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Charles De Jaeger
Charles Theophile de Jaeger (27 February 1911 – 19 May 2000) was a cameraman for the BBC. He is best known as one of the creators of a famous April Fools' Day joke from 1957: a three-minute spoof report on the Swiss spaghetti harvest beside Lake Lugano broadcast by the British current affairs programme ''Panorama''. Early years De Jaeger was born in Vienna. He worked for the Free French Film Unit during World War II and joined the BBC in July 1943, working as a sub-editor on news for Central Europe. He became a television cameraman in 1948. He was the first BBC newsreel cameraman to film outside the United Kingdom. April Fools 1957 The idea for the April Fool came from his school days, during which a teacher had once said "Boys, you are so stupid, you'd believe me if I told you that spaghetti grew on trees". He developed the idea with producer David Wheeler and it was approved by the editor of ''Panorama'', Michael Peacock. A silent film was recorded in Castagnola in Switzerl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spaghetti-tree Hoax
The spaghetti-tree hoax was a three-minute hoax report broadcast on April Fools' Day 1957 by the BBC current-affairs programme ''Panorama'', purportedly showing a family in southern Switzerland harvesting spaghetti from the family "spaghetti tree". At the time spaghetti was relatively unknown in the UK, so many British people were unaware that it is made from wheat flour and water; a number of viewers afterwards contacted the BBC for advice on growing their own spaghetti trees. Decades later, CNN called this broadcast "the biggest hoax that any reputable news establishment ever pulled". Broadcast The news report was produced as an April Fools' Day joke in 1957, and presented a family in the canton of Ticino in southern Switzerland gathering a bumper spaghetti harvest after a mild winter and "virtual disappearance of the spaghetti weevil". Footage of a traditional "Harvest Festival" was aired along with a discussion of the breeding necessary to develop a strain to produce the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Panorama (TV Series)
A panorama (formed from Greek πᾶν "all" + ὅραμα "view") is any wide-angle view or representation of a physical space, whether in painting, drawing, photography, film, seismic images, or 3D modeling. The word was originally coined in the 18th century by the English (Irish descent) painter Robert Barker to describe his panoramic paintings of Edinburgh and London. The motion-picture term ''panning'' is derived from ''panorama''. A panoramic view is also purposed for multimedia, cross-scale applications to an outline overview (from a distance) along and across repositories. This so-called "cognitive panorama" is a panoramic view over, and a combination of, cognitive spaces used to capture the larger scale. History The device of the panorama existed in painting, particularly in murals, as early as 20 A.D., in those found in Pompeii, as a means of generating an immersive "panoptic" experience of a vista. Cartographic experiments during the Enlightenment era prece ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Free French
Free France (french: France Libre) was a political entity that claimed to be the legitimate government of France following the dissolution of the Third Republic. Led by French general , Free France was established as a government-in-exile in London in June 1940 after the Fall of France during World War II and fought the Axis as an Allied nation with its Free French Forces (). Free France also supported the resistance in Nazi-occupied France, known as the French Forces of the Interior, and gained strategic footholds in several French colonies in Africa. Following the defeat of the Third Republic by Nazi Germany, Marshal Philippe Pétain led efforts to negotiate an armistice and established a German puppet state known as Vichy France. Opposed to the idea of an armistice, de Gaulle fled to Britain, and from there broadcast the Appeal of 18 June () exhorting the French people to resist the Nazis and join the Free French Forces. On 27 October 1940, the Empire Defense Council ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Peacock (television Executive)
Ian Michael Peacock (14 September 1929 – 6 December 2019) was a British television executive, who from 1963 until the spring of 1965 was the first Controller of BBC2, the Corporation's second television channel. Early life and career Michael Peacock was born in Christchurch, Hampshire, on 14 September 1929. After graduating with an upper second class degree in sociology from the London School of Economics in 1952, he immediately joined BBC Television as a trainee producer, working under Grace Wyndham Goldie in the Television Talks Department, based at Alexandra Palace, which moved to the Lime Grove Studios the following year. Career Peacock became the producer of ''Panorama'', the Corporation's first weekly TV current affairs series, in 1955, at the age of twenty-six. Under his editorship, with Richard Dimbleby as anchorman, the programme developed a high reputation, and during the Suez crisis in 1956 audiences reached 12 million viewers. Peacock was responsible for the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Castagnola, Switzerland
Castagnola is a village on the northern shore of Lake Lugano, below the mountain of Monte Brè, in the Swiss canton of Ticino. Politically the village forms part of the Castagnola-Cassarate quarter of the city of Lugano, although until 1972 Castagnola-Cassarate was an independent municipality under the name Castagnola. Castagnola was first recorded in 1335 as ''Castigniola''. Amongst its notable residents is the artist Angela Lyn. and Latvian poet couple Rainis and Aspazija Aspazija was the pen name of Elza Johanna Emilija Lizete Pliekšāne (née Elza Rozenberga; 16 March 1865 – 5 November 1943), a Latvian poet and playwright. Aspazija is the Latvian transliteration of Aspasia. Biography Aspazija was born ..., who lived here from 1905–20. Carlo Cattaneo, Italian writer and philosopher, died here in 1869. References Villages in Ticino Lugano Populated places on Lake Lugano {{Ticino-geo-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Dimbleby
Frederick Richard Dimbleby (25 May 1913 – 22 December 1965) was an English journalist and broadcaster, who became the BBC's first war correspondent, and then its leading TV news commentator. As host of the long-running current affairs programme ''Panorama'', he pioneered a popular style of interviewing that was respectful but searching. At formal public events, he could combine gravitas with creative insights based on extensive research. He was also able to maintain interest throughout the all-night election specials. The annual Richard Dimbleby Lecture was founded in his memory. Biography Early life Dimbleby was born near Richmond, Surrey, the son of Gwendoline Mabel (Bolwell) and Frederick Jabez George Dimbleby, a journalist. He was educated at The Mall School, Twickenham, and at Mill Hill School, and began his career in 1931 on the ''Richmond and Twickenham Times'', which his grandfather, Frederick William Dimbleby, had acquired in 1894. He then worked as a news r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1911 Births
A notable ongoing event was the race for the South Pole. Events January * January 1 – A decade after federation, the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory are added to the Commonwealth of Australia. * January 3 ** 1911 Kebin earthquake: An earthquake of 7.7 moment magnitude strikes near Almaty in Russian Turkestan, killing 450 or more people. ** Siege of Sidney Street in London: Two Latvian anarchists die, after a seven-hour siege against a combined police and military force. Home Secretary Winston Churchill arrives to oversee events. * January 5 – Egypt's Zamalek SC is founded as a general sports and Association football club by Belgian lawyer George Merzbach as Qasr El Nile Club. * January 14 – Roald Amundsen's South Pole expedition makes landfall, on the eastern edge of the Ross Ice Shelf. * January 18 – Eugene B. Ely lands on the deck of the USS ''Pennsylvania'' stationed in San Francisco harbor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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