Posts Tagged ‘Halloween’
Special Halloween Edition: Horror for all!…
By way of helping readers ready themselves for this evening’s frightful festivities, a stroll down memory lane…
These and other terrifying trailers (along with lots of other fascinating film fodder) at The Ebert Club; inexpensive annual membership required– and more than worth it.
And for advanced students: “The Top 10 Zombie Movies You’ve Never Seen.”
SPECIAL HORROR-GEEK UPDATE: “‘Why won’t you die?!’ The art of the jump scare.”
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As we steel ourselves against breaking prematurely into the candy, we might note that it was on this date in 2004 that the 14th Baron of Prestoungrange pardoned the 81 “East Lothian Witches” who had been put to death 400 years earlier (often, for crimes as innocuous as owning a black cat and living on their own).
The Baron acted on the authority of Scotland’s ancient baronial courts– and not a moment too soon, as the courts were abolished the following month.
Boo! (It’s that time again…)
…from the always-amusing xkcd. (The last panel? The Banach-Tarski Paradox: explained here; illustrated here. The “Axiom of Choice”– of which the the B-T Paradox is a case– is explained here.)
As we gird ourselves for the season of horrors, we might recall that it was on this date in 1483 that Tomás de Torquemada was appointed Inquisitor General of Spain (at the behest of Queen Isabella, whose confessor he had been). Called “the hammer of heretics, the light of Spain, the saviour of his country, the honor of his order” by Spanish chronicler Sebastián de Olmedo, Torquemada was a key advocate for the Alhambra Decree (Ferdinand’s and Isabella’s expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492) and a zealous prosecutor of “crypto-Jews” and “crypto-Muslims.” While the precise number of deaths on his watch is a matter of debate, there is a general agreement that, between 1480 and 1530, about 2000 people burned in the autos-de-fé of the Spanish Inquisition.
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