A
couple of world changing events feature for the 2nd
October.
The first
occurred in the laboratory of John Logie Baird. On the 2nd October 1925,
Baird successfully transmitted the first television picture with a grey scale
image: the head of a ventriloquist's dummy nicknamed "Stooky Bill" in
a 30-line vertically scanned image, at five pictures per second. Baird went
downstairs and fetched an office worker, 20-year-old William Edward Taynton, to
see what a human face would look like, and Taynton became the first person to
be televised in a full tonal range. Looking for publicity, Baird visited the Daily
Express newspaper to promote his invention. The news editor was terrified:
he was quoted by one of his staff as saying: "For God's sake, go down to
reception and get rid of a lunatic who's down there. He says he's got a machine
for seeing by wireless! Watch him — he may have a razor on him."
Opus Dei was founded in Spain on the 2nd October 1928 by the Catholic priest Saint Josemaría Escrivá, Opus Dei was
given final Catholic Church approval in 1950 by Pope Pius XII. In 1982, by
decision of Pope John Paul II, the Catholic Church made it into a personal
prelature—that is, the jurisdiction of its own bishop covers the persons in
Opus Dei wherever they are, rather than geographical dioceses. Opus
Dei, formally known as The Prelature of the Holy Cross and Opus Dei
(Latin: Praelatura Sanctae Crucis et Operis Dei), is an institution of
the Catholic Church that teaches that everyone is called to holiness and that
ordinary life is a path to sanctity. The majority of its membership are lay
people, with secular priests under the governance of a prelate (bishop) elected
by specific members and appointed by the Pope. Opus Dei is Latin for Work of
God; hence the organization is often referred to by members and supporters
as the Work.
Dan Brown made much of this
stuff in his book The Da Vinci Code.
Peanuts
a syndicated daily and Sunday American comic strip written and
illustrated by Charles M. Schulz, which ran from 2nd
October 1950, to the 13th February 13 2000, continuing in
reruns afterward. The strip is the most popular and influential in the history
of the comic strip, with 17,897 strips published in all, making it "arguably the longest story ever told by one
human being", according to Robert Thompson of Syracuse University. At its
peak, Peanuts ran in over 2,600 newspapers, with a readership of 355
million in 75 countries, and was translated into 21 languages. It helped to
cement the four panel gag strip as the standard in the United States, and
together with its merchandise earned Schulz more than $1 billion. Reprints of
the strip are still syndicated and run in almost every U.S. newspaper
His rapid-fire, often impromptu delivery
of innuendo-laden patter earned him many admirers and imitators. He made 13
feature films with his siblings the Marx Brothers, of whom he was the
third-born. He also had a successful solo career, most notably as the host of
the radio and television game show You
Bet Your Life. His distinctive appearance, carried over from his days in vaudeville,
included quirks such as an exaggerated stooped posture, glasses, cigar, and a
thick greasepaint mustache and eyebrows. These exaggerated features resulted in
the creation of one of the world's most ubiquitous and recognizable novelty
disguises, known as "Groucho glasses", a one-piece mask consisting of
horn-rimmed glasses, large plastic nose, bushy eyebrows and mustache.
Groucho was best known for his use of
the paraprosdokian, a figure of speech
in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in
a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first
part. It is frequently used for humorous or dramatic effect, sometimes
producing an anti climax. Some paraprosdokians not only change the meaning of
an early phrase, but they also play on the double meaning of a particular word,
creating a form of syllepsis. "Paraprosdokian" comes from Greek
"παρά” meaning "against" and "“προσδοκία" meaning
"expectation".
"I've had a perfectly wonderful
evening, but this wasn't it." Groucho Marx
And of course one of the best bits of graffiti
to emerge from the May 1968 evenments in
Paris.
“Je suis Marxiste — tendance Groucho.”
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