October 7

On the 7th in 1769, English explorer Captain Cook stumbled upon New Zealand. Cook was the first European to set foot on New Zealand since Abel Janszoon Tasman had attempted, but failed, to establish a colony in New Zealand in 1642. William Bligh, of Mutiny on the Bounty fame, was Cook’s sailing master. George Vancouver, who would be among the first to explore the coasts of Washington and Oregon in America’s Pacific Northwest, was one of the midshipmen on Cook’s second voyage of discovery. Tasman is generally given credit for having discovered New Zealand; despite the fact that people known as the Maori since at least the ninth century had continuously inhabited this island.

October 6

On the 6th in 1927, The Jazz Singer, the first major feature-length ‘talkie’ movie starring Al ‘You ain’t heard nothing yet’ Jolson was released.

The movie was based on Samson Raphaelson’s play ‘A Day of Atonement’.
Clément-Maurice Gratioulet and Henri Lioret of France produced the first talkies, which were shown in 1900 at the Paris Exposition. They consisted of short films of the theater, opera, and ballet.

October 5

President Truman was the first sitting president to address the nation by the means of a live televised broadcast when he went on the air on the 5th in 1947. In this address, he used his time to urge his fellow Americans to not eat meat on Tuesdays or poultry on Saturdays. His reason for this request was to help people starving in other countries. I haven’t been able to ferret out the story behind his very specific request that Americans avoid meat on Tuesdays and poultry on Saturdays. Why didn’t he pick liver and Brussels sprouts? Nobody here likes either of them and if those people were really starving, they would pretty much eat whatever was put in front of them wouldn’t they?

On November 1, 1950, Puerto Rican nationalists Griselio Torresola and Oscar Collazo attempted to assassinate Truman at Blair House.

October 4

On the 4th in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII, with a single shot from his starters’ pistol, started the ball rolling for his eponymous calendar, which is the calendar predominately used to this day. Jaded as we have become we tend to take far too many things for granted. For instance, we assume that October 4 will be followed by October 5, which in turn will be closely followed by October 6, and then 7, and so on and so on. Well until October 31 of course, since October only has 31 days, though that may very well change if I have anything to say about it. Such was not always the case. In 1582, October 4 was immediately followed by October 15. Think about it, if you had a busy social calendar for October 11, you were probably going to lose your security deposit, because in 1582 there would simply not be an October 11. Do not even think about rescheduling for the 15th because it is amazing how quickly things sell out.

The pope’s name at birth was Ugo Boncompagni. Prior to ascending to the Papacy, Pope Paul III had employed Benedict. Under Paul, Benedict served as a judge and vice-chancellor of the small town of Campagna.

October 3

Ever since Warhol made his point about fame, everyone wants to know the answer to the question ‘when do my fifteen minutes start?’ For Welshman Dayfdd ap Gruffyd, Prince of Gwyedd, the last Welsh ruler of Wales[i], they started on the 3rd in 1283 when, according to reliable sources, he became the first person to have been executed by drawing and quartering[ii]. He survived the drawing part, which if done properly can take an extraordinarily long time, and watched as his intestines were boiled. He did not survive much beyond that because the quartering is always effective on the first try. The international response to this development was swift and decisive and resulted in a total blockade of the importing of vowels to Wales.

[i] He became ruler of Wales when his brother Llywelyn ap Gruffydd was murdered
[ii] Beginning in the 13th century, the punishment for treason was hanging, drawing and quartering. In a bold-faced case of discrimination based on gender, only males guilty of treason were executed in this manner. Women guilty of treason were simply burnt at the stake.

October 2

On the 2nd in 1535, Jacques Cartier, the intrepid adventurer not the manufacturer of tasteful jewelry and watches, began settlement of what was to become Montreal, Quebec, Canada. I shouldn’t hold it against Cartier, though I will, but I have not cared for Montreal since a friend and I were refused entrance to a restaurant there because we could not speak French and we were wearing blue jeans. I suppose that the Quebecois aren’t all bad and they do serve at least one important function: they give the French someone to look down on.

Cartier gets credit for giving the name Canada to … well, Canada.
Mark Twain while on a trip to Montreal remarked, "This is the first time I was ever in a city where you couldn't throw a brick without breaking a church window."
Cartier was a very busy beaver. In 1541, he also started the colony of Charlesbourg-Royal but it was abandoned in 1542. The site is the location of present day Cap-Rouge, Quebec.

October 1

Born on the 1st in 1842, Charles Cros was a man who lived his life with both feet planted firmly in the outskirts of fame and accomplishment. He came remarkably close to almost inventing the phonograph. On April 30, 1877, he submitted a sealed envelope to the Academy of Science in Paris. Contained in the envelope was a description of a device for making sound recordings capable of being stored and played back at will. Cros’ proposal for such a machine was read in public on the following December 3rd. Before he had an opportunity to build a working model of this groundbreaking device however, Thomas Edison, working independently, introduced a working model of his own phonograph, which Edison patented on January 15, 1878. Cros was a man of many talents. He also worked on the photograph equipment of the late nineteenth century and almost came up an improvement. Undeterred by these little set backs, Gros then turned his gaze to the stars. Cros became convinced that the pinpoints of light that he and others had observed on Mars and Venus were the lights of large cities on those planets. He spent years petitioning the French government to build a giant mirror that could be used to communicate with the Martians and Venusians by burning giant lines on the deserts of those planets. Cros was never convinced that the Martians were not a proven fact, or that the mirror he wanted to build was technically impossible. One possible explanation for Cros’ behavior might be that in addition to being an inventor he was also a poet. That of course means he was, at times, completely out of his mind.