The Friday Post ~ 16th February 2018

HAApeeee Friday!

Well I don’t know about anyone else, but this was a week and a half!  I don’t know why it seemed so long, but I was beginning to think that Friday was never going to arrive!  But … I should have trusted it…  for here it is. 🙂

Well, you’re here for this weeks expensive edumacation, so find a seat, put your chewing gum in the bin, get your books out and a pen or pencil  (crayon for you … you know who you are – oh, and your mother says you are NOT to eat ANY crayons this week!) – put the date a the top of your page, and we shall begin.

Ready?  Here we go . . .

On this Day in History

1742 – Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington, becomes British Prime Minister.

1852 – Studebaker Brothers wagon company, precursor of the automobile manufacturer, is established.

Studebaker Corporation, or simply Studebaker, was a United States wagon and automobile manufacturer based in South Bend, Indiana. Originally, the company was a producer of wagons for farmers, miners and the military, founded in 1852 and incorporated in 1868 under the name of the Studebaker Brothers Manufacturing Company.

Studebaker entered the automotive business in 1902 with electric vehicles and in 1904 with gasoline vehicles, all sold under the name “Studebaker Automobile Company”. It partnered with other builders of gasoline-powered vehicles—Garford and E-M-F—until 1911.

The first gasoline cars to be fully manufactured by Studebaker were marketed in August 1912. Over the next 40 years, the company established an enviable reputation for quality and reliability.

In 1954, after a dramatic and unexpected fall in sales, Studebaker merged with the Packard Motor Car Company, forming the Studebaker-Packard Corporation.  The final Packard-designed cars were built by the company in Detroit in 1956, and the last Packards with Studebaker bodies were built in 1958.  “Packard” was then dropped from the company’s name as Studebaker rapidly diversified, buying up companies such as Schaefer, which made commercial refrigerators, STP, which made automotive oil treatments, and Paxton Products, which made automobile superchargers.  Even a commercial airline, Trans International Airlines, founded by Kirk Kerkorian, came into the corporate fold in the early ‘sixties.

By 1963, however, the company’s mainstay products, automobiles and trucks, were selling very poorly. The South Bend plant was closed and cars were built solely at the satellite plant in Hamilton, Ontario until March 1966.

Studebaker merged with Worthington Corporation to become Studebaker-Worthington in 1967 . McGraw-Edison purchased Studebaker-Worthington in 1979, eliminating the century-old Studebaker name from the corporate landscape.

1923 – Howard Carter unseals the burial chamber of Pharaoh Tutankhamun.  Tutankhamun (1341 BC – 1323 BC) was an Egyptian Pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty (ruled 1333 BC – 1324 BC in the conventional chronology), during the period of Egyptian history known as the New Kingdom.  The 1922 discovery by Howard Carter of Tutankhamun’s intact tomb received worldwide press coverage and sparked a renewed public interest in ancient Egypt, for which Tutankhamun’s burial mask remains the popular face.

1937 – Wallace H. Carothers receives a patent for nylon. Wallace Hume Carothers (April 27, 1896 – April 29, 1937) was an American chemist, inventor and the leader of organic chemistry at DuPont, credited with the invention of Nylon.

Carothers was a group leader in DuPont’s Experimental Station laboratory, near Wilmington, Delaware, where most polymer research was done. Carothers was a brilliant organic chemist who, in addition to first developing nylon, also helped lay the groundwork for Neoprene. After receiving his Ph.D, he taught at several universities before he was hired by the DuPont Company to work on fundamental research.

He married the former Helen Sweetman on February 21, 1936.  Wallace Carothers had been troubled by periods of mental depression since his youth.  Despite his success with Nylon, he felt that he had not accomplished much and had run out of ideas.  His unhappiness was compounded by the death of his favourite sister, and on April 29, 1937, he checked into a Philadelphia hotel room and died after drinking a cocktail of lemon juice laced with potassium cyanide.  His daughter, Jane, was born seven months later on November 27, 1937.

Nylon is a generic designation for a family of synthetic polymers known generically as polyamides and first produced on February 28, 1935 by Wallace Carothers at DuPont.  Nylon is one of the most commonly used polymers.

Nylon is a thermoplastic silky material, first used commercially in a nylon-bristled toothbrush (1938), followed more famously by women’s stockings (“nylons”; 1940).  It is made of repeating units linked by peptide bonds (another name for amide bonds) and is frequently referred to as polyamide (PA).  Nylon was the first commercially successful polymer.

Nylon was intended to be a synthetic replacement for silk and substituted for it in many different products after silk became scarce during World War II.  It replaced silk in military applications such as parachutes and flak vests, and was used in many types of vehicle tyres.

Nylon fibers are used in many applications, including fabrics, bridal veils, carpets, musical strings, and rope.

Solid nylon is used for mechanical parts such as machine screws, gears and other low to medium-stress components previously cast in metal. Engineering-grade nylon is processed by extrusion, casting, and injection moulding. Solid nylon is used in hair combs.  Type 6/6 Nylon 101 is the most common commercial grade of nylon, and Nylon 6 is the most common commercial grade of moulded nylon.  Nylon is available in glass-filled variants which increase structural and impact strength and rigidity, and molybdenum sulfide-filled variants which increase lubricity.

1957 – The “Toddlers’ Truce”, a controversial television close-down between 6.00pm and 7.00pm – was abolished in the United Kingdom. The Toddlers’ Truce was a piece of early British TV scheduling policy which required transmission halt for an hour each weekday from 6-7pm.  This was from the end of children’s TV and the evening schedule so that young children could be put to bed.

Background
It may have originated when the BBC resumed television after the end of the war in 1946.  The policy remained fairly uncontroversial until ITV began transmission in 1955.  At that time the Truce was accepted as policy by the Postmaster General, Earl De La Warr, in the interests of smoothing relations between ITV and the fledgling ITA.  The problem became apparent in 1956 when the ITV franchise-holders under the ITA’s jurisdiction were struggling to stay in business.  As the BBC were and still are funded by a TV licence fee, their budget was not related to the number of hours of transmission.  Indeed the Truce saved them money.  ITV, on the other hand, were funded entirely by advertising and the Truce caused a loss of revenue in the hour’s close-down.  Supporters of ITV, which had faced strong political opposition, argued that the Truce had little to do with social responsibility and was simply a way to give the BBC an unfair advantage.

Abolition
The ITA had encouraged the ITV companies (Granada, ABC Television, ATV and Associated – Rediffusion) to seek abolition of the Truce.  Action was taken finally in July 1956, probably the result of a lack of effective cooperation between the companies rather than political objection.  The Postmaster General, Charles Hill, had disliked the policy as an example of the BBC’s paternalism toward its audience, saying:

This restriction seemed to me absurd and I said so. It was the responsibility of parents, not the state, to put their children to bed at the right time… I invited the BBC and the ITA to agree to its abolition …

The BBC could not, however, be persuaded to accept the abolition or even to a compromise of reducing the period to 30 minutes.  Hill tired of the disagreement and asked Parliament for the abolition which was agreed on 31 October 1956.  However, the BBC and ITA couldn’t even agree a date for the abolition to take place.  Hill decided on Saturday, 16 February 1957.

Subsequent use of the time
The BBC filled the hour with a music programme, ‘Six-Five Special’ from the first Saturday and with the ‘Tonight’ news magazine from Monday to Friday.  The BBC however continued to close from 6.15-7.00pm on Sundays, the time of evening church services, until ‘Songs of Praise’ was launched on 1 October 1961.  Until 1992 this time on Sundays was used for religious programmes on BBC1 and ITV.  The 6-7pm slot has ever since been devoted to news, especially regional news, in the weekday schedules of both BBC1 and ITV, though ‘Crossroads’ (a Monday to Friday soap opera, no longer made) was also shown at this time in most ITV regions.

1957 – The first computer bulletin board system is created (CBBS in Chicago, Illinois). A Bulletin Board System, or BBS, is a computer system running software that allows users to connect and login to the system using a terminal program.  Originally BBSes were accessed only over a phone line using a modem, but by the early 1990s some BBSes allowed access via a Telnet, packet switched network, or packet radio connection.

Once logged in, a user could perform functions such as downloading or uploading software and data, reading news, and exchanging messages with other users, either through electronic mail or in public message boards.  Many BBSes also offered on-line games, in which users could compete with each other, and BBSes with multiple phone lines often offered chat rooms, allowing users to interact with each other.

Monochrome, a modern BBS still running today.

The term “Bulletin Board System” itself is a reference to the traditional cork-and-pin bulletin board often found in entrances of supermarkets, schools, libraries or other public areas where people can post messages, advertisements, or community news.
During their heyday from the late 1970s to the mid 1990s, most BBSes were run as a hobby free of charge by the system operator (or “SysOp”), while other BBSes charged their users a subscription fee for access, or were operated by a business as a means of supporting their customers.  Bulletin Board Systems were in many ways a precursor to the modern form of the World Wide Web and other aspects of the Internet.

Early BBSes were often a local phenomenon, as one had to dial into a BBS with a phone line and would have to pay additional long distance charges for a BBS out of the local calling area. Thus, many users of a given BBS usually lived in the same area, and activities such as BBS Meets or Get Togethers, where everyone from the board would gather and meet face to face, were common.

As the use of the Internet became more widespread in the mid to late 1990s, traditional BBSes rapidly faded in popularity.  Today, Internet forums occupy much of the same social and technological space as BBSes did, and the term BBS is often used to refer to any online forum or message board.

1983 – The Ash Wednesday bush-fires in Victoria and South Australia claim the lives of 75 people.  The Ash Wednesday bush-fires were a series of bush-fires that occurred in south-eastern Australia on 16 February 1983.  Within twelve hours, more than 180 fires fanned by winds of up to 110 km (68 mph) per hour caused widespread destruction across the states of Victoria and South Australia.  Years of severe drought and extreme weather combined to create one of Australia’s worst fire days in a century.  The fires are the second deadliest bush-fire disaster in Australian history – only the 2009 Victorian bush-fires have claimed more lives.

Ash Wednesday is one of Australia’s costliest natural disasters.  Over 3,700 buildings were destroyed or damaged and 2,545 individuals and families lost their homes.  Livestock losses were very high, with over 340,000 sheep, 18,000 cattle and numerous native animals either dead or later destroyed.  A total of 4,540 insurance claims were paid totalling A$176 million with a total estimated cost of well over $400 million (1983 values) for both states or $1.3 billion in adjusted terms (2007).

The emergency saw the largest number of volunteers called to duty from across Australia at the same time—an estimated 130,000 firefighters, defence force personnel, relief workers and support crews.

2006 –  The last Mobile army surgical hospital (MASH) is decommissioned by the United States Army.

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Born on this Day

1878 – Pamela Colman Smith, artist, writer, designer of the Rider-Waite-Smith deck of tarot cards (d. 1951)  –  Read about and see the Rider-Waite tarot deck HERE

1909 – Richard McDonald,  – American fast food pioneer (d. 1998)

1927 – June Brown, English actress

1935 – Sonny Bono, American entertainer & U.S. Congressman (d. 1998)

1946 – Ian Lavender, English actor

1959 – John McEnroe, American tennis player

1960 – Pete Willis, English guitarist (Def Leppard)

1961 – Andy Taylor, English musician (Duran Duran, The Power Station)

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External Links for more news in history of today:

BBC: On this Day

New York Times ~ On this Day

Today in Canadian History ~ 16th February.

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~  Playtime Bell Rings!  ~

These are the jokes folks!

The first computer dates back to Adam and Eve. It was an Apple with limited memory, just one byte. And then everything crashed.

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I just asked my husband if he remembers what today is …  Scaring men is SO easy.

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I saw a documentary on how ships are kept together;  riveting!

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Behind every very cross woman is a man who has absolutely no idea what he did wrong.

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I went to a karaoke bar last night that didn’t play any 70’s music…
 at first I was afraid,  I was petrified.

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If I repeatedly stab my cornflakes does that make me a  cereal killer?

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My uncle has a weird hobby; he collects empty bottles…  which sounds so much better than “alcoholic.”

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I went to the garden centre in December and bought a Christmas Tree.  The assistant asked me, “Will you be putting that up yourself?”  I replied,  “No, you idiot. I’ll be putting it up in my living room.

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I used to be in a band called ‘Missing Cat’… you probably saw our posters.

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My husband and I met at a Castanet class… we clicked.

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I phoned up the spiritual leader of Tibet, he sent me a large goat with a long neck,  turns out I phoned dial-a-lama.

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and finally …. I’d like to finish with a song . . . 

Don’t go bacon my heart.  I couldn’t if I fried.

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Time for a coffee and a moment of contemplation. . . 

Thought for the Day

CONFIDENCE:

Once all village people decided to pray for rain.  On the day of the prayer all the people gathered and only one boy came with an umbrella.  That’s Confidence.

TRUST:

Trust should be like the feeling of a one year old baby when you throw him in the air;  he laughs….  because he knows you will catch him.  That’s Trust.

HOPE:

Every night we go to bed, we have no assurance to get up alive the next morning, but still we have plans for the coming day . . .   That’s Hope.

Keep Confidence.

Trust others.

Never lose Hope.

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And that wraps up our Edumacation for today! 🙂

May your day be blessed with all that you need, a little of what you want, and a sprinkle of wisdom for those moments when you need it.

Thank you for coming and sharing a coffee with me.  It’s such a blessing to me that you’re here.

Sending you much love and squidges, from me in my corner, to you in yours. ~