1892, Alfred, Lord Tennyson died. Not just the guy a street in my subdivision is named for, Tennyson was the poet laureate of the United Kingdom for much of the Victorian era. He was the fourth of 12 children and had a sort of competition with his two older brothers. They all wrote poetry in their youth and were even published. One of Alfred’s brothers married the younger sister of Alfred’s future wife. And his other brother died in an insane asylum. Alfred turned out well, though. Besides becoming the British poet laureate, he was also made a peer in the House of Lords for his writing — a first for British writers. Highly quotable, he also coined some phrases we still use today. “Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all”? Those are Tennyson’s words. And in describing the charge of British soldiers in the Crimean War, Tennyson penned two fateful lines about the life of those soldiers: “Theirs not to reason why / Theirs but to do and die.”
1927, “The Jazz Singer,” the first feature-length “talkie” film, was released. Not just something random I remember from eighth-grade social studies, “The Jazz Singer” is a historic movie, heralding the end of the silent film era. It’s also interesting as a time capsule of a film: It employs blackface to explore Jewish-American identity. Al Jolson plays the protagonist, Jakie Rabinowitz, who uses his good voice to sing jazz songs in blackface instead of the service at the synagogue. His father, a Jewish cantor, more or less disowns him multiple times in the film. (Renaming himself Jack Robin, Jakie even takes a liking to a shiksa named Mary.) But, when forced to choose between opening his show on Broadway or singing at the Yom Kippur service in his dying father’s place, Jakie chooses the latter. The shiksa, Mary, is there at the service and notices that Jakie is “a jazz singer — singing to his God.” The film closes with Jakie, in blackface, singing a song to his mother in his new show, making it all OK.
1973, Egypt and Syria attacked Israel, sparking the Yom Kippur War or Ramadan War. It’s called by either name because in 1973, the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur and the Muslim holy month of Ramadan overlapped. What else was there to do but go to war? Egypt and Syria fought for territories Israel had gained in war six years earlier. Syria invaded the Golan Heights, and Egypt crossed the Sinai Peninsula. Initially surprised, Israel rallied and drove both the Egyptians and Syrians back, nearly to Cairo and Damascus, respectively. While this was an Arab-Israeli conflict, it also was part of the ongoing Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. The United States supplied Israel, and the Soviet Union supplied the Arabs. The two Cold War enemies nearly went to war themselves over this conflict. The long-term effects of the war were generally positive. The United States became more involved in peace negotiations and the Soviet Union stopped backing Egypt. Read on to the 1981 event to see how all that ended for the Egyptian president.
1979, Pope John Paul II became the first pope to visit the White House. The United States, a historically more Protestant country, had not been in the business of courting pontiffs, so this visit was a big breakthrough. The pope arrived in Washington where he celebrated Mass before coming to the White House. Thirty minutes before he got there, police arrested a man at the White House who was carrying three guns and a knife. Crisis averted, President Jimmy Carter greeted the pope in the pontiff’s native Polish. Then, the pope blessed Carter. The two called for nuclear disarmament and humanitarian aid to underdeveloped countries. The pope went on to visit even more countries, setting foot in 129 before he died. Many credit him with helping to end communism in Poland. And in his time he angered both Catholic progressives and traditionalists alike, affirming the church’s stance against birth control and ordination of women, but also reaching out to believers of other faiths. In 2004, a year before he died, President George W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
1981, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was assassinated. After the 1973 war that was just briefly covered, the United States took to mediating the Arab-Israeli conflict. In 1978, President Jimmy Carter helped Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin agree to the Camp David Accords. The latter two won Nobel Peace Prizes whereas Carter would have to wait until 2002 to receive his for other humanitarian work. Essentially, the Camp David Accords meant Israel would return the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt and Egypt would officially recognize Israel as a state. (Another part of this deal was American agreement to subsidize both Egypt and Israel. This was especially advantageous to Egypt as they had lost Soviet support.) Everyone cheered: “Yeah, the Arab-Israel conflict is one step closer to being resolved!” Then members of the Egyptian military who didn’t like Sadat’s peace killed him. Hosni Mubarak succeeded Sadat as president and continued to receive American aid until February. At that point, popular uprisings ended his 30-year tenure as president of Egypt, making FDR’s term as president look like William Henry Harrison’s.
