Just because he was handsome doesn’t make this photograph any less awkward for F. Scott Fitzgerald.
F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald may have been the toast of the town, but in 1925 they sure did take an awkward Christmas photo.
Found in a copy of the Hemingway / Fitzgerald letters that we bought at the Strand, and excerpted in our latest issue, “Intoxication”
Ravi Shankar, died yesterday at the age of 92. From the WSJ:
Mr. Shankar’s popularity in the West was boosted by his partnerships with foreign musicians, most famously Beatles guitarist George Harrison.
“When people say that George Harrison made me famous, that is true in a way,” Mr. Shankar said in a televised interview in 2009, according to this report.
But when Mr. Harrison first approached Mr. Shankar for lessons in the mid-1960s, the idea of blending Indian classical music with pop music was puzzling to the sitar maestro.
“It is strange to see pop musicians with sitars. I was confused at first. It had so little to do with our classical music. When George Harrison came to me, I didn’t know what to think,” said Mr. Shankar in Raga.
“But I found he really wanted to learn. I never thought our meeting would cause such an explosion, that Indian music would suddenly appear on the pop scene,” he added.
Mr. Harrison revered Mr. Shankar, saying he was “the first person who ever impressed me in my life.”
Mr. Harrison’s collaboration with Mr. Shankar influenced the music of the Beatles, who went on to release several Indian-inspired songs. Among them was the 1966 track “Love You To,” one of the earliest examples of a pop song incorporating elements of Indian classical music. The song was composed by Mr. Harrison, who also sings and plays the sitar in it.
Of note to more modern audiences: Norah Jones’ father. (Though that certainly isn’t all you should know about Shankar.) RIP.
…a Navy archaeologist believes he has found the cave on San Nicolas Island occupied by The Lone Woman—better known to many as the protagonist of Scott O’Dell’s 1960 classic, Island of the Blue Dolphins. The Newberry Medal–winner was based on the true story of a Native American woman left behind when the rest of the Nicoleño tribe was evacuated from the Channel Islands by missionaries after the population was decimated by Russian fur traders; one story has it she returned to the island to search for her missing child.
more.
Ninety-six years ago today, the first birth control clinic in America opened in Brooklyn, New York. In 1916, 464 patients were seen before the clinic was shut down after ten days. Today, nearly 800 Planned Parenthood health centers in communities nationwide provide primary and preventive care to nearly 3 million patients a year.
During the 1960s and ’70s, Polaroid was the coolest technology company on earth. Like Apple, it was an innovation machine…
more.
"I am, and ever will be, a white-socks, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer, born under the second law of thermodynamics, steeped in steam tables, in love with free-body diagrams, transformed by Laplace and propelled by compressible flow."
- Neil Armstrong (via sarzha)
(Source: economist.com, via kateoplis)
BACK IN THE U.S.S.R. So by now we know that U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps has broken the all-time Olympics record for most medals ever, with 19 (as of yesterday — Phelps has three more events to go at the summer games in London). But many members of the media failed to point out exactly whose record Phelps had broken: it belonged to Russian gymnast Larisa Latynina, who won 18 medals between 1956 and 1964. She was in attendance during Phelps’s record-smashing performance on Tuesday. ”Latynina joked in recent weeks that it was time for a man to be able to do what a woman had done long ago,” wrote the New York Times. ”And that it was too bad Phelps was not Russian.” (Photo: AP via the Times)
Using a sensitive technique known as atomic force microscopy, a team studying the mummified remains of Ötzi the Iceman found the oldest intact blood cells ever confirmed. What’s more, they found a protein called fibrin, which means that the 5,300-year-old Ötzi, who died after some sort of violent altercation, didn’t expire immediately after being wounded. Whodunit?
While we may never get to the bottom of Ötzi’s case, these observations may help modern forensic investigators interpret damaged and ancient blood samples from today’s crime scenes.
(For what it’s worth, my money is on Ötzi being involved in a crystal mammoth deal that went south. It’s hard out there for an Iceman. Now would be a good time to cue “Regulate” by Warren G.)
(via ScienceNOW)
BRIDGE TO SOMEWHERE In this Oct. 7, 1914 photo provided by the New York City Municipal Archives, painters are suspended from wires on the Brooklyn Bridge in New York. The city agency has posted a collection of 870,000 rarely- or never seen photos chronicling New York’s early days. (Photo: Eugene deSalignac / Dept. of Bridges / Plant & Structures via the AP / New York Daily News)