Frank Beacham's Journal

On this day in 1955 — 67 years ago — the Guinness World Records was first published

On this day in 1955 — 67 years ago — the Guinness World Records was first published.

It’s the biggest-selling annual book ever, with more than 132 million sold. The book itself holds a world record, as the best-selling copyrighted book of all time. It is one of the most frequently stolen books from public libraries in the United States.

That’s in a different league from the longest eyelashes on a dog (6.69 inches), the largest bubble-gum bubble blown (20 inches) or the longest human fingernails (32 feet, 3.8 inches).

On November 10, 1951, Sir Hugh Beaver, then the managing director of the Guinness Breweries, went on a shooting party in the North Slob near the River Slaney in County Wexford, Ireland. After missing a shot at a golden plover, he became involved in an argument over which was the fastest game bird in Europe, the golden plover or the red grouse (it is the plover).

That evening at Castlebridge House, he realized that it was impossible to confirm in reference books whether or not the golden plover was Europe's fastest game bird. Beaver knew that there must be numerous other questions debated nightly in pubs throughout Ireland and abroad, but there was no book in the world with which to settle arguments about records.

He realized then that a book supplying the answers to this sort of question might prove successful. Beaver's idea became reality when Guinness employee, Christopher Chataway, recommended University friends, Norris and Ross McWhirter, who had been running a fact-finding agency in London.

The brothers were commissioned to compile what became The Guinness Book of Records in August, 1954. A thousand copies were printed and given away. After founding The Guinness Book of Records at 107 Fleet Street, the first 198-page edition was bound on August 27, 1955 and went to the top of the British best seller lists by Christmas.

"It was a marketing give away – it wasn't supposed to be a money maker,” Beaver said. The following year, it launched in the U.S,, and sold 70,000 copies. Since then, Guinness World Records has become a household name and the global leader in world records.

The book has gone on to become a record breaker in its own right, with sales of more than 100 million copies in 100 different countries and 37 languages.

Today, Guinness World Records, now owned by the same company as the Ripley’s Believe It or Not chain, gets 50,000 records applications a year and it approves 6,000 of them.

Thanks New York Times!

Hugh Beaver

Howard Zinn was born 100 years ago today

Howard Zinn, May 2009

Photo by Frank Beacham

Howard Zinn was born 100 years ago today.

Zinn was an academic historian, author, playwright and social activist. Before and during his tenure as a political science professor at Boston University from 1964-88, he wrote more than 20 books, which included his best-selling and influential, A People's History of the United States.

Zinn wrote extensively about the civil rights and anti-war movements, as well as of the labor history of the United States. His memoir, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train, was also the title of a 2004 documentary about Zinn's life and work.

Born to a Jewish immigrant family in Brooklyn, Zinn’s father, Eddie Zinn, born in Austria-Hungary, emigrated to the U.S. with his brother Samuel before the outbreak of World War I. Howard's mother, Jenny, emigrated from the Eastern Siberian city of Irkutsk.

Both parents were factory workers with limited education when they met and married, and there were no books or magazines in the series of apartments where they raised their children.

Zinn's parents introduced him to literature by sending 10 cents plus a coupon to the New York Post for each of the 20 volumes of Charles Dickens' collected works. He also studied creative writing at Thomas Jefferson High School in a special program established by poet Elias Lieberman.

Eager to fight fascism, Zinn joined the Army Air Force during World War II and was assigned as a bombardier in the 490th Bombardment Group, bombing targets in Berlin, Czechoslovakia and Hungary.

A U.S. bombardier in April, 1945, Zinn dropped napalm bombs on Royan, a seaside resort in southwestern France. The anti-war stance Zinn developed later was informed, in part, by his experiences.

On a post-doctoral research mission nine years later, Zinn visited the resort near Bordeaux where he interviewed residents, reviewed municipal documents and read wartime newspaper clippings at the local library. In 1966, Zinn returned to Royan after which he gave his fullest account of that research in his book, The Politics of History.

On the ground, Zinn learned that the aerial bombing attacks in which he participated had killed more than 1,000 French civilians as well as some German soldiers hiding near Royan to await the war's end. The events that are described "in all accounts," he found, as "une tragique erreur" that leveled a small but ancient city and "its population that was, at least officially, friend, not foe."

In The Politics of History, Zinn described how the bombing was ordered — three weeks before the war in Europe ended — by military officials who were, in part, motivated more by the desire for their own career advancement than in legitimate military objectives.

He quotes the official history of the U.S. Army Air Forces' brief reference to the Eighth Air Force attack on Royan and also, in the same chapter, to the bombing of Pilsen in what was then Czechoslovakia. The official history stated that the famous Skoda works in Pilsen "received 500 well-placed tons," and that "because of a warning sent out ahead of time the workers were able to escape, except for five persons."

Zinn questioned the justifications for military operations that inflicted massive civilian casualties during the Allied bombing of cities such as Dresden, Royan, Tokyo; and Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II; Hanoi during the War in Vietnam; and Baghdad during the war in Iraq and the civilian casualties during bombings in Afghanistan during the current and nearly decade-old war there.

In his pamphlet, “Hiroshima: Breaking the Silence,” written in 1995, he laid out the case against targeting civilians with aerial bombing.

After World War II, Zinn attended New York University on the GI Bill, graduating with a B.A. in 1951.

At Columbia University, he later earned an M.A. (1952) and a Ph.D. in history with a minor in political science (1958). His masters' thesis examined the Colorado coal strikes of 1914.

In 1964, Zinn accepted a position at Boston University, after writing two books and participating in the Civil Rights movement in the South. His classes in civil liberties were among the most popular at the university with as many as 400 students subscribing each semester to the non-required class. A professor of political science, he taught at Boston University for 24 years and retired in 1988 at age 64.

"He had a deep sense of fairness and justice for the underdog. But he always kept his sense of humor. He was a happy warrior," said Caryl Rivers, journalism professor at Boston University. Rivers and Zinn were among a group of faculty members who in 1979 defended the right of the school's clerical workers to strike and were threatened with dismissal after refusing to cross a picket line.

Zinn came to believe that the point of view expressed in traditional history books was often limited. He wrote a history textbook, A People's History of the United States, to provide other perspectives on American history. The textbook depicts the struggles of Native Americans against European and U.S. conquest and expansion, slaves against slavery, unionists and other workers against capitalists, women against patriarchy, and African-Americans for civil rights.

The book was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1981. In the years since the first edition of A People's History was published in 1980, it has been used as an alternative to standard textbooks in many high school and college history courses, and it is one of the most widely known examples of critical pedagogy.

The New York Times Book Review stated in 2006 that the book "routinely sells more than 100,000 copies a year.” Zinn described himself as "something of an anarchist, something of a socialist. Maybe a democratic socialist.” He suggested looking at socialism in its full historical context as a popular, positive idea that got a bad name from its association with Soviet Communism.

Zinn was swimming in a hotel pool when he died of an apparent heart attack in Santa Monica, California, on January 27, 2010. He was 87.

Here, Zinn appears for an interview with Bill Moyers

Ray Bradbury was born 102 years ago today

Ray Bradbury was born 102 years ago today.

A fantasy, science fiction, horror and mystery fiction author, Bradbury was wrote the dystopian novel, Fahrenheit 451, in 1953. His science fiction and horror stories are gathered together as The Martian Chronicles (1950) and The Illustrated Man (1951).

Bradbury was one of the most celebrated 20th and 21st century American genre writers. He wrote and consulted on many screenplays and television scripts, including Moby Dick and It Came from Outer Space. Many of his works have been adapted into comic books, television shows and films.

Bradbury died in Los Angeles on June 5, 2012 at the age of 91.

On this day in 1958 — 64 years ago — Vladimir Nabokov's controversial novel, Lolita, was published in the United States

Sue Lyon, 1960

Photo by Bert Stern

On this day in 1958 — 64 years ago — Vladimir Nabokov's controversial novel, Lolita, was published in the United States.

The novel, about a man's obsession with a 12-year-old girl, had been rejected by four publishers before G.P. Putnam's Sons accepted it. The novel became a bestseller that allowed Nabokov to retire from his career as college professor.

Born in 1899 in St. Petersburg, Russia, into a wealthy and privileged family, Nabokov lived in a St. Petersburg townhouse and on a country estate. There he learned boxing, tennis and chess.

He grew up speaking both English and Russian, attended Cambridge and inherited $2 million from an uncle. However, his family lost much of their wealth when the Russian Revolution forced them to flee to Germany. Nabokov earned money by teaching boxing and tennis and creating Russian crossword puzzles.

He worked during the day and wrote at night, sometimes in the bathroom so the light wouldn't bother his family. He wrote many novels and short stories in Russian.

In 1939, the tall, athletic scholar was invited to Stanford to lecture on Slavic languages. He stayed in the U.S. for 20 years, teaching at Wellesley and Cornell, and pursuing an avid interest in butterflies. He became a research fellow at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology and discovered several species and subspecies of butterflies.

He and his wife, Vera, spent summers driving around the U.S., staying in motels, and looking for butterflies. The motels, the American landscape and butterflies all figure prominently in various works.

Nabokov's first novel in English was, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight. His most successful books in the U.S. were, Lolita, and Ada (1969), a family chronicle about a childhood romance between two close relations, which becomes a lifelong obsession between the characters.

Nabokov and his wife returned to Europe in 1959. He died in Switzerland in 1977.

Thanks History.com

James Baldwin was born 98 years ago today

James Baldwin was born 98 years ago today.

A novelist, essayist, playwright, poet and social critic, Baldwin's essays, such as the collection, Notes of a Native Son (1955), explore palpable yet unspoken intricacies and tensions of racial, sexual and class distinctions in Western societies.

Some Baldwin essays are book-length, including The Fire Next Time (1963), No Name in the Street (1972) and The Devil Finds Work (1976). His novels and plays fictionalize fundamental personal questions and dilemmas amid complex social and psychological pressures thwarting the equitable integration of not only blacks yet also of male homosexuals.

Baldwin depicts the individual homosexual’s quest for acceptance in his second novel, Giovanni's Room, in 1956. It was written well before the equality of homosexuals was widely espoused in America. Baldwin's best-known novel is his first, Go Tell It On The Mountain, in 1953.

When Baldwin was an infant, his mother, Emma Berdis Jones, divorced his father because of drug abuse and moved to Harlem where she married a preacher, David Baldwin. The family was very poor. James spent much time caring for his several younger brothers and sisters.

At age ten, he was beaten by a gang of police officers. His adoptive father, whom James in essays called simply his father, appears to have treated James — versus James's siblings — with singular harshness. His stepfather died of tuberculosis in summer of 1943 soon before James turned 19.

The day of the funeral was James's 19th birthday, his father's last child was born, and Harlem rioted. The portrait is the opening his essay, "Notes of a Native Son.” The quest to answer or explain familial and social repudiation — and attain a sense of self — became a motif in Baldwin's writing.

James attended the prestigious, mostly Jewish DeWitt Clinton High School, in Bedford Park, Bronx, where, along with Richard Avedon, he worked on the school magazine. Baldwin was its literary editor.

After high school, Baldwin studied at The New School, finding an intellectual community.

At age 14, Baldwin joined the Pentecostal Church and became a Pentecostal preacher. The difficulties of life, as well as his abusive stepfather, who was a preacher, delivered him to the church. During a euphoric prayer meeting, Baldwin converted, and soon became junior minister at the Fireside Pentecostal Assembly. He drew larger crowds than his father did.

At 17, Baldwin came to view Christianity as falsely premised, however, and later regarded his time in the pulpit as a remedy to his personal crises. Still, his church experience significantly shaped his worldview and writing. For him, "being in the pulpit was like being in the theatre; I was behind the scenes and knew how the illusion was worked."

Baldwin once visited Elijah Muhammad, founder of the Nation of Islam, who inquired about Baldwin's religious beliefs.

"I left the church 20 years ago and haven't joined anything since," Baldwin answered.

"And what are you now?," Elijah asked.

"I? Now? Nothing. I'm a writer. I like doing things alone," Baldwin responded.

Baldwin died in 1987 at age 63.

His influence on other writers was profound. Toni Morrison edited the Library of America’s two-volume editions of Baldwin's fiction and essays, and a recent collection of critical essays links these two writers.

One of Baldwin's richest short stories, "Sonny's Blues," appears in many anthologies of short fiction used in introductory college literature classes.

In 1987, Kevin Brown, a photo-journalist from Baltimore, founded the National James Baldwin Literary Society. The group organizes free public events celebrating Baldwin's life and legacy.

Above photo by Mark Anstendig

On this day in 1899 — 123 years ago — Ernest Hemingway, author of such novels as For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and the Sea, was born in Oak Park, Illinois

On this day in 1899 — 123 years ago — Ernest Hemingway, author of such novels as For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and the Sea, was born in Oak Park, Illinois.

The influential American literary icon became known for his straightforward prose and use of understatement. Hemingway, who tackled topics such as bullfighting and war in his work, also became famous for his own macho, hard-drinking persona.

As a boy, Hemingway, the second of six children of Clarence Hemingway, a doctor, and Grace Hall Hemingway, a musician, learned to fish and hunt. Each would remain lifelong passions.

After graduating from Oak Park and River Forest High School in 1917, he worked as a reporter for the Kansas City Star in Missouri. The following year, as a volunteer ambulance driver for the Red Cross in Italy during World War I, he was wounded by mortar fire and spent months recuperating.

During the 1920s, Hemingway lived in Paris and was part of a group of expatriate writers and artists that included F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound.

In 1925, Hemingway published his first collection of short stories in the U.S., which was followed by his well-received 1926 debut novel, The Sun Also Rises, about a group of American and British expatriates in the 1920s who journey from Paris to Pamplona, Spain to watch bullfighting.

In 1929, Hemingway, who by then had left Europe and moved to Key West, Florida, published A Farewell to Arms, about an American ambulance driver on the Italian front during World War I and his love for a beautiful English nurse. In 1932, his non-fiction book, Death in the Afternoon, about bullfighting in Spain, was released.

It was followed in 1935 by another non-fiction work, Green Hills of Africa, about a safari Hemingway made to East Africa in the early 1930s. During the late 1930s, Hemingway traveled to Spain to report on that country’s civil war, and also spent time living in Cuba.

In 1937, he released To Have and Have Not, a novel about a fishing boat captain forced to run contraband between Key West and Cuba. In 1940, the acclaimed For Whom the Bell Tolls, about a young American fighting with a band of guerrillas in the Spanish civil war, made its debut.

Hemingway went on to work as a war correspondent in Europe during World War II, and release the 1950 novel, Across the River and into the Trees.

Hemingway’s last significant work to be published during his lifetime was 1952’s The Old Man and the Sea, a novella about an aging Cuban fisherman that was an allegory referring to the writer's own struggles to preserve his art in the face of fame and attention.

Hemingway had become a cult figure whose four marriages and adventurous exploits in big-game hunting and fishing were widely covered in the press. But despite his fame, he had not produced a major literary work in the decade before The Old Man and the Sea debuted. The book was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1953, and Hemingway won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954.

After surviving two plane crashes in Africa in 1953, Hemingway became increasingly anxious and depressed. On July 2, 1961, he killed himself with a shotgun at his home in Ketchum, Idaho. (His father had committed suicide in 1928.)

Three novels by Hemingway were released posthumously—Islands in the Stream (1970), The Garden of Eden (1986) and True at First Light (1999) — as was the memoir A Moveable Feast (1964), which he penned about his time in Paris in the 1920s.

Thanks History.com

On this day in 1933 — 89 years ago — best-selling novelist Cormac McCarthy was born in Rhode Island

On this day in 1933 — 89 years ago — best-selling novelist Cormac McCarthy, whose books include “All the Pretty Horses,” “No Country for Old Men” and “The Road,” which won the Pulitzer Prize, was born in Providence, Rhode Island.

McCarthy’s novels, often set in the American Southwest, are known for being bleak and violent and often feature characters who are outsiders or criminals.

McCarthy, whose father was a lawyer, was raised in Tennessee and attended the University of Tennessee in the early 1950s. He dropped out of school in 1953 to serve for four years in the U.S. Air Force then returned to the university before leaving again without graduating.

McCarthy’s first novel, “The Orchard Keeper,” was published in 1965 and edited (along with several of his later novels) by Albert Erskine, the longtime editor for William Faulkner, to whom McCarthy has been compared.

During the 1960s and 1970s, McCarthy lived an impoverished existence as his next novels — “Outer Dark,” “Child of God” and “Suttree” — were each published to modest sales.

In 1985, he released “Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West,” about a violent gang of mercenaries hunting Indians on the Texas-Mexico border in the mid-19th century. Time magazine later named “Blood Meridian” to its list of 100 best English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005.

McCarthy’s commercial breakthrough came with 1992’s “All the Pretty Horses,” about the adventures of a young Texas cowboy and his friend who travel to Mexico in the mid-20th century. A best-seller, “All the Pretty Horses” won the National Book Award and was turned into a 2000 movie directed by Billy Bob Thornton and starring Matt Damon and Penelope Cruz.

The novel was the first book in McCarthy’s Border trilogy, which includes “The Crossing” (1994) and “Cities of the Plain” (1998).

“No Country for Old Men,” about a serial killer and a drug deal that goes wrong, debuted in 2005. The book was made into a 2007 feature film directed by Ethan and Joel Coen and starring Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem and Tommy Lee Jones. It won four Academy Awards, including best picture.

In 2006, “The Road,” about a father and son who journey across a post-apocalyptic wasteland, was published. The novel won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize.

In 2007, the famously reclusive McCarthy gave his first-ever television interview to Oprah Winfrey after she selected “The Road” for her on-air book club. In 2009, a big-screen adaptation of “The Road,” featuring Viggo Mortensen, was released.

That same year, McCarthy auctioned off the manual typewriter on which he’d written all his novels. The machine, which he bought at a Tennessee pawn shop in 1963 for $50, sold for $254,500.

The author donated the proceeds to the Santa Fe Institute, a scientific think tank. A friend gave McCarthy a replacement typewriter of the same model, reportedly purchased for less than $20.

Cormac continues to write, working on several novels.

J.D. Salinger's only novel, The Catcher in the Rye, was published by Little, Brown on this day in 1951 — 71 years ago

J.D. Salinger's only novel, The Catcher in the Rye, was published by Little, Brown on this day in 1951 — 71 years ago.

The book, about a confused teenager disillusioned by the adult world, was an instant hit and was taught in high schools for the next half a century.

The 31-year-old Salinger had worked on the novel for a decade. His stories had already started appearing in the 1940s, many in the New Yorker. The book took the country by storm, selling out and becoming a Book of the Month Club selection.

Fame did not agree with Salinger, who retreated to a hilltop cabin in Cornish, New Hampshire. However, he continued to publish stories in the New Yorker periodically. He published Franny and Zooey in 1963, based on two combined New Yorker stories.

Salinger stopped publishing his work in 1965 — the same year he divorced his wife of 12 years. In 1999, journalist Joyce Maynard published a book about her affair with Salinger, which had taken place more than two decades earlier.

Notoriously reclusive, Salinger died at 91 in his home in New Hampshire on Jan. 27, 2010.

Marcel Proust, French novelist, critic and essayist, was born 151 years ago today

Marcel Proust, French novelist, critic and essayist, was born 151 years ago today.

Proust is best known for his novel, Remembrance of Things Past. The work was published in seven parts between 1913 and 1927.

Proust is considered by many to be one of the greatest authors of all time.

Above, Proust by Jennie Cohen

Jean Cocteau, French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker, was born 133 years ago today

Jean Cocteau in 1923

Jean Cocteau, French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker, was born 133 years ago today.

Cocteau wrote the novel, Les Enfants terribles (1929), and made the films, Blood of a Poet (1930), Les Parents terribles (1948), Beauty and the Beast (1946) and Orpheus (1949).

His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Yul Brynner, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, Igor Stravinsky, María Félix, Édith Piaf and Raymond Radiguet.

In his early twenties, Cocteau became associated with the writers Marcel Proust, André Gide and Maurice Barrès. In 1912, he collaborated with Léon Bakst on Le Dieu bleu for the Ballets Russes. The principal dancers were Tamara Karsavina and Vaslav Nijinsky.

During World War I, Cocteau served in the Red Cross as an ambulance driver. This was the period in which he met the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, artists Pablo Picasso and Amedeo Modigliani, and numerous other writers and artists with whom he later collaborated.

Russian choreographer, Sergei Diaghilev, persuaded Cocteau to write a scenario for a ballet, which resulted in Parade, in 1917. It was produced by Diaghilev, with sets by Picasso, the libretto by Apollinaire and the music by Erik Satie. The piece was later expanded into a full opera — with music by Satie, Poulenc and Ravel.

An important exponent of avant-garde art, Cocteau had great influence on the work of others, including the group of composers known as Les six. In the early 1920s, he and other members of Les six frequented a wildly popular bar named Le Boeuf sur le Toit, a name that Cocteau himself had a hand in picking.

The popularity of the bar was due in no small measure to the presence of Cocteau and his friends.

Cocteau's experiments with the human voice peaked with his play La Voix humaine. The story involves one woman on stage speaking on the telephone with her (invisible and inaudible) departing lover, who is leaving her to marry another woman. The telephone proved to be the perfect prop for Cocteau to explore his ideas, feelings and "algebra" concerning human needs and realities in communication.

In 1940, Le Bel Indifférent, Cocteau's play written for and starring Édith Piaf, was enormously successful. He also worked with Pablo Picasso on several projects and was friends with most of the European art community.

Cocteau's films, most of which he both wrote and directed, were particularly important in introducing the avant-garde into French cinema and influenced to a certain degree the upcoming French New Wave genre.

In 1945, Cocteau was one of several designers who created sets for the Théâtre de la Mode. He drew inspiration from filmmaker René Clair while making Tribute to René Clair: I Married a Witch.

Cocteau died of a heart attack at his chateau in Milly-la-Forêt, Essonne, France, on October 11, 1963 at the age of 74.