March 18, 2003: The Da Vinci Code is published, and becomes one of the best-selling novels of the 21st Century, selling more than 80 million copies. It also inspires a film series, starring Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon.
Author Dan Brown said created the character of Langdon as a fictional alter ego of himself, "the man he wishes he could be." Brown was born June 22, 1964 in Exeter, New Hampshire, and attended the Phillips Exeter Academy, one of the most prestigious private schools in America. He assigned those parts of his background to Langdon as well.
Where they split is in college: Brown went to Drexel University in Philadelphia, where he met John Langdon, a professor of typography, on whom he based the professional part of the character, including his name; while he made the Langdon character a graduate of Princeton University and a professor at Harvard.
The 1st book in the series was Angels & Demons, published in 2000. In The Da Vinci Code, Langdon is in Paris to give a lecture, but is arrested by the police for the murder of Jacques Saunière, the curator of the Louvre. He is taken to the scene of the crime, where he meets Saunière's granndaughter, cryptologist Sophie Neveu. She says her grandfather told her to find Langdon.
Langdon spends the rest of the novel dodging the police and trying to solve the mystery of an ancient secret society, the Priory of Sion, which was once headed by Leonardo da Vinci. At the end of the novel, Langdon uncovers the fact that Saunière and Sophie are descendants of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, and that the "Holy Grail" isn't a cup, as the legends of King Arthur and one of the Indiana Jones movies suggest, but Jesus' bloodline: It's not "San Greal," it's "Sang real" (royal blood).
Brown continued Langdon's story with The Lost Symbol in 2009, Inferno in 2013, and Origin in 2017. However, like in the James Bond stories and the Burton/Schumacher Batman films, his girlfriends never carry over into the next story. (UPDATE: In 2025, Brown published a 6th Langdon novel The Secret of Secrets.)
In 2006, a film version of The Da Vinci Code premiered, and starring Tom Hanks as Langdon and Audrey Tautou as Sophie. A film version of Angels & Demons was released in 2009, meaning that, unlike in the novel series, it takes place after The Da Vinci Code. In 2016, Inferno premiered. All 3 Langdon films were directed by Ron Howard.
In real life? The Priory of Sion, the "good guys" in The Da Vinci Code, were a hoax, designed to re-ignite interest in medieval orders of chivalry; while Opus Dei (Latin for "Work of God") is an organization within the Roman Catholic Church, founded in 1928, whose motives are publicly debated, but are questionable enough to make them believable as the villains in the book and the novel.
In 1982, Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln collaborated to write The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, telling of the theory of a Jesus bloodline, leading to descendants who emigrated to what is now southern France, intermarrying with the regions noble families, and starting the Merovingian dynasty, which ruled France from AD 481 to 751, before the Carolingian dynasty took control.
The book suggests, and Brown's novel accepts as part of his story, that the Church wanted to kill off this bloodline, lest a member of it try to assert control over the Church as an "antipope." But it also suggests that the bloodline wanted to create a "United States of Europe," more a new Holy Roman Empire that would be a theocracy. In other words, no good guys here, and Jesus would be appalled at what these alleged descendants, those by blood and those by mission, were doing. .
That's the theory. Interviewed for a documentary titled The Real Da Vinci Code, which aired on Britain's Channel 4 and America's History Channel, Leigh suggested, "Then as now, it was far likelier for a Jewish man to marry and have a child than for him to heal the sick and raise the dead." But he also admitted, "Is there evidence? Yes, there is evidence. However, evidence is not proof."
And what about Leonardo da Vinci himself, whose 1486 painting Virgin of the Rocks ("Madonna of the Rocks" in the novel and the film) becomes a plot point? As far as history has been able to determine, he had nothing to do with any orders of chivalry.
He was born on April 15, 1452 in Vinci, outside Florence, Italy. While his fame initially rested on his achievements as a painter, including of The Last Supper in 1498 (tying him to the original concept of the Holy Grail as the cup used at that meal) and the Mona Lisa in 1503, he has also become known for his notebooks, in which he made drawings and notes on a variety of subjects, including anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography, painting, and paleontology. By the time he died on May 2, 1519, at the age of 67, he had become widely regarded as a genius who epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal.
In a 2014 episode of Epic Rap Battles of History, "Artists vs. Turtles," Rhett & Link (Rhett McLaughlin and Charles Lincoln "Link" Neal) played Donatello di Betto Bardi and Leonardo da Vinci, respectively; while the duo Smosh, Ian Hecox and Anthony Padilla, respectively, played Michelangelo Buonarroti and Raphael Sanzio; while series creators "Nice" Peter Shukoff and "Epic" Lloyd Ahlquist provided the voices of all 4 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, who were named for those artists, with Lloyd wearing the suits for all 4.
*
March 18, 2003 was a Monday. Baseball was in Spring Training. Football was out of season. There were 10 games in the NBA:
* The New York Knicks beat the San Antonio Spurs, 105-97 at the SBC Center (now the Frost Bank Center) in San Antonio. Allan Houston led all scorers on the night with 36 points.
* The New Jersey Nets beat the Boston Celtics, 87-74 at the FleetCenter (now the TD Garden) in Boston.
* The Detroit Pistons beat the Washington Wizards, 94-90 in overtime at the MCI Center (now the Capital One Arena) in Washington.
* The Philadelphia 76ers beat the Miami Heat, 103-83 at the American Airlines Arena (now the Kaseya Center) in
Miami.
* The Dallas Mavericks beat the Cleveland Cavaliers, 114-93 at the American Airlines Center in Dallas.
* The Chicago Bulls beat the Atlanta Hawks, 103-78 at the United Center in Chicago.
* The Minnesota Timberwolves beat the Memphis Grizzlies, 96-80 at the Target Center in Minneapolis.
* The Sacramento Kings beat the Golden State Warriors, 117-91 at the ARCO Arena in Sacramento.
* The Utah Jazz beat their arch-rivals, the Denver Nuggets, 99-81 at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City.
* And the Seattle SuperSonics beat the Houston Rockets, 100-94 at the KeyArena in Seattle.
And there were 8 games in the NHL:
* The New York Islanders and the Toronto Maple Leafs played to a tie, 3-3 at the Air Canada Centre (now the Scotiabank Arena) in
Toronto.
* The New Jersey Devils beat the Montreal Canadiens, 1-0 at the Bell Centre in Montreal.
* The Ottawa Senators beat the Carolina Hurricanes, 6-5 at the RBC Center (now the Lenovo Center) in Raleigh, North Carolina.
* The Buffalo Sabres beat the Philadelphia Flyers, 5-2 at the HSBC Arena (now the KeyBank Center) in Buffalo.
* The Detroit Red Wings beat the Pittsburgh Penguins, 5-1 at the Mellon Arena (as the Civic Arena was then known)
in Pittsburgh.
* The St. Louis Blues beat the Vancouver Canucks, 6-4 at the Savvis Center (now the Enterprise Center) in St. Louis.
* The Phoenix Coyotes beat the Boston Bruins, 2-1 at the America West Arena (now the Mortgage Matchup Center) in Phoenix.
* And the Calgary Flames beat the Los Angeles, Kings, 4-1 at the Staples Center (now the Crypto.com Arena) in Los
Angeles.
