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April
- probably comes from the Latin "aperire" meaning to
open referring to the opening of spring buds and flowers. April is Cancer Control Month, Keep America Beautiful Month, Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Month, and National Automobile Month. We'll celebrate Easter, Passover (usually) and take note of International Children's Book Day, Astronomy Day, Arbor and Earth Day. If you were wondering why the date of Easter changes from year to year it's because Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon of the Vernal Equinox. Science Gnus is an almanacish compendium of News of Science, History, Science, Mathematics,Items of Interest and Science as well as Professor Sy Yentz, Dr. Matt Matician, the Activity of the Month, Factorinos, Trivia Question, Bonus Trivia Question, Extinct, Trivia Answers, Jokes,Obscure Questions, and Word of the Month Science Gnus is an almanacish compendium of News of Science, History, Science, Mathematics,Items of Interest and Science as well as Professor Sy Yentz, Dr. Matt Matician, the Activity of the Month, Factorinos, Trivia Question, Bonus Trivia Question, Extinct, Trivia Answers, Jokes,Obscure Questions, and Word of the Month |
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1. April Fool's Day- A
day traditionally featuring jokes and pranks. Here’s a great idea for a joke;
we’ll change the calendar overnight and see what happens. Considering the difficulties the U.S
Government (although, you’re right, it is the U.S government) had going from
analog to digital television with years of warnings, alerts, and
tutorials…………and they still couldn’t get it right! The calendar change must have been hilarious.
In 1582,
Pope Gregory XIII ordered a new calendar rationally known as the Gregorian Calendar to replace the
old Julian Calendar (cleverly named after Julius Caesar). The new calendar
called for New Year's Day to be celebrated Jan. 1. Allegedly those celebrating the old date were
called April Fools. There are no really
satisfactory explanation, all have holes in them and are liable to fool you but
then just watch the evening news or read the newspapers – every day is Fool’s
Day. Most ancient cultures celebrated
the New Year around the time of the Vernal Equinox, the first day of
spring. Seemed like a good time to bring
in a new year. In 1582,
1578-Saturday- Just like a romance novel ......... a
pulsating, throbbing thrill. Happy Birthday, William Harvey the English doctor
who discovered the circulation of blood and the functioning of the heart.
1776 –Monday Happy Birthday, Sophie Germain, French
mathematician. Influenced by her
childhood study of Archimedes, his work and his death – he was so engrossed
with a geometrical configuration in sand that he ignored the orders of a Roman
soldier and was speared to death- she developed a life long love (alliteration
alert) of mathematics. She made major contributions to number theory, acoustics
and elasticity.
1789-Wednesday- The
1792 – Sunday- Japan's greatest volcanic disaster as
the volcano Unzen erupted killing over 15,000 people. Unzen
is actually a massive volcanic complex that makes up much of the
1815-Saturday- Happy Birthday, Otto von Bismarck, the German Chancellor paved the way for the
rise of the modern German state. Known as the "Iron Chancellor",
1826 –Saturday- Samuel Morey patented the internal combustion engine. Morey
is one of the highest achieving yet among the most obscure American inventors in history even though he
secured at least 20 patents from 1793 to 1833 and was a true pioneer of steam
propulsion. Yes, it was “the Morey, the merrier”. Morey’s work with engines
also influenced Robert Livingston and Robert Fulton in the development of the
steam boat. In fact,
1853-Friday- Cincinnati, Ohio established the very first full time paid,
professional fire department using steam fire engines pulled by horses. The
plan called for full time paid city employees using a horse-drawn steam engine.
The steam pumper allowed four or five men to affectively spray more water on a
fire than hundreds of volunteers using hand pumpers.
1864 –Friday As the Civil War raged, J. G. Batterson,
of The Travelers Insurance Company, introduced travel insurance into the
1865-Saturday The Battle of Five Forks, dealt a death
blow for Robert E. Lee’s already severely damaged Army of Northern Virginia as
supply lines were now cut off (the surrender at Appomattox was two weeks away).
1865 –Saturday- Happy Birthday Richard Adolf Zsigmondy, Dutch chemist. He conducted
pioneering research in colloid chemistry. Yes, “when worlds colloid”. He also came up with the idea of the
ultramicroscope – making visible sub microscopic particles whose linear
extension is below the microscope's resolution limit. In 1913 he invented the
immersion microscope. He also invented two types of filters, a membrane filter
in 1918 and an ultra-fine filter in 1922. In 1925, Zsigmondy was awarded the
Nobel Prize for colloid chemistry and the invention of the ultramicroscope.
1873-Tuesday- Happy Birthday, Sergey Rachmaninoff,
last of the great Russian romantic composers (other Russian romantic composers?
Think Tchaikovsky).
1873
–Tuesday- In the worst single ship disaster to occur off
the Canadian Coast prior to the Titanic’s
visit in 1912, the luxury steamship S.S.
Atlantic, of the White Star Line, ran aground on Mar's Head, Lower
Prospect, Nova Scotia. Lifeboats were lowered
by the crew but were washed away as the ship began to sink, killing 562.
1875-Thursday- Sir Francis Galton published the first
newspaper weather map - in The Times,
London, England. We note that the map
was of the weather for the previous day, March 31, not a prediction of coming
weather. Galton was the first to describe the anti-cyclone and pioneered the
introduction of weather-maps based on charting data about air pressure. His
book Meteorographica, 1863, was the
first systematic attempt to gather, chart and interpret weather data on a
continental scale, a fundamental work of modern scientific meteorology.
1889-Monday- The first commercial dishwashing machine
was marketed for sale in
1890-Tuesday- The electric trolley car was patented by Belgian inventor,
Charles Van Depoele. He had designed the first commercial electric railway in
the
1905 –Saturday- Paris and
1924 –Tuesday They had him in jail.
They had him locked away…… and they let him out. Adolf Hitler was sentenced to
five years in jail for his participation in the "Beer Hall Putsch" –
his almost slapstick comedic attempt to take over
1929 –Monday- The yo-yo was introduced in
1932 –Friday- Happy Birthday, Norman Abramson,
American computer scientist who created ALOHAnet, - which sounds like a way to
trap tourists in Hawaii but was really the first modern data network, and led
to the development of the theory of random access ALOHA channels. ALOHA channels created significant
advancements within wireless and local area networking, and some versions are still in use today in all major mobile
telephone and wireless data standards. This influential work also developed the
core concepts found today in Ethernet. It opened in 1970, operating at 9600
bits per second, using radio to provide a wireless packet-switched data network
between several
1933
–Saturday- Happy Birthday, Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, French
physicist who shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in
1997 (with Steven Chu and William D. Phillips) for developing methods using
laser light to cool gases to the micro-kelvin temperature range - nearly
absolute zero to a fraction of a millionth of a degree. This method of “trapping atoms” – sort of like
tranquilizing them, was a long way from Ernest Rutherford’s early 1900’s
experiments of shooting alpha particles at foil to locate the nuclei of atoms.
With this technique the motion of the chilled atoms is thereby sufficiently
slowed to permit their study with very great accuracy, and their inner
structure can be determined.
1938- Friday- Panda kaput. Su Lin,
the first panda to live in captivity outside China, died after a twig lodged in
its throat. The clever keepers at Brookfield Zoo, Chicago, U.S. had added oak
twigs to the panda's usual diet of bamboo even though there was no record of
panda’s ever eating oak twigs…..why not just give them hamburgers????. The panda had been brought from
1939 –Saturday- The end of the
Spanish Civil War as Generalísimo Francisco Franco announced that the last of
the Republican forces had surrendered. The war had lasted from 1936-1939
between those loyal to the newly- established Republican government (which came
power after the fall of the Spanish monarchy) and those who favored a
conservative, militaristic system. The outcome of the Spanish Civil War altered
the balance of power in Europe, as
1945-Sunday- American forces invaded the Japanese held
1946 –Monday- During the early
morning an earthquake of magnitude 7.4 occurred in an area of the Aleutian
Trench located approximately 90 miles south of Unimak Island, part of the
Aleutian Island chain. During the quake, a large section of seafloor was
uplifted along the fault where the quake occurred, producing a large,
Pacific-wide tectonic tsunami. The first wave of the tsunami reached the big
1959 -Wednesday-
Freddy
Cannons’ Tallahassee Lassie was released on an unsuspecting public. Featuring
existential lyrics such as “She’s my Tallahassee Lassie, whoo”, Cannon’s record
(written by his mother) would be followed by such dithyrambs as Way Down Yonder in New Orleans, the
immortal Transistor Sister, and the,
not bad, Palisades Park. Cannon would become one of Dick Clark’s “pet
acts” (see Fabian, Frankie Avalon, Bobby Rydell, et al) and kept making
appearances long after he ran out of places to sing about.
1960-Friday- Tiros I, a two-camera weather satellite was launched. After 2 months it had taken over 20,000
pictures of clouds. The goal was to improve satellite applications for
Earth-bound decisions, such as "should we evacuate the coast because of
the hurricane?" or “Will I need my sun block SPF 30 at the beach
today?”…….no, not really for the second question. Professor Sy Yentz has his sunbathing sense
of humor. TIROS proved extremely successful for weather forecasting but to this
day, people are still reluctant to evacuate their homes.
1963 -Monday Oh Dirk! Oh Audry! Oh, the awful writing. Oh the awful
acting….The soap opera
1967 - The United States Department of Transportation began
operations. Well, that’s certainly worked out well. Its first secretary, Alan
S. Boyd, took office on January 16, 1967 but the Department started its
tradition of screwing everything up on this day
1970 –Wednesday- Goodbye
to the “Marlboro Man”, silly jingles and cigarettes as suave accessories…….
when President Richard Nixon signed a measure banning cigarette advertising on
radio and TV.
1976 –Thursday- Apple Computer
was formed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. The first home computer with a GUI or
graphical user interface was the Apple Lisa. The very first graphical user
interface was developed by the Xerox Corporation at their Palo Alto Research
Center (PARC). Apple hit the mother lode
with the 1984 release of the Macintosh.
1979-Sunday- Perhaps
his increasingly bizarre behavior in years to come was due to exposure to
radiation. President Jimmy Carter, who had trained as
an engineering officer for nuclear power plants – yet continued to say
“nucular” visited the
1981
–Wednesday Always up to date with modern trends, daylight saving time was
finally introduced in the
1984
–Sunday- “What’s Going On?” On the
day before his forty fifth birthday, Singer Marvin Gaye was shot to death by
his father at age 44. Gaye, one of Motown’s principal artists, had a series of
hits beginning with Stubborn Kind of
Fellow in 1962 and continuing with hits such as I Heard it Through the Grapevine, and What’s Going On. He also
teamed with Tammi Terrell for Ain’t No
Mountain High Enough. Addled by drug use, paranoia, and contentious relationship
with his father, Gaye was shot point blank after a violent argument.
1987
–Wednesday- Seeking to
avoid rising air, sea and train fares,
Steve Newman became the first man to walk around the world alone. It
took him 4 years, and he visited 20 countries. He ran into a blizzard in the Pyrenees, wild
boars in
2001 –Sunday- “I Bob, take you, George…….”
Same-sex marriage became legal in the
2002
–Monday- The
742 –Thursday- Happy Birthday, Charlemagne, King of the Franks
(Duke of Weiners, Earl of Hot Dogs, and Prince of Sausage) King of the Lombards
and Charles I of the Holy Roman Empire. The greatest of medieval kings, he was
born in 742, at ……well, we don’t know exactly where he was born…. As King of
the Franks, Charlemagne’ goal was to strengthen his realm and to bring order to
the chaos of medieval
1513-Wednesday- Juan Ponce
DeLeon, born in born in Tierra de Campos Palencia, Spain.while searching for The
Fountain of youth (and abeach front condo), made the first European landing on
the Florida shore. He
landed near the site of what is now
1527
–Saturday- (Gonna find her)
(Gonna find her)
(Gonna find her)
(Gonna find her)
Yeah,
I've been searchin'
A-a searchin'
Oh, yeah, searchin' every which a-way
Yeah, yeah
Oh, yeah, searchin'
I'm searchin'
Searchin' every which a-way
Yeah, yeah……The
Coasters………….. Happy Birthday, Abraham Ortelius, born Abraham Ortels, Flemish cartographer and geographer. Ortelius
was a contemporary of Gerardus Mercator. He is the most famous of the
16th-century Flemish school of geography…..go ahead, name some others….see? Ortelius traveled with Mercator in 1560 and
was inspired to begin his chief work, Theatrum
OrbisTerrarum (1570), the first modern atlas of the world. The first
edition of this atlas contained 53 maps, in part compiled from maps of 87
cartographers; the 1587 edition had 103 maps.
1618 –Monday- Happy Birthday, Francesco Maria Grimaldi,
Italian mathematician and physicist. Grimaldi discovered the diffraction of
light and gave it the name diffraction, (although he probably called it diffrazione)
which means "breaking up." He laid the groundwork for the later
invention of the diffraction grating. He was one of the earliest physicists to
suggest that light was wavelike in nature. Grimaldi was also responsible for
the practice of naming lunar regions after astronomers and physicists.
1647 –Tuesday- Happy Birthday- Maria Sibylla Merian, German botanist. Merian collected, raised, and observed the
living insects, rather than working from preserved specimens, as was the norm
which may have made for an interesting house. Following a divorce, at age fifty
two, she and her eldest daughter embarked on a
trip to the Dutch colony of
1725-Monday- I have
always loved truth so passionately that I have often resorted to lying as a way
of introducing it into the minds which were ignorant of its charms. ………Happy
Birthday, Giovanni Casanova, Italian ecclesiastic, writer, soldier, spy, and
diplomat but mainly remembered as the prince of Italian adventurers and as the
man who made the name Casanova synonymous with “libertine.” He spent his later
years (1785–98) as librarian to the Count von Waldstein in
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"He now felt glad at having
suffered sorrow and trouble, because it enabled him to enjoy so much better all
the pleasure and happiness around him; for the great swans swam round the
new-comer, and stroked his neck with their beaks, as a welcome." …from 'The Ugly Duckling'…. International
Children‘s Book Day- marks the birthday
of Hans Christian Anderson in 1805 -Tuesday.
1814 –Saturday- Happy Birthday, Erastus Bigalow, American industrialist who is famous as
the developer of the power loom for making lace and many types of carpet. Yes,
he was a “loomatic”. Bigalow’s invention led to led to Alexander Smith starting
what would become the world's largest rug and carpet manufacturer of the modern
era in the Bronx N.Y., in 1845.
1827-Monday- Take
out those No. 2 pencils and begin taking note…..Lead pencils, which are really
graphite (plumbago)
pencils, were first manufactured by
Joseph Dixon, who built his factory in Salem, Mass. Dixon was responsible for
the development of the graphite industry in the U.S. Not one to let grass grow
under his feet,
1834-Wednesday- Happy Birthday, Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, French sculptor of “Liberty Englightening the World”, aka
The Statue of Liberty. He launched his
sculptathon with "
1840-Thursday-
Happy Birthday, Emile Zola, French
novelist Emile Zola
novelist. Among Zola's most important works is his famous Rougon-Macquart cycle (1871-1893), which included such novels as L’Assommoir (1877), about the suffering
of the Parisian working-class, Nana (1880),
dealing with prostitution, and Germinal
(1885), depicting the mining industry. Zola's open letter J'ACCUSE in the newspaper L'Aurore on January
13, 1898, reopened the case of the Jewish Captain, Alfred Dreyfus, sentenced to
1841 –Friday- Happy Birthday- Clément Ader, French aviation
pioneer He is most well-known, however, for his two remarkable flying machines,
the Ader Eole and the Ader Avion No. 3. He claimed to have flown before the
Wright Brothers but he was told to go fly a kite.
1845-Wednesday- "Smile."........H.L. Fizeau & J. Leon Foucault took the first photograph of the Sun. Leon Foucault is a bit more famous for his pendulum, Foucault’s Pendulum, which proved the rotation of the Earth. The image, taken with an exposure of 1/60th of a second, was about 4.7 inches (12 centimeters) in diameter and captured several sunspots.
1865 –Sunday- …..And I wonder--
I wah-wah-wah-wah-wonder,
Why,
Why, why, why, why, why he ran away,
Yes, and I wonder,
A-where he will stay-ay,
My little runaway,
Run, run, run, run, runaway. …..apologies
to Del Shannon……With the Confederate defences breached and Robert E. Lee in
retreat, Confederate President Jefferson Davis and most of his Cabinet fled the
Confederate capital of
1872-Tuesday-
George B. Brayton of
1875-Friday – and speaking of gasoline
engines, Happy Birthday,
Walter P. Chrysler, the industrialist, inventor and manufacturer who
founded the Chrysler Corporation in1925 , and developed the six-cylinder
engine. We were cleverly going to list all of the car models sold by Chrysler
over the years but there are 83! So you’ll find them here: http://www.ranker.com/list/full-list-of-chrysler-models/reference?page=3&format=mainlist
1889-Tuesday- Charles M. Hall ( Independently, Paul Héroult in
1902
–Wednesday- The movie wasn’t so
hot, it didn’t have much of a plot
We fell asleep, our goose is cooked, our reputation is shot
Wake up little Susie
Wake up little Susie, well
Whatta we gonna tell your mama
Whatta we gonna tell your pa
Whatta we gonna tell our friends when they say “ooh-la-la” ….The Everly Brothers…."Electric
Theatre", actually it was “Tally’s Electric Theater” the first full-time movie theater in the
United States, opened in Los Angeles, California at 262 South Main Street. Admission was ten cents and “provided an
hour's amusement in a vaudeville of
moving pictures including Capture of
the Biddle Brothers and
1917-Monday-
President Woodrow Wilson asked
Congress to declare war against
1920
–Friday- Just the
facts Ma’am…… "The story you are about to see is true. Only the
names have been changed to protect the innocent." Happy Birthday, Jack Webb, American actor, director,
producer, Sgt. Joe Friday, Dragnet, Mark VII Limited ,
1934 –Monday- Happy Birthday,
Paul Cohen, American mathematician who received the
Fields Medal – the Mathematics equivalent of the Nobel Prize(1966) for his for
his research on one of David Hilbert's "23 most important problems"
in mathematics, proving the independence of the continuum hypothesis. The term consistency in mathematics
refers to the condition that any mathematical theorem be free from contradiction.
Developing a consistency proof
had been listed as number one on David Hilbert's 1900 list of the 23 most
important problems in mathematics for the twentieth century (balancing a check
book was number 2, figuring out the tip for a party of eight at a restaurant
was number 3. Although he had no specific background in the field of logic, in
which the consistency proof is particularly relevant, Cohen saw it as a way of
providing convincing evidence "that set theory is based on some kind of truth," Question from
Professor Sy Yentz….who checked his work?
He also worked on differential equations and harmonic analysis. We
presume harmonic analysis has something to do with harmonicas.
1935-Tuesday- Robert Watt ( brother of Say Watt?, Some Watt and Kumq Watt) was granted a patent for RADAR (Radio Detecting And Ranging) radar locating of aircraft. Watt built on the work of German physicist, Heinrich Hertz who had calculated that an electric current swinging very rapidly back and forth in a conducting wire would radiate electromagnetic waves into the surrounding space (today we would call such a wire an "antenna"). With the wire he created (in 1886) and detected such oscillations in his lab, using an electric spark, in which the current oscillates rapidly, we call "radio waves". Watt also coined the phrase ionosphere.
1953 –Thursday- The journal Nature
published a paper from Francis Crick and James Watson, with the catchy
title of Molecular Structure of
Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid, in which
they described a double helix structure for DNA. There were four basic
questions: Inquiry Questions -To solve the structure of DNA four ideas had to
come together.
That the phosphate backbone was on
the outside, bases on the inside.
That the molecule was a double
helix.
That the strands were antiparallel.
That it had a specific base pairing.
Rosalind Franklin had done most of the work but she got bogged down in
calculations. Franklin came up with a a
draft paper, dated March, 17, 1953,
which outlined that the molecule was a double helix, had specific base pairing
and the antiparallel A form, which had not been applied to the B form.
But………..Watson and Crick beat her to the publishing as they submitted a final
paper on March 18 to be published April 2.
1956
–Monday As the World Turns and The
Edge of Night premiered on CBS-TV. The two soaps become the first daytime
dramas to debut in the 30-minute format. As the World Turns starred Ruth Warrick
and Helen Wagner. Edge of Night was an
attempt to transfer the Perry Mason character from its cancelled nighttime
venue to daytime. When the attempt failed, a "new" Perry Mason was
created in the person of Mike Karr, "Edge's" first lawyer-hero, soon
to be joined by Adam Drake, his younger and flashier partner. It initially
starred John Larkin, radio’s Perry Mason.
1956-Monday-
I keep a close watch on this heart of mine
I keep my eyes wide open all the time.
I keep the ends out for the tie that binds
Because you're mine, I walk the line ………The two
soap opera premieres obviously prompted Johnny Cash to walk the line as he recored
I Walk the Line on this day. It
is a promise to remain faithful to his first wife, Vivian, while he is on the
road….well we all know how well that worked out.
1973 –Monday- Launch of the LexisNexis computerized legal
research service. In 1967, Data Corp, an Ohio-based company who developed ink
jet printing technologies, was contracted by the Ohio State Bar Association to
provide a "free-text" search and retrieval system. Mead Data Central introduces LEXIS® and NAARS
services. LEXIS provides the full text of
1978 –Sunday- Vini
Vedi Velcro ….I came, I saw,
I stuck around….Velcro,
one of the great developments of Western civilization, was released (or is it
attached?). It was developed by Swiss
engineer Georges de Mestral, who had noticed how cockle burrs clung to his
clothing during a hike in the mountains. The cocklebur is a maze of thin strands
with burrs (or hooks) on the ends that cling to fabrics or animal fur. Using a
microscope, he discovered their natural hook-like shape. Velcro uses two tapes,
one with stiff "hooks" like the burrs which clings to the second tape
with soft "loops" like the fabric of his pants. The trademarked name
Velcro comes from "vel" or velvet and "cro" from the French
word crochet which means hook.
1979- The world’s first
anthrax epidemic (an overwhelming desire to continuously listen to Indians and Antisocial by Anthrax) , began in Ekaterinburg, Russia By the time it ended six weeks later, 62
people were dead. Another 32 survived serious illness. As people in
Ekaterinburg first began reporting their illnesses, the Communist government of
the “workers paradise” –famous for never telling the truth about anything- announced
that the cause was tainted meat that the victims had eaten. However, the town
was the home of a biological-weapons plant so much of the rest of the world was
immediately skeptical of the Soviet explanation. It was not until 13 years
later, in 1992, that the epidemic was finally explained: typically effician
socialist workers at the Ekaterinburg weapons plant failed to replace a crucial
filter, causing a release of anthrax spores into the outside air. Anthrax is an
infectious, usually fatal disease of
warm-blooded animals, especially of cattle and sheep, caused by the bacterium Bacillus anthracis. The disease can be
transmitted to humans through contact with contaminated animal substances, such
as hair, feces, or hides, and is characterized by ulcerative skin lesions.
1982
–Friday- Argentina
invaded the
1984
–Monday- Squadron
Leader Rakesh Sharma was launched aboard Soyuz T-11, and becomes the first
Indian in space. Following a one day
solo flight the Soyuz docked with the Salyut 7 space station on 04.04.1984 and
common work with the third resident crew. The crew conducted scientific and
technical studies which included 43 experimental sessions, as Earth observation
program concentrating on
1993 –Friday- It’s
only rock n roll but I like it………..The London tabloids broke the news that
Rolling Stone bassist Bill Wyman's son Stephen was engaged to 46-year-old Patsy
Smith, mother of Wyman's ex-wife, 22-year-old Mandy Smith.
2002 –Tuesday- The desecration of the Church of the Nativity (traditional birthplace of Jesus) as Muslim gunmen forced their way into the church and used it as a base of operations as they began a 39 day stand off with Israeli forces who had taken control of Bethlehem
1043 -Monday Edward the Confessor
– the last Saxon King -was crowned King of England. Of course in 1066 when
Edward went kaput, his crown went to Harold Godwine….Edward’s
brother-in-law. This was disputed by
William the Bastard of Normandy who invaded
1367
–Friday- Happy
Birthday, King Henry IV of England. Made famous by Shakespeare as Bolingbroke, Henry (
1449 –Tuesday- King Henry VI (grandson of
Henry IV – see 1367 above) of England granted John of Utynam a 20-year monopoly
to make stained glass. This was one of the earliest known patents. John was a
master glass-maker from
1683 –Saturday- Happy Birthday,
English naturalist, Mark Catesby. Catesby traveled
back and forth to
1715 –Wednesday- Happy Birthday, William Watson,
William Watson English physician and scientist who was born and died in
1778-Friday- Happy Birthday, Pierre-Fidèle Bretonneau, French
epidemiologist who in 1825 performed the first successful tracheotomy – an incision
of and entrance into the trachea through the skin and muscles of the neck. Bretonneau was the first person to study and
describe fully the symptoms of diphtheria, and gave the disease its name. He
also believed there was a difference between typhoid fever and typhus, which
were often mistaken as the same disease. In case you were wondering,Typhus, is caused by bacteria spreading
through the bites of lice and fleas. The infection causes headache, fever and a
rash of red spots. It arrived in Europe in the 15th century, and there was a
fearful epidemic in 1557-59.Typhoid, on the other hand, is spread by consuming
contaminated food or water and is not unrelated to salmonella. Meanwhile, back
to Bretonneau who found time from his medical studies to be 25 years younger
than his first wife and, at the age of 78, marry a young woman of 18. He was 84
when he died, presumably with a smile on his face.
1783 –Thursday-
Happy Birthday, Washington Irving, American
author who wrote The Legend of Sleepy
Hollow. Interestingly,
both Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle appear in his book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon,
1798
–Tuesday- Happy Birthday, Charles
Wilkes, American oceanographer, who named the continent of
1823 –Thursday- Happy
Birthday, William Marcy “Boss”
1829-Friday-
James Carrington of
1837-Monday-
Happy Birthday, John Burroughs, American conservationist. He was born in
1860-Tuesday- Giddyup!
The Pony Express was started from
1866-Tuesday- Addressing the problem of ill fitting hats, after years of
trying to invent a machine that could re-shape people’s heads, R. Eickemeyer
and G. Osterheld of
1882 –Monday As the song goes, “The dirty little coward who shot Mr. Howard has laid
poor Jessie in his grave”. Legendary
outlaw Jesse James was shot in the back by
as he straightend a picture on his living room wall by Robert Ford, a
member of his gang, some say he was just a “hanger on”, who hoped to collect the bounty for Jesse’s
capture “dead or alive”. In case you
were wondering, Jesse’s brother Frank later surrendered, was acquitted in two
trials and died of old age. Jesse lives on as he has been played in the movies by Tyrone
Power (1939 – with Henry Fonda as Frank James), Robert Wagner (1957), John
Lupton (1966 – Lupton was a 1950’s lead in the TV Western, Broken Arrow), Audie Murphy (1969), Robert Duvall (1972), James
Keach (1980), Kris Kristofferson (1986), Rob Lowe (1994), J. D. Souther (1999),
Colin Farrell (2001), and Brad Pitt (2007 – with playwright Sam Shepherd as
Frank). Ford received a pardon for the murder from Missouri Governor Thomas
Crittenden. On June 8th, 1892,
Ford was sitting in a saloon when in walked a man by the name of Edward
O'Kelley with a sawed off shotgun. As Ford's back was to the door, O'Kelley
said "Hello, Bob," and as Ford turned around to see who had addressed
him, O'Kelley shot him with both barrels, killing him instantly
1885 –Friday- Gerhard
Daimler, German inventor was granted a German patent for his engine design.
Daimler had been working on the idea for years but reliable ignition was a
problem. In 1883 Daimler finally developed
and patented a reliable self-firing ignition system using an incandescent tube
in the cylinder head. Later that year, he used the engine to power a
bicycle. He got around to cars in 1889.
Powered by a 1.5 hp, two-cylinder gasoline engine, it had a four-speed
transmission and traveled at 10 mph.
1898 –Sunday- Happy Birthday, Katherine Esau,
German-American botanist. Follow this carefully now; she was born in
Yekaterinoslav, Russian Empire (now Dnipropetrovsk and equally as unspellable,
1924
–Thursday- Happy
Birthday Actor (and notably strange human being), Marlon Brando born in Omaha,
Neb. Brando, considered by some to be the greatest actor of his time, starred in
On the Waterfront, The Godfather,
Last Tango in Paris, the lamentable One-Eyed
Jacks (which he directed) and forty other movies.
1924
–Thursday- Born on the same day as Marlon Brando, Happy
Birthday, Doris Day, perpetually virginal American actress who staved off the
attentions (at least until the end of the movie) of Rock Hudson, Clark Gable,
Cary Grant, and others in a series of
frothy late 1950’s early 60s movie comedies – Pillow Talk, Teacher’s Pet, Lover Come Back, and That Touch of Mink.
1926 –Saturday- Happy Birthday, Virgil Grissom – one of the original seven American
astronauts. Grissom had flown 100 combat missions
with the 334th Fighter Interceptor Squadron in
1934-Tuesday-
Happy Birthday, Jane Goodall, British anthropologist famous for her work with
chimpanzees and appetite for bananas.
Goodall became the world's foremost
authority on chimpanzees, having closely observed their behavior in the jungles
of the Gombe Game Reserve in Africa, living in the chimps' environment and
gaining their confidence by lending them money, allowing them to use her TV and
promising to get Regis Philbin’s autograph.
1934-Tuesday- Same day as Jane Goodall was born, inventor Percy Shaw of
1936-Friday- Richard Bruno Hauptmann, convicted in the 1932 kidnapping
and murder of the 20-month-old son of Charles A. Lindbergh, was kaputed by
electrocution. On March 1, 1932, Charles Lindbergh Jr., the son of the famous
American aviator who made the first solo, nonstop transatlantic flight in 1927,
was kidnapped from the nursery of the Lindbergh home in
1936
–Friday- Friday,
Speaking of knockouts (see above item) we are told that on this day, Shortest
boxing bout with gloves lasted only 10 seconds. The Gnus attempted to identify
the combatants, or combatant. In the
xeroxographic world of the internet, all references are the same. We did find that it is not the shortest bout,
1 Russell Rees KO1 Des Sowden 4 seconds Jr. Lightweight Nov. 3, 2000 (Rees,
noted for his exceptionally bad halitosis, exhaled deeply as he moved to the
center of the ring and Sowden toppled over). 2 Jose Pons KO1 Cecilio Niz 5
seconds Middleweight Mar. 26, 1952 and 3 Ever Beleno KO1 Guillermo Salcedo 5
seconds Featherweight Sep. 16, 1994 , there are quite a few more till we reach
10 seconds and none of the 10 second entrees feature a 1936 bout. http://forum.philboxing.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=107289
1942 –Friday- Happy Birthday
singer, Billy Joe Royal, who had a top ten hit in 1965 (see Wooley Booley, 1965 below) with Down in the Boondocks. Billy Joe makes the Gnus because it gave us
the opportunity to explore the notion of boondocks. Boondocks are defined as wild and dense brush; jungle. Or rural country;
the backwoods. The word is derived from
the Tagalog word bundok, meaning mountain. Tagalog is an Austronesian language spoken in
the
1946 –Wednesday- Lt. General Masaharu Homma, the Japanese
commander responsible for the Bataan Death March, was executed in the
1948-Saturday- President
Truman signed the Marshall Plan, which allocated more than $5 billion in aid
for 16 European countries. Eventually
over $12 billion was given. The
1956-Tuesday- Elvis Presley performed his #1 hit Heartbreak Hotel on the Milton Berle’s
Texaco Star Theater. Elvis was also in a skit with Berle with
1965-Saturday- SNAP 10A, the first nuclear reactor in
space, was launched from Vanden berg Air Force Base,
1965
– Saturday- Saturday-
possibly related to the previous item, another moment in classical music history
as Wooley Booley by Sam the Sham (Domingo
Samudio) and the Pharoahs
was released. The occasionally Homeric
lyrics;
Uno, dos, one, two, tres, quatro
Matty told Hatty about a thing she saw.
Had two big horns and a wooly jaw.
Wooly bully, wooly bully.
Wooly bully, wooly bully, wooly bully.
Hatty told Matty, "Let's don't take
no chance.
Let's not be L-seven, come and learn to
dance."
Interestingly, while the song was the
number one seller of the year, it only reached number 2 on the Billboard Charts.
1966-Sunday- Luna 10
(U.S.S.R.) became the first spacecraft to orbit the Moon.(See March 31). The scientific instruments on board
included a gamma-ray spectrometer, triaxial magnetometer, a meteorite detector,
and lots of those thingees that, you know, do science stuff.
1968 – Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey had its premiere in
1969-Thursday- Dr. Denton A. Cooley implanted the first total artificial
heart (the Liotta Total Artificial Heart) at the Texas Heart Institute in
1973
–Tuesday A
huge technological breakthrough and a curse. The first portable phone call was
placed by inventor Martin Cooper. The phone was 10 inches in height, 3 inches
deep and an inch-and-a-half wide and weighed 30-oz. Cooper walked down the
streets of
1973-Tuesday- And on the same day as the first portable phone was demonstrated -Francis W. Dorion patented a "dual razor blade assembly.” Now people could get twice as many cuts but they could hold their portable phones to their clean shaven faces.
1974
–Wednesday- The worst
tornado outbreak in
1986 –Thursday- IBM unleashed their first laptop computer on
the world. The computer considered by most historians to be the first true
portable computer was the Osborne 1.
Adam Osborne founded the eponymous Osborne Computer and produced the equally
eponymous Osborne 1 in 1981, a portable computer that weighed 24 pounds and
cost $1795. The Osborne 1 came with a five-inch screen, modem port, two 5 1/4
floppy drives, a large collection of bundled software programs, and a battery
pack. It was a failure. http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bllaptop.htm
2007 –Tuesday- An official new world record for
conventional-train speed of 574.8 km/h (357.2 mph) was set by a French TGV on
the LGV Est high speed line east of
186 –Tuesday-
Happy Birthday, Caracalla, Roman emperor from 211 - 217. Following the kapution
of his father Septimus Severus, Caracalla was proclaimed co-emperor with his
brother Publius Septimius Antoninius Geta. Caracalla killed Geta. Caracalla was
one of
1581
–Saturday- Going around in circles,
Francis Drake completed a circumnavigation of the world in 1580 and on this day
was knighted on board his flagship the Golden
Hind by Elizabeth I. Drake was the second captain to circle the globe – the
feat had already been accomplished by the expedition of Ferdinand Magellan in
1519 although since Magellan went kaput in the Philippines, Drake was the first
expedition leader to do the round trip Seven years later, with the aid of a
huge storm, he would save the country from the Spanish Armada.
1688 –Sunday- Happy Birthday, Joseph-Nicolas
Delisle, of “Delisles of Capri”, (you can also have two seats on Delisle), French
astronomer who proposed that the series of colored rings sometimes observed
around the Sun is caused by diffraction of sunlight through water droplets in a
cloud right here on Earth. Delisle is also remembered as the author of a method
for observing the transits of Venus and Mercury by instants of contacts.
1818-Saturday- Congress decreed that the U.S. flag would consist of 13 red
and white stripes and 20 stars, with a new star to be added for every new state
added to flag on the first July fourth after statehood. That did not settle an
issue that began in on June 14, 1777 when the Continental Congress passed the
first Flag Act, which announced, "Resolved, That the flag of the United
States be made of thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be
thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new Constellation."
The overall flag size, proportions, and arrangements of the stars and stripes
were not fixed until President William Taft's administration in 1912. For one
hundred and thirty-five years, the flag had no prescribed appearance, and many
variations were designed and sewn.
1821-Wednesday- Happy Birthday, Linus Yale, American inventor born
in
1823-Friday- Happy Birthday, Charles
Wilhelm Siemens, German/British scientist who invented a gas-heated,
open-hearth furnace. Repairs to the
furnace were called "open hearth surgery." He also did extensive work in electric
telegraphy. Siemens designed the cable-laying ship Faraday for laying a new
trans-Atlantic cable in 1874. He also worked on electric lighting and on the
Portrush electric railway in
1828-Saturday-
Casparus van Wooden, of
1841-Sunday
– William Henry we hardly knew ye. Only thirty one days after assuming office
(presidential inaugurations were held on March 4 in those days), William Henry
Harrison, the ninth president of the
1846-Sunday- Happy Birthday,
Raoul Pictet, Swiss chemist who was a
pioneer of cryogenics which is the production of low temperatures or the study
of low-temperature phenomena. Needless to say his work was met with a chilly
reception by the Scientific community.
1859 –Monday-
O, I wish I was in the land of cotton
Old times there are not forgotten
Look away! Look away!
Look away!
In
Early on one frosty mornin'
Look away! Look away!
Look away!
Chorus:
O, I wish I was in
Hooray! Hooray!
In
To live and die in
Away, away,
The song, Dixie, made its debut in
1866 –Wednesday-
Alexander II of
1902 –Friday- British financier Cecil Rhodes left $10
million in his will to provide scholarships for Americans at
1915 –Sunday- Happy Birthday, Muddy Waters, American
blues musician. Among his hits were; I Can't Be Satisfied, I Feel Like Going Home, Train Fare Blues
but his influence on Rock & Roll is inestimable. Waters “electrified” the blues of the
Mississippi Delta, and brought it to
1932-Monday- Professor Charles Glen (C.G)King isolated Vitamin C in the juice of lemons after five years of research. Dr. King and his colleague William Waugh were successful in obtaining a patent in 1941 for their process of isolating the vitamin, but were denied a patent for the vitamin itself by Patent Office This isolation gave C a complex but then Vitamin B already had a complex and now C was complex and.....oh, it's so confusing, and complex.
1933-Tuesday- Four years before the Hindenburg disaster, the Akron,
a dirigible crashed in New Jersey, (also where the Hindenburg exploded and crashed), killing 73 people in one of the
first air disasters in history. The
1938-Monday- Happy Birthday, Ananda Chakrabarty, Indian-American biochemist who patented
the first genetically engineered life-form (which we now know as Paris Hilton).
The U.S. Supreme Court, on June 16, 1980 ruled that new forms of life could be
patented if they are the outcome of human ingenuity. Chakrabarty’s creation was
a biology-based solution for cleaning up toxic spills using the generically
engineered Pseudomonas (today classified as Burkholderia
cepacia or B. cepacia). As noted,
an unexpected outcome of Chakrabarty’s creation was the development of the
parasite, Celebutardicus Moronicus, a
species that appears to be growing faster than a fungus on week old bread.
1963
–Thursday- The movie musical Bye
Bye Birdie opened at
1964
- The Beatles
occupied the top five positions on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. - Can't Buy Me Love , Twist and Shout (cover of the Isley Brothers), She Loves You, I Want to Hold Your Hand, and Please Please Me ( a Gnus favorite).
1968 –Monday-
Martin Luther King was assassinated by James Earl Ray while standing on the
balcony of the Lorraine Motel in
1968 –Monday NASA launched the unmanned
Apollo 6. The goals were to demonstrate
structural and thermal integrity and compatibility of the launch vehicle and
spacecraft, (i.e would they fall apart or burn up) confirm launch loads and
dynamic characteristics and verify stage separations, propulsion, guidance and
control, electrical systems, emergency detection system. The tests were more severe than expected as two
of the second stage engines shut down early. The remaining three engines fired
longer than normal, but failed to achieve the speed expected. The third stage’s
engine also fired longer than would have been burning. Apollo 6 was the last of
the unmanned Apollo missions.
1972-Tuesday- The first electric
power generated in the
1978-Tuesday- Francisco Garcia was granted a patent
"orthodontic pliers." No, no no, it’s not what you think. They weren’t used for pulling teeth. The
pliers were primarily for bending the
alignment wire end during orthodontic techniques…..think braces.
1983-Monday-
The first flight
of the shuttle, Challenger. The crew was Paul J. Weitz, Commander, Karol J. Bobko,
Pilot; Donald H. Peterson, Mission Specialist; F. Story Musgrave, Mission
Specialist It was
named after the British Naval research vessel HMS Challenger that sailed the
Back to Calendar
456 -Wedneday St. Patrick returned to
1566 –Tuesday- It’s……it’s………it’s…….The Spanish Inquisition! Two-hundred
Dutch noblemen, led by Hendrik van Brederode, force dthemselves into the
presence of Margaret of Parma (must have been a big room) and presented the
Petition of Compromise, denouncing the Spanish Inquisition in the
Ximinez:
NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise
and fear...fear and surprise.... Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and
ruthless efficiency.... Our *three* weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless
efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.... Our
*four*...no... *Amongst* our weapons.... Amongst our weaponry...are such
elements as fear, surprise.... I'll come in again.
[The
Inquisition exits]
Chapman:
I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition.
[The
cardinals burst in]
Ximinez:
NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition! Amongst our weaponry are such diverse
elements as: fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, an almost fanatical devotion
to the Pope, and nice red uniforms - Oh damn!
[To
Cardinal Biggles] I can't say it - you'll have to say it.
Biggles:
What?
Ximinez:
You'll have to say the bit about 'Our chief weapons are ...'
Biggles:
[rather horrified]: I couldn't do that...
[Ximinez
bundles the cardinals outside again]
Chapman:
I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition.
[The
cardinals enter]
Biggles:
Er.... Nobody...um....
Ximinez:
Expects...
Biggles:
Expects... Nobody expects the...um...the Spanish...um...
Ximinez:
Inquisition.
Biggles:
I know, I know! Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. In fact, those who do
expect -
Ximinez:
Our chief weapons are...
Biggles:
Our chief weapons are...um...er...
Ximinez:
Surprise...
Biggles:
Surprise and --
Ximinez:
Okay, stop. Stop. Stop there - stop there. Stop. Phew! Ah! ... our chief
weapons are surprise...blah blah blah. Cardinal, read the charges.
Fang:
You are hereby charged that you did on diverse dates commit heresy against the
http://people.csail.mit.edu/paulfitz/spanish/script.html
1588 –Tuesday- Happy Birthday, Thomas
Hobbes English philosopher and political theorist. In his most
famous work, The Leviathan, he
described life in the wilderness (without rule and law) as “nasty, poor,
brutish, and short.”
1614-Friday – (We’ve also seen this date as 1613 –
it probably depends on when the catering hall was available) A
social note as Pocahontas, daughter of the chief of the Powhatan Indian
confederacy, married English tobacco planter John Rolfe in Jamestown, Virginia.
The bride, eldest daughter of the Powhatans of Virginia, was resplendent in a
gown of white taffeta. The groom, eldest son of the Rolfe’s of
1621 -Monday The Mayflower left
1649-Monday Happy Birthday, Elihu Yale, born in
1722
-Sunday- Dutch Admiral Jacob Roggeveen commanding
three ships arrived at
1753-Thursday- The British Museum was founded by an Act of Parliament granting £20,000 to purchase the 50,000 volume library of Sir Hans Sloane and his vast collection of 69,352 items of nature and art. The man obviously had a large attic. The museum was officially opened in 1759.
1801-Sunday- Happy Birthday, Felix Dujardin, French zoologist. He did valuable research on bacteria and on the “Infusoria” (dirty water). In 1834 he proposed that a new group of one-celled organisms be called Rhizopoda; meaning "root-foot”. This name was later changed to Protozoa. Contemporary protozoa are also known as local television station news readers. In 1835 he described protoplasm in unicellular animals, naming it “sarcode” which was later renamed protoplasm by Hugo von Mohl. Protoplasm includes both the substance within and the cell membrane and is the " living substance" of the cell. It can be differentiated into cytoplasm and the nucleus. He also demonstrated the role of the vacuole for evacuating waste matter and tried to invent little protozoa sized toilet paper in the interests of single celled hygiene. So, basically, he made important discoveries but someone always changed the names.
1804 –Thursday- Happy Birthday, Mathias Jacob Schleiden, German
botanist, cofounder (with Theodor Schwann – who extended it to animals and also
invented the Schwann Dive) of the cell theory, promulgated in 1839 which states
that all organisms are composed of similar units of organization, called cells.
1806 –Saturday- Isaac Quintard of
1815-Wednesday- The volcano Tambora, a stratovolcano, on the
1827-Thursday Happy Birthday, Joseph Lister,
(Listerine?) English surgeon and founder of modern antiseptic surgery. Doctors had believed that infections were due
to “bad air”. When, In 1865, Louis Pasteur suggested that decay was caused by
living organisms in the air, which on entering matter caused it to ferment,
Lister made the connection with wound sepsis. Combining his work with the work
of Pasteur, he began cleaning wounds with carbolic acid. His basic surgical principle - that
bacteria must never gain entry to an operation wound - remains the basis of
surgery to this day.
1856-Saturday- Happy Birthday, Booker T. Washington, born a slave so the birthday is
really an estimate, an educator and reformer who became an important
spokesperson for black Americans at the turn of the 20th century. He had
dedicated himself to the idea that education would raise his people to equality
in this country,
1858-Monday- Happy
Birthday,
1869
–Monday- Daniel Bakeman kaput.
Bakeman was the last surviving veteran of the American Revolution. Mr. Bakeman
entered the service when he was about seventeen years of age and served as a private
with the
1879 –Saturday- Chile declared war on
1892 –Tuesday- Walter H. Coe of
1893-Wednesday- As we all know, Thomas Corwin Mendenhall, then Superintendent of Weights and Measures, with the approval of the Secretary of the Treasury, decided that the International Meter and Kilogram would in the future be regarded as the fundamental standards of length and mass in the United States, both for metric and customary weights and measures. Well, that idea certainly caught on quickly.
1894-Thursday- Happy Birthday, Lawrence Bell, U.S.
aircraft designer and founder of Bell
Aircraft Co. Bell’s experimental X-1 rocket-propelled airplane (nicknamed the
“Glamorous Glennis”) piloted by Chuck Yeager (when he landed he was “ground
chuck”) in 1947 was the first to break the sound barrier in level flight. The
company also produced the nation's first jet propelled airplane, the world's
first commercial helicopter, the world's fastest and highest flying airplane,
the
1895 –Friday-
Irish playwright and wit Oscar Wilde lost his
criminal libel case against the Marquess of Queensberry, who had accused the
writer of being a homosexual. Wilde (married with two children) had engaged in
an affair with Queensbury’s son. Queensberry was also famous for instituting
the “Marquess of Queensberry Rules” that standardized boxing matches.
Queensberry was also considered to be a bit unhinged. He had stalked Wilde for months. Wilde thought it would be a simple show trial
in which he could show off his wit. In
losing the case, he was brought up on sodomy charges and received two years in
prison effectively ending his career.
1896 –Sunday- Sunday- After a hiatus of a few
centuries, actually it was about 1,500 years, the Olympic games resumed. The
ancient Olympic Games continued to be played every four years for nearly 1200
years until in 393 AD, the Roman emperor Theodosius I, a Christian, abolished
the Games because of their pagan influences. On this day, the first of the
modern Olympic Games opened in
1909 –Monday- Nerves
were frayed as The Neurological Institute of New York (NI) was
founded. While the
1918-Friday- Happy Birthday, Joseph Sobek, American inventor of
racquetball. Sobek developed the sport in 1950 to play at the
1949-Tuesday-
Happy Birthday, Judith
Resnick, American astronaut killed aboard the Challenger, January, 1986. In
1984, Resnik, one of only seven Jewish astronauts, became the second American
woman to travel in space. Dr. Sally K. Ride flew a mission in 1983. On her
first trip into space, Resnick was a mission specialist on the maiden voyage of
the space shuttle Discovery. Resnik
had logged 144 hours and 57 minutes in space.
1951 –Thursday-
Spies, and avowed Communist
Party members, Julius and
Ethel Rosenberg were sentenced to death for conspiring to commit espionage in
the form of sending U.S atomic bomb secrets, for the Soviet Union. For many years there was public hand wringing
by the usual apologists and Lenin’s
“useful idiots” over their innocence or guilt, a guilt finally proven through
the opening in 1995, of the spy code decryption process known as the Venona
Project. In his memoirs, published
posthumously in 1990, Nikita Khrushchev praised the pair for their "very
significant help in accelerating the production of our atomic bomb."
1951 –Thursday- Cinematic masterpiece, Bedtime for Bonzo premiered in
1964, 1975, 1976, 1992, 1997 – A series of kaputions as General
Douglas MacArthur, Nationalist Chinese Leader Chang Kai Shek, Billionaire weirdo, Howard Hughes, Walmart
founder Sam Walmart, and Beat Poet Allan Ginsberg all died on this day.
1964 –Sunday- The Beatles launched the
British Invasion. Ed Sullivan supplied
the landing craft. The next group up
after the Beatles was……The Searchers, somewhat lower in the Brit Rock pantheon,
but hey, who knew? The Searchers sang, Needles and Pins and Ain't That Just Like Me. Also appearing on the show were Señor Wences,
Topo Gigio (Gasp! Señor Wences and his hand puppets PLUS Togo Gigio on the same
show!!!), singer Theresa Brewer, comedian Nipsey Russell, and tenor Franco
Corelli.
1973-Thursday- Washington: Scientists
produced human blood cells in a living mouse. The mouse, which then donned
white gloves and could talk, immediately opened a theme park, married another
talking mouse named Minnie, and grew rich on the sales of memorabilia.
1987 –Sunday- The first launching of a television
network in almost 40 years as the FOX Broadcasting Company, under the direction
of Rupert Murdoch, started with two Sunday night shows, Married......With Children and The
Tracey Ullman Show. They were the beginnings of the FOX lineup. And now all
the airwaves are infested with reality shows providing ongoing opportunities
for publicity seekers to demonstrate their lack of talent, brains, and class.
1994
– Tuesday- Lead singer of Nirvana, rock star and icon, Kurt Cobain
committed suicide in his home in
1998
–Sunday- The Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge linking Shikoku with
Honshū in
648 B.C.-
Thursday- The earliest total solar
eclipse chronicled by the Greeks was observed. Archilochus, Greek poet said, "Nothing
can be surprising any more or impossible or miraculous, now that Zeus, father
of the Olympians has made night out of noonday, hiding the bright sunlight, and
. . . fear has come upon mankind. After this, men can believe anything, expect
anything. Don't any of you be surprised in future if land beasts change places
with dolphins and go to live in their salty pastures, and get to like the
sounding waves of the sea more than the land, while the dolphins prefer the
mountains." http://uk.geocities.com/solareclipsewebpages@btopenworld.com/SECalendar.html#_April
“ And Melina
Mercouri will win an Academy Award for Never on Sunday and then get elected to
Parliament.”
1199 –Tuesday - Richard the Lion Heart
kaput. The English king who between
running around on Crusade, being captured and held in dungeon
and attacking cities and towns in France, seemingly did everything he
could to avoid being in England. During
his reign from 1189-1199, he spent a total of six months in
1327 –Sunday- Love at first sight.
The Italian poet and scholar
Petrarch (often called the “first humanist”) , born in Arezzo, Italy, first saw
his ideal love and muse, Laura (possibly Laure de Noves, married in 1325 to
Hugo de Sade), at the Church of St. Clare in Avignon, France, who inspired him
with a passion which has become distinctive for its constancy and purity. He
really had a crush on her. His Canzoniere (Song Book)
was inspired Laura, chronicling his first encounter with her at the age of 23.
However, his love appears to have been unrequited. There is no definite
information concerning Laura, except that she was lovely to look at, with
golden hair, and her bearing was modest and dignified…..and she had a nice tan,
a buffed body, good caps on her teeth, a botoxed forehead, chewed gun, used the
word “like” in like every like sentence, and went to the mall twice a week.
1483-Friday- Happy
Birthday, Rafael (Raffaello Sanzi or Santi), Italian
painter and architect of the Italian Renaissance, student and then rival of
Michelangelo (who, interestingly, was born on one month and eight years earlier
on March 6 ). Raphael is
best known for his Madonnas and for his large figure paintings in the
1652 –Saturday- Dutch sailor Jan van Riebeeck established a re-supply
camp at the Cape of Good Hope, which eventually became
1748-Saturday The Roman city of
1830-Tuesday-
Fayette Township,
New York, Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon religion, organized the Church of
Christ of the Latter-day Saints during a meeting with a small group of fifty
five believers.
1841-Tuesday-
John Tyler was sworn in as the
new president.
1852-Tuesday- Edward
Sabine, Irish astronomer, scientist, ornithologist and explorer, announced that the 11 year sunspot cycle was
"absolutely identical" with the geomagnetic cycle. The geomagnetic
cycle is variations in the natural magnetic field measured at the Earth's
surface. The geomagnetic cycle is also responsible for the Numericallus Clueless virus that results in the bizarre behavior of
people who bring massive amounts of items to the “10 or Less” express line in
stores.
1862 –Sunday- The
beginning of the Battle of Shiloh as Confederate general Albert Sidney
Johnson's surprise attack on the Union forces led by Ulysses S. Grant initially
looked like a victory for the South. Late in the afternoon, Johnson was shot in
the leg. Too involved with parries and thrusts and encircling flanks, he failed
to notice the bleeding through his boot and subsequently bled to death. General
Pierre Beauregard took over leadership and failed to follow up the initial successes
thus giving Grant and his chief aide, William T. Sherman a chance to rally
their forces. Union reinforcements arrived the next day resulting in a
Confederate withdrawal. This bloody battle shocked the country (North and
South) and made the human destruction by the war a reality for both sides.
1869-Tuesday-
Same month (different year) as the British Museum - The American
Museum of Natural History in New York City was officially created with the
signing of a bill by the Governor of New York, John Thompson Hoffman. All
visitors immediately went to see the giant blue whale, then the dinosaurs, and
then the gift shop, and then the restrooms.
1869- Tuesday- Same
day as the creation of the
1869-Tuesday – Wow! What a day! And on the same day as the
two items above, the brouhaha over the invention of roller skates rolled on as Isaac Hodgson received a patent for his "roller
skate." The earliest known type, using two large wheels on each skate was
invented by a Belgian (there’s those Belgians again), Joseph Merlin, in 1759.
In
1870-Wednesday- Happy Birthday, Clarence McClung, American geneticist and paleontologist
who discovered the role of chromosomes in sex determination in a species of
grasshopper. Of course any criticism of his work on grasshoppers made him
hopping mad. From grasshoppers to mammals,
(quite a leap) he was one of the first to deduce that chromosomes determine the
sex of offspring. His 1901 hypothesis stated that that an extra, or accessory,
chromosome was the determiner of sex. The discovery of the sex-determining
chromosome provided some of the earliest evidence that a given chromosome
carries a definable set of hereditary traits. This explains why so many people
that you meet are idiots. Also, if your grandparents did not have children, it
is unlikely that you will have children.
1875 –Tuesday Alexander
Graham Bell was granted the patent for the multiple telegraph, which sent two
signals at the same time. This also
occurs frequently when people are dating.
1889-Saturday- The Kodak Camera was placed on sale by
George Eastman. Cost was $32.50. Actually, this was the Kodak II, a more
consumer friendly gadget than the Kodak I, which was actually cheaper at $25.00. Eastman’s goal was to simplify photography
and make it available to everyone, not just trained photographers. In 1883,
Eastman had announced the invention of photographic film in rolls. The Kodak
camera was pre-loaded with enough film for 100 exposures (no need to worry
about lining up the sprockets….a lifelong problem for Professor Sy Yentz prior
to the development of digital cameras). The Kodak camera could easily be
carried and handheld during its operation. The development process was a bit
cumbersome, after all the shots were taken, the whole camera was returned to
the Kodak company in Rochester, New York, where the film was developed, prints
were made, new photographic film was inserted, and then the camera and prints
were returned to the customer. Whew!
1895-Saturday-
Having lost the libel case that he
thought was a sure winner, Irish
writer Oscar Wilde was arrested after losing his libel case against the Marques
of Queensberry. See April 5. Homosexuality was classified as a crime in
1896 –Monday-After a 1,500 year interlude, after being banned
by Roman Emperor Theodosius I, the Olympic Games, a tradition of
ancient Greece, were re-started in
Athens, Greece. The first events were
held on this day. Roman Emperor Theodosius I had ended them in 393 A.D. At the
opening of the Athens Games, 280 participants from 13 nations competed in 43
events, including track-and-field, swimming, gymnastics, cycling, wrestling,
weightlifting, fencing, shooting, and tennis. The track-and-field events were
held at the Panathenaic Stadium, which was originally built in 330B.C. Unlike
the original games, athletes wore clothing this time.
1909-Tuesday- After 23 years of trying, Robert C. Peary and
Matthew Hensen became the first men to
reach the North Pole. They discovered a right jolly old elf and they laughed
when they saw him in spite of themselves.
Later, one Dr. Frederick A. Cook challenged their claim of being the
first to reach the North Pole. Cook claimed he had already reached the pole by
dogsled the previous year. A major contretemps followed, and in 1911 the scientific
geniuses of the U.S. Congress formally
recognized Peary's claim. In recent years, further studies of the conflicting
claims suggest that neither expedition reached the exact North Pole, but that
Peary and Henson came far closer, falling perhaps 30 miles short. On May 3,
1952, U.S. Lieutenant Colonel Joseph O. Fletcher of
1912-Saturday-
The electric starter first appeared in cars. Charles Kettering had invented the first
practical electric automobile starter.
1920 –Tuesday- Happy Birthday, Edmund H. Fischer, American
biochemist, born in Shanghai, China who was the co-recipient with Edwin G. Krebs
of the 1992 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries
concerning reversible phosphorylation, (say it fast, three times) a biochemical mechanism that governs the
activities of cell proteins. The discovery was a key to unlocking
how glycogen (a storage form of glucose in the body) in the body breaks down
into glucose (a simple sugar that is a major energy source for all cellular and
bodily functions). It fostered the techniques that prevent the body from
rejecting transplanted organs.
1928
–Friday- Happy Birthday, James D. Watson, American geneticist
and biophysicist who shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine
(with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins – but not Rosalind Franklin) for
the discovery of "the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its
significance for information transfer in living material."
Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is the substance contained in cells that controls
heredity. The X-ray crystallography experiments of Franklin and Wilkins
provided much information about DNA - in particular that DNA was a molecule in
which two "strands" formed a tightly linked pair. Crick and Watson
made the intuitive leap: in 1953, they proposed that the structure of DNA was a
winding helix in which pairs of bases (adenine paired with thymine and guanine
paired with cytosine) held the two strands together.
1930-Sunday-
An important date for Professor Sy Yentz and his presentations (see http://sciencegnus.com/Twinkies.pdf
Hostess Twinkies were
invented by bakery executive James Dewar.
1938 – Teflon was accidentally discovered by Du Pont
researcher Roy J. Plunkett and his technician Jack Rebok. Actually they
discovered the chemical compound polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) but polytetrafluoroethylene
proved to be a bit of a tongue twister so
it was later marketed as Teflon. They
found an apparently defective cylinder of perfluoroethylene gas. Since
no pressure was found when the valve was opened, even though the cyclinder
weight was the same as full cylinders, they decided to saw it open to
investigate. They found a slippery white powder. Plunkett found it had unusual
properties, a wonderful solid lubricant in powdered form which was chemically
inert and had a very high melting point (sounds a bit like Senator Charles Schumer). Think about it
the next time you use a Teflon pan to cook with.
1947 - Named for Antoinette Perry, an actress,
director, producer, and the wartime leader of the American Theatre Wing who had
recently passed away, the Tony Awards made their official debut at a dinner in
the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria hotel on Easter Sunday, April 6,
1947. Originally they were only awarded to people named Tony. No, actually, the
awards are for Broadway productions and performances. They are also famous for
the televised awards show which is watched by no one. Since they keep coming up
with new categories, it’s all very confusing but winners get a boost at the box
office so they must be important. The first winners were 1947 Actors (Dramatic)
Winner - José Ferrer (Cyrano de Bergerac)
and Fredric March (Years Ago), actresses
(Dramatic) Winner - Ingrid Bergman (Joan
of Lorraine) and Helen Hayes (Happy
Birthday). There was no award for
Best Play but the Director Winner was Elia Kazan (All My Sons)
1950 - A train fell off a bridge in
1954- Speaking
of chemical food products with the Twinkies (see 1930), the TV Dinner was first
put on sale by Swanson & Sons. Note; considering the size of
the chemical content, some of these may still found in your local supermarket. The first TV dinner featured turkey, corn
bread dressing and gravy, buttered peas and sweet potatoes. It cost 98 cents
and came in a box resembling a TV. In
1962 they stopped calling them TV Dinners and reverted to “nuclear waste”.
1955-
It was confirmed that Jupiter emitted radio waves. They were discovered by Bernard F. Burke and
Kenneth L. Franklin, astronomers at the Carnegie Institution in
1957 – Happy Birthday, Paolo Angelo Nespoli, Italian astronaut. On October 23,
2007 he was a member of the crew onboard STS-120, Discovery, to the International Space Station. This was the Space Shuttle mission which delivered the
Harmony module to the International Space Station.
1957 – On the day astronaut Paolo Nespoli was born,
1963
–Saturday- The Kingsmen recorded their seminal version of
the song Louie Louie. The original Louie
Louie was written in 1955 by Richard Berry and released as a single in 1957 on
Flip Records as Berry recorded it with The Pharaohs, (no, not Sam the Sham’s
Pharoahs). The Kingsmen originally hated
the original recording and were equally disgusted when they discovered they had
to pay the $50 recording fee. Louie Louie is legend. The mumbled lyrics made it
the subject of obscenity investigations by the FBI and the FCC, culminating in
an airwave ban in the state of
With the exception of Paul McCartney's
"Yesterday," it's been covered more times than any other pop song
(over 1,000 versions and counting). http://www.louielouie.net/06-history.htm
Louie Louie,
oh no
Me gotta go
Aye-yi-yi-yi, I said
Louie Louie, oh baby
Me gotta go
Fine little girl waits for me
Catch a ship across the sea
Sail that ship about, all alone
Never know if I make it home
Louie Louie,
oh no
Me gotta go
Aye-yi-yi-yi, I said
Louie Louie, oh baby
Me gotta go
1965 - Launch of Early Bird, the
first communications satellite to be placed in synchronous orbit. A synchronous
orbit is a circular orbit around the equator, at a distance of 6.6 Earth radii.
At this distance the orbital period is 24 hours, keeping the satellite
"anchored" above the same spot on Earth. This makes the synchronous
orbit useful for communication satellites: a satellite transmitting TV programs
to the US, for instance, will always be in touch with the US if
"anchored" above it, and receiving antennas will only need to point
to a fixed spot in the sky. This enables
people to watch increasingly stupid and insipid television shows…….or be put to
sleep by C-Span.
1966- The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini
had its world premiere. The “beach party”
movies had jumped the shark with Pajama
Party. Some say they jumped the
shark with the first movie, but this one killed the franchise. It was somewhere south of treacle. Frankie and Annette had more common sense so
the movie starred Disney reject Tommy Kirk, Deborah Walling, Nancy Sinatra –
couldn’t sing and the movie proved she couldn’t act either- and featured the
sadly used and fading fast, Francis X. Bushman, Boris Karloff, and Basil
Rathbone. The series began in 1963 with Beach
Party and then followed with,
1973 – Pioneer 10 had
been launched to explore the Solar System. On this day, Pioneer 11 was launched to explore Jupiter and Saturn. Pioneer 11 reached Jupiter in December 1974,
following Pioneer 10, which flew by the planet a year earlier. It came in under
the giant planet's south pole and skimmed within 42,800 km (26,600 miles) of
Jupiter's cloud tops. In 1990 Pioneer 11
became the fourth spacecraft to journey beyond the Solar System, heading in the
same direction that the Sun moves through interstellar space. The last
communication was received from Pioneer
11 on Nov. 30, 1995; its electric power source was exhausted, it could no
longer operate any of its experiments or point its antenna toward Earth. Pioneer 11 is headed in the direction of
the constellation
1983
- Interior Secretary
James Watt banned the Beach Boys from the 4th of July celebration on the
Washington Mall, saying rock 'n' roll bands attract the "wrong
element." When contacted about the wrong element, deceased Russian chemist
Dimitri Mendeleev, who developed the periodic table of elements, said that it
must be cadmium, which gives off a weird,
yellow-colored vapor that is poisonous when it is boiled.
1985 –Saturday- William J. Schroeder became the first
artificial heart recipient to be discharged from the hospital. His health
insurance coverage had run out and as he was wheeled on a gurney out of the hospital
while adorned in open backed gown and attached to several machines to be sent
to Prompt Care center, he took off his oxygen mask and protested that in fact
he had six months worth of coverage………
1993- In Russia, a huge radioactive cloud was released from an
explosion of a tank of radioactive waste at the secret military facility at
Tomsk 7 located in the Russian wilderness, 1700 miles east of Moscow, it was
the worst nuclear accident, though not the only one (they do try to keep things
secret over there) since the disaster at Chernobyl in Apr 1986. As a result of
this radioactive cloud activity,
2009 –Sunday- 3:32 AM, A 6.3-magnitude earthquake centered
at local capital
529 –Thursday-
Part one of the Corpus Juris
Civilis the most comprehensive code of Roman law
and the basic document of all modern juris prudence ….. Dear Prudence, won't you come out to play?
Dear Prudence, greet the brand new day
The sun is up, the sky is blue
It's beautiful and so are you
Dear Prudence, won't you come out to play?..... It was compiled by order of Byzantine (Eastern Roman)
Emperor Justinian I. The first three
parts appeared between 529 and 535 and they were the work of a commission of 17 jurists
presided over by the eminent jurist and questor, Tribonian. The Corpus Juris was an attempt to
systematize Roman law, to reduce it to order after over 1,000 years of
development.
1770
–Saturday- Happy Birthday, William Wordsworth, English poet from the Lake District (northwest
England) and one of the founders of the Romantic
school of poetry. Wordsworth lived with his sister Dorothy and developed a
close working partnership with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Together they published
Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems
in 1798, and before you can say iambic pentameter, the Romantic movement was launched. The book,
included Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient
Mariner and Wordsworth's Tintern
Abbey. The collaboration of the two poets was analogous
to the doo wop album The Paragons Meet the Jesters of 1959.
1794-Monday-Chemist
Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), discoverer of oxygen, although we note the
ill-fated and kaput Karl Scheele of Sweden had discovered it but not published his
discovery, in 1772- left England for
good and traveled to the United States and his new home in Northumberland Pa. .
The previous year, on July 14, 1791, his laboratory, home and library were
burned to destruction by a mob of people angry at his support of the French
Revolution. His French colleague, the chemist Antoine Lavoisier, was kaputed
via guillotine a week after Priestly left
1805 – Sunday-“ Goodbye”. “Don’t forget to send post cards”. “Can you get me a t shirt and a refrigerator
magnet?” After a long
winter, …..it was
1805 –Sunday- Meanwhile, the
public debut of Beethoven’s Third
Symphony, (Eroica) Op. 55, in E-flat Major at the Theater-an-der- in
1809-Friday-
Happy Birthday, James Glaisher, English
meteorologist and aeronaut. Between 1862-66, he made numerous balloon ascents.
The object was to carry out scientific observations such as the variation in
temperature and humidity of the atmosphere at high elevations. On September 5, 1862,
ascending from
1827-Saturday- "Truth
is stranger than friction." John Walker, an English pharmacist, recorded
his first sale of the friction matches he had invented the previous year. Like
many scientific discoveries, his had been accidental. While trying to produce a
readily combustible material for fowling-pieces (a kind of scattergun or
shotgun). His first match was the wooden
stirring stick he used in a mixture of potash and antimony (note: antimony is
the opposite of unclemony) . To remove a blob on the end of the stick, he had scraped
it on the stone floor, and poof, it ignited. He never patented the invention, and
his production was limited to a sideline of his pharmacy business. “Matches?
Matches? We don’t need no stinking matches.”
Small phosphorus matches were first marketed in
1860-Saturday-
Happy Birthday to a flaky guy, W.K, Kellogg, American industrialist
and philanthropist who founded the W.K. Kellogg Company to manufacture cereal
products as breakfast foods. He was a serial cereal producer. Along with his
brother John Harvey, Kellogg developed
and promoted eating cereal as healthy breakfast food, especially corn flakes
which he invented in 1894. In 1906 he
founded the
1866-Saturday- Happy Birthday, Erik Fredholm, presented by
Professor Sy Yentz as another of the mathematicians who were obviously very
important but the Professor has no idea what any of this means. Fredholm was a
Swedish mathematician who is remembered for “Fredholm integral equations” with
applications in mathematical physics and actuarial science. His first paper,
published in 1890, was on a special class of functions inspired by the heat
equation. His 1898 doctoral dissertation involved a study of partial
differential equations motivated by an equilibrium problem in elasticity.
Fredhlom also had a career in actuarial science - Actuarial science applies
mathematical and statistical methods to finance and insurance, particularly to
risk assessment. - From 1902 on he studied various questions in this area,
including an elegant formula he proposed to determine the surrender value of a
life insurance policy. He built a machine to solve differential equations. He
also liked to watch the daytime television judge shows because he thought they
were real judges.
1873 –Monday- Happy Birthday, John
(Mugsy) McGraw American baseball player and manager of the New York Giants
from 1902 – 1932. McGraw had also been
with the Baltimore Orioles when they were in the National League and then
Baltimore when it was in the American League.
In fact, in a way he contributed to the creation of the New York Yankees
when in 1902 he left
1906- Saturday- Mount Vesuvius erupted…..again. The eruptive column of ash and gas reached a height of 13,000 meters. The eruption lasted through the rest of April. During this the eruption the top of Vesuvius was truncated and formed a huge crater with a diameter of approximately 500 m and a depth of 250 m. As always with volcanic eruptions, it was a pain in the ash. Vesuvius is a composite volcano, made up of alternate layers of ash and lava. Composite volcanoes normally have two different kinds of eruptions. One kind produces mostly ash and cinders. The other kind produces lava. In Vesuvius these two types of eruption have not been seen to happen together but Vesuvius will get you either way.
1911-Friday- Happy Birthday, Kenneth Oakley, English physical anthropologist, geologist, and
paleontologist who exposed the fraud known as the “Piltdown Man.” The Piltdown
Man, “discovered” in 1912 in
1915-Wednesday- Them that's got shall get
Them that's not shall lose
So the Bible said and it still is news
Mama may have, Papa may have
But God bless the child that's got his own
That's got his own …..Happy Birthday, Billie
Holiday, “Lady Day”, born Eleanora Fagan on April in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, who was one of the great American blues/jazz singers. Among her
many great recordings were; God Bless' The Child, There'll Be
Some Changes Made, Fine And Mellow and Strange
Fruit.
1922 – During the
incompetent, scandal filled administration of Warren G. Harding (cut short by
his kapution in 1923), the Teapot Dome Scandal was on of the crooked
highlights. Teddy Roosevelt had established
the conservation movement in the West. One of the politicians who opposed the
conservation was Senator Albert B. Fall of
1927 –Thursday- A precursor to television took place as the first simultaneous telecast of image and sound took
place. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover (elected president the following year)
read a speech in Washington, D.C., which was transmitted to Bell Telephone
Laboratories in New York City, where an audience saw and heard a tiny televised
image of Hoover, less than 3 inches square. How much of the “audience” was
actually able to see a 3” screen is open to debate. It would be like showing your cell phone
pictures in an auditorium. Comments ranged from “gee, how did they get him in there”,
to “must be PBS, there’s no commercials”.
1933
–Friday- Another “
1933
– Friday – “It was beauty killed the beast”. The
world premiere of King Kong……the
original King Kong. Starring Faye
Ray, Robert Armstrong, and Bruce Cabot (actually King Kong gets billing too as
the Eighth Wonder of the World), and directed by Merion C. Cooper, the movie
was a huge hit, remained a huge hit and inspired another King Kong in 1976 and yet another King Kong (Peter Jackson spending some of his Lord of the Rings
money) in 2005. We also had Mighty Joe Young, Son of Kong, and King Kong
vs. Godzilla. For the original, we note that the models of King Kong built
for the island scenes were only 18 inches high. When director Cooper decided
Kong needed to look bigger while in
Captain
translates Native Chief's comments on Ann Darrow (Fay Wray)
Captain
Englehorn: He says, "Look at the golden woman."
Carl
Denham: Yeah, blondes are scarce around here.
1940
–Sunday- Booker
T. Washington became the first African American to be honored with a postage
stamp. The ten cent stamp is one of only five in the Famous American Educator
Series. The others are: Horace Mann,
Mark Hopkins, Charles Eliot and Francis Willard.
1945-Saturday-
The Japanese
battleship, Yamato, the largest
battleship of all time, displacing 72,000 tons – by comparison the U.S Iowa class battleships displaced 58,000
and the German Bismarck, 45,000 tons
– was sunk by US planes as it attempted to prevent the attack on Okinawa. The sister ship of the Yamato, the Musashi, was
sunk during the
1946- Sunday- The World Health Organization (WHO) was confirmed as
a U.N agency. In 1945, three physicians, Drs. Szeming Sze of
1949 – The Broadway premiere of Rogers
and Hammerstein’s South Pacific. It won ten Tony Awards, including all four
acting awards, and many of its songs have been much acclaimed, including, Some Enchanted Evening, I'm Gonna Wash That
Man Right Outta My Hair, Happy Talk, Bali Ha'i, Younger than Springtime,
and I'm in Love with a Wonderful Guy.
It inspired a 1958 film adaptation and has enjoyed numerous successful revivals
on Broadway, amateur theater groups, D
list theater groups (like the ones that play Pocono Playhouse) and high school
productions. The original production starred Mary Martin (pre Peter Pan) and opera
star Ezio Pinza. It was directed by Joshua Logan.
1963 –Sunday- Getting bored with running for re-election
and inspired by Communist dictators all over the world,
Joseph Broz Tito was proclaimed to be the leader of Yugoslavia for life. That
life would end with his going kaput in 1980.
The country that he kept together did not outlive him by much more than
a decade. Croatian nationalists won the first free elections in their province
in April and May 1990, and the independence of
1969 –Monday- Not by
C-Section but by the publication of the first “request for comments,” or RFC,
documents gave birth to the internet. This day is often cited as a symbolic
birth date of the net because the RFC memoranda contain research, proposals and
methodologies applicable to internet technology. One interesting aspect of the
RFC is that each document is issued a unique serial number. An individual paper
cannot be overwritten; rather, updates or corrections are submitted on a
separate RFC. The result is an ongoing historical record of the evolution of
internet standards including a list of winners of the Nigerian Lottery.
Although, in the frequently fuzzy world of the internet, when it comes to the
birth of the net, Jan. 1, 1983, also has its supporters. On that date, the
National Science Foundation’s university network backbone, a precursor to the
World Wide Web, became operational.
1970 –Tuesday- Fill
your hand you son of a bitch….. John Wayne won his only Academy Award, Best Actor in
the film, True Grit. Directed by
Henry Hathaway and co-starring Kim Darby, Glen Campbell, Robert Duvall, Dennis
Hopper, Strother Martin, great western villain, John Doucette, and Alfred Ryder
the film was
1983 –Thursday- Aboard the Challenger, STS 6, launched on April 4, Donald Peterson and Story Musgrave
enjoyed the first space walk of the Shuttle program. It lasted about four
hours, 17 minutes. It was scheduled to last only two hours but shuttle
commander Paul Weitz and pilot Karel Bobko refused to let them back in until
they remembered the secret password.
1990 –Saturday- Incredibly,
two fatal ferry accidents occurred on the same day in two different
continents. The
first took place in
1994
–Thursday- Hutus
in
2000-Friday-
NASA launched the 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft on a Delta 2 rocket. Odyssey would
travel 286 million miles before entering orbit around Mars on Oct. 24, 2001.
Its primary mission was to look for water in the form of ice under the Martian
surface and to create a thermal map of the planet but it actually discovered
the source of the dreaded Earth disease
Fastium Foodicus Fatticus and its aftereffect, Someonus Elsium Faltismo.
2008 – Monday- Note to the
people who booed Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival when he broke out the
electric guitar; Dylan was awarded an honorary Pulitzer Prize for his impact on
music and culture. There’s a bit of
history at work here and the Gnus Research Department has collated the series
of events; The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan saw
that The Times They Are a-Changin'
but it brought out Another Side of Bob
Dylan and he was Bringing It All Back
Home but then he packed for Highway
61 Revisited and met a Blonde on Blonde but lost her to John Wesley Harding on the Nashville
Skyline. He restored his self esteem
with a Self Portrait on a New Morning but got dizzy watching Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid due to Planet Waves. He left Blood
on the Tracks and also on his The
Basement Tapes. He was overcome with Desire
but kept it strictly Street Legal. He
saw a Slow Train Coming and knew he
would be Saved by a Shot of
Love until Infidels ran amok at the Empire
Burlesque and he was Knocked Out
Loaded, and toppled over backwards Down in the Groove and finally cried, Oh Mercy while looking up Under the Red Sky . Eventually, the Pulitzer Prize folks decided
that since he was as Good as I Been to
You and had comforted a World Gone
Wrong since Time Out of Mind through "Love
and Theft" until Modern Times,
they would be Together Through Life.
563 B.C –Friday- Happy Birthday, Buddha as Buddhists celebrate
the commemoration of the birth of Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, who
lived in India from 563 B.C. to 483 B.C. Actually, the Buddhist tradition that
celebrates his birthday on April 8 originally placed his birth in the 11th
century B.C., and it was not until the modern era that scholars determined that
he was more likely born in the sixth century B.C., and possibly in May rather
than April but, hey, it’s sometime during the spring.
217 –Tuesday- Roman Emperor Caracalla, one of the more odious on the list of
Roman emperors, was kaputed. Caracalla
had slewn his brother, Geta to capture the throne. His death was, shall we say,
less than heroic when Julius Martialis, an officer in the imperial bodyguard, kaputed
the emperor on a journey between
1525
–Wednesday- On this day, just six years after Martin
Luther had instigated the Protestant Reformation, Albert of Brandenburg grand master of the Teutonic Knights first
duke of
1732-Tuesday-
Happy Birthday, David Rittenhouse, American astronomer,
instrument maker and inventor, famous for being an early observer of the atmosphere
of Venus. He found the interior décor to be too cloying, the color scheme
didn’t match, and the sulfuric acid burned his lungs. He was the first one in
1766-Tuesday-
A good day for fire safety as the first patent
was granted for a fire escape. The “fire escape” consisted of a wicker basket on a pulley and a chain
designed by a
1778
–Saturday- John Adams arrived
in Paris, France, on this day in 1778 to replace former Continental Congress
member Silas Deane as a member of the American commission representing the
interests of the United States. Deane had been accused of misappropriating
funds and went into exile. The charges
were not true but he became a footnote in history although he does have a
highway in
1779-Thursday-
Happy Birthday, Johann Schweigger, German
physicist who invented the galvanometer in 1820. Since a galvanometer is a
device used to measure the strength of an electric curren, Schweigger developed
the galvanometer as a tool for, yes, measuring the strength and direction of
electric current. Schweigger named this instrument in honor of Italian
scientist Luigi Galvani. It was the first sensitive instrument for measuring
and detecting small amounts of electricity. Yes, sensitive, but also strong and
manly.
1805-Monday- Happy Birthday, Hugo
von Mohl, German botanist who was the first to propose that new cells are
formed by cell division. The previous belief was based on cell addition, then
later cell subtraction but cells really needed a graphing calculator to do
their division. Yes, he believed “the
Mohl the merrier.” He was an expert on microscopy and laid the foundation for
later work on the structure of palms and cycads. His works include Principles of the Anatomy and Physiology of the Vegetable Cell
1820 –“Ah, it has no arms.
We’ll never be able to sell it”. The Venus de Milo was discovered on the Aegean
1850-Monday- Happy Birthday William Welch, one
of the founders of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Welch concentrated specifically on
bacteriology and became one of the earliest proponents of this science in the
1862-Tuesday- The
first aerosol dispenser, an "improved bottle for aerated liquids" was
patented in the
1868-
Wednesday- Happy Birthday, Herbert
Jennings, U.S. zoologist, one of the first scientists to study the behavior of
individual microorganisms. Poorly
behaved microorganisms had TV privileges taken away and could be “grounded” for
up to a week. Some even had to write “I
will not mutate” hundred times on the blackboard.
1869-Thursday- Happy Birthday, Harvey Williams Cushing,
American surgeon, who was a pioneer of neurosurgery. Among his contributions to
the practice of medicine were; the use of x-rays in surgical practice,
physiological saline for irrigation (replaced the backhoe) during surgery, the
discovery of the pituitary as the master hormone gland, founding the clinical
specialty of endocrinology, the use of blood pressure measurement in surgical
practice, and the physiological consequences of increased intracranial pressure
and in his spare time…… He also performed the first brain surgery in the
1873-Tuesday- The first
commercially successful margarine manufacturing process was patented by Alfred
Paraf of
1879- Tuesday- Milk was sold in glass bottles
for the first time in the
1879 –Tuesday- And,
on the same day, a "Fire Escape Ladder" was patented by black
American inventor, Joseph.R. Winters. It was
a wagon-mounted fire escape ladder for the city of
1886-Thursday- German scientist, Dr. Carl Gassner, was
issued a patent for the first "dry" cell, which used zinc as its
primary ingredient. He encased the cell chemicals in a sealed zinc container
for the other elements as well as for the negative electrode. The electrolyte
was absorbed in a porous material and the cell was sealed across the top. This
cell was easy to handle and portable. In fact, became the prototype for the dry battery
industry This 1886 battery was much like the carbon-zinc, general-purpose
batteries sold today. In the U.S, in 1896, the Nation Carbide Company, later
Union Carbide and Eveready, produced the first consumer dry cell battery. And
since you asked……an example of a wet cell
battery would be a car battery.
1893
–Saturday- The first recorded college basketball game
occured in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania when the Geneva College Covenanters
defeated the New Brighton YMCA.
It's fun to stay at the Y-M-C-A.
It's fun to stay at the Y-M-C-A.
They have everything that you need to
enjoy,
You can hang out with all the boys ...
1947-Tuesday-
The largest recorded number of sunspots
was observed. A Clearasil rocket was
immediately dispatched to clear up these unsightly blemishes. Typically, a big sunspot can be two or three times the size of the
entire surface area of the Earth. A sunspot is a cooler darker spot appearing
periodically on the sun's photosphere; associated with a strong magnetic field.
1953-Wednesday- The
first 3D motion picture produced and released by a major company as Man in
the Dark, directed by Lew Landers, opened at the Globe Theater in New York
City, starring Edmond O'Brien. Man in the
Dark was a “noir” film. In the plot a thug (Edmond O'Brien) is convicted and
undergoes experimental brain surgery to remove the criminal element in his
brain. The operation wipes out all memories of his past life, including,
cleverly, where he stashed the loot. He
is abducted by his gang and they try to beat the truth out of him. His memories
return in the form of weird dreams, and he and his old girlfriend (Audrey
Totter) track down the clues to find the money. The next 3D feature movie, The
House of Wax, (a horror film) was the first from a major company in color
and it opened only two days later, at the Paramount Theater in NYC.
1974-Monday-
Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves hit
his 715th career home run, breaking New York Yankee Babe Ruth's legendary
record of 714 homers. Aaron’s home run came off former Yankee, Al Downing.
While a great hitter, Aaron’s record, like Pete Rose’s record for hits, was
more a tribute to longevity than prowess. His season high was forty seven but
he hit over forty home runs in eight seasons, and in the thirties in seven seasons. He
accomplished all of this without the assistance of performance enhancing drugs
that could have turned him into a Michelin man with a gigantic head.
1975
– Tuesday- Frank Robinson managed the Cleveland Indians in his first game
as major league baseball's first African American manager. A Yankee killer as a
player, Robinson continued as manager, a playing manager to boot, he homered in
his first at bat as the Indians beat the Yankees 5-3.
1983
–Friday- Danny and the Juniors
kaput. Lead singer Danny Rapp was found dead of an apparent self-inflicted
gunshot wound to the head. He was 41. Danny and the Junior had one of the
greatest of all rock n roll records, At
the Hop in 1957. They followed it up
with Rock and Roll is Here to Stay –
great title but basically At the Hop including piano intro all over again. The kapution of Danny did not deter the
Juniors as they continue to perform as Danny and the Juniors featuring Joe
Terry.
2008
–Tuesday- The completion of
the
193
–Tuesday- Oh, it's a long, long while from May to
December
But the days grow short when you reach Septimus…………Septimius Severus was proclaimed Roman Emperor by the army in Illyricum
(in the Balkans). Not one of the prouder periods of
Roman history as The assassination of Commodus, followed by the short reign of
Pertinax and the auction of the empire to Didius Julianus, led to civil war
(again) and the rise of Septimius
Severus. He was succeeded by his two sons, Geta and the rather hygienic Caracalla
(see Baths of Caracalla). Septimius is
reported to have given his sons three pieces of advice: "Get along; pay
off the soldiers; and disregard everyone else." The first piece of advice
would not be heeded. Caracalla slew Geta and was in turn slewn himself while
visiting the loo (actually some bushes) while travelling from
1336
–Monday- Happy Birthday, Tamerlane, Turkic ruler
and conqueror, one of the greatest military campaigners in history, and the
most influential Central Asian military leader of the Middle Ages. Tamerlane’s far-flung
expeditions carried him from southern
1413
–Friday- Henry V was crowned King of England. The House
of Lancaster via John of Gaunt, one of the sons of Edward III begat Henry IV
who usurped and probably kaputed the
hapless Richard II produced Henry’s son, Shakespeare’s “Prince Hal”. As victor of the Battle of Agincourt (1415, in the Hundred
Years' War with
1626-Thursday- In an event too strange for even the Gnus to
make up, Francis Bacon, English philosopher and scientist went kaput as a
result of a chill he caught while trying to invent frozen food. He stuffed a dead chicken with snow to see if
cold would preserve its flesh. He
couldn’t chill the chicken but he ended up as frozen Bacon. This was truly a fowl
deed.
1682 –Thursday-
French explorer Rene Robert
La Salle reached the
1770-Monday- Happy Birthday Thomas Johan Seebeck, German physicist who
discovered that an electric current flows between different conductive
materials that are kept at different temperatures, known as the Seebeck effect. Seebeck also made investigations into
photoluminescence (the luminescent emission from certain materials excited by
light…..aren’t we all excited by light?......Especially when they have those
two for one sales of fluorescents), the heating and chemical effects of
different parts of the solar spectrum, polarization, and the magnetic character
of electric currents as well as the magnetic character of Regis Philbin.
1794
– Happy Birthday- Theobald Boehm, Bavarian goldsmith, flutist,
composer, and industrialist who invented the type of flute that became the
basis for the modern instrument. In
1806-Wednesday-
Happy Birthday, Isambard K. Brunel, English
civil (he was very polite) and mechanical engineer. Brunel designed the first transatlantic steamer, the Great Western. In addition to ships, he designed and built
bridges, dockyards, and viaducts. As Groucho Marx would say, “Viaduct?”
1859 –Saturday- Twenty three year-old Samuel Langhorne Clemens
received his steamboat pilot's license. Clemens went on to greater fame as a
writer known as Mark Twain. If you can’t fathom why he took the name Mark twain, it means the mark of two fathoms used when sounding
river shallows. If you can’t fathom what a fathom is, it’s a unit of length
equal to 6 feet (1.83 meters), used principally in the measurement and
specification of marine depths.
1860 –Monday- Au clair de la lune,
Mon ami, Pierrot,
Prete-moi ta plume
Pour ecrire un mot!
Ma
chandelle est morte,
Je n'ai plus de feu;
Ouvre-moi ta porte,
Pour l'amour de Dieu. .....Jean Baptiste Lully………The oldest
recording of the human voice - made 17 years before Thomas Edison invented the
phonograph. The 10-second recording is
of a person singing a snippet of a French folk song, Au clair de la lune' and was recorded on by Parisian inventor
Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville. Scott
de Martinville used a device he he called a "phonautograph" that
scratched sound waves onto a sheet of paper blackened by the smoke of an oil
lamp. However, unlike
1865
–Sunday- Won’t you please surrender to me
Your lips, your arms, your heart,
dear
Be mine forever
Be mine tonight - Elvis
The great Confederate
General Robert E. Lee, surrounded by Grant’s forces and having had his supply
line cut after the defeat at Five Forks, surrendered the Army of Northern
Virginia and its remaining 28,000 soldiers to Union General Ulysses S. Grant,
Appomattox, Virginia, effectively ending the Civil War. The Gnus highly recommends, April 1865, The Month that Saved
1867 –Friday-
Passing by a vote of 37-2, the United States Senate ratified a treaty
with
1872-Tuesday- Dried milk was patented by Samuel R. Percy. He called it
"Improvement in Drying and Concentrating Liquid Substances by
Atomizing". This must have sounded
very appetizing on the container. Actually, Marco Polo arrived in
1881-Saturday-
I'll sing you a true
song of Billy the Kid,
I'll sing of the desperate deeds that he did,
Way out in New Mexico, long long ago
When a man's only chance was his own 44.
When Billy the Kid was a very young lad
In the old Silver City he went to the bad
Way out in the West with a gun in his hand
At the age of twelve years he first killed his man…….Woody
Guthrie…….After a one day trial, William H. Bonney, “Billy the Kid” was
convicted of the murder of sheriff of
1895-Tuesday- A spectrogram
(a spectrogram is a graphic
or photographic representation of the spectrum) made
by American astronomer James Keeler proved that the rings of Saturn were indeed
composed of meteoric particles, as predicted
in 1859 by James Maxwell in his
riveting read, On the Stability of the Motion of Saturn's Rings. Competing
theories regarding the structure of the rings involved Play Doh, gefilte
fish. and borax.
1901-Tuesday- If you’ve ever
undergone physical therapy thank - Happy Birthday, Howard Rusk, American
physician and founder of the science of rehabilitation medicine -physical
therapy- which he established through efforts to rehabilitate wounded soldiers
during and after WW II. During his
career he was variously, a consultant on rehabilitation to the Veterans
Administration, the United Nations Secretariat, and the New York City
Department of Hospitals, a member of the city's Board of Hospitals and
president of the International Society for the Welfare of Cripples. Broken
Bodies and Spirits and an advisor to nine Presidents, although Gerald Ford
probably doesn’t count because he would have no idea what Rusk was talking
about but he would have needed him because he fell down a lot.
1903-Thursday- Happy Birthday- Gregory Pincus, the American scientist
whose discoveries led to the development of the first birth-control pills. In
1953, when Margaret Sanger (also famous or infamous for her belief in Eugenics)
and Katharine McCormick went looking for a scientist to develop a birth control
pill, they turned to Pincus for his expertise. . In 1955 two drug companies,
Syntex and Searle, had each developed a form of synthetic progesterone. They
allowed Pincus to explore use of this female hormone in his work and invent the
birth control pill. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Searle's
drug for contraceptive use in 1960.
1905 –Sunday- In a
trip that must have been a delight in February…..in
1913 –Wednesday- Ebbet’s
field, at 55 Sullivan Place, Brooklyn New York, home
of the lamented and defunct Brooklyn Dodgers had it’s official opening. It was built by Dodgers owner Charlie Ebbetts who had risen through the organization from ticket seller to
business manager. He became the owner in
1902, buying the team from Harry von
der Horst. Built on the site of the
Pigtown garbage dump at a cost of
$750,000, approximately 11,000 fans who watched as the Philadelphia Phillies defeated the hometown Brooklyn
Dodgers 1-0. Baseball's first
televised baseball game was played on the field by the Dodgers on August 26, 1939 against the Reds. Jackie Robinson became the first black man in the 20th century to play in Major League
Baseball at Ebbet’s on April 15, 1947. http://www.baseball-statistics.com/Ballparks/LA/Ebbetts.htm
1930 –Sunday- Happy Birthday-F. Albert Cotton,
American chemist who conducted important
research into metal-metal-bonding. He found numerous compounds containing metal
atom clusters with single bonds, and discovered the existence of double, triple
and quadruple metal-metal bonds as well as James Bond. At one count there were
there were 1,070 people in the
1932 –Saturday-
Well, it's one for the
money, two for the show
Three to get ready now go cat go
But don't you, step on my blue suede shoes
You Can do anything
But lay off of my blue suede shoes
You can knock me down, step on my face
Slander my name all over the place
Do anything that you wanna do
But uh uh honey lay off of my shoes
You can do anything
But lay off of my blue
suede shoes Happy
Birthday, Carl Perkins American singer who virtually defined and established
rockabilly music in the rock and roll cannon. IMBd sourced the following
anecdote, Perkins and good friend Johnny Cash gave each other the ideas for two
of their biggest songs. Perkins got the inspiration to write his best known
song, Blue Suede Shoes from Cash, who
told Perkins stories of soldiers on leave while Cash was in the military who
would start a fight with anyone who got near their blue suede shoes. Cash got
the idea for I Walk the Line when
Perkins commented on all the groupies that they had access to now that they
were famous and Cash countered, "Not me, brother, I walk the line."
Perkins immediately responded, "Hey, I walk the line...that would be a
great title for a song."
1939-
Sunday- African American singer Marian Anderson performed at the Lincoln
Memorial in
1940 –Tuesday- In an invasion that may have occurred sooner except
that they couldn’t figure out where Norway was…..after all, everyone gets the
order of Norway, Sweden and Finland mixed up, Nazi Germany now invaded neutral
Norway, a move that completely surprised the Norwegian and British defenders of
the country. The Nazis immediately
captured several strategic points along the Norwegian coast. It was during the
invasion's preliminary phase, that the term “Fifth Column” came into use as
Norwegian Fascists under Vidkun Quisling (now a the eponymous synonym for traitorous
weasel) acted as a so-called fifth column for the German invaders, seizing
Norway's nerve centers, spreading false rumors, and occupying military bases
and other locations. In June,
1942 –Thursday- The beginning of the Bataan Death March as Major General
Edward P. King Jr. surrendered at Bataan, a province of the Philippines
occupying the whole of Bataan Peninsula on Luzon------s--against General
Douglas MacArthur's orders--and 78,000 troops (66,000 Filipinos and 12,000
Americans), the largest contingent of U.S. soldiers ever to surrender, were
taken captive by the warm, cuddly, Japanese. The
prisoners were immediately forced to walk 55 miles from Mariveles, on the
southern end of the Bataan peninsula, to
1952 –Wednesday- The Los Angeles
premiere of Singin’ in the Rain ( it
premiered in
1959-Thursday-
NASA announced the selection
of
1970 –Thursday- Paul McCartney quit
the Beatles. In a case of “I quit, no you quit,
no….”, in September 1969, John Lennon told the band that he was leaving. The others persuaded him not to go public
until they made one more effort to get an
acceptable version of their final album, Let
It Be, which had been recorded several
months before Abbey Road but put on
hold after two attempts by producer George
Martin to put it in final form. Phil
Spector, who had produced Lennon's Instant Karma single was enlisted to
make a last ditch effort at producing Let
It Be (originally titled Get Back.) McCartney, unhappy with the
way several of the songs were
produced, tried without success to stop the album's release, not a bad idea since it would have prevented The Long and Winding Road from being inflicted on the public. The band's
breakup was announced on April 10, 1970,
a month before Let It Be was released. http://classicrock.about.com/od/beatles/a/beatles_history_5.htm
1974
–Tuesday- "The surrey with the syringe on top"
- African American, Phil Brooks
was issued a
1977 –Saturday- In one of the
darkest days of rock history, Shaun Cassidy lip synched his version of Da Doo Ron Ron on "American
Bandstand." The Crystals, Darlene Love and Phil Specter must have been mortified
as would most music lovers with an I.Q above 70. They may have never recovered. In fact, if Phil Spector cited it as a reason
for his dementia when he shot the starlet, he might not have even been
arrested.
1981-Thursday- For next year's spelling bee - Nature
published the longest scientific name in history. With 16,569 nucleotides,
the systematic name for human mitochondrial DNA is 207,000 letters long. Try it
and see if your spell check works. You can find it at [PDF] Nature Vol. 290 9 April 1981
1986
–Wednesday- Life after death, it was
announced that Patrick Duffy's character,
Bobby Ewing, on the TV show
1991
–Tuesday- Georgia voted to secede from the U.S.S.R. This completely mystified the leaders of the
U.S.S.R who thought
1998
–Thursday- Engaging in one of their favorite cultural pastimes,
the stampede, more than 150 Muslims died in stampede in Mecca, Saudi
Arabia, on last day of the Haj pilgrimage.
2005- Saturday-
In an event that rendered gossip columnists, gossip television shows and
paparazzi orgasmic with delight, Prince Charles, the addlepated,
purblind, offspring of
Queen Elizabeth II, married long time lover, the morally challenged, debased, conspicuously
ugly Camilla Parker Bowles who was now Camilla Parker Bowles Windsor.
2008
- After all the excitement about the successful
docking of the European ATV "Jules Verne", it's time to spare a
thought for its Russian predecessor. The Progress
28 module was filled with rubbish and unneeded equipment, quietly severed from
its docking bay and steered toward Earth. On Monday at 0850 GMT, the selfless
module dropped through the atmosphere, burned and eventually reached the
Pacific Ocean, sinking into the satellite graveyard 3000 km east of the
879 –Monday – The editorial staff of the Gnus, never resting in
the quest for strange names for rulers,
could not pass up the opportunity to note the kaputing of Louis the Stammerer, eldest son of Charles the Bald and Ermentrude
of Orléans. In 878, he gave the counties
of
1389 –Friday- Happy Birthday, Cosimo de' Medici, ruler
of
1633
–Sunday- Going Bananas - Bananas
appeared on sale in
1710 –Thursday- The first law regulating copyright in the world was
issued in
1755 – Thursday- Happy Birthday, Samuel
Hahnemann, German physician and founder of the system of therapeutics known as
homeopathy. Hahnemann was the first physician to prepare medicines in a
specialized way; proving them on healthy human beings, to determine how the
medicines acted to cure diseases. Before Hahnemann, medicines were given on
speculative indications, mainly on the basis of authority without experimental
verification. Homeopathy is also the walkway to the house of a homosexual.
1766-Thursday- Happy Birthday, Sir John Leslie, Scottish physicist,
meteorologist and mathematician who first created artificial ice. He also gave
the first correct description of capillary action in 1802 and invented many
instruments, most notably an accurate differential air thermometer, and also a
hygrometer, a photometer, the pyroscope (An
instrument for measuring the intensity of heat radiating from a fire, or the
cooling influence of bodies), an atmometer (an instrument measuring rate of evaporation into
atmosphere), and aethrioscope
(of course you knew that a aethrioscope is an instrument consisting in part
of a differential thermometer. It is used for measuring changes
of temperature produced by different conditions of the sky,
such as clear or cloudy). He
was a busy guy who this thing for scopes. When not busy scoping out things he
found the time to write, An Experimental
Inquiry into the Nature and Propagation of Heat (1804) The ice came about
in 1810 when he developed a method of obtaining very low temperatures, by
evaporating water in a receiver emptied with an air-pump but containing a drying
agent. This produced a considerable degree of refrigeration on the principle of
exposing in the exhausted receiver of an air-pump sulfuric acid, a substance
rapidly absorbing vapor
1790 –Saturday- Same day, 80 years
later than The Statute of Ann, creating copyrights, President George
Washington established the United States Patent system. For the first time in
history the intrinsic right of an inventor to profit from his invention was
recognized by law. Previously, privileges granted to an inventor were dependent
upon the prerogative of a monarch or upon a special act of a legislature.
1814
–Sunday- Like the Battle of New
Orleans, fought the first week of 1815, two weeks after a peace treaty had been
signed, the Battle of Toulouse was unnecessary. The last major battle of the
Peninsular War, it was fought over the important southern French city of
1821 –Tuesday- Patriarch Gregory V of
1827
–Tuesday- Happy Birthday General Lew Wallace, Union Civil War general and
author of Ben Hur - A Tale of the
Christ (1880).one of the most
popular novels of the 19th century later made into at least two
movies in the 20th century both of which had exciting chariot races,
the second of which featured Charlton Heston knocking Stephen Boyd off his chariot and smushing him into
the dust. At the close of the Civil War Wallace sat on the
court-martial which tried the
1838-Tuesday- Happy Birthday, Frank Baldwin (not related, thankfully, to any of the acti