When it rains it pours talent.
Giovanni Benvenuti was an illustrator of unique skill. We've posted a couple of wonderful collections of his covers (you can see those here and here, and we really recommend them because it's all very striking work), but have neglected him these last several years. That stops today, because he's a top tier artist. Above you see the cover he painted for Dominique Dorn's thriller Véronique et la St. Médard, published by Éditions Ditis for its Collection la Chouette in 1961. There's a lot to like about this piece, but we're most struck by the indistinct lights seen through the veil of rain. They're suggestive but could really be anything.
Dominque Dorn, appropriately, could really be anyone. It was the pen name of Marie-Anne Devillers, who also published as Mario Ropp, Maïa Walbert, Maïa de Villers, and Michèle Vaudois. That's a lot of names, and she used them to write a lot of books. Ropp was by far her most prolific pseudonym. She published more than one hundred novels under that identity. On the whole, Dorn churned out novels at an astounding rate, sometimes publishing six a year. That's a lot of output, so we'll probably run into her again. See another here.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1939—Batman Debuts
In Detective Comics #27, DC Comics publishes its second major superhero, Batman, who becomes one of the most popular comic book characters of all time, and then a popular camp television series starring Adam West, and lastly a multi-million dollar movie franchise starring Michael Keaton, then George Clooney, and finally Christian Bale. 1953—Crick and Watson Publish DNA Results
British scientists James D Watson and Francis Crick publish an article detailing their discovery of the existence and structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, in Nature magazine. Their findings answer one of the oldest and most fundamental questions of biology, that of how living things reproduce themselves. 1967—First Space Program Casualty Occurs
Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov dies in Soyuz 1 when, during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere after more than ten successful orbits, the capsule's main parachute fails to deploy properly, and the backup chute becomes entangled in the first. The capsule's descent is slowed, but it still hits the ground at about 90 mph, at which point it bursts into flames. Komarov is the first human to die during a space mission. 1986—Otto Preminger Dies
Austro–Hungarian film director Otto Preminger, who directed such eternal classics as Laura, Anatomy of a Murder, Carmen Jones, The Man with the Golden Arm, and Stalag 17, and for his efforts earned a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, dies in New York City, aged 80, from cancer and Alzheimer's disease. 1998—James Earl Ray Dies
The convicted assassin of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., petty criminal James Earl Ray, dies in prison of hepatitis aged 70, protesting his innocence as he had for decades. Members of the King family who supported Ray's fight to clear his name believed the U.S. Government had been involved in Dr. King's killing, but with Ray's death such questions became moot.
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