How The Mango Became The Fruit Of Chairman Mao

“Mangoes don’t have an obvious connection to the Chinese Cultural Revolution; in the 1960s, they weren’t even cultivated in northern China.” Yet they’re featured with the Great Helmsman in a lot of propaganda art from the late 1960s – thanks to a convergence of the Cultural Revolution, the Pakistani ambassador, and the Worker-Peasant Mao Zedong Thought Propaganda Teams.

Conductor Wolfgang Sawallisch, 89

After 20 years at the musical helm of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, he crowned his career with a decade as music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Sawallisch described those ten years as the high point of his symphonic life, and many observers (including more than a few of the players) believe that he was the best music director the Philadelphians ever had.