It had been less than three months since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into World War II, and tensions were running high. And then on the evening of February 24, 1942, in Los Angeles, it appeared that we were being attacked once again. The United States Navy responded with an anti-aircraft artillery barrage. The resulting brouhaha lasted through the night with 1,400 shells fired until the Secretary of the Navy announced the end of the air raid. He also admitted that the entire incident had been a false alarm, a case of “war nerves.”
The attacking force, it seems, was an errant weather balloon, and “once the firing started, imagination created all kinds of targets in the sky and everyone joined in.” The incident was later derisively dubbed the “Battle of Los Angeles” or the “Great Los Angeles Air Raid.”
A Midsummer Night’s Prayer Meeting
“The Family Shakespeare — in which nothing is added to the original text,
but those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family. My great objects in this undertaking are to remove from the writings of Shakespeare some defects which diminish their value.”
Thus read an introduction for the 1807 edition of Shakespeare’s works, finally made suitable for general audiences by Thomas Bowdler some 200 years after the Bard was safely buried. Certainly Shakespeare, were he alive, could not have objected to having the defects which diminished their value removed from his works. Shakespeare and family values — together at last.
Bowdler undertook this project, along with his sister Henrietta, thanks to childhood memories in which his father had entertained his family with readings from Shakespeare. Only later as an adult did Bowdler realize that his father had been leaving out some of the naughty parts of the plays, anything he felt unsuitable for the ears of his wife and children. Realizing that not all fathers were clever enough to censor on the spot, Bowdler decided it would be worthwhile to publish an edition which came already sanitized.
Shakespeare no doubt would have thanked Thomas Bowdler who joined him in the hereafter on February 24, 1827.
Wretched Richard's Almanac 