FURTHERMORE
By Gerry Moran
What’s another hundred years going to bring? Who the hell knows but at the rate we’re waging incessant, callous and cruel wars I wouldn’t be surprised if we weren’t around (all it takes is a few trigger-happy lunatics to nuke us into oblivion). Or perhaps AI will rule the roost and eradicate Man’s follies, foibles and greed (among other things).
Well, whatever about 100 years from now following is a selection of events from 100 years ago, a long time back for sure until I remember that my mother, God rest her, was a lively, energetic 14-year-old in 1924 which brings the distant past that bit nearer to me.
* January 21, 1924: Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, the provincial lawyer turned political agitator better known as Lenin died after a long illness. He was 54.
* February 12: George Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody In Blue’, described as an experiment in modern music, transfixed an audience in New York. He called the piece “a musical kaleidoscope of America, our pep, our blues, our metropolitan madness”.
* Also in February, the lid on Tutankhamun’s sarcophagus in Luxor (which had been discovered 15 months earlier by Howard Carter) was lifted. The first thing Carter saw was a drab linen shroud. When the shroud was drawn back, gasps of amazement could be heard; for almost 3,300 years the cloth had covered a breathtaking, golden effigy of the king while lying among the many treasures round about was a small wreath of flowers that astonishingly still retained their colours and was possibly placed there by Tutankhamun’s wife in a touching farewell gesture.
* April 16: A new giant American film company with a roaring lion as its trademark was formed. The new company, MGM, was an amalgamation of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures and the Louis B Mayer Company (100 years later, that lion is still roaring).
* May 25: Stalin emerged as the Soviet Union’s strong man after the death of Lenin in January.
* July 30: The eight Olympic Games held in Paris were memorable not least for Johnny Weissmuller (later to play Tarzan in 19 films) who won three gold medals in the swimming pool. On the track Britain’s Eric Liddell, the Scottish Rugby international, forsook the 100 metres (for which he was fancied) to avoid competing in heats on a Sunday. He switched to the 400 metres which he won, setting a new record. Cambridge law student Harold Abrahams triumphed against all odds in the 100 metres. He became the first European to win the Olympic title. These events are wonderfully re-enacted in the marvellous movie ‘Chariots Of The Gods’.
* August 25.: The Mauretania sets a new record for crossing the Atlantic at the ripe old age of 17. The Cunard liner completed the 3,198 miles in five days, one hour and 35 minutes at an average speed of 30 miles an hour beating her record made 14 years previously before converting to oil fired boilers.
* September 18: Mahatma Gandhi fasts for 21 days, in despair at the recent riots between Muslims and Hindus. “Nothing I say or write can bring the two communities together.”
* December 20: Paroled after just eight months for high treason, Adolf Hitler, leader of the Nazis, an extreme German nationalist party, was treated like an honoured guest by his gaolers; he had a room with a view overlooking the river Lech while visitors flocked to pay him homage and brought him gifts .
* December 24: Eight people died in Britain’s worst air crash when an Imperial Airways aircraft plummeted to the ground seconds after take-off from Croydon aerodrome. The UK’s previous worst disaster was in 1922 when six people died in a mid-air collision.
And in Ireland in 1924
In Ireland, Dublin Corporation renames Sackville St. O’Connell St. In an austerity budget Finance Minister Ernest Blythe cuts the old age pension by 10% from 10 shillings to mine shillings. Minister for Education Eoin McNeill makes the teaching of Irish compulsory in all schools.
Eamon de Valera is arrested in Newry Town Hall after defying an order preventing him from speaking in Northern Ireland. Seán O’ Casey’s play ‘Juno And The Paycock’ opens at the Abbey Theatre. In the Art competitions at the Paris Olympics Jack B Yeats (brother of WB) wins silver for his painting ‘The Liffey Swim.
Meanwhile, Dublin win the hurling All Ireland and Kerry win the football.
