Beatrix Potter – The Tale of Peter Rabbit

116 years before the combination of uncanny valley CGI and the voice of James Corden, a minor Childrens’ publisher put out a small run of picture books about a naughty rabbit. This book immediately lifted its 32-year-old author out of obscurity and went on to be one of the best-sellers of all time. Before I …

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A 1902 recording session in Tbilisi

From Excavated Shellac, the story of one of the first adventures to record the music of the rest of the world.   Likely the music was baffling to these engineers from America. Up to that time, the normal recording repertoire for the Gramophone Company was what one might expect. It primarily consisted of Western classical …

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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – The Hound of the Baskervilles

When I was four or five years old I somehow acquired a Ladybird Horror Classics edition of ‘The Hound of The Baskervilles’. This one in fact: If that cover, or the equally terrifying illustrations within weren’t enough to scare a young child, the book also came with a cassette. The “horror” theme of this publication …

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Elsewhere in 1902

January 30th – Scott’s Discovery Expedition reaches the Great Ice Barrier in Antarctica March 6th – Real Madrid F.C. are founded April 5th – The Ibrox Stadium stands collapse during an England-Scotland match – 25 are killed, 517 are injured April 11th – The South African Army fights a last, disastrous battle against the British …

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1901 in Art

Gustav Klimt – Judith and the Head of Holofernes Pablo Picasso – The Blue Room Winslow Homer — Searchlight on Harbor Entrance, Santiago de Cuba Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo – The Fourth Estate Akseli Gallen-Kallela – Kullervo Rides to War Joseph Farquharson – The Shortening Winter’s Day is Near a Close Camille Pissarro – Hay …

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The Films of Mitchell & Kenyon

Here’s a wonderful thing. In 1994 a stack of negatives was found in a cellar by workmen demolishing a shop. The prints turned out to be the largest surviving collection of actuality films anywhere in the world, and their restoration is almost certainly the best window on to life in Edwardian England. Sagar Mitchell and …

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The Assassination of President McKinley

President William McKinley was shot by anarchist Leon Czolgosz on September 6th, 1901, during a visit to the Pan-American Exposition at the Temple of Music in Buffalo, New York. He died eight days later of gangrene caused by the gunshot wounds. He was the third American president to have been assassinated in forty years – …

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