Monday: Hili dialogue

May 9, 2016 • 6:15 am

It’s Monday, May 9, and today will see a rare event: the transit of Mercury across the sun.This starts at 7:12 a.m. EST, and will last over 7 hours. Need I remind you to NOT look directly at the Sun? (You couldn’t see Mercury anyway). Here’s the path of full visibility (darkest shading). Go here to see when it starts in your area. And, of course, I’d appreciate any photographs that readers take (while NOT looking directly at the Sun!).

Screen shot 2016-05-08 at 7.50.05 PM

After that excitement, I’ll just tell you that on this day in 1941, the British captured a German submarine containing the Enigma machine. And on May 8, 1970, between 75,000 and 100,000 people demonstrated at the White House against the Vietnam War. I was among them. Finally, exactly 4 years later the House of Representatives opened impeachment hearings against Richard M. Nixon.

Sophie Scholl, one of the White Rose group, and one of my heroes, was born on this day in 1921, and, at 22 (along with her brother and a friend), was guillotined by the Nazis for resistance work in 1943. Go here to see an unbearably sad clip of her last moments, taken from a 2005 movie. Manfred Eigen was born on this day in 1927, and Bill Joel in 1949. Notables who died on this day include Friedrich Schiller (1805), Tenzing Norgay (1986) and Lena Horne (2010).

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili doesn’t like Mondays any better than the rest of us, though I don’t know why; she is, after all, a CAT:

Hili: We have to face the truth.
Cyrus: What do you mean?
Hili: It’s Monday.

P1040191

In Polish:
Hili: Musimy spojrzeć prawdzie w oczy.
Cyrus: Co masz na myśli?
Hili: Jest poniedziałek.
And out in Winnipeg, Gus is in the garden, inspecting the newly-sprung tulips:
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5 thoughts on “Monday: Hili dialogue”

    1. That second paper provokes the thought that church and Sunday school might be making people miserable. I propose getting rid of Christianity as a cure.

  2. Of course, when the US film of the capture of U-571 was made, it was a US crew who did it. The actual event took place a full six months before Japan and Germany declared war on the USA. The film-makers must have a twinge of conscience, since they changed the number (the real submarine was U-110), and the alleged date was altered to spring 1942.

  3. I used to skim quickly over these birthdays and death days, but now I really enjoy these “teasers” about interesting events or people I had never heard of.

  4. Manfred Eigen was born on this day in 1927

    The “hypercycles” guy?
    Yes. Man, that book gave me a week’s worth of headaches.

    Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1967), shared with Ronald George Wreyford Norrish and George Porter, for his studies on the kinetics of extremely fast running chemical reactions with relaxation methods

    Oh, I didn’t know that. That would explain why following his logic on chemical equilibria gave me a headache.
    That Book : Title Steps towards life: a perspective on evolution
    Authors Manfred Eigen, Ruthild Winkler
    Publisher Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 1992
    ISBN 019854751X, 9780198547518

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