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Guy Fawkes tries to blow up Parliament.
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Tokugawa shogunate establishes licensed pleasure quarter in Edo.
These pleasure quarters provide the setting for Chikamatsu's bunraku tragedy, The Love Suicides at Amijima. -
Louis XIV begins ruling France.
This will prove very beneficial to Moliere. -
Tartuffe by Moliere
Moliere tries to convince to think for ourselves so that we don't get taken for a ride by some hustler. Oh, and be sure to thank your gracious king! -
Matsuo Basho goes on a journey.
Basho, haiku master, took a five month long journey in 1689 that resulted in The Narrow Road to the Deep North, a sort-of travelogue through nature and language itself. -
About 100,000 African slaves cross the Atlantic Ocean.
Bringing culture and folklore, like the Anansi story, with them. -
The Love Suicides at Amijima by Chikamatsu
Some puppets look for love in all the wrong places. -
"A Modest Proposal" by Jonathan Swift
Queeriarty on tumblr said it best when he wrote, "Jonathan Swift man. He was just 100000000% done with society so he wrote a sarcastic ass work about the Irish selling their babies for food and everyone took him seriously and thought he was weird and like how do you even deal with that kind of level of omfg I was just kidding poor guy" -
Candide, or Optimism! by Voltaire
Voltaire takes shots at pretty much everyone in this tale of one simple man's quest to be with his one true love and carve out a life in "the best of all possible worlds." -
America declares independence from England.
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Mozart's Don Giovanni is first performed.
I'd post a link to a three-hour recording of the opera, but I'm trying to get a good grade. -
Period: to
French Revolution
In which heads rolled. -
"The Tyger" by William Blake
William Blake really wants to know how the hell you make a tyger and what sort of dreadful being would even make something like that. -
"Frost at Midnight" by Samuel Coleridge
Coleridge lets his infant son know what it's all about while the fire fades. -
Count Alessandro Volta invents the battery.
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Napoleon crowned emperor of France.
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Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
God and Mephistopheles invent MTV's Punk'd before MTV and Faust learns the hard way not to take in stray animals. -
British prohibit slave trade.
WAY BEFORE WE DO. -
France abolishes slave trade.
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Britain defeats Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo.
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Beethoven composes Symphony no. 9
And it's really long. -
The Brewery of Eggshells
This creepy as all get-out Irish folk story about a hideous imp baby is probably the best argument against Jonathan Swift's Modest Proposal. It was recorded in a collection of Irish folklore by Thomas Croker in 1825. -
At this point, about 10% of the world's population can read.
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Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville
Melville preferred not to publish this brilliant story of non-compliance under his own name. He still had a sour taste in his mouth from all the hate shoveled onto his previous work. -
Matthew Perry goes to Japan.
No, COMMODORE Matthew Perry. He was spent by President Filmore to basically force the Japanese to industrialize and start trading with us. -
Darwin publishes "On the Origin of Species."
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Serfs emancipated in Russia
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Richard Gatling patents the machine gun.
Because the world really needed it. -
British defeat the Zulu people in Africa.
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The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy
"None of your stupid bull%#@$ matters because you're just going to die, idiot."- Leo Tolstoy
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Eiffel Tower built.
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Tom Tit Tot
Joseph Jacob printed this English version of the Rumplestiltskin story in his English Folk Tales collection in 1890. -
Russian Famine; 500,000 die
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X-Rays discovered.
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"Heart of Darkess" by Joseph Conrad
Just because you're not piking heads in front of your house doesn't mean you don't have a bit of that darkness in you. -
Anansi the Spider
Walter Jekyll published a written version of the Jaimaican telling of this folk story from Africa about a manipulate jerk spider. -
Period: to
World War I
Where Ernest Hemingway saw too much. -
"Tonight I Can Write"
"Tonight I Can Write" Here's a reading of Neruda's ode to getting over someone creepilly set to footage of Natalie Portman. -
"Explico Algunas Cosas" de Pablo Neruda
"Explico Algunas Cosas" de Pablo Neruda Pablo recounts the horrors of the Spanish Civil War in this chill-inducing poem. -
Period: to
Spanish Civil War
Where Neruda saw blood in the streets. -
"Steal Away to Jesus" sung by Mahalia Jackson & Nat King Cole
Mahalia Jackson & Nat King Cole "Steal Away to Jesus" A stunningly beautiful rendition of the old spiritual that was famous for being a signal for escaped slaves.
