History Book: The death of a princess

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, August 29th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Next up: the WORLD History Book. This week marks the 25th anniversary of a death that would shock the world, as well as a birth that would change it.

EICHER: But first, we’ll look back at the publication of an American classic. Here’s arts and media editor Collin Garbarino.

COLLIN GARBARINO: Old Man and the Sea came out 70 years ago, this week, and high school reading lists haven’t been the same since. Here’s Charlton Heston reading the beginning of Ernest Hemingway’s classic novella.

HESTON: He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. In the first forty days a boy had been with him. But after forty days without a fish the boy's parents had told him that the old man was now definitely and finally salao, which is the worst form of unlucky, and the boy had gone at their orders in another boat which caught three good fish the first week. It made the boy sad to see the old man come in each day with his skiff empty and he always went down to help him carry either the coiled lines or the gaff and harpoon and the sail that was furled around the mast. The sail was patched with flour sacks and, furled, it looked like the flag of permanent defeat.

The story follows the adventure of Santiago, an old Cuban fisherman. His unlucky streak seems to end when he hooks a giant marlin, but bringing the huge fish in becomes a life and death struggle that teaches readers about perseverance.

HESTON: He can't do this forever. But four hours later the fish was still swimming steadily out to sea, towing the skiff, and the old man was still braced solidly with the line across his back.

Scribner’s published the book in hardback, but the story also appeared in its entirety that same week in Life magazine. Old Man and the Sea might have been about a failed fisherman, but the story proved to be an instant success. Life sold five million copies in just two days.

Hemingway won a Pulitzer for the story the next year, and Old Man and the Sea ended up being the last piece of major fiction Hemingway published during his lifetime.

And now we look at the end of August 1997—a week that brought both tragic endings and improbable beginnings.

Early in the morning of August 31, Princess Diana died in a car crash in Paris. She and her boyfriend, Dodi Al Fayed, were riding in the backseat of a black Mercedes that sped through the city trying to avoid paparazzi. The car was traveling at twice the legal speed limit when the French driver, who had been drinking, lost control and hit a pillar in a tunnel.

ROBIN COOK: Well, we understand that the princess is in hospital. We are deeply shocked by the news. And our first thoughts at the present time are with the princess and her family. Our ambassador is at the hospital and we will provide every possible assistance we can. In the meantime, all I would add is that I think it will be doubly tragic if it does emerge that this accident was in part caused by the persistent hounding of the princess and her privacy by photographers. Thank you very much.

Fayed died at the crash site, but Diana was brought to a nearby hospital where she died of her injuries a few hours later.

ANNOUNCER: This is BBC television from London. A short while ago, Buckingham Palace confirmed the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. The princess died following a car accident in Paris. She was 36. A statement issued by the palace says the Queen and the Prince of Wales are deeply shocked and distressed by the terrible news.

Diana’s death elicited a national outpouring of grief. And she received a royal ceremonial funeral at Westminster Abbey a week after the accident.

AUDIO: [Elton John singing]

And finally, today is the 25th anniversary of the founding of Netflix. The whole business started because company founder Reed Hastings got stuck with a $40 late fee. He had forgotten to return the movie Apollo 13 to his local Blockbuster.

REED HASTINGS: It made me think, I can’t be the only one who is struggling with this late fee thing. It just started me thinking about the internet and DVDs, and how something could work without late fees.

He came up with the idea of mailing those little red envelopes that allowed him to deliver movies without much cost.

REED HASTINGS: So I stuffed a bunch of CDs—you couldn’t buy DVDs then—and I mailed them to myself, and then I had to wait for 24 hours to see them come home to see are they going to be all shattered in bits along with my idea. And then you know the next day, 3 o’clock, the postman arrives. I rip open the envelopes and the first one’s in good shape and the second one’s in good shape, and the third one’s in good shape.

Hastings says it was at this point he knew his idea would work, but Netflix wasn’t an overnight success. In the late ’90s, few Americans owned DVD players, and the company lost tens of millions of dollars in its early years. But as DVD players got cheaper, Netflix’s subscriptions took off. But the company kept adapting, first pioneering the streaming revolution and then producing its own original content.

And Blockbuster? Well, let’s just say no one pays them late fees anymore.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Collin Garbarino.

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