Keechaka Vadham (The Extermination of Keechaka) is an Indian silent film
produced, directed, filmed and edited by R. Nataraja Mudaliar
(pictured), and released in the late 1910s. No print of it is known to
survive. The first Tamil film and the first film to be made in South
India, it was shot in about five weeks at Mudaliar's production house,
India Film Company. The screenplay by C. Rangavadivelu is based on an
episode from the Virata Parva segment of the Hindu epic Mahabharata,
focusing on Keechaka's attempts to woo Draupadi. The film stars Raju
Mudaliar and Jeevarathnam as the central characters. Keechaka Vadham was
commercially successful and received positive critical feedback. The
film's success prompted the director to make a series of similar
historical films that laid the foundation for the South Indian cinema
industry. His works were an inspiration to other filmmakers, including
Raghupathi Surya Prakasa and J. C. Daniel.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keechaka_Vadham>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1812:
French invasion of Russia: Following the Battle of Borodino
seven days earlier, Napoleon and his Grande Armée captured Moscow, only
to find the city deserted and burning (depicted).
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_of_Moscow_%281812%29>
1901:
Theodore Roosevelt became President of the United States at age
42, the youngest person ever to do so, eight days after William McKinley
was fatally wounded in Buffalo, New York.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Roosevelt>
1954:
In a secret nuclear test, a Soviet Tu-4 bomber dropped a
40-kiloton atomic weapon just north of Totskoye village, exposing some
45,000 soldiers and 10,000 civilians to nuclear fallout.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totskoye_nuclear_exercise>
2019:
Drone attacks on major processing facilities at Abqaiq and
Khurais forced Saudi Arabia to cut more than half of its oil production.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abqaiq%E2%80%93Khurais_attack>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
epicene:
1. (linguistics) Of or relating to a class of Greek and Latin nouns that
may refer to males or females but have a fixed grammatical gender
(feminine, masculine, neuter, etc.).
2. (linguistics) Of or relating to nouns or pronouns in any language
that have a single form for male and female referents.
3. (by extension) Suitable for use regardless of sex; unisex.
4. (biology and figuratively) Of indeterminate sex, whether asexual,
androgynous, hermaphrodite, or intersex.
5. (by extension) Indeterminate; mixed.
6. (by extension, usually derogatory) Of a man: effeminate.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/epicene>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Only what we have wrought into our character during life can we
take away with us.
--Alexander von Humboldt
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt>
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