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Odd This Day

@oddthisday.bsky.social

Chris Coates, purveyor of niche drivel: https://substack.com/@oddthisday

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Odd This Day@oddthisday.bsky.social · 12h ago

Well, happy Charles Darwin is “very poorly today & very stupid & hate[s] everybody & everything” to all who celebrate, because he wrote those words in a letter to his friend (and author of Principles of Geology) Charles Lyell 161 years ago today

Odd This Day@oddthisday.bsky.social · 12h ago

Well, happy Charles Darwin is “very poorly today & very stupid & hate[s] everybody & everything” to all who celebrate, because he wrote those words in a letter to his friend (and author of Principles of Geology) Charles Lyell 161 years ago today

Odd This Day@oddthisday.bsky.social · yesterday

Well, if it’s 30 September, it must be... oh God. The 36th anniversary of the first—and, you may not be entirely surprised to hear—only transmission of a sitcom which was genuinely called ‘Heil Honey, I’m Home’, in which Hitler and Eva Braun live next door to Jewish couple Arny and Rosa Goldenstein

Neil McCaul as comedy Hitler, mugging for the camera
Odd This Day@oddthisday.bsky.social · 2d ago

Today is the 321st anniversary of the last of the ‘wars of the fists’ (guerre dei pugni) on a bridge in Venice. Sometimes also known as battagliole sui ponti, or “little battles on the bridges”, or guerre de canne (wars with sticks), they could also involve cudgels, roof tiles, stones, and knives

Ponte dei Pugni, Pietro Liberi (1605-87)—a 17th century painting of a massive scrap on a bridge. It’s covered in people, wrestling and jostling, and is surrounded by spectators
Odd This Day@oddthisday.bsky.social · 2d ago

Today is the 321st anniversary of the last of the ‘wars of the fists’ (guerre dei pugni) on a bridge in Venice. Sometimes also known as battagliole sui ponti, or “little battles on the bridges”, or guerre de canne (wars with sticks), they could also involve cudgels, roof tiles, stones, and knives

Ponte dei Pugni, Pietro Liberi (1605-87)—a 17th century painting of a massive scrap on a bridge. It’s covered in people, wrestling and jostling, and is surrounded by spectators
Odd This Day@oddthisday.bsky.social · 3d ago

It’s the 51st anniversary of the first day of the unlikely-sounding Spaghetti House Siege, when three armed robbers went into the Knightsbridge branch of an Italian restaurant chain, staff hid the money from them under a table, police surrounded the building, and they were stuck in there five days

A London street with a bus going down it. On the other side of the road, police vans and a crowd of people
Joel Morris@gralefrit.bsky.social · 4d ago

Morning. Last week I found out for the first time that Champion The Wonder Horse (stalwart black and white 50s schedule filler up to 1993) was a spin-off. Champion was Gene Autry’s horse, and it was a 1955 cash in on the success of the Gene Autry Show. He’s like horse Frasier.

Champignon, Le Cheval Merveilleux
Odd This Day@oddthisday.bsky.social · 4d ago

84th anniversary today of the birth of Alvin Stardust, who had two separate, successful, careers in music, in different decades, with different identities, both of which he inherited from other performers

Odd This Day@oddthisday.bsky.social · last yr.

Today would have been the 83rd birthday of Bernard William Jewry, had he not sadly died in 2014 at the relatively young age of 72. This wouldn’t be especially remarkable had he not spent the previous 40 years going by the name Alvin Stardust

A man with black bouffant hair and sideburns looks moodily at camera, wearing a black leather (possibly snakeskin/faux snakeskin) jacket, black gloves and huge jewellery. Or, in the words of his Telegraph obituary “an extravagantly quiffed, leather-clad rocker with preposterous sideburns and chunky rings worn over tight-fitting leather gloves”
Odd This Day@oddthisday.bsky.social · 5d ago

...and its the 413th anniversary of that poor child being buried after he was murdered by ACTUAL WITCHES (who were not in fact witches—apologies for the spoiler)

Odd This Day@oddthisday.bsky.social · last yr.

It’s the 412th anniversary of the burial of Henry, Baron de Ros, infant son and heir of Francis Manners, 6th Earl of Rutland, whose tragic early demise led to the only gravestone in any English church which mentions sorcery – because, OF COURSE, he was done in by witches

Old woodblock print of the witches of Belvoir – three women with sticks, one with an owl on her shoulder, another with a cat at her feet, and the third with what may be a small dog. There seems to be a rat or mouse in the foreground, too
Odd This Day@oddthisday.bsky.social · 5d ago

Today is the 63rd anniversary of the publication of the Denning Report into the Profumo affair, which is not really obscure history, but you may enjoy this telegram from the British Embassy in Paris to the Foreign Office about what Those Saucy Bleeders The Damned French were making of it all

FROM PARIS TO FOREIGN OFFICE By Bag Sir P. Dixon DEPARTMENTAL DISTRUBUTION No. 242 Saving September 28, 1963 R: September 29, 1963 Addressed to Foreign Office telegram No. 242 Saving of 28/9 R.F.I. Saving to: Washington Bonn Denning Report No doubt the more sensational Paris papers had been hoping to find new provender in the Denning Report. Some have done their best with the little they found. The pro-Gaullist Paris Presse, for example purports to be publishing the complete text: the tabloid Paris Jour adorned its centre page account with no less than 7 pictures of Miss Keeler in various stages of undress. But other equally popular papers (Parisien Liberé, for example) recognised from the outset that the material for sensationalism was disappointing and played the story down (“Report not worth 7 shillings”). The official Gaullist broadsheet La Nation went so far as to headline “Denning Report Damp Squib: Macmillan Acquitted: Ward Posthumously Executed”. The normally sedate Figaro went through contortions deciding how to handle the story: early editions were confined to an assessment of political consequences but the editor had second thoughts and later editions covered the Report in a way which will certainly bring complaints from parts of the paper’s rather squeamish public.2. With regard to the political consequences, almost the only serious comment has so far come from Correspondents in London. A despatch from Henri Pierre in Le Monde published under the headline “Lord Denning’s Report contains a severe indictment of Mr. Macmillan and his colleagues and the Government” speaks of “a new stock of dynamite” for the Opposition and of the “casualness, incompetence of Mr. Macmillan’s direct associates”. Paris Presse under the heading “Stricken Macmillan goes to see Churchill” describes the Prime Minister as “madly incompetent … The report is hard, very hard, on him and his team that the only real censure…..is addressed”. Capuano in L’Information adopted a rather similar line in a despatch headlined “Denning Report may offer Labour opposition good electoral platform”. “If the content … is no surprise, it nevertheless calls in question the Prime Minister’s foresight and authority. The political repercussions that this aspect of matters might have, is not to be under-estimated.” Bertrand in Le Figaro in reporting that elections would not take place before next Spring at the earliest, nevertheless speaks of the electoral battle as ”virtually begun”.3. On the other hand the Prime Minister’s television appearance was reported in Le Monde under the heading “Mr. Macmillan defends himself in masterly fashion”. “He defended himself and defended his colleagues with such masterliness that Mr. Wilson is going, as is usual, to ask the right to reply to him. Mr. Macmillan was in fact excellent, making a bludgeon of his honesty and sincerity and even of his naivety”.