On this day... in 1678, the Temple of Athena Parthenos (more familiarly, the Parthenon) was partially destroyed during an armed conflict between Venetian and Ottoman forces. Lobbed explosives from the Ottoman side blew huge chunks of glorious Pentelic marble into flying fragment, forever destroying the elegant men, women, gods and animals that peopled the many friezes and metopes of argubaly the greatest stucture from ancient Greece's golden era.
On this day... in 1957, a musical written by Arthur Laurents, Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim debuted on Broadway and was nominated for Best Musical the same year. Revitalising the ages-old tale of love across social boundaries, the musical spawned a number of remakes, films documentaries, and revivals, and is still touring to this day. This musical is West Side Story.
On this day... in 1983, a potential nuclear WWIII was averted when, despite indications from his computerised early warning systems, retired Russian colonel Stanislav Petrov refused to believe that the USA had launched long-range missiles against the USSR.
On this day... in 2006, Yi-Wen Hui was finally blessed from the powers-that-be the gift of Ethernet Connection, thereby putting her in touch with the world at 2 in the morning after a sorely-felt abscence of three months. On the same day she rose at 8.30am, cooked and ate a substantial meal, and set off to Gilds Silver Service training where she learned all about food handling and how to hold large serving cutlery with small hands and how to serve potatoes and how to clear ten plates at once. Adjourning from the training centre, she spent the next two hours being intellectually enriched on contemporary industrial relations. The following two hours was spent at the opposite end of the university campus listening to an old prune about marketing foundations and applications. She grabbed an egg-and-cress malted sandwich during her mid-afternoon break, and prowled through endless dusty cartons at a book fair in a bid to find a good bargain (something one cannot live without). Half and hour passed before she emerged into the afternoon sunlight, triumphantly brandishing three management text books, one of which was core reading, and all for the very thrifty price of thirty-five pounds. From 4-6pm she absorbed a rather inspirational introduction and talk given by the vice-chancellor of the University of Manchester, as part of her Leadership in Action unit. And now, utterly exhausted by the day's activities, she is going to bed.
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Saturday, September 09, 2006
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