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Today in History 06/24/17

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Engraving portraying women affected by the dancing plague (Public Domain)(1374) Dancing in the streets causes alarm in Germany
In the German town of Aix-la-Chapelle, people begin jumping, twirling, twitching, and hallucinating, all of it seemingly out of their control to stop, and some “dance” until they drop. The so-called “dancing plague” will spread to other cities and later be blamed on mass hysteria or bacterial infections.

Dancing mania (also known as dancing plague, choreomania, St John’s Dance and, historically, St. Vitus’s Dance) was a social phenomenon that occurred primarily in mainland Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries. It involved groups of people dancing erratically, sometimes thousands at a time. The mania affected men, women, and children who danced until they collapsed from exhaustion. One of the first major outbreaks was in Aachen, in the Holy Roman Empire, in 1374, and it quickly spread throughout Europe; one particularly notable outbreak occurred in Strasbourg in 1518, also in the Holy Roman Empire.

Affecting thousands of people across several centuries, dancing mania was not an isolated event, and was well documented in contemporary reports. It was nevertheless poorly understood, and remedies were based on guesswork. Generally, musicians accompanied dancers, to help ward off the mania, but this tactic sometimes backfired by encouraging more to join in. There is no consensus among modern-day scholars as to the cause of dancing mania.

The several theories proposed range from religious cults being behind the processions to people dancing to relieve themselves of stress and put the poverty of the period out of their minds. It is, however, thought[by whom?] to have been a mass psychogenic illness in which the occurrence of similar physical symptoms, with no known physical cause, affect a large group of people as a form of social influence.


wiki/Dancing_mania
Portrait of Spanish painter Pablo Picasso standing in his studio, 1920s (© Hulton Archive/Getty Images)(1901) First Paris showing for the teenage Picasso
Seventy-five works by a 19-year-old Spaniard hang in a Paris gallery. While few art critics see Pablo Picasso’s show, those who do give it good notices. The artist’s first major exhibition comes on the cusp of his Blue Period, the first of many stylistic phases in a career that will span more than 70 years.
Pablo Picasso was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, stage designer, poet and playwright who spent most of his adult life in France. Regarded as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, and Guernica, a dramatic portrayal of the bombing of Guernica by the German and Italian airforces.
Lived: Oct 25, 1881 – Apr 08, 1973 (age 91)
Height: 5′ 4″ (1.63 m)
Spouse: Jacqueline Roque (m. 1961 – 1973) · Olga Khokhlova (m. 1918 – 1955)
Children: Claude Picasso (Son) · Paloma Picasso (Daughter) · Paul Joseph Picasso (Son) · Maya Widmaier-Picasso (Daughter)
Periods: Cubism · Picasso’s Blue Period · Picasso’s Rose Period · Picasso’s African Period · Surrealism · Modern art · Analytic cubism · Synthetic cubism
Parents: José Ruiz y Blasco (Father) · María Picasso y López (Mother)

wiki/Pablo_Picaso
Kenneth Arnold showing an illustration of one of the nine objects he saw (Public Domain)(1947) Idaho pilot sees supersonic UFOs zoom past Mt. Rainier
Pilot Kenneth Arnold sees what he says are nine shiny objects flying in a 5-mile formation in the clear afternoon sky above Washington State. He later calculates their speed at 1,200 miles-per-hour, describing them as “saucer-shaped” to journalists reporting on the first major UFO sighting of modern times.
Kenneth A. Arnold was an American aviator and businessman. He is best known for making what is generally considered the first widely reported unidentified flying object sighting in the United States, after claiming to have seen nine unusual objects flying in tandem near Mount Rainier, Washington on June 24, 1947.
Born: Mar 29, 1915 · Sebeka, MN
Died: Jan 16, 1984 · Bellevue, WA
Spouse: Doris Arnold
Education: University of Minnesota
Parents: Bertha E. Barden · Edward Erb Arnold
Highlights
  • 1940: Arnold began Great Western Fire Control Supply in Boise, Idaho in 1940, a company that sold and installed fire suppression systems, a job that took him around the Pacific Northwest.

  • 1947: He is best known for making what is generally considered the first widely reported unidentified flying object sighting in the United States, after claiming to have seen nine unusual objects flying in tandem near Mount Rainier, Washington on June 24, 1947.

  • 1962: He ran unsuccessfully for Lieutenant Governor of Idaho in 1962.

  • 1977: On June 24, 1977, however, he attended the First International UFO Congress in Chicago, curated by Fate to mark the 30th anniversary of the “birth” of the modern UFO age.

  • 1984: Kenneth Arnold died on January 16, 1984 in Bellevue, United States.

wiki/Kenneth_Arnold
John Isner (left) hugs Nicolas Mahut after winning their record-setting match at Wimbledon. (© Glyn Kirk/AFP/Getty Images)(2010) Three-day match wraps up at Wimbledon
After 11 hours and 5 minutes played over three days, American John Isner defeats Frenchman Nicolas Mahut in a first-round singles match at Wimbledon. The contest sets records for longest match in professional tennis history for both time and number of games (183).
The Isner–Mahut match at the 2010 Wimbledon Championships was a first round Men’s Singles match, in which the American 23rd seed John Isner played French qualifier Nicolas Mahut. The match began at 6:13 pm British Summer Time on Tuesday, 22 June, 2010 on Court 18 at Wimbledon. At 9:07 pm, due to fading light, play was suspended before the start of the fifth set. After resuming on Wednesday, 23 June, at 2:05 pm, the record for longest match was broken at 5:45 pm. The light faded again, and so play was suspended at 9:09 pm, with the final set tied at 59 games all. Play resumed at 3:40 pm on Thursday, 24 June, and Isner won at 4:47 pm, the final set having lasted 8 hours, 11 minutes.
wiki/Isner–Mahut_match_at_the_2010_Wimbledon_Championships
4.2.m17

A Historical Day

(1374) Dancing in the streets causes alarm in Germany
1374 In the German town of Aix-la-Chapelle, people begin jumping, twirling, twitching, and hallucinating, all of it seemingly out of their control to stop, and some “dance” until they drop. The so-called “dancing plague” will spread to other cities and later be blamed on mass hysteria or bacterial infections. .
(1497) Cabot ‘explores’ North American mainland
Italian explorer John Cabot anchors ‘The Matthew’ off the coast of what will be Newfoundland, and walks no further than “beyond the shooting distance of a crossbow” into the vast continent. His visit is the first by Europeans to mainland North America since the Vikings landed five hundred years before.. 1497
(1901) First Paris showing for the teenage Picasso
1901 Seventy-five works by a 19-year-old Spaniard hang in a Paris gallery. While few art critics see Pablo Picasso’s show, those who do give it good notices. The artist’s first major exhibition comes on the cusp of his Blue Period, the first of many stylistic phases in a career that will span more than 70 years. .
(1947) Idaho pilot sees supersonic UFOs zoom past Mt. Rainier
Pilot Kenneth Arnold sees what he says are nine shiny objects flying in a 5-mile formation in the clear afternoon sky above Washington State. He later calculates their speed at 1,200 miles-per-hour, describing them as “saucer-shaped” to journalists reporting on the first major UFO sighting of modern times. . 1947