3rd July

American General William Tecumseh Sherman came out with the truth at a speech at the Michigan Military Academy today in 1879. He said, 'I am sick and tired of war. Its glory is all moonshine ... War is hell.' Sadly, later generations didn't listen - hence two world wars, Vietnam etc etc etc.

PS - hasn't Gen. Sherman got the coolest middle name ever?

In other news ...

In 1905, Russian troops opened fire of strikers in Odessa. More than 6000 died which is a tragedy and a terrible harbinger of worse that was to come in 1817. The only good this to come out of the Odessa steps massacre is Eisenstein's film Battleship Potemkin. Watch that and you'll be a Bolshevik all your life.

18th April

Today in 1955 Albert Einstein died at Princeton hospital. Hailed in his own day and ours as one of the greatest geniuses (genii?) of All Time, he also had the worst hair and one of the silliest moustaches. He couldn't talk until he was three and after that hardly ever shut up. But these things are always relative, aren't they? I just loved his films - Battleship Potemkin, Alexander Nevsky - that's where his genius really lay.

In other news ...
The first launderette was opened in Fort Worth Texas on this day in 1934. It gave Texas hours of endless fun watching their washing go round and only later did the viewing public realize it got their clothes clean too. Bonus! John Yogi Bear, the inventor of television took his inspiration from it and experts today believe that, in seeing a shirt passing the same exact spot every 2.1 seconds is actually more variety-filled than anything on today's nine squillion satellite channels.