Month: December 2017

Recording Industry Association of American Sues Napster (1999)

Shortly after Napster was founded in 1999, the popular file-sharing service was hit with a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The trial gave Napster so much publicity that usage of the service increased, despite RIAA’s claim that Napster users were breaking the law by downloading copyrighted music for free. Though it was forced by an injunction to shut down its network in July 2001, Napster did not fold. What happened to it? Discuss

Source: The Free Dictionary

Pearl Harbor Day

Pearl Harbor Day marks the anniversary of the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor in 1941, bringing the United States into World War II and widening the European war to the Pacific. Many states proclaim a Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, and each year services are held on December 7 at the Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor. The marble memorial, built over the sunken USS Arizona and dedicated in 1962, was designed by architect Alfred Preis, a resident of Honolulu who was an Austrian citizen in 1941 and was interned as an enemy alien. Discuss

Source: The Free Dictionary

Willa Sibert Cather (1873)

Cather moved with her family to Nebraska at the age of nine, and though she later settled in New York, her prairie upbringing deeply influenced her writing. Her novels, which include O Pioneers!, Death Comes for the Archbishop, and My Ántonia, celebrate the spirit and courage of pioneer life. Her works include several independent heroines of the frontier and have been studied from a feminist perspective. Cather occasionally wore men’s clothing and went by what nickname? Discuss

Source: The Free Dictionary

Netsuke

Netsuke are tiny carved figurines used to secure the cord of a purse or container to the sash of a kimono. Carved by Japanese artists from materials such as ivory and wood, netsuke reflect many aspects of Japan’s culture, with some representing simple objects and others depicting entire scenes from history and folklore. First invented in the 17th century, the practical yet artistic items are still produced today. Why did the Japanese need to attach containers to their robes in the first place? Discuss

Source: The Free Dictionary

US Federal Judge Rules James Joyce’s Ulysses Not Obscene (1933)

For more than a decade after its debut, James Joyce’s masterpiece, Ulysses, was banned in the US. A literary magazine had attempted to publish it in serial form, but the series was cut short after the publishers ran a rather suggestive passage and were convicted of obscenity. When the implicit ban on the book was finally challenged in 1933, Judge John M. Woolsey praised the work for its literary merits and ruled that it was not obscene. How did a publisher force the issue to court? Discuss

Source: The Free Dictionary

Joyce Kilmer (1886)

Kilmer was a prolific poet who celebrated nature and faith in short, sentimental verse. His works, now mostly forgotten, have been dismissed by modern scholars as overly simplistic. Today, his reputation largely rests on the wide popularity of a single 1913 poem, “Trees.” It begins, “I think that I shall never see / A poem lovely as a tree,” and many specific trees have been proposed as Kilmer’s inspiration. His career was cut short when what killed him at age 31? Discuss

Source: The Free Dictionary