The Friday Post ~ History of Events on 23rd March

Good morning and happy Friday to you.  How’s your week been?  Good I hope, or at least, very little to complain about.

My week has been busy and wrapped up in tiredness.  I’m not doing anything which burns the candle at both ends, but cooo…  I seem to suddenly find a drop in energy levels between 3pm and 4pm, and I’ll either fall asleep in my chair and catch 40 winks, – or on one day I actually made my way wearily to my bed and slept soundly until 7pm.  I’m beginning to think I should be living somewhere in Spain or Mexico, where they have an afternoon siesta!

Anyhooooo….  This  ‘On this day in History’  of lesson is going to be the last ‘On this day in History’ lesson for a while.  All schools have holidays and breaks to allow pupils some freedom and fun, and this Friday Lesson is doing just that.  But for today,  you’ve come dressed in your school uniforms and ready for some edumacation, so let’s crack on with it, shall we?

23rd March 2018

On this Day in History

1540 – Waltham Abbey is surrendered to King Henry VIII of England; the last religious community to be closed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

1775 – American Revolutionary War: Patrick Henry delivers his speech – “Give me liberty, or give me death!” – at St. John’s Episcopal Church, Richmond, Virginia.

1839 – The first recorded use of “OK” (okay).  Okay, frequently spelled OK and occasionally okeh is a colloquial English word denoting approval, assent, or acknowledgment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK

1840 – John W. Draper takes first successful photo of the Moon.  John William Draper (May 5, 1811, – January 4, 1882) was an (English-born) American scientist, philosopher, physician, chemist, historian, and photographer.  He was the first person to take an astrophotograph;  he took the first photo of the Moon which showed any lunar features in 1840.

1857 – Elisha Otis’s first elevator is installed at 488 Broadway New York City.  Elisha Graves Otis (August 3, 1811 – April 8, 1861) invented a safety device that prevented elevators from falling if the hoisting cable broke.  He worked on this device while living in Yonkers, New York in 1852, and had a finished product in 1854.

1889 – The free Woolwich Ferry officially opens in east London.  The Woolwich Free Ferry is a boat service across the River Thames, London, UK, which is licensed and financed by London River Services, the maritime arm of Transport for London.  The service is operated by Serco Group under licence from TfL and carries both foot passengers and vehicles.

The ferry carries more than one million vehicles and 2.5 million passengers each year. Occupants of vehicles (including drivers) are counted as passengers.  In depth website about the Woolwich Ferry

1888 – In England,  The Football League,  the world’s oldest professional association football league, meets for the first time.

1901 – Australian opera singer, Dame Nellie Melba, reveals the secret of her now famous toast. Melba toast is a very dry, crisp, thinly sliced toast often served with soups and salads or topped with either melted cheese or pâté.

The toast was created for her by chef (and fan) Auguste Escoffier, who also created the Peach Melba dessert. Melba toast is said to be derived from the crisp toast that was part of Dame Melba’s diet during the year 1897, a year in which she was very ill.

For the cooks among us Melba toast is usually made by lightly toasting bread in the normal way. Once the outside of the bread is slightly firm, it is removed from the toaster and then each slice is cut in half “longitudinally” with a bread knife to make two slices, each half the thickness. These two thin slices are then toasted again to make Melba Toast.

1903 – The Wright Brothers apply for a patent on their invention of one of the first successful air planes.

1909 – Theodore Roosevelt leaves New York for a post-presidency safari in Africa. The trip is sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution and National Geographic Society.

1919 – In Milan, Italy, Benito Mussolini re-formed his Fascist political movement.  Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism.

1933 – The Reichstag passes the Enabling act of 1933,  making Adolf Hitler dictator of Germany.

1956 – Pakistan becomes the first Islamic republic in the world. (Republic Day in Pakistan)

1965 – NASA launches Gemini 3, the United States’ first two-man space flight (crew: Gus Grissom and John Young).

1977 – The first of The Nixon Interviews  (12 recorded over four weeks) are videotaped with British journalist David Frost interviewing former United States President Richard Nixon about the Watergate scandal and the Nixon tapes.

1983 – Strategic Defense Initiative President Ronald Reagan makes his initial proposal to develop technology to intercept enemy missiles.

1994 – Aeroflot Flight 593 crashed into the Kuznetsk Alatau mountain, Kemerovo Oblast, Russia, killing 75, when the pilot’s fifteen-year old son accidentally disengages the autopilot.

1994 – A United States Air Force (USAF) F-16 aircraft collides with a USAF C-130 at Pope Air Force Base and then crashes, killing 24 United States Army soldiers on the ground. This later became known as the Green Ramp disaster.

2001 – The Russian Mir space station is disposed of, breaking up in the atmosphere before falling into the southern Pacific Ocean near Fiji.

~  ❤  ~

Born on this Day

1904 – Joan Crawford, American actress (d. 1977).  NB: The year of Miss Crawford’s birth has been variously identified as 1904, 1906, 1908 and 1909, the last being her own favourite.

1921 – Donald Campbell, British car and motorboat racer (d. 1967)

1925 – David Watkin, English cinematographer (d. 2008) – In Chariots of Fire, he helped create one of the most memorable images of 1980s cinema: the opening sequence in which a huddle of young male athletes pounds along the water’s edge on a beach” to the film’s theme music by Vangelis.

1929 – Sir Roger Bannister, English runner

1935 – Barry Cryer,  OBE.  an English comedian, actor and screenwriter.

1946 – Alan Bleasdale, English screenwriter and producer

1953 – Chaka Khan, American singer

1957 – Amanda Plummer, American actress – daughter of actors Tammy Grimes and Christopher Plummer.

1962 – Sir Steven Redgrave  CBE DL, retired British rower who won gold medals at five consecutive Olympic Games from 1984 to 2000.  He has also won three Commonwealth Games gold medals and nine World Rowing Championships golds.  He is the most successful male rower in Olympic history, and the only man to have won gold medals at five Olympic Games in an endurance sport.

1965 – Marti Pellow, Scottish singer (Wet Wet Wet)

1968 – Damon Albarn, English musician (Blur, Gorillaz and The Good, the Bad & the Queen)

1971 – Gail Porter, Scottish television presenter

1980 – Russell Howard, English comedian

1983 – Mo Farah, Somali-English runner

1989 – Ayesha Curry, Canadian-American chef, author and television personality

1990 – Princess Eugenie of York.  Younger daughter of Prince Andrew, Duke of York, and of Sarah, Duchess of York.  She is eighth in line of succession to the British throne,  and has worked for the Hauser & Wirth art gallery in London as an associate director since 2015.

Died on this Day and remembered here

1965 – Mae Murray, American actress, dancer, producer, and screenwriter (b. 1889)

2001 – Rowland Evans, American journalist (b. 1921)

2002 – Eileen Farrell, American soprano (b. 1920)

2011 – Elizabeth Taylor DBE, American-British actress, socialite and humanitarian (b. 1932)

2012 – Jim Duffy, American animator, director, and producer (b. 1937)

2015 – Lil’ Chris, English singer-songwriter, actor, and television personality (b. 1990)

External Links for more news on this day

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

cups

Thought for the Day

A book was published in 1913 written by a lady called Eleanor H. Porter, which many of you will have heard about, read or even watched the film which was made based upon this book.  The book was called Pollyanna.

I can see some of you smiling already, – but for those of you who don’t know this book/film let me explain a little more…. 

The writer, Eleanor H. Porter originally trained as a singer, but in her later years she turned to writing.  She wrote books for adult readers, but she wrote mainly children’s literature books.  But Pollyanna was my favourite – both as a child and as an adult. 

Ms. Porter also wrote a sequel:  ‘Pollyanna Grows Up‘, because the book had become so popular.  There are other books, other ‘sequels’, but none of them are written by Eleanor, for Eleanor passed away just seven years after the first Pollyanna book was published.

However, she has left behind her a legacy of monumental proportions.  Not just in me, but in all children of the world who have read this book or had it read to them. 

To be honest, if it were up to me I’d make it compulsory in the first schools, second schools and high schools, purely because of the ‘Glad Game‘ which Pollyanna’s father taught her, and which the reader learns about by reading the book.

Pollyanna was an orphan.  Both of her parents had passed away (not at the same time).  Pollyanna was sent to live with her spinster aunt – a rather stiff, stern, crotchety woman who lived alone – except for a small ‘staff’ – a maid, gardener and a driver.  We do, at a later point in the book, learn that Aunt Polly was like she was because of a lost love.

Pollyanna and her bright, sunny, cheerful, joyous and loving personality, was to transform not only her Aunts life, but the lives of all the people who lived in the small town where she lived.  And she did it simply by teaching everyone she came into contact with:  ‘The Game’.

The Game is ‘The Glad Game‘.  It’s a game which Pollyanna’s father taught to her one Christmas time.

Pollyanna was hoping to find a doll in the missionary barrel which held all manner of things….  however, Pollyanna only found a pair of crutches, which she had no need of.  Naturally Pollyanna was a little disappointed.  Her father, seeing his child’s sad face, made up the game on the spot, and taught Pollyanna how she could look at every situation and find the good side in there somewhere.  And … in this case of the crutches, she could be glad about them, because, he told her,  “we don’t need ’em!”.

Armed with this Glad Game, her life was transformed, and also, the lives of all people around her.

When she moved into her Aunts house following the death of her father, Polly was late coming to the dinner table one evening and her Aunt said that she would be punished by not having the delights that had been prepared for dinner in the dining room, but instead, her punishment would be to have only bread and milk, and she would have to eat it in the kitchen with the servant, Nancy.

Pollyanna was absolutely thrilled to bits and couldn’t thank her Aunt enough!  She explained that she loves bread and milk, and she loves Nancy too, so to be able to eat bread and milk in the kitchen with Nancy was a real treat!

Pollyanna teaches this very same outlook to other people around the little town.  She teaches the invalid, Mrs. Snow, the Glad Game (which takes some considerable time as Mrs. Snow is a real grouch!) …  and eventually Mrs. Snow is playing along and enjoying life again.

And it’s this ‘Glad Game’ which is my thought for the day.

Something which happened recently made me put the Glad Game to work…  and that’s why I’m thinking about it today. 

Some of you may have read Pollyanna … but if you haven’t, or haven’t read it for a while, I urge you to go and borrow a copy from your library, or even buy the book, so that you can learn for yourself about the ‘Glad Game‘, and see if you can put it into practise in your life. 

Every situation you come to,  every problem you find yourself with,  has something in it to be glad about.  It’s that elusive ‘silver lining‘ that people talk about;  sing about;  make movies about!  Find the good in a situation and SNAP!, suddenly the situation doesn’t seem quite as daunting as it did before!

And, once you get used to playing the Glad Game, – teach others how to play it too.

I promise you, that although it’s a simple philosophy, it really does work.

Transform your life …  and then go and transform other people lives for them by teaching them ‘The Glad Game’!.

You, have a great  ‘Glad Game‘  day.

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

Sig coffee copy

 

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The Friday Post ~ History of Events on 16th March

Good Morning,  and a very Happy Friday to one and all.  We are, today, 75 days into 2018 – which means that there’s 283 till Christmas.  Now don’t you feel better now you’ve had an early warning about this special date rushing towards us?  You’ll be able to miss the crush of shoppers in December, simply because you have a lovely blogging friend who gives you these early warnings!

You’re welcome.  😀

Anyhoo . . .  you’ve come for a little Edumacation Cobwebs Style, so … shall we get on with it?

16th March 2018

On this Day in History

1689 – The 23rd Regiment of Foot or Royal Welch Fusiliers is founded.

1802 – The Army Corps of Engineers is established to found and operate the United States Military Academy at West Point.

1815 – Prince Willem proclaims himself King of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, the first constitutional monarch in the Netherlands.

1830 – London’s re-organised police force (Scotland Yard) forms.  New Scotland Yard (NSY) is the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service, responsible for law enforcement within Greater London, excluding the City district, which is covered by the City of London Police.

1867 – First publication of an article by Joseph Lister outlining the discovery of antiseptic surgery, in The Lancet.

1870 – The first version of the overture fantasy Romeo and Juliet  by Tchaikovsky receives its premiere performance.

1872 – The Wanderers F.C. won the first FA Cup, the oldest football competition in the world, beating Royal Engineers A.F.C. 1-0 at The Oval in Kennington, London.

1918 – Geoffrey O’Hara’s “K-K-K-Katy” song was published.  “K-K-K-Katy” was a popular World War I-era song written by Canadian American composer Geoffrey O’Hara in 1917 and published in 1918. The sheet music advertised it as “The Sensational Stammering Song Success Sung by the Soldiers and Sailors”.

The lyrics tell of a brave but awkward soldier called Jimmy who is lovesick over the beautiful Katy. He buys a wedding ring before going to fight in France.  It was a top 20 song from May 1918 to January 1919 and was number 1 from July to September.

1926 – History of Rocketry: Robert Goddard launches the first liquid-fuelled rocket, at Auburn, Massachusetts, it travels 184′ (56 meters).

1935 – Adolf Hitler orders Germany to rearm herself in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. Conscription is reintroduced to form the Wehrmacht.

1939 – From Prague Castle, Hitler proclaims Bohemia and Moravia a German protectorate.

1940 – First person killed (James Isbister) in a German bombing raid on the UK in World War II during a raid on Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands.

1958 – The Ford Motor Company produces its 50 millionth automobile, the Thunderbird, averaging almost a million cars a year since the company’s founding.

1962 – A Flying Tiger Line Super Constellation (a propeller-driven, four-engined airliner) disappears in the western Pacific Ocean, with all 107 aboard missing and presumed dead.

1964 – Capitol released the Beatles record “Can’t Buy Me Lovebacked with “You Can’t Do That”.

1968 – General Motors produces its 100 millionth automobile, the Oldsmobile Toronado.

1972 – John & Yoko are served with deportation papers.  The Nixon Administration tried to have Lennon deported from the U.S., as Richard Nixon believed that Lennon’s proactive antiwar activities and support for George McGovern could cost him re-election.  Republican Senator Strom Thurmond suggested, in a February 1972 memo, that “deportation would be a strategic counter-measure” against Lennon.  The next month the Immigration and Naturalisation Service began deportation proceedings against Lennon, arguing that his 1968 misdemeanour conviction for cannabis possession in London had made him ineligible for admission to the U.S. Lennon spent the next four years in deportation hearings.

1976 – UK Prime Minister Harold Wilson resigned. Harold Wilson, Labour leader for 13 years and prime minister for almost eight, stunned the political world by announcing his resignation. Mr Wilson, who had turned 60 five days previously, made his bombshell announcement to his Cabinet that morning.
BBC News story on the Day complete with video footage.

1978 – Supertanker Amoco Cadiz splits in two after running aground on the Portsall Rocks, three miles off the coast of Brittany, resulting in the 5th largest oil spill in history.

1985 – Associated Press newsman Terry Anderson is taken hostage in Beirut. He is released on December 4, 1991.
1988 – Iran-Contra Affair: Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North and Vice Admiral John Poindexter are indicted on charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States.

1988 – American off-road racing legend Mickey Thompson, and his wife Trudy were shot to death in their driveway. Thompson, known as the “Speed King,” set nearly 500 auto speed endurance records including being the first person to travel more than 400 mph on land.

On March 16, 1988 Mickey Thompson and his wife were killed by two gunmen at their home in Bradbury, California in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains.

An intense police investigation led nowhere until thirteen years after their deaths when former business partner Michael Frank Goodwin was charged in Orange County, California with the murders.  However, that case was overturned on jurisdictional grounds by the California District Court of Appeal.  On June 8, 2004, Goodwin was formally charged in Pasadena in Los Angeles County. In October 2006, a Pasadena Superior Court judge ordered Goodwin to stand trial for the murders.

On January 4, 2007 a jury found Michael Goodwin guilty of two counts of murder in the death of Mickey Thompson and his wife.  Goodwin was sentenced to two consecutive life-without-parole terms for the murders of Thompson and his wife. The judge also denied Goodwin’s motion for a new trial.

1994 – Tonya Harding plead guilty in Portland, OR, to conspiracy to hinder prosecution for covering up the attack on her skating rival Nancy Kerrigan. She was fined $100,000. She was also banned from amateur figure skating.

1995 – Mississippi formally ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment, becoming the last state to approve the abolition of slavery.  The Thirteenth Amendment was officially ratified in 1865.

2001 – A series of bomb blasts that took place in the city of Shijiazhuang, China killed 108 people and injured 38 others, was the biggest mass murder in China in decades.

~  ❤  ~  ❤  ~  ❤  ~

Born on this Day

1789 – Georg Simon Ohm, German physicist (d. 1854) (discovered Ohm’s Law)

1839 – John Butler Yeats, Irish painter (d. 1922)

1856 – Napoléon Eugène, Prince Imperial, only child of Emperor Napoleon III of France (d. 1879)

1920 – Leo McKern, Australian-English actor (d. 2002)

1926 – Jerry Lewis, American comedian (d. 2017)

1948 – Michael Bruce, American musician (Alice Cooper)

1949 – Erik Estrada, Puerto Rican actor

1954 – Jimmy Nail, British actor and singer

1959 – Flavor Flav, American rapper, and reality tv star

1959 – Greg Dyer, Australian cricketer

1960 – Jenny Eclair, English comedian, actress and screenwriter

1961 – Todd McFarlane, Canadian comic book artist, writer and media entrepreneur, founded McFarlane Toys

1963 – Jerome Flynn, English actor and singer

1984 – Aisling Bea, Irish comedienne and actress

Died on this Day and remembered here

1970 – Tammi Terrell, American singer (b. 1945)

1975 – T-Bone Walker, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1910)

1983 – Arthur Godfrey, American actor and television host (b. 1903)

1998 – Derek Barton, English-American chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1918)

2003 – Rachel Corrie, American activist (b. 1979)

2003 – Ronald Ferguson, English captain, polo player, and manager (b. 1931) (father of Sarah Ferguson)

2013 – Frank Thornton, English actor (b. 1921) (perhaps known best for playing Captain Peacock in Are You Being Served?)

2014 – Steve Moore, English author and illustrator (b. 1949)

2016 – Frank Sinatra, Jr., American singer and actor (b. 1944) ( son of singer and actor Frank Sinatra)

PLAYTIME BELL RINGS ..  ~  ..  TIME FOR FUN!

These are the jokes folks ….

Conjunctivitis.com – that’s a site for sore eyes

Police arrested two kids yesterday. One was drinking battery acid, the other was eating fireworks. They charged one and let the other one off.

I usually meet my friend at 12:59 – because I like that one-to-one time.

Is it possible to mistake schizophrenia for telepathy?  I hear you ask.

As a child I was made to walk the plank. We couldn’t afford a dog.

Whenever I see a man with a beard, moustache and glasses, I think,  ‘There’s a man who has taken every precaution to avoid people doodling on photographs of him’

I needed a password eight characters long so I picked  Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

And now it’s coffee and contemplation time . . .

Cup of Coffee

Thought for the Day

If our eyes saw only souls instead of bodies, how differently do you think you’d actually see people?  Would you be able, I wonder, to see the struggles that they’ve been through, or are going through?  Would you be able to see that their outer persona of being  ‘non-approachable’  was actually just a self-protection thing, because of the amount of hurt and pain that person had suffered at the hands of others, and that in reality he/she was a soft gentle person with a heart which is able to love the world twice over?

If you saw only the soul of a person – would you still see the moody, aggressive teenager, or would you see the child they still were, and the bullying which they were experiencing at the hands of someone else?

If her soul presented itself to you next time you saw your mother –  would you see her as a nag who was constantly telling you how you need to __________ [fill in the blank space].  Or would you see how her love and concern for you is as strong today as it was the moment you were born, and what she’s actually doing now is simply trying to guide and protect you, because her love for you is all-encompassing?

This wonderful gift of seeing someone’s soul rather than seeing their ‘over-coat’ or body – is something we all need to put into action.  We need to use it as the tool which was actually given to us all at birth – but we’ve all forgotten how to do it.

So I’m here to gently push you into seeing the souls of people, instead of their ‘over-coat’.  It’s an easy enough thing to do.  Just remind yourself all the time to see the soul not the body – until eventually you won’t need to remind yourself for it will come naturally to you – just as breathing in and out does!

You’ll learn so much more, and you’ll treat people with more kindness, love, and understanding,  by seeing their soul, rather than their body.

~  ❤  ~  ❤  ~  ❤  ~

Well schools out and we’ve finished out Edumacation for this week.  I hope you’ve learned something that you can take out into the world and share with someone else.  People are going to think you’re oh SO clever!

This week has been a busy one here in Cobweb Towers.  phew!  Between Doctors appointments, hospital appointments, garage (car) visits,  Little Cobs visiting, (which is always a joy, but cooo,  he’s a Grammy Exhaustion Factory in one small boy!)  – and then, just to make sure that the cake had a cherry on the top:  the dishwasher turned its toes up and died.

Mr.Cobs says he doesn’t think we need to buy a new one because, he says, he really rather likes washing the dishes.  I’m not sure if I passed out at this point but I do feel that several hours are missing from that point.   We shall see if he changes his mind, and in the meantime I’ll do a bit of looking around the internet to see what’s on offer – just in case.

Well … that’s me done and dusted.  I shall hang my school teachers cap and gown up for another week and become the child I really am for the rest of the time.  😀

May your Friday be joyful, may your weekend be filled with warm smiles.  And may you find contentment nestling in your heart.

Sending squidges  … 

Sig coffee copy

 

 

The Friday Post ~ Your Edumacation for 2nd March 2018

Aaand here we are again. Another Friday Edumacation and yet another week where I haven’t posted any crafty things.  [sigh]  I do have things.  Two things in fact – but I can’t find where I saved the photos on my ‘puter!   Thankfully, I still have the photos on my phone, so I can load them all over again, re-size them, add the watermark and then load them onto the media bit of my blog.  Of course … none of this would have happened if  … (get ready for a bit of singing)  … 🎵 🎶  ‘if I only had a brain’  🎵 🎶 

But I haven’t, so doing the loading/re-sizing/water-mark/saving  combo,  all over again, is the choice I have.

Aaanywhooo….  Let’s get going with your edumacation, shall we?

2nd March

On this Day in History

1717 – The Loves of Mars and Venus becomes the first ballet performed in England.

1903 – The Martha Washington Hotel opened for business in New York City. The hotel had 416 rooms and was the first hotel exclusively for women.

1923 – Time magazine debuts
1925 – State and federal highway officials developed a nationwide route-numbering system and adopted the familiar U.S. shield-shaped, numbered marker.

1933 – The film King Kong opens at New York’s Radio City Music Hall.

1943 – 173 people die in the Bethnal Green Tube Disaster, London, the worst civilian disaster of World War 2.
The Bethnal Green Disaster @ Wikipedia.

1949 – Captain James Gallagher lands his B-50 Superfortress Lucky Lady II in Fort Worth, Texas after completing the first non-stop around-the-world airplane flight in 94 hours and one minute.
1949 – The first automatic street light was installed in New Milford, Conn.

1950 – Silly Putty was invented.  Silly Putty (originally called nutty putty, and also known as Potty Putty) is a silicone plastic, marketed today as a toy for children, but originally created as an accident during the course of research into potential rubber substitutes for use by the United States during World War II.

During World War II, the USA was looking for a synthetic rubber compound because of the difficulties in obtaining natural rubber from the Far East.  In researching this problem, James Wright of General Electric reacted boric acid with silicone oil and produced a gooey material – though it bounced it was certainly not a rubber substitute. No uses for it were found until the 1950’s when its potential as a toy was realised.  It was after its success as a toy that other uses were found.  It has found applications in medical and scientific simulations, and has also been used in stress-reduction and physical therapy.  In the home it can be used to pick up dirt, lint and pet hair, and it was even used by Apollo astronauts to secure tools in zero-gravity.

Silly Putty

History of Silly Putty
Silly Putty’s origin was due to a wartime accident.  During World War II, Japan invaded rubber producing countries in order to cut off the United States supply of rubber.  It was needed in order to produce tires for vehicles, boots for solders, gas masks, rafts, and even bombers.  To help combat the lack of rubber US citizens were asked to donate any rubber around their house such as spare tires, rubber boots, and rubber rain coats.  All rubber made products were rationed and citizens had to make their products last till the end of the war.  Also in response the government asked producers to try and come up with a synthetic rubber compound.

In 1943, James Wright, a Scottish engineer, worked for General Electric in a New Haven, Connecticut laboratory.  Combining a boric acid and silicone oil, Wright had ended up with a putty that had some unique properties.  The putty would bounce when dropped, and could stretch farther than regular rubber, would not collect mould, and had a very high melting temperature.  Unfortunately the substance did not contain the properties needed to replace rubber. In 1945 hoping there was a use for his new developed putty Wright sent a sample to scientists all around the world, but no practical use was ever found.

Finally, in 1949, the putty reached the owner of a toy store, Ruth Fallgatter, who contacted Peter Hodgson, a marketing consultant, to produce her catalogue and discuss bouncing putty.  The two decided to market their bouncing putty selling it in a clear case for $2.  The putty outsold every item in the catalogue except for 50-cent Crayola crayons.  Despite the fortune it made, Fallgatter did not pursue it any more, but Hodgson saw its potential.

Already $12,000 in debt, Hodgson borrowed $147 to buy a batch of the putty to pack one ounce portions into plastic eggs for $1, calling it silly putty.  After making progress in the industry, even selling over 250,000 eggs of silly putty in three days, Hodgson was almost put out of business in 1951 by the Korean War.  Silicone, a main ingredient in silly putty, was put on ration, hurting his business.  In 1952, a year later, the restriction on silicone was lifted and silly putty production resumed.  In the beginning, its target market was mainly adults.  However, by 1955 the majority of the consumers were aged 6 through 12.  In 1957 Hodgson produced the first televised commercial for silly putty, which aired during the Howdy Doody Show.

In 1961, Silly Putty went worldwide, becoming a hit in the Soviet Union, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, and Switzerland.  Silly Putty went to the moon in 1968 with the Apollo 8 astronauts.

Peter Hodgson died in 1976.  A year later, Binney and Smith, the makers of Crayola products, acquired the rights to Silly Putty.  By 1987, Silly Putty had pushed sales to over two million eggs annually.
CLICK HERE to be taken to a cutting from a newspaper talking about silly putty, from years ago – includes photographs.  (this will open in another window for you).  When the page loads, click on the newspaper clipping to enlarge it so that you can read it easily.

1953 – The Academy Awards are first broadcast on television by NBC.  The Academy Awards, popularly known as the Oscars, are presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) to recognise excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers.  The formal ceremony at which the awards are presented is one of the most prominent film award ceremonies in the world.  The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences itself was conceived by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio boss Louis B. Mayer.

Acadamey Award

The 1st Academy Awards ceremony was held on Thursday, May 16, 1929, at the Hotel Roosevelt in Hollywood to honour outstanding film achievements of 1927 and 1928.  It was hosted by actor Douglas Fairbanks and director William C. deMille.

1958 – 1st surface crossing of Antarctic continent is completed in 99 days by Sir Vivian Ernest Fuchs FRS (February 11, 1908 – November 11, 1999).  Fuchs was an English explorer whose expeditionary team completed the first overland crossing of Antarctica in 1958.

1965 – “Sound Of Music” opens.  The Sound of Music is a musical with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, and a book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse.  It is based on Maria von Trapp’s book  ‘The Story of the Trapp Family Singers’.  Songs from the musical that have become standards include “The Sound of Music”, “Edelweiss”, “My Favourite Things”, “Climb Ev’ry Mountain”, and “Do-Re-Mi”.

The original Broadway production opened in November 1959, and the show has enjoyed numerous productions and revivals since then.  It was made into a popular 1965 movie musical.  The Sound of Music was the final musical written by Rodgers and Hammerstein;  Hammerstein died of cancer nine months after the premiere.

1968 – Baggeridge Colliery closes marking the end of over 300 years of coal mining in The Black Country.

The Black Country is a region of the West Midlands in England, west of Birmingham.  During the Industrial Revolution, it became one of the most industrialised parts of Britain with coal mines, coking, iron foundries, glass factories, brick-works and steel mills.

Baggeridge Colliery – closing on 2 March 1968, marked the end of an era after some 300 years of mass coal mining in the region.

Links:  The Black Country – explained by Wikipedia (will open in a new tab for you). 

 … and …  The Black Country Living Museum (BCLM) – which is a wonderful website giving you a glimpse into the Living Museum itself.  It’s not a typical building type of museum, but roads, streets lots of buildings – and as you walk in through the entrance – you’re instantly taken back to times gone by.  All the money used is the money of the time.  All the people there are dressed exactly as people of the time would be dressed.  It’s a clickable website which is easy to navigate and very much worthy of a look.  Nostalgia will probably sweep you along, if you are ‘of an age’, and if you’re ever in the area – I would strongly recommend a trip there. (The link will open in a new tab for you).

1969 – In Toulouse, France the first test flight of the Anglo-French Concorde is conducted.
BBC News on the Day

1976 – Walt Disney World logged its 50 millionth guest
1978 – 1st broadcast of “Dallas” on CBS TV

1983 – Compact Disc recordings developed by Phillips & Sony introduced
1989 – Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” premieres on worldwide Pepsi commercial

1989 – Twelve European Community nations agree to ban the production of all chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) by the end of the century.

The haloalkanes (also known as halogenoalkanes or alkyl halides) are a group of chemical compounds, consisting of alkanes, such as methane or ethane, with one or more halogens linked, such as chlorine or fluorine, making them a type of organic halide.  They are a subset of the halocarbons, similar to haloalkenes and haloaromatics.  They are known under many chemical and commercial names.  As flame retardants, fire extinguishants, refrigerants, propellants and solvents they have or had wide use.  Some haloalkanes (those containing chlorine or bromine) have been shown to have negative effects on the environment such as ozone depletion.  The most widely known family within this group is the chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).

A haloalkane is a chemical compound derived from an alkane by substituting one or more hydrogen atoms with halogen atoms.  Mixed compounds are also possible, the best-known examples being the chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) which are mainly responsible for ozone depletion.

Freon is a trade name for a group of chlorofluorocarbons used primarily as a refrigerant. The word Freon is a registered trademark belonging to DuPont.

Two groups of haloalkanes, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and perfluorocarbons (PFCs), are targets of the Kyoto Protocol. [1] Allan Thornton, President of Environmental Investigation Agency, an environmental watchdog, says that HFCs are up to 12,500 times as potent as carbon dioxide in global warming.  Wealthy countries are clamping down on these gases.  Thornton says that many countries are needlessly producing these chemicals just to get the carbon credits.  Thus, as a result of carbon trading rules under the Kyoto Protocol, nearly half the credits from developing countries are from HFCs, with China scoring billions of dollars from catching and destroying HFCs that would be in the atmosphere as industrial byproducts.

On September 21, 2007, approximately 200 countries agreed to accelerate the elimination of hydrochlorofluorocarbons entirely by 2020 in a United Nations-sponsored Montreal summit.  Developing nations were given until 2030. Many nations, such as the United States and China, who had previously resisted such efforts, agreed with the accelerated phase out schedule.

1990 – Nelson Mandela is elected deputy President of the African National Congress.

1991 – Battle at Rumaila oil field brings an end to the 1991 Gulf War.

1994 – Branch Davidian cult leader David Koresh promises to surrender if taped statement is broadcast; it is, but he doesn’t.  David Koresh (August 17, 1959 – April 19, 1993) was the leader of a Branch Davidian religious sect, believing himself to be the final prophet.  A 1993 raid by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and subsequent siege by the FBI ended with the burning of the Branch Davidian ranch. Koresh, 53 adults and 21 children died in the fire.  Read more about this man, here: David Koresh @ Wikipedia

1995 – British trader Nick Leeson arrested for collapse of Barings Bank PLC. Nicholas Leeson (born February 25, 1967) was a former derivatives trader whose unsupervised speculative trading caused the collapse of Barings Bank, the United Kingdom’s oldest investment bank.

In 1992, he was appointed general manager of a new operation in futures markets on the Singapore International Monetary Exchange (SIMEX).  Barings had held a seat on SIMEX for some time, but did not activate it until Leeson was sent over.

Leeson 1

From 1992, Leeson made unauthorized speculative trades that at first made large profits for Barings; £10 million which accounted for 10% of Barings’ annual income.  He earned a bonus of £130,000 on his salary of £50,000 for that year.  However, his luck soon went sour, and he used one of Barings’ error accounts (accounts used to correct mistakes made in trading) to hide his losses.  The account was numbered 88888 — a number considered very lucky in Chinese numerology.  Leeson claims that this account was first used to hide an error made by one of his colleagues; rather than buy 20 contracts as the customer had ordered, she had sold them, costing Barings £20,000.  However, Leeson used this account to cover further bad trades. He insists that he never used the account for his own gain, but in 1996 the New York Times quoted “British press reports” as claiming that investigators had located approximately $35 million in various bank accounts tied to him.

Management at Barings Bank also allowed Leeson to remain Chief Trader while being responsible for settling his trades, jobs that are usually done by two different people.  This made it much simpler for him to hide his losses from his superiors.

By the end of 1992, the account’s losses exceeded £2 million, which ballooned to £208 million by the end of 1994.

There were clues in Leeson’s lifestyle off the trading floor that he was headed for trouble.  In October 1994 he was arrested and spent a night in a Singaporean jail after an incident in which he exposed his buttocks in public to two women.  His superiors at Barings persuaded The International Financing Review to re-write a planned reference to the incident in its gossip column to cover it up.

The beginning of the end occurred on 16 January 1995, when Leeson placed a short straddle in the Stock Exchange of Singapore and Tokyo stock exchanges, essentially betting that the Japanese stock market would not move significantly overnight.  However, the Kobe earthquake hit early in the morning on January 17, sending Asian markets, and Leeson’s investments, into a tailspin.  Leeson attempted to recoup his losses by making a series of increasingly risky new investments, this time betting that the Nikkei Stock Average would make a rapid recovery.  But the recovery failed to materialise, and he succeeded only in digging a deeper hole.

Realising the gravity of the situation, Leeson left a note reading “I’m Sorry” and fled on 23 February.  Losses eventually reached £827 million (US$1.4 billion), twice the bank’s available trading capital.  After a failed bailout attempt, Barings was declared insolvent on 26 February.

After fleeing to Malaysia, Thailand and finally Germany, Leeson was arrested and extradited back to Singapore on 2 March 1995, though his wife Lisa was allowed to return to England.  While he had authorisation for the January 15 short straddle, he was charged with fraud for deceiving his superiors about the riskiness of his activities and the scale of his losses.  Several observers (and Leeson himself) have placed much of the blame on the bank’s own deficient internal auditing and risk management practices.  Indeed, the Singapore authorities’ report on the collapse was scathingly critical of Barings management, claiming that senior officials knew or should have known about the “five eights” account.

Sentenced to six and a half years in Changi Prison in Singapore, he was released from prison in 1999, having been diagnosed with colon cancer, which he survived despite grim forecasts at the time.

While in prison, in 1996, Leeson published an autobiography, Rogue Trader, detailing his acts.  A review in the financial columns of the New York Times stated, “This is a dreary book, written by a young man very taken with himself, but it ought to be read by banking managers and auditors everywhere.”

Nick Leeson & Leona Tormay

Aftermath
Nick Leeson’s first wife Lisa divorced him while he was in prison. He married an Irish beautician, Leona Tormay, (above)  in 2003 and they now live in Barna, County Galway in the west of Ireland.  He is a regular guest on the after-dinner speaking circuit.  He was appointed Commercial Manager of Galway United Football Club in April 2005, rising to the position of General Manager in late November 2005.  By July 2007 he had become the club’s CEO.  He still finds time to deal in the stock markets, but only with his own money.

In June 2005, Leeson released a new book Back from the Brink: Coping with Stress. It picks up his story where Rogue Trader left off, including in-depth conversations with psychologist Ivan Tyrrell asserting how the prolonged periods of severe stress that affected Leeson’s mental and physical health have parallels in many other people’s lives.
Nick Leeson’s Official Website
Leeson’s legacy lives on in Singapore
Business: The Economy How Leeson broke the bank

1998 – Data sent from the Galileo spacecraft indicates that Jupiter’s moon Europa has a liquid ocean under a thick crust of ice.

2004 – NASA announced that the Mars rover Opportunity had discovered evidence that water had existed on Mars in the past.

❤  ~  ❤  ~  ❤

Born on this Day.

1904 – Dr Seuss [Theodor Geisel] American writer, cartoonist and children’s book author

1917 – Desi Arnaz, Cuban-born American actor (Ricky Ricardo-I Love Lucy) and bandleader (d. 1986)

1923 – Basil Hume, English cardinal (d. 1999)

1931 – Mikhail Gorbachev, Russian lawyer and politician, President of the Soviet Union, Nobel Prize laureate

1942 – Lou Reed, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, producer, and actor (d. 2013)

1947 – Harry Redknapp, English footballer and manager

1950 – Karen Carpenter, American singer and drummer (The Carpenters) (d. 1983)

1955 – Jay Osmond Ogden UT, singer (Osmond Brothers, Donny & Marie)

1956 – Mark Evans, Australian rock bassist (AC/DC)

1958 – Ian Woosnam, Welsh golfer

1962 – Jon Bon Jovi, American musician (Bon Jovi)

1968 – Daniel Craig, English actor – the sixth actor to portray the fictional intelligence officer James Bond.

1971 – Dave Gorman, English documentary comedian

1977 – Chris Martin, English musician (Coldplay)

1980 – Rebel Wilson, Australian actress and screenwriter

1988 – James Arthur, English singer-songwriter

~  ❤  ~

Died on this Day  and remembered here

1930 – D. H. Lawrence, English novelist, poet, playwright, and critic (b. 1885)

1999 – Dusty Springfield, English singer (b. 1939)

2007 – Thomas S. Kleppe, American soldier and politician, 41st United States Secretary of the Interior (b. 1919)

2012 – James Q. Wilson, American political scientist and academic (b. 1931)

2016 – Benoît Lacroix, Canadian priest, historian, and philosopher (b. 1915).

~  ❤  ~

PLAYTIME BELL RINGS ..  ~  ..  TIME FOR FUN!

These are the jokes folks ….

Husband:  “Oh the weather is lovely today. Shall we go out for a quick jog?“
Wife: “Ha!, I love the way you pronounce ‘Shall we go out and have a cake’!”

I asked my daughter if she’d seen my newspaper.  She told me that newspapers are old school.  She said that people use tablets nowadays and handed me her iPad.  The fly didn’t stand a chance. 

I went to the petting zoo today.   Not one person would stroke me.

Mr Cobs keeps telling me that he has the body of a Greek god.  I’m going to have to explain where Buddha actually comes from.

What does a cloud with an itchy rash do?  . . .  It finds the nearest skyscraper.

What would you call a female magician in the desert? . . .  A sandwich.   (Get it?  If not – say it slowly out loud. lol)

I used to breed rabbits.  Then I realised they can handle it themselves.

Need cheering up?  Start a fight with somebody when they have the hiccoughs!

According to my mirror I am pregnant.  The father is Nutella.

If you had to decide between a diet and a piece of chocolate, would you prefer dark, white or milk chocolate?

I’m all for irony, but the phrase “Good morning” seems to be going a bit too far.

~  and now, dear reader, it’s time for coffee and contemplation.  ~

Cup of Coffee

Thought for the day

I read something a few days ago that said children laughed approximately 400 times a day, but adults laugh only about 20 times a day.

So … this got me thinking, and …. I’m here with a challenge.

Get a note-book.  Or a few sheets of printer paper, and fold them in half to make a little note book, and then sit the ‘book’ next to your computer, with a pen.  Then …  DAILY write down at least three things that you’re grateful for.

Actually put them down on paper.  I don’t care how mundane you think they are.  I don’t care how daft they might look to other people.  If you’re grateful for it, then it’s worth while acknowledging.  And what’s more … if you begin to find that you can name more than three things, then keep going!

I’m not going to ask you in a weeks time to share your list with anyone.  Obviously … you can if you wish, but this challenge isn’t that sort of challenge.

This challenge is a personal, just to yourself, challenge, to find things in your life that you love;  that make your life wonderful;  things that, if they suddenly disappeared from your life,  you’d miss them.  

It could be a person or a group of folks.  It could be your home.  Your spouse/partner.  Your car.  Your garden.  The people in the local shop(s).  The store across the road.  Your job.  Your colleagues.  It could be the health people at your doctors or hospital who know their jobs so well that they’re working hard on your behalf to sort out a problem.

It could be a friend …  or a few friends.  It could even be your computer!

Yes, … actually …  that’s a good one.  Just think how miserable your days would be if your computer no longer worked.  You certainly wouldn’t be able to be here reading this, would you?

Let’s make some changes in our lives which would make us feel more positive.  Make us feel great.  Give us something wonderful to get up for in the morning.

Let’s remind ourselves of how darned rootin’ tootin’ fabulous life itself is, and how privileged we are to have been blessed with what we are blessed with.

Count your blessings.  Go on . . .   start now.  START RIGHT NOW.

~  ❤  ~  ❤  ~  ❤  ~

Well, that’s school over and done with.  We’ve taken care of your edumacation;  we’ve done a bit of physical education and exercised your chuckle muscle;  and we’ve taken care of your mental health by giving you something to think about.  And this week, just for a change …. you’ve got homework.  Your note-book and pen will be put to good use every day as you write your three (or more) things you’re blessed with.

I’ve already got one of my things in my book ….  you!  I’m blessed with having YOU in my life.  You’re one of my blessings.  Thank you for being you.  I love who you are.

Well … I guess it’s time for us to now move our bodies and get a bit of a happy wriggle on.  So drink up the last sips of your coffee, and we’ll get on with Friday, shall we?

I’ll have to put on my snow shoes, because we’ve got a ‘fabulous’ falling of snow here, and although it’s stopped for the time being (as I’m typing)  …. the weather people are saying that there’s going to be another shed load delivered during the night.

The poor dog isn’t happy about it.  She’s only got short legs, and she’s got a big belly … so the belly gets dragged through the snow.  Having a ‘tiddle’ isn’t the fun thing it normally is … and finding a place to … well … do the ‘other’ thing … she’s totally flummoxed.  Where’s the grass and the dirt???  I swear to Dog that she’s blaming Mr. Cobs for this stuff.  LOL.

Now the cats …   well . . .  Alf Capone finds the whole thing LOTS of fun especially on the decking, for as each tiny flake lands he bats it onto the decking to catch it.  Problem is that this stuff is magical.  He KNOWS he caught ‘it’ …. but when he lifts his great big panther sized paw, the thing has disappeared!  GASP!!!  So funny.  He can’t figure it out.

However ... Miss Maisie Dotes thinks she’s way above and beyond this ridiculous stuff, after all, everyone knows she’s a Princess, and whatever the white stuff is, it’s not anything like Princessy, so can we please get it cleaned up as it’s making climbing the fence a wholly disappointing thing to attempt.  Plus … it’s too cold on her tiny Princess toes.

These animals are such a joy.  I love them from nose to toes to tip of tail.

Oh look …  three more blessings!  Hey heeey..…  I’m beating you already!  You’d better get a big wriggle on because at this rate I’m going to have filled my book before you’ve got to the end of page one!  LOL

Have a truly fabulous Friday, and may your weekend fill you with joy, warmth and contentment.

Sending you love from me, here in my corner, to you, there in yours.

Sig coffee copy

 

 

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
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.

Netscape BBSes

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.

❤  ~  ❤  ~  ❤

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)

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

❤  ❤  ❤

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

Cup of Coffee

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.

~  ❤  ~  ❤  ~  ❤  ~

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. ~

Sig coffee copy

The Friday Post ~ 9th February 2018

Hello and a BIG WELCOME to Friday!  Comes round regular as clockwork, doesn’t it?!  But  it’s a popular day with heaps of people, so it must have something good about it, is my way of thinking.

So let’s get into the groove  [sings well-known Madonna song to self] and take our seats for some Friday Edumacation, shall we? Ready?  Sitting comfortably?   . . . .  Then lets GO!

On this Day in History

Today is the 40th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar.

1870 – The U.S. Weather Bureau was established.
1895 – William G. Morgan creates a game called Mintonette
, which soon comes to be referred to as volleyball.

1900 – Davis Cup competition is established. The Davis Cup is the premier international team event in men’s tennis. The largest annual international team competition in sports, the Davis Cup is run by the International Tennis Federation (ITF) and is contested between teams of players from competing countries in a knock-out format. The competition began in 1900 as a challenge between the United States and Great Britain. In 2005, 134 nations entered teams into the competition. The most successful countries over the history of the tournament are the United States (winning 32 tournaments and finishing as runners-up 29 times) and Australia (winning 28 times and finishing second 19 times and also winning on four occasions with New Zealand under the name ‘Australasia’).

The women’s equivalent of the Davis Cup is the Fed Cup.

(additional note just for fun  When I typed that last sentence instead of typing  “… Davis Cup is the Fed Cup” ….  what I actually typed by accident was: The women’s equivalent of the Davis Cup is the Fed up.”  –  Totally different meaning,  Totally an accident.  But … was it?  Could it have been a  Freudian slip,  I wonder?  LOL).

1922 – Brazil becomes a member of the Berne Convention copyright treaty. The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, usually known as the Berne Convention, is an international agreement governing copyright, which was first accepted in Berne, Switzerland in 1886.  …  Link:  Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works  (link will open in a new window)

1942 – World War II: Top United States military leaders hold their first formal meeting to discuss American military strategy in the war.
1942 – Year-round Daylight saving time is re-instated in the United States as a wartime measure to help conserve energy resources.

1950 – Second Red Scare: Senator Joseph McCarthy accuses the United States State Department of being filled with Communists. McCarthyism is a term describing the intense anti-communist suspicion in the United States in a period that lasted roughly from the late 1940’s to the late 1950’s. This period is also referred to as the Second Red Scare, and coincided with increased fears about communist influence on American institutions and espionage by Soviet agents.  Originally coined to criticise the actions of U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy, “McCarthyism” later took on a more general meaning, not necessarily referring to the conduct of Joseph McCarthy alone.

During this time many thousands of Americans were accused of being Communists or communist sympathisers and became the subject of aggressive investigations and questioning before government or private-industry panels, committees and agencies. The primary targets of such suspicions were government employees, those in the entertainment industry, educators and union activists. Suspicions were often given credence despite inconclusive or questionable evidence, and the level of threat posed by a person’s real or supposed leftist associations or beliefs was often greatly exaggerated. Many people suffered loss of employment, destruction of their careers, and even imprisonment. Most of these punishments came about through trial verdicts later overturned, laws that would be declared unconstitutional, dismissals for reasons later declared illegal or actionable, or extra-legal procedures that would come into general disrepute.

The most famous examples of McCarthyism include the Hollywood blacklist and the investigations and hearings conducted by Joseph McCarthy. It was a widespread social and cultural phenomenon that affected all levels of society and was the source of a great deal of debate and conflict in the United States.

1960 – Joanne Woodward receives the first star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Joanne Gignilliat Trimmier Woodward (born February 27, 1930) is an American Academy Award,  Golden Globe, Emmy and Cannes award-winning actress.  Woodward is also a television and theatrical producer.
1964 – The Beatles make their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, performing before a “record-busting” audience of 73 million viewers.
1965 – Vietnam War: The first United States combat troops are sent to South Vietnam.
1969 – First test flight of the Boeing 747.

1971 – The 6.4 on the Richter Scale Sylmar earthquake hits the San Fernando Valley area of California.
1971 – Apollo program: Apollo 14 returns to Earth after the third manned moon landing.

1986 – Comet Halley reaches perihelion, its closest approach to the sun, during its second visit to the inner solar system in the 20th century.

Halley’s Comet or Comet Halley (officially designated 1P/Halley) is the most famous of the periodic comets and can currently be seen every 75–76 years. Many comets with long orbital periods may appear brighter and more spectacular, but Halley is the only short-period comet that is clearly visible to the naked eye, and thus, the only naked-eye comet certain to return within a human lifetime. During its returns to the inner solar system, it has been observed by astronomers since at least 240 BC, but it was not recognized as a periodic comet until the eighteenth century when its orbit was computed by Edmond Halley, after whom the comet is now named. Halley’s Comet last appeared in the inner Solar System in 1986, and will next appear in mid-2061.

Halley is generally pronounced rhyming with valley, or (especially in the US) “Hailey”, but Edmond Halley himself probably pronounced his name “Hawley”, with the “hall-” rhyming with “tall” or “small”.

1995 – Space Shuttle astronauts Bernard A. Harris, Jr. and Michael Foale become the first African-American and first Briton, respectively, to perform spacewalks.
1996 – The Irish Republican Army (the I.R.A) declares the end of its 18 month ceasefire shortly followed by a large bomb in London’s Canary Wharf.

1996 – Copernicium is first discovered

Copernicium is a synthetic chemical element with symbol Cn and atomic number 112. It is an extremely radioactive element, and can only be created in a laboratory. The most stable known isotope, copernicium-285, has a half-life of approximately 29 seconds. Copernicium was first created in 1996 by the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research near Darmstadt, Germany.  It is named after the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus.  LINK: (opens in a new page for you);  The Periodic Table of Videos (University of Nottingham)

2001 – The American submarine USS Greeneville accidentally strikes and sinks the Ehime-Maru, a Japanese training vessel operated by the Uwajima Fishery High School.

The Ehime-Maru and USS Greeneville collision was a ship collision between the United States Navy (USN) submarine USS Greeneville (SSN-772) and the Japanese fishing training ship Ehime Maru on 9 February 2001, about 9 nautical miles (17 km) off the south coast of Oahu, Hawaii, USA. In a demonstration for some civilian visitors, Greeneville performed an emergency surfacing manoeuvre. As the submarine surfaced, it struck Ehime Maru, a high school fishing training ship from Ehime Prefecture, Japan. Within minutes of the collision, Ehime Maru sank. Nine of its crew members were killed, including four high school students.

Many Japanese, including government officials, were concerned over news that civilians were present in Greeneville’s control room at the time of the accident. Some expressed anger because of a perception that the submarine did not try to assist Ehime Maru’s survivors and that the submarine’s captain, Commander Scott Waddle, did not apologise immediately afterwards. The Navy conducted a public court of inquiry, placed blame on Waddle and other members of Greeneville’s crew, and dealt non-judicial punishment or administrative disciplinary action to the captain and some crew members.

In response to requests from the families of Ehime Maru’s victims and the government of Japan, the USN raised Ehime Maru from the ocean floor in October 2001 and moved it to shallow water near Oahu. Once there, Navy and Japanese divers located and retrieved the remains of eight of the nine victims from the wreck. Ehime Maru was then moved back out to sea and scuttled in deep water. The Navy compensated the government of Ehime Prefecture, Ehime Maru’s survivors, and victims’ family members for the accident. Waddle travelled to Japan in December 2002 to apologise to the ship’s survivors and victims’ families.

The accident renewed calls by many in Japan for the United States to make more effort to reduce or eliminate crimes and accidents involving U.S. military personnel who injure or kill Japanese citizens.  In response to the accident, the Navy changed its policies regarding civilian visits to its ships.

2016 – Two passenger trains collided in the German town of Bad Aibling in the state of Bavaria.  Twelve people died, and 85 others were injured

❤  ~  ❤  ~  ❤

Born on this Day

1789 – Franz Xaver Gabelsberger, German inventor of the stenography (d. 1849)

1907 – Harold Scott MacDonald Coxeter, English-Canadian mathematician and academic (d. 2003)

1909 – Carmen Miranda, Portuguese-Brazilian actress, singer, and dancer (d. 1955)

1909 – Heather Angel, British actress (d. 1986)

1914 – Gypsy Rose Lee, American dancer (d. 1970)

1940 – Brian Bennett, English drummer & musician (The Shadows)

1942 – Carole King, American singer

1943 – Joe Pesci, American actor

1945 – Mia Farrow, American actress

1960 – Holly Johnson, British singer (Frankie Goes to Hollywood)

1981 – Tom Hiddleston, English actor, producer, and musical performer

~  ❤  ~

Died on this Day  and remembered here

1981 – Bill Haley. –  American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1925)

2002 – Princess Margaret of the United Kingdom (b. 1930), the Queens younger sister.

2006 – Freddie Laker – British airline entrepreneur (b. 1922)

~  ❤  ~

*PLAYTIME BELL RINGS!

THESE  are the jokes, folks!

I’d like to start with the chimney jokes  –  I’ve got a stack of them.
I had a dream last night that I was cutting carrots with the Grim Reaper  –  dicing with death.
I saw a man chatting-up a cheetah and I thought:  ‘He’s trying to pull a fast one.’
I’ve decided to sell my Hoover  –  it was just collecting dust.
I went to the local supermarket and said:  ‘I want to make a complaint – this vinegar’s got lumps in it.’   He said:  ‘Those are pickled onions’.
You know, somebody actually complimented me on my driving today.  They left a little note on the windscreen, it said  ‘Parking Fine’.   So that was nice.  😀
I was in this restaurant and I asked for something herby.  They gave me a Volkswagen with no driver.
A lot of people cry when they cut onions.  –  The trick is not to form an emotional bond.

Q. What did the little boat say to the yacht?  A. Can I interest you in a little row-mance?

 Meanwhile, in a parallel universe:  “Oh for God’s sake! Where are all these extra single socks coming from?!”

Mr. Cobs and I often laugh about how competitive we are.   But I laugh more 😉

and finally ….
did you know …..

Moses had the first tablet that could connect to the cloud!

❤  ~  ❤  ~  ❤

Now, shall we have a coffee and a moment of contemplation?  . . .

Cup of Coffee

Thought for the Day

What would you do if you weren’t afraid?

Fear can make you stand still – and that’s not what we were made for.  Instead, use fear as a tool and not as a handicap.

Fear is inbuilt into us because it’s that wise old owl who tells us not to go too close to the edge of the cliff, because the wind could take us over it.

Fear is that little voice that tells you not to get into the bath of hot water until you’ve tested the temperature first.  Fear is that thing that is one of your guides.

However,  what fear isn’t, is a stop sign for everything.

Fear shouldn’t make you stop.  Fear should just get you to think about the possibilities for a moment and then work out the best way to go about doing what you want to do.

Fear isn’t meant to hold you in the palm of its hand and manipulate you.

If you have a fear about something, then that’s ok.  But remind yourself that you are in control.  If fear is keeping you suspended animation then step out of it.

Work out what it is that is your worst fear.  Once you know that …  put it on one side …  sort of on a shelf in your brain.  Out of the way.  Because once you know what it is, you don’t need to keep going over it,  over and over and over again.

You simply have to acknowledge what your worst fear is and once you understand it, you can get on with your life, knowing that you know what the fear is, but not letting it stop you from enjoying what life has to offer you.

Now I ask again . . .   What would you do if you weren’t afraid?

LIVE your LIFE.

Don’t live your fear.

~  ❤  ~  ❤  ~  ❤  ~

Ok, that costly edumacation that your parents pay for is now over for another Friday.  I absolutely LOVE seeing you here, thank you so very much for coming.  It’s a total thrill to know that you’re visiting and having a read.  It makes ‘building’ this regular Friday ‘bit of fun’ all worthwhile.

Thank you to all who come for a visit, and an especially big  THANK YOU  to those who stay a few minutes to leave a bit of a chat behind.  It tickles the heck out of me when we get together on a Friday and all have a good old chin wag.

May your Friday be filled with happiness, peace and joy.  May your weekend be filled with contentment and love.  

Sending you squidges and love, from me here in my corner to you there in yours.

Sig coffee copy

The Friday Post ~ 2nd February 2018

Hello and Happy Second of February to you.  Did you say ‘White Rabbits’ yesterday?  If not, please say it right now.  This very moment.  Although it’s a little late, it might still work and give you the chance of a happy February. Just play along – even if you don’t believe.  What harm can it do, eh?

But anyhoo …  you’ve come for your Friday Edumacation Lessons, so please find your seats and settle down.  We shall begin. . . .

On this Day in History

1653 – New Amsterdam (later renamed The City of New York) is incorporated. New Amsterdam (Dutch: Nieuw Amsterdam) was a 17th century Dutch colonial settlement that later became New York City.

The town developed outside of Fort Amsterdam on Manhattan Island in the New Netherland territory (1614–1674) which was situated between 38 and 42 degrees latitude as a provincial extension of the Dutch Republic as of 1624. Provincial possession of the territory was accomplished with the first settlement which was established on Governors Island in 1624. A year later, in 1625, construction of a citadel comprising Fort Amsterdam was commenced on the southern tip of Manhattan and the first settlers were moved there from Governors Island.

Earlier, the harbour and the river had been discovered, explored and charted by an expedition of the Dutch East India Company captained by Henry Hudson in 1609. From 1611 through 1614, the territory was surveyed and charted by various private commercial companies on behalf of the States General of the Dutch Republic and operated for the interests of private commercial entities prior to official possession as a North American extension of the Dutch Republic as a provincial entity in 1624.

The town was founded in 1625 by New Netherland’s second director, Willem Verhulst who, together with his council, selected Manhattan Island as the optimal place for permanent settlement by the Dutch West India Company. That year, military engineer and surveyor Krijn Frederiksz laid out a citadel with Fort Amsterdam as centrepiece. To secure the settlers’ property and its surroundings according to Dutch law, Peter Minuit created a deed with the Manhattan Indians in 1626 which signified legal possession of Manhattan. He was appointed New Netherland’s third director by the local council after Willem Verhulst was recalled to patria and sailed away in November 1626.

The city, situated on the strategic, fortifiable southern tip of the island of Manhattan was to maintain New Netherland’s provincial integrity by defending river access to the company’s fur trade operations in the North River, later named Hudson River. Furthermore, it was entrusted to safeguard the West India Company’s exclusive access to New Netherland’s other two estuaries; the Delaware River and the Connecticut River. Fort Amsterdam was designated the capital of the province in 1625 and developed into the largest Dutch colonial settlement of the New Netherland province, now the New York Tri-State Region, and remained a Dutch possession until September 1664, when it fell provisionally and temporarily into the hands of the English.

The Dutch Republic regained it in August 1673 with a fleet of 21 ships, renaming the city New Orange. New Netherland was ceded permanently to the English in November 1674 by treaty.

The 1625 date of the founding of New Amsterdam is now commemorated in the official Seal of New York City (formerly, the year on the seal was 1664, the year of the provisional Articles of Transfer, ensuring New Netherlanders that they “shall keep and enjoy the liberty of their consciences in religion”, negotiated with the English by Petrus Stuyvesant and his council).

1709 – Alexander Selkirk is rescued from shipwreck on a desert island, inspiring the book Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe.

1812 – Russia establishes a fur trading colony at Fort Ross, California.

1887 – In Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania the first Groundhog Day is observed.

1901 – Queen Victoria’s funeral takes place. Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was from 20 June 1837 the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and from 1 May 1876 the first Empress of India of the British Raj until her death. Her reign as the Queen lasted 63 years and seven months, was longer than that of any of her predecessors.  The period centred on her reign is known as the Victorian era, a time of industrial, political, and military progress within the United Kingdom.

Queen Victoria

Though Victoria ascended the throne at a time when the United Kingdom was already an established constitutional monarchy in which the king or queen held few political powers and exercised its influence by the prime minister’s advice, she still served as a very important symbolic figure of her time. The Victorian era represented the height of the Industrial Revolution, a period of significant social, economic, and technological progress in the United Kingdom. Victoria’s reign was marked by a great expansion of the British Empire; during this period it reached its zenith, becoming the foremost global power of the time.

1922 – Ulysses by James Joyce is published. Ulysses is a novel by James Joyce, first serialised in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on February 2, 1922, in Paris.  It is considered one of the most important works of Modernist literature.

Ulysses chronicles the passage through Dublin by its main character, Leopold Bloom, during an ordinary day, June 16, 1904. The title alludes to the hero of Homer’s Odyssey (Latinised into Ulysses), and there are many parallels, both implicit and explicit, between the two works (e.g., the correspondences between Leopold Bloom and Odysseus, Molly Bloom and Penelope, and Stephen Dedalus and Telemachus). June 16 is now celebrated by Joyce’s fans worldwide as Bloomsday.

Ulysses totals about 265,000 words from a vocabulary of 30,030 words and is divided into 18 “episodes”. The book has been the subject of much controversy and scrutiny since its publication, ranging from early obscenity trials to protracted textual “Joyce Wars.” Ulysses’ stream-of-consciousness technique, careful structuring, and experimental prose—full of puns, parodies, and allusions—as well as its rich characterisations and broad humour, have made the book perhaps the most highly regarded novel in the Modernist pantheon. In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Ulysses first on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.

1935 – Leonarde Keeler tests the first polygraph machine.  Leonarde Keeler (1903–1949) was the co-inventor of the polygraph.

On February 2, 1935, Detective Keeler conducted the first use of his invention, the Keeler Polygraph—otherwise known as the lie detector. Keeler used the lie detector on two criminals in Portage, Wisconsin, who were later convicted of assault when the lie detector results were introduced in court.

1940 – Frank Sinatra debuts with the Tommy Dorsey orchestra.

1959 – Nine experienced ski hikers in the northern Ural Mountains in the Soviet Union die under mysterious circumstances.

1971 – Idi Amin replaces President Milton Obote as leader of Uganda.  Idi Amin Dada (c.1925 – 16 August 2003), commonly known as Idi Amin, was a Ugandan military dictator and the president of Uganda from 1971 to 1979.  Amin joined the British colonial regiment, the King’s African Rifles, in 1946, and advanced to the rank of Major General and Commander of the Ugandan Army.  He took power in a military coup in January 1971, deposing Milton Obote.  His rule was characterized by human rights abuses, political repression, ethnic persecution, extrajudicial killings and the expulsion of Asians from Uganda.  The number of people killed as a result of his regime is unknown; estimates from human rights groups range from 100,000 to 500,000.

From 1977 to 1979, Amin titled himself as “His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular.”  In 1975–1976, despite opposition, Amin became the Chairman of the Organisation of African Unity, a pan-Africanist group designed to promote solidarity of the African states.  During the 1977–1979 period, Uganda was appointed to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

Dissent within Uganda, and Amin’s attempt to annex the Kagera province of Tanzania in 1978, led to the Uganda-Tanzania War and the fall of his regime in 1979.  Amin fled to Libya, before relocating to Saudi Arabia in 1981, where he died in 2003.

1972 – The British embassy in Dublin is destroyed in protest over Bloody Sunday.  Bloody Sunday (Irish: Domhnach na Fola) is the term used to describe an incident in Derry, Northern Ireland, on 30 January 1972 in which 27 civil rights protesters were shot by members of the 1st Battalion of the British Parachute Regiment during a Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association march in the Bogside area of the city.   External Link:  BBC Coverage

1980 – Reports surface that FBI were targeting Congressmen in the Abscam operation.  Abscam (sometimes ABSCAM) was a United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) sting operation run from the FBI’s Hauppauge, Long Island, office in the late 1970s and early 1980s.  The operation initially targeted trafficking in stolen property but was converted to a public corruption investigation.

1982 – Hama Massacre: Syria attacks the town of Hama.
1989 – Soviet war in Afghanistan: The last Soviet Union armoured column leaves Kabul.
1989 – Satellite television service Sky Television plc launched.

1990 – Apartheid:  F.W. de Klerk allows the African National Congress to legally function and promises to release Nelson Mandela.

Apartheid (meaning separateness in Afrikaans cognate to English apart and hood) was a system of legal racial segregation enforced by the National Party government of South Africa between 1948 and 1994.  Apartheid had its roots in the history of colonisation and settlement of southern Africa, with the development of practices and policies of separation along racial lines and domination by European settlers and their descendants.  Following the general election of 1948, the National Party set in place its programme of Apartheid, with the formalisation and expansion of existing policies and practices into a system of institutionalised racism and white domination.

Apartheid was dismantled in a series of negotiations from 1990 to 1993, culminating in elections in 1994, the first in South Africa with universal suffrage.  The vestiges of apartheid still shape South African politics and society.  External Link:  Apartheid at Wikipedia

❤  ~  ❤  ~  ❤

Born on this Day

1585 – Judith Quiney.  William Shakespeare’s youngest daughter (d. 1662)

1585 – Hamnet Shakespeare.  William Shakespeare’s only son (d. 1596)

1650 – Nell Gwynne, English actress and royal mistress (d. 1687

1882 – James Joyce, Irish author (d. 1941)

1925 – Elaine Stritch, American actress (d. 2014)

1931 – Les Dawson, British comedian (d. 1993)

1940 – David Jason, English actor

1942 – Graham Nash,  British-born American musician – born in Lancashire, England and known for his light tenor vocals and for his songwriting contributions with the British pop group The Hollies, and with the folk-rock band Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

1944 – Geoffrey Hughes, British actor. (d.  27 July 2012).  Mr. Hughes provided the voice of Paul McCartney in the 1968 animated film Yellow Submarine, and rose to fame for portraying much-loved binman Eddie Yeats in the British soap: Coronation Street. He also appeared in the popular British television sitcom Keeping Up Appearances,  playing lovable slob Onslow – husband of Daisy, who was the sister of thewonderful social-climbing snob Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced ‘Bouquet’).  Daisy was the sister without the  large house, Mercedes, sauna, Jacuzzi, swimming pool and Daisy didn’t have room for a pony either.   It was sister Violet who had all these things – plus she also had a musical bidet.   (I include this information for those of us who are lovers of the programme – and I know there are plenty of us! lol)

1947 – Farrah Fawcett, American actress (d. 2009)

1954 – Christie Brinkley, American model

1963 – Eva Cassidy, American singer (d. 1996)

1972 – Dana International, Israeli singer.

1977 – Shakira, Colombian singer

Died on this Day and remembered here

1969 – Boris Karloff, English actor (b. 1887)

1970 – Bertrand Russell, English mathematician and philosopher, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1872)

1979 – Sid Vicious, English musician (Sex Pistols) (b. 1957)

1980 – William Howard Stein, American biochemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1911)

1987 – Alistair MacLean, Scottish novelist and screenwriter (b. 1922)

1995 – Fred Perry, British former tennis player (b. 1909)

1995 – Donald Pleasence, English actor (b. 1919)

1996 – Gene Kelly, American dancer, actor, and director (b. 1912)

2007 – Billy Henderson, American singer (The Spinners) (b. 1939)

[end of school bell sounds]

PLAYTIME!  (These are the jokes folks!)

Two male friends talking to each other, and the one says:  “I’m certain there are female hormones in beer. When I drink too much, I talk nonsense and I cannot control my car”.

I’ve read so many horrible things about eating chocolate and drinking wine recently that I made a new, firm New Year’s resolution: NO MORE READING!

Has anyone else noticed that the  ‘&’  symbol looks like a dog dragging its bottom over the floor?

I heard the Secret Service had to change their commands.  They can’t say “Get down!” anymore when the President is under attack.   Now it’s “Donald! Duck!”

Two immigrants arrive in the United States and are discussing the difference between their country and the U.S.

One of them mentions he’s heard that people in the U.S. eat dogs, and if they’re going to fit in, they better eat dogs as well.  So they head to the nearest hot dog stand and order two ‘dogs.’

The first guy unwraps his, looks at it, and nervously looks at his friend.

“Which part did you get?”

Four elephants go for a walk on a stormy day. They only have one umbrella between them. How come they none of them get wet?

Well did anybody say it was raining?

Thought for the Day

Did you know that in an average day it’s estimated that we have roughly 60,000 thoughts?  I wonder, out of all those thoughts, how many of them are happy ones. 

I know, for myself, that happy thoughts create happy perceptions.  I know that when I’m happy, I seem to have this glow.  People seem to notice something about me – I have no idea what it is, but this happy feeling inside seems to show and glow on the outside of me.  I also seem to be able to conjure up this never-ending circle of happiness that just attracts more happiness into my life.

However, I also know that if I think negatively, or are pestering over something, worrying, or am angry or fearful about something, all the warmth goes out of my life.  And that ‘glow’ that I have when I’m happy, seems to totally disappear.

If we think negatively, or are angry or fearful, then those feelings seem to take us away from our pathway in life.  These negative thoughts seem to strip us of all of our power and out ability to negotiate life effectively  We seem to become afraid of everything and even act defensively in some situations that normally, we wouldn’t.  In return, this pushes away all the good things in life, like friends and the ability to see possibilities and then we just become even more negative which eventually leads to us being lonely and even more negative.  It’s like a vicious circle.

So …  I guess that the way to a happy you, is via your thoughts.  Not just because you instantly begin to feel better and brighter, but you also become stronger and have a more solid and stable foundation to your whole life.

Have a happy day, think happy …  and remember that you’re in control of those thoughts, not the other way round. 

You won’t be bounced around by life if you’re in the driving seat!

❤  ~  ❤  ~  ❤

Well that’s me done and dusted.  All that’s left for me to say is …  Thank you so much for coming and having a coffee moment with me.

May your day be blessed with peace, joy and all those things which will make your face smile and your heart happy.

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The Friday Post ~ 26th January 2018

Hello dear pals . . .  happy last Thursday in January 2018.  In part, this month has flown past at great speed…  but at about the 22nd something changed and since then it’s slowed down somewhat.  Oddest thing, but I can’t explain it better than that.  (But then …  I’m an odd thing myself and I can’t explain ‘me’ either!  lol)

Right …. let the EDUMACATION BEGIN!

Today is Australia Day, also known as Anniversary Day and Foundation Day.

Australia day is the national day of Australia, and has been an official public holiday since 1994.  Celebrated annually on 26th January, the day commemorates the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788, marking the start of British colonisation of Australia.  Records of the celebration of Australia Day date back to 1808, with Governor Lachlan Macquarie having held the first official celebration of Australia Day in 1818

On this Day in History

1340 – King Edward III of England is declared King of France.

1500 – Vicente Yáñez Pinzón becomes the first European to set foot on Brazil. Vicente Yáñez Pinzón (Palos de la Frontera (Spain) c. 1460 – after 1523) was a Spanish navigator, explorer, and conquistador. Along with his older brother Martín Alonso Pinzón, he sailed with Christopher Columbus on the first voyage to the New World in 1492, as captain of the Niña.

1565 – Battle of Talikota, fought between the Vijayanagara Empire and the Islamic sultanates of the Deccan, leads to the subjugation, and eventual destruction of the last Hindu kingdom in India, and the consolidation of Islamic rule over much of the Indian subcontinent.

1788 – The British First Fleet, led by Arthur Phillip, sails into Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour) to establish Sydney, the first permanent European settlement on the continent. Commemorated as Australia Day.

1808 – Rum Rebellion, the only successful (albeit short-lived) armed takeover of the government in Australia. The Rum Rebellion, also known as the Rum Puncheon Rebellion, of 1808 was the only successful armed takeover of government in Australia’s recorded history. The Governor of New South Wales, William Bligh, was deposed by the New South Wales Corps under the command of Major George Johnston, working closely with John MacArthur, on 26 January 1808, 20 years to the day after Arthur Phillip founded European settlement in Australia.

Afterwards, the colony was ruled by the military, with the senior military officer stationed in Sydney purporting to act as the Lieutenant-Governor of the colony until the arrival from Britain of Major-General Lachlan Macquarie as the new Governor at the beginning of 1810.

1837 – Michigan is admitted as the 26th U.S. state.

1841 – James Bremer takes formal possession of Hong Kong Island at what is now Possession Point, establishing British Hong Kong.

1905 – The Cullinan Diamond – the world’s largest Diamond ever – is found near Pretoria, South Africa at the Premier Mine.  Weighing at 3,106.75 carats (621.35 g or 1.3698 pounds).   It was named after Thomas Cullinan, the mine’s chairman.

In April 1905, the diamond was put on sale in London, but despite considerable interest, it was still unsold after two years. In 1907 the Transvaal Colony government bought the Cullinan and presented it to King Edward VII on his 66th birthday.

Cullinan produced stones of various cuts and sizes, the largest of which is named Cullinan I or the Great Star of Africa, and at 530.4 carats (106.08 g) it is the largest clear-cut diamond in the world. Cullinan I is mounted in the head of the Sovereign’s Sceptre with Cross. The second-largest is Cullinan II or the Second Star of Africa, weighing 317.4 carats (63.48 g), mounted in the Imperial State Crown. Both diamonds are part of the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom.

Seven other major diamonds, weighing a total of 208.29 carats (41.66 g), are privately owned by Queen Elizabeth II, who inherited them from her grandmother, Queen Mary, in 1953. The Queen also owns minor brilliants and a set of unpolished fragments.

Anecdotes
In 1905, transport from South Africa to England posed a bit of a security problem. Detectives from London were placed on a steamer ship that was rumoured to carry the stone, but this was a diversionary tactic.  The stone on that ship was a fake, meant to attract those who would be interested in stealing it.  The actual diamond was sent to England in a plain box via parcel post, albeit registered mail.

The story goes that when the diamond was split, the knife broke during the first attempt. “The tale is told of Joseph Asscher, the greatest cleaver of the day,” wrote Matthew Hart in his book Diamond: A Journey to the Heart of an Obsession, “that when he prepared to cleave the largest diamond ever known, the 3,106 carat (632 g) Cullinan, he had a doctor and nurse standing by and when he finally struck the diamond and it broke perfectly in two, he fainted dead away.” It turns out the fainting story is a popular myth. Diamond historian Lord Ian Balfour wrote that it was much more likely he opened a bottle of champagne, instead.

Rumours abound of a “second half” of the Cullinan diamond. According to Sir William Crookes the original, uncut diamond was itself “a fragment, probably less than half, of a distorted octahedral crystal; the other portions still await discovery by some fortunate miner“. Crookes thus indirectly indicates that the original, larger crystal broke in a natural way and not by a man-made cut. Others have speculated that before Frederick Wells sold the diamond to Sir Thomas Cullinan he broke off a piece which sized in at about 1,500 to 2,000 carats (300 to 400 g).

External Links:  Elizabeth II’s Jewels   …  The Cullinan Diamond …  and …  The Home of The Royal Family

1907 – The Short Magazine Lee-Enfield Mk III is officially introduced into British Military Service, and remains the oldest military rifle still in official use.

1911 – Glenn H. Curtiss flies the first successful American seaplane.

1915 – The Rocky Mountain National Park is established by an act of the U.S. Congress.

1920 – Former Ford Motor Co. executive Henry Leland launches the Lincoln Motor Company which he later sold to his former employer.

1926 – The first demonstration of the television by John Logie Baird.

John Logie Baird was a Scottish engineer, innovator, one of the inventors of the mechanical television, demonstrating the first working television system on 26 January 1926, – and inventor of both the first publicly demonstrated colour television system, and the first purely electronic colour television picture tube.

1934 – The Apollo Theatre reopens in Harlem, New York City. The Apollo Theatre in New York City is one of the most famous clubs for popular music in the United States.

1961 – John F. Kennedy appoints Janet G. Travell to be his physician. This is the first time a woman holds this appointment.
1962 – Ranger program: Ranger 3 is launched to study the moon. The space probe later missed the moon by 22,000 miles (35,400 km).
1965 – Hindi becomes the official language of India.

1966 – The Beaumont Children go missing from Glenelg Beach near Adelaide, South Australia.  Jane Nartare Beaumont (aged 9), Arnna Kathleen Beaumont (aged 7), and Grant Ellis Beaumont (aged 4) were three siblings who disappeared without a trace from a beach near Adelaide, South Australia in 1966.  Known collectively as The Beaumont Children, their case resulted in the largest police investigation in Australian criminal history, and remains Australia’s most infamous unsolved cold case.

1978 – The Great Blizzard of 1978, a rare severe blizzard with the lowest non-tropical atmospheric pressure ever recorded in the US, strikes the Ohio – Great Lakes region with heavy snow and winds up to 100 mph (161 km/h).

1988 – Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera has its first performance on Broadway, at the Majestic Theatre in New York.

1992 – Boris Yeltsin announces that Russia is going to stop targeting United States cities with nuclear weapons.
1998 – Lewinsky scandal: On American television, U.S. President Bill Clinton denies having had “sexual relations” with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

2001 –  The 7.7 Mw Gujarat earthquake shakes Western India with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (Extreme), leaving 13,805–20,023 dead and about 166,800 injured.

2006 – Western Union discontinues use of its telegram service.

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Born on this Day

1857 – the 12th Dalai Lama (d. 1875)

1880 – Douglas MacArthur, American general and Medal of Honor recipient (d. 1964)

1904 – Ancel Keys, American scientist (d. 2004)

1905 – Maria von Trapp, Austrian-born singer (d. 1987)

1908 – Jill Esmond, English actress (d. 1990)

1922 – Michael Bentine, British comedian (d. 1996)

1925 –  Paul Newman, American actor, activist, director, race car driver, and businessman, co-founded Newman’s Own (d. 2008)

1958 – Anita Baker, American singer

1958 – Ellen DeGeneres, American actress and comedian

1963 – Andrew Ridgeley, English musician

1967 – Col Needham, English businessman, co-founded – ‘Internet Movie Database’

~  ❤  ~

Died on this day and remembered here:

1795 – Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach, German composer (b. 1732)

1973 – Edward G. Robinson, American actor (b. 1893)

1979 – Nelson Rockefeller, 41st Vice President of the United States (b. 1908)

2008 – Christian Brando, actor and son of Marlon Brando (b. 1958)

~  ❤  ~  ❤  ~  ❤  ~

Well that’s it.  Schools over.  But ….  now we have . . .  PLAYTIME!

These are the jokes, folks!  …

Did you hear about the actor who fell through the floorboards?  He was just going through a stage!

My dog ate all the scrabble tiles, and now he keeps leaving little messages all around the house.

Have you visited that new restaurant yet?  The one called Karma?  There’s no menu, you just get what you deserve.

Why don’t scientists trust atoms?  Because they make up everything.

Why did the chicken go to the séance?  To get to the other side.

Where are average things manufactured?  The Satisfactory.

What sits at the bottom of the sea and twitches?  A nervous wreck.

What kind of exercise do lazy people do?  Diddly Squats.

What does Charles Dickens keep in his spice rack?   The Best of Thymes,  The Worst of Thymes.

Harry prays to God:  “Dear Lord, please make me win the lottery”.

The next day Harry begs the Lord again:  “Please make it so I win the lottery, Lord!”

The next day, Harry again prays:  “Please, please, dear Lord, make me win the lottery!”

Suddenly he hears a voice from above:   “Harry, would you kindly go and buy a lottery ticket.”

❤  ❤  ❤

Thought for the Day

Bucket Lists.  I don’t believe in having ‘Bucket Lists’.  Why would a person make a list of things they want to do, when there’s so much to do in life anyway?  Why limit your life to a shopping list?

Your life is happening NOW.  Don’t miss a thing.  Don’t miss going outside and seeing the colour of the grass.  Don’t think about seeing XYZ in another country when you haven’t even seen to the bottom of your own back garden!  Why long to visit Buckingham Palace and see the Queen, when you haven’t even seen your own Aunt for ….  how long was that?  

Instead of a bucket list, lets throw that list in the bin and make a sign instead.  A sign, on a piece of A4 (or something bigger if you have it), and pin it up where you can see it every single morning, without fail.

On that piece of paper, write: 

LIFE BEGINS TODAY.

 

Seize the day …. make the most of the present and stop thinking about next week, next month, next year, sometime in the future.  Live NOWRight now.  You could be run over by a bus any day soon.

Don’t let your last thoughts be:  I wish I’d have appreciated the colours of the pansies my mom grew.  –  I wish I’d have visited a coffee-house weekly and ordered a different coffee (or tea) every single time I went, so that I could experience them all.

Do as much as you possibly can now.  Right now.  Because you don’t know that everything will fall into place for that shopping list you fondly call your ‘Bucket List’.  Benefit your life now,  . . .  because:  LIFE BEGINS TODAY.

❤  ❤  ❤

Well that’s me done and dusted.   😀

All that’s left for me to do now is  wish you a truly wonderful weekend.  May you find some magical smiles this weekend. And … may the coming week, the last few days of January, bring you peace and joy.  The earth is warming up – although I know that some of you might not think it is … but it is.  I can feel it happening.  Spring is on its way …. unless of course, you live in Australia or one of the other places upon Earth which are just about to leave their summer and go into Autumn.

Thank you so much for coming and having a coffee with me. Sending you much love and a big bucket of squidges ~

Sig coffee copy

 

 

 

The Friday Post ~ 19th January 2018

Well hello there!  I’m Cobwebs. Cobs, for short.  Do you come here often?

Yeah, I know it’s cheesy but I couldn’t think of any other way than saying it like that in order to say hello to new people who might have stumbled across us all sat around the kitchen table having a giggle.

So anyhoo ….  how the divil are you?  Fine and groovy I hope.  No ailments.  No money troubles.  And no worries which keep you awake at night, I trust.  But if you have any of these, feel free to unburden yourself via a comment and I, and perhaps one of your fellow bloggers who visit here, might be able to help;  come up with a solution; or just generally say encouraging things which might help to ease your pain or troubles.  Everyone here really is so nice that I could squidge them all.  So feel free to chat.

Well, it’s Friday again and on checking the dockets, I see that all of your parents are up to date on their payments for your Private Edumacation at the Institute of Cobwebs, so I guess that we should get on with it.  Please find your seats … quietly but quickly …  and get comfortable, because then I shall begin.

Ready?  Ok … let’s go!

On This Day in History.

1883 – The first electric lighting system employing overhead wires, built by Thomas Edison, begins service at Roselle, New Jersey.

Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman who developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph and the long-lasting, practical electric light bulb.  Dubbed  “The Wizard of Menlo Park”  by a newspaper reporter, he was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production and large teamwork to the process of invention, and therefore is often credited with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory.

Edison is considered one of the most prolific inventors in history, holding 1,093 U.S. patents in his name, as well as many patents in the United Kingdom, France and Germany.  He is credited with numerous inventions that contributed to mass communication and, in particular, telecommunications.  His advanced work in these fields was an outgrowth of his early career as a telegraph operator. Edison originated the concept and implementation of electric-power generation and distribution to homes, businesses, and factories – a crucial development in the modern industrialised world.  His first power plant was on Manhattan Island, New York.

1915 – Georges Claude patents the neon discharge tube for use in advertising. The French engineer, chemist, and inventor Georges Claude (September 24, 1870 – May 23, 1960), was the first to apply an electrical discharge to a sealed tube of neon gas (circa 1902) to create a lamp.

Georges Claude
Georges Claude

Inspired in part by Daniel McFarlan Moore’s invention, Moore’s Lamp, Paris-born Claude invented the neon lamp by passing an electric current through inert gases, making them glow very brightly.

In 1902 Georges Claude and businessman Paul Delorme founded L’Air Liquide S.A. (Air Liquide) based on a method to liquefy air that enabled large-scale production of oxygen. Air Liquide presently exists as a large multinational corporation headquartered in Paris, France.

In 1923, Georges Claude and his French company Claude Neon, introduced neon gas signs to the United States, by selling two to a Packard car dealership in Los Angeles. Earle C. Anthony purchased the two signs reading “Packard” for $1,250 apiece. Neon lighting quickly became a popular fixture in outdoor advertising. Visible even in daylight, people would stop and stare at the first neon signs for hours, dubbed “liquid fire.”

Being a student of Jacques-Arsène d’Arsonval, the inventor of the OTEC concept, Claude was also the first person to build prototype plants of that technology. Claude built his plant in Cuba in 1930. The system produced 22 kilowatts of electricity with a low-pressure turbine.

In 1935, Claude constructed another plant, this time aboard a 10,000-ton cargo vessel moored off the coast of Brazil. Weather and waves destroyed both plants before they could become net power generators. (Net power is the amount of power generated after subtracting power needed to run the system.)

Georges Claude was also an accomplished artist painting many watercolour pictures some when on holiday in the Pyrenees (1909) in the Valli’s De Lac hon.

Claude was honoured for chemical work in World War I but stripped of his honours and sentenced to life in prison in June 1945 for collaboration with the Nazis. Claude was convicted of propaganda work favouring collaboration, but was cleared of another charge that he helped design the V-1 rocket. In 1950 Claude was released from jail, at the age of 79.

1915 – World War I: German zeppelins bomb the cities of Great Yarmouth and King’s Lynn in the United Kingdom, in the first major aerial bombardment of a civilian target.

1917 – Silvertown explosion: 73 are killed and 400 injured in an explosion in a munitions plant in London.  The Silvertown explosion occurred in Silvertown in West Ham, Essex (now Greater London) on Friday, 19 January 1917 at 18.52.  The blast occurred at a munitions factory which was producing explosives for Britain’s World War I military effort.  Approximately 50 tons of TNT exploded, killing 73 people and injuring over 400, and also causing substantial damage to buildings and property in the local area.  This was possibly the largest single explosion to occur in Britain up to that time, though this is difficult to ascertain as there is not an obvious way to measure the size of past explosions.

Silvertown
Silvertown, UK.  1917

Just before 7am on 19 January 1917, a fire started at the works resulting in the detonation of 50 tons of high explosives. A large part of the factory was instantly destroyed together with several nearby buildings and streets. The flour mills and silos on the south side of the Royal Victoria Dock were badly damaged. Across the river on the Greenwich Peninsula, now the site of the Millennium Dome, one of the gas holders exploded.

Although there was a strong response from local communities, the geographical isolation of the area hindered rescue work.   The cost of the damage was estimated at a quarter of a million pounds, an enormous sum at that time.

The day after the explosion, the local authorities set up the Explosion Emergency Committee to oversee rescue and rebuilding work. By mid-February 1917, more than 1,700 men were employed in repairing houses. By August most of the work was complete. The government eventually paid about three million pounds in compensation to the people affected by the disaster.

An inquiry into the incident judged that Silvertown was a totally unsuitable place for a T.N.T. plant and castigated Brunner, Mond & Co for negligence in the running of their works. The report remained secret until the 1950s.

1920 – The United States Senate votes against joining the League of Nations. The League of Nations (LoN) was a supranational organisation founded as a result of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919–1920.  At its greatest extent from 28 September 1934 to the 23 February 1935, it had 58 members.  The League’s goals included disarmament, preventing war through collective security, settling disputes between countries through negotiation, diplomacy and improving global quality of life.  The diplomatic philosophy behind the League represented a fundamental shift in thought from the preceding hundred years.  The League lacked its own armed force and so depended on the Great Powers to enforce its resolutions, keep to economic sanctions which the League ordered, or provide an army, when needed, for the League to use.  However, they were often reluctant to do so. Sanctions could also hurt the League members imposing the sanctions and given the pacifist attitude following World War I, countries were reluctant to take military action. Benito Mussolini stated that “The League is very well when sparrows shout, but no good at all when eagles fall out.”

After a number of notable successes and some early failures in the 1920’s, the League ultimately proved incapable of preventing aggression by the Axis powers in the 1930’s. The onset of the Second World War suggested that the League had failed in its primary purpose, which was to avoid any future world war. The United Nations replaced it after the end of the war and inherited a number of agencies and organisations founded by the League.

1935 – Coopers Inc. sells the world’s first briefs. Jockey International, Inc. is a manufacturer, distributor and retailer of underwear, sleep-wear, and socks for men, women, and children. The company is based in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Jockey is known for having invented the first men’s Y-Front brief in 1934. Jockey is a recognised Trademark in 120 countries.

Coopers Briefs

1937 – Howard Hughes sets a new air record by flying from Los Angeles, California to New York City in 7 hours, 28 minutes, 25 seconds.

1953 – 68% of all television sets in the United States are tuned in to I Love Lucy to watch Lucy give birth.

1966 – Indira Gandhi is elected Prime Minister of India. Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi (19 November 1917 – 31 October 1984) was the Prime Minister of the Republic of India for three consecutive terms from 1966 to 1977 and for a fourth term from 1980 until her assassination in 1984, a total of fifteen years. She was India’s first and, to date, only female Prime Minister.

Indira Gandhi

In 1999, she was voted the greatest woman of the past 1000 years in a poll carried by BBC news, ahead of other notable women such as Queen Elizabeth I of England, Marie Curie and Mother Teresa.

Born in the politically influential Nehru dynasty, she grew up in an intensely political atmosphere. Despite the same last name, she was of no relation to the statesman Mohandas Gandhi. Her grandfather, Motilal Nehru, was a prominent Indian nationalist leader. Her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, was a pivotal figure in the Indian independence movement and the first Prime Minister of Independent India. Returning to India from Oxford in 1941, she became involved in the Indian Independence movement.

In the 1950s, she served her father unofficially as a personal assistant during his tenure as the first Prime Minister of India. After her father’s death in 1964, she was appointed as a member of the Rajya Sabha by the President of India and became a member of Lal Bahadur Shastri’s cabinet as Minister of Information and Broadcasting.

The then Congress Party President K. Kamaraj was instrumental in making Indira Gandhi the Prime Minister after the sudden demise of Shastri. Gandhi soon showed an ability to win elections and outmaneuver opponents through populism. She introduced more left-wing economic policies and promoted agricultural productivity. A decisive victory in the 1971 war with Pakistan was followed by a period of instability that led her to impose a state of emergency in 1975; she paid for the authoritarian excesses of the period with three years in opposition. Returned to office in 1980, she became increasingly involved in an escalating conflict with separatists in Punjab that eventually led to her assassination by her own bodyguards in 1984.

1971 – The revival of No, No, Nanette premieres at the 46th Street Theatre, in New York City.  No, No, Nanette is a musical comedy with lyrics by Irving Caesar and Otto Harbach, music by Vincent Youmans, and a book by Otto Harbach and Frank Mandel.

Its songs include the well-known “Tea for Two” and “I Want to Be Happy”.  It was first produced on March 11, 1925 at London’s Palace Theatre, where it starred Binnie Hale and George Grossmith, Jr. and ran for 665 performances.

1975 – Triple J begins broadcasting in Sydney, Australia. Triple J is a nationally networked, government-funded Australian radio station (a division of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation), mainly aimed at youth (defined as those between 12 and 25). Music played on the station is generally more alternative than commercial stations with a heavy emphasis on Australian music and new music. In metropolitan rating surveys Triple J usually has less than one-third the market share of its major commercial rivals, but its influence on Australian popular music belies the modest ratings, having provided a launchpad for numerous Australian recording artists and announcers.

1977 – President Gerald Ford pardons Iva Toguri D’Aquino (a.k.a. “Tokyo Rose”). Iva Ikuko Toguri D’Aquino (July 4, 1916 – September 26, 2006), a Japanese-American, was the woman most identified with “Tokyo Rose”, a generic name given by Allied forces in the South Pacific during World War II to any of approximately a dozen English-speaking female broadcasters of Japanese propaganda.

Iva Toguri D'Aquino - aka Tokyo Rose
Iva Toguri D’Aquino – “Tokyo Rose”

Identified by the press as Tokyo Rose after the war, she was detained for a year by the U.S. military before being released for lack of evidence. Upon return to the U.S., the Federal Bureau of Investigation began an investigation of her activities and she was subsequently charged by the United States Attorney’s Office with eight counts of treason. Her 1949 trial resulted in a conviction on one count, making her the seventh American to be convicted on that charge. In 1974, investigative journalists found key witnesses had lied during testimony and other serious problems with the conduct of the trial. She was pardoned by U.S. President Gerald Ford in 1977.

1977 – Snow falls in Miami, Florida.  This is the only time in the history of the city that snowfall has occurred. It also fell in the Bahamas.
1978 – The last Volkswagen Beetle made in Germany leaves VW’s plant in Emden.  Beetle production in Latin America would continue until 2003.

1981 – Iran Hostage Crisis: United States and Iranian officials sign an agreement to release 52 American hostages after 14 months of captivity. The Iran hostage crisis was a diplomatic crisis between Iran and the United States where 52 U.S. diplomats were held hostage for 444 days from November 4, 1979 to January 20, 1981, after a group of Islamist students took over the American embassy in support of the Iranian revolution.

Iran Hostage Crisis 1

The crisis has been described as an entanglement of “vengeance and mutual incomprehension”. In Iran, the incident was seen by many as a blow against the U.S., its influence in Iran, its perceived attempts to undermine the Iranian Revolution, and its long-standing support of the recently overthrown autocratic Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The Shah had been restored to power by a CIA-funded coup of a democratically elected Iranian government and had recently been allowed into the United States for cancer treatment.

Operation Eagle Claw ended in Disaster in the desert
Operation Eagle Claw ended in disaster in the desert

The ordeal reached a climax when after failed attempts to negotiate a release, the United States military attempted a rescue operation, Operation Eagle Claw, on April 24, 1980, which resulted in an aborted mission, the crash of two aircraft and the deaths of eight American military men and one Iranian civilian.

The crisis ended with the signing of the Algiers Accords in Algeria on January 19, 1981. The hostages were formally released into United States custody the following day, just minutes after the new American president Ronald Reagan was sworn in.

freedom
Freedom

After months of negotiations, helped by Algerian intermediaries and the Shah’s death, US diplomacy bore fruit.  On the day of President Ronald Reagan’s inauguration, 20 January 1981, the hostages were set free.  A day later they arrived at a US Air Force base in West Germany.  Here, Airy Force attaché David Roader shouts with joy as he arrives on German soil.  In return the US had agreed to unfreeze Iranian assets worth $8bn and give hostage takes immunity.

In America, the crisis is thought by some political analysts to be the primary reason for U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s defeat in the November 1980 presidential election, and described by some as the “pivotal episode” in the history of U.S.-Iranian relations. In Iran, the crisis strengthened the prestige of the Ayatollah Khomeini and the political power of forces who supported theocracy and the hostage taking. The crisis also marked the beginning of American legal action, or sanctions, that weakened economic ties between Iran and America. Sanctions blocked all property within U.S. jurisdiction owned by the Central Bank and Government of Iran.

Iran Hostage Crisis Fin

Ticker tape parade
From Germany, the freed Americans were taken to Washington where they were given a hero’s welcome along Pennsylvania Avenue before a reception hosted by Ronald Reagan at the White House.

The crisis may have helped bury the Carter administration’s re-election hopes but it gave Mr Reagan a massive boost at the beginning of his presidency.
However, some sceptics remarked at the convenient timing of the release.

Pres. Ronald Reagan and Bruce Laingen
Newly inauguration US President Ronald Reagan listens to Bruce Laingen, top diplomatic hostage during the Iran hostage crisis who was one of the three seized at the Iranian foreign ministry on 4 November 1979.

After the euphoria had subsided, awkward questions arose that have never been fully cleared up. Critics still believe Mr Reagan’s campaign team conspired to postpone the hostages’ release until after the 1980 election to prevent it helping Mr Carter’s returned to office.

Memorial
Today, the embassy is still the stage for angry anniversary demonstrations in which protesters chant anti-US and Israeli slogans and burn flags and effigies.

Memorial

But for the rest of the year the building serves as a museum to the revolution, opened in 2001.

Outside the door stand a bronze model based on New York’s Statue of Liberty on one side and statue portraying one of the hostages on the other.

1983 – The Apple Lisa, the first commercial personal computer from Apple Inc. to have a graphical user interface and a computer mouse, is announced.

Apple Lisa

The Apple Lisa was a personal computer designed at Apple Computer, Inc. during the early 1980’s.

The Lisa project was started at Apple in 1978 and evolved into a project to design a powerful personal computer with a graphical user interface (GUI) that would be targeted toward business customers.

Around 1982, Steve Jobs was forced out of the Lisa project , so he joined the Macintosh project instead. Contrary to popular belief, the Macintosh is not a direct descendant of Lisa, although there are obvious similarities between the systems and the final revision, the Lisa 2/10, was modified and sold as the Macintosh XL.

The Lisa was a more advanced (and far more expensive) system than the Macintosh of that time in many respects, such as its inclusion of protected memory, cooperative multitasking, a generally more sophisticated hard disk based operating system, a built-in screen saver, an advanced calculator with a paper tape and RPN, support for up to 2 megabytes of RAM, expansion slots, and a larger higher resolution display. It would be many years before many of those features were implemented on the Macintosh platform. Protected memory, for instance, did not arrive until the Mac OS X operating system was released in 2001.

The Macintosh, however, featured a faster 68000 processor (7.89 MHz) and sound. The complexity of the Lisa operating system and its programs taxed the 5 MHz Motorola 68000 microprocessor so that the system felt sluggish, particularly when scrolling in documents.

1993 – IBM announces a $4.97 billion loss for 1992, the largest single-year corporate loss in United States history.
1999 – British Aerospace agrees to acquire the defence subsidiary of the General Electric Company plc, forming BAE Systems in November 1999.

2006 – The New Horizons probe is launched by NASA on the first mission to Pluto.

❤  ~  ❤  ~  ❤

Born on this Day

1736 – James Watt, Scottish inventor (d. 1819) and mechanical engineer whose improvements to the steam engine were fundamental to the changes brought by the Industrial Revolution in both Britain and the world.

1807 – Robert E. Lee, American Confederate general (d. 1870)

1809 – Edgar Allan Poe, American writer and poet (d. 1849)

1839 – Paul Cézanne, French painter (d. 1906)

1923 – Jean Stapleton, American actress best known for her portrayal of Edith Baines Bunker, the long-suffering, yet devoted wife of Archie Bunker.

1930 – Tippi Hedren, American actress

1935 – Johnny O’Keefe, Australian singer (d. 1978) hits include “Wild One” (1958), “Shout!” and “She’s My Baby”.

1939 – Phil Everly, American musician of The Everly Brothers fame

1940 – Mike Reid, English comedian (d. 2007)

1942 – Michael Crawford, British singer and actor

1943 – Janis Joplin, American singer (d. 1970)

1946 – Dolly Parton, American singer and actress

1947 – Rod Evans, British musician (Deep Purple)

1949 – Robert Palmer, English singer and guitarist (d. 2003)

1953 – Desi Arnaz, Jr., American actor

1954 – Katey Sagal, American actress best known for her roles in Futurama, 8 Simple Rules and Married… with Children.

1958 – Thomas Kinkade, American painter (d. 2012)

1963 – Martin Bashir, English journalist

1963 – John Bercow, English politician, Speaker of the House of Commons

1980 – Jenson Button, English race car driver

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Died on this day and remembered here

1998 – Carl Perkins, American guitarist (b. 1932)

2000 – Hedy Lamarr, Austrian-American actress, singer, and mathematician (b. 1913)

2006 – Wilson Pickett, American singer (b. 1941)

~  ❤  ~  ❤  ~  ❤  ~

Thought for the Day

Someone somewhere is speaking well of you.  Live up to the things they’re saying.

History lesson complete.  Birthdays remembered.  Those who have gone before us are remembered also.  And now ….  It’s PLAYTIME!

What do you call a fat psychic?  A four chin teller.

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Why did the duck go to rehab? Because he was a quack addict!

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My friend hates when I make jokes about her weight. She needs to lighten up.

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The sole purpose of a child’s middle name is so they can tell when they’re really in trouble.

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The fact that there is a highway to hell and a stairway to heaven says a lot about the anticipated traffic load.

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Right now I’m having amnesia and deja vu at the same time! I think I’ve forgotten this before?

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What are the three words guaranteed to humiliate men everywhere? ‘Hold my handbag.’ (‘purse’ for folks of the USA)

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What do you call a bear with no ears?   . . .   ‘B’.

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I went to a pet shop and asked the man behind the counter if I could buy a goldfish.  He said:  “Do you want an Aquarium?”.  I told him  I didn’t care what star sign it was.

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What do you get when you cross a dyslexic,  an insomniac and an agnostic?  Someone who lays awake at night wondering if there’s a dog.

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and finally ….  a joke I used to tell my big girls when they were little girls, and they LOVED it  – so much so that they took it to school and I was terrified I’d get it in the neck from the teachers because of it . . . . 

Knock knock.  Who’s there?   Smellip  . . .   I’ll let you finish that one off all by yourself – say it out loud and you’ll ‘get it’.

😀  ❤  😀

Well that’s me done and dusted for another Friday.  Today was a busy, busy day in history, wasn’t it!   phew!  There will be a test later today so you’d better have been paying attention, that boy at the back there!

I hope you found something to interest you, something that might surprise you and biggest hope of all …. something to make you smile.

May your Friday be filled with smiles and peace, and may your weekend be truly wonderful, and blessed from the moment you wake up on Saturday to the moment you fall asleep on Sunday at bedtime.

Thank you for coming and sharing a coffee with me.  I have such a ton of fun with you.  Sending squidges ~ 

Sig coffee copy

The Friday Post ~ 12th January 2018

Hello there, and a very happy Friday the 12th of January to you!

How are you?  What have you been up to this week?  Done anything out of the ordinary?  Been a little bit naughty and spent some money in the January sales?

Me?  Well I’ve been cleaning my craft room and getting things into some sort of  ‘New Year = New Order!’  Every now and again I will go through these phases of changing things around and “getting things in order” – when I have actually come to realise that this ‘getting things in order’ routine, is simply a case of re-organising stuff I have.  At the time I’m doing it, this re-organising makes total sense, but then (roughly) six weeks passes and I need to re-organise all over again!  Tsk tsk …. this is the problem with cleaning.  Nothing ever stays clean, and within days of doing it you have to do it all over again!

But anyhoo ….  you haven’t come here to read about my domestic trials and tribulations, you’ve come for Fridays Edumacation Lesson, which your family has paid a princely amount of money for you to attend, so we’d better get on with it, eh?

Button up your coats.  Tighten your belts.  Seat belts on – exit doors duly noted to the left, right and under the floor … get ready …. we’re going in!

On This Day In History

1773 – The first public Colonial American museum opens in Charleston, South Carolina. The Thirteen Colonies were part of what became known as British America, a name that was used by Great Britain until the Treaty of Paris recognised the independence of the original United States of America. These thirteen British colonies in North America rebelled against British rule in 1775. A provisional government was formed which proclaimed their independence, which is now celebrated as having occurred on July 4, 1776, and subsequently became the original thirteen United States of America. The colonies were founded between 1607 (Virginia), and 1733 (Georgia), although Great Britain held several other colonies in North America and the West Indies.

1866 – The Royal Aeronautical Society is formed in London. Founded in 1866 The Royal Aeronautical Society, also known as the RAeS, is a multidisciplinary professional institution dedicated to the entire global aerospace community.

The objectives of The Royal Aeronautical Society include; to support and maintain the highest professional standards in all aerospace disciplines; to provide a unique source of specialist information and a local forum for the exchange of ideas; and to exert influence in the interests of aerospace in both the public and industrial arenas.

Throughout the world’s aerospace community the name of The Royal Aeronautical Society is widely known and respected. Many practitioners from all disciplines within the aerospace industry use the Society’s designatory post-nominals such as FRAeS, CRAeS, MRAeS, AMRAeS, and ARAeS (incorporating the former graduate grade, GradRAeS).

The Staff of the Royal Aeronautical Society are based at the Society’s headquarters at No.4 Hamilton Place, London, W1J 7BQ. Although centred in the United Kingdom, the Royal Aeronautical Society is a worldwide Society with an international network of 63 Branches

1895 – The National Trust is founded in Britain. The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, usually known as the National Trust, is a conservation organisation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Trust does not operate in Scotland, where there is an independent National Trust for Scotland.

National Trust

According to its website:

“The National Trust works to preserve and protect the coastline, countryside and buildings of England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
We do this in a range of ways, through practical caring and conservation, through educating and informing, and through encouraging millions of people to enjoy their national heritage.”

History
The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty was formed in 1895 and is a charitable organisation registered under the Charities Act 1993. Its formal purpose is:

The preservation for the benefit of the Nation of lands and tenements (including buildings) of beauty or historic interest and, as regards lands, for the preservation of their natural aspect, features and animal and plant life. Also the preservation of furniture, pictures and chattels of any description having national and historic or artistic interest.

The Trust was founded on 12 January 1895 by Octavia Hill (1838–1912), Robert Hunter (1844–1913) and Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley (1851–1920), prompted in part by the earlier success of Charles Eliot and the Kyrle Society. A fourth individual, the Duke of Westminster (1825–1899), is also referred to in many texts as being a principal contributor to the formation of the Trust.

In the early days the Trust was concerned primarily with protecting open spaces and a variety of threatened buildings; its first property was Alfriston Clergy House and its first nature reserve was Wicken Fen. Its first archaeological monument was White Barrow.

The Trust’s symbol, a sprig of oak leaves and acorns, is thought to have been inspired by a carving in the cornice of the Alfriston Clergy House.

National Trust Logo

Membership
The Trust is one of the largest membership organisations in the world and annual subscriptions are its most important source of income. Membership numbers have grown from 226,200 when the Trust celebrated its 75th anniversary in 1970 to 500,000 in 1975, one million in 1981, two million in 1990 and by 2007, membership had reached 3.5 million.

The members elect half of the Council of the National Trust, and periodically (most recently in 2006) vote on the organisations which may appoint the other half of the Council. Members may also propose and vote on motions at the annual general meeting, although these are advisory and do not decide the policy of the Trust.

In the 1990’s a dispute over whether stag hunting should be permitted on National Trust land caused bitter disputes within the organisation and was the subject of much debate at annual general meetings, but it did little to slow down the growth in member numbers.

There is a separate organisation called The Royal Oak Foundation for American supporters.
The Royal Oak Foundation is an alliance of American citizens supporting the mission of the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, a conservation organisation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The foundation is headquartered in New York City.

Founded in 1973 the Royal Oak Foundation is a United States tax-exempt non-profit organisation. The foundation supports the preservation and conservation of natural beauty, historic properties, houses and gardens in Britain.

In the United States, the foundation sponsors the Drue Heinz Lecture Series, which delivers lectures in major U.S. cities on the subjects of architecture, social history, landscape design, interior decoration, and decorative arts.

Membership is open to the general public, and includes free admission to historic properties operated by the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty.

External Links:  The National Trust Website   /   The Royal Oak Foundation Website

1908 – A long-distance radio message is sent from the Eiffel Tower for the first time.

1915 – The Rocky Mountain National Park is formed by an act of U.S. Congress. Rocky Mountain National Park is a National Park located in the north-central region of the U.S. state of Colorado. It features majestic mountain views, a variety of wildlife, varied climates and environments—from wooded forests to mountain tundra—and easy access to back-country trails and campsites. The park is located northwest of Boulder, Colorado in the Rockies, and includes the Continental Divide and the headwaters of the Colorado River.

Rocky Mountain National Park

The park has five visitor centres. The park headquarters, Beaver Meadows Visitor Center, is a National Historic Landmark, designed by the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture at Taliesin West.

Rocky Mountain National Park 2

The park may be accessed by three roads: U.S. Highway 34, 36, and State Highway 7. Highway 7 enters the park for less than a mile, where it provides access to the Lily Lake Visitor Center. Highway 36 enters the park on the east side, where it terminates after a few miles at Highway 34. Highway 34, known as Trail Ridge Road through the park, runs from the town of Estes Park on the east to Grand Lake on the southwest. The road reaches an elevation of 12,183 feet (3,713 m), and is closed by snow in winter.

Rocky Mountain National Park 3

The park is surrounded by Roosevelt National Forest on the north and east, Routt National Forest on the northwest, and Arapaho National Forest on the southwest.

Rocky Mountain National Park 4

Ecosystems
The lowest elevations in the park are montane forests and grassland. The ponderosa pine, which prefers drier areas, dominates, though at higher elevations Douglas fir trees are found. Above 9,000 feet (2,700 m) the montane forests give way to the sub-alpine forest. Engelmann Spruce and Sub-alpine Fir trees are common in this zone. These forests tend to have more moisture than the montane and tend to be denser. Above tree line, at approximately 11,500 feet (3,500 m), trees disappear and the vast alpine tundra takes over. Due to harsh winds and weather, the plants in the tundra are short with very limited growing seasons. Streams have created lush riparian wetlands across the park.

Climate
July and August are the warmest months in the park, where temperatures can reach the 80’s although it is not uncommon to drop to below freezing at night. Thunderstorms often appear in the afternoons, and visitors should plan on staying below tree line when they occur. Heavy winter snows begin around mid-October, and last into May. While the snow can melt away from the lowest elevations of the park, deep snow is found above 9,000 feet (2,700 m) in the winter, causing the closure of Trail Ridge and Fall River roads during the winter and spring. Most of the trails are under snow this time of the year, and snowshoeing and skiing become popular. Springs tend to be wet, alternating between rain and possibly heavy snows. These snows can occur as late as July.  The west side of the park typically receives more precipitation than the drier east side.  Rocky Mountain National Park (official Site)

1915 – The United States House of Representatives rejects the proposal to give women the right to vote.

1942 – President Franklin Roosevelt creates the National War Labor Board.  The National War Labor Board, was reestablished by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, on January 12, 1942.  It became a tripartite body and was charged with acting as an arbitration tribunal in labor-management dispute cases, thereby preventing work stoppages which might hinder the war effort. It administered wage control in national industries such as automobiles, shipping, railways, airlines, telegraph lines, and mining. The Board was originally divided into 12 Regional Administrative Boards which handled both labor dispute settlement and wage stabilisation functions for specific geographic regions. The National Board further decentralised in 1943, when it established special tripartite commissions and panels to deal with specific industries on a national base. It ceased operating in 1946, and thereafter labor disputes were handled by the National Labor Relations Board, originally set up in 1935.

1967 – Dr. James Bedford becomes the first person to be cryonically preserved with intent of future resuscitation. James Hiram Bedford (20 April 1893 – 12 January 1967) was a University of California psychology professor who had written several books on occupational counselling. He is notable as the first human being to be cryonically preserved(frozen, in this case). Among those in the cryonics community, the anniversary of his cryonic suspension is celebrated as “Bedford Day”.

In June 1965, Ev Cooper’s Life Extension Society offered to preserve one person for free stating that “the Life Extension Society now has primitive facilities for emergency short-term freezing and storing our friend the large homeotherm (man).  LES offers to freeze free of charge the first person desirous and in need of cryogenic suspension” (For the Record). This ultimately turned out to be Dr. Bedford. He was frozen on January 12, 1967 in Glendale, California at age 73.

Bedford was frozen by Robert Prehoda (author of the 1969 book Suspended Animation), Dr. Dante Brunol (physician and biophysicist) and Robert Nelson (President of the Cryonics Society of California). Nelson then wrote a book about the subject titled We Froze the First Man. Modern cryonics organisations perfuse cryonics patients with an anti-freeze (cryoprotectant) to prevent ice formation (vitrification), but the use of cryoprotectants in Bedford’s case was primitive. He was injected with some DMSO, so it is unlikely that his brain was protected. He was truly “frozen”.

Bedford’s body was maintained in liquid nitrogen by his family until 1982. Then it was moved to Alcor Life Extension Foundation, and has remained in Alcor’s care to the present day.  In May 1991, his body’s condition was evaluated when he was moved to a new storage dewar.  The examiners concluded that “it seems likely that his external temperature has remained at relatively low subzero temperatures throughout the storage interval.”

External Links:

1971 – The Harrisburg Seven: The Reverend Philip Berrigan and five others are indicted on charges of conspiring to kidnap Henry Kissinger and of plotting to blow up the heating tunnels of federal buildings in Washington, D.C.

The Harrisburg Seven were a group of religious anti-war activists led by Philip Berrigan. The group became famous when they were unsuccessfully prosecuted for alleged criminal plots during the Vietnam War era. Six of the seven were Irish Catholic nuns or priests. The seventh was Eqbal Ahmad, a Pakistani journalist, American-trained political scientist, and self-described “odd man out” of the group. In 1970, the group attracted government attention when Berrigan, then imprisoned, and Sister Elizabeth McAlister were caught trading letters that alluded to kidnapping National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger and blowing up steam tunnels

Background
Father Berrigan was serving time in the Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary, in central Pennsylvania. Boyd Douglas, who eventually would become a FBI informant and star prosecution witness – was a fellow inmate. Douglas was on a work-release at the library at nearby Bucknell University. Douglas used his real connection with Berrigan to convince some students at Bucknell that he was an anti-war activist, telling some that he was serving time for anti-war activities. In fact, he was in prison for check forgery.

Douglas set up a mail drop and persuaded students transcribe letters intended for Berrigan into his school notebooks to smuggle into the prison. (They were later called, unwillingly, as government witnesses.) Douglas was the chief prosecution witness.

The trial
U.S. Attorneys charged the Harrisburg Seven with conspiracy to kidnap Kissinger and bomb heating tunnels. They filed the case in the city of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Activist attorney and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark led the defence team for their trial during the spring months of 1972. Unconventionally, he didn’t call any witnesses in his clients’ defence, including the defendants themselves. He reasoned that the jury was sympathetic to his Catholic clients and that sympathy would be ruined by their testimony that they’d burned their draft cards. After an extraordinarily long deliberation, the jury remained hung and the defendants were freed.

Douglas testified that he transmitted transcribed letters between the defendants, which the prosecution used as evidence of a conspiracy among them. Several of Douglas’ former girlfriends testified at the trial that he acted not just as an informer, but also as a catalyst and agent provocateur for the group’s plans.

There were minor convictions for a few of the defendants, based on smuggling mail into the prison; most of those were overturned on appeal.

The trial gained some notoriety for the use of scientific jury selection – use of demographic factors to identify unfavourable jurors – to keep the defendants from being convicted.

1991 – Gulf War: An act of the U.S. Congress authorises the use of military force to drive Iraq out of Kuwait.

1998 – Nineteen European Nations agree to forbid human cloning. Human cloning is the creation of a genetically identical copy of a human being, human cell, or human tissue. Although the possibility of cloning human beings has been the subject of speculation for much of the twentieth century, scientists and policy makers began to take the prospect seriously in the 1960’s. Nobel Prize winning geneticist Joshua Lederberg advocated for cloning and genetic engineering in a seminal article in the American Naturalist in 1966 and again, the following year, in the Washington Post. He sparked a debate with conservative bioethicist Leon Kass, who wrote at the time that “the programmed reproduction of man will, in fact, dehumanise him.” Another Nobel Laureate, James Watson, publicised the potential and the perils of cloning in his Atlantic Monthly essay, “Moving Toward the Clonal Man,” in 1971.

Human cloning also gained a foothold in popular culture, starting in the 1970’s. Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock, David Rorvik’s In His Image: Toward Cloning of a Man, Woody Allen’s film “Sleeper” and the The Boys from Brazil all helped to make the general public aware of the ethical issues surrounding human cloning.

Ethical implications
The cloning of human beings is highly controversial. Advocates of human therapeutic cloning believe the practice could provide genetically identical cells for regenerative medicine, and tissues and organs for transplantation. Such cells, tissues, and organs would neither trigger an immune response nor require the use of immunosuppressive drugs. Both basic research and therapeutic development for serious diseases such as cancer, heart disease, and diabetes, as well as improvements in burn treatment and reconstructive and cosmetic surgery, are areas that might benefit from such new technology. New York University bioethicist Jacob M. Appel has argued that “children cloned for therapeutic purposes” such as “to donate bone marrow to a sibling with leukaemia” might someday be viewed as heroes.

Proponents claim that human reproductive cloning also would produce benefits. Severino Antinori and Panos Zavos hope to create a fertility treatment that allows parents who are both infertile to have children with at least some of their DNA in their offspring.

Some scientists, including Dr. Richard Seed, suggest that human cloning might obviate the human ageing process. How this might work is not entirely clear since the brain or identity would have to be transferred to a cloned body. Dr. Preston Estep has suggested the terms “replacement cloning” to describe the generation of a clone of a previously living person, and “persistence cloning” to descregligible SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) one of the considered options to repair the cell depletion related to cellular senescence is to grow replacement tissues from stem cells harvested from a cloned embryo.

Opponents of human cloning argue that the process will likely lead to severely disabled children. For example, bioethicist Thomas Murray of the Hastings Centre argues that “it is absolutely inevitable that groups are going to try to clone a human being. But they are going to create a lot of dead and dying babies along the way.”

There were, as of December 2008, no documented cases of a living human being produced through human cloning.  However, the most successful (though inefficient) common cloning technique in non-human mammals is the process by which Dolly the sheep was produced. It is also the technique used by Advanced Cell Technology (ACT), the first company to successfully clone early human embryos that stopped at the six cell stage. The process is as follows: an egg cell taken from a donor has its cytoplasm removed. Another cell with the genetic material to be cloned is fused with the original egg cell, transferring its cell nucleus to the enucleated donor egg. vIn theory, this process, known as somatic cell nuclear transfer, could be applied to human beings.

ACT also reported its attempts to clone stem cell lines by parthenogenesis, where an unfertilised egg cell is induced to divide and grow as if it were fertilised, but only incomplete blastocysts resulted. Even if it were practical with mammals, this technique could work only with females. Discussion of human cloning generally assumes the use of somatic cell nuclear transfer, rather than parthenogenesis.

In January, 2008, Wood and Andrew French, Stemagen’s chief scientific officer in California, announced that they successfully created the first 5 mature human embryos using DNA from adult skin cells, aiming to provide a less-controversial source of viable embryonic stem cells. Dr. Samuel Wood and a colleague donated skin cells, and DNA from those cells was transferred to human eggs. It is not clear if the embryos produced would have been capable of further development, but Dr. Wood stated that if that were possible, using the technology for reproductive cloning would be both unethical and illegal. The 5 cloned embryos, created in Stemagen Corporation lab, in La Jolla, were later destroyed.

The current law on human cloning
U.N.
On December 12, 2001 the United Nations General Assembly began elaborating an international convention against the reproductive cloning of human beings. Lawrence S. B. Goldstein, college professor of cellular and molecular medicine at the University of California at San Diego, claims that the United States, unable to pass a national law, forced Costa Rica to start this debate in the UN over the international cloning ban. Unable to reach a consensus on a binding convention, in March 2005 a non-binding United Nations Declaration on Human Cloning was finally adopted.
Australia:  Australia had prohibited human cloning, though as of December 2006, a bill legalising therapeutic cloning and the creation of human embryos for stem cell research passed the House of Representatives. Within certain regulatory limits, and subject to the effect of state legislation, therapeutic cloning is now legal in some parts of Australia.
European Union:   The European Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine prohibits human cloning in one of its additional protocols, but this protocol has been ratified only by Greece, Spain and Portugal. The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union explicitly prohibits reproductive human cloning, though the Charter currently carries no legal standing. The proposed Treaty of Lisbon would, if ratified, make the charter legally binding for the institutions of the European Union.
U.S.   In 1998, 2001, 2004 and 2007 the U.S. House of Representatives voted whether to ban all human cloning, both reproductive and therapeutic. Each time, divisions in the Senate over therapeutic cloning prevented either competing proposal (a ban on both forms or reproductive cloning only) from passing. Some American states ban both forms of cloning, while some others outlaw only reproductive cloning.

Current regulations prohibit federal funding for research into human cloning, which effectively prevents such research from occurring in public institutions and private institutions such as universities which receive federal funding. However, there are currently no federal laws in the United States which ban cloning completely, and any such laws would raise difficult Constitutional questions similar to the issues raised by abortion.
U.K.  The British government introduced legislation in order to allow licensed therapeutic cloning in a debate in January 14, 2001 in an amendment to the Human Fertilization and Embryology Act 1990. However on November 15, 2001 a pro-life group won a High Court legal challenge that effectively left cloning unregulated in the UK. Their hope was that Parliament would fill this gap by passing prohibitive legislation. The government was quick to pass legislation prohibiting reproductive cloning Human Reproductive Cloning Act 2001. The remaining gap with regard to therapeutic cloning was closed when the appeals courts reversed the previous decision of the High Court.

The first licence was granted on August 11, 2004 to researchers at the University of Newcastle to allow them to investigate treatments for diabetes, Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease.
Religious objections:   The Roman Catholic Church, under the papacy of Benedict XVI, has condemned the practice of human cloning, in the magisterial instruction Dignitas Personae, stating that it represents a grave offence to the dignity of that person as well as to the fundamental equality of all people.

“Variations and voids:  The Regulation of Human Cloning around the world”  – an academic article by S.Pattinson and T. Caulfield.

2004 – The world’s largest ocean liner, RMS Queen Mary 2, makes its maiden voyage.
2005 – Deep Impact (space mission) launches from Cape Canaveral on a Delta 2 rocket.
2006 – The foreign ministers of the United Kingdom, France, and Germany declare that negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program have reached a dead-end and recommend that Iran be referred to the United Nations Security Council.

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Born on this Day

1904 – Fred McDowell, American blues musician (d. 1972)

1925 – Scottie MacGregor, American actress best-known for her comic performance as Harriet Oleson from 1974 to 1983 on the NBC television series Little House on the Prairie.

1926 – Ray Price, American singer. Some of his more famous songs include “Release Me”, “Crazy Arms”, “Heartaches by the Number”, “City Lights”, “My Shoes Keep Walking Back to You”, “For the Good Times”, “I Won’t Mention It Again”, “You’re the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me”, and “Danny Boy.” He was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1996.

1932 – Des O’Connor, British television presenter

1933 – Michael Aspel, English broadcaster

1944 – Joe Frazier, American boxer

1945 – Maggie Bell, Scottish singer (Stone the Crows)

1946 – Cynthia Robinson, American musician (Sly & the Family Stone)

1948 – Anthony Andrews, English actor

1951 – Kirstie Alley, American actress

1957 – John Lasseter, Academy Award-winning American animator and the chief creative officer at Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios. He is also currently the Principal Creative Advisor for Walt Disney Imagineering

1974 – Melanie Chisholm, British singer – best known as one of the five members of the pioneering pop group Spice Girls, where she was nicknamed “Sporty Spice”

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Died on this Day and Remembered here

1897 – Isaac Pitman, British inventor (Pitman Shorthand) (b. 1813)

1960 – Nevil Shute, English writer (b. 1899)

1976 – Agatha Christie, English writer (b. 1890)

2003 – Maurice Gibb, British singer, songwriter, and musician (Bee Gees) (b. 1949

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PLAYTIME BELL RINGS!

dinger dinger dinger ding!

These are the Jokes folks!

(a bunch of one-liners for you . . . )

I just bought underwater headphones and it’s made me loads faster. Do you know how motivating it is swimming to the theme song from Jaws? I mean my anxiety is through the roof but record times.
🙂

Red sky at night: shepherd’s delight. Blue sky at night: day
🤗
It all starts innocently, mixing chocolate and Rice Krispies, but before you know it you’re adding raisins and marshmallows – it’s a rocky road.
😀
The anti-ageing advert that I would like to see is a baby covered in cream saying, ‘Aah, I’ve used too much.’
😁
My friend said she was giving up drinking from Monday to Friday. I’m just worried she’s going to dehydrate
🤣
Jokes about white sugar are rare. Jokes about brown sugar, Demerara.
😆
My sister had a baby and they took a while to name her and I told her to  ‘Hurry up!’.  I didn’t want my niece to grow up to be one of these kids you hear about on the news where it says, ‘The 17 year old defendant, who hasn’t been named’.  
😅

I went to Waterstones the book store and asked the store assistant for a book about turtles,  she said ‘hardback?’  I said  ‘yes and with little heads”

😝
and finally . . . 
If anyone knows how to fix some broken hinges,  my door’s always open.   😂
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Thought for the Day

Too often I hear people say that in their lives they would like more time to just sit and think and enjoy.

We don’t practice simply enjoying ‘nothing’, do we?  It’s something that concerns me a lot …  because if we don’t do it when we are younger, we can be left not knowing how to do it in later life.

Part of the problem is our work ethic.  For some reason, we feel we must justify our existence by always being busy and useful.  Everything we do must have a purpose and we must constantly live with one eye on what we shall be doing tomorrow.  The old month by month tyranny of the calendar was replaced by the daily tyranny of the Filofax, which is now supplemented with the hourly tyranny of e-mail/twitter/whats-ap/skype/Facebook (other social media(s) are available), is really not doing any of us any favours

According to the book of Genesis, although human beings are ‘made’ to be able to work, more wonderful than work is the enjoyment of the ‘Sabbath’.  Sunday.  The day when even God himself rested in order to savour what he has made!  

We seem to have lost the capacity for that sort of enjoyment.  We seem to have forgotten how to just sit and do nothing but think about what we’ve achieved.  What have we done in our lives that is pleasing to us.  We seem to have forgotten how to do this and we need more than anything to recover it.  But how?

In the Christian Gospel, we are told to that to enter the Kingdom of God we must become as little children,  a reference not to their supposed innocence, but their capacity for self-forgetfulness in play.  They do something because it is fun and worthwhile in itself and not because it has some further justification.  This is what we tend to lose in our busy lives where everything must be done for a purpose.  If we are to reach an old age that we can enjoy and feel good about, we need to regain the capacity for enjoyment long before we are old.  Perhaps then, in our evening walk, we shall find ourselves enjoying God’s company in the cool of the day, and finding ourselves happy and fulfilled.

We don’t need to work from morning till night.  We need to work, rest, and play.  That’s what this whole life/existence thing was designed for.  That’s what we are meant to do.  That’s the whole point of it all.

Take a little time today to do nothing but sit.  Sit with your God, if you believe, or just sit with life if you don’t.  Spend a little time doing something that gives you joy.  Even if it’s going out, buying a children’s colouring book and crayons and colouring to your heart’s content.  There would be less illness . . .   less worry  . . .  less tension,  if only people allowed themselves to let their inner child loose once in a while.

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Thank you so much for coming and sharing a coffee moment with me.  I love being in your company.

I wish you a really great day.  Smile as much as you can.  Take time to have a little fun and laughs somewhere along the way.  You’ll feel better for it.  I know you will.  And remember …. to stop now and again and just allow yourself to ‘be’.  Stop doing.  Stop talking.  Stop thinking.  Just be.  Give yourself a minute or two away from your daily life, and instead give yourself a moment of a life of doing nothing – not even thinking.  Just BE.

Have a wonderful day, and a truly fabulous weekend.  Be good to yourself, and …  may your God go with you.

Sig coffee copy

 

 

The Friday Post ~ 5th January 2018

HAPPY NEW YEAR!  Gosh, I haven’t seen you since last year!  Time flies.

It’s my first day back posting on my blog here since a couple of days before Christmas, and Christmas only seems like it was last week!  I cannot believe how quickly the time has flown past.  I knew I was going to give myself a little holiday from actually posting on my blog – but I only thought it would be ….  “aw, around a week or so” …  well I was obviously enjoying Christmas and the New Year so much that I just lost track of time!

I’ve  been visiting blogs in an effort to keep up with the reading and commenting – but I’m behind.  So … if I’ve missed something on your blog that you really wanted me to see, then pleeeeeeeease – leave a link to it in a comment and I’ll pop along and have a read.

I haven’t been crafting.  Nope, not even one bit – but I have been trying to clear up the unimaginable mess I made before Christmas.  I was crafting right up till lunch time on the 24th December.   I did think about take a photograph of my craft room .. but I was so ashamed of the mess that I just couldn’t.  So I’ll leave it to your imagination to build the scene.  Eeeeek!

But anyhoo . . .   You’re here now to take a gander over what happened on this day in times gone by … so in an endeavour to take up the chalk and educationamalise you a little more, I shall begin where I usually do, by saying:

On This Day In History

1759 – George Washington marries Martha Dandridge Custis.

1846 – The United States House of Representatives votes to stop sharing the Oregon Territory with the United Kingdom.
1854 – The San Francisco steamer sinks, killing 300 people.

1895 – Dreyfus Affair: French officer Alfred Dreyfus is stripped of his rank and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island. The Dreyfus Affair was a political scandal which divided France from the 1890s to the early 1900s. It involved the conviction for treason in November 1894 of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French artillery officer of Jewish background who was in advanced training with the Army’s General Staff. Alfred Dreyfus was sentenced to life imprisonment, which he began to serve in solitary confinement on Devil’s Island in French Guiana.

Alfred Dreyfus FOR 5TH JAN 2018

Two years later, in 1896, the real culprit was brought to light and identified:  a French Army major named Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy.  However, French high-level military officials dismissed or ignored this new evidence which exonerated Alfred Dreyfus.  Thus, in January 1898, military judges unanimously acquitted Esterhazy on the second day of his trial.  Worse, French military counter-intelligence officers fabricated false documents designed to secure Dreyfus’s conviction as a spy for Germany.  They were all eventually exposed, in large part due to a resounding public intervention by writer Emile Zola in January 1898.  The case had to be re-opened, and Dreyfus was brought back from Guiana in 1899 to be tried again.  The intense political and judicial scandal that ensued divided French society between those who supported Dreyfus (the Dreyfusards) and those who condemned him (the anti-Dreyfusards, such as Edouard Drumont, director of La Libre Parole, and Hubert-Joseph Henry).

Eventually, all the accusations against Alfred Dreyfus were demonstrated to be baseless. Dreyfus was exonerated and reinstated as a major in the French Army in 1906. He later served during the whole of World War I, ending his service with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.

1896 – An Austrian newspaper reported that Wilhelm Roentgen has discovered a type of radiation later known as X-rays.

1914 – The Ford Motor Company announces an eight-hour workday and a minimum wage of $5 for a day’s labor.
1918 – The Free Committee for a German Workers Peace, which would become the Nazi party, is founded.

1925 – Nellie Taylor Ross of Wyoming becomes the first female governor in the United States.

1933 – Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge begins in San Francisco Bay.

1944 – The Daily Mail becomes the first transoceanic newspaper.  The Daily Mail is a British newspaper, currently published in a tabloid format.  First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom’s second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun.  Its sister paper, The Mail on Sunday, was launched in 1982.  An Irish edition of the paper was launched in 2006.  The Daily Mail was Britain’s first daily newspaper aimed at what is now considered the middle-market and the first to sell 1 million copies a day.

1962 – A replica of the miraculous statue, the Holy Infant of Good Health, is presented to Blessed Pope John XXIII.  The Holy Infant of Good Health (Santo Niño de la salud) is a statue of the Christ Child regarded by many to be miraculous, which was found in 1939, in Morelia (Michoacán State), Mexico.  The statue is eleven inches tall and has apparently been responsible for many healings.

The veneration of the statue was approved by Luis M Altamirano y Bulnes, Archbishop of Morelia, in 1944. That same year, the image was solemnly crowned by pontifical command.  On January 5, 1959, a replica of the Infant was presented to Blessed Pope John XXIII.  And on November 12, 1970, an Order of Religious sisters, the Missionaries of the Holy Infant of Good Health, were founded in Morelia.

The little statue is dressed “with symbols of the power of Christ, wearing a royal mantle, trimmed in ermine, a golden scepter in the left hand while the right is raised in blessing, and on the head an imperial crown of precious stones.”   The Holy Infant of Good Health’s Feast Day is celebrated on April 21st.

1972 – U.S. President Richard Nixon orders the development of a space shuttle program.
1975 – The Tasman Bridge in Tasmania, Australia, is struck by the bulk ore carrier Lake Illawarra, killing twelve people.

1993 – The oil tanker MV Braer runs aground on the coast of the Shetland Islands, spilling 84,700 tons of crude oil.  Fortunately for Shetland, the Gulfaks crude the Braer was carrying is not a typical North Sea oil.  It is lighter and more easily biodegradable than other North Sea crude oils, and this, in combination with some of the worst storms seen in Shetland (naturally dispersing the oil by wave action and evaporation), prevented the event becoming an even bigger disaster.  However, the destruction to wildlife was still massive.  The total number of bird corpses recovered from beaches, due to this oil spill, during January was 1538.

1993 – Washington state executes Westley Allan Dodd by hanging (the first legal hanging in America since 1965).  Westley Allan Dodd (July 3, 1961 – January 5, 1993) was a convicted serial killer and child molester from Richland, Washington.

Dodd began sexually abusing children when he was 13 years old; his first victims were his own cousins. All his victims (over 50 in all) were children below the age of 12, some of them as young as two. Dodd’s fantasies became increasingly violent over the years. He eventually progressed from molesting his victims to torturing, raping and then murdering them. 

Westley Allan Dodd

After he was arrested for trying to abduct a boy from a movie theater, the police found a homemade torture rack in his home, as yet unused.  He was arrested by local police in Camas, Washington and interviewed by task force detectives.  Portland Police Bureau Detective C. W. Jensen and Clark County Detective Sergeant Dave Trimble obtained Dodd’s confession and served the search warrant on his home.

Dodd was sentenced to death in 1990 for molesting and then stabbing to death Cole Neer (age 11) and his brother William (10) near a Vancouver, Washington, park in 1989, as well as for the separate rape and murder of Lee Iseli (aged 4).

Less than four years elapsed between the murders and Dodd’s execution. He refused to appeal his case or the capital sentence, stating “I must be executed before I have an opportunity to escape or kill someone within the prison. If I do escape, I promise you I will kill prison guards if I have to and rape and enjoy every minute of it.” While in court he said that, if he escaped from jail, he would immediately go back to “killing kids.”.

Dodd was executed by hanging at 12:05 a.m. on January 5, 1993 at Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla.  By Washington state law, Dodd had to choose the method of his execution, and state law gave Dodd two options: lethal injection or hanging. Dodd chose hanging.  He also requested that his hanging be televised, but that request was denied.

His execution was witnessed by 12 members of local and regional media, prison officials, and representatives of the families of the three victims.  He ate salmon and potatoes for his last meal.  His last words, spoken from the second floor of the indoor gallows, were recorded by the media witnesses as: “I was once asked by somebody, I don’t remember who, if there was any way sex offenders could be stopped. I said, `No.’ I was wrong. I was wrong when I said there was no hope, no peace. There is hope. There is peace. I found both in the Lord, Jesus Christ. Look to the Lord, and you will find peace.”.

Dodd was pronounced dead by the prison doctor and his body transported to Seattle for autopsy. The King County Medical Examiner, Dr. Donald Reay, found that Dodd had died quickly and probably with little pain.  He was cremated following the autopsy, and his ashes turned over to his family.

2005 – Eris, the largest known dwarf planet in the solar system, is discovered by the team of Michael E. Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David L. Rabinowitz using images originally taken on October 21, 2003, at the Palomar Observatory.

Eris was first spotted in 2003 by a Palomar Observatory-based team led by Mike Brown but not identified until 2005.  Eris has one moon, Dysnomia;  and recent observations have found no evidence of further satellites.  The current distance from the Sun is 96.7 AU, roughly three times that of Pluto.  With the exception of some comets the pair are the most distant known natural objects in the Solar System.

ERIS

Because Eris is larger than Pluto, its discoverers and NASA called it the Solar system’s tenth planet.  This, along with the prospect of other similarly sized objects being discovered in the future, motivated the International Astronomical Union (IAU) to define the term planet for the first time.  Under a new definition approved on August 24, 2006, Eris is a “dwarf planet” along with Pluto, Ceres, Haumea and Makemake.

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Born On This Day

1829 – Sir Roger Tichborne, missing U.K. heir who was the subject of the longest criminal trial in British history (d. c. 1854)

1834 – William John Wills, English explorer of Australia, member of the Burke and Wills expedition (d. 1861)

1903 – Harold Gatty, Australian aviator, navigator with Wiley Post (d. 1957)

1906 – Kathleen Kenyon, English archaeologist (d. 1978)

1917 – Jane Wyman, American actress (d. 2007)

1931 – Robert Duvall, American actor

1940 – Michael O’Donoghue, American writer (d. 1994)

1940 – Athol Guy, Australian singer, member of The Seekers

1942 – Jan Leeming, English television presenter and newsreader

1946 – Diane Keaton, American actress

1949 – George Brown, American drummer (Kool & The Gang)

1950 – Chris Stein, American guitarist (Blondie)

1965 – Vinnie Jones, English-born Welsh footballer and actor

1969 – Marilyn Manson, American singer

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Died on this day and Remembered here:

1939 – Amelia Earhart, American aviator declared dead after disappearance in 1937. (b. 1897)

1941 – Amy Johnson, English aviator (b. 1903)

1998 – Sonny Bono, American entertainer and politician (b. 1935)

2003 – Roy Jenkins, British politician (b. 1920)

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Thought for the Day

If you could make a wish, right now, right at this very moment,  what would you wish for?  Be quick!  You only have a tiny window of opportunity to answer this question so make your wish NOW!

What did you wish for?  Money?  New house?  New Car?  Love?  Great Job?  Jewellery?

I wonder what you’d have got if your next door neighbour had to make the wish for you?  Would they have wished for what you might have wanted?

What about if this question was asked of me….  What if the Genie in the Bottle had popped up and said that I had to make your wish for you.  Do you think I might have made the right wish?   Would I have wished a wish that would have given you what your heart longed for? 

Would you still be talking to me, I wonder,  if I told you that the thing I would have wished for you to be in receipt of was . . . . . . contentment?

A little while ago I was chatting with someone I know, and we were talking about writing Christmas and New Year Cards, and what to write on them.  I said that when I was wishing anyone a Happy New Year, or writing a card for a wedding;  for the birth of a new baby;  Engagement;  Anniversary . . .   or anything that required me to wish that person(s) something tangible,  I ALWAYS wished contentment for them.

You see, I believe that if a person has contentment then everything else just falls into place.  There is nothing to really wish for that they didn’t already have, for they are content!  Nothing of any import missing.  Nothing for them to feel ‘disgruntled’ about.

Contentment, for me, is the ultimate goal every single day.  If I can go to bed at night-time and think back over my day, and feel contented,  then I know I’ve had a really great day.  

Think about it for a moment . . .  and while you’re thinking,  …  I’ll make my wish for you,  ~  for contentment.

May you have oodles of contentment.  May each day fill you with sleepy contentment at the end of it,  and may you wake up each morning knowing that the only goal you have to reach that day is contentment.

And … when you go to bed tonight …. may you think about what I’ve said and look back over your day, to find that you actually are content.   Ohand don’t forget to thank your God, the universe, or whoever you personally thank for the wonderful things in your life.

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[Play Time Bell Rings . . . .]

These are the Jokes Folks!

Crime in multi-storey car parks.  That is wrong on so many different levels.

I have downloaded this new app. Its great, it tells you what to wear, what to eat and what you shouldnt be eating, if you’ve put on weight.  Its called the Daily Mail newspaper.

I was playing chess with my friend and she said, ‘Let’s make this interesting’.   So we stopped playing chess.

My friend Richard told me:  “I usually meet my girlfriend at 12:59 because I like that one-to-one time.”

My husband surprised me the other day when he said:  “When I was younger I felt like a man trapped inside a woman’s body. Then I was born.”

My grandad has a chair in his shower which makes him feel old, so in order to feel young he sits on it backwards like a cool teacher giving an assembly about drugs.

Is it possible to mistake schizophrenia for telepathy?  I hear you ask.

You can’t lose a homing pigeon. If your homing pigeon doesn’t come back,  then what you’ve lost is a pigeon.

My husband told me: ‘Sex is better on holiday.’  . . .   That really wasn’t a nice postcard to receive.

As a child I was made to walk the plank.  We couldn’t afford a dog.

Oh my goodness!!!, mega drama the other day: My dishwasher stopped working! Yup, his visa expired.

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Hopefully, your chuckle muscle has received a good workout now and may even be aching a little bit! 😀   You’ll now be able to tell people that you’ve already had your workout today.

It’s lovely to be back in the saddle and here, chatting with you. I’ve missed you.   😊

May your day today be a truly great one for you, and may your weekend be filled with contentment.   Take very good care of yourself, and, whatever you’re doing or wherever you’re going, may your God go with you.

Sending squidges,  and love, in a rainbow of colours.   ❤️ 💛 💚 💙 💜

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