22nd November

We all remember where we were today in 1963. There was a nightmare on Elm Street, Dallas as somebody gunned down John F Kennedy, riding through the city in an open-topped Lincoln convertible with his wife, Jackie and the governor of Texas, John Connolly and his wife. Millions of words, umpteen documentaries, a handful of movies, official and unofficial enquiries and nearly half a century - and still we don't know who did it.

In other news ...
Richard Strauss unveiled his new opera today in Dresden. The year was 1901 and the opera was about a team of dedicated scientists beavering away to cure the common cold. It was called Feuersnot.

26th June

Peter Lorre was born today in 1904 in Hungary. He starred hysterically in the German film 'M', loosely based on the career of the serial killer Peter Kurten and went on to be decidedly creepy in B-feature horror flicks. His family were well known in showbiz; his mother Annie, was a Scottish tap dancer; his sone John was a star of Dad's Army on the telly; and his grandson Hugh used to be a comedian but has turned into a really curmudgeonly American doctor.

For extra points, dear reader - do you know the name of the cartoon character based on Lorre, a feature of several Bugs Bunny shorts? Well, I'll tell you, I don't want you to get too excited or despondent (depending on whether you know or not). It was Hugo, and the other one was Rocky, based on Edward G Robinson. Ah, film trivia - don't you just love it?

In other news ...
This was the day when JFK did his bit for US-German relations with the famous 'binliner' speech - 'All free men,' he said, 'wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin' - which is of course, patent nonsense. As was an earlier part of the speech - 'Civis Romanus sumi' (he meant 'sum' which means 'I am') and again, the parallel is nonsense. 'I am a Roman citizen' was a proud boast because half the 'civilized' world had been 'integrated' into the Roman Empire. Much of Europe had been 'integrated' by Berlin, too, in a little thing called World War Two. So what was JFK saying? Nazi domination is a good thing? Remember, he was chummy with that good old SS Sturmbannfuhrer, Wernher von Braun.

14th March

Karl Marx died on this day in London in 1883. His friend and co-writer Friedrich Engels described him as the 'best-hated man of his time' and that was before the Americans had ever heard of him. His book, The Communist Manifesto. written in German in London in 1848 is very short, very repetitive and has one good line - 'You have nothing to lose but your chains'. As a blueprint for revolution (as tried out by Lenin, Trotsky etc) it doesn't work. As an appeal to human nature it fails too. As for Marx himself, he spent most of his later life scrounging off Engels and has a truly awful tombstone in London's otherwise fantastic Highgate Cemetery.

Marx out of 10? 1.5

In other news ...

On this day 48 years ago dodgy nightclub owner Jack Ruby was found guilty of murdering Lee Harvey Oswald, the presumed assassin of JFK in Dealey Plaza, Dallas five months earlier. If Ruby wasn't part of a conspiracy himself then his removal of Oswald goes beyond the criminal. Had Oswald stood trial we might all know what happened that day in Dallas and a whole JFK industry would never have been born.

Ruby's motive in shooting Oswald at point blank range in front of TV cameras when Oswald was in police custody was 'I did it for Jackie Kennedy'. 

Yeah, right.

31st January

On this day in 1835 a national sport was started called Shooting the President. It is now carried out on a regular basis, providing endless work for conspiracy theorists, secret service agents, journalists, Lee Harvey Oswald lookalikes and JFK deniers.

The first round of the game featured 'Old Hickory' Andrew Jackson (you may remember Charlton Heston played him in The Buccaneer) as the target of house-painter Richard Lawrence as the assassin. Lawrence may have been a few bullets short of a murder attempt for two reasons. Firstly, his gun jammed and secondly he claimed to be the rightful king of England, which came as something of a surprise to William IV, who actually was. What Lawrence didn't know was that Jackson already carried two lead slugs in his body from duels fought over gambling debts.

Why don't they make Presidents like that any more - although having said that it would be pointless, since Charlton Heston is no longer around to play them on film!

In other news ...

Most accounts will tell you that 'mild mannered murderer' HH Crippen poisoned his wife, Belle elmore and partially dismembered her body before stashing it in the cellar of their house at 63, Hilldrop Crescent on this day in 1910. Who said so? Chief Inspector Walter Dew of Scotland Yard. On what evidence? On the say-so of the pathologist Bernard Spilsbury, who already had a God-like reputation before this case made his name.

Unfortunately, the remains in the cellar were those of a man. Oops - nice one Dr Spilsbury. That doesn't mean of course that Crippen didn't kill Belle Elmore and it might mean that he also killed the anonymous bloke in the cellar. What it does mean, however, is that there is no hard evidence that Crippen killed anybody. A posthumous pardon is long overdue and when is Belle Elmore going to come forward?