Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 5, 1995 TAG: 9501050018
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RICK HOROWITZ
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
But what if we prefer a third choice? What if we're actually looking forward to ... looking back? What if, for instance, there are so many exciting, delighting and altogether intriguing anniversaries coming up during 1995, that turning back the time machine (that's one) is the very best way to kick off the new year? Read on:
Mom Always Liked You Best
The year is 395, exactly 1600 years ago. The Huns and the Visigoths are rampaging across the Near East and Greece, respectively, but the big news is the splitting of the Roman Empire with the death of Theodosius the Great. Theo's 17-year-old son, Arcadius, will rule the Eastern Empire from Constantinople; kid brother Honorius, 10, will rule the West from Milan. The split is supposed to be temporary. That's what they think.
Which takes us to the year 995, precisely a millennium ago, and a chance to celebrate the historic thousandth anniversary of ...
Virtually nothing.
The Germans subdue the Slavnici, the last independent tribe of Bohemia. Basil II brings Syria inside the Byzantine Empire. And Olaf Trygvasson becomes King of Norway. You want to party on any of those? Go ahead - we'll wait here.
Back so soon?
Good, because it's starting to liven up again. In 1095, a major-major event: Pope Urban II calls for a Crusade against the Moslem infidels in the Holy Land. There'll be eight crusades spanning nearly 200 years. Religious fervor is part of the attraction; the prospect of free acreage for landless younger brothers doesn't hurt either.
Byzantine doings in the Byzantine Empire in 1195, as Emperor Isaac II Angelus is dethroned by his brother Alexius while Isaac is off hunting. Isaac had once rescued Alexius from captivity, but that was then. Now? Alexius takes Isaac prisoner and has his eyes put out.
In 1295, Venetian merchant Marco Polo returns home after serving with the late, great Kublai Khan. He's brought back spices, a wokful of Asian cooking techniques and memories enough to fill a book - which three years from now, sitting in a Genoese jail, he'll dictate to a fellow prisoner.
Soup and Silver
A half-millennium ago, 1495: The English Parliament passes a new law against vagabonds and beggars, while the Diet of Worms - that's a conference, not a weight-loss program - tries to reinvigorate the Holy Roman Empire by, among other things, proclaiming Perpetual Peace. (If you can outlaw poverty, why not war?) Leonardo da Vinci has somewhat smaller goals in mind in 1495; he's just beginning "The Last Supper."
In the New World, a South American llama herder lights a fire and sees something shining back at him: silver. The Potosi mines will eventually yield some two billion dollars worth.
By 1595, 400 years ago, people are on the move - the Dutch sailing around the Cape of Good Hope to begin colonizing the East Indies, the British navigator Sir Walter Raleigh journeying 300 miles up South America's Orinoco River. He probably misses Shakespeare's "Richard II" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream," which have their debuts back home. And there's big news in shoes: heels!
In 1695 in France, civilization takes a giant slurp forward: The Duc du Montaussier invents the soup ladle. But most guests continue to dip their own spoons into the tureen. ...
Quoth the Umpire: "Nevermore"
It's 1795, and the French Revolution staggers on. But out of the rubble, some important developments: the metric system, with the meter - one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the equator - the standard unit of measurement, and the gram the standard unit of weight. While they're at it, they also come up with a new monetary unit: the franc.
The British navy finally puts an end to scurvy among its lads at sea. The answer? Lemon juice. In the westward-ho U.S.A., the Treaty of Greenville is signed and Indians cede lands that will ultimately become Ohio, while the North West Fur Company establishes the first semi-permanent trading post on the Lake Michigan site that will someday be Milwaukee. No bratwursts yet.
It's sesquicentennial time - 1845 - and technology marches forward: The British grant a patent for the rubber band! Meanwhile, the Great Famine hits Ireland, starving vast numbers and sending hundreds of thousands more across the ocean to the United States. The country on this side of the ocean is growing bigger all the time. In fact, claims magazine editor John L. O'Sullivan in 1845, it's "our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent."
We don't take much convincing. Out in the Oregon Territory, a new town is founded, and named when two homesick New Englanders flip a coin. One wants Boston, the other favors: Portland. And make way for two new states, as Florida and Texas join the union.
Edgar Allan Poe publishes "Tales" and "The Raven and Other Poems" in 1845, and there's another, revolutionary, book out as well: Author Margaret Fuller argues in her "Woman in the Nineteenth Century" that women need to seek fulfillment and careers beyond their traditional marital duties. "That her hand may be given with dignity," Fuller says, "she must be able to stand alone."
And one for the guys: In 1845, a New York City fireman named Alexander Cartwright organizes the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club, and devises a set of rules to improve the game: a diamond-shaped infield with 90-foot basepaths, the ball is pitched underhand, 21 runs wins and Ken Burns gets to do the documentary. ...
Names You've Even Heard Of
Lots of what makes the world go 'round today gets rolling exactly 100 years ago, in 1895. The German physicist William Roentgen discovers X-rays. In France, Auguste and Louis Lumiere demonstrate the first commercially successful motion-picture projector, the "cinematographe." German engineer Rudolf Diesel invents an engine. American King C. Gillette invents the safety razor. John Harvey Kellogg introduces "Granose," the world's first flaked breakfast cereal.
The first American automobile company is founded in 1895 by Charles Duryea, then Charles and brother J. Frank win the first American auto race, between Chicago and Evanston. Some 80 cars enter the competition; only six are able to start.
Elsewhere this year, Wellesley College English professor Katherine Lee Bates has a poem published that was inspired by an 1893 visit to Pike's Peak. Revised in 1904 and once again in 1911, it's "America the Beautiful." When set to music, generations of school children will wonder, "Purple mountain majesties?"
Want some easier lyrics to sing? How about these? "Casey would waltz with a strawberry blonde and..." It's "The Band Played On," one of the year's biggest hits. H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine" is a major new book. And William Randolph Hearst hits it big, too, when he purchases the New York Journal in 1895 and turns it into a sensationalistic, gossip-and-photo-laden broadsheet. The paper's success spawns a flock of print imitators and Geraldo Rivera.
The first professional football game is played in 1895 in Pennsylvania, when Latrobe hosts the fellows from Jeannette. William Harrison Dempsey is born in 1895; they'll call him "Jack" when he laces up the gloves. George Herman Ruth is born, too; they'll call him "Babe."
And at 53 1/2 Spring Street in New York City, another momentous birth: America's first pizzeria. Hold the anchovies.
The Big One Ends the Big One
"Is there anything I can do for you?" says Harry Truman to the suddenly widowed Eleanor Roosevelt on April 12, 1945.
"Is there anything we can do for you," she replies. "For you are the one in trouble now."
It's 1945, 50 years ago, and World War II finally comes to an end. FDR is succeeded by the little-known (and even less-respected) Truman. The Allies argue over the shape of the peacetime world and find that a cold war is quickly replacing the hot one. Roosevelt's final dream, the United Nations, becomes reality; in this new atomic age, the U.N. hopes to keep things quiet for a while at least.
Good luck. Now that the Big One is over, the little ones can start. Vietnam declares its independence, with president Ho Chi Minh leading the fight against French colonialism. The Muslims rise up against the French in Algeria. Mao Tse-tung and Chiang Kai-shek start fighting for control of China. Gandhi wants the British out of India.
In the United States, shoe, meat, butter, tire rationing are all lifted, as life returns to nearly normal. Or even better than normal. Frozen orange juice makes its debut in 1945; so do aerosol-spray insecticides. And Silly Putty is developed out of research for wartime rubber substitutes, though it won't be marketed as a toy until 1949.
Ebony Magazine publishes its first issue and sells out its press run of 25,000 copies. On Broadway, Rodgers and Hammerstein score big with "Carousel," while 34-year-old playwright Tennessee Williams offers "The Glass Menagerie."
Ray Milland turns in an Oscar-winning performance in "The Lost Weekend." Joan Crawford does likewise in "Mildred Pierce." "It's Been a Long, Long Time" is one of the songs that greets returning soldiers, and another Jule Styne/Sammy Cahn composition scales the heights of winter masochism: "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!"
In football, it's the Cleveland (that's right, Cleveland) Rams over the Washington Redskins for the NFL championship. In baseball, the Detroit Tigers win the World Series over the Chicago Cubs.
All worth remembering, but there's one more development that means galas galore. In Massachusetts in 1945, an inventive chemist comes up with a plastic water glass, the first commercial product made of polyethylene. He'll soon begin large-scale marketing of a whole range of plastic products. His preferred method? At-home sales parties. His name? Earl S. Tupper.
So forget the Orange Bowl, the Rose Bowl, the Cotton Bowl. It's time to raise a golden-anniversary Tupperware Bowl to the new year - and to all those memorable old years, too.
Keywords:
YEAR 1995
by CNB