Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Sept 1, 1902: A Trip to the Moon, which is considered the 1st science fiction film, was released in France. It follows a group of astronomers who travel to the Moon, in a cannon-propelled capsule, escape from an underground group of lunar inhabitants and return to Earth. Released in the USA on Oct 4, 1902. Remains the best-known of the 520 films made by Georges Méliès; the moment in which the capsule lands in the Moon's eye remains one of the most iconic and frequently referenced images in the history of cinema.


Film maker/Director/Writer Georges Méliès rose to prominence creating "trick films" and became well known for his innovative use of special effects such as substitution splices, multiple exposures, time-lapse photography, dissolves, and hand-painted colour. He was also one of the first filmmakers to use storyboards in film. His works are used in the 2011 movie "Hugo" directed by Martin Scorcese.

Because of rampant film piracy, Méliès never received most of the profits of the popular film. One account reports that Méliès sold a print of the film to the Paris photographer Charles Gerschel for use in an Algiers theatre, under strict stipulation that the print only be shown in Algeria. Gerschel sold the print, and various other Méliès films, to the Edison Manufacturing Company employee Alfred C. Abadie, who sent them directly to Edison's laboratories to be duplicated and sold by Vitagraph. Copies of the print spread to other firms, and by 1904 Siegmund Lubin, the Selig Polyscope Company, and Edison were all redistributing it. Edison's print of the film was even offered in a hand-colored version available at a higher price, just as Méliès had done. Méliès was often uncredited altogether; for the first six months of the film's distribution, the only American exhibitor to credit Méliès in advertisements for the film was Thomas Lincoln Tally, who chose the film as the inaugural presentation of his Electric Theater. Human greed knows no bounds.

In order to combat the problem of film piracy that became clear during the release of A Trip to the Moon, Méliès opened an American branch of the Star Film Company, directed by his brother Gaston Méliès, in New York in 1903. The office was designed to sell Méliès's films directly and to protect them by registering them under United States copyright. The introduction to the English-language edition of the Star Film Company catalogue announced: "In opening a factory and office in New York we are prepared and determined energetically to pursue all counterfeiters and pirates. We will not speak twice, we will act!" | Wiki

In Jan 2024 Peregrine Lunar Lander flight 01 (Peregrine Mission One) had a few dozen time capsules as part of its payload. One was the Arch Mission Foundation’s Lunar Library II: the largest archive of Earth, on the Moon.

A disc packed with more than 60 million pages of information, including English Wikipedia, selected records from the Internet Archive, a linguistic key to 5,000 languages, various private collections, and movies, one of which I heard is the 1902 film A Trip to the Moon, but I can't find a definitive source listing anywhere. The library is printed onto nickel NanoFiche, an “ultra-durable analog nano storage medium,” according to Astrobotic.


Unfortunately, Peregrine, the silvery lander that shot for the moon, burned up over the Pacific ocean due to a faulty pressure helium control valve.


Sept 1, 1920: The Fountain of Time statue opened within Washington Park in Chicago, Illinois. Fountain of Time, or simply Time, is a sculpture by Lorado Taft, measuring 126 feet 10 inches (38.66 m) in length, situated at the western edge of the Midway Plaisance within Washington Park in Chicago. The sculpture is inspired by Henry Austin Dobson's poem "Paradox of Time". Its 100 figures passing before Father Time were created as a monument to the 100 years of peace between the United States and the United Kingdom following the Treaty of Ghent in 1814.


Time was intended to be matched by a sister fountain, Fountain of Creation, on the opposite end of the Midway. Work began but was never completed. The finished portions of Fountain of Creation, depicting figures from the Greek legend of the repopulation of Earth after the great flood, are considered Taft's final work, and were given to University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, his alma mater.

Wiki | Fountain of Time Website (a few hundred photos)


September 1, 1939: At dawn, the German Army invaded Poland to begin the Second World War in Europe. The attack came without any declaration of war by Germany, though it had been obvious since March 1939 that Poland was Hitler’s next military target.


Also, the USSR was mobilizing to invade Poland on Sept 17, 1939 with the aim to divide a conquered Poland in two. Unfortunately Britain and France mobilizing didn't amount to much until it was too late for Poland. No one at this point knew about the secret clause in the Nazi-Soviet Pact. The big disgrace was France and UK didn’t lift a finger to help Poland.

With all of the German forces in Poland, there was nothing stopping especially France to invade western Germany. Germany had so few divisions in the west, France could have possibly won the war, but the French were weak. Instead they hid in their Maginot Line and once Poland was conquered, the Germans simply went around it and conquered France. Two days later, on Sept. 3, 1939, Britain and France declared war. Poland has never forgotten which is probably why for the past few years they been significantly building up their military and buying US weapons like there is no tomorrow.



Sept 1, 1939: Operation Pied Piper - in anticipation of the outbreak of the Second World War, the great evacuation of children from British cities began. I can't imagine how difficult & sad that must have been.

Child Evacuees in the Second World War: Operation Pied Piper

Photographs of the evacuation of British children in 1939, excitedly waving from packed trains or with name tags round their necks, have become some of the most emblematic images of the Second World War. The children’s forced move represented the nature of total war, a conflict that involved even the youngest members of British society.

But the origins of childhood evacuation in fact lie much further back. It was in the early twentieth century that governments and populations across Europe first began to speculate on the dangers of aerial bombardment. H.G. Wells’ 1907 novel 'War in the Air' predicted the growing threat of attack from the air and governments worried how cities and urban crowds in particular would respond. The First World War saw some of these fears realised: although often forgotten in popular memory, British cities were bombed by zeppelins throughout the 1914-1918 conflict, resulting in the deaths of 1,239 civilians, half of whom were women and children.

Sept 1, 1967: Siegfried Sassoon died at age 80. Decorated for bravery on the Western Front, he became one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poetry described the horrors of the trenches and satirised jingoism.




Sept 1, 1974: The SR-71 Blackbird sets (and holds) the record for flying from New York to London in the time of one hour, 54 minutes and 56.4 seconds at an average speed of 1,806.964 miles per hour. It was jointly operated by the United States Air Force and NASA.




Sept 1, 1982: The United States Air Force Space Command is founded.




A confused 13 year old Roman Catholic alcoholic obsessed with death was sent to a Episcopalian boarding school to dry out and ends up a waitress on Long Island and then picks up a guitar and becomes a star. One of my younger cousins went to elementary school with her back in the 90s. Aside from death she has a fascination with SpaceX & Tesla, and apparently playful acting in Witchcraft. Elizabeth Woolridge Grant is the one true Romantic produced by this country in the modern age.



Most people know her as...




Today is the 40th anniversary of C.H.U.D.