Days of Yore

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10 Years Ago

SMOFs were all astir at the Millennium Philcon, the 2001 Worldcon. There was much contention over an established Hugo category. Most people thought something should be done, but what varied. Three different proposals had been considered and voted down the previous year. Yes, this was the year the split of Best Dramatic Presentation was first passed, to be confirmed in 2002.

Evelyn Leeper's con report also notes the passage of an amendment requiring that postal mail be retained permanently as a Hugo voting option-- not as paranoid as it sounds, since electronic votes were already outnumbering paper ones.

100 Years Ago

D. W. Griffith released his longest film to date, Enoch Arden. Running a staggering 33 minutes, it required not one but two reels of film, and so it was made as two movies that could be shown separately. Later advances in cinema technology and viewer patience would of course completely remove the need to break films into two parts.

1000 Years Ago

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle sets out the state of play at the start of the year 1011: "[The Danes] had now overrun East-Anglia, and Essex, and Middlesex, and Oxfordshire, and Cambridgeshire, and Hertfordshire, and Buckinghamshire, and Bedfordshire, and half of Huntingdonshire, and much of Northamptonshire; and, to the south of the Thames, all Kent, and Sussex, and Hastings, and Surrey, and Berkshire, and Hampshire, and much of Wiltshire." Things did not improve. In September, a raid would make it to Canterbury and seize various church officials.

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