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7 unusual facts about Charles Mackay


Charles MacKay

While he had some involvement in the planning of the 2009 festival season, the 2010 season is based on MacKay's programming and contains nods of appreciation and dedication to John Crosby, SFO's founding director (by opening his season with Madame Butterfly, Crosby's 1957 opening night and the opening night of new 1968 theatre after the 1967 fire) and to Richard Gaddes (by including a Benjamin Britten opera, Albert Herring in the line-up).

Charles Mackay

During the American Civil War he returned there as a correspondent for The Times, in which capacity he discovered and disclosed the Fenian conspiracy.

In 1830 he was engaged as a private secretary to William Cockerill, the ironmaster, near Liège, began writing in French in the Courrier Belge, and sent English poems to a local newspaper called The Telegraph.

Jesse Lauriston Livermore

One of Livermore's favorite books was Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, by Charles Mackay, first published in 1841.

Stock market bubble

Those stories, and many others, are recounted in Charles Mackay's 1841 popular account, "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds".

The Gourd and the Palm-tree

However, not only is the poem very obviously derived from Meissner's German fable, but its original (and unacknowledged) Scottish author, Charles Mackay, nowhere credits it with an Eastern origin in the collection in which it first appeared.

The Madness of the Crowds

The album's title is derived from Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, a famous book by Charles Mackay.


Jump Jim Crow

In Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Charles Mackay, pg 629-630, reported his dismay at hearing the song in London.


see also

Glasgow Argus

At the time of the United Kingdom general election, 1847, Charles Mackay disagreed with the paper's management on the choice of local Liberal candidate, and left the position of editor.