and Jealousy (1954), Scandal in Sorrento (1955), and Bread, Love and Andalusia (1958).

In 1959, De Sica appeared in the British television series The Four Just Men. In 1961, he starred in The Two Marshals alongside Totò.

Vittorio De Sica died at 73 at the Neuilly-sur-Seine hospital in Paris. He was a Roman Catholic and a communist.

More information: The Guardian

I've lost all my money on these films.
They are not commercial.
But I'm glad to lose it this way.
To have for a souvenir of my life pictures
like Umberto D. and The Bicycle Thief.

Vittorio De Sica

R.34, CROSSING THE ATLANTIC OCEAN FOR FIRST TIME

Today, The Grandma has been reading the British dirigible R34 that landed in New York, completing the first crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by an airship, on a day like today in 1919.

R.34 made her first flight on 14 March 1919 and was delivered to her service base at RAF East Fortune near Edinburgh on 29 May after a 21-hour flight from Inchinnan.

R.34 had set out the previous evening, but thick fog made navigation difficult, and after spending the night over the North Sea the airship was unable to moor in the morning due to fog. After cruising as far south as Yorkshire R.34 returned to East Fortune to dock at about 3 p.m. The airship made her first endurance trip of 56 hours over the Baltic from 17 to 20 June.

It was then decided to attempt the first return Atlantic crossing, under the command of Major George Scott. R.34 had never been intended as a passenger carrier and extra accommodation was arranged by slinging hammocks for the crew along the keel walkway. A metal plate was welded to an engine exhaust pipe to allow for the preparation of hot food.

The crew included Brigadier-General Edward Maitland and Zachary Lansdowne as the representative of the US Navy. William Ballantyne, one of the crew members scheduled to stay behind to save weight, stowed away with the crew's mascot, a small tabby kitten called "Wopsie"; they emerged at 2.00 p.m. on the first day, too late to be dropped off.

 

More information: National Museums Scotland

R.34 left East Fortune, Scotland, on 2 July 1919 and arrived at Mineola, Long Island, United States, on 6 July after a flight of 108 hours, with only a few gallons of fuel remaining. As the landing party had no experience of handling large rigid airships, Major E. M. Pritchard jumped by parachute and so became the first person to reach American soil by air from Europe.

This was the first East-West aerial crossing of the Atlantic and was achieved weeks after the first transatlantic aeroplane flight by British aviators Captain John Alcock and Lieutenant Arthur Whitten Brown in a modified First World War Vickers Vimy. The return journey to RNAS Pulham took place from 10 to 13 July and took 75 hours. Returned to East Fortune for a refit, R.34 then flew to Howden, East Yorkshire, for crew training.

On 27 January 1921, R.34 set off on what should have been a routine exercise. Over the North Sea the weather worsened and a recall signal sent by radio was not received. Following a navigational error the craft flew into a hillside on the North Yorkshire Moors during the night, and the ship lost two propellers. She went back out to sea using the two remaining engines and in daylight followed the Humber Estuary back to Howden.

Strong winds made it impossible to get her back into the shed, and she was tied down outside for the night. By the morning further damage had occurred and R.34 was written off and scrapped.

 

More information: The History Press

 

 

The human bird shall take his first flight,
filling the world with amazement,
all writings with his fame,
and bringing eternal glory to the nest whence he sprang.

Leonardo da Vinci

'MILAGROS', DISCOVERING THE SACRED MEXICAN HEARTS

Today, Claire Fontaine and The Grandma have been reading on Zinnia Folk Arts about Milagros, the sacred Mexican hearts so populars in this ancestral American culture.

Milagros are small metal religious charms. The word milagro means miracle” In the not too distant past, these small charms, often depicting arms, legs, praying people, farm animals and a wide range of other subjects were typically nailed or pinned to crosses or wooden statues of various saints like the Virgin Mary or Christ, sacred objects, pinned on the clothing of saint statues, or hung with little red ribbons or threads from altars and shrines. They are also carried for protection and good luck.

Ranging in size from less than 1/2 inch to several inches, they are as unique as the cultures that produce them.

In Mexico, the use of milagros is connected with an institution known as the manda. This where a person will ask a favor a saint, and then, in order to repay the saint after the favor has been granted, one must make a pilgrimage to the shrine of that saint, and take a milagro and leave it there. These milagros are typically pinned to some object of devotion in the shrine, and often a small prayer of thanks is added, written of a piece of paper.

People also might carry a milagro with them in order to get its benefit. For instance, a curandera -a spiritual healer- might bless a milagro and recommend that the person carry it in her pocketbook or on her person, in order to cure a physical ailment or to ward off evil, or bring about a change of fortune.

Typical milagros commonly found and their potential meanings:

Hearts, sacred hearts, hearts with swords. These can represent the human heart, and it might be connected with cares of worries over a heart condition, or the love that one person feels for another.

Eyes, double eyes, glasses. The milagro of the eyes is often connected with the popular Mexican saint Santa Lucia, who is depicted with a tray with two eyes on it. The eyes can also represent the concept of watching. One practice is to attach the milagro to the frame of the image of a deceased person, in the belief that this might represent the concept that the spirit of that person is watching over us, and helping to defend us from spirits from the land of the dead, or pleading our case before the saints and the angels.

Body parts (lungs, ears, kidneys...). Various body parts, such as kidneys, livers, lungs, ears, noses, breasts, lips/mouth as well as the better known arms and legs are usually used when asking for help with a particular ailment of the identified part.

Praying female or male figures. This popular milagro can represent a man or woman, such as a mother, wife, father, husband, or any other man or woman who is perceived as being faithful and fervent, or it might represent the prayers of a man or woman. It can also represent any female or male saint.

Woman or man's head. A milagro of the head might represent the man or woman’s mind, spirit, or a condition such a headache.

Young girls or boys. This milagro might represent a male or female child, or a niece or nephew, a grandchild, or any other child. It might also represent the childlike qualities in anyone.

Arms. The milagro of the arm might represent an arm itself, and some condition associated with it. It could also represent one's strength, one’s ability to work. It might represent an embrace, and physical demonstrations of affection that involve embracing.

Legs and feet. This might represent one’s leg and some condition associated with it, such as an injury, or arthritic condition. It might also represent one's strength, and the concept of travel, such as, not only walking, but a journey, or even the idea that one might be safe driving back and forth from work every day.

Houses represent, normally, one’s own home, and the blessings that might be made on it, and on the family that dwells there. It can also represent the hope of having one’s home, or it can represent someone else’s home. It might also represent one’s workplace, or school. When traveling, it can be a charm to insure that one will arrive safely home again, or it can establish a connection between the traveler and the loved ones at home.

Hens, roosters and chickens. The hen is actually a very powerful symbol, as are all of the animal milagros. This one might represent one’s own hen, seeking blessings so that she might always lay good eggs. Or, it might symbolize human qualities like those of a mother hen - the concept of mothering.

Bulls, cows. The bull might symbolize strength, husbanding, protection, stamina, endurance. Horses: The horse might symbolize the qualities of a man in being a workhorse, or travel, and be involved in a prayer about a journey.

Mules, like the horse. Might symbolize the qualities of a man in being a workhorse -being able to work like a mule- or it might symbolize travel, and be involved in a prayer about a journey. It might also be involved in a prayer or a charm to overcome stubbornness, in either in oneself or in another.

Sheep, lambs, goats. The sheep could symbolize any of the Bible verses about sheep. It could also symbolize the concept of togetherness, the fealty one feels for one’s groups, or family. It might also be used a charm to try and erase the effects of behavior that is typically described in a negative way as being like that of a sheep -such as giving into peer pressure with negative results, or, say, the concern of a parent that her child may be involved with a harmful cult or some other group that one does not approve of.

Dogs. The family dog milagros could symbolize loyalty. It could also symbolize protection, such as what a sheep dog affords the herd.

Pigs. The pig could symbolize nourishment -bringing home the bacon. It might also be used as a charm to try and erase the effects of behavior that is typically described in a negative way as being like that of a pig, such as perceived lack of control in ones eating habits.

More information: The Free Library

If I could not be in this free and wonderful country
-I wouldn't want to be anywhere else, mind you
-Mexico is where I would live.
I love Mexico, and I love the Mexican people.

Dusty Rhodes

1817, THE CONSTRUCTION ON THE ERIE CANAL BEGINS

Today, The Grandma has been listening to Bruce Springsteen's Live in Dublin, and she has been reading about the Erie Canal, whose construction began in Rome, New York, on a day like today in 1817.

The Erie Canal is a historic canal in upstate New York that runs east-west between the Hudson River and Lake Erie.

 

Completed in 1825, the canal was the first navigable waterway connecting the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes, vastly reducing the costs of transporting people and goods across the Appalachians. In effect, the canal accelerated the settlement of the Great Lakes region, the westward expansion of the United States, and the economic ascendancy of New York State. It has been called The Nation's First Superhighway.

A canal from the Hudson to the Great Lakes was first proposed in the 1780s, but a formal survey was not conducted until 1808. The New York State Legislature authorized construction in 1817.

Political opponents of the canal and its lead supporter New York Governor DeWitt Clinton, denigrated the project as Clinton's Folly and Clinton's Big Ditch. Nonetheless, the canal saw quick success upon opening on October 26, 1825, with toll revenue covering the state's construction debt within the first year of operation. The westward connection gave New York City a strong advantage over all other U.S. ports and brought major growth to canal cities such as Albany, Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo.

The construction of the Erie Canal was a landmark civil engineering achievement in the early history of the United States. When built, the 584 km canal was the second-longest in the world (after the Grand Canal in China). Initially 12 m wide and 1.2 m deep, the canal was expanded several times, most notably from 1905 to 1918 when the Barge Canal was built and over half the original route was abandoned. The modern Barge Canal measures 565 km long, 37 m wide, and 3.7 m deep. It has 34 locks, including the Waterford Flight, the steepest locks in the United States. When leaving the canal, boats must also traverse the Black Rock Lock to reach Lake Erie or the Troy Federal Lock to reach the tidal Hudson. The overall elevation difference is about 172 m.

The Erie's peak year was 1855, when 33,000 commercial shipments took place. It continued to be competitive with railroads until about 1902, when tolls were abolished. Commercial traffic declined heavily in the latter half of the 20th century due to competition from trucking and the 1959 opening of the larger St. Lawrence Seaway. The canal's last regularly scheduled hauler, the Day Peckinpaugh, ended service in 1994.

Today, the Erie Canal is mainly used by recreational watercraft. It connects the three other canals in the New York State Canal System: the Champlain, Oswego, and Cayuga–Seneca. Some long-distance boaters take the Erie as part of the Great Loop. The canal has also become a tourist attraction in its own right -a number of parks and museums are dedicated to its history. The New York State Canalway Trail is a popular cycling path that follows the canal across the state. In 2000, Congress designated the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor to protect and promote the system.

Before railroads, water transport was the most cost-effective way to ship bulk goods. A mule can only carry about 110 kg but can draw a barge weighing as much as 27,000 kg along a towpath. In total, a canal could cut transport costs by about 95 percent.

More information: Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor 

In the early years of the United States, transportation of goods between the coastal ports and the interior was slow and difficult. Close to the seacoast, rivers provided easy inland transport up to the fall line, since floating vessels encounter much less friction than land vehicles. However, the Appalachian Mountains were a great obstacle to further transportation or settlement, stretching 2,400 km from Maine to Alabama, with just five places where mule trains or wagon roads could be routed. Passengers and freight bound for the western parts of the country had to travel overland, a journey made more difficult by the rough condition of the roads.

In 1800, it typically took 2½ weeks to travel overland from New York to Cleveland, Ohio, (740 km) and 4 weeks to Detroit (985 km).

The principal exportable product of the Ohio Valley was grain, which was a high-volume, low-priced commodity, bolstered by supplies from the coast. Frequently it was not worth the cost of transporting it to far-away population centers. This was a factor leading to farmers in the west turning their grains into whiskey for easier transport and higher sales, and later the Whiskey Rebellion.

In the 18th and early 19th centuries, it became clear to coastal residents that the city or state that succeeded in developing a cheap, reliable route to the West would enjoy economic success, and the port at the seaward end of such a route would see business increase greatly. In time, projects were devised in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and relatively deep into the coastal states.

The idea of a canal to tie the East Coast to the new western settlements was discussed as early as 1724: New York provincial official Cadwallader Colden made a passing reference (in a report on fur trading) to improving the natural waterways of western New York.

The original canal was 584 km long, from Albany on the Hudson to Buffalo on Lake Erie. The channel was cut 12 m wide and  1.2 m deep, with removed soil piled on the downhill side to form a walkway known as a towpath. Its construction, through limestone and mountains, proved a daunting task. To move earth, animals pulled a slip scraper (similar to a bulldozer). The sides of the canal were lined with stone set in clay, and the bottom was also lined with clay.

The Canal was built by Irish laborers and German stonemasons. All labour on the canal depended upon human and animal power or the force of water. Engineering techniques developed during its construction included the building of aqueducts to redirect water; one aqueduct was 290 long to span 240 m of river. As the canal progressed, the crews and engineers working on the project developed expertise and became a skilled labour force.

Construction began on July 4, 1817, at Rome, New York. The first 24 km, from Rome to Utica, opened in 1819. At that rate, the canal would not be finished for 30 years.

The remaining problem was finding labor; increased immigration helped fill the need. Many of the laborers working on the canal were Irish, who had recently come to the United States as a group of about 5,000. Most of them were Roman Catholic, a religion that raised much suspicion in early America because of its hierarchic structure, and many laborers on the canal suffered violent assault as the result of misjudgment and xenophobia.

 More information: Smithsonian Magazine

The Erie Canal was thus completed in eight years at a total length of  568 km and cost $7.143 million (equivalent to $192 million in 2023). It was acclaimed as an engineering marvel that united the country and helped New York City develop as an international trade centre.

The Mohawk and Hudson Railroad opened in 1837, providing a bypass to the slowest part of the canal between Albany and Schenectady. Other railroads were soon chartered and built to continue the line west to Buffalo, and in 1842 a continuous line (which later became the New York Central Railroad and its Auburn Road in 1853) was open the whole way to Buffalo. As the railroad served the same general route as the canal, but provided for faster travel, passengers soon switched to it.

In 1992, the New York State Barge Canal was renamed the New York State Canal System (including the Erie, Cayuga-Seneca, Oswego, and Champlain canals) and placed under the newly created New York State Canal Corporation, a subsidiary of the New York State Thruway Authority. While part of the Thruway, the canal system was operated using money generated by Thruway tolls.

In 2017, the New York State Canal Corporation was transferred from the New York State Thruway to the New York Power Authority.

In 2000, Congress designated the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor, covering 843 km of navigable water from Lake Champlain to the Capital Region and west to Buffalo. The area has a population of 2.7 million; about 75% of Central and Western New York's population lives within 40 km of the Erie Canal.

The Erie Canal greatly lowered the cost of shipping between the Midwest and the Northeast, bringing much lower food costs to Eastern cities and allowing the East to ship machinery and manufactured goods to the Midwest more economically.

New ethnic Irish communities formed in some towns along its route after completion, as Irish immigrants were a large portion of the construction labor force. A plaque honoring the canal's construction is located in Battery Park in southern Manhattan.

Many notable authors wrote about the canal, including Herman Melville, Frances Trollope, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, Samuel Hopkins Adams and the Marquis de Lafayette, and many tales and songs were written about life on the canal. The popular song Low Bridge, Everybody Down by Thomas S. Allen was written in 1905 to memorialize the canal's early heyday, when barges were pulled by mules rather than engines.

Today, the Erie Canal is used primarily by recreational vessels, though it remains served by several commercial barge-towing companies.

More information: Niagara Falls USA

Low bridge, everybody down
Low bridge, we're coming to a town
You'll always know your neighbor
And you'll always know your pal
If ya ever navigated on the Erie Canal.

 

Thomas S. Allen

1884, DOW JONES PUBLISHES ITS FIRST STOCK AVERAGE

Today, The Grandma has been reading about Dow Jones, the American company that published its first stock average on a day like today in 1884.

Dow Jones & Company, Inc. (also known simply as Dow Jones) is an American publishing firm owned by News Corp. The company publishes The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, MarketWatch, Mansion Global, Financial News and Private Equity News. It formerly published the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

The company was founded in 1882 by three reporters: Charles Dow, Edward Jones, and Charles Bergstresser. Charles Dow was widely known for his ability to break down and convey what was often considered very convoluted financial information and news to the general public  -this is one of the reasons why Dow Jones & Company is well known for their publications and transferring of important and sometimes difficult to understand financial information to people across the globe. Nevertheless, the three reporters were joined in control of the organization by Thomas F. Woodlock.

Dow Jones was acquired in 1902 by Clarence Barron, the leading financial journalist of the day, after the death of co-founder Charles Dow. Upon Barron's death in 1928, control of the company passed to his stepdaughters Jane and Martha Bancroft. The company was led by the Bancroft family, which effectively controlled 64% of all voting stock, until 2007 when an extended takeover battle saw News Corporation acquire the business. The company then became a subsidiary of News Corporation.

It was reported on August 1, 2007, that the bid had been successful after an extended period of uncertainty about shareholder agreement, with the transaction finalized on December 13, 2007. It was worth US$5 billion or $60 a share, giving News Corp control of The Wall Street Journal and ending the Bancroft family's 105 years of ownership.

The company was best known for the publication of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and related market statistics, Dow Jones Newswire, and a number of financial publications. 

In 2010 the Dow Jones Indexes subsidiary was sold to the CME Group and the company focused on financial news publications, including its flagship publication The Wall Street Journal and providing financial news and information tools to financial companies.

In 2005, together with FTSE, Dow Jones launched the Industry Classification Benchmark, a taxonomy used to segregate markets into sectors.

The company's foundation was laid by Charles Dow, Edward Jones and Charles Bergstresser who, over two decades, conceived and promoted the three products which define Dow Jones and financial journalism: The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones Newswires and the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Dow Jones was acquired in 1902 by the leading financial journalist of the day, Clarence Barron.

In 2007, Dow Jones was acquired by News Corp., a leading global media company.
The Bancroft family and heirs of Clarence W. Barron effectively controlled the company's class B shares, each with a voting power of ten regular shares, prior to its sale to News Corp. At one time, they controlled 64% of Dow Jones voting stock.

Currently, Dow Jones is owned by Rupert Murdoch, owner of News Corp and several other major media companies.

More information: WSJ

The market is in an upward trend
if one of its averages goes above a previous important high
and is accompanied or followed
by a similar movement in the other average.

Dow Theory

ERNEST MILLER HEMINGWAY, LITERATURE & JOURNALISM

Today, The Grandma has been reading about Ernest Hemingway, the American novelist, who dies on a day like today in 1961.

Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899-July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer and journalist. 

 

Best known for an economical, understated style that significantly influenced later 20th-century writers, he is often romanticized for his adventurous lifestyle, and outspoken and blunt public image.

Most of Hemingway's works were published between the mid-1920s and mid-1950s, including seven novels, six short-story collections and two non-fiction works. His writings have become classics of American literature; he was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature, while three of his novels, four short-story collections and three nonfiction works were published posthumously.

Hemingway was raised in Oak Park, Illinois in the Chicago area. After high school, he spent six months as a cub reporter for The Kansas City Star before enlisting in the Red Cross. He served as an ambulance driver on the Italian Front in World War I and was seriously wounded in 1918.

His wartime experiences formed the basis for his 1929 novel A Farewell to Arms. He married Hadley Richardson in 1921, the first of four wives. They moved to Paris where he worked as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star and fell under the influence of the modernist writers and artists of the 1920s' Lost Generation expatriate community. His debut novel The Sun Also Rises was published in 1926.

He divorced Richardson in 1927 and married Pauline Pfeiffer. They divorced after he returned from the Spanish Civil War, where he had worked as a journalist and which formed the basis for his 1940 novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. Martha Gellhorn became his third wife in 1940. He and Gellhorn separated after he met Mary Welsh in London during World War II. Hemingway was present with Allied troops as a journalist at the Normandy landings and the liberation of Paris. He maintained permanent residences in Key West, Florida, in the 1930s and in Cuba in the 1940s and 1950s.

On a 1954 trip to Africa, he was seriously injured in two plane accidents on successive days, leaving him in pain and ill health for much of the rest of his life. In 1959 he bought a house in Ketchum, Idaho, where, on July 2, 1961, he shot himself in the head.

More information: The Ernest Hemingway Collection

Ernest Miller Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois, an affluent suburb just west of Chicago, to Clarence Edmonds Hemingway, a physician, and Grace Hall Hemingway, a musician.

Hemingway wanted to go to war and tried to enlist in the U.S. Army but was not accepted because he had poor eyesight. Instead he volunteered to a Red Cross recruitment effort in December 1917 and signed on to be an ambulance driver with the American Red Cross Motor Corps in Italy.

Hemingway had been following developments in Spain since early in his career and from 1931 it became clear that there would be another European war. Hemingway predicted war would happen in the late 1930s. Baker writes that Hemingway did not expect Spain to become a sort of international testing-ground for Germany, Italy, and Russia before the Spanish Civil War was over. Despite Pauline's reluctance, he signed with North American Newspaper Alliance to cover the Spanish Civil War, and sailed from New York on February 27, 1937. Journalist and writer Martha Gellhorn accompanied Hemingway.

In November he visited the location of the Battle of the Ebro, the last republican stand, along with other British and American journalists. They arrived to find the last bridge destroyed and had to retreat across the turbulent Ebro in a rowboat, Hemingway at the oars, pulling for dear life.

Hemingway sank into depression as his literary friends began to die: in 1939 William Butler Yeats and Ford Madox Ford; in 1940 F. Scott Fitzgerald; in 1941 Sherwood Anderson and James Joyce; in 1946 Gertrude Stein; and the following year in 1947, Max Perkins, Hemingway's long-time Scribner's editor, and friend.

In October 1954, Hemingway received the Nobel Prize in Literature. He modestly told the press that Carl Sandburg, Isak Dinesen and Bernard Berenson deserved the prize, but he gladly accepted the prize money.

Hemingway's behavior during his final years had been similar to that of his father before he killed himself; his father may have had hereditary hemochromatosis, whereby the excessive accumulation of iron in tissues culminates in mental and physical deterioration. Medical records made available in 1991 confirmed that Hemingway had been diagnosed with hemochromatosis in early 1961. His sister Ursula and his brother Leicester also killed themselves. Hemingway's health was further complicated by heavy drinking throughout most of his life.

Following the tradition established by Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, and Sinclair Lewis, Hemingway was a journalist before becoming a novelist.

Hemingway's writing includes themes of love, war, travel, expatriation, wilderness, and loss.

Hemingway's legacy to American literature is his style: writers who came after him either emulated or avoided it.

Mary Hemingway established the Hemingway Foundation in 1965, and in the 1970s she donated her husband's papers to the John F. Kennedy Library.

In 1980, a group of Hemingway scholars gathered to assess the donated papers, subsequently forming the Hemingway Society, committed to supporting and fostering Hemingway scholarship, publishing The Hemingway Review.

Download A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

I don't like to write like God.
It is only because you never do it, though,
that the critics think you can't do it.

 

Ernest Hemingway

SOS, THE INTERNATIONAL DISTRESS SIGNAL SINCE 1908

Today, The Grandma has been reading about SOS, the international distress signal, that was adopted on a day like today in 1908.

 

SOS is a Morse code distress signal used internationally, originally established for maritime use. In formal notation SOS is written with an overscore line (SOS), to indicate that the Morse code equivalents for the individual letters of SOS are transmitted as an unbroken sequence of three dots / three dashes / three dots, with no spaces between the letters.

In International Morse Code three dots form the letter S and three dashes make the letter O, so S O S became a common way to remember the order of the dots and dashes. IWB, VZE, 3B, and V7 form equivalent sequences, but traditionally SOS is the easiest to remember.

SOS, when it was first agreed upon by the International Radio Telegraphic Convention in 1906, was merely a distinctive Morse code sequence and was initially not an abbreviation. 

Later a backronym was created for it in popular usage, and SOS became associated with mnemonic phrases such as Save Our Souls and Save Our Ship. Moreover, due to its high-profile use in emergencies, the phrase SOS has entered general usage to informally indicate a crisis or the need for action.

SOS originated in German government maritime radio regulations adopted effective 1 April 1905. It became a worldwide standard when it was included in the service regulations of the first International Radiotelegraph Convention signed on 3 November 1906, which became effective on 1 July 1908.

In modern terminology, SOS is a Morse procedural signal or prosign, used as a start-of-message mark for transmissions requesting assistance when loss of life or catastrophic loss of property is imminent. Other prefixes are used for mechanical breakdowns, requests for medical assistance, and a relayed distress signal originally sent by another station. SOS remained the maritime radio distress signal until 1999, when it was replaced by the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System.

More information: Electronic Notes

SOS is still recognized as a standard distress signal that may be used with any signaling method. It has been used as a visual distress signal, consisting of three short/three long/three short flashes of light, such as from a survival mirror. In some cases the individual letters S O S have been spelled out, for example, stamped in a snowbank or formed out of logs on a beach. S O S being readable upside down as well as right side up (as an ambigram) is an advantage for visual recognition.

Radio (initially known as wireless telegraphy) was developed in the late 1890s, and was quickly recognized as an important aid to maritime communication. Previously seagoing vessels had adopted a variety of standardized visual and audio distress signals, using such things as semaphore flags, signal flares, bells, and foghorns. However, initially cooperation in standardizing radio distress signals was limited by national differences and rivalries between competing radio companies.

In 1903, an Italian representative at the Berlin Preliminary Conference on Wireless Telegraphy, Captain Quintino Bonomo, discussed the need for common operating procedures, including the suggestion that ships in distress... should send the signal SSS DDD at intervals of a few minutes. However, procedural questions were beyond the scope of this conference, so no standard signal was adopted at the time, although Article IV of the conference's Final Protocol stated that Wireless telegraph stations should, unless practically impossible, give priority to calls for help received from ships at sea.

Without international regulations, individual organizations were left to develop their practices. On 7 January 1904 the Marconi International Marine Communication Company issued Circular 57, which specified that, for the company's worldwide installations, beginning 1 February 1904 the call to be given by ships in distress or in any way requiring assistance shall be C.Q.D. An alternative proposal, put forward in 1906 by the U.S. Navy, suggested that the International Code of Signals flag signals should be adopted for radio use, including NC, which stood for In distress; want immediate assistance.

Germany was the first country to adopt the SOS distress signal, which it called the Notzeichen signal, as one of three Morse code sequences included in national radio regulations which became effective on 1 April 1905.

In 1906, the first International Radiotelegraph Convention met in Berlin, which produced an agreement signed on 3 November 1906 that become effective on 1 July 1908.

In both the 1 April 1905 German law and the 1906 international regulations, the distress signal is specified as a continuous Morse code sequence of three dots / three dashes / three dots, with no mention of any alphabetic equivalents. However there was a convention in International Morse whereby three dots comprise the letter S, and three dashes the letter O, and it soon became common to informally refer to the distress signal as S O S, with the 12 January 1907 Electrical World stating that Vessels in distress use the special signal, SOS, repeated at short intervals.

In American Morse code, which was used by many coastal ships in the United States through the first part of the twentieth century, three dashes stood for the numeral 5, so in a few cases the distress signal was informally referred to as S 5 S.

The first ships that have been reported to have transmitted an SOS distress call were the Cunard oceanliner RMS Slavonia on 10 June 1909 while sailing the Azores, and the steamer SS Arapahoe on 11 August 1909 while off the North Carolina coast. The signal of the Arapahoe was received by the United Wireless Telegraph Company station at Hatteras, North Carolina, and forwarded to the steamer company's offices. However, there was some resistance among Marconi operators to adopting the new signal, and as late as the April 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic the ship's Marconi operators intermixed CQD and SOS distress calls. In the interests of consistency and maritime safety, the use of CQD appears to have died out thereafter.

More information: Translate Morse Code

 I would imagine that 

if you could understand Morse code,
a tap dancer would drive you crazy

Mitch Hedberg