Category: Practice

1539 Hernando de Soto claimed Florida for Spain. Been to Miami and Orlando for conferences. Kate has been to visit Gwen, too.

1748 Amsterdam began the first municipal postal service. Been there many times.

1769 Tahiti. Lieutenant James Cook observed the transit of Venus in a tent. Afterwards, he continued to search for Terra Australis Incognita. Stopped there en route to Australia for the first time in January 1974.

1923 Rome. The Italian government of Benito Mussolini enfranchised women. to Il Duce made the announcement at a world conference on female suffrage held in Rome. Pictured below are members of the Australian delegation to the confab.

1965 Space. One hundred and twenty miles above Earth, Ed White stepped out of Gemini IV for the first American spacewalk for twenty minutes. Gemini missions developed techniques for rendezvous and docking used in later Apollo missions.

1883 Chicago. The first El(evated) trains began to run. We have ridden a few, mostly around the Loop and still have our cards.

1935 George Herman Ruth announced his retirement from baseball. He had acquired the knick-name ‘Babe’ as a teenager for his babyface. He drew so many fans to Yankee games that with the gate proceeds a new stadium was built, often called ‘The House that Ruth Built,’ which lasted until 2008. His batting records stood until the 1960s and 1970s. By the way the Baby Ruth candy bar, it was claimed had nothing to do with George Herman though it came into being in 1920, the year George Herman began hitting prodigious homes runs for the Yankees. The Chicago manufacturer claimed the candy bar was named for President Grover Cleveland’s daughter Ruth, hence Baby Ruth, though there was no connection and Cleveland had left office long before and returned to Buffalo, while Ruth had died. It seems to have been contrived to capitalise on George Herman’s fame without paying him an honorarium.

1953 Westminster. Princess Elizabeth was crowned Queen Elizabeth II in the first televised coronation. Eight thousand guests attended the ceremony, and three million lined the streets. It was broadcast in forty-four languages to millions more even to the antipodes. It remains the last televised British coronation to date.

1962 Paris, Sports: The French Tennis Open was an all-Australian affair. In the Men’s final it was Rod Laver versus Roy Emerson. Laver prevailed, winning three of five sets. But wait, there is more. The Women’s Open was also all-Australian between Margret Court and Lesley Turner with Court winning two of three sets. Court is shown below.

1966 Space. Surveyor I from the United States made the first soft landing on the Moon and began to transmit data with two television cameras and more than a hundred engineering sensors, including radar. It stopped working later in July of 1966.

1763 Glasgow, Literature: H. Spens published the first English translation of Plato’s ‘The Republic’ (1763) and added an introductory essay on ancient philosophy rendering them as Christian precursors. A copy of this edition sold on San Francisco for $US8,000 in 2009. It is a book I have read in whole and in part many times in several translations.

1808 Athens, OH. Ohio University was founded as the first land-grant university. The idea of using land to fund higher education was extended nationally later in the Morrill Acts.

1924 Washington DC. An act of Congress recognised the citizenship of all Native Americans. President Calvin Coolidge signed it the next day. However, the right to vote was governed by state laws, and in many states Native Indians were ineligible to vote until 1957 when Maine was the last state to enfranchise Indians. Coolidge is shown below with representatives of Indian peoples.

1964 Nairobi. Kenya became a republic with Jomo Kenyatta as president. It became one of the success stories of African states. This entry reminded me of Mike Resnick, ‘Kirinyaga: A Fable of Utopia’ (1998) related to Kenya.

1980 Atlanta, Journalism: CNN went to air as the first 24-hour televised news service, repeating the same headlines every hour mixed with ephemeral sensationalism. The Cable News Network was the initiative of Ted Turner.

1279 BC Ramesses II became Pharaoh of Egypt. Kate has been to Egypt and seen the statues below. It is Ramesses on the left.

1859 In Westminster Big Ben began to keep the time atop St Stephen’s Tower. One story has it that the bell was called ‘Big Ben’ after Sir Benjamin Hall who was London commissioner of works who supervised the construction. The clock is linked to the Greenwich Observatory to keep the time accurate. The smooth motion of the pendulum was once regulated by a stack of coins. A light above Big Ben is illuminated when parliament is in session.

1884 Battle Creek MI, Commerce: Dr John Kellogg patented the cornflake as an anaphrodisiac. Look it up. He was so nuts, as the lengthy entry on Wikipedia shows, that he makes Michel Foucault seem normal.

1929 Ford Motors signed a contract to produce Model A’s on the Volga River. The first order was for 72,000 vehicles. Henry Ford thought this example of capitalism would undermine communism. At the time the USA did not recognise the USSR, and so Ford had no diplomatic assistance.

1997 The Confederation Bridge linked Prince Edward Island with New Brunswick over thirteen kilometres of ice covered waters, a remarkable feat of engineering at the time. It was built as a public-private partnership. Each day 4000 vehicles use it, many of them surely carry the potatoes for which the the Island is famous. Never been there.

1783 The first daily newspaper in the USA began publication, the ‘Pennsylvania Evening Post.’ It had been a weekly since 1776.

1848 After the Mexican-American War (25 April 1846–2 February 1848) Mexico was coerced into a treaty ceding what are now New Mexico, California and parts of Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and Colorado to the United States in return for $15 million dollars, that is about $400 billion today.

1854 The Kansas-Nebraska Act created the two territories, giving residents the option to choose slave or free. The act voided the Missouri Compromise and led to the Jayhawk War in Kansas. These events are often cited as steps toward the Civil War.

1963 Sixteen year-old New Jersey teenager Lesley Gore sang ‘It’s My Party’ on American Bandstand. And she’ll cry if she wants to. This is a Gore I might have voted for.

1971 Mariner 9, weighing more than one thousand pounds, was launched from Cape Canaveral. It orbited Mars for nearly a year, sending back video, photographs, and sound recordings. It was the first probe placed in orbit around the Red Planet.

1453 The Ottoman Turks conquered Christian Byzantium, ending its remnant of the Roman Empire. The name is a corruption of Osman, a leader who formed a coalition of peoples into an empire. Not all Ottomans were Muslims and not all Ottoman Muslims were Turks. So much for generalisations. The part of Turkey that is in Europe on the west side of the Bosphorus is called Rumi, a vestigial reference to Roman. We have been there.

1913 Paris, Arts: Igor Stravinsky’s ‘Le Sacre du printemps’ premiered with Vaslav Nijinsky in the lead. It was panned by critics and booed by the audience in a riot that prevented completion. The Marx Brothers ‘A Night at the Opera’ was partly inspired by this event.

1942 Bing Crosby recorded ‘White Christmas.’ An estimated 100 million copies have been sold, including one in Minden. (It’s an in-joke.)

1953 New Zealander Edmund Hillary with Nepali Tenzing Norgay reached the summit of Mount Everest. Efforts had been made to reach this peak since 1921. After service in World War II, the restless Hillary took up climbing.

2005 Danica Patrick took the lead in the Indianapolis 500 for three laps. She was the first woman to do so. She finished fourth from thirty-three starters. Janet Guthrie had been the first woman to drive in the Indy in 1977. The PGA was still trying to keep women off the greens at the time. Patrick is at the wheel in the picture below.

0585 Sardis, Turkey. A solar eclipse occurred in the midst of battle between Medes and Lydians. Both armies took it as an apocalyptic sign and fled. Thales recorded the date and it is used as a reference point for dating other events.

1851 Akron, OH, Politics. The Ohio Women’s Rights Convention met, calling for human equality, including the suffrage. A great deal of evidence about women’s work both in the home, cottage industries, and workplaces was presented to show the importance of women.

1892 San Francisco, Ecology. John Muir with others formed the Sierra Club for the conservation of nature.

1937 Wolfsburg, Germany. The Gesellschaft zur Vorbereitung des Deutschen Volkswagens was founded to manufacture the People’s Car. The model was show in 1939 just before the war. Few were made before the factory was turned to weapons.

1961 London, Politics. The Observer newspaper published the first of series of articles about forgotten Prisoners calling for an amnesty campaign, this one focussed on Portugal. The creation of Amnesty International came soon thereafter.

1679 London, Politics. Parliament passed Habeas Corpus Act which allows a prisoner to challenge the cause of arrest before a court.

1703 Peter the Great founded St Petersburg. Been there, seen that. A discussion of a biography of Great Peter can be found elsewhere on this blog.

1873 Troy, Archeology. Heinrich Schliemann found Priam’s Treasure of gold and precious stones. Ditto.

1937 San Francisco, Technology: The Golden Gate Bridge was opened to pedestrians. More than 200,000 people paid .25 cents to walk across it during the weekend. On Monday President Franklin Roosevelt pressed a telegraph key in the White House that raised the barrier to automobile traffic for the first time. Ditto.

1967 Canberra, Politics. The Holt conservative government called a national referendum that recognised Aboriginal rights to citizenship. The initiative for the vote is credited to Liberal Bill Wentworth in a private members bill. The Opposition Labor Party supported the government’s call for a YES vote, which was 90.7%. The ALP How-to-Vote card is shown below.

Since we got a Thermomix we have been asked many times what we use it for. We always managed to cite a few examples, but decided it was time to be more systematic. We kept a log for about a month and it is presented in the table below. Some the same person uses it twice for separate purposes.

Date What Who
11 March watermelon drink and later sweet potato puree Michael
11 March hard boiled eggs Katie
12 March carrots puree Michael
13 March pistachio nuts with bread crumbs for a coating Michael
14 March caramelised onions Katie
15 March chocolate mould Katie
15 March stuffing for squash Michael
15 March kale and basil mixture Michael
16 March chocolate sauce Katie
17 March Rye bread ends with caraway seed Michael
18 March Watermelon drink Michael
20 March chocolate sauce and hard boiled eggs Katie
20 March green leaves to dress linguine Michael
21 March greens to mix with a chili sauce Michael
22 March boiled rice Katie
24 March pizza dough Katie
26 March carrots puree Michael
30 March leek, potato, chicken soup Katie
31 March watermelon drink Michael
31 March broccoli for dressing Michael
2 April hard boiled and then later eggs breadcrumbs from ends Katie
5 April pureed dog food and later toasted caraway seeds with ground hazelnuts Katie
8 April dog meatballs mushroom and the later miso sauce Katie
11 April salted caramel sauce and then later spaghetti Katie
12 April hard boiled and then later eggs sticky date pudding Katie
Executive Summary: We would be lost without it. Jobs that used to take hours are now done in thirty seconds, like pulverising dried citrus skins to make a powder.
We know about the problems some users have encountered but so our experiences are very good.
Note on nomenclature. When we got it, we christened it Asimov as in ‘I, Robot.’ We still refer to it that way between ourselves.

1374 BC Ugarit (Syria), Astronomy: A solar eclipse was observed and recorded in Mesopotamia by Assyrian stargazers, who wrote that ‘the Sun went down in the daytime.’ Ugarit is on the Mediterranean coast of Syria as indicated below.

1469 Florence (IT), History: To Bernardo and Bartolomea was born a son, Niccolò Machiavelli. We know a little about his schooling from Bernardo’s day book of expenses, but after about age fourteen he disappears until taking office at twenty-nine. Births and deaths do not usually make this summary but Machia is an exception.

1841 Auckland, History: New Zealand was declared a colony separate from New South Wales and has stayed separate since, and proud of it!

1958 Truman Capote published ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ and no one noticed Holly Golighty until 1961 when along came Edda Kathleen van Heemstra (Hepburn-)Ruston.

1978 Maynard (MA), Technology: Gary Thuerk of the Digital Equipment Corporation sent a marketing email to 400 users on ARPAnet, which had 2600 users in all. The managers of ARPAnet quickly censured the unwanted solicitation but it was the birth of spam as we know it. The term ‘spam’ was ostensibly derived from a Monty Python skit where a waitress recites a menu in which every item includes spam. It is on You Tube. There is in Honolulu a is a spring festival of …. SPAM, which we have visited to verify its reality. Wikipedia offers an explanation of this oddity. What we know is that Honolulu is only place we have seen spam sushi.