[KenOC]

It's been a year, and from here on it'll be mostly repeats. So I won't be posting these any more. Thanks to all who have enjoyed reading. Bye!

It would be great if somebody wants to continue these...

 

[KenOC]

Today, November 24 in 1859: Charles Darwin publishes "On the Origin of Species."

And in 1971: During a severe thunderstorm over Washington state, a hijacker calling himself Dan Cooper (AKA D. B. Cooper) parachutes from a Northwest Orient Airlines plane with $200,000 in ransom money. He has never been found.

 

[KenOC]

On this day, 29 October 539 BC: Cyrus the Great, founder of Persian Empire, enters the capital of Babylon and allowed the Jews to return to their land.

1618: English adventurer, writer, and courtier Sir Walter Raleigh is beheaded for allegedly conspiring against James I of England.

1675: Leibniz makes the first use of the long s (∫) as a symbol of the integral in calculus.

1787: Mozart's opera Don Giovanni receives its first performance in Prague.

1792: Mount Hood, Oregon, is named after the British naval officer Alexander Arthur Hood by Lt. William E. Broughton who spotted the mountain near the mouth of the Willamette River. Here's a repost of a 1931 photo by my dad.

1901: Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of U.S. President William McKinley, is executed by electrocution.

1923: Turkey becomes a republic following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.

1929: The New York Stock Exchange crashes in what will be called the Crash of '29 or "Black Tuesday", ending the Great Bull Market of the 1920s and beginning the Great Depression.

1953: BCPA Flight 304 DC-6 crashes near San Francisco. Pianist William Kapell is among the 19 killed.

1964: A collection of irreplaceable gems, including the 565 carat Star of India, is stolen by a group of thieves (among them is "Murph the surf") from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

1969: The first-ever computer-to-computer link is established on ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet.

Born today:
1897: Joseph Goebbels, German politician, Chancellor of Germany (d. 1945).
1906: Fredric Brown, American author (d. 1972)*.
1921: Bill Mauldin, American cartoonist (d. 2003).
1926: Jon Vickers, Canadian tenor.
1947: Richard Dreyfuss, American actor, singer, and producer.

* My current avatar is inspired by a Frederick Brown story from 1954.

 

[KenOC]

On this day, 30 September 1541: Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto and his forces enter Tula territory in present-day western Arkansas, encountering fierce resistance. Here's my mom with our 1948 de Soto! Who remembers that marque?

1791: The Magic Flute, the last opera by Mozart to make its debut, premieres at Freihaus-Theater auf der Wieden in Vienna, Austria.

1882: Thomas Edison's first commercial hydroelectric power plant (later known as Appleton Edison Light Company) begins operation on the Fox River in Appleton, Wisconsin.

1927: Babe Ruth becomes the first baseball player to hit 60 home runs in a season.

1938: The League of Nations unanimously outlaws "intentional bombings of civilian populations". Good try, fellas.

1954: The U.S. Navy submarine USS Nautilus is commissioned as the world's first nuclear reactor powered vessel. Cap'n Nemo applauds and launches into some Bach.

1965: The 30 September Movement attempts a coup against the Indonesian government, which is crushed by the military under Suharto and leads to a mass anti-communist purge, with over 500,000 people killed.

1968: The Boeing 747 is rolled out and shown to the public for the first time at the Boeing Everett Factory.

2005: The controversial cartoons of Muhammad are printed in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Trouble follows.

 

[KenOC]

On this day, 5 November 1605: Gunpowder Plot: Guy Fawkes is arrested.

1757: Seven Years' War: Frederick the Great defeats the allied armies of France and the Holy Roman Empire at the Battle of Rossbach.

1831: Nat Turner, American slave leader, is tried, convicted, and sentenced to death in Virginia.

1862: American Civil War: Abraham Lincoln removes George B. McClellan as commander of the Union Army for the second and final time.

1872: Women's suffrage in the United States: In defiance of the law, suffragist Susan B. Anthony votes for the first time, and is later fined $100.

1916: The Everett Massacre takes place in Everett, Washington as political differences lead to a shoot-out between the Industrial Workers of the World organizers and local police.

1925: Secret agent Sidney Reilly, the first "super-spy" of the 20th century, is executed by the OGPU, the secret police of the Soviet Union.

1955: After being destroyed in World War II, the rebuilt Vienna State Opera reopens with a performance of Beethoven's Fidelio.

1995: André Dallaire attempts to assassinate Prime Minister Jean Chrétien of Canada. He is thwarted when the Prime Minister's wife locks the door.

2007: The Android mobile operating system is unveiled by Google.

Born today:
1855: Eugene V. Debs, American union leader and socialist politician (d. 1926).
1885: Will Durant, American historian, philosopher, and author (d. 1981).
1887: Paul Wittgenstein, Austrian-American pianist (d. 1961).
1895: Walter Gieseking, French-German pianist and composer (d. 1956).
1906: Fred Lawrence Whipple, American astronomer and academic (d. 2004).
1911: Roy Rogers, American singer, guitarist, and actor (Sons of the Pioneers) (d. 1998).
1921: Georges Cziffra, Hungarian pianist and composer (d. 1994).
1941: Art Garfunkel, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor (Simon & Garfunkel).
1948: Bernard-Henri Lévy, French philosopher and author.
1963: Tatum O'Neal, American actress and author.

It's Guy Fawkes Night in the UK and related places.

 

[KenOC]

On this day, 30 January 1649: King Charles I of England is beheaded.

1661: Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England is ritually executed two years after his death, on the anniversary of the execution of the monarch he himself deposed.

1703: The Forty-seven Ronin, under the command of Ōishi Kuranosuke, avenge the death of their master.

1835: In the first assassination attempt against a President of the United States, Richard Lawrence attempts to shoot president Andrew Jackson, but fails and is subdued by a crowd, including several congressmen.

1847: Yerba Buena, California is renamed San Francisco.

1933: Adolf Hitler is sworn in as Chancellor of Germany.

1945: World War II: The Wilhelm Gustloff, overfilled with German refugees, sinks in the Baltic Sea after being torpedoed by a Soviet submarine, leading to the deadliest known maritime disaster, killing approximately 9,500 people.

1948: Indian pacifist and leader Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, known for his non-violent freedom struggle, is assassinated by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu extremist.

1968: Tet Offensive is launched by forces of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army against South Vietnam, the United States, and their allies.

 

[KenOC]

On this day, 12 November 1893: The treaty of the Durand Line delineating the border between present day Pakistan and Afghanistan is signed by Sir Mortimer Durand, a British diplomat in British India, and the Afghan Amir Abdur Rahman Khan. The Durand Line has gained international recognition as an international border between the two nations.

1912: The frozen bodies of Robert Scott and his men are found on the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica.

1927: Leon Trotsky is expelled from the Soviet Communist Party, leaving Joseph Stalin in undisputed control of the Soviet Union.

1936: In California, the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge opens to traffic.

1948: In Tokyo, an international war crimes tribunal sentences seven Japanese military and government officials, including General Hideki Tojo, to death for their roles in World War II.

1970: The Oregon Highway Division attempts to destroy a rotting beached Sperm whale with explosives, leading to the "exploding whale" incident.

1996: A Saudi Arabian Airlines Boeing 747 and a Kazakh Ilyushin Il-76 cargo plane collide in mid-air near New Delhi, killing 349. This is the deadliest mid-air collision to date.

Born today:
1817: Bahá'u'lláh, Persian spiritual leader, founded the Bahá'í Faith (d. 1892).
1833: Alexander Borodin, Russian composer and chemist (d. 1887).
1840: Auguste Rodin, French sculptor, created The Thinker (d. 1917).
1866: Sun Yat-sen, Chinese physician and politician, 1st President of the Republic of China (d. 1925).
1929: Grace Kelly, American-Monacan actress and singer (d. 1982).
1934: Charles Manson, American cult leader and murderer.
1945: Neil Young, Canadian singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (Buffalo Springfield, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young).
1970: Tonya Harding, American figure skater.

It's World Pneumonia Day.

 

[KenOC]

On this day, 10 November 1865: Major Henry Wirz, the superintendent of a prison camp in Andersonville, Georgia, is hanged, becoming the only American Civil War soldier executed for war crimes.

1871: Henry Morton Stanley locates missing explorer and missionary, Dr. David Livingstone in Ujiji, near Lake Tanganyika, famously greeting him with the words, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"

1951: With the rollout of the North American Numbering Plan, direct-dial coast-to-coast telephone service begins in the United States.

1958: The Hope Diamond is donated to the Smithsonian Institution by New York diamond merchant Harry Winston.

1969: National Educational Television (the predecessor to the Public Broadcasting Service) in the United States debuts the children's television program Sesame Street.

1983: Bill Gates introduces Windows 1.0.

Born today:
1483: Martin Luther, German monk and priest, leader of the Protestant Reformation (d. 1546).
1668: François Couperin, French organist and composer (d. 1733).
1697: William Hogarth, English painter, illustrator, and critic (d. 1764).
1759: Friedrich Schiller, German poet, playwright, and historian (d. 1805).
1810: George Jennings, English plumber and engineer, invented the flush toilet (d. 1882).
1919: Mikhail Kalashnikov, Russian general and weapons designer, designed the AK-47 (d. 2013).
1925: Richard Burton, Welsh actor and producer (d. 1984).
1928: Ennio Morricone, Italian trumpet player, composer, and conductor.
1939: Russell Means, American actor and activist (d. 2012).
1940: Screaming Lord Sutch, English singer-songwriter and politician (d. 1999).

Who could forget Screaming Lord Sutch?

It's World Science Day, established by UNESCO in 2001.

 

[KenOC]

On this day, 1 November 1512: The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, painted by Michelangelo, is exhibited to the public for the first time.

1520: The Strait of Magellan, the passage immediately south of mainland South America connecting the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans, is first discovered and navigated by European explorer Ferdinand Magellan during the first recorded circumnavigation voyage.

1604: William Shakespeare's tragedy Othello is performed for the first time, at Whitehall Palace in London.

1611: William Shakespeare's play The Tempest is performed for the first time, at Whitehall Palace in London.

1765: The British Parliament enacts the Stamp Act on the Thirteen Colonies in order to help pay for British military operations in North America.

1814: Congress of Vienna opens to re-draw the European political map after the defeat of France in the Napoleonic Wars.

1894: Nicholas II becomes the new (and last) Tsar of Russia after his father, Alexander III, dies.

1896: A picture showing the bare breasts of a woman appears in National Geographic magazine for the first time.

1918: Malbone Street Wreck: The worst rapid transit accident in US history occurs under the intersection of Malbone Street and Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn, New York City, with at least 102 deaths.

1941: American photographer Ansel Adams takes a picture of a moonrise over the town of Hernandez, New Mexico that would become one of the most famous images in the history of photography.

1950: Puerto Rican nationalists Griselio Torresola and Oscar Collazo attempt to assassinate US President Harry S. Truman at Blair House.

1952: Operation Ivy: The United States successfully detonates the first staged hydrogen device, codenamed "Mike" [M for megaton], in the Eniwetok atoll, located in the Marshall Islands in the central Pacific Ocean. The explosion has a yield of ten megatons.

1960: While campaigning for President of the United States, John F. Kennedy announces his idea of the Peace Corps.

1963: The Arecibo Observatory in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, with the largest radio telescope ever constructed, officially opens.

1982: Honda becomes the first Asian automobile company to produce cars in the United States with the opening of its factory in Marysville, Ohio. The Honda Accord is the first car produced there.

Born today:
1871: Stephen Crane, American journalist, author, and poet (d. 1900).
1902: Eugen Jochum, German conductor (d. 1987).
1923: Victoria de los Ángeles, Spanish soprano (d. 2005).
1923: Gordon R. Dickson, Canadian-American author (d. 2001).
1935: Edward Said, Palestinian-American theorist, author, and academic (d. 2003).

It's National Bison Day in the United States.

 

[KenOC]

Thanks Taggart! Frederick Brown's magazine cover: This is supposedly a Kelly Freas self-portrait.

 

[KenOC]

On this day, 4 October 1535: The first complete English-language Bible (the Coverdale Bible) is printed, with translations by William Tyndale and Myles Coverdale.

1582: Pope Gregory XIII implements the Gregorian calendar. In Italy, Poland, Portugal, and Spain, October 4 of this year is followed directly by October 15.

1795: Napoleon Bonaparte first rises to national prominence with a "Whiff of Grapeshot", using cannon to suppress armed counter-revolutionary rioters threatening the French Legislature (National Convention).

1853: Crimean War: The Ottoman Empire declares war on Russia.

1883: First run of the Orient Express.

1957: Space Race: Launch of Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth.

1983: Richard Noble sets a new land speed record of 633 miles per hour (1,019 km/h), driving Thrust 2 at the Black Rock Desert in Nevada.

It's World Animal Day (International).

 

[KenOC]

On this day, 26 September 1580: Sir Francis Drake finishes his circumnavigation of the Earth. He immediately looks for a restroom.

1777: British troops occupy Philadelphia during the American Revolution.

1789: Thomas Jefferson is appointed the first United States Secretary of State, John Jay is appointed the first Chief Justice of the United States, Samuel Osgood is appointed the first United States Postmaster General, and Edmund Randolph is appointed the first United States Attorney General.

1933: As gangster Machine Gun Kelly surrenders to the FBI, he shouts out, "Don't shoot, G-Men!", which becomes a nickname for FBI agents.

1933: Ten convicts escape from the Indiana State Prison with guns smuggled into the prison by bank robber John Dillinger.

1944: World War II: Operation Market Garden fails.

1959: Typhoon Vera, the strongest typhoon to hit Japan in recorded history, makes landfall on Honshu, killing 4,580 people and leaving nearly 1.6 million others homeless.

1960: In Chicago, the first televised debate takes place between presidential candidates Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy.

1960: Fidel Castro announces Cuba's support for the U.S.S.R.

1969: Abbey Road, the last recorded album by The Beatles, is released.

1983: Soviet military officer Stanislav Petrov averts a likely worldwide nuclear war by correctly identifying a report of an incoming nuclear missile as a computer error and not an American first strike. Thanks Stan!

 

[KenOC]

On this day, 22 September 480 BC: Battle of Salamis: The Greek fleet under Themistocles defeats the Persian fleet under Xerxes I. History changes in a major way.

1598: English playwright Ben Jonson kills an actor in a duel and is indicted for manslaughter.

1776: Nathan Hale is hanged for spying during American Revolution.

1823: Joseph Smith states he found the Golden Plates on this date after being directed by God through the Angel Moroni to the place where they were buried.

1869: Richard Wagner's opera Das Rheingold premieres in Munich.

1919: The steel strike of 1919, led by the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, begins in Pennsylvania before spreading across the United States.

1927: Jack Dempsey loses the "Long Count" boxing match to Gene Tunney.

1941: World War II: On Jewish New Year Day, the German SS murder 6,000 Jews in Vinnytsya, Ukraine. Those are the survivors of the previous killings that took place a few days earlier in which about 24,000 Jews were executed.

1980: Iraq invades Iran.

On a brighter note, it's Hobbit Day! Also the equinox, of course.

 

[KenOC]

On 27 August 1776: Battle of Long Island: In what is now Brooklyn, New York, British forces under General William Howe defeat Americans under General George Washington.

1859: Petroleum is discovered in Titusville, Pennsylvania leading to the world's first commercially successful oil well.

1896: Anglo-Zanzibar War: The shortest war in world history (09:00 to 09:45), between the United Kingdom and Zanzibar.

1918: Mexican Revolution: Battle of Ambos Nogales -- U.S. Army forces skirmish against Mexican Carrancistas and their German advisors in the only battle of World War I fought on American soil.

1939: Inaugural flight of the turbojet-powered Heinkel He 178, the world's first jet aircraft.

1979: A Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb kills British retired admiral Louis Mountbatten and three others while they are boating on holiday in Sligo, Republic of Ireland.

1991: The European Community recognizes the independence of the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

It is, or was, the Volturnalia, held in honor of Volturnus (Roman Empire).

 

[KenOC]

On this day, 25 August 1609: Galileo Galilei demonstrates his first telescope to Venetian lawmakers.

1835: The New York Sun perpetrates the Great Moon Hoax, claiming life and civilization had been discovered on the moon. Here's an illustration from the paper.

1939: The United Kingdom and Poland form a military alliance in which the UK promises to defend Poland in case of invasion by a foreign power. That promise was shortly tested.

1945: Ten days after World War II ends with Japan announcing its surrender, armed supporters of the Chinese Communist Party kill U.S. intelligence officer John Birch, regarded by some of the American right as the first victim of the Cold War.

1991: Linus Torvalds announces the first version of what will become Linux.

2012: The Voyager 1 spacecraft enters interstellar space, becoming the first man-made object to do so.

It's Opiconsivia, held in honor of Ops!

 

[KenOC]

On this day, 14 August 1040: King Duncan I is killed in battle against his first cousin and rival Macbeth. The latter succeeds him as King of Scotland.

(nothing much happens for 800 years...)

1888: An audio recording of English composer Arthur Sullivan's "The Lost Chord", one of the first recordings of music ever made, is played during a press conference introducing Thomas Edison's phonograph in London, England.

1900: The Eight-Nation Alliance occupies Beijing, China, in a campaign to end the Boxer Rebellion in China.

1933: Loggers cause a forest fire in the Coast Range of Oregon, later known as the first forest fire of the Tillamook Burn. It is extinguished on September 5, after destroying 240,000 acres. I include this because my family used to drive through the Tillamook Burn when I was a child, going to visit good family friends in Cannon Beach. Strong memories of the devastation.

1935: The Social Security Act is signed by President Franklin Roosevelt, creating a government pension system for the retired.

1936: Rainey Bethea is hanged in Owensboro, Kentucky in the last public execution in the United States.

1945: Japan accepts the Allied terms of surrender in World War II, and the Emperor records the Imperial Rescript on Surrender (August 15 in Japan Standard Time).

1975: The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the longest-running release in film history, opens at the USA Theatre in Westwood, Los Angeles, California.

1994: Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, also known as "Carlos the Jackal," is captured.

 

[KenOC]

On this day, 27 May 1703: Tsar Peter the Great founds the city of Saint Petersburg.

1907: Bubonic plague breaks out in San Francisco, California.

1927: The Ford Motor Company ceases manufacture of the Ford Model T and begins to retool plants to make the Ford Model A.

1933: The Walt Disney Company releases the cartoon Three Little Pigs, with its hit song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?"

1937: In California, the Golden Gate Bridge opens to pedestrian traffic, creating a vital link between San Francisco and Marin County, California.

1941: World War II: The German battleship Bismarck is sunk in the North Atlantic killing almost 2,100 men.

1967: Australians vote in favor of a constitutional referendum granting the Australian government the power to make laws to benefit Indigenous Australians and to count them in the national census.

1995: In Culpeper, Virginia, the actor Christopher Reeve is paralyzed from the neck down after falling from his horse in a riding competition.

 

[KenOC]

On this day, 12 April 1204: The Crusaders of the Fourth Crusade breach the walls of Constantinople and enter the city, which they completely occupy the following day.

1831: Soldiers marching on the Broughton Suspension Bridge in Manchester, England cause it to collapse. Troops now use route step to avoid the harmonic oscillations.

1861: The American Civil War begins with Confederate forces firing on Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina.

1927: April 12 Incident: Chiang Kai-shek orders the Communist Party of China members executed in Shanghai, ending the First United Front.

1934: The strongest surface wind gust in the world, 231 mph, is measured on the summit of Mount Washington, New Hampshire.

1945: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies while in office; vice-president Harry Truman is sworn in as the 33rd President.

1955: The polio vaccine, developed by Dr. Jonas Salk, is declared safe and effective.

1961: The Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human to orbit the earth in Vostok 3KA-2 (Vostok 1).

1981: The first launch of a space shuttle (the Columbia) takes place -- the STS-1 mission.

It's the feast day of Erkembode.

 

[KenOC]

On this day, 8 March 1618: Johannes Kepler discovers the third law of planetary motion.

Got curious so I looked this up:

Third law: "The square of the orbital period of a planet is directly proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit."

The third law, published by Kepler in 1619, captures the relationship between the distance of planets from the Sun and their orbital periods.

Kepler enunciated this third law in a laborious attempt to determine what he viewed as the "music of the spheres" according to precise laws, and express it in terms of musical notation. So it used to be known as the harmonic law.