Hamptons Television

11/06/2024

" I have learned to use the word impossible with the greatest caution. "

- Werner von Braun

11/06/2024

In his inaugural address, Lincoln appealed to our disgruntled Nation:
“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break, our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

11/05/2024

11/05/2024

On this day in 1935 - The game "Monopoly" was introduced by Parker Brothers Company.

11/04/2024

Rest in Peace 💔

11/04/2024

Read to your children

11/03/2024

"If the wind does not serve, take to the oars."

Si ventus non servit, te confers ad remos.

11/02/2024

On this day in 1920, the KDKA radio station in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, sent out the first-ever regular radio broadcast in the United States. According to the jargon of the day, the Harding-Cox presidential election results were sent out “over the air". At the time, only 5,000 Americans owned radios. In its early days, no one could imagine how radio might be lucrative. As media moguls began to get creative, a mad grab began for control of the airwaves took place. Commercial radio won out when, in 1922, the New York station WEAF (later known as WNBC) began selling on-air advertising.

While companies were initially skeptical, radio advertising soon proved wildly effective. This was the first time in history when advertising could enter private places without being deliberately carried inside, such as in the pages of a newspaper. A listener might tune in to hear the first broadcast of a baseball game, for example — also compliments of KDKA, in 1921 — and would have no way of evading advertisements, short of switching off the dial.

The result was a totally new relationship between the American public and consumption. Suddenly, private life was punctuated with reminders about product options, and the ability to purchase more and better goods increasingly defined American success. Commercial broadcasting successfully linked status, self-worth, and identity with shopping.

Radio changed culture in many additional ways, from the introduction of instantaneous news, to providing a platform for politicians, to shaping the way Americans thought about important current events, such as World War II, the first major war in the era of broadcasting. Radio also paved the way for other media. Once Americans grew accustomed to the voices of radio advertisers in the home, it was easy to invite television, and then internet ad banners, into the family.

In 1906, the American inventor Lee de Forest created an amplifier that made broadcasting possible. Of commercial radio, de Forest said: “What have you done with my child? You have sent him out on the street in rags of ragtime to collect money from all and sundry. You have made of him a laughingstock of intelligence, surely a stench in the nostrils of the gods of the ionosphere.”

Broadcasting has expanded American thinking and reminded listeners and viewers of our potential outside of the mall. Yet we can trace our modern shopping habits all the way back to that first Pittsburgh broadcast, over 100years ago today.

11/02/2024

All Souls Day. If you remember your loved ones, their love will fill your heart. ❤️

11/02/2024

It’s the birthday of frontier hero Daniel Boone, born near Reading, Pennsylvania (1734). He was one of 11 children, raised in a Quaker household. He grew up wandering through the woods, tending the family’s cattle. He learned to track animals, and he hunted with a wooden spear until he was 12, when he got his first rifle. But then two of his older siblings married non-Quakers, or “worldlings,” and the family was ostracized by the Quaker community. So they moved to North Carolina. It took them more than a year to get there.

Daniel Boone fought in the French and Indian War, came home and got married, and managed to have 10 children in between his long and frequent hunting trips into the wilderness. He explored farther and farther west, and in 1767 he ventured into what is now Kentucky. A couple of years later, he made it to the Cumberland Gap, and then he said, “I returned to my family with a determination to bring them as soon as possible to live in Kentucky, which I esteemed a second paradise.” He did manage to move his whole family to the Kentucky territory, then western Virginia, and finally settled in Missouri when it was still owned by France. When someone asked him why he had left Kentucky, he said it was “too crowded.” In 1788, when he moved to western Virginia, there were about 70,000 people in the entire territory.

Daniel Boone became a myth even during his lifetime, the quintessential rugged outdoorsman. In 1784, John Filson published a book called The Discovery, Settlement and Present State of Kentucky to Which Is Added the Adventures of Daniel Boon. Filson interviewed Boone and looked at his journals, but he heavily edited the frontiersman’s words, replacing them with flowery language. He presented Boone’s story in the first person, as an autobiography, and Boone himself happily claimed that every word was true, and the book became extremely popular in Europe and America. It went through numerous editions, freely edited and adapted. Lord Byron included a long ode to Boone in his epic poem Don Juan, and James Fenimore Cooper used Boone as the inspiration for the character Natty Bumppo in his series of novels The Leatherstocking Tales.

There was only one painting done of Boone during his lifetime, showing him in a buckskin shirt, leggings, moccasins, and a beaver hat. But in the 1820s, an actor portraying Boone couldn’t find a beaver hat, so he grabbed a coonskin cap instead. To this day Daniel Boone is portrayed in a coonskin cap, even though the real Boone thought coonskin caps were silly and impractical — he always wore a beaver or felt hat instead, which had a wide brim for keeping out the sun and rain.

11/01/2024

They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds.

Hanno cercato di seppellire noi, non sapevano che eravamo semi

11/01/2024

Today is All Saints' Day, and Pope Julius II chose this day in 1512 to display Michelangelo's paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel for the first time. It took Michelangelo four years to complete the paintings that decorate the ceiling of the chapel. The paintings are of scenes from the Old Testament, including the famous center section, "The Creation of Adam." The chapel itself was built about 25 years earlier, and various Renaissance painters were commissioned to paint frescos on the walls.

Michelangelo was 33 years old at the time, and he tried to point out to the pope that he was a sculptor, and not really a painter, but the pope wouldn't listen. Michelangelo used his skills as a sculptor to make the two-dimensional ceiling look like a series of three-dimensional scenes — a technique that was relatively new at the time. It took him four years to finish the job, between 1508 and 1512. He worked from a scaffold 60 feet above the floor, and he covered about 10,000 square feet of surface. Every day, fresh plaster was laid over a part of the ceiling and Michelangelo had to finish painting before the plaster dried.

The German writer Wolfgang von Goethe wrote, "We cannot know what a human being can achieve until we have seen [the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel]."

11/01/2024

Happy Halloween!

10/31/2024

The moment you're ready to quit is usually the moment right before the miracle happens.

10/31/2024

Many find it kind of spooky that the world's most famous magician died on the year's most "magical" day.

A few days earlier a college student punched him four times in the stomach to test Houdini's claims that he could withstand any blow to the abdomen.

Houdini reportedly was caught off-guard and the the punches ruptured his appendix.

10/30/2024

Frankenstein 1931

10/30/2024

Oct. 30, 1938

Radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds, starring Orson Welles, caused a nationwide panic.

Fake news bulletins describing a Martian invasion of New Jersey were so realistic, radio listeners freaked out and flooded police departments with calls.

The broadcast remains the most famous Halloween hoax of all time.

https://youtu.be/VKralXDreqk