Sunday, November 11, 2007

A post two days late...

The 9th of November is sometimes referred to as Schicksalstag (day of fate) in german history. A lot of stuff happened at a 9th of november...:


  • 1848 - During the german revolution the democrat Robert Blum is executed in Vienna by monarchists. He soon becomes the most famous martyr of the 48 revolution, and soon is forgotten (I never heard of him before...)

  • 1918 - Kaiser Wilhelm resigns. Philipp Scheideman proclaimed the republic at 14:00, two hours later the Soviet Republic of Germany was declared by Karl Liebknecht...

  • 1923 - The Hitler-Ludendorf-Putsch (also known as Beer-Hall-Putsch). It failed, Hitler was sentenced to only 5 years of Festungshaft (the more comfortable jail) because of his patriotic motives. Hitler only served 8 months of the 5 years...

  • 1938 - Kristallnacht, the first large Progrom against jewish people in germany and austria.

  • 1989 - Fall of the Berlin Wall.


And we do celebrate the Inventor's day... It is the assumed birthday of Hedy Lamarr, who as most sources say was born (as Hedwig Kiessler) on November the 9th 1913, 1914 or 1915. Or maybe at the 9. September, as in the birth certificate it first was written IX and later corrected to XI.

Hedy Lamarr was claimed to be the world's most beautiful woman by her Holywood Producers. Groucho Marx once said after leaving one of her films "I hate it if the male lead has bigger boobies than the female...". Together with George Antheil, composer of a Ballet pour instruments mecaniques et percussion
(for 16 mechanical pianos, percussion, sirenes and a plane propeller, according to the FAZ the loudest concert in the history of mankind...) and a self claimed experts on adenoids, who wanted to enlare Lamarr's breasts with lotions invented by himself, (to remind you of the beginning of this phrase: it started "Together with George Antheil") she invented the frequency hopping method of spread sprectrum techniques and had a patent for it. Unfortunately it wouldn't have worked... There is a nice article on FAZ.net, which deconstructs some of the otherwise nice story :-)

As last words of this post, a quote from Miss Lamarr:
Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid.

No comments: