A Brief History On December 1, 1768, the Danish ship Fredensborg sank in a storm off the coast of Norway on her return trip from a death filled delivery of slaves to St. Croix in the Caribbean. Today, we list 10 Infamous Ships that either served an evil purpose or were particularly unlucky, and are remembered today with less than fond memories. (Note: the RMS Titanic and SS Edmund Fitzgerald are TOO obvious!) Digging Deeper 1. Fredensborg, Denmark/Norway. Originally named Cron Prindz Christian after the heir apparent to the throne of Norway/Denmark, her last cargo of slaves was picked up at…
Browsing: December
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A Brief History On December 1, 2017, the new feature film directed by and starring James Franco, The Disaster Artist: My Life in The Room, The Greatest Bad Film Ever Made, will premier across the United States. Although this reviewer was unfamiliar with the cult classic film, The Room (2003), there is apparently a cult following of this comically bad movie that is seen by adoring, laughing fans at midnight viewings in theaters across the country. The Disaster Artist is a film about the people and the making of that comically bad movie so many have come to love. Right…
A Brief History On December 12, 1967, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, an American comedy-drama film produced and directed by Stanley Kramer, and written by William Rose, was released in the United States of America. The film stars Spencer Tracy, Sidney Poitier, and Katharine Hepburn, and features Hepburn’s niece Katharine Houghton. The film was one of the few films of the time to depict an interracial marriage in a positive light, as interracial marriage historically had been illegal in most states of the United States, and still was illegal in 17 states—mostly Southern states—until 12 June 1967, six months before the film was released, roughly two weeks after Tracy filmed his…
A Brief History On December 25, 1962, To Kill a Mockingbird, an American drama film directed by Robert Mulligan, opened in theaters. The screenplay by Horton Foote is based on Harper Lee’s 1960 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. It stars Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch and Mary Badham as Scout. The film received overwhelmingly positive reviews from critics and was a box-office success, earning more than 10 times its budget. The film won three Academy Awards, including Best Actor for Peck, and was nominated for eight, including Best Picture. In 1995, the film was listed in the National Film Registry. In 2003, the American Film Institute named Atticus Finch the greatest movie hero of the 20th century. In 2007 the…
A Brief History “Winter Dreams” is a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) that first appeared in Metropolitan Magazine in December 1922, and was collected in All the Sad Young Men in 1926. “Winter Dreams” is considered one of Fitzgerald’s finest stories and is frequently anthologized. In the Fitzgerald canon, it is considered to be in the “Gatsby-cluster,” as many of its themes were later expanded upon in his famous novel The Great Gatsby in 1925. Digging Deeper: Background The short story was based upon Fitzgerald’s unsuccessful romantic pursuit of socialite Ginevra King (1898–1980). A wealthy heiress from a Chicago banking family,…