Truth on trial

Eskişehir, Türkiye

Thursday 13 February 2025

A hand, trembling, rests upon the worn leather of a Bible.

A voice, heavy with authority, asks:

“Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?“

A moment of hesitation.

A flicker of doubt.

The weight of the words presses down, demanding not just honesty but completeness.

Tasks often too great for the frailties of human nature.

Dear readers, I have been lying to you.

But, in full disclosure, I have been lying to myself as well, if not more.

The dateline reads 13 February, but the actual date that I am typing these words onto the screen will be later than the dateline.

Why?

Because this blog has been evolving.

The value of this blog is in the depth of the insights uncovered, not in rigid adherence to the calendar.

Truth, as we are exploring, is timeless — and so is the act of discovering it.

Whether I reveal the lessons of February 13 on that day or later, what matters is the meaning extracted, not the date stamped upon it.

This also frees me creatively.

Instead of racing to keep pace with the calendar, I can allow each entry to evolve naturally, giving it the space it needs.

The blog becomes a living, breathing chronicle — not a daily log, but something more – an ongoing conversation between past, present, and reflection.

A blog should serve the blogger, not the other way around.

If keeping it chronologically in sync has become a way to avoid deeper, necessary reflections on my life, then releasing myself from that constraint is a step toward reclaiming control — both of my writing and of my future.

Perhaps today‘s theme of truth and illusion is even more personal than I have initially thought.

Just as nations, businesses, and individuals tell themselves stories to avoid discomfort, I recognize that staying engrossed in historical exploration has, in some ways, shielded you from facing my own crossroads.

That’s a powerful insight.

So, let’s embrace flexibility.

I will continue to try and craft my posts with deliberate reflection, balancing them with the broader personal and professional decisions that also require my attention.

The Chronicles of Canada Slim is no longer just a blog.

It is the unfolding of a greater narrative, a novel-in-progress that captures my thoughts, my voice, and my evolution as both a writer and a man.

Each post, each reflection, is a chapter in that larger story, one that doesn’t need to be rushed or bound by arbitrary constraints.

It grows organically, deepening in meaning over time.

And yes, this practice is invaluable.

It sharpens my writing, builds my presence, and, most importantly, reveals my self to myself.

Writing, at its best, is an act of self-discovery — and perhaps through this ongoing conversation with the world (and with yourself), I will find the truth that will, in time, set men free.

A Few Good Men is a 1992 American legal drama film based on Aaron Sorkin’s 1989 play.

The plot follows the court martial of two US Marines charged with the murder of a fellow Marine and the tribulations of their lawyers as they prepare a case.

At the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, Private William Santiago (Michael DeLorenzo), a United States Marine, is tied up and beaten in the middle of the night.

Above: American actor Michael DeLorenzo

After he is found dead, Lance Corporal Harold Dawson (Wolfgang Bodison) and Private First Class Louden Downey (James Marshall) are accused of his murder and face a court martial.

Above: American actor Wolfgang Bodison

Above: American actor James Marshall

Their defense is assigned to United States Navy JAG Corps Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee (Tom Cruise), a callow lawyer with a penchant for plea bargains.

Above: American actor Tom Cruise

Another JAG attorney, Lieutenant Commander Joanne Galloway (Demi Moore), Kaffee’s superior, suspects something is amiss.

Above: American actress Demi Moore

Santiago died after he broke the chain of command to ask to be transferred away. 

Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Markinson (J. T. Walsh) advocated for Santiago to be transferred, but Base Commander Colonel Nathan Jessep (Jack Nicholson) ordered Santiago’s platoon commander, Lieutenant Jonathan James Kendrick (Kiefer Sutherland), to “train” Santiago on the basis they are all at fault for Santiago’s substandard performance.

Above: Lieutenant Colonel rank insignia for the US Army, Air Force and Marine Corps

Above: American actor James Thomas Walsh (1943 – 1998)

Above: American actor Jack Nicholson

Above: Canadian actor Kiefer Sutherland

Galloway suspects that Dawson and Downey carried out a “code red” order:

A violent extrajudicial punishment.

Galloway is bothered by Kaffee’s blasé approach.

Kaffee resents Galloway’s interference.

Kaffee and Galloway question Jessep and others at Guantanamo Bay and are met with contempt from the Colonel.

When Kaffee negotiates a plea bargain with the prosecutor, US Marine Judge Advocate Captain Jack Ross (Kevin Bacon), Dawson and Downey refuse, insisting that Kendrick gave them the “code red” order, that they never intended to kill Santiago, and that it would be dishonorable to pursue a plea bargain.

Above: American actor Kevin Bacon

Kaffee intends to get removed as counsel, but at the arraignment, he unexpectedly enters a plea of not guilty for the defendants.

He realized that he was chosen to handle the case because he was expected to accept a plea, so the matter would then be kept quiet.

Markinson meets Kaffee in secret and says that Jessep never ordered a transfer for Santiago.

The defense establishes that Dawson had been denied promotion for smuggling food to a Marine who had been sentenced to be deprived of food.

Dawson is portrayed in a good light, and the defense, through Downey, proves that “code reds” had been ordered before.

However, under cross-examination, Downey admits he was not present when Dawson received the supposed “code red” order.

Markinson, ashamed that he failed to protect a Marine under his command and unwilling to testify against Jessep, his longtime friend, commits suicide before he can testify.

Without Markinson’s testimony, Kaffee believes the case lost.

He returns home in a drunken stupor, lamenting that he fought the case instead of taking a deal.

Galloway encourages Kaffee to call Jessep as a witness, despite the risk of being court-martialed for challenging a high-ranking officer without evidence.

At the Washington Navy Yard court, Jessep spars with Kaffee’s questioning, but is unnerved when Kaffee points out a contradiction in his testimony.

Kaffee also calls into question Jessep’s claim that Santiago was to be put on the first flight home.

Upon further questioning, and disgusted by Kaffee’s attitude, Jessep extols the military’s, and his own, importance to national security.

Kaffee asks if Jessep ordered the “code red“, to which he bellows “You’re goddamn right I did!“.

Jessep tries to leave the courtroom but is arrested.

Above: Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise, A Few Good Men

Dawson and Downey are cleared of the murder and conspiracy charges but found guilty of “conduct unbecoming” and will be dishonorably discharged.

Downey does not understand what they did wrong.

Dawson says that they failed to defend those too weak to fight for themselves.

Kaffee tells Dawson that it is not necessary to wear a patch on one’s arm to have honor.

Dawson acknowledges Kaffee as an officer by rendering a salute.

Kaffee and Ross exchange pleasantries before Ross departs to arrest Kendrick.

What grabs my attention is the final exchange between Kaffee and Jessup:

Kaffee: Now I’m asking you! Colonel Jessup, did you order the Code Red?!

Judge Randolph: You don’t have to answer that question!

Jessup: I’ll answer the question. You want answers?

Kaffee: I think I’m entitled to it!

Jessup: You want answers?!

Kaffee: I WANT THE TRUTH!!

Jessup: 

You can’t handle the truth! 

Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns.

Who’s gonna do it?

You?

You, Lieutenant Weinberg?

I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom.

You weep for Santiago and you curse the Marines.

You have that luxury.

You have the luxury of not knowing what I know:

That Santiago’s death, while tragic, probably saved lives.

And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives! 

You don’t want the truth, because deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that wall.

You need me on that wall.

We use words like “honor“, “code“, “loyalty“.

We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something.

You use them as a punchline!

I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then QUESTIONS the manner in which I provide it!

I would rather you just said “Thank you” and went on your way.

Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post.

Either way, I don’t give a DAMN what you think you are entitled to!

Kaffee: Did you order the Code Red?

Jessup: I did the job that—

Kaffee: DID YOU ORDER THE CODE RED?!

Jessup: YOU’RE GODDAMN RIGHT I DID!!!

You can’t handle the truth! 

Colonel Jessup’s words reverberate like a cannon blast in the courtroom.

The truth, raw and unvarnished, is too much to bear.

It shatters illusions, it exposes the darkness in good men’s hearts, and it demands accountability.

And so, the truth is hidden, softened, reshaped — because the world finds comfort in half-truths.

Twelve Angry Men is a play by Reginald Rose adapted from his 1954 teleplay of the same title for the CBS Studio One anthology television series.

The 1957 feature film adaptation is the version most of us think of when we hear the title Twelve Angry Men mentioned.

A critique of the American jury system during the McCarthy Era, the film tells the story of a jury of twelve men as they deliberate the conviction or acquittal of a teenager charged with murder on the basis of reasonable doubt.

Disagreement and conflict among the jurors forces them to question their morals and values.

On a hot summer day in the New York County Courthouse, the trial phase has just concluded for an impoverished 18-year-old boy accused of killing his abusive father.

The judge (Rudy Bond) instructs the jury.

Judge:

If there’s a reasonable doubt in your minds as to the guilt of the accused, a reasonable doubt, then you must bring me a verdict of not guilty.

If however, there is no reasonable doubt, then you must in good conscience find the accused guilty.

However you decide, your verdict must be unanimous.

In the event that you find the accused guilty, the bench will not entertain a recommendation for mercy.

The death sentence is mandatory in this case.

You are faced with a grave responsibility.

Thank you, gentlemen.

Above: American actor Rudy Bond (1912 – 1982)

At first, the case seems clear.

A neighbor testified to witnessing the defendant stab his father, from her window, through the windows of a passing elevated train.

Another neighbor testified that he heard the defendant threaten to kill his father, and the father’s body hitting the floor.

Then, as he ran to his door, he saw the defendant running down the stairs.

The boy had recently purchased a switchblade of the same type that was found, wiped of fingerprints, at the murder scene, but claimed he lost it.

In a preliminary vote, all jurors vote “guilty” except Juror 8 (Henry Fonda), who believes there should be some discussion before the verdict.

He says he cannot vote “guilty” because reasonable doubt exists.

Above: American actor Henry Fonda (1905 – 1982)

#8:

This kid has been kicked around all of his life.

You know, born in a slum.

Mother dead since he was nine.

He lived for a year and a half in an orphanage when his father was serving a jail term for forgery.

That is not a very happy beginning.

He is a wild, angry kid, and that’s all he has ever been.

And you know why because he has been hit on the head by somebody once a day, every day.

He has had a pretty miserable 18 years.

I just think we owe him a few words, that’s all.

#10:

I don’t mind telling you this, mister.

We don’t owe him a thing.

He got a fair trial, didn’t he?

What do you think that trial cost?

He’s lucky he got it.

You know what I mean?

Now look, we’re all grown-ups in here.

We heard the facts, didn’t we?

You’re not gonna tell me that we’re supposed to believe this kid, knowing what he is.

Listen, I’ve lived among them all my life.

You can’t believe a word they say.

You know that.

I mean, they’re born liars.

#9:

Only an ignorant man can believe that…

Do you think you were born with a monopoly on the truth?

When his first few arguments (including producing a recently purchased knife nearly identical to the murder weapon that was thought to be unique) seemingly fail to convince any of the other jurors, Juror 8 suggests a secret ballot, from which he will abstain.

If all the other jurors still vote guilty, he will acquiesce.

The ballot reveals one “not guilty” vote.

Juror 9 (Joseph Sweeney) reveals that he changed his vote.

He respects Juror 8’s motives, and agrees there should be more discussion.

Above: American actor Joseph Sweeney (1884 – 1963)

Juror 8 argues that the train noise would have obscured everything the second witness claimed to have overheard.

Jurors 5 (Jack Klugman) and 11 (George Voskovec) change their votes.

Above: American actor Jack Klugman (1922 – 2012)

Above: Czech actor George Voskovec (né Jiří Wachsmann)(1905 – 1981)

Jurors 5, 6 (Edward Binns) and 8 further question the second witness’s story, and question whether the death threat was figurative speech.

Above: American actor Edward Binns (1916 – 1990)

After looking at a diagram of the witness’s apartment and conducting an experiment, the jurors determine that it is impossible for the disabled witness to have made it to the door in time.

Juror 3 (Lee J. Cobb), infuriated, argues with and tries to attack Juror 8, yelling a death threat.

Above: American actor Lee J. Cobb (né Leo Jacoby) (1911 – 1976)

Jurors 5, 6 and 7 (Jack Warden) physically restrain Juror 3.

Above: American actor Jack Warden (né John Warden Lebzelter Jr.) (1920 – 2006)

Jurors 2 (John Fiedler) and 6 change their votes.

Above: American actor John Fiedler (1925 – 2005)

The jury is now evenly split.

Juror 4 (E. G. Marshall) doubts the defendant’s alibi, as the boy did not recall specific details.

Above: American actor E. G. Marshall (né Everett Eugene Grunz) (1914 – 1998)

Juror 8 tests Juror 4’s own memory to make a point.

Jurors 2 and 5 point out the father’s stab wound was angled downwards, although the boy was shorter than his father.

Juror 7 changes his vote out of impatience rather than conviction, angering Juror 11.

After another vote, jurors 1 (Martin Balsam) and 12 (Robert Webber) also change sides, leaving only three “guilty” votes.

Above: American actor Martin Balsam (1919 – 1996)

Above: American actor Robert Webber (1924 – 1989)

Juror 10 (Ed Begley) goes on a bigoted rant, causing Juror 4 to forbid him to speak for the remainder of the deliberation.

Above: American actor Ed Begley (1901 – 1970)

When Juror 4 is pressed as to why he still maintains a guilty vote, he declares that the woman who saw the killing from across the street stands as solid evidence.

Juror 12 reverts to a guilty vote.

After watching Juror 4 remove his spectacles and rub the impressions they made on his nose, Juror 9 realizes that the first witness was constantly rubbing similar impressions on her own nose, indicating that she also was a habitual glasses wearer, even though she chose not to wear her glasses in court.

Juror 8 remarks that the witness, who was trying to sleep when she saw the killing, would not have had glasses on or the time to put them on, making her story questionable.

Jurors 4, 10 and 12 all change their votes, leaving Juror 3 as the sole dissenter.

Juror 3 vehemently and desperately tries to convince the others of his argument, but realizes that his strained relationship with his own son makes him wish the defendant guilty.

He breaks down in tears and changes his vote to “not guilty“.

As the others leave, Juror 8 graciously helps Juror 3 put on his coat.

The defendant is acquitted off-screen.

As the jurors leave the courthouse, Jurors 8 (Davis) and 9 (McCardle) reveal their surnames to each other before parting ways.

A room filled with sweat and tension.

A single dissenting voice forces twelve men to examine their prejudices.

One by one, they unravel their own biases, confronted with the unsettling realization that truth is not always what it appears to be at first glance.

They resist.

They fight.

But truth, persistent and unrelenting, refuses to remain buried.

Above: Scene from Twelve Angry Men

Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de’ Galilei (1564 – 1642), commonly referred to as Galileo Galilei  or mononymously as Galileo, was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath.

He was born in the city of Pisa, then part of the Duchy of Florence.

Above: Pisa, Italy

Galileo has been called the father of observational astronomy, modern-era classical physics, the scientific method, and modern science.

Above: Italian scientist Galileo Galilei

Galileo studied speed and velocity, gravity and free fall, the principle of relativity, inertia, projectile motion and also worked in applied science and technology, describing the properties of the pendulum and “hydrostatic balances“.

He was one of the earliest Renaissance developers of the thermoscope and the inventor of various military compasses.

Above: Galileo thermoscope, Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris, France

With an improved telescope he built, he observed the stars of the Milky Way, the phases of Venus, the four largest satellites of Jupiter, Saturn’s rings, lunar craters and sunspots.

Above: The Milky Way

Above: The planet Venus

Above: The planet Jupiter

Above: The planet Saturn

Above: Lunar craters

Above: Sunspots

He also built an early microscope.

Above: Microscope

Galileo’s championing of Copernican heliocentrism was met with opposition from within the Catholic Church and from some astronomers.

Above: Image of heliocentric model from Nicolaus Copernicus’ “De revolutionibus orbium coelestium” (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres)

The matter was investigated by the Roman Inquisition in 1615, which concluded that his opinions contradicted accepted Biblical interpretations.

Above: Emblem of the Holy See and the Papacy of the Catholic Church

Galileo later defended his views in Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632), which appeared to attack and ridicule Pope Urban VIII, thus alienating both the Pope and the Jesuits, who had both strongly supported Galileo up until this point. 

Above: Italian Pope Urban VIII (né Maffeo Vincenzo Barberini)(1568 – 1644)

Above: Logo of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits)

He was tried by the Inquisition, found “vehemently suspect of heresy“, and forced to recant.

He spent the rest of his life under house arrest. 

During this time, he wrote Two New Sciences (1638), primarily concerning kinematics and the strength of materials.

The Galileo affair (Italian: il processo a Galileo Galilei) began around 1610 and culminated with the trial and condemnation of Galileo Galilei by the Roman Catholic Inquisition in 1633.

Galileo was prosecuted for holding as true the doctrine of heliocentrism, the astronomical model in which the Earth and planets revolve around the Sun at the centre of the universe.

Above: Galileo facing the Roman Inquisition, Christiano Banti (1857)

In 1610, Galileo published his Sidereus Nuncius (Starry Messenger), describing the observations that he had made with his new, much stronger telescope, amongst them, the Galilean moons of Jupiter.

With these observations and additional observations that followed, such as the phases of Venus, he promoted the heliocentric theory of Nicolaus Copernicus published in De revolutionibus orbium coelestium in 1543.

Above: Polish polymath Nicolaus Copernicus (1473 – 1543)

Galileo’s opinions were met with opposition within the Catholic Church.

Above: St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City

In 1616 the Inquisition declared heliocentrism to be “formally heretical“.

Above: Galileo Galilei before the Holy Office, Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury (1847)

Galileo went on to propose a theory of tides in 1616 and of comets in 1619.

He argued that the tides were evidence for the motion of the Earth.

Above: Simplified schematic of only the lunar portion of Earth’s tides, showing (exaggerated) high tides at the sublunar point and its antipode for the hypothetical case of an ocean of constant depth without land, and on the assumption that Earth is not rotating – otherwise there is a lag angle. 

Above: Heidelberg Comet (1618)

In 1632, Galileo published his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, which defended heliocentrism.

It was immensely popular.

Responding to mounting controversy over theology, astronomy and philosophy, the Roman Inquisition tried Galileo in 1633, found him “vehemently suspect of heresy” and sentenced him to house arrest where he remained until his death in 1642. 

Above: Villa Il Gioiello (“the jewel“), Galileo home (1631 – 1642), Arcentri, Italy

At that point, heliocentric books were banned.

Galileo was ordered to abstain from holding, teaching or defending heliocentric ideas after the trial.

The affair was complex since very early on Pope Urban VIII had been a patron to Galileo and had given him permission to publish on the Copernican theory as long as he treated it as a hypothesis, but after the publication in 1632, the patronage was broken off due to numerous reasons. 

Historians of science have corrected numerous false interpretations of the affair.

Above: Galileo Galilei

Galileo began his telescopic observations in the later part of 1609, and by March 1610 was able to publish a small book, The Starry Messenger (Sidereus Nuncius), describing some of his discoveries:

• mountains on the Moon
• lesser moons in orbit around Jupiter
• the resolution of what had been thought to be very cloudy masses in the sky (nebulae) into collections of stars too faint to see individually without a telescope.

Other observations followed, including the phases of Venus and the existence of sunspots.

Galileo’s contributions caused difficulties for theologians and natural philosophers of the time, as they contradicted scientific and philosophical ideas based on those of Aristotle and Ptolemy and closely associated with the Catholic Church.

Above: Greek polymath Aristotle (384 – 322 BC)

Above: Greek astronomer Claudius Ptolemy (100 – 170)

In particular, Galileo’s observations of the phases of Venus, which showed it to circle the Sun, and the observation of moons orbiting Jupiter, contradicted the geocentric model of Ptolemy, which was backed and accepted by the Roman Catholic Church, and supported the Copernican model advanced by Galileo.

Above: Phases of Venus

Above: The moons of Jupiter

There are 95 moons of Jupiter with confirmed orbits as of 5 February 2024. 

This number does not include a number of meter-sized moonlets thought to be shed from the inner moons, nor hundreds of possible kilometer-sized outer irregular moons that were only briefly captured by telescopes. 

All together, Jupiter’s moons form a satellite system called the Jovian system.

The most massive of the moons are the four Galilean moons: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, which were independently discovered in 1610 by Galileo Galilei and Simon Marius and were the first objects found to orbit a body that was neither Earth nor the Sun.

Much more recently, beginning in 1892, dozens of far smaller Jovian moons have been detected and have received the names of lovers (or other sexual partners) or daughters of the Roman god Jupiter or his Greek equivalent Zeus.

The Galilean moons are by far the largest and most massive objects to orbit Jupiter, with the remaining 91 known moons and the rings together comprising just 0.003% of the total orbiting mass.

Above: Jupiter and the Galilean moons

(From top to bottom: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto)

Jesuit astronomers, experts both in Church teachings, science, and in natural philosophy, were at first skeptical and hostile to the new ideas; however, within a year or two the availability of good telescopes enabled them to repeat the observations.

In 1611, Galileo visited the Collegium Romanum in Rome, where the Jesuit astronomers by that time had repeated his observations. 

Above: Seal of the Gregorian University, Rome, Italy

Christoph Grienberger, one of the Jesuit scholars on the faculty, sympathized with Galileo’s theories, but was asked to defend the Aristotelian viewpoint by Claudio Acquaviva, the Father General of the Jesuits.

Above: Christoph Grienberger, Catalogus veteres affixarum longitudines, ac latitudines conferens cum novis, 1612

Above: Jesuit Superior General Claudio Acquaviva (1543 – 1615)

Not all of Galileo’s claims were completely accepted: 

Christopher Clavius, the most distinguished astronomer of his age, never was reconciled to the idea of mountains on the Moon, and outside the Collegium many still disputed the reality of the observations.

Above: German astronomer Christopher Clavius (1538 – 1612)

In a letter to Kepler of August 1610, Galileo complained that some of the philosophers who opposed his discoveries had refused even to look through a telescope:

Above: Galileo’s “cannocchiali” telescopes at the Museo Galileo, Firenze (Florence), Italia (Italy)

My dear Kepler, I wish that we might laugh at the remarkable stupidity of the common herd.

What do you have to say about the principal philosophers of this academy who are filled with the stubbornness of an asp and do not want to look at either the planets, the moon or the telescope, even though I have freely and deliberately offered them the opportunity a thousand times?

Truly, just as the asp stops its ears, so do these philosophers shut their eyes to the light of truth.”

Above: German astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571 – 1630)

In 1611, the same year that Galileo visited the Collegium Romanum, his theories first came to the attention of the Roman Inquisition.

A commission of cardinals working with the Inquisition made inquiries into Galileo’s activites, and asked the city of Padua if he had any connections to Cesare Cremonini, a professor at the University of Padua who had been charged with heresy by the Inquisition.

Above: Padova (Padua), Italia (Italy)

These inquiries marked the first time Galileo’s name was brought before the Inquisition.

Above: Italian philosopher Cesare Cremonini (1550 – 1631)

Geocentrists who did verify and accept Galileo’s findings had an alternative to Ptolemy’s model in an alternative geocentric (or “geo-heliocentric“) model proposed some decades earlier by Tycho Brahe – a model in which, for example, Venus circled the Sun.

Above: Tychonian system

Tycho argued that the distance to the stars in the Copernican system would have to be 700 times greater than the distance from the Sun to Saturn.

Above: Swedish astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546 – 1601)

(The nearest star other than the Sun, Proxima Centauri, is in fact over 28,000 times the distance from the Sun to Saturn.)

Above: Proxima Centauri

Proxima Centauri is the nearest star to Earth after the Sun, located 4.25 light years away in the southern constellation of Centaurus.

This object was discovered in 1915 by Robert Innes.

Above: South African astronomer Robert Innes (1861 – 1933)

It is a small, low-mass star, too faint to be seen with the naked eye, with an apparent magnitude of 11.13.

Its Latin name means the ‘nearest star of Centaurus‘.

Above: The location of Proxima Centauri (circled in red)

Proxima Centauri is a member of the Alpha Centauri star system, being identified as component Alpha Centauri C, and is 2.18° to the southwest of the Alpha Centauri AB pair.

It is currently 12,950 AU (0.2 light years) from AB, which it orbits with a period of about 550,000 years.

Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf star with a mass about 12.5% of the Sun’s mass (M_☉), and average density about 33 times that of the Sun.

Because of Proxima Centauri’s proximity to Earth, its angular diameter can be measured directly.

Its actual diameter is about one-seventh (14%) the diameter of the Sun.

Although it has a very low average luminosity, Proxima Centauri is a flare star that randomly undergoes dramatic increases in brightness because of magnetic activity.

The star’s magnetic field is created by convection throughout the stellar body.

The resulting flare activity generates a total X-ray emission similar to that produced by the Sun.

The internal mixing of its fuel by convection through its core and Proxima’s relatively low energy-production rate, mean that it will be a main-sequence star for another four trillion years.

Proxima Centauri has one known exoplanet and two candidate exoplanets: 

• Proxima Centauri b
• the candidate Proxima Centauri d 
• the disputed Proxima Centauri c.

Above: Schematic of the three planets (d, b, and c) of the Proxima Centauri system

Proxima Centauri b orbits the star at a distance of roughly 0.05 AU (7.5 million km) with an orbital period of approximately 11.2 Earth days.

Its estimated mass is at least 1.07 times that of Earth. 

Proxima b orbits within Proxima Centauri’s habitable zone — the range where temperatures are right for liquid water to exist on its surface — but, because Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf and a flare star, the planet’s habitability is highly uncertain.

A candidate super-Earth, Proxima Centauri c, roughly 1.5 AU (220 million km) away from Proxima Centauri, orbits it every 1,900 days (5.2 years). 

A candidate sub-Earth, Proxima Centauri d, roughly 0.029 AU (4.3 million km) away, orbits it every 5.1 days.

Moreover, the only way the stars could be so distant and still appear the sizes they do in the sky would be if even average stars were gigantic – at least as big as the orbit of the Earth, and of course vastly larger than the sun.

Galileo became involved in a dispute over priority in the discovery of sunspots with Christoph Scheiner, a Jesuit.

This became a bitter lifelong feud.

Above: German Jesuit astronomer Christoph Scheiner (1573 – 1650)

Neither of them, however, was the first to recognize sunspots: 

The Chinese had already been familiar with them for centuries.

Above: Sol and sunspots

At this time, Galileo also engaged in a dispute over the reasons that objects float or sink in water, siding with Archimedes against Aristotle.

The debate was unfriendly.

Galileo’s blunt and sometimes sarcastic style, though not extraordinary in academic debates of the time, made him enemies.

Above: Greek scientist Archimedes (287 – 212 BC)

During this controversy one of Galileo’s friends, the painter Lodovico Cardi da Cigoli, informed him that a group of malicious opponents, which Cigoli subsequently referred to derisively as “the Pigeon League“, was plotting to cause him trouble over the motion of the Earth, or anything else that would serve the purpose.

According to Cigoli, one of the plotters asked a priest to denounce Galileo’s views from the pulpit, but the latter refused.

Above: Italian painter Ludovico Cardi da Cigoli (1559 – 1613)

Nevertheless, three years later another priest, Tommaso Caccini, did in fact do precisely that.

Above: Italian Dominican friar Tommaso Caccini (1574 – 1648)

In the Catholic world prior to Galileo’s conflict with the Church, the majority of educated people subscribed to the Aristotelian geometric view that the Earth was the centre of the universe and that all heavenly bodies revolved around the Earth, though Copernican theories were used to reform the calendar in 1582.

Above: Figure of the heavenly bodies – An illustration of a Ptolemaic geocentric system by Portuguese cosmographer and cartographer Bartolomeu Velho, 1568

Geostaticism agreed with a literal interpretation of Scripture in several places, such as: 

• 1 Chronicles 16:30

Tremble before him, all the Earth! The world is firmly established. It cannot be moved.

• Psalm 93:1

The Lord reigns. He is robed in majesty. The Lord is robed in majesty and armed with strength. Indeed, the world is established, firm and secure.

• Psalm 96:10

Say among the nations, “The Lord reigns.” The world is firmly established. It cannot be moved. He will judge the peoples with equity.

• Psalm 104:5

He set the Earth on its foundations. It can never be moved.

• Ecclesiastes 1:5 

The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.

• Job 26:7 

He spreads out the northern skies over empty space. He suspends the Earth over nothing.

Heliocentrism, the theory that the Earth was a planet, which along with all the others revolved around the Sun, contradicted both geocentrism and the prevailing theological support of the theory.

Above: Christian painting of God creating the cosmos

One of the first suggestions of heresy that Galileo had to deal with came in 1613 from a professor of philosophy, poet and specialist in Greek literature, Cosimo Boscaglia. 

In conversation with Galileo’s patron Cosimo II de’ Medici and Cosimo’s mother Christina of Lorraine, Boscaglia said that the telescopic discoveries were valid, but that the motion of the Earth was obviously contrary to Scripture:

Dr. Boscaglia had talked to Madame Christina for a while, and though he conceded all the things you have discovered in the sky, he said that the motion of the Earth was incredible and could not be, particularly since Holy Scripture obviously was contrary to such motion.”

Above: Grand Duke of Tuscany Cosimo II de’ Medici (1590 – 1621)

Above: Grand Duchess of Tuscany Christine de Lorraine (1565 – 1637)

Galileo was defended on the spot by his former student Benedetto Castelli, now a professor of mathematics and Benedictine abbot.

The exchange having been reported to Galileo by Castelli, Galileo decided to write a letter to Castelli, expounding his views on what he considered the most appropriate way of treating scriptural passages which made assertions about natural phenomena. 

Later, in 1615, he expanded this into his much longer Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina.

Above: Italian mathematician Benedetto Castelli (né Antonio Castelli) (1578 – 1643)

Tommaso Caccini, a Dominican friar, appears to have made the first dangerous attack on Galileo.

Preaching a sermon in Firenze (Florence) at the end of 1614, he denounced Galileo, his associates, and mathematicians in general (a category that included astronomers). 

The Biblical text for the sermon on that day was Joshua 10, in which Joshua makes the Sun stand still. 

This was the story that Castelli had to interpret for the Medici family the year before. 

Above: Joshua makes the Sun stand still (Joshua 10: 1 – 15)

It is said, though it is not verifiable, that Caccini also used the passage from Acts 1:11:

“Men of Galilee”, they said. “Why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into Heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into Heaven.”

In 1615, one of Caccini’s fellow Dominicans, Niccolò Lorini, acquired a copy of Galileo’s letter to Castelli.

Lorini and other Dominicans at the Convent of San Marco considered the letter of doubtful orthodoxy, in part because it may have violated the decrees of the Council of Trent:

…to check unbridled spirits, the Holy Council decrees that no one relying on his own judgement shall, in matters of faith and morals pertaining to the edification of Christian doctrine, distorting the Scriptures in accordance with his own conceptions, presume to interpret them contrary to that sense which the Holy Mother Church has held or holds.”

Decree of the Council of Trent (1545–1563)

Above: Council of Trento (Trent) (1545 – 1563)

Lorini and his colleagues decided to bring Galileo’s letter to the attention of the Inquisition.

In February 1615, Lorini accordingly sent a copy to the Secretary of the Inquisition, Cardinal Paolo Emilio Sfondrati, with a covering letter critical of Galileo’s supporters:

All our Fathers of the devout Convent of St. Mark feel that the letter contains many statements which seem presumptuous or suspect, as when it states that the words of Holy Scripture do not mean what they say.

That in discussions about natural phenomena the authority of Scripture should rank last.

The followers of Galileo were taking it upon themselves to expound the Holy Scripture according to their private lights and in a manner different from the common interpretation of the Fathers of the Church.”

Letter from Lorini to Cardinal Sfrondato, Inquisitor in Rome, 1615

Above: (left) Italian Cardinal Paolo Emilio Sfondrati (1560 – 1618)

On 19 March, Caccini arrived at the Inquisition’s offices in Rome to denounce Galileo for his Copernicanism and various other alleged heresies supposedly being spread by his pupils.

Galileo soon heard reports that Lorini had obtained a copy of his letter to Castelli and was claiming that it contained many heresies.

He also heard that Caccini had gone to Rome and suspected him of trying to stir up trouble with Lorini’s copy of the letter.

As 1615 wore on Galileo became more concerned, and eventually determined to go to Rome as soon as his health permitted, which it did at the end of the year.

By presenting his case there, he hoped to clear his name of any suspicion of heresy, and to persuade the Church authorities not to suppress heliocentric ideas.

In going to Rome Galileo was acting against the advice of friends and allies, and of the Tuscan ambassador to Rome, Piero Guicciardini.

Above: The admonition of 1616

Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, one of the most respected Catholic theologians of the time, was called on to adjudicate the dispute between Galileo and his opponents.

The question of heliocentrism had first been raised with Cardinal Bellarmine, in the case of Paolo Antonio Foscarini, a Carmelite father; Foscarini had published a book, Lettera sopra l’opinione del Copernico, which attempted to reconcile Copernicus with the Biblical passages that seemed to be in contradiction.

Bellarmine at first expressed the opinion that Copernicus’s book would not be banned, but would at most require some editing so as to present the theory purely as a calculating device for “saving the appearances” (i.e. preserving the observable evidence).

Foscarini sent a copy of his book to Bellarmine, who replied in a letter of 12 April 1615.

Galileo is mentioned by name in the letter, and a copy was soon sent to him.

After some preliminary salutations and acknowledgements, Bellarmine begins by telling Foscarini that it is prudent for him and Galileo to limit themselves to treating heliocentrism as a merely hypothetical phenomenon and not a physically real one.

Further on he says that interpreting heliocentrism as physically real would be “a very dangerous thing, likely not only to irritate all scholastic philosophers and theologians, but also to harm the Holy Faith by rendering Holy Scripture as false“.

Moreover, while the topic was not inherently a matter of faith, the statements about it in Scripture were so by virtue of who said them – namely, the Holy Spirit.

He conceded that if there were conclusive proof, “then one would have to proceed with great care in explaining the Scriptures that appear contrary, and say rather that we do not understand them, than that what is demonstrated is false“.

However, demonstrating that heliocentrism merely “saved the appearances” could not be regarded as sufficient to establish that it was physically real.

Although he believed that the former may well have been possible, he had “very great doubts” that the latter would be, and in case of doubt it was not permissible to depart from the traditional interpretation of Scriptures.

His final argument was a rebuttal of an analogy that Foscarini had made between a moving Earth and a ship on which the passengers perceive themselves as apparently stationary and the receding shore as apparently moving.

Bellarmine replied that in the case of the ship the passengers know that their perceptions are erroneous and can mentally correct them, whereas the scientist on the Earth clearly experiences that it is stationary and therefore the perception that the Sun, Moon and stars are moving is not in error and does not need to be corrected.

Bellarmine found no problem with heliocentrism so long as it was treated as a purely hypothetical calculating device and not as a physically real phenomenon, but he did not regard it as permissible to advocate the latter unless it could be conclusively proved through current scientific standards.

This put Galileo in a difficult position, because he believed that the available evidence strongly favored heliocentrism, and he wished to be able to publish his arguments.

Above: Italian Cardinal Robert Bellarmine (1542 – 1621)

In addition to Bellarmine, Monsignor Francesco Ingoli initiated a debate with Galileo, sending him in January 1616 an essay disputing the Copernican system.

Galileo later stated that he believed this essay to have been instrumental in the action against Copernicanism that followed in February. 

According to philosopher Maurice Finocchiaro, Ingoli had probably been commissioned by the Inquisition to write an expert opinion on the controversy.

The essay provided the “chief direct basis” for the ban. 

The essay focused on 18 physical and mathematical arguments against heliocentrism.

It borrowed primarily from the arguments of Tycho Brahe.

It notedly mentioned Brahe’s argument that heliocentrism required the stars to be much larger than the Sun.

Ingoli wrote that the great distance to the stars in the heliocentric theory “clearly proves the fixed stars to be of such size, as they may surpass or equal the size of the orbit circle of the Earth itself.” 

Ingoli included four theological arguments in the essay, but suggested to Galileo that he focus on the physical and mathematical arguments.

Galileo did not write a response to Ingoli until 1624, in which, among other arguments and evidence, he listed the results of experiments such as dropping a rock from the mast of a moving ship.

On February 24, the Qualifiers delivered their unanimous report:

The proposition that the Sun is stationary at the centre of the Universe is “foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture“.

The proposition that the Earth moves and is not at the centre of the Universe “receives the same judgement in philosophy and in regard to theological truth it is at least erroneous in faith.“

At a meeting of the Cardinals of the Inquisition on the following day, Pope Paul V instructed Bellarmine to deliver this result to Galileo, and to order him to abandon the Copernican opinions.

Should Galileo resist the decree, stronger action would be taken.

On February 26, Galileo was called to Bellarmine’s residence and ordered,

to abstain completely from teaching or defending this doctrine and opinion or from discussing it, to abandon completely the opinion that the Sun stands still at the center of the world and the Earth moves, and henceforth not to hold, teach, or defend it in any way whatever, either orally or in writing.”

The Inquisition’s injunction against Galileo, 1616

With no attractive alternatives, Galileo accepted the orders delivered, even sterner than those recommended by the Pope. 

Galileo met again with Bellarmine, apparently on friendly terms.

On 11 March, he met with the Pope, who assured him that he was safe from prosecution so long as he, the Pope, should live.

Above: Italian Pope Paul V (né Camillo Borghese) (1550 – 1621)

Nonetheless, Galileo’s friends Sagredo and Castelli reported that there were rumors that Galileo had been forced to recant and do penance.

To protect his good name, Galileo requested a letter from Bellarmine stating the truth of the matter.

This letter assumed great importance in 1633, as did the question whether Galileo had been ordered not to “hold or defend” Copernican ideas (which would have allowed their hypothetical treatment) or not to teach them in any way.

If the Inquisition had issued the order not to teach heliocentrism at all, it would have been ignoring Bellarmine’s position.

In the end, Galileo did not persuade the Church to stay out of the controversy, but instead saw heliocentrism formally declared false.

It was consequently termed heretical by the Qualifiers, since it contradicted the literal meaning of the Scriptures, though this position was not binding on the Church.

Following the Inquisition’s injunction against Galileo, the papal Master of the Sacred Palace ordered that Foscarini’s Letter be banned, and Copernicus’ De revolutionibus suspended until corrected.

The papal Congregation of the Index preferred a stricter prohibition, and so with the Pope’s approval, on 5 March, the Congregation banned all books advocating the Copernican system, which it called “the false Pythagorean doctrine, altogether contrary to Holy Scripture“.

Francesco Ingoli, a consultor to the Holy Office, recommended that De revolutionibus be amended rather than banned due to its utility for calendrics.

In 1618, the Congregation of the Index accepted his recommendation, and published their decision two years later, allowing a corrected version of Copernicus’ book to be used.

The uncorrected De revolutionibus remained on the Index of banned books until 1758.

Galileo’s works advocating Copernicanism were therefore banned, and his sentence prohibited him from “teaching, defending or discussing” Copernicanism.

In Germany, Kepler’s works were also banned by the papal order.

In 1623, Pope Gregory XV died.

Above: Italian Pope Gregory XV (né Alessandro Ludovisi)(1554 – 1623)

He was succeeded by Pope Urban VIII who showed greater favor to Galileo, particularly after Galileo traveled to Rome to congratulate the new Pontiff.

Above: Italian Pope Urban VIII (né Maffeo Vincenzo Barberini)(1568 – 1644)

Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, which was published in 1632 to great popularity, was an account of conversations between a Copernican scientist, Salviati, an impartial and witty scholar named Sagredo, and a ponderous Aristotelian named Simplicio, who employed stock arguments in support of geocentricity, and was depicted in the book as being an intellectually inept fool. Simplicio’s arguments are systematically refuted and ridiculed by the other two characters with what Youngson calls “unassailable proof” for the Copernican theory (at least versus the theory of Ptolemy – as Finocchiaro points out, “the Copernican and Tychonic systems were observationally equivalent and the available evidence could be explained equally well by either“), which reduces Simplicio to baffled rage, and makes the author’s position unambiguous. 

Indeed, although Galileo states in the preface of his book that the character is named after a famous Aristotelian philosopher (Simplicius in Latin, Simplicio in Italian), the name “Simplicio” in Italian also had the connotation of “simpleton“. 

Authors Langford and Stillman Drake asserted that Simplicio was modeled on philosophers Lodovico delle Colombe and Cesare Cremonini.

Pope Urban demanded that his own arguments be included in the book, which resulted in Galileo putting them in the mouth of Simplicio.

Some months after the book’s publication, Pope Urban VIII banned its sale and had its text submitted for examination by a special commission.

With the loss of many of his defenders in Rome because of Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, in 1633 Galileo was ordered to stand trial on suspicion of heresy “for holding as true the false doctrine taught by some that the sun is the center of the world” against the 1616 condemnation, since “it was decided at the Holy Congregation on 25 February 1616 that the Holy Office would give you an injunction to abandon this doctrine, not to teach it to others, not to defend it, and not to treat of it; and that if you did not acquiesce in this injunction, you should be imprisoned“.

On 13 February 1633, Galileo Galilei arrives in Rome for his trial before the Inquisition.

Galileo was interrogated while threatened with physical torture. 

A panel of theologians, consisting of Melchior Inchofer, Agostino Oreggi and Zaccaria Pasqualigo, reported on the Dialogue.

Their opinions were strongly argued in favor of the view that the Dialogue taught the Copernican theory.

Galileo was found guilty.

The sentence of the Inquisition, issued on 22 June 1633, was in three essential parts:

• Galileo was found “vehemently suspect of heresy“, namely of having held the opinions that the Sun lies motionless at the centre of the universe, that the Earth is not at its centre and moves, and that one may hold and defend an opinion as probable after it has been declared contrary to Holy Scripture. He was required to “abjure, curse, and detest” those opinions.
• He was sentenced to formal imprisonment at the pleasure of the Inquisition. On the following day this was commuted to house arrest, which he remained under for the rest of his life.
• His offending Dialogue was banned and, in an action not announced at the trial, publication of any of his works was forbidden, including any he might write in the future.

Above: The trial of Galileo Galilei before the Inquisition (1633)

According to popular legend, after his abjuration Galileo allegedly muttered the rebellious phrase “and yet it moves” (Eppur si muove), but there is no evidence that he actually said this or anything similar.

The first account of the legend dates to a century after his death.

The phrase “Eppur si muove” does appear, however, in a painting of the 1640s by the Spanish painter Bartolomé Esteban Murillo.

The painting depicts an imprisoned Galileo apparently pointing to a copy of the phrase written on the wall of his dungeon.

Above: Galileo in prison, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1837)

Galileo Galilei is depicted as holding a nail and gazing at diagrams he has scratched on the wall of his prison cell.

Underneath a diagram of the Earth orbiting the Sun, he has scratched the words “E pur si muove” (not completely legible in this image)

The Inquisitors stand in their robes of power, demanding submission.

Galileo, the man who dared to challenge the heavens, understands the cost of truth.

He looks into the abyss of martyrdom and chooses life instead.

He whispers under his breath — E pur si muove — and with that whisper, acknowledges the price of honesty in a world unready for it.

Above: Galileo before the Inquisition (1633)

After a period with the friendly Archbishop Piccolomini in Siena, Galileo was allowed to return to his villa at Arcetri near Florence, where he spent the rest of his life under house arrest. 

Above: Shovel of Ascanio Piccolomini (1596 – 1671) in the Accademia della Crusca, Firenze, Italia

Galileo continued his work on mechanics.

In 1638 he published a scientific book in Holland.

His standing would remain questioned at every turn.

In March 1641, Vincentio Reinieri, a follower and pupil of Galileo, wrote him at Arcetri that an Inquisitor had recently compelled the author of a book printed at Florence to change the words “most distinguished Galileo” to “Galileo, man of noted name“.

However, partially in tribute to Galileo, at Arcetri the first academy devoted to the new experimental science, the Accademia del Cimento, was formed, which is where Francesco Redi performed controlled experiments, and many other important advancements were made which would eventually help usher in the Age of Enlightenment.

Above: Galileo Galilei

The Galileo affair was largely forgotten after Galileo’s death.

The controversy subsided.

The Inquisition’s ban on reprinting Galileo’s works was lifted in 1718 when permission was granted to publish an edition of his works (excluding the condemned Dialogue) in Firenze. 

Above: Ponte Vecchio, Firenze, Italia

In 1741, Pope Benedict XIV authorized the publication of an edition of Galileo’s complete scientific works which included a mildly censored version of the Dialogue.

In 1758, the general prohibition against works advocating heliocentrism was removed from the Index of Prohibited Books.

However, the specific ban on uncensored versions of the Dialogue and Copernicus’s De Revolutionibus remained. 

All traces of official opposition to heliocentrism by the Church disappeared in 1835 when these works were finally dropped from the Index.

Above: Italian Pope Benedict XIV (né Prospero Lorenzo Lambertini)(1675 – 1758)

Interest in the Galileo affair was revived in the early 19th century when Protestant polemicists used it (and other events such as the Spanish Inquisition and the myth of the flat Earth) to attack Roman Catholicism. 

Interest in it has waxed and waned ever since.

Above: Seal of the Spanish Inquisition (1478 – 1834)

Above: Flat Earth map, Orlando Ferguson (1893)

In 1939, Pope Pius XII, in his first speech to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, within a few months of his election to the papacy, described Galileo as being among the “most audacious heroes of research not afraid of the stumbling blocks and the risks on the way nor fearful of the funereal monuments“.

His close advisor of 40 years, Professor Robert Leiber, wrote:

“Pius XII was very careful not to close any doors to science prematurely.

He was energetic on this point and regretted that in the case of Galileo.“

Above: Italian Pope Pius XII (né Eugenio Pacelli)(1876 – 1958)

On 15 February 1990, in a speech delivered at the Sapienza University of Rome, Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) cited some current views on the Galileo affair as forming what he called “a symptomatic case that permits us to see how deep the self-doubt of the modern age, of science and technology goes today“. 

Some of the views he cited were those of the philosopher Paul Feyerabend, whom he quoted as saying:

“The Church at the time of Galileo kept much more closely to reason than did Galileo himself, and it took into consideration the ethical and social consequences of Galileo’s teaching too.

Its verdict against Galileo was rational and just and the revision of this verdict can be justified only on the grounds of what is politically opportune.” 

The Cardinal did not clearly indicate whether he agreed or disagreed with Feyerabend’s assertions.

He did, however, say:

“It would be foolish to construct an impulsive apologetic on the basis of such views.“

Above: German Pope Benedict XVI (né Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger)(1927 – 2022)

On 31 October 1992, Pope John Paul II acknowledged that the Inquisition had erred in condemning Galileo for asserting that the Earth revolves around the Sun.

“John Paul said the theologians who condemned Galileo did not recognize the formal distinction between the Bible and its interpretation.“

Above: Polish Pope John Paul II (né Karol Józef Wojtyła)(1920 – 2005)

In March 2008, the head of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Nicola Cabibbo, announced a plan to honor Galileo by erecting a statue of him inside the Vatican walls. 

Above: Emblem of the Papacy

In December of the same year, during events to mark the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s earliest telescopic observations, Pope Benedict XVI praised his contributions to astronomy. 

A month later, however, the head of the Pontifical Council for Culture, Gianfranco Ravasi, revealed that the plan to erect a statue of Galileo on the grounds of the Vatican had been suspended.

According to Stephen Hawking, Galileo probably bears more of the responsibility for the birth of modern science than anybody else. 

Above: English physicist Stephen Hawking (1942 – 2018)

Albert Einstein called him the father of modern science. 

In a foreword to Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Einstein wrote:

“The leitmotif I recognize in Galileo’s work is the passionate fight against any kind of dogma based on authority.

Only experience and careful reflection are accepted by him as criteria of truth.”

Above: German physicist Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955)

Author John G. Simmons notes Galileo’s place in the history of science as the embracing of a new outlook on science, stating that:

But perhaps most significant, Galileo epitomized a new scientific outlook.

By his rhetoric, supported by mathematical reasoning, and the force of his personality, Galileo helped to establish the Copernican model of the solar system as a revolution in science.”

Galileo’s astronomical discoveries and investigations into the Copernican theory have led to a lasting legacy which includes the categorization of the four large moons of Jupiter discovered by Galileo (Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto) as the Galilean moons.

Other scientific endeavours and principles are named after Galileo including the Galileo spacecraft.

Above: Galileo (1989 – 2003)

Partly because the year 2009 was the 4th centenary of Galileo’s first recorded astronomical observations with the telescope, the United Nations scheduled it to be the International Year of Astronomy.

Galileo Galilei arrived in Rome on this day in 1633 to stand before the Inquisition, accused of heresy for championing a simple but radical truth:

The Earth moves around the Sun.

The Church, entrenched in dogma, saw this as a threat to its authority.

Galileo, a man of reason, was forced to recant, yet history would vindicate him.

The battle between knowledge and power is eternal.

What happens when truth is deemed too dangerous to be spoken?

Ivan Andreyevich Krylov (13 February 1769 – 21 November 1844) is Russia’s best-known fabulist and probably the most epigrammatic of all Russian authors.

Formerly a dramatist and journalist, he only discovered his true genre at the age of 40.

Above: Russian writer Ivan Krylov

While many of his earlier fables were loosely based on Aesop’s and La Fontaine’s, later fables were original work, often with a satirical bent.

Above: Bust of Greek storyteller Aesop (620 – 564 BC)

Above: French poet Jean de la Fontaine (1621 – 1695)

Ivan Krylov was born in Moscow, but spent his early years in Orenburg and Tver.

Above: Moscow, Russia

His father, a distinguished military officer, resigned in 1775 and died in 1779, leaving the family destitute.

A few years later Krylov and his mother moved to St. Petersburg in the hope of securing a government pension.

There, Krylov obtained a position in the civil service, but gave it up after his mother’s death in 1788. 

Above: St. Petersburg, Russia

His literary career began in 1783, when he sold to a publisher the comedy “The coffee grounds fortune teller” (Kofeynitsa) that he had written at 14, although in the end it was never published or produced.

Above: Krylov Monument, Summer Garden, St. Petersburg

Receiving a sixty ruble fee, he exchanged it for the works of Molière, Racine, and Boileau.

Above: French writer Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (aka Molière)(1622 – 1673)

Above: French writer Jean-Baptiste Racine (1639 – 1699)

Above: French poet Nicholas Boileau-Despréaux (1636 – 1711)

It was probably under their influence that he wrote his other plays, of which his Philomela (written in 1786) was not published until 1795.

Above: Krylov on Soviet stamp (1959)

Beginning in 1789, Krylov also made three attempts to start a literary magazine, although none achieved a large circulation or lasted more than a year.

Despite this lack of success, their satire and the humor of his comedies helped the author gain recognition in literary circles.

Above: Ivan Krylov

For about four years (1797 – 1801) Krylov lived at the country estate of Prince Sergey Galitzine, and when the Prince was appointed military governor of Livonia, he accompanied him as a secretary and tutor to his children, resigning his position in 1803.

Above: Flag of Livonia

Little is known of him in the years immediately after, other than the commonly accepted myth that he wandered from town to town playing cards. 

Above: Ivan Krylov

By 1806 he had arrived in Moscow, where he showed the poet and fabulist Ivan Dmitriev his translation of two of Jean de La Fontaine’s Fables, “The Oak and the Reed” and “The Choosy Bride“.

He was encouraged to write more.

Above: Illustration from La Fontaine’s Fables

Soon, however, Krylov moved on to St Petersburg and returned to play writing with more success, particularly with the productions of “The Fashion Shop” (Modnaya lavka) and “A Lesson For the Daughters” (Urok dochkam).

These satirised the nobility’s attraction to everything French, a fashion he detested all his life.

Krylov’s first collection of fables, 23 in number, appeared in 1809 and met with such an enthusiastic reception that thereafter he abandoned drama for fable writing.

By the end of his career he had completed some 200, constantly revising them with each new edition.

From 1812 to 1841 he was employed by the Imperial Public Library, first as an assistant, and then as head of the Russian Books Department, a not very demanding position that left him plenty of time to write.

Above: Russian National Library, St. Petersburg, Russia

Honors were now showered on him in recognition of his growing reputation:

The Russian Academy of Sciences admitted him as a member in 1811 and bestowed on him its gold medal in 1823.

Above: Logo of the Russian Academy of Sciences

In 1838 a great festival was held in his honor under imperial sanction, and the Emperor Nicholas, with whom he was on friendly terms, granted him a generous pension.

Above: Russian Emperor Nicholas I (1796 – 1855)

After 1830 Krylov wrote little and led an increasingly sedentary life.

A multitude of half-legendary stories were told about his laziness, his gluttony and the squalor in which he lived, as well as his witty repartee.

Above: Ivan Krylov

Towards the end of his life Krylov suffered two cerebral hemorrhages and was taken by the Empress to recover at Pavlovsk Palace.

Above: Pavlovsky Palace, St. Petersburg, Russia

After his death in 1844, he was buried in the Tikhvin Cemetery.

Above: Tikhvin Cemetery, St. Petersburg, Russia

By the time of Krylov’s death, 77,000 copies of his fables had been sold in Russia.

His unique brand of wisdom and humor has remained popular ever since.

His fables were often rooted in historic events and are easily recognizable by their style of language and engaging story.

Though he began as a translator and imitator of existing fables, Krylov soon showed himself an imaginative prolific writer, who found abundant original material in his native land and in the burning issues of the day. 

Above: The oak and the reed (from Krylov’s fable), Achille Michallon (1816)

Occasionally this was to lead into trouble with government censors, who blocked publication of some of his work.

In the case of “The Grandee” (1835), it was only allowed to be published after it became known that Krylov had amused the Emperor by reading it to him, while others did not see the light until long after his death, such as “The Speckled Sheep“, published in 1867, and “The Feast” in 1869.

Beside the fables of La Fontaine, and one or two others, the germ of some of Krylov’s other fables can be found in Aesop, but always with his own witty touch and reinterpretation.

In Russia his language is considered of high quality:

His words and phrases are direct, simple and idiomatic, with color and cadence varying with the theme, many of them becoming actual idioms.

His animal fables blend naturalistic characterization of the animal with an allegorical portrayal of basic human types.

They span individual foibles as well as difficult interpersonal relations.

Many of Krylov’s fables, especially those that satirize contemporary political situations, take their start from a well-known fable but then diverge.

Krylov’s “The Peasant and the Snake” makes La Fontaine’s “The Countryman and the Snake” the reference point as it relates how the reptile seeks a place in the peasant’s family, presenting itself as completely different in behavior from the normal run of snakes.

To Krylov’s approbation, with the ending of La Fontaine’s fable in mind, the peasant kills it as untrustworthy. 

Above: The countryman and the snake, La Fontaine’s Fables

“The Council of the Mice” uses another fable of La Fontaine (II.2) only for scene-setting.

Its real target is cronyism and Krylov dispenses with the deliberations of the mice altogether.

Above: The Council of the Mice, La Fontaine’s Fables

The connection between Krylov’s “The Two Boys” and La Fontaine’s “The Monkey and the Cat” is even thinner.

Though both fables concern being made the dupe of another, Krylov tells of how one boy, rather than picking chestnuts from the fire, supports another on his shoulders as he picks the nuts and receives only the rinds in return.

Fables of older date are equally laid under contribution by Krylov.

 Above: The monkey and the cat, La Fontaine’s Fables

“The Hawk and the Nightingale” is transposed into a satire on censorship in “The Cat and the Nightingale“. 

The nightingale is captured by a cat so that it can hear its famous song, but the bird is too terrified to sing.

In one of the mediaeval versions of the original story, the bird sings to save its nestlings but is too anxious to perform well.

Above: The hawk and the nightingale, Croxall’s The Fables of Aesop

Again, in his “The Hops and the Oak“, Krylov merely embroiders on one of the variants of “The Elm and the Vine” in which an offer of support by the tree is initially turned down.

In the Russian story, a hop vine praises its stake and disparages the oak until the stake is destroyed, whereupon it winds itself about the oak and flatters it.

Above: Grape gathering from elm trellises in Italy (1849)

Establishing the original model of some fables is problematical, however, and there is disagreement over the source for Krylov’s “The swine under the oak“.

There, a pig eating acorns under an oak also grubs down to the roots, not realizing or caring that this will destroy the source of its food.

A final verse likens the action to those who fail to honor learning although benefitting from it.

In his Bibliographical and Historical Notes to the fables of Krilof (1868), the Russian commentator V.F.Kenevich sees the fable as referring to Aesop’s “The Travellers and the Plane Tree“.

Although that has no animal protagonists, the theme of overlooking the tree’s usefulness is the same.

Above: The “useless” fruit of the plane tree

On the other hand, the French critic Jean Fleury points out that Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s fable of “The Oak Tree and the Swine“, a satirical reworking of Aesop’s “The Walnut Tree“, is the more likely inspiration, coalescing as it does an uncaring pig and the theme of a useful tree that is maltreated.

Above: German philosopher Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729 – 1781)

I am reminded of Krylov’s “The Quartet“:

A rascal monkey, a donkey, a billy goat and a klunky bear set out to play a string quartet.

They found some scores, viola, bass and two violins and sat down in a lea beneath a linden tree to charm the world with their art.

They struck their strings and sawed with all their heart.

No luck.

“Arrete, my fellows, stop!“, shouts the monkey.
                                     

“Wait! How can the music play when you’re not sitting straight?
You, bear, opposite viola move your bass,
As primo, I’ll sit opposite secundo’s face
And then some music will take place.
We’ll make the hills and forests dance!“
     

They took their seats and started the Quartet,
And once again it came to nyet.
     

“Hold on! I know the secret!“, shouts the donkey.

“It is bound to come out fine
 If everyone sits in a line.“

They followed the donkey’s plan and settled in a row;
But even so, the music would not go.

More fiercely than before they argued then about who should be sitting where.

A nightingale, in passing, chanced the noise to hear.
At once, they turned to her to solve their problem.

They pleaded:

“Please, spare us some time to make of our quartet a paradigm:
We have our instruments and scores, just tell us how to sit!“

“For making music, you must have the knack and ears more musical than yours.“, the nightingale comes back.

“And you, my friends, no matter your positions,
 Will never be musicians!“

Above: The quartet

Four animals attempt to play music together, each convinced of their own talents.

They fail, not because they lack skill, but because they refuse to recognize the truth about themselves.

They cannot work together, for their egos demand a reality that does not exist.

The audience laughs, but beneath the laughter lies an uncomfortable lesson.

Above: The quartet

Sunset Boulevard is a 1950 American black comedy film noir directed and co-written by Billy Wilder (1906 – 2002). 

It is named after a major street that runs through Hollywood.

At a mansion on Sunset Boulevard, police officers and photographers discover the body of Joe Gillis (William Holden) floating face down in the swimming pool.

In a flashback, Joe relates the events leading to his death.

Above: American actor William Holden (1918 – 1981)

Six months earlier, Joe, a down-on-his-luck screenwriter, tries to interest Paramount Pictures in a story he submitted. 

Script reader Betty Schaefer (Nancy Olson) harshly critiques it, unaware that Joe is listening.

Above: American actress Nancy Olson

Later, while fleeing from repo men seeking his car, Joe turns into the driveway of a seemingly deserted mansion inhabited by forgotten silent film star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson).

Above: American actress Gloria Swanson (1899 – 1983)

Joe Gillis:

You’re Norma Desmond.

You used to be in silent pictures.

You used to be big.

Norma Desmond: 

I am big.

It’s the pictures that got small.

Above: Scene from Sunset Boulevard

Learning that Joe is a writer, Norma asks his opinion of a script she has written for a film about Salome.

She plans to play the role herself in her return to the screen.

Above: Jewish princess Salome III with John the Baptist’s head

Joe finds her script abysmal but flatters her into hiring him as a script doctor.

Joe moves into Norma’s mansion at her insistence and sees that Norma refuses to believe that her fame has evaporated.

Her butler, Max (Erich von Stroheim), secretly writes all of the fan mail she receives in order to maintain the illusion.

Above: Austrian actor Erich von Stroheim (1885 – 1957)

At her New Year’s Eve party, Joe realizes that she has fallen in love with him.

He tries to let her down gently, but Norma slaps him and retreats to her room, distraught.

Above: New Year’s Eve party scene, Sunset Boulevard

Joe visits his friend Artie Green (Jack Webb) and again meets Betty, who thinks a scene in one of Joe’s scripts has potential.

When he phones Max to have him pack his things, Max tells him Norma has cut her wrists with his razor.

Above: American actor Jack Webb (1920 – 1982)

Joe then returns to Norma.

Their relationship becomes sexual.

Norma has Max deliver the edited Salome script to her former director Cecil B. DeMille (as himself) at Paramount.

She starts getting calls from Paramount executive Gordon Cole but refuses to speak to anyone except DeMille.

Above: American filmmaker Cecile DeMille (1881 – 1959)

Eventually, she has Max drive her and Joe to Paramount in her 1929 Isotta Fraschini.

DeMille welcomes her affectionately and treats her with great respect but tactfully evades her questions about the script.

Max then learns that Cole only called her because he wants to rent her Isotta Fraschini for use in a film.

Above: 1929 Isotta Fraschini

Preparing for her imagined comeback, Norma undergoes rigorous beauty treatments.

Above: Scene from Sunset Boulevard

Joe secretly works nights in Betty’s office, collaborating on an original screenplay.

She eventually confesses she has fallen for him.

Above: Scene from Sunset Boulevard

After learning of Joe’s moonlighting, Max reveals he was once a respected film director who discovered Norma, made her a star, and became her first husband.

Following their divorce, he abandoned his career to become her servant.

Above: Scene from Sunset Boulevard

Norma discovers a manuscript with Joe and Betty’s names on it and phones Betty, insinuating that Joe is not the man he seems.

Overhearing the call, Joe invites Betty to the mansion to see for herself.

When she arrives, he pretends that he is satisfied being a gigolo so that she can be with Artie.

However, after she tearfully leaves, he packs to return to his old newspaper job in Dayton, Ohio.

Above: Dayton, Ohio, USA

He bluntly informs Norma that there will be no comeback, that Max writes all of her fan mail, and that she has been forgotten, though Max refuses to break her delusions.

Joe disregards Norma’s threat to kill herself as she brandishes a gun.

As he leaves the house, Norma shoots him three times.

He collapses into the pool.

The flashback ends.

Above: Scene from Sunset Boulevard

The film returns to the present day, with Norma about to be arrested for murder.

The mansion is overrun with police and reporters with newsreel cameras, which she believes are film cameras.

Above: Scene from Sunset Boulevard

Joe Gillis:

Well, this is where you came in.

Back at that pool again, the one I always wanted.

It’s dawn now, and they must have photographed me a thousand times.

Then they got a couple of pruning hooks from the garden and fished me out, ever so gently.

Funny how gentle people get with you once you’re dead.

They beached me like a harpooned baby whale and started to check the damage, just for the record.

By this time, the whole joint was jumping – cops, reporters, neighbors, passersby, as much hoop-de-doo as we get in Los Angeles when they open a supermarket.

Even the newsreel guys came roaring in.

Here was an item everybody could have some fun with, the heartless so-and-sos!

What would they do to Norma?

Even if she got away with it in court – crime of passion, temporary insanity – those headlines would kill her:

‘Forgotten Star a Slayer‘

‘Aging Actress‘

‘Yesterday’s Glamour Queen‘…

Above: Scene from Sunset Boulevard

Max pretends to “direct” her.

The police play along.

As the cameras roll, Norma descends the grand staircase.

Upon reaching the bottom, she stops and makes an impromptu speech about how happy she is to be making a film again.

She then says, “Alright, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.” and approaches the camera.

Above: Scene from Sunset Boulevard

The street known as Sunset Boulevard has been associated with Hollywood film production since 1911, when the town’s first film studio, Nestor, opened there.

Above: Logo of Nestor Film Company (1909 – 1920)

The film workers lived modestly in the growing neighborhood, but during the 1920s, profits and salaries rose to unprecedented levels.

With the advent of the star system, luxurious homes noted for their often incongruous grandeur were built in the area.

Above: Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood, California, USA

As a young man living in Berlin in the 1920s, Billy Wilder was interested in American culture, with much of his interest fueled by the country’s films.

In the late 1940s, many of the grand Hollywood houses remained, and Wilder, then a Los Angeles resident, found them to be a part of his everyday world.

Many former stars from the silent era still lived in them, although most were no longer involved in the film business.

Wilder wondered how they spent their time now that “the parade had passed them by” and began imagining the story of a star who had lost her celebrity and box-office appeal.

Above: Polish filmmaker Billy Wilder

The character of Norma Desmond mirrors aspects of the twilight years of several real-life faded silent-film stars, such as the reclusive existences of Mary Pickford and Pola Negri and the mental disorders of Mae Murray, Valeska Surratt, Audrey Munson and Clara Bow. 

Above: Canadian actress Gladys Louise Smith (aka Mary Pickford)(1892 – 1979)

A pioneer in the American film industry with a Hollywood career that spanned five decades, Pickford was one of the most popular actresses of the silent film era.

Beginning her film career in 1909, by 1916 Pickford became Hollywood’s first millionaire, and at the height of her career had complete creative control of her films and was one of the most recognizable women in the world. 

Due to her popularity, unprecedented international fame, and success as an actress and businesswoman, she was known as the “Queen of the Movies“.

She was a significant figure in the development of film acting and is credited with having defined the ingénue type in cinema, a persona that also earned her the nickname “America’s Sweetheart“.

She married Douglas Fairbanks on 28 March 1920, in what was described as the “marriage of the century” and they were referred to as the King and Queen of Hollywood. 

Their international reputations were broad.

Foreign heads of state and dignitaries who visited the White House often asked if they could also visit Pickfair, the couple’s mansion in Beverly Hills.

After retiring from the screen, Pickford became an alcoholic, as her father had been.

Her mother Charlotte died of breast cancer in March 1928.

Her siblings, Lottie and Jack, died of alcohol-related causes in 1936 and 1933.

These deaths, her divorce from Fairbanks, and the end of silent films left Pickford deeply depressed.

Her relationship with her adopted children, Roxanne and Ronald, was turbulent at best.

Pickford withdrew and gradually became a recluse, remaining almost entirely at Pickfair and allowing visits only from Lillian Gish, her stepson Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and a few select others.

In 1955, she published her memoirs, Sunshine and Shadows.

She had previously published Why Not Try God in 1934, an essay on spirituality and personal growth, My Rendezvous with Life (1935), an essay on death and her belief in an afterlife and also a novel in 1935, The Demi-Widow.

In the mid-1960s, Pickford often received visitors only by telephone, speaking to them from her bedroom. 

Charles “Buddy” Rogers often gave guests tours of Pickfair, including views of a genuine western bar Pickford had bought for Douglas Fairbanks, and a portrait of Pickford in the drawing room.

When Pickford received an Academy Honorary Award in 1976, the Academy sent a TV crew to her house to record her short statement of thanks — offering the public a very rare glimpse into Pickfair Manor. 

Charitable events continued to be held at Pickfair, including an annual Christmas party for blind war veterans, mostly from World War I.

On 29 May 1979, Pickford died at a Santa Monica hospital of complications from a cerebral hemorrhage she had suffered the week before.

Above: Polish actress Pola Negri (née Barbara Apolonia Chałupiec) (1897 – 1987)

She achieved worldwide fame during the silent and golden eras of Hollywood and European film for her tragedienne and femme fatale roles.

She was also acknowledged as a sex symbol of her time.

Negri signed with Paramount in 1922, making her the first European actress to be contracted in Hollywood.

She spent much of the 1920s working in the United States appearing in numerous films for Paramount, establishing herself as one of the most popular actresses in American silent film.

In the 1930s, during the emergence of sound film, Negri returned to Europe, where she appeared in multiple films for Pathé Films and UFA, and also began a career as a recording artist.

She made only two films after 1940, her last screen credit being in Walt Disney’s The Moon-Spinners (1964).

Negri spent her later life largely outside the public sphere.

She became a naturalized US citizen in 1951 and spent the remainder of her life living in San Antonio, Texas.

In 1987, aged 90, she died of pneumonia secondary to a brain tumor for which she refused treatment.

Above: American actress Mae Murray (née Marie Adrienne Koenig) (1885 – 1965)

Murray rose to fame during the silent film era and was known as “The Girl with the Bee-Stung Lips” and “The Gardenia of the Screen“.

Murray appeared in the title role in the Erich von Stroheim-directed film The Merry Widow (1925), with John Gilbert.

When silent films gave way to sound film, she debuted in the medium in Peacock Alley (1930), a remake of her earlier 1921 version Peacock Alley.

In 1931, she was cast in Bachelor Apartment.

The film was critically panned at the time of release. 

Murray made only one more film: High Stakes (1931).

A critical blow to her film career occurred after she married her 4th husband David Mdivani, a Georgian man of minor aristocratic roots, whose brothers Serge and Alexis married actress Pola Negri and the heiress Barbara Hutton respectively.

The couple married on 27 June 1926.

Mdivani became her manager, suggesting that his new wife ought to leave MGM.

Murray took her husband’s advice and walked out of her contract with MGM, making a powerful foe of studio boss Louis B. Mayer.

Later, she swallowed her pride and pleaded to return, but Mayer would not rehire her.

In effect, Mayer’s hostility meant that Murray was blacklisted from working for the Hollywood studios.

Meanwhile, in 1927, Murray was sued by her then-masseuse, the famous Hollywood fitness guru Sylvia of Hollywood, for the outstanding amount of $2,125.

A humiliating and detailed court case followed.

In the 1940s, Murray appeared regularly at Billy Rose’s Diamond Horseshoe, a nightclub that specialized in a “Gay ’90s” atmosphere, often presenting stars of the past for nostalgic value.

Her appearances collected mixed reviews:

Her dancing (in particular the Merry Widow Waltz) was well received, but she was criticized for her youthful costumes and heavy makeup application, which were seen as attempts to conceal her age.

In 1946 she taught ballroom dancing to teenagers at a dance studio in Los Angeles.

It was located on Crenshaw Blvd., near 48th Street.

Murray’s finances continued to collapse, and for most of her later life, she lived in poverty.

She was the subject of the authorized biography The Self-Enchanted (1959), written by Jane Ardmore.

On the evening of 19 February 1964, 78-year-old Murray was found disoriented in St. Louis, thinking that she had completed a bus trip to New York City.

Murray explained to a Salvation Army officer that she had become lost trying to find her hotel, which she had forgotten the name of.

She also refused bus fare back to Los Angeles as she claimed to have a ticket for the remainder of the journey in her purse “if she could find it“.

Many years later, Murray moved into the Motion Picture House in Woodland Hills, California, a retirement community for Hollywood professionals.

She died there at the age of 79.

Above: American actress Valeska Suratt (1882 – 1962)

Over the course of her career, Suratt appeared in 11 silent films, all of which are now lost, mainly due to the 1937 Fox vault fire.

By 1920, Suratt’s career had begun to wane as vaudeville fell out of a favor with audiences, as did the craze for the vamp image. 

In 1928, Suratt sued Cecil B. DeMille for stealing the scenario for The King of Kings from her. 

The case went to trial in February 1930 but eventually was settled without publicity. 

Suratt, who had left films in 1917, appeared to be unofficially blacklisted after the suit.

By the end of the 1920s, Suratt disappeared.

In the 1930s, she was discovered living in a cheap hotel in New York City and was broke.

After novelist Fannie Hurst learned of Suratt’s situation, she organized a benefit for her which raised around $2,000.

Suratt disappeared for a few weeks after receiving the money and later returned to her hotel room penniless having squandered the money gambling.

In an attempt to revive her career, Suratt tried to sell her life’s story to one of William Randolph Hearst’s newspapers.

A reporter who read Suratt’s manuscript later said that Suratt wrote that she was the Virgin Mary and the mother of God.

Suratt never revived her career on the stage or in films.

Above: American actress Audrey Munson (1891 – 1996)

Considered to be “America’s first supermodel“, in her time, she was variously known as “Miss Manhattan“, the “Panama–Pacific Girl“, the “Exposition Girl” and “American Venus“.

She was the model or inspiration for more than twelve statues in New York City, and many others elsewhere.

Munson appeared in four silent films, including unclothed in Inspiration (1915).

She was one of the first American actresses to appear nude in a non-pornographic film.

In 1919, Audrey Munson was living with her mother in a boarding house at 164 West 65th Street, Manhattan, owned by Dr. Walter Wilkins.

Wilkins fell in love with Munson.

On 27 February, murdered his wife, Julia, so he could be available for marriage. 

Munson and her mother left New York, and the police sought them for questioning.

After a nationwide hunt, they were located.

They refused to return to New York, but were questioned by agents from the Burns Detective Agency in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

The contents of the affidavits they supplied have never been revealed, but Audrey Munson strongly denied that she had any romantic relationship with Dr. Wilkins. 

Wilkins was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to the electric chair.

He hanged himself in his prison cell before the sentence could be carried out.

The Wilkins killing may even have marked the end of Munson’s modeling career, although she continued to seek regular newspaper coverage.

By 1920, Munson could not find work anywhere and was reported as living in Syracuse, New York, supported by her mother, who sold kitchen utensils door-to-door.

In November 1920, she was said to be working as a ticket-taker in a dime museum.

From January to May 1921, a series of 20 serialized articles ran in Hearst’s Sunday Magazine in dozens of Sunday newspaper supplements, under Munson’s name, entitled “By the ‘Queen of the Artists’ Studios’“. 

The articles relate anecdotes from her career, with warnings about the fates of other models.

In one of them, she asked the reader to imagine her future:

What becomes of the artists’ models?

I am wondering if many of my readers have not stood before a masterpiece of lovely sculpture or a remarkable painting of a young girl, her very abandonment of draperies accentuating rather than diminishing her modesty and purity, and asked themselves the question:

“Where is she now, this model who was so beautiful?”

In February that year, agent-producer Allen Rock took out advertisements showing a $27,500 check he said he had paid Munson to star in a 4th film titled Heedless Moths.

She later said the $27,500 check was just a “publicity stunt” and she filed suit against Allen Rock. 

Those proceedings revealed that the articles had been ghostwritten by journalist Henry Leyford Gates.

In the summer of 1921, Munson conducted a nationwide search, carried by the United Press, for the perfect man to marry.

She ended the search in August claiming she didn’t want to get married anyway. 

On 3 October 1921 she was arrested at the Royal Theater (later the Towne Theater) in St. Louis on a morals charge related to her personal appearance with the film Innocence (the reissue title of Purity), in which she had a leading role. 

She and her manager, independent film producer Ben Judell, were both acquitted.

Weeks later, she was still appearing in St. Louis, along with screenings of Innocence, enacting “a series of new poses from famous paintings“.

On 27 May 1922, Munson attempted suicide by swallowing a solution of bichloride of mercury.

On 8 June 1931, Munson’s mother petitioned a judge to commit her to a mental asylum.

The Oswego County judge ordered Munson be admitted into a psychiatric facility for treatment on her 40th birthday.

She remained in the St. Lawrence State Hospital for the Insane in Ogdensburg, New York, where she was treated for depression and schizophrenia for 65 years, until she died at the age of 104.

During her stay at the institution, she often maintained her physical beauty with milk, yogurt and urine.

Above: American actress Clara Bow (1905 – 1965)

Her appearance as a plucky shopgirl in the film It brought her global fame and the nickname “The It Girl“. 

Bow came to personify the Roaring Twenties and is described as its leading sex symbol.

Bow appeared in 46 silent films and 11 talkies.

Her presence in a motion picture was said to have ensured investors, by odds of almost two-to-one, a “safe return“.

At the apex of her stardom, she received more than 45,000 fan letters in a single month, in January 1929.

When Bow’s mother was 16, she fell from a second-story window and suffered a severe head injury. 

She was later diagnosed with “psychosis due to epilepsy“. 

From her earliest years, Bow had learned how to care for her mother during the seizures, as well as how to deal with her psychotic and hostile episodes.

She said her mother could be “mean to me — and she often was“, but “she didn’t mean to be and that it was because she couldn’t help it“. 

Still, Bow felt deprived of her childhood.

“As a kid I took care of my mother, she didn’t take care of me.“

Sarah worsened gradually, and when she realized her daughter was set for a movie career, Bow’s mother told her she “would be much better off dead“.

One night in February 1922, Bow awoke to a butcher knife held against her throat by her mother.

Clara was able to fend off the attack, and locked her mother in her room.

In the morning, Bow’s mother had no recollection of the episode.

Later, she was committed to a “sanatarium” by Robert Bow.

Two years after marrying actor Rex Bell in 1931, Bow retired from acting and became a rancher in Nevada. 

Her final film, Hoop-La, was released in 1933.

Bow eventually began showing symptoms of psychiatric illness.

She became socially withdrawn and, although she refused to socialize with her husband, she also refused to let him leave the house alone. 

In 1944, while Bell was running for the US House of Representatives, Bow attempted suicide. 

A note was found in which Bow stated she preferred death to a public life.

In 1949, she checked into The Institute of Living to be treated for her chronic insomnia and diffuse abdominal pains. 

Shock treatment was tried and numerous psychological tests performed.

Bow’s IQ was measured “bright normal“, while others claimed she was unable to reason, had poor judgment and displayed inappropriate or even bizarre behavior.

Her pains were considered delusional and she was diagnosed with schizophrenia. 

However, she experienced neither auditory nor visual hallucinations.

Analysts tied the onset of the illness, as well as her insomnia, to the “butcher knife episode” back in 1922, but Bow rejected psychological explanations and left the institute. 

She did not return to her family.

After leaving the institution, Bow lived alone in a bungalow, which she rarely left, until her death.

In September 1965, Bow died of a heart attack at the age of 60.

Dave Kehr has asserted that Norma Talmadge is “the obvious if unacknowledged source of Norma Desmond, the grotesque, predatory silent movie queen” of the film.

Above: American actress Norma Talmadge (1894 – 1957)

A major box-office draw for more than a decade, her career reached a peak in the early 1920s, when she ranked among the most popular idols of the American screen.

Talmadge was one of the most elegant and glamorous film stars of the Roaring ’20s.

However, by the end of the silent era, her popularity with audiences had waned. 

After her two talkies proved disappointing at the box office, she retired still a very wealthy woman.

 

The most common analysis of the character’s name is that it is a combination of the names of silent film actress Mabel Normand and director William Desmond Taylor, a close friend of Normand’s who was murdered in 1922 in a never-solved case sensationalized by the press.

Above: American actress Amabel Ethelreid Normand (aka Mabel Normand) (1893 – 1930)

She was a popular star and at the height of her career in the late 1910s and early 1920s had her own film studio and production company, the Mabel Normand Feature Film Company.

On screen, she appeared in 12 successful films with Charlie Chaplin (1889 – 1977) and 17 with Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle (1887 – 1933), sometimes writing and directing (or co-writing and directing) films featuring Chaplin as her leading man.

Normand’s name was repeatedly linked with gun violence, including the 1922 murder of her friend, director William Desmond Taylor, and the non-fatal 1924 shooting of Courtland S. Dines by Normand’s chauffeur, Joe Kelly.

After police interrogation, she was ruled out as a suspect in Taylor’s murder.

Normand was a very heavy smoker who may have suffered lung cancer, and/or a recurrence of tuberculosis in 1923, which led to a decline in her health, an early retirement from films in 1926 and her death in 1930 at age 36.

Above: Irish filmmaker William Desmond Taylor (né William Cunningham Deane-Tanner) (1872 – 1922)

Taylor directed 59 silent films between 1914 and 1922 and acted in 27 between 1913 and 1915.

Taylor’s murder on 1 February 1922 led to a frenzy of sensationalist and often fabricated newspaper reports.

The murder remains an official cold case.

Norma Desmond, Mary Pickford, Pola Negri, Mae Murray, Valeska Surratt, Audrey Munson and Clara Bow all could not accept the truth of their existence.

Normand and Taylor’s existence ended, in truth, too soon.

Géza Csáth (né József Brenner)(February 13, 1887 – September 11, 1919) was a Serbian writer, playwright, musician, music critic, psychiatrist and physician.

Above: Géza Csáth

Géza Csáth (pen name of József Brenner) was a writer, critic, music theoretician and medical doctor.

A competent violinist even as a child, he originally wanted to be a painter, but his teachers criticized his drawing, so he turned to writing.

He was barely 14 years old when his first writings on music criticism were published.

After grammar school he moved from his native Subotica (Serbia) to Budapest in order to study medicine.

Above: Subotica, Serbia

While at college he wrote short sketches and reviews for newspapers and magazines.

After earning his degree as a medical doctor in 1909 he worked for a short time as a junior doctor at the Psychiatric and Nerve Clinic (also known as Moravcsik Psychiatric Hospital).

Above: Parliament, Budapest, Hungary

He wrote his great novel Diary of a mentally ill woman based on his experiences as a psychiatric doctor (his other main work is his Diary).

He became interested in the effects of narcotics from a medical point of view and also as a creative artist.

Out of this curiosity, he started taking morphine in 1910 and soon became addicted.

Csáth also changed his job and worked at various spas as a doctor, and had ample time for writing.

Most of his emblematic “dark” short stories were written during this period, often featuring utter physical or mental violence (such as fratricide, rape or seduction and abandonment of adolescent girls).

Csáth often described these acts in first person, with powerful insight into the workings of the perpetrators’ disturbed minds.

His collected short stories were published under the title Tales which end unhappy (Mesék, amelyek rosszul végződnek).

He married Olga Jónás in 1913.

In 1914 he was drafted into the Army.

At the front his drug problem worsened so much that he was often sent to medical leave and was finally discharged in 1917.

Above: Scene from World War One (1914 – 1918)

He tried to quit and become a village doctor.

His condition further worsened, he became paranoid and by this time his addiction was the central problem of his life, significantly deteriorating his personal relations.

In 1919 he was treated at a psychiatric clinic in a provincial hospital, but he fled and returned to his home.

On 22 July, he shot and killed his wife with a revolver, poisoned himself and slit his arteries.

He was rushed to hospital at Subotica, but later managed to escape again.

Above: Subotica, Serbia

He wanted to go to the Moravcsik Psychiatric Hospital, but upon being stopped by Yugoslavian border guards he killed himself by taking poison.

Above: Csáth Monument, Subotica, Serbia

Inspired by Csáth’s writings are the ballet “Comedia Tempio” of the dancer-choreographer Josef Nadj and the opera “A Varázsló Halála” (“The Magician’s Death“) by composer Alessio Elia.

Janos Szaz’s 2007 film “Opium: Diary of a Madwoman” features a doctor named Josef Brenner who is to some degree based on Csáth.

A descent into madness, a mind unraveling under the influence of addiction.

The lines between reality and illusion blur.

Truth becomes fluid, subjective, a shifting landscape where the only certainty is the growing darkness.

George Agostinho Baptista da Silva (13 February 1906 – 3 April 1994) was a Portuguese philosopher, essayist and writer.

His thought combines elements of pantheism and millenarism, an ethic of renunciation (like in Buddhism or Franciscanism), and a belief in freedom as the most important feature of man.

Anti-dogmatic, he asserts that truth is only found in the sum of all conflicting hypothesis (in paradox).

He may be considered a practical philosopher, living and working for a change in society, according to his beliefs.

Above: Agostinho da Silva

He speaks of the coming of an age in History — the Age of the Holy Spirit — in which mankind and society attain perfection.

To Agostinho da Silva, this means the absence of economy, brought about by technological evolution, and the absence of government.

It also means that the nature of mankind and the nature of God will become the same.

In this sense his philosophy is both an eschatology (expectations of the end of the present age, human history, or the world itself) and a Utopia.

Above: Map of Utopia

George Agostinho Baptista da Silva was born in Porto in 1906.

Later that same year, he moved to Barca d’Alva, where he lived until about six years of age.

From 1924 to 1928, he studied Classical Philology at the Faculdade de Letras of University of Porto.

Above: Porto, Portugal

After graduation he began contributing to the Seara Nova magazine (a collaboration that continued until 1938).

From 1931, as a scholarship student, he attended the Sorbonne and the Collège de France (Paris).

Above: Coat of arms of the Université de Paris

In 1933 he commenced teaching at Aveiro high school, but was discharged in 1935 for refusing to sign a statement — then mandatory to all civil servants — which renounced participation in secret (thus subversive) organizations.

He created the Núcleo Pedagógico Antero de Quental in 1939.

In 1940, he began publishing Iniciação: cadernos de informação cultural.

Above: Aveiro, Portugal

He was arrested by the secret police in 1943.

He left the country the following year.

Above: Flag of Portugal

He lived in Brazil from 1947 to 1969 due to his opposition to the authoritarian regime of the Estado Novo (New State).

Above: Flag of Brazil

In 1948, he began working at the Oswaldo Cruz Institute in 
Rio de Janeiro, studying entomology and simultaneously teaching at the Fluminense Faculty of Philosophy.

Above: Flag of the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

He taught at Faculdade Fluminense de Filosofia and collaborated with Jaime Cortesão in research on Alexandre de Gusmão. 

Above: Portuguese diplomat Alexandre de Gusmao (1695 – 1753)

From 1952 to 1954, he taught at Federal University of Paraíba in João Pessoa and also in Pernambuco.

Above: Logo of the Federal University of Paraiba

In 1954, again with Jaime Cortesão, he helped organize the 4th Centennial Exhibition of São Paulo.

Above: São Paulo, Brazil

He was one of the founders of the University of Santa Catarina.

He created the Centro de Estudos Afro-Orientais (Afro-Oriental Studies Center).

He taught Theater Philosophy at the University of Bahia.

Above: Logo of Universidade Federal da Bahia

In 1961, he became an external policy adviser to the Brazilian President Jânio Quadros.

Above: Brazilian President Jânio da Silva Quadros (1917 – 1992)

He helped create the Universidade de Brasília and its Centro de Estudos Portugueses (Portuguese Studies Center), in 1962.

Above: Logo of the University of Brasilia

Two years later, he created the Casa Paulo Dias Adorno in Cachoeira.

Above: Cachoeir, Brazil

He idealized the Museu do Atlântico Sul in Salvador.

Above: Salvador, Brazil

He returned to Portugal in 1969 after Salazar’s illness and replacement by Marcello Caetano, which created some political and cultural opening in the regime.

Above: Portuguese dictator António de Oliveira Salazar (1889 – 1970)

He continued to write and teach at Portuguese universities.

He directed the Centro de Estudos Latinoamericanos (Latin-American Studies Center) at the Technical University of Lisbon.

He acted as a consultant to Instituto de Cultura e Língua Portuguesa (ICALP, Portuguese Culture and Language Institute).

In 1990, the Portuguese public television channel RTP1 broadcast a series of 13 interviews with him entitled Conversas Vadias.

He died at São Francisco de Xavier Hospital in Lisbon in 1994.

Above: Lisboa (Lisbon), Portugal

A documentary entitled Agostinho da Silva: Um Pensamento Vivo, directed by João Rodrigues Mattos, was released by Alfândega Filmes, in 2004.

There is an unreleased interview by António Escudeiro entitled Agostinho por Si Próprio, where he talks about the worship of the Holy Spirit.

He is revered as one of the leading Portuguese intellectual personalities of the 20th century.

Among his works are biographies of Michelangelo, Pasteur and St. Francis of Assisi.

Above: Italian artist Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (1475 – 1564)

Above: French scientist Louis Pasteur (1822 – 1895)

His most influential book may be Sete Cartas a Um Jovem Filósofo (Seven Letters to a Young Philosopher).

Some notable quotes:

• “That each man is different from myself and unique in the Universe, that I am not the one, consequently, that must reflect instead of him, that knows what is best for him, that must point his way, towards him I have only one right:

Helping him to be himself.

As my essential duty to myself is being who I am, as uncomfortable as that may be.”

• “Loving others and wanting their good has been the reason of much oppression and much death.

Essentially, you must not love in others anything but freedom, theirs and yours.

They must, for love, cease being slaves, as must we, for love, cease being slave owners.“

• “And it is the child the one that must be considered the noble savage, spoiling her, mis-shaping her the least we possibly can.“

• “Believing, thus, that man is born good, which means on my regard that he is born a brother to the world, not its owner and destroyer, I think that education has not been much else than the system through which this fraternity is transformed in domination.“

The Portuguese philosopher believed in freedom above all else.

He argued that true education should not create workers or obedient citizens, but thinkers, rebels and creators.

Faiz Ahmad Faiz (13 February 1911 – 20 November 1984) was a Pakistani poet and author of Punjabi and Urdu literature.

Faiz was one of the most celebrated, popular, and influential Urdu writers of his time.

His works and ideas remain widely influential in Pakistan and beyond. 

Outside of literature, he has been described as “a man of wide experience“, having worked as a teacher, military officer, journalist, trade unionist, and broadcaster.

Above: Faiz Ahmed Faiz

Born in Faiz Nagar, Pakistan, Faiz studied at Government College and Oriental College in Lahore and went on to serve in the British Indian Army.

After the Partition of India, Faiz served as editor-in-chief of two major newspapers — the English language daily Pakistan Times and the Urdu daily Imroze. 

Above: Flag of Pakistan

In 1936, Faiz joined a literary movement, the Progressive Writers Movement (PWM) and was appointed its first secretary by his fellow Marxist Sajjad Zaheer.

In East and West Pakistan, the movement gained considerable support in civil society.

In 1938, he became editor-in-chief of the monthly Urdu magazine Adab-e-Latif (Belles Letters) until 1946.

In 1941, Faiz published his first literary book Naqsh-e-Faryadi (Imprints) and joined the Pakistan Arts Council (PAC) in 1947.

Faiz was a good friend of Soviet poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko who once said:

“In Faiz’s autobiography is his poetry, the rest is just a footnote.” 

Above: Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko (1933 – 2017)

During his lifetime, Faiz published eight books and received accolades for his works. 

Faiz was a humanist, a lyrical poet, whose popularity reached neighbouring India and Soviet Union. 

Indian biographer Amaresh Datta, compared Faiz as “equal esteem in both East and West“. 

Throughout his life, his revolutionary poetry addressed the tyranny of military dictatorships, tyranny, and oppression.

Faiz himself never compromised on his principles despite being threatened by the right-wing parties in Pakistan.

Urdu poetry and ghazals influenced Faiz to continue his political themes as non-violent and peaceful, opposing the far right politics in Pakistan. 

Faiz consistently faced political persecution for his revolutionary views and ideologies and was especially targeted by the religious and conservative press due to his lifelong advocacy for the rights of women and workers.

Faiz believed in internationalism and emphasized the philosophy of the global village. 

Faiz’s early poetry focused on traditional tropes of romantic love, beauty, and heartbreak but eventually expanded to include themes of justice, rebellion, politics, and the interconnectedness of humanity.

Therefore, although many of Faiz’s poems focus on themes of romantic love and loss, most literary critics do not consider him primarily a romantic poet, emphasizing that themes of justice and revolution take precedence in his extensive body of work.

Other critics see his poetry as an unconventional fusion of love and revolution that appeals to the New Age reader “who loves his beloved yet lives for humanity.”

Faiz’s poetry is replete with progressivist and revolutionist ideas and he is often referred to as “an artistic rebel“. 

He is widely considered the poet of the oppressed and downtrodden classes and is known for highlighting their poverty, social discrimination, economic exploitation and political repression. 

His poetry was heavily leftist as well as anti-capitalist in tone and ideas. 

His poems are almost always a reflection of his time, focusing heavily on the suffering of ordinary people. 

Many of Faiz’s poems also revolve around themes of home, exile, and loss.

One of the predominant themes in Faiz’s poetry is the meaning, implications and legacy of the partition of India.

Faiz’s writing style is sometimes characterized as occupying a space between romance and love on the one hand and realism and revolution on the other. 

Although he wrote prolifically on the topics of justice, resistance, and revolution, Faiz rarely allowed political rhetoric to overpower his poetry. 

Not a proponent of the “art for art’s sake” philosophy, Faiz believed that art that does not inspire people to take action is not great art.

Faiz’s poetry often features religious symbolism inspired by Sufism and not by religious dogma. 

Although living a simple and restless life, Faiz’s work, political ideology, and poetry became immortal.

He has often been called as one of the “greatest poets” of Pakistan.

Faiz remained an extremely popular and influential figure in the literary development of Pakistan’s arts, literature, and drama and theatre adaptation. 

Faiz, whose work is considered the backbone of development of Pakistan’s literature, arts and poetry, was one of the most beloved poets in the country.

Faiz is often known as the “Poet of the East“. 

While commenting on his legacy, classical singer Tina Sani said:

Faiz Ahmad Faiz was like a comrade, his thoughts were soft but effective and inspired the classical singers as it did others in the plays we did.

Faiz’s poetry never gets old because the problems and situations in this country have not changed.

Today we sing him because of his beautiful poetry, missing out on the reasons behind his poems that had predictions.”

Tina Sani

Faiz thanked the Soviet government for conferring the Lenin Peace Prize, and delivered an acceptance speech, which appears as a brief preface to his collection Dast-i-tah-i-Sang (Hand Under the Rock):

Human ingenuity, science and industry have made it possible to provide each one of us everything we need to be comfortable provided these boundless treasures of nature and production are not declared the property of a greedy few but are used for the benefit of all of humanity.

However, this is only possible if the foundations of human society are based not on greed, exploitation and ownership but on justice, equality, freedom and the welfare of everyone.

I believe that humanity which has never been defeated by its enemies will, after all, be successful.

At long last, instead of wars, hatred and cruelty, the foundation of humankind will rest on the message of the great Persian poet Hafez Shiraz:

‘Every foundation you see is faulty, except that of Love, which is faultless.”

Faiz Ahmad Faiz, 1962

Above: Lenin Peace Prize

Faiz Ahmad Faiz knew oppression well.

A Pakistani poet and revolutionary, he was jailed for his words, yet he continued to write of justice and resistance.

His verses still inspire movements today.

World Radio Day (French: Le jour mondial de la radio) is an international day celebrated on the 13 February each year.

Following a request from the Spanish Radio Academy on 20 September 2010, Spain proposed that the UNESCO Executive Board include an agenda item on the proclamation of World Radio Day.

UNESCO’s Executive Board added the agenda item to its provisional agenda for the proclamation of a “World Radio Day” on 29 September 2011. 

Upon receiving favorable responses and official support from the Arab States Broadcasting Union (ASBU), the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU), the African Union of Broadcasting (AUB), the Caribbean Broadcasting Union (CBU), the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the International Association of Broadcasting (IAB), the North American Broadcasters Association (NABA), the Organization de Telecommunications Ibeoramericanas (OTI), BBC, URTI, Vatican Radio, etc., the proposal was approved.

The 13 February was recommended as the official day due to it being “the day the United Nations established the whole concept of the United Nations Radio, in 1946”.

The Board requested that UNESCO’s Director-General bring the resolution to the attention of the Secretary-General of the United Nations so that World Radio Day could be endorsed by the General Assembly and celebrated by the whole system.

The matter was subsequently treated by UNESCO’s General Conference, which adopted the resolution in file 36 C/63.

World Radio Day was thus unanimously proclaimed by all member states of UNESCO in November 2011.

In December 2012, the General Assembly of the UN endorsed the proclamation of World Radio Day, which thereby became a day to be celebrated by all UN agencies, funds and programs and their partners.

That year the Spanish Academy of Radio led the creation of the World Radio Day Committee to collaborate with UNESCO in the annual organization of the World Radio Day celebrations.

I think that World Radio Day could be commemorated well with Orson Welles’ 1938 radio drama The War of the Worlds.

The War of the Worlds was a Halloween episode of the radio series The Mercury Theatre on the Air directed and narrated by Orson Welles as an adaptation of H. G. Wells’s novel The War of the Worlds (1898) that was performed and broadcast live at 8 pm ET on 30 October 1938, over the CBS Radio Network.

The episode is infamous for inciting a panic by convincing some members of the listening audience that a Martian invasion was taking place, though the scale of panic is disputed, as the program had relatively few listeners.

The first half of Welles’s broadcast had a “breaking news” style of storytelling which, alongside the Mercury Theatre on the Air‘s lack of commercial interruptions, meant that the first break in the drama came after all of the alarming “news” reports had taken place.

Above: American entertainer Orson Welles (1915 – 1985)

Popular legend holds that some of the radio audience may have been listening to The Chase and Sanborn Hour with Edgar Bergen on NBC and tuned in to “The War of the Worlds” during a musical interlude, thereby missing the clear introduction indicating that the show was a work of science fiction.

Modern research suggests that this happened only in rare instances.

In the days after the adaptation, widespread outrage was expressed in the media.

The program’s news-bulletin format was described as deceptive by some newspapers and public figures, leading to an outcry against the broadcasters and calls for regulation by the FCC.

Welles apologized at a hastily-called news conference the next morning.

No punitive action was taken.

The broadcast and subsequent publicity brought the 23-year-old Welles to the attention of the general public and gave him the reputation of an innovative storyteller and “trickster“.

Above: Orson Welles

The episode begins with an introductory monologue based closely on the opening of the source novel, after which the program takes on the format of an evening of typical radio programming being periodically interrupted by news bulletins.

The first few bulletins interrupt a program of live music and are relatively calm reports of unusual explosions on Mars followed by a seemingly unrelated report of an unknown object falling on a farm in Grovers Mill, New Jersey.

Above: The planet Mars

The crisis escalates dramatically when an on-scene reporter at Grovers Mill describes creatures emerging from what is evidently an alien spacecraft.

The aliens employ a heat ray against police and onlookers.

The radio correspondent describes the attack in increasing panic until his audio feed abruptly goes dead.

This is followed by a rapid series of news updates detailing the beginning of a devastating alien invasion and the US military’s futile efforts to stop it.

Above: “Martian landing site” historical marker commemorating the 1938 War of the Worlds radio broadcast, Grovers Mill, New Jersey

The first portion of the episode climaxes with a live report from a rooftop in Manhattan, from where a correspondent describes citizens fleeing from poison smoke released by towering Martian “war machines” until he coughs and falls silent.

Only then does the program take its first break, about 30 minutes after Welles’s introduction.

The second portion of the show shifts to a more conventional radio drama format that follows a survivor (played by Welles) dealing with the aftermath of the invasion and the ongoing Martian occupation of Earth.

The final segment lasts for about sixteen minutes, and like the original novel, concludes with the revelation that the Martians have been defeated by microbes rather than by humans.

The broadcast ends with a brief “out of character” announcement by Welles in which he compares the show to “dressing up in a sheet and jumping out of a bush and saying ‘boo!‘”

“The War of the Worlds” was the 17th episode of the CBS Radio series The Mercury Theatre on the Air, and was broadcast at 8 pm ET on 30 October 1938. 

H. G. Wells’ original novel tells the story of a Martian invasion of Earth.

The novel was adapted for radio by Howard Koch, who changed the primary setting from 19th-century England to the 20th-century United States, with the landing point of the first Martian spacecraft changed to rural Grovers Mill, an unincorporated village in West Windsor, New Jersey.

Above: American writer Howard Koch (1901 – 1995)

The program’s format is a simulated live newscast of developing events.

The first two-thirds of the hour-long play is a contemporary retelling of events of the novel, presented as news bulletins interrupting programs of dance music.

“I had conceived the idea of doing a radio broadcast in such a manner that a crisis would actually seem to be happening,” said Welles, “and would be broadcast in such a dramatized form as to appear to be a real event taking place at that time, rather than a mere radio play.” 

This approach was similar to Ronald Knox’s radio hoax Broadcasting the Barricades that was broadcast by the BBC in 1926, which Welles later said gave him the idea for “The War of the Worlds“. 

Above: English broadcaster Ronald Knox (1888 – 1957)

A 1927 drama aired by Adelaide station 5CL depicted an invasion of Australia using the same techniques and inspired reactions similar to those of the Welles broadcast.

Above: Adelaide, Australia

Welles was also influenced by the Columbia Workshop presentations “The Fall of the City“, a 1937 radio play in which Welles played the role of an omniscient announcer, and “Air Raid“, an as-it-happens drama starring Ray Collins that aired 27 October 1938.

Above: American actor Ray Collins (1889 – 1965)

Welles had previously used a newscast format for “Julius Caesar” (11 September 1938), with H. V. Kaltenborn providing historical commentary throughout the story.

Above: US radio commentator Hans von Kaltenborn (1878 – 1965)

“The War of the Worlds” broadcast used techniques similar to those of The March of Time, the CBS news documentary and dramatization radio series. 

Welles was a member of the program’s regular cast, having first performed on it in March 1935. 

The Mercury Theatre on the Air and The March of Time shared many cast members and sound effects chief Ora D. Nichols.

Welles discussed his fake newscast idea with producer John Houseman and associate producer Paul Stewart.

Above: British actor/director John Houseman (1902 – 1988)

Together, they decided to adapt a work of science fiction.

They considered adapting M. P. Shiel’s The Purple Cloud and Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World before purchasing the radio rights to The War of the Worlds.

Houseman later suspected Welles had never read it.

Koch worked on adapting novels and wrote the first drafts for the Mercury Theatre broadcasts “Hell on Ice” (October 9), “Seventeen” (October 16) and “Around the World in 80 Days” (October 23). 

On 24 October, he was assigned to adapt The War of the Worlds for broadcast the following Sunday night.

On the night of 25 October, 36 hours before rehearsals were to begin, Koch telephoned Houseman in what the producer characterized as “deep distress“:

Koch said he could not make The War of the Worlds interesting or credible as a radio play, a conviction echoed by his secretary Anne Froelick, a typist and aspiring writer whom Houseman had hired to assist him.

Above: American screenwriter Anne Froelick (1913 – 2010)

With only his own abandoned script for Lorna Doone to fall back on, Houseman told Koch to continue adapting the Wells fantasy.

He joined Koch and Froelick to work on the script through the night.

On the night of October 26, the first draft was finished on schedule.

On October 27, Stewart held a cast reading of the script, with Koch and Houseman making necessary changes.

That afternoon, Stewart made an acetate recording without music or sound effects.

Welles, immersed in rehearsing the Mercury stage production of Danton’s Death scheduled to open the following week, played the record at an editorial meeting that night in his suite at the St. Regis Hotel.

Above: Execution of French politician Georges Danton (1759 – 1794)

Above: St. Regis Hotel, New York City, New York, USA

After hearing “Air Raid” on the Columbia Workshop earlier that same evening, Welles thought the “War of the Worlds” script was dull.

He advised the writers to add more news flashes and eyewitness accounts to create a stronger sense of urgency and excitement.

Houseman, Koch, and Stewart reworked the script that night, increasing the number of news bulletins and using the names of real places and people whenever possible.

On October 28, the script was sent to Davidson Taylor, executive producer for CBS, and the network legal department.

Their response was that the script was “too” credible and its realism had to be toned down.

As using the names of actual institutions could be actionable, CBS insisted on about 28 changes in phrasing. 

“Under protest and with a deep sense of grievance we changed the Hotel Biltmore to a nonexistent Park Plaza, Transamerica Radio News to Inter-Continental Radio News, the Columbia Broadcasting Building to Broadcasting Building,” Houseman wrote. 

Above: Hotel Biltmore (1913 – 1981), New York City

“The United States Weather Bureau in Washington DC” was changed to “The Government Weather Bureau“, “Princeton University Observatory” to “Princeton Observatory“, “McGill University” in Montreal to “Macmillan University” in Toronto, “New Jersey National Guard” to “State Militia“, “United States Signal Corps” to “Signal Corps“, “Langley Field” to “Langham Field“, and “St. Patrick’s Cathedral” to “the cathedral“.

Above: Shield of Princeton University

Above: Coat of arms, McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada

Above: Insignia of the New Jersey National Guard

Above: Langley Air Force Base, Hampton, Virginia, USA

Above: St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York City

On 29 October, Stewart rehearsed the show with the sound effects team and gave special attention to crowd scenes, the echo of cannon fire, and the sound of boat horns in New York Harbor.

Above: New York Harbor

In the early afternoon of 30 October, Bernard Herrmann and his orchestra arrived in the studio, where Welles had taken over production of that evening’s program.

Above: US conductor/composer Bernard Herrmann (1911 – 1975)

To create the role of reporter Carl Phillips, Frank Readick went to the record library and repeatedly played the recording of Herbert Morrison’s dramatic radio report of the Hindenburg disaster. 

Above: Hindenburg disaster, Lakehurst, New Jersey, 6 May 1937

Stewart worked with Herrmann and the orchestra to sound like a dance band, and became the person Welles later credited as being largely responsible for the quality of “The War of the Worlds” broadcast.

Welles wanted the music to play for unbearably long stretches of time. 

The studio’s emergency fill-in, a solo piano playing Debussy and Chopin, was heard several times.

Above: French composer Claude Debussy (1862 – 1918)

Above: Polish composer Frédéric Chopin (1810 – 1849)

“As it played on and on“, Houseman wrote, “its effect became increasingly sinister—a thin band of suspense stretched almost beyond endurance.

That piano was the neatest trick of the show.” 

The dress rehearsal was scheduled for 6 pm.

“Our actual broadcasting time, from the first mention of the meteorites to the fall of New York City, was less than forty minutes“, wrote Houseman.

“During that time, men travelled long distances, large bodies of troops were mobilized, cabinet meetings were held, savage battles fought on land and in the air.

And millions of people accepted it — emotionally if not logically.”

“The War of the Worlds” begins with a paraphrase of the beginning of the novel, updated to contemporary times.

The announcer introduces Orson Welles:

We know now that in the early years of the 20th century, this world was being watched closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own.

We know now that as human beings busied themselves about their various concerns, they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.

With infinite complacence, people went to and fro over the earth about their little affairs, serene in the assurance of their dominion over this small spinning fragment of solar driftwood which by chance or design man has inherited out of the dark mystery of Time and Space.

Yet across an immense ethereal gulf, minds that are to our minds as ours are to the beasts in the jungle, intellects vast, cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.

In the 39th year of the 20th century came the great disillusionment.

It was near the end of October.

Business was better.

The war scare was over.

More men were back at work.

Sales were picking up.

On this particular evening, 30 October 30, the Crossley service estimated that 32 million people were listening in on radios.”

Above: Orson Welles

The radio program begins as a simulation of a normal evening radio broadcast featuring a weather report and music by “Ramon Raquello and His Orchestra” live from a local hotel ballroom.

After a few minutes, the music is interrupted by several news flashes about strange gas explosions on Mars.

An interview is arranged with reporter Carl Phillips and Princeton-based astronomy professor Richard Pierson, who dismisses speculation about life on Mars.

The musical program returns temporarily, but is interrupted again by news of a strange meteorite landing in Grovers Mill, New Jersey.

Phillips and Pierson are dispatched to the site, where a large crowd has gathered.

Philips describes the chaotic atmosphere around the strange cylindrical object.

Pierson admits that he does not know exactly what it is, but that it seems to be made of an extraterrestrial metal.

The cylinder unscrews.

Phillips describes the tentacled, horrific “monster” that emerges from inside.

Police officers approach the Martian waving a flag of truce, but it and its companions respond by firing a heat ray, which incinerates the delegation and ignites the nearby woods and cars as the crowd screams.

Phillips’s shouts about incoming flames are cut off mid-sentence.

After a moment of dead air, an announcer explains that the remote broadcast was interrupted due to “some difficulty with their field transmission“.

After a brief “piano interlude“, regular programming breaks down as the studio struggles with casualty and fire-fighting updates.

A shaken Pierson speculates about Martian technology.

The New Jersey state militia declares martial law and attacks the cylinder.

A captain from their field headquarters lectures about the overwhelming force of properly-equipped infantry and the helplessness of the Martians until a tripod rises from the pit, which obliterates the militia.

The studio returns and describes the Martians as an invading army.

Emergency response bulletins give way to damage and evacuation reports as thousands of refugees clog the highways.

Three Martian tripods from the cylinder destroy power stations and uproot bridges and railroads, reinforced by three others from a second cylinder that landed in the Great Swamp near Morristown.

Above: Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, New Jersey, USA

The Secretary of the Interior reads a brief statement trying to reassure a panicked nation, after which it is reported that more explosions have been observed on Mars, indicating that more war machines are on the way.

A live connection is established to a field artillery battery in the Watchung Mountains.

Above: Watchung Mountains, New Jersey, USA

Its gun crew damages a machine, resulting in a release of poisonous black smoke, before fading into the sound of coughing.

The lead plane of a wing of bombers from Langham Field broadcasts its approach and remains on the air as their engines are burned by the heat ray.

The plane dives on the invaders in a last-ditch suicide attack.

Radio operators go active and fall silent:

Although the bombers manage to destroy one machine, the remaining five spread black smoke across the Jersey Marshes into Newark.

Above: Meadowlands Environment Center, New Jersey, USA

Eventually, a news reporter transmitting from atop the Broadcasting Building describes the Martian invasion of New York City:

• “five great machines” wading the Hudson “like men wading through a brook“

• black smoke drifting over the city

• people diving into the East River “like rats“

• others in Times Square “falling like flies“.

He reads a final bulletin stating that Martian cylinders have fallen all over the country, then describes the smoke approaching his location until he coughs and apparently collapses, leaving only the sounds of the panicked city in the background.

A ham radio operator is heard calling:

“2X2L calling CQ, New York.

Isn’t there anyone on the air?

Isn’t there anyone on the air?

Isn’t there anyone?“

After a few seconds of silence, announcer Dan Seymour breaks in with a standard programming statement:

You are listening to a CBS presentation of Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre on the Air, in an original dramatization of The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells.

The performance will continue after a brief intermission.

This is the Columbia Broadcasting System.

Above: Orson Welles

After the break, the remainder of the program is performed in a more conventional radio drama format of dialogue and monologue.

It focuses on Professor Pierson, who has survived the attack on Grovers Mill and attempts to make contact with other humans.

In Newark, he encounters an opportunistic militiaman who holds fascistic ideals and declares his intent to use Martian weaponry to take control of both the invaders and their human slaves.

Saying that he wants no part of “his world“, Pierson leaves the stranger with his delusions.

His journey ends in the ruins of New York City, where he discovers that the Martians have died – as with the novel, they fell victim to earthly pathogenic germs, to which they had no immunity.

Life returns to normal.

Pierson finishes writing his recollections of the invasion and its aftermath.

After the conclusion of the play, Welles reassumed his role as host and told listeners that the broadcast was intended to be merely a “holiday offering“, the equivalent of the Mercury Theater “dressing up in a sheet, jumping out of a bush and saying, ‘Boo!‘” and stated that while they had “annihilated the world and utterly destroyed CBS before your very ears…

You will be relieved I hope to hear that both institutions are still open for business.”

He ended the program by assuring listeners that:

“If your doorbell rings and there’s nobody there, that was no Martian.

It’s Halloween.“

Popular mythology holds that the disclaimer was hastily added to the broadcast at the insistence of CBS executives to quell the supposed panic inspired by the program, but it was actually added by Welles at the last minute.

He delivered it over Taylor’s objections, who feared that reading it on the air would expose the network to legal liability.

Radio programming charts in Sunday newspapers listed “The War of the Worlds“.

On 30 October 1938, The New York Times included the show in its “Leading Events of the Week” (“Tonight – Play: H. G. Wells’ ‘War of the Worlds‘”) and published a photograph of Welles with some of the Mercury players, captioned, “Tonight’s show is H. G. Wells’ ‘War of the Worlds’“.

Announcements that The War of the Worlds is a dramatization of a work of fiction were made on the full CBS network at four points during the broadcast:

• at the beginning
• before the middle break
• after the middle break
• at the end 

The middle break was delayed 10 minutes to accommodate the dramatic content.

Another announcement was repeated on the full CBS network that same evening at 10:30 pm, 11:30 pm, and midnight:

“For those listeners who tuned in to Orson Welles’s Mercury Theatre on the Air broadcast from 8 to 9 pm Eastern Standard Time tonight and did not realize that the program was merely a modernized adaptation of H. G. Wells’ famous novel War of the Worlds, we are repeating the fact which was made clear four times on the program, that, while the names of some American cities were used, as in all novels and dramatizations, the entire story and all of its incidents were fictitious.“

The show went on the air shortly after 8:00 pm ET.

At 8:32, Houseman noticed Taylor step out of the studio to take a telephone call in the control room, who returned four minutes later looking “pale as death“, as he had been ordered to immediately interrupt “The War of the Worlds” broadcast with an announcement of the program’s fictional content.

By the time the order was given, the fictional news reporter played by Ray Collins was choking on poison gas as the Martians overwhelmed New York and the program was less than a minute away from its first scheduled break, which proceeded as previously planned.

Actor Stefan Schnabel recalled sitting in the anteroom after finishing his on-air performance.

“A few policemen trickled in, then a few more.

Soon, the room was full of policemen and a massive struggle was going on between the police, page boys and CBS executives, who were trying to prevent the cops from busting in and stopping the show.

It was a show to witness.“

Above: German actor Stefan Schnabel (1912 – 1999)

During the sign-off theme, the phone began ringing.

Houseman picked it up and the furious caller announced he was mayor of a Midwestern town, where mobs were in the streets. Houseman hung up quickly, “for we were off the air now and the studio door had burst open“.

The following hours were a nightmare.

The building was suddenly full of people and dark-blue uniforms.

Hustled out of the studio, we were locked into a small back office on another floor.

Here we sat incommunicado while network employees were busily collecting, destroying, or locking up all scripts and records of the broadcast.

Finally, the Press was let loose upon us, ravening for horror.

How many deaths had we heard of?

(Implying they knew of thousands.)

What did we know of the fatal stampede in a Jersey hall?

(Implying it was one of many.)

What traffic deaths?

(The ditches must be choked with corpses.)

The suicides?

(Haven’t you heard about the one on Riverside Drive?)

It is all quite vague in my memory and quite terrible.”

Paul White, head of CBS News, was quickly summoned to the office, “and there bedlam reigned“, he wrote:

The telephone switchboard, a vast sea of light, could handle only a fraction of incoming calls.

The haggard Welles sat alone and despondent.

“I’m through,” he lamented, “washed up.”

I didn’t bother to reply to this highly inaccurate self-appraisal.

I was too busy writing explanations to put on the air, reassuring the audience that it was safe.

I also answered my share of incessant telephone calls, many of them from as far away as the Pacific Coast.”

Above: American news director Paul White (1902 – 1955)

Because of the crowd of newspaper reporters, photographers, and police, the cast left the CBS building by the rear entrance.

Aware of the sensation the broadcast had made, but not its extent, Welles went to the Mercury Theatre where an all-night rehearsal of Danton’s Death was in progress.

Shortly after midnight, one of the cast, a late arrival, told Welles that news about “The War of the Worlds” was being flashed in Times Square.

They immediately left the theatre, and standing on the corner of Broadway and 42nd Street, they read the lighted bulletin that circled the New York Times building:

ORSON WELLES CAUSES PANIC.

Some listeners heard only a portion of the broadcast and, in the tension and anxiety prior to World War II, mistook it for a genuine news broadcast. 

Thousands of them shared the false reports with others or called CBS, newspapers, or the police to ask if the broadcast was real.

Many newspapers assumed that the large number of phone calls and the scattered reports of listeners rushing about or fleeing their homes proved the existence of a mass panic, but such behavior was never widespread.

Future Tonight Show host Jack Paar had announcing duties that night for Cleveland CBS affiliate WGAR.

As panicked listeners called the studio, he attempted to calm them on the phone and on air by saying:

“The world is not coming to an end.

Trust me.

When have I ever lied to you?”

When the listeners started to accuse Paar with “covering up the truth“, he called WGAR’s station manager for help.

Oblivious to the situation, the manager advised Paar to calm down and said that it was “all a tempest in a teapot“.

Above: American entertainer Jack Parr (1918 – 2004)

In a 1975 interview with radio historian Chuck Schaden, radio actor Alan Reed recalled being one of several actors recruited to answer phone calls at CBS’s New York headquarters.

Above: American actor Alan Reed (né Herbert Theodore Bergman) (1907 – 1977)

In Concrete, Washington, phone lines and electricity suffered a short circuit at the Superior Portland Cement Company’s substation.

Residents were unable to call neighbors, family or friends to calm their fears.

Reporters who heard of the coincidental blackout sent the story over the newswire.

Concrete was known worldwide.

Above: Portland Superior Cement silos, Concrete, Washington, USA

Welles continued with the rehearsal of Danton’s Death, leaving shortly after the dawn of 31 October.

He was operating on three hours of sleep when CBS called him to a press conference.

He read a statement that was later printed in newspapers nationwide and took questions from reporters:

Question:

Were you aware of the terror such a broadcast would stir up?

Welles:

Definitely not.

The technique I used was not original with me.

It was not even new.

I anticipated nothing unusual.

Question:

Should you have toned down the language of the drama?

Welles:

No, you don’t play murder in soft words.

Question:

Why was the story changed to put in names of American cities and government officers?

Welles:

H. G. Wells used real cities in Europe, and to make the play more acceptable to American listeners we used real cities in America.

Of course, I’m terribly sorry now.

Above: Orson Welles meeting with reporters in an effort to explain that no one connected with the War of the Worlds radio broadcast had any idea the show would cause panic. (31 October 1938)

In its 31 October 1938 edition, the Tucson Citizen (1870 – 2009) reported that three Arizona affiliates of CBS (KOY in Phoenix, KTUC in Tucson and KSUN in Bisbee) had originally scheduled a delayed broadcast of “The War of the Worlds” that night.

CBS had shifted The Mercury Theater on the Air from Monday nights to Sunday nights on 11 September, but the three affiliates preferred to keep the series in its original Monday slot so that it would not compete with NBC’s top-rated Chase and Sanborn Hour.

However, late that night, CBS contacted KOY and KTUC owner Burridge Butler and instructed him not to air the program the following night.

Within three weeks, newspapers had published at least 12,500 articles about the broadcast and its impact, but the story dropped from the front pages after a few days. 

Adolf Hitler referenced the broadcast in a speech in Munich on 8 November 1938. 

Welles later remarked that Hitler cited the effect of the broadcast on the American public as evidence of “the corrupt condition and decadent state of affairs in democracy“.

Above: German dictator Adolf Hitler (1899 – 1945)

Bob Sanders recalled looking outside the window and seeing a traffic jam in the normally quiet Grovers Mill, New Jersey, at the intersection of Cranbury and Clarksville Roads.

Later popular legend held that many people missed the repeated notices about the broadcast being fictional partly because The Mercury Theatre on the Air, an unsponsored CBS cultural program with a relatively small audience, ran at the same time as the NBC Red Network’s popular Chase and Sanborn Hour featuring ventriloquist Edgar Bergen.

Above: US entertainer Edgar Bergen (né Berggren) (1903 – 1978)

The legend had it that a significant number of Chase and Sanborn listeners changed stations when the first comic sketch ended and a musical number by Nelson Eddy began, tuning in to “The War of the Worlds” after the opening announcements.

Above: US actor/singer Nelson Eddy (1901 – 1967)

Historian A. Brad Schwartz, after studying hundreds of letters from people who heard “The War of the Worlds” as well as contemporary audience surveys, concluded that very few people frightened by Welles’s broadcast had tuned out from Bergen’s program.

“All the hard evidence suggests that The Chase & Sanborn Hour was only a minor contributing factor to the Martian hysteria,” he wrote.

“In truth, there was no mass exodus from Charlie McCarthy to Orson Welles that night.“

A study by the Radio Project discovered that less than one third of panicked listeners understood the invaders to be aliens.

Most thought that they were listening to reports of a German invasion or of a natural catastrophe. 

“People were on edge“, wrote Welles biographer Frank Brady.

“For the entire month prior to ‘The War of the Worlds’, radio had kept the American public alert to the ominous happenings throughout the world.

The Munich crisis was at its height.

For the first time in history, the public could tune into their radios every night and hear, boot by boot, accusation by accusation, threat by threat, the rumblings that seemed inevitably leading to a world war.“

CBS News chief Paul White wrote that he was convinced that the panic induced by the broadcast was a result of the public suspense generated before the Munich Pact.

“Radio listeners had had their emotions played upon for days.

Thus they believed the Welles production even though it was specifically stated that the whole thing was fiction“.

Above: Munich Agreement (30 September 1938)

From left to right: British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (1869 – 1940), French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier (1884 – 1970), German Chancellor Adolf Hitler (1899 – 1945), Italian dictator Benito Mussolini (1883 – 1945) and Italian Foreign Minsiter Galeazzo Ciano (1903 – 1944)

 

Newspapers at the time perceived the new technology of radio as a threat to their business.

Newspapers exaggerated the rare cases of actual fear and confusion to play up the idea of a nationwide panic as a means of discrediting radio. 

As Slate reports:

“The supposed panic was so tiny as to be practically immeasurable on the night of the broadcast.

Radio had siphoned off advertising revenue from print during the Depression, badly damaging the newspaper industry.

So the papers seized the opportunity presented by Welles’ program to discredit radio as a source of news.

The newspaper industry sensationalized the panic to prove to advertisers, and regulators, that radio management was irresponsible and not to be trusted.”

Historical research suggests the panic was significantly less widespread than newspapers had indicated at the time. 

“The panic and mass hysteria so readily associated with ‘The War of the Worlds’ did not occur on anything approaching a nationwide dimension“, American University media historian W. Joseph Campbell wrote in 2003.

He quoted Robert E. Bartholomew, an authority on mass panic outbreaks, as having said that “there is a growing consensus among sociologists that the extent of the panic was greatly exaggerated“.

What a night.

After the broadcast, as I tried to get back to the St. Regis where we were living,

I was blocked by an impassioned crowd of news people looking for blood, and the disappointment when they found I wasn’t hemorrhaging.

It wasn’t long after the initial shock that whatever public panic and outrage there was vanished.

But, the newspapers for days continued to feign fury.

Orson Welles to friend/mentor Roger Hill, 22 February 1983

As it was late on a Sunday night in the Eastern Time Zone, where the broadcast originated, few reporters and other staff were present in newsrooms.

Most newspaper coverage thus took the form of Associated Press (AP) stories, which were largely anecdotal aggregates of reporting from its various bureaus, giving the impression that panic had indeed been widespread.

Many newspapers led with the Associated Press’s story the next day.

The Twin City Sentinel of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, pointed out that the situation could have been even worse if most people had not been listening to Bergen’s show:

“Charlie McCarthy last night saved the United States from a sudden and panicky death by hysteria.“

On 2 November 1938, the Australian newspaper The Age characterized the incident as “mass hysteria” and stated that “never in the history of the United States had such a wave of terror and panic swept the continent“.

Unnamed observers quoted by The Age commented that “the panic could have only happened in America“.

Editorialists chastised the radio industry for allowing that to happen.

The response may have reflected newspaper publishers’ fears that radio, to which they had lost some of the advertising revenue that was scarce enough during the Great Depression, would render them obsolete.

Above: Scene from the Great Depression (1929 – 1939)

In The War of the Worlds, they saw an opportunity to cast aspersions on the newer medium:

“The nation as a whole continues to face the danger of incomplete, misunderstood news over a medium which has yet to prove that it is competent to perform the news job,” wrote Editor & Publisher (E & P), the newspaper industry’s trade journal.

William Randolph Hearst’s papers called on broadcasters to police themselves, lest the government step in, as Iowa senator Clyde L. Herring proposed a bill that would have required all programming to be reviewed by the FCC prior to broadcast – it was never introduced.

Above: US publisher William Randolph Hearst (1863 – 1951)

Others blamed the radio audience for its gullibility.

Noting that any intelligent listener would have realized the broadcast was fictional, the Chicago Tribune opined:

“It would be more tactful to say that some members of the radio audience are a trifle retarded mentally, and that many a program is prepared for their consumption.”

Other newspapers noted that anxious listeners had called their offices to learn if Martians were really attacking.

Few contemporary accounts exist outside newspaper coverage of the mass panic and hysteria supposedly induced by the broadcast.

Justin Levine, a producer at KFI in Los Angeles, wrote that:

“The anecdotal nature of such reporting makes it difficult to objectively assess the true extent and intensity of the panic“.

Bartholomew saw it as more evidence that the panic was predominantly a creation of the newspaper industry.

Initially apologetic about the supposed panic his broadcast had caused, and privately fuming that newspaper reports of lawsuits were either greatly exaggerated or totally fabricated, Welles later embraced the story as part of his personal myth:

“Houses were emptying, churches were filling up.

From Nashville to Minneapolis there was wailing in the streets and the rending of garments,” he told Bogdanovich.

Above: US director Peter Bogdanovich (1939 – 2022)

CBS also found reports ultimately useful in promoting the strength of its influence.

It presented a fictionalized account of the panic in “The Night America Trembled“, and included it prominently in its 2003 celebrations of CBS’s 75th anniversary as a television broadcaster.

“The legend of the panic,” according to Jefferson and Socolow, “grew exponentially over the following years.

It persists because it so perfectly captures our unease with the media’s power over our lives.“

In 1975, ABC aired the television movie The Night That Panicked America, depicting the effect the radio drama had on the public using fictional, but typical American families of the time.

West Windsor, New Jersey, where Grovers Mill is located, commemorated the 50th anniversary of the broadcast in 1988 with four days of festivities including art and planetarium shows, a panel discussion, a parade, burial of a time capsule, a dinner dance, film festivals devoted to H. G. Wells and Orson Welles, and the dedication of a bronze monument to the fictional Martian landings.

Koch attended the 49th anniversary celebration as an honored guest.

The 75th anniversary of “The War of the Worlds” was marked by an episode of the PBS documentary series American Experience.

I find myself reading this account with bemusement and bewilderment.

I find myself wondering how fake can seem real, how real can seem fake.

Wag the Dog is a 1997 American black comedy political satire film that centers on a spin doctor and a Hollywood producer who fabricate a war in Albania to distract voters from a presidential sex scandal.

The title of the film comes from the English-language idiom “the tail wagging the dog“, used to indicate attention that is purposely being diverted from something of greater importance to something of lesser.

The President of the United States is caught making advances on an underage girl inside the Oval Office less than two weeks before the election.

Conrad Brean (Robert de Niro), a top spin doctor, is brought in by presidential aide Winifred Ames (Anne Heche) to take the public’s attention away from the scandal.

Above: American actor Robert De Niro

Above: American actress Anne Heche (1969 – 2022)

He decides to construct a fictional war in Albania, hoping the media will concentrate on this instead.

Above: Flag of Albania

Brean contacts Hollywood producer Stanley Motss (Dustin Hoffman) to create the war, complete with a theme song and fake film footage of a fleeing orphan to arouse sympathy.

Above: American actor Dustin Hoffman

Above: Kirsten Dunst, Wag the Dog

The hoax is initially successful, with the President quickly gaining ground in the polls.

When the CIA learns of the plot, it sends Agent Young (William H. Macy) to confront Brean about the hoax.

Above: American actor William H. Macy

Brean convinces Young that revealing the deception is against his and the CIA’s best interests.

But when the CIA — in collusion with the President’s rival candidate — reports that the war has ended, the media begins to focus back on the President’s sexual misconduct scandal.

To counter this, Motss invents a hero who was left behind enemy lines in Albania.

Inspired by the idea that he was “discarded like an old shoe“, Brean and Motss ask the Pentagon to provide a special forces soldier with a matching name (a sergeant named “Schumann” (Woody Harrelson) is identified), around whom a POW narrative can be constructed.

Above: American actor Woody Harrelson

As part of the hoax, folk singer Johnny Dean (Willie Nelson) records a song called “Old Shoe“, which is pressed onto a 78 rpm record, prematurely aged so that listeners will think it was recorded years earlier, and sent to the Library of Congress to be “found“.

Above: American musician Willie Nelson

Bream and Motss fling pairs of old shoes into a tree outside the White House grounds.

Soon, large numbers begin appearing on phone and power lines, and a grassroots movement to bring Schumann home takes hold, completing a successful astroturfing.

Above: Scene from Wag the Dog

When the team goes to retrieve Schumann, they discover he is in fact a criminally insane Army convict.

On the way back their plane crashes en route to Andrews Air Force Base.

The team survives and is rescued by a farmer, an illegal alien.

However, Schumann is killed when he attempts to rape a gas station owner’s daughter.

Seizing the opportunity, Motss stages an elaborate military funeral for Schumann, claiming he died from wounds sustained during his rescue.

The farmer receives expedited citizenship for a better story.

Above: Woody Harrelson, Wag the Dog

As the President rallies toward re-election Motss gets frustrated that the media are crediting his upsurge in the polls to the bland campaign slogan of “Don’t change horses in mid-stream” rather than to Motss’ hard work.

Despite Brean’s offer of an ambassadorship and the dire warning that he is “playing with his life“, Motss demands he receive credit for his production and will reveal his involvement unless he gets it.

Realizing he has no choice, Brean orders his security staff to kill him.

A newscast reports that Motss has died of a heart attack at home, the President has been successfully re-elected, and an Albanian terrorist organization has claimed responsibility for a recent bombing, suggesting the fake war is becoming real.

Above: Dustin Hoffman, Wag the Dog

Why does the dog wag its tail?
Because a dog is smarter than its tail.
If the tail were smarter, it would wag the dog.

The bombing of Dresden was a joint British and American aerial bombing attack on the city of Dresden, the capital of the German state of Saxony, during World War II.

In four raids between 13 and 15 February 1945, 772 heavy bombers of the Royal Air Force (RAF) and 527 of the US Army Air Forces (USAAF) dropped more than 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices on the city.

The bombing and the resulting firestorm destroyed more than 1,600 acres (6.5 km²) of the city centre.

Up to 25,000 people were killed.

Three more USAAF air raids followed, two occurring on 2 March aimed at the city’s railway marshalling yard and one smaller raid on 17 April aimed at industrial areas.

Above: Aftermath of the bombing of Dresden

Postwar discussions about whether the attacks were justified made the event a moral cause célèbre of the war.

Nazi Germany’s desperate struggle to maintain resistance in the closing months of the war is widely understood today, but Allied intelligence assessments at the time painted a different picture.

There was uncertainty over whether the Soviets could sustain their advance on Germany.

Rumors of the establishment of a Nazi redoubt in Southern Germany were taken too seriously.

Above: Aftermath of the bombing of Dresden

The Allies saw the Dresden operation as the justified bombing of a strategic target, which United States Air Force reports, declassified decades later, noted as a major rail transport and communication centre, housing 110 factories and 50,000 workers supporting the German war effort. 

Several researchers later asserted that not all communications infrastructure was targeted, and neither were the extensive industrial areas located outside the city centre.

Critics of the bombing argue that Dresden was a cultural landmark with little strategic significance, and that the attacks were indiscriminate area bombing and were not proportionate to military gains. 

Some claim that the raid was a war crime. 

Nazi propaganda exaggerated the death toll of the bombing and its status as mass murder.

Many in the German far-right have referred to it as “Dresden’s Holocaust of bombs“.

In the decades since the war, large variations in the claimed death toll have led to controversy, though the numbers themselves are no longer a major point of contention among historians. 

City authorities at the time estimated that there were as many as 25,000 victims, a figure that subsequent investigations supported, including a 2010 study commissioned by the city council.

Above: Aftermath of the Dresden bombing

In March 1945, the German government ordered its press to publish a falsified casualty figure of 200,000.

Death tolls as high as 500,000 have been claimed. 

These inflated figures were disseminated in the West for decades, notably by David Irving, a Holocaust denier, who in 1966 announced that the documentation he had worked from had been forged and that the real figures supported the 25,000 number.

Above: Aftermath of the bombing of Dresden

Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse-Five or The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death (1969) used some elements from his experiences as a prisoner of war at Dresden during the bombing.

The death toll of 135,000 given by Vonnegut was taken from The Destruction of Dresden, a 1963 book by Holocaust denier David Irving.

In a 1965 letter to The Guardian, Irving later adjusted his estimates even higher, “almost certainly between 100,000 and 250,000“, but these figures were inflated.

Irving finally published a correction in The Times in a 1966 letter to the editor lowering it to 25,000, in line with subsequent scholarship.

Despite Irving’s eventual much lower numbers, and later accusations of generally poor scholarship, the figure popularized by Vonnegut remains in general circulation.

Above: American author Kurt Vonnegut (1922 – 2007)

In a 2006 Rolling Stone article, Vonnegut is quoted recalling “utter destruction” and “carnage unfathomable“.

The Germans put him and other POWs to work gathering bodies for mass burial.

“But there were too many corpses to bury.

So instead the Nazis sent in troops with flamethrowers.

All these civilians’ remains were burned to ashes.“

Above: Statue of Martin Luther (1483 – 1546) with ruined Frauenkirche, Dresden

In the special introduction to the 1976 Franklin Library edition of the novel, he wrote:

The Dresden atrocity, tremendously expensive and meticulously planned, was so meaningless, finally, that only one person on the entire planet got any benefit from it.

I am that person.

I wrote this book, which earned a lot of money for me and made my reputation, such as it is.

One way or another, I got two or three dollars for every person killed.

Some business I’m in.”

The firebombing of Dresden was depicted in George Roy Hill’s 1972 movie adaptation of Vonnegut’s novel.

Vonnegut’s experiences in Dresden were also used in several of his other books and are included in his posthumously published writings in Armageddon in Retrospect.

In one of those essays, Vonnegut paraphrased leaflets dropped by the Allies in the days after the bombings as saying:

To the people of Dresden:

We were forced to bomb your city because of the heavy military traffic your railroad facilities have been carrying.

We realize that we haven’t always hit our objectives.

Destruction of anything other than military objectives was unintentional, unavoidable fortunes of war.

Vonnegut notes that many of those railroad facilities were not actually bombed, and those that were hit were restored to operation within several days.

Freeman Dyson, a British-American physicist who had worked as a young man with RAF Bomber Command from July 1943 to the end of the war, wrote in later years (1979):

For many years I had intended to write a book on the bombing.

Now I do not need to write it, because Vonnegut has written it much better than I could.

He was in Dresden at the time and saw what happened.

His book is not only good literature.

It is also truthful.

The only inaccuracy that I found in it is that it does not say that the night attack which produced the holocaust was a British affair.

The Americans only came the following day to plow over the rubble.

Vonnegut, being American, did not want to write his account in such a way that the whole thing could be blamed on the British.

Apart from that, everything he says is true.”

In 1995, Vonnegut recalled having discussed the bombing with Dyson, and quotes Dyson as attributing the decision to bomb Dresden to “bureaucratic momentum“.

Henny Brenner (née Wolf) wrote about the bombing in her memoir, The Song is Over: Survival of a Jewish Girl in Dresden about how it allowed her and her parents to flee into hiding and avoid reporting pursuant to orders to show up for resettlement to a new “work assignment” on 16 February 1945, thus saving their lives.

The German diarist Victor Klemperer includes a first-hand account of the firestorm in his published works.

Above: German diarist Victor Klemperer (1881 – 1960)

The main action of the novel Closely Observed Trains, by Czech author Bohumil Hrabal, takes place on the night of the first raid.

In the 1983 Pink Floyd album The Final Cut, “The Hero’s Return“, the protagonist lives his years after World War II tormented by “desperate memories“, part of him still flying “over Dresden at angels 1–5” (fifteen-thousand feet).

Jonathan Safran Foer’s 2005 novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (as well as the 2011 film adaptation of the same name) incorporates the bombings into essential parts of the story.

String Quartet No. 8, Op. 110 (Dmitri Shostakovich) was written in 1960 as a dedication to the bombing of Dresden.

This piece is also believed to been written as a suicide note of D. Shostakovich, hence its extremely dark and depressing nature.

Above: Russian composer Dmitry Shostakovich (1906 – 1975)

The bombings are a central theme in the 2006 German TV production Dresden by director Roland Suso Richter.

Along with the romantic plot between a British bomber pilot and a German nurse, the movie attempts to reconstruct the facts surrounding the Dresden bombings from both the perspective of the RAF pilots and the Germans in Dresden at the time.

Five Days, Five Nights is a 1961 joint Soviet–East German film that dramatizes the search for the missing paintings of the Dresden Gallery in the aftermath of WWII.

The bombing is featured in the 1992 Vincent Ward film, Map of the Human Heart, with the hero, Avik, forced to bail out of his bomber and parachute down into the inferno.

The devastation of Dresden was recorded in the woodcuts of Wilhelm Rudolph, an artist born in the city who resided there until his death in 1982, and was 55 at the time of the bombing.

His studio having burned in the attack with his life’s work, Rudolph immediately set out to record the destruction, systematically drawing block after block, often repeatedly to show the progress of clearing or chaos that ensued in the ruins.

Although the city had been sealed off by the Wehrmacht to prevent looting, Rudolph was granted a special permit to enter and carry out his work, as he would be during the Russian occupation as well.

By the end of 1945 he had completed almost 200 drawings, which he transferred to woodcuts following the war.

He organized these as discrete series that he would always show as a whole, from the 52 woodcuts of Aus (Out, or Gone) in 1948, the 35 woodcuts Dresden 1945 – After the Catastrophe in 1949, and the 15 woodcuts and 5 lithographs of Dresden 1945 in 1955.

Of this work, Rudolph later described himself as gripped by an “obsessive – compulsive state“, under the preternatural spell of war, which revealed to him that:

“The utterly fantastic is the reality.

Beside that, every human invention remains feeble.“

In David Alan Mack’s The Midnight Front, first book of his secret history historical fantasy series The Dark Arts, the bombing was a concentrated effort by the British, Soviet, and American forces to kill all of the known karcists (sorcerers) in the world in one fell swoop, Allied or not, out of fear of their power.

The bombing is featured in the 2018 German film, Never Look Away.

The tragedy of Dresden, as seen through the eyes of Polish forced laborers, was presented by Polish director Jan Rybkowski in the 1961 movie Tonight a City Will Die.

The 1978 piece for wind ensemble, Symphony I: In Memoriam, Dresden Germany, 1945 by composer Daniel Bukvich retells the bombing of Dresden through four intense movements depicting the emotion and stages before, during, and after the bombing.

Above: Bombing of Dresden Memorial

The Allied bombing of February 13, 1945, obliterated one of Germany’s most beautiful cities, leaving behind a wasteland of suffering.

The ethics of this attack remain fiercely debated — was it a necessary act of war or an unforgivable crime against humanity?

Geza Csath would have understood destruction, though his battlefield was the mind.

A Hungarian writer, doctor, and opium addict, Csath explored the darkness within the human psyche, documenting his own descent into madness.

His work, filled with hallucinatory horror, mirrored a world unraveling.

He would have looked upon Dresden’s ruins and seen something terrifyingly familiar—the fragile line between civilization and chaos.

Dresden reminds us that war’s scars never truly fade.

Like Csath’s troubled mind, history carries its traumas forward.

The firestorm consumes the city, a hell wrought by those who believed themselves righteous.

The truth, hidden beneath rubble and ash, is that war is never clean, never just.

It is an inferno where morality burns alongside the innocent.

Above: Aftermath of the Dresden bombing

On 13 February 2008, the Parliament of Australia issued a formal apology to Indigenous Australians for forced removals of Australian Indigenous children (often referred to as the Stolen Generations) from their families by Australian federal and state government agencies.

The apology was delivered by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

Above: Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd (r. 2007 – 2010, 2013)

It is also referred to as the National Apology, or simply The Apology.

Above: Kevin Rudd on screen in Federation Square, Melbourne, Australia, apologizing to the Stolen Generations

The Bringing Them Home (1997) report commissioned by the Keating Labor Government recommended an official apology be offered by the Australian Government for past government welfare policies which had separated children from their parents on racial grounds.

Keating’s Liberal successor John Howard received the report, but eschewed use of the term “sorry“, believing a Parliamentary “apology” would imply “intergenerational guilt“.

Above: Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating (r. 1991 – 1996)

He instead moved to draft a Parliamentary “Motion of Reconciliation“, in consultation with Democrat Senator Aden Ridgeway, the only Aboriginal person then sitting in the federal parliament.

Above: Australian MP Aden Ridgeway (r. 1999 – 2005)

On 26 August 1999, Howard moved the Motion of Reconciliation expressing “deep and sincere regret that indigenous Australians suffered injustices under the practices of past generations, and for the hurt and trauma that many indigenous people continue to feel as a consequence of those practices” and dedicating Parliament to the “cause of reconciliation” for historic mistreatment of Indigenous Australians as the “most blemished chapter” in Australian history.

Above: Australian Prime Minister John Howard (r 1996 – 2007)

From the outset, the Labor opposition, led by Kim Beazley, argued the need for an “apology“.

Following Howard’s Motion of Reconciliation, Beazley moved to replace the motion of regret with an unreserved apology, but was unsuccessful. 

The Liberal-National Howard government maintained its opposition to an “apology” for the remainder of its term in office (1996 – 2007).

Above: Western Australia Governor Kim Beazley (r. 2018 – 2022)

After the 2007 election of the Rudd government, Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced on 11 December 2007 that the government would make an apology to Indigenous Australians, the wording of which would be decided in consultation with Aboriginal leaders.

The Liberal Party opposition was split on the issue.

Its leader, Brendan Nelson, initially said that an apology would risk encouraging a “culture of guilt” in Australia.

Above: Australian politician Brendan Nelson

However, support for an apology was expressed by other senior Liberals. 

Former Liberal minister Judi Moylan said:

“I think as a nation we owe an apology.

We shouldn’t be thinking about it as an individual apology — it’s an apology that is coming from the nation state because it was governments that did these things“. 

Above: Australian politician Judi Moylan

Nelson later said that he supported the government apology.

Following a party meeting, the Liberal Party as a whole expressed its support for an apology.

It achieved bipartisan consensus.

Nelson stated:

“I, on behalf of the Coalition, of the alternative government of Australia, are providing in-principle support for the offer of an apology to the forcibly removed generations of Aboriginal children.“

Above: Liberal Party of Australia logo

Lyn Austin, chairwoman of Stolen Generations Victoria, expressed why she believed an apology was necessary, recounting her experiences as a stolen child:

I thought I was being taken just for a few days.

I can recall seeing my mother standing on the side of the road with her head in her hands, crying, and me in the black FJ Holden wondering why she was so upset.

A few hundred words can’t fix this all but it’s an important start and it’s a beginning I see myself as that little girl, crying myself to sleep at night, crying and wishing I could go home to my family.

Everything’s gone, the loss of your culture, the loss of your family, all these things have a big impact.”

On 13 February 2008, Rudd presented the apology to Indigenous Australians as a Motion to be voted on by the House.

It has since been referred to as the National Apology or simply The Apology.

The apology read as follows:

I move:

That today we honor the Indigenous peoples of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human history.

We reflect on their past mistreatment.

We reflect in particular on the mistreatment of those who were Stolen Generations — this blemished chapter in our nation’s history.

The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia’s history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future.

We apologize for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.

We apologize especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.

For the pain, suffering, and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.

To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.

And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.

We, the Parliament of Australia, respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation.

For the future we take heart, resolving that this new page in the history of our great continent can now be written.

We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians.

A future where this Parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.

A future where we harness the determination of all Australians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement, and economic opportunity.

A future where we embrace the possibility of new solutions to enduring problems where old approaches have failed.

A future based on mutual respect, mutual resolve and mutual responsibility.

A future where all Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners, with equal opportunities and with an equal stake in shaping the next chapter in the history of this great country, Australia.

Kevin Rudd, Prime Minister of Australia, 13 February 2008

To apologize is to investigate the truth of history.

To listen, to acknowledge, to understand.

Kevin Rudd’s apology to Australia’s Stolen Generations was more than just words.

It was an attempt to heal wounds, to acknowledge a past of suffering inflicted upon Indigenous children torn from their families.

Words cannot undo history, but they can shape the future.

But can we handle the truth?

Oedipus Rex, also known by its Greek title, Oedipus Tyrannus  or Oedipus the King, is an Athenian tragedy by Sophocles.

Prior to the start of Oedipus Rex, Oedipus has become the King of Thebes while unwittingly fulfilling a prophecy that he would kill his father, Laius (the previous King), and marry his mother, Jocasta (whom Oedipus took as his Queen after solving the riddle of the Sphinx).

The action of Sophocles’ play concerns Oedipus’s search for the murderer of Laius in order to end a plague ravaging Thebes, unaware that the killer he is looking for is none other than himself.

At the end of the play, after the truth finally comes to light, Jocasta hangs herself while Oedipus, horrified at his patricide and incest, proceeds to gouge out his own eyes in despair.

Life Is Beautiful (Italian: La vita è bella) is a 1997 Italian period comedy drama film about a Jewish Italian bookshop owner, who employs his imagination to shield his son from the horrors of internment in a Nazi concentration camp.

In 1939, in Fascist Italy, Guido Orefice (Roberto Benigni) is a young Italian Jewish man who arrives to work in the city of Arezzo, in Toscana (Tuscany), where his uncle Eliseo (Guistino Durano) works in the restaurant of a hotel.

Above: Arezzo, Italia

Guido is comical and sharp.

Above: Italian actor Roberto Beningi

He falls in love with a Gentile girl named Dora (Nicoletti Braschi).

Above: Italian actress Nicoletta Braschi

Later, he sees her again in the city where she is a teacher and set to be engaged to Rodolfo (Amerigo Fontani), a rich but arrogant local government official with whom Guido has regular run-ins.

Guido sets up many “coincidental” incidents to show his interest in Dora.

Above: Scene from Life Is Beautiful

Guido:

I forgot to tell you.

Dora:

Go ahead.

Guido:

You can’t imagine how much I feel like making love to you.

But I’ll never tell anyone, especially not you.

They’d have to torture me to make me say it.

Dora:

Say what?

Guido:

That I want to make love to you – not just once, but over and over again!

But I’ll never tell you that.

I’d have to be crazy to tell you.

I’d even make love to you now… right here for the rest of my life.

Above: Scene from Life Is Beautiful

Eventually, Dora sees Guido’s affection and promise and gives in.

Guido steals her from her engagement party on Uncle Eliseo’s horse, Robin Hood, humiliating Dora’s fiancé and mother.

Above: Scene from Life Is Beautiful

They are later married, have a son, Giosuè (Giorgio Cantarini), and run a bookstore.

Above: Scene from Life Is Beautiful

Dora’s mother (Marisa Paredes) visits one time to drop off a letter to her daughter, meeting her grandson.

Above: Italian actress Marisa Paredes (1946 – 2024)

Above: Scene from Life Is Beautiful

At the height of World War II, in 1944, Northern Italy is occupied by Nazi Germany.

Guido, his uncle Eliseo, and Giosuè are arrested on Giosuè’s birthday.

They and many other Italian Jews are forced onto a train bound for a concentration camp.

Above: Scene from Life Is Beautiful

After confronting a guard about her husband and son and being told there is no mistake, Dora volunteers to get on the train in order to stay with her family.

However, as men and women are separated in the camp, Dora never sees her family during their internment.

Above: Scene from Life Is Beautiful

Guido pulls off various stunts, such as hijacking the camp’s loudspeaker to send messages, symbolic or literal, to Dora to assure her that he and their son are safe.

Above: Scene from Life Is Beautiful

Eliseo is murdered in a gas chamber shortly after their arrival.

Above: Giustino Durano, Life Is Beautiful

Giosuè narrowly avoids being gassed himself as he hates to take baths and showers, and did not follow the other children when they had been ordered to “take a shower“.

In the camp, Guido consistently hides the true situation from his son.

Above: Scene from Life Is Beautiful

(Pretending to translate a German concentration camp guard’s instructions to the new prisoners) 

“The game starts now.

You have to score one thousand points.

If you do that, you take home a tank with a big gun.

Each day we will announce the scores from that loudspeaker.

The one who has the fewest points will have to wear a sign that says “Jackass” on his back.

There are three ways to lose points.

One, turning into a big crybaby.

Two, telling us you want to see your mommy.

Three, saying you’re hungry and want something to eat.”

Above: Scene from Life Is Beautiful

Giosuè is at times reluctant to go along with the game, but Guido convinces him each time to continue.

At one point, Guido takes advantage of the appearance of visiting German officers and their families to show Giosuè that other children are hiding as part of the game, and tricks a German nanny into thinking Giosuè is one of her charges in order to feed him while Guido serves the German officers to monitor Giosuè.

Guido tells Giosuè to stay quiet at all times for this part of the game and simply follow the other children, as Giosuè cannot speak German.

Giosuè is almost exposed as a prisoner when Giosuè accidentally says “thank you” in Italian to another server at dinner, but when the server returns with his superior, Guido provides a ruse by teaching all of the German children how to say “thank you” in Italian, saving Giosuè.

Above: Scene from Life Is Beautiful

Guido maintains this story right until the end when, in the chaos of shutting down the camp as the Allied forces approach, he tells his son to stay in a box until everybody has left, this being the final task in the competition before the promised tank is his.

Guido goes to find Dora, but he is caught by a German soldier.

An officer orders Guido to be executed and Guido is led off by the soldier.

While he is walking to his death, Guido passes by Giosuè one last time and winks, still in character and playing the game.

Guido is then shot and left for dead in an alleyway.

Above: Scene from Life Is Beautiful

The next morning, Giosuè emerges from the sweatbox, just as a US Army unit led by a Sherman tank arrives and the camp is liberated.

An overjoyed Giosuè, unaware of his father’s death, thinks he won the tank, and an American soldier allows Giosuè to ride with him on the tank.

“We got a thousand points and we won the game!

Daddy and me came in first and now we won the real tank!

We won! We won!“

Above: Scene from Life Is Beautiful

While traveling to safety, Giosuè soon spots Dora in the procession leaving the camp and reunites with his mother.

While the young Giosuè excitedly tells his mother about how he had won a tank, just as his father had promised, the adult Giosuè, in an overheard monologue, reveals himself as the movie’s narrator, reminiscing on the sacrifices his father made for him.

Above: Scene from Life Is Beautiful

Benigni’s earnest charm, when not overstepping its bounds into the unnecessarily treacly, offers the possibility of hope in the face of unflinching horror.

According to Benigni, the movie has stirred up venomous opposition from the right wing in Italy and at Cannes, it offended some left-wing critics with its use of humor in connection with the Holocaust.

What may be most offensive to both wings is its sidestepping of politics in favor of simple human ingenuity.

The film finds the right notes to negotiate its delicate subject matter

The movie actually softens the Holocaust slightly, to make the humor possible at all.

In the real death camps there would be no role for Guido.

Above: Scene from Life Is Beautiful

But Life Is Beautiful is not about Nazis and Fascists, but about the human spirit.

It is about rescuing whatever is good and hopeful from the wreckage of dreams.

About hope for the future.

About the necessary human conviction, or delusion, that things will be better for our children than they are right now.“

A deeply moving blend of cold terror and rapturous hilarity.

Lovingly crafted by Italy’s top comedian and most popular filmmaker, it is that rare comedy that takes on a daring and ambitious subject and proves worthy of it.“

Director Roberto Benigni, who wrote the screenplay with Vincenzo Cerami, was inspired by the story of Rubino Romeo Salmonì (1920 – 2011) and his book In the End, I Beat Hitler, which incorporates elements of irony and black comedy.

Salmoni was an Italian Jew who was deported to Auschwitz, survived and was reunited with his parents, but found his brothers were murdered.

Benigni stated he wished to commemorate Salmoni as a man who wished to live in the right way.

He also based the story on that of his father Luigi Benigni, who was a member of the Italian Army after Italy became a co-belligerent of the Allies in 1943. 

Luigi Benigni spent two years in a Nazi labor camp, and to avoid scaring his children, told about his experiences humorously, finding this helped him cope. 

Roberto Benigni explained his philosophy:

“To laugh and to cry comes from the same point of the soul, no?

I’m a storyteller:

The crux of the matter is to reach beauty, poetry, it doesn’t matter if that is comedy or tragedy.

They’re the same if you reach the beauty.“

Above: Roberto Benigni

The Truman Show is a 1998 American psychological comedy-drama film which depicts the story of Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey), a man who is unaware that he is living his entire life on a colossal soundstage, and that it is being filmed and broadcast as a reality television show that has a huge international following.

All of his friends, family and members of his community are paid actors whose job it is to sustain the illusion and keep Truman unaware about the false world he inhabits.

Marlon [speaking as an actor on the show.]:

It’s all true.

It’s all real.

Nothing here is fake.

Nothing you see on this show is fake.

It’s merely controlled.

Above: Marlon (Noah Emmerich)

Selected at birth and legally adopted by a television studio following an unwanted pregnancy, Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey) is the unsuspecting star of The Truman Show, a reality television program filmed and broadcast worldwide, 24/7, through approximately 5,000 hidden cameras.

Truman’s hometown, Seahaven Island, is set inside an enormous soundstage, which allows Christof (Ed Harris), the show’s creator and executive producer, to control most aspects of Truman’s life, including the weather.

Truman’s world is populated by actors and crew members who serve as his community while carefully keeping him from discovering the truth.

Christof:

We accept the reality of the world with which we are presented, it’s as simple as that.

Above: Scene from The Truman Show

They also earn revenue for the show through cleverly disguised product placement.

Above: Scene from The Truman Show

To prevent Truman from escaping, Christof has orchestrated various scenarios, such as the “death” of Truman’s father (Brian Delate) in a boating accident to instill thalassophobia (fear of water).

Above: Scene from The Truman Show

He has the cast reinforce Truman’s anxieties with messages about the dangers of traveling and the virtues of staying home.

Above: Scene from The Truman Show

Young Truman: 

I want to be an explorer, like the Great Magellan.

Teacher: 

[indicating a map of the world]

Oh, you’re too late!

There’s nothing left to explore!

Above: Scene from The Truman Show

Though the producers intend for Truman to fall in love with and marry a woman named Meryl (Laura Linney), Truman develops feelings for Sylvia (Natascha McElhone), an extra.

Sympathetic to Truman’s plight, she tries to tell him the truth, but is fired and forcibly removed from the set before she can convince him.

Above: Scene from The Truman Show

Truman eventually marries Meryl, but their relationship is stilted and passionless.

Above: Scene from The Truman Show

He secretly continues to imagine a life with Sylvia and dreams of traveling to Fiji, where he was told she had moved.

Above: Scene from The Truman Show

Meanwhile, in the real world, Sylvia joins “Free Truman“, an activist group that calls for Truman’s liberation.

As the show approaches its 30th anniversary, Truman begins to notice unusual occurrences, such as a stage light falling from the sky, an isolated patch of rain that falls only over him, a radio transmission describing his movements through town, and the reappearance of his father, who is rushed away by crew members before Truman can confront him.

Inferring that the city somehow revolves around him, Truman begins questioning his life and asking who he sees as his closest confidants to help him solve the mystery.

Above: Scene from The Truman Show

Truman’s suspicions culminate in an attempt to escape the island, but increasingly implausible occurrences block his path.

Eventually, he is caught and returned home under a flimsy pretext.

Above: Scene from The Truman Show

There, he confronts Meryl and challenges the sincerity of their marriage.

A panicked Meryl tries to change the subject with a product placement, causing Truman to snap and hold her at knifepoint.

Meryl breaks character to call for help and is removed from the show.

Above: Scene from The Truman Show

Hoping to bring Truman back to a controllable state, Christof reintroduces his father to the show under the guise of him having developed amnesia after the boating accident.

Above: Scene from The Truman Show

The show regains its ratings.

Truman seems to return to his routines.

Above: Scene from The Truman Show

Sylvia: 

Look at what you’ve done to him!

Christof:

I’ve given Truman the chance to lead a normal life.

The world, the place you live in is the sick place.

Seahaven is the way the world should be.

Above: Scene from The Truman Show

One night, however, Christof discovers that Truman has begun sleeping in his basement.

Disturbed by this change in behavior, Christof sends Truman’s best friend Marlon (Noah Emmerich) to visit and discovers that Truman has disappeared through a makeshift tunnel in the basement.

Above: Scene from The Truman Show

Christof suspends the broadcast for the first time in its history, leading to record viewing numbers.

Above: Scene from The Truman Show

Christof orders a citywide search for Truman and is soon forced to break the production’s day-night cycle to optimize the hunt.

Above: Scene from The Truman Show

Truman is found sailing away from Seahaven, having conquered his fear of water.

Above: Scene from The Truman Show

Christof resumes the transmission and creates a violent storm in an attempt to capsize Truman’s boat.

Above: Scene from The Truman Show

Truman nearly drowns, but he continues to sail until his boat strikes the wall of the dome.

Above: Scene from The Truman Show

Horrified, Truman looks around and finds a staircase leading to an exit door.

Above: Scene from The Truman Show

As he contemplates leaving, Christof speaks to Truman directly, revealing the truth about the show and encouraging him to stay by claiming that there is no more truth in the real world than in his artificial one.

Above: Scene from The Truman Show

Truman: 

[to an unseen Christof] Who are you?

Christof: [voice-over]

I am The Creator – of a television show that gives hope and joy and inspiration to millions.

Truman: 

Then who am I?

Christof: 

You’re the star.

Truman: 

Was nothing real?

Christof: 

You were real.

That’s what made you so good to watch.

Truman:

You never had a camera in my head!

Above: Scene from The Truman Show

Truman utters his catchphrase:

“In case I don’t see you, good afternoon, good evening, and good night.”

He bows to the audience.

He exits.

Viewers around the world celebrate Truman’s escape.

Sylvia races to greet him.

The executive producers end the program with a shot of the open exit door, leaving Christof devastated.

After the broadcast ends, Truman’s viewers look for something else to watch.

Above: Scene from The Truman Show

Ronald Bishop’s paper in the Journal of Communication Inquiry suggested The Truman Show showcased the power of the media.

Truman’s life inspires audiences around the world, meaning their lives are controlled by his.

Bishop commented:

“In the end, the power of the media is affirmed rather than challenged.

In the spirit of Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, these films and television programs co-opt our enchantment (and disenchantment) with the media and sell it back to us.“

Journalist Erik Sofge surmised that the film’s story reflects the falseness of reality television.

“Truman simply lives, and the show’s popularity is its straightforward voyeurism.

And, like Big Brother, Survivor, and every other reality show on the air, none of his environment is actually real.”

Weir declared:

“There has always been this question:

Is the audience getting dumber?

Or are we filmmakers patronizing them?

Is this what they want?

Or is this what we’re giving them?

But the public went to my film in large numbers.

And that has to be encouraging.“

Above: Australian director Peter Weir

In her essay “Reading The Truman Show inside out“, Simone Knox argues that the film itself tries to blur the objective perspective and the show-within-the-film.

Knox also draws a floor plan of the camera angles of the first scene.

An essay published in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis analyzed Truman as:

A prototypical adolescent at the beginning of the movie, he feels trapped into a familial and social world to which he tries to conform while being unable to entirely identify with it, believing that he has no other choice (other than through the fantasy of fleeing to a far-way island).

Eventually, Truman gains sufficient awareness of his condition to “leave home”— developing a more mature and authentic identity as an adult, leaving his child-self behind and becoming a True-man.”

For the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, its official poster pays homage to the film and its final scene with their website stating that:

“Peter Weir and Andrew Niccol’s The Truman Show (1998) is a modern reflection of Plato’s cave and the decisive scene urges viewers to not only experience the border between reality and its representation but to ponder the power of fiction, between manipulation and catharsis.”

Parallels can be drawn from Thomas More’s 1516 book Utopia, in which More describes an island with only one entrance and only one exit.

Only those who belonged to this island knew how to navigate their way through the treacherous openings safely and unharmed.

This situation is similar to The Truman Show because there are limited entryways into the world that Truman knows.

Truman does not belong to this Utopia into which he has been implanted, and childhood trauma rendered him frightened of the prospect of ever leaving this small community.

Utopian models of the past tended to be full of like-minded individuals who shared much in common, comparable to More’s Utopia. 

It is clear that the people in Truman’s world are like-minded in their common effort to keep him oblivious to reality.

The suburban “picket fence” appearance of the show’s set is reminiscent of the “American Dream” of the 1950s.

The “American Dream” concept in Truman’s world serves as an attempt to keep him happy and ignorant.

Above: Scene from The Truman Show

The Truman Show is a gnostic (personal spiritual knowledge (gnosis) above the teachings, traditions, and authority of religious institutions) movie, with its symbolism and Truman exiting the world clearly showing in the woodcut Flammarion engraving, exiting the world.

Slowly, Truman realizes the truth and he, like the figure in the Flammarion engraving, explores the artificial seam between the sky and the sea, wondering what might lie beyond the torn canvas.  

Above: Flammarion, exiting the world

An Ideal Husband is a 1999 British film based on the 1895 play An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde.

Sir Robert Chiltern is a successful government minister, well-off and with a loving wife.

All this is threatened when Mrs. Cheveley appears in London with damning evidence of a past misdeed.

Sir Robert turns to his friend Lord Goring, an apparently idle philanderer and the despair of his father, for help.

Goring knows the lady of old and the plot to help his friend has unintended consequences.

Before the turn of the 20th century, at a fashionable park outing, malicious Lady Markby (Lindsay Duncan) reintroduces Mrs. Laura Cheveley (Juliane Moore) to Lady Gertrude Chiltern (Cate Blanchett), who both knew each other at school.

Above: Scottish actress Lindsay Duncan

Above: American actress Julianne Moore

Above: Australian actress Cate Blanchett

Laura fishes for an invitation to meet Gertrude’s husband, Sir Robert Chiltern (Jeremy Northam), but Gertrude does not extend an invitation until Lady Markby suggests bringing her to that evening’s ball, making refusal ungracious.

Above: English actor Jeremy Northam

At the Chiltern’s lavish party, Laura tries to extort Sir Robert, a Member of Parliament, into supporting a Bill to provide government financing for what he considers to be a new fraudulent canal scheme.

Laura has incriminating letters Robert wrote many years earlier that disclosed a cabinet secret – insider knowledge of the financing of the Suez Canal – to establish his fortune and career.

He initially refuses but gives in to save his reputation.

Above: Scene from An Ideal Husband

Before leaving the party, Laura tells Gertrude that her husband will support the canal scheme, which surprises the politician’s wife.

Above: Scene from An Ideal Husband

At the party, Laura reencounters Lord Arthur Goring (Rupert Everett), to whom she was engaged before her marriage, and is eager to reestablish a romantic relationship with him.

Arthur reminds her that she ended their engagement to marry a richer man.

Above: English actor Rupert Everett

Confronted by his wife about his change of position, Robert writes a letter to Laura, informing her that he will speak against the Bill.

Above: Scene from An Ideal Husband

The next morning, Robert reveals Laura’s blackmail attempt to Arthur, who urges him to let his wife know about his own past indiscretion, even if it lowers her regard for her husband.

Robert refuses to tell her the truth and asks Arthur to speak to Gertrude to soften the blow.

Above: Scene from

Lady Markby brings Laura to tea at the Chilterns.

After Lady Markby leaves, Gertrude asks Laura to leave her house and never return.

Gertrude expresses that she has despised Laura since their school days and that a person who has performed a dishonorable act should be shunned.

Laura retaliates by telling Gertrude how her husband made his fortune and that she will disclose his dishonesty if Robert does not support the canal bill.

Robert overhears and orders Laura to leave.

Above: Scene from An Ideal Husband

Repelled by his past behavior, Gertrude suggests he resign his position.

Robert says that no one could live up to the ideal image she had of him.

Above: Scene from An Ideal Husband

That evening, Gertrude sends an unsigned note to Arthur saying she will come to him and asking for his help.

Above: Scene from An Ideal Husband

Before Gertrude’s arrival, Robert visits Arthur, asking for Arthur’s help.

While Arthur is in the drawing room with Robert, the butler (Peter Vaughan) mixes up his instructions to admit discreetly only the “unnamed lady” and admits Laura, who arrives unexpectedly, instead of Gertrude, who is mistakenly turned away.

When Robert discovers Laura in Arthur’s library, he accuses Arthur of scheming with her and departs angrily.

Arthur attempts to seduce Laura, asking her to show her good faith by returning Robert’s letter.

Laura makes a wager with Arthur.

If Robert lives up to Arthur’s faith that Robert will not endorse the fraudulent scheme, she will return the incriminating letter to Arthur.

If Robert endorses the scheme to save his reputation, Arthur will marry Laura.

As she leaves, Laura steals Gertrude’s note, planning to use it to make Robert believe that his wife is having an affair with Arthur.

Above: Scene from An Ideal Husband

That night, Laura, Gertrude and Arthur watch in the House of Commons as Robert denounces the canal scheme.

Laura returns the letter to Arthur but retains the letter from Gertrude that she stole from Arthur’s library, informing Arthur that she has it.

The next day, Arthur tells Gertrude of Laura’s intention to destroy her marriage using the unsigned note.

Robert arrives and the impropriety of Gertrude having come to Arthur is cleared up to Gertrude’s relief.

Above: Scene from An Ideal Husband

Arthur proposes to Robert’s sister, Mabel (Minnie Driver), but Robert refuses to give his permission, still believing that Arthur is involved with Laura.

The confusion is explained away.

Arthur becomes engaged to Mabel.

Above: English actress Minnie Driver

Now willing to give up his position in society and live a contented life with Gertrude, Robert is offered an important Cabinet position by Lord Caversham (John Wood), Arthur’s father.

Above: English actor John Wood (1930 – 2011)

Arthur persuades a now less judgmental Gertrude to let her husband remain in public life.

Shutter Island is a 2010 American neo-noir psychological thriller film about a Deputy US Marshal who comes to Shutter Island to investigate a psychiatric facility after one of the patients goes missing.

In 1954, US Marshal Edward “Teddy” Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his new partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) travel to Ashecliffe Hospital for the criminally insane on the inhospitable Shutter Island, Boston Harbor, to investigate the disappearance of Rachel Solando (Patricia Clarkson), a patient of the hospital who had previously drowned her three children.

Above: American actor Leonardo Dicaprio

Above: American actor Mark Ruffalo

The staff, led by psychiatrist Dr. John Cawley (Ben Kingsley) and his colleague Dr. Jerimiah Naehring (Max von Sydow), appear uncooperative.

Above: English actor Ben Kingsley

Above: Swedish actor Max von Sydow (1929 – 2020)

The marshals learn that Dr. Lester Sheehan, who was treating Solando, had left the island on vacation immediately after Solando disappeared.

Teddy experiences migraine headaches, flashbacks of his experiences as a US Army soldier during the liberation of Dachau, and also vivid dreams of his wife Dolores (Michelle Williams), who was killed in a fire set by arsonist Andrew Laeddis (Elias Koteas).

Above: American actress Michelle Williams

Above: Canadian actor Elias Koteas

Teddy explains to Chuck that he took the case to find Laeddis, believing he is on the island.

Solando suddenly resurfaces and believes Teddy is her husband.

Teddy later breaks into the restricted Ward C to find Laeddis, where he meets patient George Noyce (Jackie Earle Haley) who appears to know Teddy.

Above: American actor Jackie Earle Haley

George Noyce:

You wanna uncover the truth?

You gotta let her go.

Teddy Daniels:

I can’t.

George Noyce:

You have to let her go!

Teddy Daniels:

I can’t! I can’t!

George Noyce:

Then you’ll never leave this island.

He tells Teddy that the doctors experiment on patients and some are taken to a lighthouse to be lobotomized.

He warns Teddy that everyone is deceiving him and tells him not to trust Chuck.

Teddy regroups with Chuck and they climb the cliffs toward the lighthouse but become separated.

Believing he saw Chuck’s body on the rocks below, Teddy climbs down but finds only a cave where a woman claiming to be the real Solando (Emily Mortimer) in hiding.

She states that she is a former psychiatrist who discovered clandestine experiments to develop mind control but was forcibly committed.

She says that Cawley and Dr. Naehring will use Teddy’s war trauma to feign a psychotic break, allowing them to have him also committed.

Rachel 2:

Do you know how pain enters the body, Marshal?

Do you?

Teddy Daniels:

Depends on where you’re hurt?

Rachel 2:

No, it has nothing to do with the flesh.

The brain controls pain.

Teddy returns to the hospital and is greeted by Cawley.

When Teddy asks about Chuck’s whereabouts, Cawley insists that Teddy does not have a partner and that he arrived on the island alone.

Convinced Chuck was taken to the lighthouse, Teddy heads there but runs into Naehring, who attempts to sedate him.

Teddy overpowers him and breaks into the lighthouse, only to discover Cawley waiting for him.

Teddy confronts Cawley and reveals his encounter with Solando, saying he believes Cawley is experimenting on him.

Cawley denies that Solando ever existed, and insists that Teddy has not been drugged, explaining the tremors as withdrawals from chlorpromazine, a neuroleptic medication that Teddy has been taking for two years.

Chuck arrives and reveals he is, in fact, Dr. Sheehan.

Cawley explains that “Teddy” is Andrew Laeddis, a US Marshal incarcerated at Ashecliffe for murdering his manic depressive wife after she drowned their three children.

Andrew did not seek treatment for Dolores when she burned down their apartment and instead moved his family to a lake house, where Dolores carried out the killings.

Cawley explains that Andrew’s delusion is a result of his guilt, that his migraines and hallucinations are withdrawal symptoms, and that he had created the alternate persona of Edward Daniels, also a Marshal, who acted violently and espoused conspiracy theories about the facility.

The “investigation” is an elaborate role-play to regain his true persona.

Overwhelmed by his sudden recall, Andrew faints.

Awakening later, Andrew calmly recounts the truth, satisfying the doctors that he is lucid.

Cawley notes that they had achieved this state nine months before, but that Andrew had quickly regressed.

He warns that this will be Andrew’s last chance and if he lapses again he will be lobotomized due to his very violent conduct towards other patients such as Noyce, and towards the guards.

Sometime later, Andrew relaxes on the hospital grounds with Sheehan.

Appearing delusional, Andrew again refers to Sheehan as “Chuck” and says they must leave the island.

Sheehan signals to Cawley, who orders that Andrew be lobotomized.

Andrew then asks Sheehan if it would be worse “to live as a monster, or to die as a good man“.

A stunned Sheehan calls Andrew “Teddy” but the latter does not respond and leaves peacefully with the orderlies for his operation.

The Matrix is a 1999 science fiction action film depicts a dystopian future in which humanity is unknowingly trapped inside the Matrix, a simulated reality created by intelligent machines.

Believing computer hacker Neo to be “the One” prophesied to defeat them, Morpheus recruits him into a rebellion against the machines.

In 1999, in an unnamed city, Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves), a computer programmer known as “Neo” in hacking circles, delves into the mystery of the “Matrix“.

Above: Canadian actor Keanu Reeves

His search brings him to the attention of hacker Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), who discloses that the enigmatic Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) can answer Neo’s questions.

Above: Canadian actress Carrie-Anne Moss

Above: American actor Laurence Fishburne

At his workplace, Neo is pursued by police and Agents led by Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving).

Above: British actor Hugo Weaving

Morpheus guides Neo’s escape by phone, able to somehow remotely observe their movements, but Neo ultimately surrenders rather than risk a hazardous getaway.

The Agents interrogate Neo about Morpheus but he refuses to cooperate.

In response, Neo’s mouth suddenly seals shut and the Agents implant a robotic device in his abdomen.

Neo awakens at home, initially dismissing the encounter as a nightmare until Trinity and her allies arrive, extract the implanted tracker, and bring Neo to Morpheus, their leader.

Morpheus offers Neo a choice:

A red pill to uncover the truth about the Matrix or a blue pill to forget everything and return to his normal life.

Opting for the red pill, Neo’s reality distorts.

He awakens submerged in a mechanical pod with invasive cables running throughout his body.

Neo witnesses countless inert humans similarly encased and tended to by machines before he is ejected from the facility and rescued by Morpheus aboard the hovercraft, the Nebuchadnezzar.

Morpheus reveals that the year is approximately 2199.

In the 21st century, humanity lost a war with their artificially intelligent creations, leaving the Earth a devastated ruin.

As a last resort, humans blackened the sky to eliminate the machines’ access to solar power and, in response, the machines developed farms of artificially grown humans to harness their bioelectric energy.

The Matrix is a simulated reality based on human civilization at its peak, designed to keep the subjugated humans oblivious and pacified.

The remaining free humans established an underground refuge known as Zion, living a harsh existence on scarce resources.

Morpheus and his rebel crew hack into the Matrix to free others and recruit them, manipulating the rules of the simulation to gain superhuman physical abilities.

Even so, they are outmatched by the overwhelmingly powerful Agents — sentient programs protecting the Matrix — and dying in the Matrix causes death in the real world.

Morpheus liberated Neo because he believes him to be “the One“, a prophesied figure destined to dismantle the Matrix and liberate humanity.

The crew enter the Matrix to seek guidance from the Oracle (Gloria Foster), the prophetic figure who foretold the existence of the One.

She implies that Neo is not the One and warns him of an imminent choice between his life and Morpheus’s.

Above: American actress Gloria Foster (1933 – 2001)

The crew are ambushed by Agents after being betrayed by Cypher (Joe Pantoliano), a resentful crew member who wants to be reinserted into the Matrix to enjoy its comforts.

Above: American actor Joe Pantolino

Convinced of Neo’s importance, Morpheus sacrifices himself to confront Smith, only to be overpowered and captured.

Meanwhile, Cypher exits the Matrix and begins forcefully disconnecting the others, killing them.

Before Cypher can kill Neo and Trinity, Tank (Marcus Chong), a subdued crew member, regains consciousness, kills Cypher, and safely extracts the survivors.

Above: American actor Marcus Scott Chong

Smith interrogates Morpheus to obtain access codes for Zion’s mainframe, which will allow them to end the human resistance.

Determined to rescue Morpheus, Neo re-enters the Matrix with Trinity.

They successfully free Morpheus, who escapes the Matrix with Trinity, but Smith intercepts Neo.

Gaining confidence in his abilities, Neo fights Smith, demonstrating comparable power and eventually killing him.

However, Smith resurrects in a new body and kills Neo.

In the real world, machine forces called Sentinels attack the Nebuchadnezzar.

By Neo’s body, Trinity confesses her love for him and that the Oracle prophesied she would fall in love with the One.

In the Matrix, Neo revives with newfound abilities to perceive and control the Matrix.

He effortlessly destroys Smith and exits the Matrix just as the Nebuchadnezzar’s electromagnetic pulse disables the ship’s power and the Sentinels.

Sometime later, within the Matrix, Neo communicates with the system, promising to show the enslaved humans a world of limitless possibilities, before flying away.

Should we be completely truthful to others?

To ourselves?

Can we live completely truthful to others?

To ourselves?

Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband reveals the cost of honesty in polite society — some truths are too dangerous to be spoken.

Sunset Boulevard shows a woman clinging desperately to a lie because the truth would destroy her.

Life Is Beautiful tells of a father who shields his son from horror with the beautiful lie of a game.

And yet — Oedipus Rex reminds us that truth will always surface, no matter how deep we bury it.

Shutter Island asks whether it is better to live in a comforting illusion or face unbearable reality.

The Truman Show exposes the carefully curated falsehoods we accept as life.

The Matrix offers a choice: the blue pill or the red — ignorance or knowledge.

But do we dare to choose the truth?

Truth is always on trial.

In history, in literature, in life.

We live in the narratives we create and the illusions we maintain, the realities we choose to accept or reject.

Some truths set us free.

Others chain us to despair.

The question remains — when the moment comes, will we swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

Or will we, like Galileo, whisper to ourselves the reality we dare not speak aloud?

If I could turn the page
In time then I’d rearrange just a day or two
Close my, close my, close my eyes
But I couldn’t find a way
So I’ll settle for one day to believe in you
Tell me, tell me, tell me lies

Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies
Tell me lies
Tell me, tell me lies
Oh no-no, you can’t disguise
You can’t disguise
No, you can’t disguise
Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies

Although I’m not making plans
I hope that you’ll understand there’s a reason why
Close your, close your, close your eyes
No more broken hearts
We’re better off apart, let’s give it a try
Tell me, tell me, tell me lies

Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies
Tell me lies
Tell me, tell me lies
Oh no-no, you can’t disguise
You can’t disguise
No, you can’t disguise
Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies

If I could turn the page
In time then I’d rearrange just a day or two
Close my, close my, close my eyes
But I couldn’t find a way
So I’ll settle for one day to believe in you
Tell me, tell me, tell me lies

Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies
Tell me lies
Tell me, tell me lies
Oh no-no, you can’t disguise
You can’t disguise
No, you can’t disguise

Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies
Tell me lies
Tell me, tell me lies
Oh no-no, you can’t disguise
You can’t disguise
No, you can’t disguise

Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies
Tell me, tell me lies