Free Republic

Happy 90th birthday today to the original Jersey Boy Frankie Valli (born 5/3/34). Known for his distinctive falsetto voice and as the frontman of the Four Seasons, one of the most successful vocal groups of the 1960s, along with a solo career that garnered hits such as “My Eyes Adored You” and “Grease.” In addition to his singing career, he has also ventured into acting and appeared in several films and television shows.

Anyone who relies on the voice of reason cannot ignore Immanuel Kant. April 22 marks the 300th anniversary of the German philosopher's birth. What does the author of "Perpetual Peace" still have to say to us today? If you want to understand the world, you don't necessarily have to travel it. Take one look at Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). On April 22, the world celebrates the 300th anniversary of his birth. The German philosopher never left his East Prussian home of Königsberg — now Kaliningrad and part of Russia — yet this did not stop him from trying to understand the...

This week is the 200th anniversary of Lord Byron’s death. The most famous poet of his age (an odd phrase now) died fighting for Greek independence in the marshes of Missolonghi. “Who would write, who had anything better to do?” he once said. There was a strange contest over his body and memory: The lungs and larynx remained in Greece but friends carried the rest back to England, where huge crowds followed the funeral procession. A month after his death, his former editor burned his memoirs, worried they would damage the reputation of a superstar read around the world. Does...

Robert MacNeil, who created the even-handed, no-frills PBS newscast “The MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour” in the 1970s and co-anchored the show for with his late partner, Jim Lehrer, for two decades, died on Friday. He was 93. MacNeil died of natural causes at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, according to his daughter, Alison MacNeil. MacNeil first gained prominence for his coverage of the Senate Watergate hearings for the public broadcasting service and began his half-hour “Robert MacNeil Report” on PBS in 1975 with his friend Lehrer as Washington correspondent.

Could find nothing in the media to note the anniversay.

I see absolutely nothing in the media about it.

A sculptor has expressed renewed hope for a large-scale memorial to Benny Hill, on the centenary of the comedian's birth. The Benny Hill Show ran on BBC and ITV from 1955 to 1989, making the Southampton-born star a household name. Barnsley sculptor Graham Ibbeson was commissioned to make a fibreglass mould of the late comedian in 2004, but it has remained in storage ever since. He said a public statue would be a fitting tribute to Hill's talent. Mr Ibbeson said: "He was a comic genius. His stage was everybody's living room.

Sunday’s centenary of the death of Vladimir Lenin, one of the most influential leaders of the 20th century, will largely go uncelebrated in his home country of Russia this weekend, where the revolutionary leader stands accused of laying a “timebomb” underneath Russia and Ukraine that has exploded in the past decade. There will be no parades or stirring speeches in Red Square. The obvious reason is that one of Lenin’s most strident critics is Vladimir Putin, who appears far more enamoured with the empire that Lenin’s revolutionaries overthrew. Often portrayed in official Soviet culture as a grandfatherly, nurturing figure who...

As Doctor Who legend Tom Baker celebrates his 90th birthday, we had to mark the occasion in style – with some rare and newly released photos of the man himself. Last year, Baker, who famously played the Fourth Doctor, celebrated Doctor Who's 60th anniversary with Radio Times magazine, opening up in an interview and posing for photos. Now, we can exclusively share five more portraits from that shoot, which show Baker suited up and draped in a replica of his iconic Fourth Doctor scarf. To date, Baker remains the longest-serving Doctor, playing the Time Lord from 1974 to 1981. His...

Peter Schickele, an American composer whose career as a writer of serious concert music was often eclipsed by that of his antic alter ego, the thoroughly debauched, terrifyingly prolific and mercifully fictional P.D.Q. Bach, died on Tuesday at his home in Bearsville, a hamlet outside Woodstock, N.Y. He was 88. His death was confirmed by his daughter, Karla Schickele, who said his health had declined after a series of infections last fall. His music was performed by the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Lark Quartet, the Minnesota Opera and other notable ensembles, as well as by the folk...

Many years ago, I was in crisis. As a result of university, I had come to hate reading, an experience all too familiar to those who study literature. What saved me was picking up an unfashionable Victorian novel in a bookshop: Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White (1860). A short way into its opening – in which the hero Walter recounts how, returning from his mother’s cottage in Hampstead he is accosted by a terrified young woman dressed in white, assists her, then learns that she has escaped from an asylum – I was gripped. The story, filled with vivid...

Filled with wonders, Marco Polo's tales are the first European account of the Silk Road. But, 700 years after the famed Venetian merchant and explorer's death, can they be trusted? Can a man who claimed to have seen a unicorn in the Indonesian island of Sumatra be trusted? This and other similarly valid questions have cast doubt on the truthfulness of Marco Polo since the 14th Century, when his book The Travels of Marco Polo became a bestseller and was translated into dozens of languages, hand-copied in countless manuscripts and available at any lavish court in Europe. Polo's tales are...

Glynis Johns, most known for her role as Mrs. Winifred Banks in the 1964 film "Mary Poppins" has died. She was 100. Her publicist Mitch Clem told Eyewitness News she died Thursday from natural causes. Glynis earned an Oscar nomination for "The Sundowners" and won a Tony award for "A Little Night Music."

Shecky Greene, an entertainment legend whose very name became synonymous with stand-up comedy, has died. He was 97. Greene died at 3:21 a.m. Sunday at his home in Las Vegas of natural causes, confirmed by his wife of 41 years Marie Musso Green. Greene is also survived by his two adopted daughters Dorian Hoffman (Charlie Hoffman) of Boise, Idaho and Alison Greene of Vancouver, Washington; his sisters-in-law JoAnn Musso Sperry, Linda Galasso, nephew Michael Sperry and nieces Angel Galasso Hooper and Gina Dadian. He was preceded in death by his first wife and mother of his children, Jeri Greene, and...

A great pother has been bubbling up for the past twelve years about James Joyce's writings. He tells forlornly in a letter to Dear Mr. Cerf, of Random House, who made a scoop on the sale of American copies of “Ulysses,” how he could never get Dublin publishers “to publish anything of mine as I wrote it.” No less than twenty-two publishers and printers read the manuscript of “Dubliners,” but not one wished to be entangled in the muck. The twenty-second printed it ; one “kind” person bought out the entire edition ; and, since it was highly inflammable, the...

Of all the angels and ghosts one might imagine to be hovering over the communities of Tribland in 2023, Willa Cather is hard to top in name recognition and enduring cultural influence. Perhaps you feel her presence as you travel the red brick main street in downtown Red Cloud, passing by the historic opera house where she gave her high school valedictory address in 1890. Likewise, you may sense Cather standing behind you when you visit the historic farmstead near Bladen where Annie Pavelka — prototype for the title character in Cather’s 1918 novel “My Ántonia” — raised her large...

Best costume of the year.

Actor Mark Goddard, known as Major Don West on all 84 episodes of the classic TV series "Lost in Space," has died at 87. His wife, Evelyn, wrote on social media, "I’m so sorry to tell you that my wonderful husband passed away on October 10th. Several days after celebrating his 87th birthday [on July 24], he was hospitalized with pneumonia. We were hopeful when he was transferred to a rehabilitation center, but then doctors discovered he was in the final stages of pulmonary fibrosis for which there is no cure." "He received excellent care at the beautiful Pat Roche...

Phyllis Coates, the first actress to play Daily Planet reporter Lois Lane on television, only to leave the Adventures of Superman after just one season, has died. She was 96. Coates, who also appeared in Republic Pictures serials and in such films as I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, died Wednesday of natural causes at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, her daughter Laura Press told The Hollywood Reporter. A native of Wichita Falls, Texas, Coates first portrayed the headstrong Lois opposite George Reeves as the Man of Steel in the dark sci-fi movie Superman...

James L. Buckley, a conservative recruit from Connecticut who invaded the New York strongholds of Democrats and liberal Republicans in 1970 and against the odds won a United States Senate seat on the Conservative Party line, died early Friday in Washington. He was 100. His death, in Sibley Memorial Hospital, resulted from complications of a fall, according to his nephew Christopher Buckley, the author and political satirist. With his improbable victory, Mr. Buckley became the first third-party candidate to land a seat in the United States Senate since Robert M. LaFollette Jr. of Wisconsin was elected on the Progressive ticket...