April 19: Hili dialogue (and Leon lagniappe)

April 19, 2016 • 6:40 am

It’s April 19, and on this day in 1770, Captain Cook espied the eastern coast of Australia.  In the U.S. the Revolutionary War began on this day with the battles of Lexington and Conrcord in Massachusetts (1775). In 1943, the revolt of the Warsaw Ghetto began, and in 1971, Charles Manson was sentenced to death for his two murder sprees. Later commuted to life in prison, Manson’s now 81 and will die in his cell in California. On this day in 2013, one of the Tsarnaev brothers was killed and the other captured; both had participated in the bombing at the Boston Marathon.

Notables born on this day include Jayne Mansfield (1933), the execrable Stanley Fish (1938), and Ashley Judd (1968). Those who died include Lord Byron (1824), CHARLES DARWIN (1882), Pierre Curie (1906), John Maynard Smith (2004), and Levon Helm (2012).

Meanwhile in Dobrazyn, Hili is NOT minding her manners:

Malgorzata: A well brought up cat doesn’t eat straight from the can!
Hili: But nobody is looking.
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In Polish:
Małgorzata: Hili, dobrze wychowany kot nie je prosto z puszki!
Hili: Przecież nikt nie widzi.

And in nearby Wroclawek, Leon seems to be off his leash:

Leon: I’m checking if it will rain tomorrow.

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Finally, Matthew Cobb called my attention to an article in yesterday’s Evening Standard reporting that a fox boarded a double-decker bus in London, climbed to the top deck, and then dismounted at the Imperial War Museum. Of course it appeared on Twi**er:

The beast left a mark on the bus, though:

“When we pulled up at the back of the Imperial War Museum, the driver came on the tannoy and said ‘OK guys, it looks like we’ve got a fox on the bus. We’re just going to wait here a while and try to coax him off’.

“As soon as the doors opened, the fox trotted down the stairs and hopped out onto the pavement.

“It may not have had an Oyster card, but it left a liquid offering on the top step, so I guess it can’t have been quite as cool as it seemed.”

15 thoughts on “April 19: Hili dialogue (and Leon lagniappe)”

  1. “but it left a liquid offering on the top step”

    Marking its territory, so it knows which bus to take in the future?

  2. Well, that fox is likely better than I am at finding my way around a city via mass transit.

    1. It’s a pre-paid card that allows travel on the tube, buses and trains (and some riverboats) in London.

      1. Excellent, that’s a new one on me too. Now you will have to explain the tube…just kidding. Don’t need to explain why no one in the U.K. is named Randy either.

  6. ” In the U.S. the Revolutionary War began on this day with the battles of Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts (1775).”

    “On this day in 2013, one of the Tsarnaev brothers was killed and the other captured; both had participated in the bombing at the Boston Marathon.”

    Because April 19th is, due to item one above, a holiday in Massachusetts, “Patriots’ Day,” on which date (or very close to it) the marathon is always run…

    1. Surely if anyone is going to run a Marathon on “Patriots Day”, it should be Athens?
      Didn’t Wossname use a horse for the night time ride? [Struggling to drag it out of the brain cell’s depths. Not John Paul Jones – didn’t he launch the naval assaults on Cumbria? … Revere? Paul Revere? Ohh, that hurt.]

        2. Now I sit correcting. Well, agreeing too. From Wikipedia :
          “For the Led Zeppelin musician, see John Paul Jones (musician). For other uses, see John Paul Jones (disambiguation).
          John Paul Jones (born John Paul; July 6, 1747 – July 18, 1792) was a Scottish American sailor and the United States’ first well-known naval fighter in the American Revolutionary War. “

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