Month: February 2019

1642 Montréal, History: French explorers had been stopping at the island now called Montréal since 1535. A small settlement development to store supplies, dig wells, and then to trade in furs. On this day the settlement was named Montréal (for the Mont Royal that dominates the island) a group of thirty colonists led by Paul de Maisonneuve began to build a permanent town starting with a church to convert the natives. We spent a few hours at the museum excavation of this original site. On one side of Mont-Royal it is English-speaking and on the other French-speaking along the Rue St Laurence. Or has that verity changed?

1652 Providence, History: Rhode Island, long the North American centre of the slave trade, legislated against slavery though the law was not enforced. There were many Quakers in the colony who had gone there to escape religious persecution in Massachusetts Bay, and they opposed slavery. They could swing the numbers on a vote but could not compel authorities to enforce it. The result was that Providence remained a slave trading centre but locals were enjoined not to own slaves. The Ivy League university, Brown, was built and endowed by slave traders.

1830 Stroud (England), Technology: Edwin Budding signed an agreement to manufacture his invention – the push lawn mower which he had designed to cut grass on cricket pitches. Saturdays would never be the same again.

1897 London, Literature: Bram Stoker published ‘Dracula.’ Next stop Bela Lugosi!

1910 Halley’s Comet passed in front of the sun in a spectacular display while the Earth moved through the Comet’s tail. This was the first appearance of the Comet that was photographed.

1893 Melbourne, Politics: Archduke Franz Ferdinand of the Austro-Hungarian Empire arrived in Melbourne for a tour that included hunting parties and barbeques. He continued on around the world. His murder later would spark World War I in which millions died including thousands of Australians. Below is an image of his bloodied jacket.

1897 New York City Harbor, Technology. Irish-born inventor John Philip Holland launched a submarine that could travel submerged by using a combination of gasoline and electric engines. He sold it to the navy who christened it the USS Holland. Likewise the first submarine in Briish Royal Navy was called the HMS Holland.

1902 Antikythera Island, Archaeology: Spyridon Stais found the Antikythera mechanism in a shipwreck off the eponymous Greek island. It is a clockwork mechanism from 205 BC with a gear, perhaps to model the movement of objects in the sky.

1954 Topeka (Kansas), Law: The Supreme Court held that segregation violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution in (Linda) Brown V the Board of Education. Note that the leader of this unanimous decision was Republican Chief Justice Earl Warren. The grade school in question is now a Civil Rights museum which I have visited a couple of times. It has some bloodcurdling displays of racial hatred.

1970 Rabat (Morocco), History: Thor Heyerdahl set off across the Atlantic on a raft made of papyrus to sail to the Americas. His contention was the Egyptians had done this millennia before. The raft (pictured below) was called Ra II and crossed four thousand miles of ocean in fifty-seven days to reach Barbados.

583 County Kerry, History: This is the feast day of Saint Brendan of Clonfert the Navigator who ostensibly made a voyage of seven years to the Land of Delight or the Garden of Eden. Did he reach the Americas? Christopher Columbus used this legend in part to justify the project to cross the Atlantic.

1763 London, Literature: Samuel Johnson met his future biographer and thereafter constant companion James Boswell, the diarist. Johnson called him Bozzy. The latter’s very name passed into common usage for constant companion as when Arthur Conan Doyle had Sherlock Holmes proclaim that he was ‘lost without his Boswell,’ i.e., Dr Watson.

1815 Blackheath, History: In the Blue Mountains returning from Bathurst NSW Governor Lachlan Macquarie named the settlement Blackheath after the colour and texture of native flora. The current population is 4,400. I finished ‘Matters of Justice’ (1986) there in a rented cabin one November when it snowed!

1866 Philadelphia, Popular Culture: Pharmacist Charles Hires began to sell ‘Root Beer’ made from the root of the sassafras tree without caffeine. A tea-totaler he promoted it as the temperance drink with health-giving properties. After many corporate sales and changes Cadbury Schweppes bought the residual company and still uses the name in an alcoholic drink, Hires Root Beer and Vodka!

2014 Chicago, Media: Barbara Walters retired from television at eighty-four. Her career spanned fifty years and led the way for women in the media, especially in serious journalism. She moderated presidential debates, interviewed Anwar Sadat, anchored NBC evening news, and made documentaries, often about the handicapped and disabled. Her example inspired countless other women in front of the camera to do more than point to the letters on a game show. I did see her flummoxed once when interviewing the president of a poor African country. She more or less asked him how he could take a salary in a destitute country. His reply was something like this: “Well, since you have brought up salaries, I can assure that I make much less than do you.’ With a tight smile, she was at a loss for a reply and the floor director cut to a commercial.

1831 Pittsburg, Technology: The first coal burning locomotive in the United States made a trial run in Pittsburgh. Ah, King Coal was much more efficient and effective than wood for steam power. We are still burning coal, as many still smoke cigarettes.

1861 St Petersburg, Politics: Russian Tsar Alexander II abolished serfdom in all-Russia. There were many qualifications and exceptions, and no enforcement.

1878 Menlo Park (New Jersey), Technology: Thomas Alva Edison patented (# 200,521) a phonograph to record and play back sound. At the time Edison thought of the device as recording words, not music. Hence the name ‘gramo-phone’ and not muso-phone.

1906 Battle Creek (Michigan), Food: Will Kellogg and others founded the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company. Still to be found on supermarket shelves.

1919 Paris, Politics: W. E. B. Du Bois hosted the first Pan-African Congress. He had some informal assistance from the U.S. State Department for this inaugural conference. There were fifty-seven delegates from fifteen countries. The aim of this the first conference was to petition the Versailles Peace Conference to reform colonial rule and speed self-rule consistent with Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points. Good thing his typewriter ribbon fouled or there would have been more points. Woody did not know when to quit. Six later congresses followed.

1800 Philadelphia, Politics: The United States government moved from Philadelphia to the swamp at Washington D.C.

1851 Bangkok, Politics: King Mongkut was crowned King of Siam. While courting Deborah Kerr he played off the English and French colonisers against each other to maintain the independence of Siam. He also promoted the use Western cutlery. No chopsticks for him. I have spent time at Chulalongkorn University and Thammasat University in Bangkok.

1863 Paris, Art: The Salon des Refusés opened to exhibit works rejected by the offical Salon. The artists included Paul Cézanene, Camille Pissaro, Edouard Manet, and Henri Fantin-LaTour, James Whister, and others. This event heralded the beginning of modern art.

1869 New York City, Politics: Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton founded the National Woman Suffrage Association to unite campaigns for the female vote, to co-ordinate fund raising efforts, to increase lobbying in state and territory legislatures, and to have an office in Wahington D.C.

1928 Cloncurry, Queensland, Society: The Aerial Medical Service took wing and later morphed into the Flying Doctor Service. Reverend John Flynn had worked with two doctors who served an area of nearly two million square miles in West Australian and the Northern Territory. Sometimes it took weeks for a doctor to get to an injured or sick person. Flynn combined two new technologies, radio and aircraft. He raised money from a benefactor, H. V. McKay, and set it up. By the way, pedal radios were distributed to remote locations at a nominal charge since electricity was not available in the places that needed the service the most. It was renamed in 1942 and in 1955 after learning of it during a visit Queen Elizabeth gave it a royal warrant. That recognition lifted its profile in the philanthropic community, in the media, and among politicians.

1796 Gloucestershire, Medicine: English country doctor Edward Jenner administered the world’s first recorded vaccination. It was against smallpox. The vaccine was enthusiastically embraced by doctors far and wide and saved millions of lives. It also inspired the search for other preventative vaccines. So far no vaccine against stupid has been found.

1804 Meriwether Lewis and William Clark left St Louis for parts unknown. The Corps of Discovery, as it was called, had forty-five men. The journey there and back took nearly three years.

1855 Sydney, History: The Royal Mint on Macquarie Street commenced operations. The building still stands and boasts a restaurant these days.

1897 Flat Holm Island (England): Guglielmo Marconi sent the first message over the sea by wireless telegraph — radio. The equipment is being set up below.

1969 Ottawa, Politics: The Trudeau government removed homosexuality from the Criminal Code of Canada. Pierre Trudeau had often said that the nation does not belong in the nation’s bedrooms. The sky did not fall.

1607 Jamestown (VA), History: English colonists landed and set up camp. It succeeded where the Lost Colony of Roanoke of 1585 failed.

1792 Tasmania, Science: There occurred the first confirmed sighting of a Tasmania Tiger. Earlier in 1642 a crewman with Dutchman Abel Tasman had found a footprint which he likened to that of tiger. In 1792 French naturalist Jacques-Julien Houtou de Labillardière with Admiral d’Entrecasteaux’s expedition to New Holland saw one and sketched it from memory. The last one died in the Hobart Zoo in 1936. Zoologist say the dingo killed off the Tigers on the mainland of Australia, but as the Bass Strait came to separate Tasmania from the continent, those tigers there survived.

1908 Washington DC, Politics: President Theodore Roosevelt delivered the opening address entitled “Conservation as a National Duty” at the outset of a three-day meeting at the Governors’ Conference on the Conservation of Natural Resources. Roosevelt designated 150 national forests, 51 federal bird reservations, four national game preserves, five national parks, and 18 national monuments because ‘nature is not inexhaustible.’ I have read a biography of this remarkable individual. We will not see his like again.

1923 Red Cloud, Literature: Willa Cather’s novel ‘One of Ours’ was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for literature much to chagrin of ambitious rivals like Ernest Hemingway. Below is the home where her imagination flowered, and to which she often returned.

1940 London, Politics: ‘I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat’ said the new Prime Minister in his first speech in the House of Commons. That was Winston Churchill sending the English language into battle, as one of his severest critics grudgingly said.

1885 Elmira, New York, Literature: Mark Twain published ‘Huckleberry Finn,’ often cited as the great American novel. Read it.

1901 Gloucester, England, Technology: Cecil Booth patented a dust removing suction cleaner. He had seen devices that blew dust off furniture to be swept up and conceived reversing the process with a filter to capture the dust. He thought this would be a more hygienic method, if it worked. His first trial was to put a handkerchief over his mouth and suck dust off wooden chairs in a restaurant! The first version was enormous and gas-fired on a wagon drawn by a team of horses. He used it to offer a cleaning service to hotels, hospitals, schools, and like institutions as pictured below. He later turned to electric models and ever smaller devices.

1927 Hollywood, Entertainment: The first list of the Awards by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was printed on the back page of Academy’s irregular newsletter. The names were later reprinted in ‘Variety’ magazine, buried on page 7. Assiduous readers would find that ‘Wings’ was the best picture that year.

1930 Flagstaff, Arizona, Science. At the Lowell Observatory astronomer Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto. Percival Lowell had concluded that wobbles in the orbit of Uranus indicated the gravity of another planet out there and he calculated when and where to look. Tombaugh was versed in a new technique using photographic plates with a blink microscope and he took the first picture of Pluto. Other observers soon confirmed the sighting.

1953 Hollywood, Entertainment: ’Bwana Devil’ the first 3-D movie was released. A forgotten movie (rated 4.9 on the IMDB) but it seemed to herald a new age in cinema, which age briefly came and went. Three D recently came….and went again. Who talks about 3-D television these days? Sic transit 3-D, as Cicero said. We still have some 3-D glasses when the old becomes new again.

1551 San Marcos University in Lima Peru opened. The first in the Americas. It still exists as the National University of San Marcos.

1797 Napoleon entered Venice without a fight and dismembered the moribund remnant of the thousand year old Venetian Republic in a few days. He made Venice a part of Italy when he placed one of his brothers on Italian throne. Venetians and Italians agree that Venice is not Italian despite maps, passports, taxes, and more. Several books about Venice are discussed elsewhere on this blog. We hope to visit there this year.

1856 Melbourne, Politics: The antipodean Eight-Hour working day was introduced. Despite predictions of the Pox News of the day the sky did not fall.

1926 The airship Norge flew over the North Pole with Roald Amundsen on board, piloted by Umberto Nobile. It was the first overflight of the Pole.

1949 New Delhi, Politics: The Nehru government appointed Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit Indian ambassador to the United States. She is the first woman ambassador in Washington, and perhaps anywhere.

330 Constantinople became the capital of the Roman Empire. The Column of Constantine remains as shown below; it marks the spot where he declared it the capital. A giant statue of, who else, Connie surmounted the column. The corner of Turkey on the west side of Bosphorus is called Rumi, and that is a reference to Roman. Been there, seen that.

868 The first recorded reference to the Diamond Sutra, a holy text of Mahayana Buddhism, which is the world oldest surviving, dated, and printed book. It is held in the British Library.

1813 William Lawson, Gregory Blaxland, and William Wentworth led an expedition westward from Sydney over the Blue Mountains. The route is the first opening for European expansion into the continent of Australia. Settlements ascending the Mountains from the coast are named for these three stalwarts.

1947 Akron, Technology: The B. F. Goodrich Company announced the development of tubeless tire that increased the safety and ease of driving. The tire blowouts that figure so prominently in movies before this time became largely a thing of the past.

1997 Technology: Deep Blue defeated the unbeatable Garry Kasparov in chess three games to two with one draw.