Ahoy me hearties, ’tis International Talk Like a Pirate Day! Arrr!
Her keel was laid down in the year 1995, it was, when crewmates Cap’n Slappy ’n Ol’ Chumbucket were granted the boon of an idea by ol’ Davy Jones himself. T’was June the 6th when they had the idea, but they fixed the day as September 19 due to the favorable winds, the set of the waves, the map to the treasure chest, and it being Cap’n Slappy’s ex-wife’s birthday, so’s it would be remembered by them.
Luckily, by 1995, the online world had the use of text-based emoticons like 🙂 and 🙁 to help distinguish humorous postings in Pirate talk from the menacing “avast! Shiver me timbers, if I don’t stove in yer decks f’r that :-(.” They’d been originated by Scott Fahlman on the Carnegie Mellon message board on September 19, 1982. But if you scrutinize history as if it were a map to riches, you’ll find an X marking a 1969 issue of the New York Times where Vladimir Nabokov suggested the same idea, in an interview — although he wasn’t specific about just how to arrange the symbols.
Remarkably, even lacking the use of emoticons or the ability to communicate in Piratese, Michael Eavis managed to institute the Glastonbury Festival on September 19, 1970. It’s a famous music festival in England, and it’s still held on Eavis’ farm on most — but not all — years. Eavis has been an activist most of his live (he’s currently 88) and founded the festival to raise money for a cause. A different cause each year. He had the idea after seeing a performance by Led Zeppelin. The festival was initially called the Pilton Pop Folk & Blues Festival (no commas), then the Glastonbury Fayre, and finally got its current name in 1979.
It’s not clear whether Charlie Chaplin ever attended the Glastonbury Festival — or, for that matter, whether he ever talked like a pirate. But September 19 has something to say about him, too. It was the day in 1952 when an a US attorney general blocked Chaplin from returning to the US after a trip to England. The details behind the action are still a bit vague, and there evidently wasn’t much, if any, actual evidence against him (he was accused of “communist sympathies”). Although Chaplin could have gone through some sort of process to be readmitted, he never tried. He never spoke about it publicly, but privately he wrote “Whether I re-entered that unhappy country or not was of little consequence to me. I would like to have told them that the sooner I was rid of that hate-beleaguered atmosphere the better, that I was fed up of America’s insults and moral pomposity.” He was convinced to return briefly in 1972 to accept a special Academy Award, and received what is still the longest standing ovation in the history of the Academy — 12 minutes.
“Arr,” he might have said, “Me shipmates ha’ removed the Black Spot!”
