The Solstice is at 10:47 this morning Mountain Time. Anthropologists have found that celebrations of the solstice go back for 30,000 years.
Ancient peoples believed that because daylight was waning, it might go away forever, so they lit huge bonfires to tempt the sun to come back. The tradition of decorating our houses and our trees with lights at this time of year is passed down from those ancient bonfires.
The Writer’s Almanac (2005)
According to the Library of Congress, “The name ‘winter’ comes from a Germanic term meaning ‘time of water’ and refers to the seasonal precipitation.”
Today is the birthday
… of Joe Paterno. The football coach at Penn State is 83.
… of Phil Donahue. The talk show host is 74.
… of Jane Fonda. The two-time Oscar-winning actress is 72. Miss Fonda has been nominated for the best actress Oscar six times, winning for Klute and Coming Home. She was also nominated for best supporting actress for On Golden Pond.
… of Carla Thomas. Gee Whiz, she’s 67.
… of Michael Tilson Thomas, he’s 65.
His grandparents, the Thomashefskys, were famous Yiddish theatrical stars. He graduated from the school of music at the University of Southern California and then got a fellowship conducting at Tanglewood, in the Berkshires. At 23, he was the youngest assistant conductor ever hired by the Boston Symphony.
He was the protégé of Leonard Bernstein, and is frequently compared to him. Like Bernstein, he stepped in at a major performance when the principal conductor got sick, and so made his reputation at age 24. He was founder of the New World Symphony in Miami, and in 1995 he went to direct the San Francisco Symphony, and he’s been there ever since. He hosts a classical music series on PBS called Keeping Score.
He said, “I believe that music is the most important when the music stops. When a piece ends, that’s when I really measure what effect it had on me or those who heard it.”
… of Samuel L. Jackson. Mace Windu is 61. Jackson was nominated for the best actor Oscar for his portrayal of Jules Winnfield in Pulp Fiction.
… of Chris Evert. The tennis hall-of-famer is 55.
… of Jane Kaczmarek. Malcolm’s mom is 54.
… of Ray Romano. Raymond is 52.
… of Kiefer Sutherland. Donald Sutherland’s little boy is 43.
… of Julie Delpy. The actress, who was nominated for a writing Oscar for Before Sunset, is 40.
Frank Zappa was born on this date in 1940. He died in 1993.
The singer, songwriter, and composer was born in Baltimore, Maryland (1940). Zappa’s father was a meteorologist in the Army who studied the effects of weather on explosions and poisonous gases. The gas masks and chemical paraphernalia his dad brought home were some of young Zappa’s first toys. When Frank Zappa started playing atonal classical music on his electric guitar, he said that his goal was to make sounds that would cause people to run from the room the moment they heard it. He was also a political activist, and he once proposed that the United States form a fourth branch of government devoted entirely to creativity.
Joseph Stalin was born on this date in 1879. This from his obituary in 1953:
Joseph Stalin became the most important figure in the political direction of one-third of the people of the world. He was one of a group of hard revolutionaries that established the first important Marxist state and, as its dictator, he carried forward its socialization and industrialization with vigor and ruthlessness.
During the second World War, Stalin personally led his country’s vast armed forces to victory. When Germany was defeated, he pushed his country’s frontiers to their greatest extent and fostered the creation of a buffer belt of Marxist-oriented satellite states from Korea across Eurasia to the Baltic Sea. Probably no other man ever exercised so much influence over so wide a region.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premiered 72 years ago today.
That famous photo of Elvis Presley with President Richard Nixon was taken 39 years ago today. The National Archives has all the details — When Nixon Met Elvis, but here’s the photo and Elvis’s letter. Just click for the larger versions.
