It’s the Ceiling Cat’s day, and on behalf of His Felinity I’ll deliver this morning’s keynote Sermon at the AHA Convention. Wish me luck. Posting will be almost nonexistent, so bear with me.
On this day in 1913, Igor Stravinsky’s The Rites of Spring (with Nijinsky) premiered in Paris, causing a famous riot. Now, of course, now it’s mainstream music. Exactly six years later, during a solar eclipse, Arthur Eddington traveled to the island of Principe, collecting the light-bending data that confirmed Einstein’s general theory of relativity. On this day in 1942, Bing Crosby recorded “White Christmas,” still the best-selling single in record history. And, on May 29, 1953, Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary became the first people to reach the top of Mount Everest.
Notables born on this day include Bob Hope (1903), John F. Kennedy (1917), and biologist Paul Ehrlich (1932), Those who met their maker on this day include W. S. Gilbert (1911), Fanny Brice (1951), Barry Goldwater (1998), and Doc Watson (2012). Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili shows an uncharacteristic concern for creatures other than herself:
A: Where is the world headed?That’s exactly what I’m wondering.
Ja: Ku czemu zmierza świat?
Hili: Też się nad tym właśnie zastanawiam.
Reader Anne-Marie sent a fly cartoon; how many of you have felt like that that male fly? I know I have. . .
More lagniappe: a cat tw**t discovered by Matthew Cobb:
Re touching the fish – to quote a soap opera theme from years ago … “who shall have the fishie / on the little dishie/ who shall have the fishie / when the boat comes in …”
Don’t ask me what it was about. Soap-coated fish or something.
It’s from a traditional song ‘Dance to your daddy’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hO1GPGtetw
The ‘soap’ was When the Boat comes In (1976)
It’s all coming back to me. [Flees, screaming!]
The song long predates the soap: it’s described as a “traditional English folk song, originating in North East England”. That doesn’t make the song any better, just takes away the soapy connotation.
Then she falls completely for some bigger fly who is dumber than an ant. Yeah, I know what that’s like!
Good luck in the Barrel, as they say.
Eddington’s observations did show that the amount of deflection of the light near the limb of the Sun was in statistical agreement with calculations made from Einstein’s equations. However, the uncertainty in the measurements were such that some 40+ years later, they were insufficiently precise to exclude a rival theory proposed by Dicke and Brans (i.e. the Brans/Dicke theory also gave results that were in statistical agreement with Eddington’s observations). It was only experiments performed using the first space vehicles sent to Mars that excluded the rival theory.
Ffs, I can’t stop giggling at that fishy tweet.
Looking forward to a report on the AHA Convention. 🙂