This date is the anniversary of the sinking of the White Ship in the English Channel, which drowned the son of Henry I and set in motion the events that led to the period of civil war in England known as the Anarchy.
The Anarchy was brought to a close by the reign of Henry II, who (probably unintentionally) had Thomas Beckett offed. Backtracking to Hank the Deuce led me to a list of monarchs in the British Isles, which led me to a list of Scottish monarchs, which led me to...
...a movie about Idi Amin? Huh. The things one learns...
Sigh. Looking at Pugsley and the Dear Leader, one realizes that batshit crazy Third World dictators sure have gone through a quality slump in the last thirty years...
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4 comments:
You mean The Last King of Scotland? Excellent movie -- I recommend it.
Don't forget, the sinking of The White Ship also made possible a great series of medieval mystery novels.
Yeah, dictators were a lot more colorful. Salvador Dali once sent Ceaucescu of Romania a telegram congratulating him on his excessiveness. Think about that one for a second. The century's biggest, most colorful nut sends you a telegram saying that HE thinks YOU'RE extravagant. Not in a letter, or a phone call, and not in an interview for a newspaper article. No, via telegram, long after telegrams became passe. Kind of like having Robert Downey walk up to you and say, "Man, you have a drug problem."
First, Dali wouldn't stick out anymore (like Charles Manson said, "it used to be, being crazy really meant something - nowadays, everybody is crazy"), and second, modern dictators are more like mid level federal agency hacks in style than swashbucklers anyway, so who would he feel like sending a telegram to?
If you have never seen Last King Of Scotland then rent it one dark winter night, great movie with a very cool soundtrack.
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