Back in 1964, Tom Lehrer talked about how they were “celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the Civil War and the fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of World War I and the twentieth anniversary of the end of World War II* so all in all it's been a good year for the war buffs,” and he gave us his song for World War III:
Fortunately, World War III never happened, and so we are coming up to a new cycle of anniversaries for “war buffs”.
This year starts the 150th anniversaries for the Civil War. While 100th anniversaries for World War I don’t technically start for three more years, you have centennial anniversaries of the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913 starting next year. And similarly, while 75th anniversaries for World War II are three years off, we have the 75th for the Spanish Civil War this year – and we already had the 75th for the start of Italy’s invasion of Abyssinia last year (sorry I missed that one).
In any case, for the next three years, Civil War anniversaries will be the main thing. And tomorrow is a big one: the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s first inauguration. You can find President Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address here.
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* Obviously, Mr. Lehrer was off by a year in this case since 1964 was only the 19th anniversary of the end of WW II.
Update (3/4/2011 11:30 am): Corrected a typo in the second to the last paragraph: Added "II" after "World War".
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