On this day in 2010, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake occurred 25 kilometers west of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. More than 100,000 people were killed.
Born in 1924 – Sergei Parajanov, Georgian-Armenian director and screenwriter.
Above: Georgian actress Sofiko Chiaureli in Parajanov’s film The Color of Pomegranates (1969).
Born in 1942 – Stephen Hawking, English physicist and author.
“People won’t have time for you if you are always angry or complaining.”
Born in 1891 – Zora Neale Hurston, American writer and anthropologist.
“There is nothing to make you like other human beings so much as doing things for them.”
“I have known the joy and pain of friendship. I have served and been served. I have made some good enemies for which I am not a bit sorry. I have loved unselfishly, and I have fondled hatred with the red-hot tongs of Hell. That’s living.”
Born in 1912 – Jacques Ellul, French philosopher and critic.
Ellul in 1967:“Modern technology has become a total phenomenon for civilization, the defining force of a new social order in which efficiency is no longer an option but a necessity imposed on all human activity.”
Watch “The Betrayal by Technology: A Portrait of Jacques Ellul” (1992, 54 min), by Jan van Boeckel.
Born in 1941 – Hayao Miyazaki, Japanese animator, director, and screenwriter.
Above: Still from Miyazaki’s 2013 film, The Wind Rises.
Born in 1961 – Todd Haynes, American director and screenwriter.
Above: Julianne Moore in Haynes’ 1995 film Safe.
Born in 1869 – Henri Matisse, French painter and sculptor.
Above: Matisse a few months before his death.
Today is the Feast of the Holy Innocents.
From the Gospel of Matthew: “When Herod saw that he had been fooled by the wise men he was furiously angry. He issued orders, and killed all the male children of two years and under in Bethlehem and the surrounding district—basing his calculation on his careful questioning of the wise men.”
Above: Massacre of the Innocents by Pieter Brueghel the Elder (1567)
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