Eventually they understood why. The Hymn to Aton is in the Bible. It is incorporated into Psalm 104.
MISCELLANEOUS STORIES ABOUT
INTERESTING PEOPLE
As a survivor in a time of political turmoil, no one can even begin to match the record of Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord (1754-1837.) He was a major figure in French diplomacy both as an ambassador and as foreign minister, in the last days of the Old Regime of Louis XVI, during the JacobinRepublic and the Reign of Terror, under the Consulate and the Empire of Napoleon, during the Bourbon Restoration in 1814, and in the overthrow of that restoration in 1832. At every step along the way, through intimidation, embezzlement, and solicitation of bribes, he emerged more powerful, wealthier, and more secure than before.
One reason for his ability to survive was his remarkable aplomb. When, for example, a conspiracy aimed at overthrowing the emperor began among members of the French government after Napoleon's defeat at the 1813 Battle of Leipzig, Talleyrand, sensing the direction of the wind, joined it. But Napoleon found out about the conspiracy and sent soldiers to round up the conspirators.
He lined them up and interrogated each one in turn, and each one in turn, terrified for his life, denied any part in the conspiracy. When Napoleon came at last to Talleyrand and demanded to know if the foreign minister had been conspiring against his emperor, Talleyrand looked calmly at the faces of the others, and then asked Napoleon, "Conspiring with whom, Sire?"
Genius has been defined as the possession of a mind that works so differently from the norm that mere mortals such as we cannot begin to fathom what goes on in there. The term is usually applied to giants of mathematics and science, but it can also certainly be applied to some of the greatest artists, Michelangelo Buenarotti being on the top of the list.
Michelangelo came into possession of a twenty-foot tall rectangular block of pure white marble which, after time and great effort, he transformed into his monumental statue of David. When an admirer expressed astonishment that so magnificent a work of art could be carved from the massive pillar of rock, the artist demurred. "You do not understand," Michelangelo said. "The statue was already in there, present in the block of marble. All I did was to remove the extraneous stone."
The Enlightenment was an intellectual, philosophical, and scientific movement which dominated the western world throughout the 18th century, and two of its towering figures were the Frenchman Voltaire and the American Benjamin Franklin. Their essays were avidly read on both sides of the Atlantic; both were contributors to Diderot's Encyclopedia; Voltaire's dramas, Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac, Voltaire's travels in England, Franklin's scientific experiments, Voltaire's residence in Berlin as a guest of Frederick the Great, Franklin's role in America's revolutionary Congress ... all of these things were well known to the intellectuals of France.
Thus it was that when Franklin was sent to Paris by Congress in late 1776, and Voltaire returned home from exile in early 1778, the anticipated moment of their meeting was eagerly anticipated. That moment came in March of that year. Voltaire's play, Irene, was being performed in Paris, and both men were in attendance, though neither knew in advance that the other would be there. The entire audience, however, seems to have been better informed, and the tension in the theater as the anticipated meeting drew nigh was palpable.
Franklin and Voltaire were both seated in the balcony, but on opposite sides of the theater. Silence descended upon the hall as the 72-year-old Franklin slowly made his way toward the frail 84-year-old Voltaire. After what seemed a seemingly interminable time, Franklin came to Voltaire's seat, and held open his arms. Voltaire, with assistance, rose to his feet, and embraced Franklin.
The theater erupted into a cacophonous pandemonium of cheers, cries, and shouts. "It was," one observer recalled, "as if the gods of the Enlightenment had descended from heaven to grace us mere mortals with the magnificence and the benevolence of their beings."
There is no dissent from the consensus of opinion that Albert Einstein, a German Jew who fortunately left Europe before the Second World War, was the greatest mathematician and physicist since Isaac Newton. His Theory of General Relativity posited a new concept of gravity, namely that it is the curvature of space around mass. If this were true, then light passing close to the sun would be curved, i.e., its trajectory would be altered by the sun's massive gravitational pull. (This would also prove, of course, that energy, being subject to gravity, was interchangeable with matter.)
British astronomer Arthur Eddington was able to prove the theory when, during a total eclipse of the sun in 1919, he recorded the positions of the stars and noted that their expected positions had changed. In other words, stars that would ordinarily be invisible during the day were visible during the eclipse; but the gravitational force of the sun had bent the trajectories of their light. This is an interesting moment in the history of science, but a comment made by Einstein before the eclipse is not only interesting; it speaks volumes about European conditions after the First World War.
"If I am proven right," he said, "the Germans will say I'm a German and the French will say I'm a Jew. If I am proven wrong, the Germans will say I'm a Jew and the French will say I’m a German."
William Jennings Bryan and Henry Clay have something unpleasant in common, unpleasant for them, at least: both ran for president as the candidates of major parties three times, and both were soundly defeated all three times, the Whig Clay in 1824, 1832, and 1844, the Democrat Bryan in 1896, 1900, and 1908.
Clay's last bid in 1844 seemed to depend upon a popular reaction against what was effectively sixteen years of Andrew Jackson (eight of Old Hickory himself, four of Jackson's VP Van Buren, and four of John Tyler who, though technically a Whig, was actually just a Jacksonian Democrat with a personal dislike of Jackson). But when, well before the campaign began, Clay received a message informing him that the Democrats had nominated James K. Polk, a Tennessee politician nicknamed "Young Hickory," Clay was heard to mutter audibly, "Beaten again, by God!"
William Jennings Bryan was somewhat more affable about his defeats, by McKinley in 1896 and 1900, and by Taft in 1908. When asked how he felt after the 1908 election results were in, Bryan said, "I feel like the drunk who gets kicked out of the saloon three times. After the third time he picks himself up, dusts himself off, and says, 'You can't fool me. Those guys don't want me in there!'"
Adlai Stevenson, Democratic governor of Illinois, was also defeated in his bid for the White House, though only twice, both times by Eisenhower, in 1952 and 1956. His reaction to defeat was somewhat less than gracious. When a supporter tried to console him by saying, "Every intelligent man in the country was behind you," Stevenson, with the egocentric arrogance unfortunately characteristic of political elites, replied, "Yes, but I needed a majority." The American people were apparently too stupid to elect him, choosing instead Eisenhower, under whom the US enjoyed eight years of prosperity and peace.
Sun Yat-sen, one of the great figures in the history of early 20th century China, was frequently forced into exile because of his involvement in revolutionary activities. In London early in the century he was attending a dinner hosted by wealthy Chinese who held republican views similar to his own, and he found himself seated beside a young, eager American journalist. Several short speeches preceded the meal, and the journalist attempted to be gregarious in a somewhat condescending manner. When the soup was served he asked Sun, "Likee soupee?" in the bizarre Pidgin English most British and Americans believed was the only way to communicate with Chinese. "Likee beefee?" was followed by "Likee fishee?", "Likee veggee?" and "Likee cakee?"
After dinner Sun was introduced as a guest speaker. Sun, who had been educated at the 'Iolani school in Honolulu, Hawaii, spoke a half dozen languages, and delivered his speech in impeccable English, much to the young journalist's embarrassed consternation. But when Sun resumed his seat, he preempted the coming apology by smiling and asking, "Likee speechee?"
Sun Yat-sen's Nationalis
t (Guomindang) Party came under the leadership of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek after Sun's death, and Chiang was, regardless of his positive vision of China's future, someone who abused power shamelessly. When he was staying overnight in a village, for example, he would have all the dogs in the village killed so their barking would not disturb him. More disastrously for a rural agrarian area he would also have all the roosters killed so their dawn crowing would not wake him up. His wife, taking her cue from his behavior, wore all articles of clothing only once and then had them destroyed, and also ordered her sheets to be changed (and the old sheets destroyed) each morning and also after every nap.
Of greater concern were the hundreds of millions upon hundreds of millions of dollars in aid Chiang received from the U.S. and other countries, money which seemingly disappeared down a bottom pit of venality and embezzlement. It was for this reason that in U.S. State Department circles Chiang Kai-shek was referred to as Generalissimo Cash My Check.
Manuel Quezon, Philippine revolutionary and later US ally and eventually the first president of an independent Philippines, was born and raised in a small provincial town in which the local priest was treated almost as a potentate. Once when as a teenager he needed to speak to the priest, the clergyman arrogantly offered Quezon his hand to kiss. Quezon, annoyed at the presumption, grabbed the priest's hand and shook it instead. The priest responded by throwing the young man out of the church.
Publically humiliated, Quezon swore revenge. But then he learned that the supposedly celibate priest was having an affair with a girl in the poorer side of town. Quezon introduced himself to her, seduced her; and left her room with a souvenir. He was thereafter seen walking about the town with the priest's clerical collar hanging loosely around his neck.
Quezon's tendency to oppose authority had a significant historical consequence. He was not at all involved in radical politics in the late 19th century Philippines, not involved in politics at all, actually. But he was a man of amorous passions, and when a young lady of his acquaintance was the object of uninvited attentions by a Spanish officer (the Philippines, be it remembered, being a colony of Spain until 1898, at which time the US acquired the country in the Spanish-American War), Quezon confronted the Spaniard and struck him in the face. He was of course arrested and sent to jail; but the authorities, not wishing to expose the tawdry situation attendant upon the assault, instead accused Quezon of being an anti-Spanish rebel, a supporter of Emilio Aguinaldo, the great Filipino guerilla leader.
Quezon had barely heard of Aguinaldo and had nothing to do with the independence movement, but his conviction as a rebel aroused his interest. He thus became a supporter of Aguinaldo and a member of the independence movement. It was this that resulted eventually in Quezon becoming the first president of the Philippines.
(Warning! Vulgar language alert!) Diplomacy has been defined as the art of bringing home the bacon without spilling the beans. This involves, of course, being able to speak at length without actually saying anything. Dimitrio Lakas, figure-head President of Panama during the Torrijos dictatorship, was a master of this, as American journalist William F. Buckley learned, to his chagrin.
In 1976, as debate over the proposed Panama Canal Treaty was raging in the U.S., Buckley went to Panama City to tape an episode of his weekly talk show, Firing Line, with Lakas as his sole guest. The topics ranged from the Canal, the treaty, the drug problem, the U.N., and at last, Panama's warming relations with Castro's Cuba. But try as he might, and using every single interrogative technique at his disposal, Buckley could not get Lakas to say anything that could be even vaguely described as a comprehendible declaratory sentence. Convoluted, vapid, vacuous, evasive, meaningless statements were all that Buckley could elicit from the person he later described as "the impossible guest."
As the interview ended with Lakas continuing to emit empty blather about Panamanian-Cuban relations, Buckley had long since despaired of taping anything at all of substance.
And then, immediately after the cameras stopped rolling and the microphones stopped recording, Lakas leaned forward to Buckley and said, "And as far as I'm concerned, Mr. Buckley, I'd just as soon fuck Castro as sign a treaty with him." For what was probably the first and last time in his long, loquacious life, Buckley was speechless.
President Charles De Gaulle of France was undoubtedly the greatest Frenchman of the 20th century. He led the Free French forces while the country was under German occupation, and then after liberation helped establish the 4th Republic. When that regime began to collapse under the strain of the Algerian War, he came out of retirement and created the 5th Republic, becoming its first president.
He resigned in 1969 over a political issue. This decision upset his supporters and political allies, one of whom said to him, "You must not resign! You are indispensible! You are irreplaceable!"
De Gaulle dismissed this with a wave of his hand and said, "The graveyards of France are filled with indispensible, irreplaceable men."
One of the most common clichés in prison comedies is the file baked in a cake. It actually happened.
Eamon De Valera, first president of an independent Ireland, was sentenced to prison instead of execution after the Easter Rebellion of 1916 because of his citizenship. His mother had emigrated from Ireland to the United States late in the 19th century, where she met and married an Argentine immigrant, and a year later gave birth to a baby boy whom she named Eamon. After her husband's death, she sent her two-year-old son to live with relatives in Ireland. Thus De Valera was by birth an American citizen; and in 1916, with the U.S. still neutral in World War One and the British eager for us to enter the war against Germany, executing an American would have been contrary to Britain’s interests.
So De Valera—or "Dev," as his admirers called him—went to prison, instead of being hanged as were so many of the other leaders of the Easter Rebellion. While incarcerated he was allowed to send and receive mail, subject of course to censorship. One of his friends received a postcard from him with a drawing in Dev's hand showing a drunken man fitting an enormous key into a lock. The drawing passed through censorship with no difficulty, because the censor did not realize that Dev had drawn a picture of the shape and size of the key to his jail cell. His friends managed to send him, without inspection, a cake in which was baked a file and a metal key blank. Dev meticulously and patiently filed the blank down to the shape of the key; and one fine evening, Eamon De Valera unlocked his cell and walked out of jail. A massive manhunt ensued, but he was never captured. Fourteen years later he was President of Ireland.
The last president of Germany before the establishment of the Third Reich was a hero of the First World War, Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg, who was born in 1837 and died in 1934. Elected president in 1925, he wished to retire at the end of his term of office in 1932, but he was talked into running for re-election by politicians who feared (correctly) that otherwise Hitler would be elected president.
Hindenburg was re-elected, but he was not a functioning executive. In fact, his senility contributed to the establishment of Hitler's dictatorship. The problem was that he seemed lucid enough in the morning, but by the afternoon he was clearly in a different world. On one occasion, he was speaking to the finance minister and began and ended the conversation by screaming, "General, I was not at all satisfied with the spring maneuvers!" On another occasion he was watching an armed forces parade when he turned to his aide and commented, "I did not know we had taken so many Russian prisoners."
Thus it was that when Hermann Goring arranged the burning of the Reichstag (Germany's parliament building) and Chancellor Hitler came to President von Hindenburg with the alarming news that the Communists were trying to start a revolution, and that to prevent this Chancellor Hitler needed presidential authority to exercise emergency powers, the old man, barely understanding what has happening, signed the order with his aged, shaky hand. And thus was the Nazi dictatorship precipitated. Hindenburg died the next year, never realizing or understanding
what he had done.
John D. Rockefeller, who had cornered the market on oil refining, was at the time of his death the wealthiest men in the world, with a personal fortune in excess of one billion 1937 dollars. His success was a result of foresight and luck, of course; but it was also a result of attention to detail and an awareness of the importance of every single dollar and cent. For example, refined oil was shipped from refineries to markets in wooden barrels whose staves were held together by copper bands fastened by solder. Rockefeller asked how many drops of solder were needed to fasten the bands. When he was told it required fifty drops, he ordered a test barrel constructed using forty drops. The barrel held. Rockefeller then ordered that all barrels thereafter be fastened with forty drops of solder. "I saved a fortune by making that change," he later commented.
Though he officially retired in 1897 (and died at age 98 in 1937), Rockefeller always kept his eye on the businesses being run by his son. He could often be found in the corporate offices early in the morning examining the books and going over dispatches. One morning an office worker arrived to find the old man on the floor on his hands and knees. Fearing that he had fallen or had a seizure, the employee ran over to him crying, "Mr. Rockefeller! Are you all right? Are you hurt?"
"No, no, I'm fine," the old man said. "I dropped a quarter."
One of John D's grandchildren was Nelson Rockefeller, who served as governor of New York and vice-president of the United States. As one of the Rockefellers he was, of course, quite wealthy. (His estate at the time of his death was estimated at $632 million.)
Warm and Witty Side of Attila the Hun Page 9
