Category: Practice

0000 This is the Winter Solstice in the southern hemisphere with the shortest day of the year followed by the longest night.

1675 King Charles II established the Royal Greenwich Observatory.

1944 President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Servicemen’s Re-adjustment Act, known as the GI Bill of Rights, to assure returning veterans of a smooth transition back to civilian life with low cost housing loans, unemployment benefits, start-up loans for small business, and funding for education. Soldiers returning from earlier wars often had great difficulty in starting over in civilian life. This bill’s purpose was materially to assist that adjustment. In so doing it transformed higher education from elite to mass because so many veterans used the allowance to go (back) to school.

1960 La Révolution tranquille began with the election of Jean Lesage’s Liberal government in Quebec. Lesage had been a protégé of Mackenzie King. English-speaking bankers in Montréal and Toronto would not buy Quebec bonds, so Lesage went to New York City for finance.

1973 Skylab astronauts splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean after a record twenty-eight days in space. Skylab included a workshop, a solar observatory, and several hundred life science and physical science experiments. Two more manned missions boarded Skylab in July and November. Plans to stabilise its decaying orbit with a space shuttle mission were not realised in time to stop its re-entry in 1979. Some of the debris of re-entry fell on the property of Kate’s parents in West Australia and we have it framed on the wall. With that background she was keen to see the Skylab replica at the Johnson Space Center in Houston a couple of years ago. Very keen.

1986 Mexico City, Sports. Only a four months after the Falklands War, while tension remained high, Argentina and England met in the World Cup. Argentine Diego Maradona dribbled past five English defenders to score his second goal in a 2-1 win. This goal has been repeatedly voted the greatest one-man goal in World Cup history. Argentina when on to win the Cup in 1986. His ‘Mano de Dios’ goal was scored earlier in this game, and it is the one most closely associated with him. By the way the referees who allowed this goal to stand were from Sweden and Ghana.

1307 Peking, Politics. Wuzong (Wu Tsung or Chih-Ta) of Yuan became Mongol Emperor of China. He distributed the works of Confucius in the land and supported Buddhists temples. Paper money was used extensively during this period, although only two examples of Yuan Dynasty paper money remain today. For that reason the Chinese currency has been called Yuan. I could not find any images of the currency. N.B. the Wikipedia entry on this man is a mess.

1788 Concord, New Hampshire was the ninth state to ratify the United States Constitution securing the necessary three-quarters of states.

1934 Lincoln, NE. Samuel Herman Gottscho snapped this photograph of the north facade of the Nebraska state capitol in Lincoln, Nebraska. Gottscho photographed architecture for years and compiled an archive of 45,000 items now held by the Library of Congress.

1948 Dr Peter Goldmark of CBS Laboratories demonstrated the long-playing record with twenty minutes of music on each side. Although the RCA 78s offered a higher quality sound, when played on the right but expensive equipment, the length of the LP made it a market success. Goldmark was motivated by the desire for longer pieces of classical music, like that of Johannes Brahms, to be played without interruption.

1956 Washington, DC, Politics. University of Michigan graduate playwright Arthur Miller refused to answer questions before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He was stripped of his passport, and cited for contempt of Congress and fined. A later appeal exonerated him. Pictured below is the HUAC circus at work destroying careers and lives without achieving anything.

1214 Oxford University was chartered and the plumbing was installed which has since remained unchanged. Its purpose was to train priests. Been to conferenceville there a few times. Once in January at New College we all wore scarves, hats, and gloves at the college dinner table.

1789 Paris. Members of the Third Estate took the Tennis Court Oath. In a fiscal crisis, the King had called each of the three Estates into session to raise taxes. The Third included wealthy merchants and land owners and officials of towns and villages who were to represent 98% of the population. To insure that the members voted as the King Louis XVI wished, once assembled in the royal tennis court, the doors were locked. They numbered 577 and they agreed unanimously not to vote new taxes. This was the first open rebellion against the status quo in the slide to the French Revolution.

1819 Liverpool, Technology. The paddle-wheel steamship Savannah arrived after a voyage from Norfolk Virginia of twenty-seven days. The first steam-powered ship to cross the Atlantic Ocean. The engine and wood fuel took up so much room there was little cargo so that there was no commercial gain, and the ship was converted back to sail. It was twenty years before another steamship made the passage.

1963 Moscow. The Soviet Union and the United States agreed to establish a hotline telephone to ally nuclear tensions. Since that time many people have claimed credit for suggesting the idea, but none of them negotiated with the Soviets.

1979 Washington, Environment. President Jimmie Carter marked the installation of solar energy panels on the White House which were removed by his successor never to return.

240 The Librarian at Alexandria Eratosthenes estimated the circumference of Earth using two sticks and his brain to within sixty-six miles of accuracy. He measured shadows at the same time in different places to asssess the curvature of the earth’s surface, which curvature is today denied by Flat Earth Republicans who fear falling off the edge unarmed.

1741 Berlin, Science. Prussian King Frederich the Great appointed Leonhard Euler a professor. Euler was a prolific mathematician whose discoveries include infinitesimal calculus and graph theory along with pioneering contributions to topology and analytic number theory. Even more important was his introduction of terminology and notation that remains in use. He published more than sixty books.

1829 London. Sir Robert Peel introduced the Metropolitan Police Act to establish a single, unified force in the London region. These were officers were called Peelers, and only later Bobbies. Every effort was made to distinguish the police from the army in uniform style and colour, ranks, and rules of conduct. It was standardised, professional, civilian, and answerable to the public. Below some 1829 Peelers. (When Peel later was Prime Minister he tried to assuage the onset of the Irish Potato famine and lost his office as a result of the costs thereof.)

1889 Naples, Cuisine. Chef Raffaele Esposito honoured Queen Margherita of Savoy by using a flatbread base and topped it with a combination of fresh tomato, mozzarella, and basil for the colours of the new Italian flag. Thus was born the pizza. The etymology of the term is clouded but one suggestion is that the word entered use in the Italian peninsula from the Byzantine world where it referred to flat bread like pita today.

1917 The British royal family renounced all its German names and titles and took the name Windsor as an act of patriotism. It was a very popular move at a dark time in World War I.

1873 Susan B Anthony was fined $100 for having tried to vote in the presidential election in the previous November. The Susan B Anthony silver dollar was minted in 1979 in her honour. Those who prosecuted her have no such memorial.

1923 The first Checker Cab hit the street in Kalamazoo Michigan. It was designed and built specifically to be a big city taxi, first in Chicago. A Russian immigrant and his family cobbled together the finance to build the first ones and were soon producing a hundred a month. In the 1960s Checker produced 8000 cars a year. Durable, manoeuvrable, dent-proof, and comfortable for driver and passengers, at twice the weight of a typical sedan they were also gas guzzlers. The last one was built in 1982. Ridden in a few but not the one Travis Bickle drove in 1976. Phew!

1960 Denver, Sports. A young man from the steel mill country of Pennsylvania won the Masters Gold Tournament in a remarkable last round in which he overcame a seven stroke deficit to tie and then set a course record that stood for years. This was Arnold Palmer whose simple speech, working class background, and affinity with the crowd was a breath of fresh air at a time when golf was the preserve of the idle rich. He learned golf early in morning and in the evening twilight in the private club where his father worked because he was not allowed on the greens when club members were active. In 1971 he bought that golf club and made it public.

1979 Vienna. President Jimmy Carter and Soviet First Secretary Leonid Brezhnev signed the SALT-II Treaty, limiting strategic nuclear weapons. Though never ratified, thanks to disruption caused by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, both parties observed its strictures. I heard the West German foreign minister of the day describe it as the most important treaty ever mooted.

1983 Cape Canaveral. Sally Ride in Challenger went into a near Earth orbit. She was responsible for the guidance systems on ascent and descent, as well as operating the Canadarm to retrieve an orbiting satellite. This latter operation was the first time it had been tried and it succeeded.

1579 Francis Drake claimed Nova Albion for the crown in what is now San Francisco Harbor where his party stayed for about a month. Been to San Francisco several times but did not see any sign of Drake, but then I was not looking for it.

1885 New York City. Two hundred crates containing three hundred and fifty individual pieces arrived in the Harbor. When assembled over the following weeks, they made the Statue of Liberty. Lady Liberty was modelled after sculptor Frederic Bartholdi’s mother. Gustav Eiffel provided the structural engineering.

1928 Amelia Earhart of Atchison Kansas flew across the Atlantic in twenty plus hours to land in Wales. She did it again in 1932. She had flown an even greater distance from Oakland to Honolulu in 1925. Then she flew off into eternity far too soon.

1950 Chicago, Medicine. Dr Richard Lawler performed the first kidney transplant operation. There were more than 16,000 in the United States in 2015.

1961 Paris. About to return to Moscow Rudolf Nureyev at Le Bourget Airport sought political asylum by wrestling with the Soviet guards accompanying the Kirov troupe and vaulting a barrier. Only in 1993 did he return to Russia at the invitation of Mikhail Gorachev to appear on the stage at the Bolshoi Theatre in an emotional homecoming. There are videos of the leaping Rudi on You Tube.

1824 The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was founded in England. MP Richard Martin led a group of twenty-two parliamentarians which created the society and then lobbied for a royal warrant which was granted on this day.

1884 Coney Island, LaMarcus Thompson opened for business the first documented switchback railway for amusement, that is, a roller coaster which attained speeds of six miles an hour. The appetite for roller coasters has waxed and waned over the years but they still exist. The biggest is 456 feet high and its cars reach 128 mph in New Jersey.

1903 Henry Ford founded the Ford Motor Company. He had started making horseless carriages in 1896. Those early sales funded the development of the Ford Model A as a reliable and inexpensive automobile. Books about his later efforts to grow rubber in South America for Fords are discussed elsewhere on this blog.

1933 President Franklin Roosevelt signed a bill creating the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. It guaranteed deposits in commercial banks, as part of a suite of measures to restore vitality and confidence in American banks. While the FDIC remains it was eviscerated during the Reagan Administration and as a result did nothing to avert the financial crises of the last decades, though it still has a staff of well-paid executives who attend meetings, as revealed in House hearings chaired by that crusader extraordinaire Henry Waxman.

1963 On Vostok 6 cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space. Over three Earth days she did forty-eight orbits which added up to more time in space than all American astronauts combined to that date. It was part of campaign of Soviet Firsts in Space. After she left the space program she served as a representative on many national and international women’s organisations and events. Only in 1983 did NASA include a woman on board challenger.

1215 King John applied his regal seal to the Magna Carta, the first coherent statement of the rights of citizens, including private property, jury trial by peers, religious freedom, and more. King John had stumbled into one disaster after another, and in response to each raised taxes, which finally led nobles to resist. They met at Runnymeade on the Thames River to negotiate a conclusion since neither side could prevail by arms. Where was Robin Hood?

1300 Dante Alighieri was named one of the six priors who governed Florence. His father was a money lender whose wealth established Dante as a poet. As Prior he banished several writers who had criticised his poetry. In turn he himself was banished in 1302 and while a wandering penitent he wrote the Comedy through which his name continues to live. I once heard his English translator John Ciardi read passages from it, and the memory still stirs emotion. There is a mystery series featuring Dante as exampled below.

1844 Charles Goodyear patented vulcanised rubber which is a curing that alters the substance into a slick hard surface that resists weather and does not stick. Neither the blimp nor the tires has a direct connection to Goodyear, but rather that company took his name as an historic tribute. Ever more domed stadiums put the blimp pictured below out of business.

1944 Regina, Saskatchewan. The Cooperative Commonwealth Federation swept into office and the indefatigable Tommy Douglas became premier. His government led the way to hospital and health insurance, no-fault automobile insurance, old age pensions, and a host of other initiatives all while staying within budget. Where there was a will, there was a way. A biography of Tommy Can is discussed elsewhere on this blog.

1946 US Ambassador to the UN Bernard Baruch presented a plan to bring nuclear technology and weapons under international control with extensive inspection and a gradual reduction in the production of arms in favour of other technologies. Distrust and hostility was no great that the proposal was rejected before the details had been tabled. It is unlikely that the plan would have been supported by the Senate, in any event. In NRA logic many of the officials who worked on the plan and lobbied in the United Nations for it, were soon to be the targets of that ravening beast HUAC and its spawn from Wisconsin.

1777 The US Congress adopted the stars and strips as the national flag. The popular lore is that a Philadelphia seamstress, Betsy Ross, designed it and gave it to George Washington who then recommended it to Congress.

1846 Sacramento, CA. The ambitious and irresponsible Captain John Fremont declared the California Republic, which lasted three weeks. This action precipitated the Mexican-American War. Americans outnumbered Mexicans in the area, and many Mexicans wanted freedom from distant Mexico City. The self-styled Bear Flaggers modelled some of their actions and the star on the flag on the earlier revolt in Texas. When US Navy ships arrived to protect the Bear Flaggers from Mexican retaliation, the California Republic evaporated.

1914 St John’s, Newfoundland. John Adcock and Arthur Brown took off in a Vickers biplane made of canvas and plywood to fly across the Atlantic, landing sixteen hours later in Clifton Ireland. This was the first trans-Atlantic flight.

1951 The US Census Bureau turned on UNIVAC, a commercial digital computer named the Universal Automatic Computer, a successor ENIAC or Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator. UNIVAC weighed 16,000 pounds and used 5000 vacuum tubes. The cell phone today has more computing power that this behemoth.

1954 The first nationwide civil defense drill in fifty-four cities to simulate a nuclear attack was declared a success though it was estimated that more than twelve million people would have been killed immediately. At 10 am Eastern Time alarms sounded and citizens were urged to seek shelter. President Eisenhower led the way by going underground. Such drills recurred with Conelrad tests a feature of my childhood. The name is a contraction of Control of Electromagnetic Radiation for those who must know such things. There are plenty of instances of such broadcasts on You Tube. (The most powerful reminder of those days is the film ‘Ladybug, Ladybug’ (1963). As usual the ‘New York Times’ reviewer, Bosley Crowther missed the point entirely in his comments on 24 December 1963.) Pictured below is an example of a duck-and-cover drill that we did. Today these drills are inspired by the NRA.

313 The putative date for the death of Alexander the Great in Babylon.

1816 Sydney. The ring road around the grounds of the Botanic Gardens was completed, and that has since been taken to be date of establishment of the Gardens. In 1959 the Gardens were granted the royal epithet. The visionary Lachlan Macquarie was governor at the time of its foundation. We have been in the grounds many times and sat in Mrs Macquarie’s chair. (Intriguing?)

1923 Vegemite went on the market, the dark brown salt that tastes like uncooked yeast made from brewery waste. The Walker Company arranged a public competition to name this concoction. The winning name was picked from a hat. In the 1930s the name was changed to Parwill in response to competition from the equally dubious Marmite, but reverted to Vegemite in 1935. The name Parwill was used in a rhyming commercial on radio, and the advertising agency convinced the proprietor of Vegemite to change the name of the product to fit the jingle and linguistically to distinguish itself from Marmite. Much legal action occurred. Vegemite is an acquired taste like water boarding.

1966 The Supreme Court of Republican Chief Justice Earl Warren ruled in Miranda v Arizona that suspects must be informed of their rights before interrogation. Ernesto Miranda had been coerced into a confession and his American Civil Liberties Union legal team appealed. By the way Warren himself concurred with this ruling.

1990 Demolition of the Berlin Wall began. It had been breached in November 1989. The work was done by one-time East German border guards. Its twenty-eight miles completely surrounded West Berlin as an anti-fascist protection barrier to keep the fascists out of East Berlin such was their clamour to get it.