The Unconquered is a three-act play written by Russian-American author
Ayn Rand as an adaptation of her 1936 novel We the Living. Producer
George Abbott staged the play on Broadway in February 1940, featuring
Helen Craig (pictured) as Kira Argounova, a young woman living in the
Soviet Union in the 1920s. Her lover Leo Kovalensky develops
tuberculosis. To get money for his treatment, Kira has an affair with a
Communist official, Andrei Taganov. After Leo recovers from his illness,
he becomes involved with black market food sales that Andrei is
investigating. When Andrei realizes that Kira loves Leo, he helps his
rival avoid prosecution, then commits suicide. Leo leaves Kira, who
decides to risk her life escaping the country. The production was
troubled by problems with the script and the cast. When the play opened
at the Biltmore Theatre, it was a critical and financial failure, and
closed in less than a week. It was the last of Rand's plays produced
during her lifetime.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unconquered_%281940_play%29>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1867:
Work began on the covering of the Senne, burying the polluted
main waterway in Brussels to allow urban renewal in the centre of the
city.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covering_of_the_Senne>
1960:
African-American college students staged the first of the
Nashville sit-ins at three lunch counters in Nashville, Tennessee, as
part of a nonviolent direct-action campaign to end racial segregation in
the U.S.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nashville_sit-ins>
1970:
The English rock band Black Sabbath released their eponymous
debut album, which is generally accepted as the first heavy-metal album.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sabbath>
2010:
A terrorist bombing at a bakery popular among foreigners in
Pune, India, killed 17 people and injured 60 others.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Pune_bombing>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
shock stall:
(aviation) A stall (“sudden loss of efficiency”) caused when the airflow
over an aircraft's wings is disturbed by shock waves that occurs at a
specific Mach number when the aircraft is accelerating to transonic
speeds.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/shock_stall>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Lying has always been a highly approved Nazi technique. Hitler,
in Mein Kampf, advocated mendacity as a policy. … Nor is the lie
direct the only means of falsehood. They all speak with a Nazi double
meaning with which to deceive the unwary. … Before we accept their
word at what seems to be its face value, we must always look for hidden
meanings. … Besides outright false statements and those with double
meanings, there are also other circumventions of truth in the nature of
fantastic explanations and absurd professions. … Even Schacht showed
that he, too, had adopted the Nazi attitude that truth is any story
which succeeds. Confronted on cross-examination with a long record of
broken vows and false words, he declared in justification — and I
quote from the record: "I think you can score many more successes when
you want to lead someone if you don't tell them the truth than if you
tell them the truth." This was the philosophy of the National
Socialists. When for years they have deceived the world, and masked
falsehood with plausibilities, can anyone be surprised that they
continue that habit of a lifetime in this dock? Credibility is one of
the main issues of this trial. Only those who have failed to learn the
bitter lessons of the last decade can doubt that men who have always
played on the unsuspecting credulity of generous opponents would not
hesitate to do the same now.
--Robert H. Jackson
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_H._Jackson>
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