Crabs and Beer!

Today is, of course, Bastille Day. It marks the birth of the French Republic. It is the National Day of France. In France, it is referred to as la Fête Nationale (“National Holiday”), le quatorze juillet (The Fourteenth of July) or la fête du 14-Juillet (14th July Holiday).

After years of misrule by the Monarchy with increasing taxes and higher food prices, the French people had finally united in a popular uprising in an effort to take control of their own country. On July 14th 1789, the people of Paris banded together to march on the Bastille. The Bastille was a 14th-century medieval fortress that became a state prison. It was used by the King to imprison his opponents, often without trial and was seen as representing the despotism of the regime of Louis the XVI.

When Louis XVI asked a French duke if the storming of Bastille was a revolt on the evening of July 14th 1789, the duke replied by saying, “No, sire. It is a revolution.”

The duke was correct as the storming of the prison marked the beginning of the French Revolution and came to symbolize liberty, democracy and the struggle against oppression for all the people of France.

In October, Louis XVI and his queen Marie Antoinette were taken from the Palace of Versailles by 4,000 rioters and put under house arrest at the Tuileries Palace, in the centre of Paris.

After a failed attempt to flee to Austria in 1791, tensions about how to punish the King continued, culminating in the storming of the Tuileries by a new mob and the arrest of Louis XVI in 1792. France was finally declared a Republic in September that year, ending the 800-year-old monarchy, and in January the following year, Louis XVI was executed by guillotine on the grounds of treason.

In the months that followed, thousands of people considered enemies of the new Republic were executed in a “Reign of Terror” – including Marie Antoinette. On the one-year anniversary of the fall of Bastille, July 14th 1790, delegates from across the country assembled in Paris to proclaim their allegiance as one national community at the Fête de la Fédération.

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Joots?

Sometimes electricity is a necessary evil…

On this day in 1964, The Rolling Stones were at No.1 on the UK singles chart with ‘It’s All Over Now’, the group’s first of 8 UK No.1’s. Written by Bobby Womack and Shirley Womack, it was first released by The Valentinos featuring Bobby Womack in the same year. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ur-yMil88fU

Sometimes reading or watching the news can get us down these days. There are still plenty of good things in the world, so here is a selection of videos to, hopefully, make us a little happier and able to face the world. Enjoy (and relax).

Dance of the Cygnets s a dance from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. Lev Ivanov’s choreography—created for the 1895 revival of Swan Lake—was meant to imitate the way cygnets huddle and move together for protection. Four dancers enter the stage in a line and move across with their arms crossed in front of one another, grasping the next dancers’ hands. They move sideways, doing sixteen pas de chat. Ideally, the dancers move in exact unison. At the very end, they break their chain and try to “fly”, only to drop to the ground.

I think this is amazing and wonderful!

The Ketchup Song (Aserejé)” is the debut single by Spanish pop group Las Ketchup, taken from their debut studio album Hijas del Tomate (2002). The song is about a young man who enters a nightclub while singing and dancing. In addition to the original Spanish version, the song exists in a form with Spanglish verses, although the nonsensical chorus is identical in both versions. “The Ketchup Song” was released on 10 June 2002 and became an international hit the same year. It reached number one in at least 20 European countries and became the best-selling hit of 2002 in eight of them. It also topped the music charts of Australia, Canada, and New Zealand but stalled at number 54 in the United States.

So sing…and dance along! Forget your worries!!

WAKA WAKA was released on 7 May 2010 by Epic Records as the official song of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, which was held in South Africa. Released in English and Spanish (with the title “Waka Waka (Esto es África)“), the song samples the original Cameroonian song “Zamina mina (Zangaléwa)”.

Sing, dance and cheer along!

The Venus Orchestra was founded in 2001 in Germany as the “Ladies First Symphony Orchestra”. They are fun to watch and listen to. Here they play a piece from Jacques Offenbach, a German-born French composer. Enjoy this remarkable performance!

Postmodern Jukebox (PMJ) is a rotating musical collective founded by New York-based pianist Scott Bradlee in 2011. Postmodern Jukebox is known for reworking popular modern music into different vintage genres, especially early 20th century forms such as swing and jazz. They have toured North America, Europe, and Australia; often simultaneously due to the extensive discography and the numerous artists and performers involved in the project.

Slow down and enjoy that bass…

Finally,for today, is a fun 1983 song by ELO (Electric Light Orchestra) with some ‘dancing’. Get up and dance yourself!

On this day in 1405, Admiral Zheng He departed on his first exploratory voyage for the Ming Dynasty. Zheng He is often regarded as the greatest admiral in Chinese history. Born into a Muslim family as Ma He, he later adopted the surname Zheng conferred onto him by the Yongle Emperor (r. 1402–1424).

Zheng was born Ma He to a Muslim family of Kunyang, Kunming, Yunnan. In the autumn of 1382, a Ming army invaded and conquered Yunnan. In 1381, Ma Hajji, Zheng He’s father, died in the fighting between the Ming armies and Mongol forces. Zheng He was captured by the Ming armies in Yunnan in 1381. General Fu Youde saw Ma He on a road and approached him to inquire about the location of the Mongol pretender. Ma He responded defiantly by saying that the Mongol pretender had jumped into a lake. Then the general took him prisoner. He was castrated between the ages of 10 and 14, and placed in the service of the Prince of Yan.

Enslaved as a eunuch servant, Ma He eventually gained the confidence of Zhu Di (who later became the Yongle Emperor), who, as his benefactor, gained the allegiance and loyalty of the young eunuch. Between 1405 and 1433, the Ming government sponsored seven naval expeditions, designed them to establish a Chinese presence and impose imperial control over the Indian Ocean trade, impress foreign peoples in the Indian Ocean basin, and extend the empire’s tributary system.

Zheng He was placed as the admiral in control of the huge fleet and armed forces that undertook the expeditions. Preparations were thorough and wide-ranging, including the use of so many linguists that a foreign language institute was established at Nanjing. Zheng He’s first voyage departed 11 July 1405, from Suzhou and consisted of a fleet of 317 ships holding almost 28,000 crewmen.

Zheng He’s fleets visited Brunei, Java, Siam (Thailand), Southeast Asia, India, the Horn of Africa, and Arabia, dispensing and receiving goods along the way. Zheng He presented gifts of gold, silver, porcelain, and silk, and in return, China received such novelties as ostriches, zebras, camels, and ivory from the Swahili Coast. The giraffe that he brought back from Malindi was taken as proof of the Mandate of Heaven upon the administration.

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Inflation…

Good business names…

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Today is the birthday, in 1947, of John Holt, reggae singer and songwriter who first found fame as a member of the Paragons, before establishing himself as a solo artist. Holt penned ‘The Tide Is High’ made famous by Blondie. He died on 20th October 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ak06IseGgg

This date, in 1925, was the first day of proceedings of The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes, commonly known as the Scopes trial or Scopes Monkey Trial. A high school teacher, John T. Scopes, was accused of violating the Butler Act, a Tennessee state law which outlawed the teaching of human evolution in public schools.

The trial was deliberately staged in order to attract publicity to the small town of Dayton, Tennessee, where it was held. Scopes was unsure whether he had ever actually taught evolution, but he incriminated himself deliberately so the case could have a defendant. Scopes was represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, which had offered to defend anyone accused of violating the Butler Act in an effort to challenge the constitutionality of the law.

William Jennings Bryan, a three-time presidential candidate and former secretary of state, argued for the prosecution, while famed labor and criminal lawyer Clarence Darrow served as the principal defense attorney for Scopes. The trial publicized the fundamentalist–modernist controversy, which set modernists, who believed evolution could be consistent with religion, against fundamentalists, who believed the literal word of God as revealed in the Bible took priority over all human knowledge.

In 1968, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Epperson v. Arkansas that such bans contravene the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment because their primary purpose is religious. Tennessee had repealed the Butler Act the previous year.

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All you need to know about Oklahoma…

And you think it’s tough to get stuff built today. The Cologne Cathedral took approximately 600 years to build…

No thanks…

Today is the birthday, in 1947, of Arlo Guthrie, US singer, songwriter, son of folksinger Woody Guthrie, (1967 album ‘Alice’s Restaurant’, 1972 US No.18 single ‘The City Of New Orleans’). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF1lqEQFVUo

On this day in 1868, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, with South Carolina providing the final approval (somewhat under duress – the Reconstruction Acts required the Confederate states to ratify the amendment before they would be re-admitted to the United States).

The Amendment is one of the most consequential amendments. It addresses citizenship rights and equal protection under the law at all levels of government.

The amendment’s first section includes the Citizenship Clause, Privileges or Immunities Clause, Due Process Clause, and Equal Protection Clause. The Citizenship Clause broadly defines citizenship, superseding the Supreme Court’s decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), which held that Americans descended from African slaves could not become American citizens. The Privileges or Immunities Clause was interpreted in the Slaughter-House Cases (1873) as preventing states from impeding federal rights, such as the freedom of movement. The Due Process Clause builds on the Fifth Amendment to prohibit all levels of government from depriving people of life, liberty, or property without substantive and procedural due process. Additionally, the Due Process Clause supports the incorporation doctrine, by which portions of the Bill of Rights have been applied to the states. The Equal Protection Clause requires each state to provide equal protection under the law to all people, including non-citizens, within its jurisdiction.

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Budget cuts?

“Full Self-Driving”…

SIGNS and SIGNS…

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Today is the birthday, in 1945, of American singer Dolores “Dee Dee” Kenniebrew, from the girl group the Crystals. She sang lead vocalist on both the Crystals’ 1963 Phil Spector produced hits ‘Then He Kissed Me’ and ‘Da Doo Ron Ron’. In 1960, at age 15, she was invited to join the girl group and was the only member who stayed in the group from their formation to their disbanding. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-qqi7-Q19k