Sunday: Hili dialogue

July 7, 2019 • 7:00 am

As you read this, I’ll likely be at the airport for the red-eye flight back to Chicago—arriving at 4:30 a.m. And there are no movies (or snacks) on these 8-hour intra-country United flights. Oy!

Well, good morning anyway, on Sunday, July 7, 2019. It’s National Strawberry Sunday Day, though I’d prefer a good hot fudge sundae, something increasingly rare. It’s also World Chocolate Day, at least since 2009. Confusingly, though, there are four National Chocolate Days in America. Well, it’s always good to have an excuse to eat chocolate.

Stuff that happened on this day include:

  • 1456 – A retrial verdict acquits Joan of Arc of heresy 25 years after her death.
  • 1534 – Jacques Cartier makes his first contact with aboriginal peoples in what is now Canada.
  • 1863 – The United States begins its first military draft; exemptions cost $300.
  • 1865 – Four conspirators in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln are hanged.
  • 1898 – U.S. President William McKinley signs the Newlands Resolution annexing Hawaii as a territory of the United States.
  • 1916 – The New Zealand Labour Party was founded in Wellington.
  • 1928 – Sliced bread is sold for the first time (on the inventor’s 48th birthday) by the Chillicothe Baking Company of Chillicothe, Missouri.

Remember the phrase “the greatest thing since sliced bread”? Well, thank Otto Rohwedder for that phrase. His first bread-slicing machine, shown below, is displayed at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C.

Bread-slicing machine. 1975.315261.1.
  • 1944 – World War II: Largest Banzai charge of the Pacific War at the Battle of Saipan.

From Wikipedia re the above:

The largest banzai charge of the war took place during the Battle of Saipan. General Yoshitsugu Saitō gathered almost 4,300 Japanese soldiers, walking wounded and some civilians, many unarmed and ordered the charge. On the evening of June 7, 1944 it slammed directly into the Army’s 1st and 2nd Battalions of the 105th Infantry Regiment (United States), who would lose almost 650 men [10] in the 15 hour pitched battle. In the end U.S. Army and Marine lines would hold, almost all the Japanese soldiers taking part in the charge would be killed.

  • 1946 – Mother Francesca S. Cabrini becomes the first American to be canonized.  [JAC: She worked and died in Chicago.]

Here are the two miracles required for her be canonized (made a saint):

Cabrini was beatified on November 13, 1938, by Pope Pius XI, and canonized on July 7, 1946, by Pope Pius XII. Her beatification miracle involved the restoration of sight and healing the disfigurements of a one day old baby who had been blinded by a 50% silver nitrate solution instead of the normal 1% solution in the child’s eyes. The child, named Peter Smith, would later be present at her canonization and become a priest. Her canonization miracle involved the healing of a terminally ill member of her congregation. When she was canonized, 120,000 people from all over the area filled Soldier Field for a Mass of thanksgiving.

  • 1954 – Elvis Presley makes his radio debut when WHBQ Memphis played his first recording for Sun Records, “That’s All Right”.
  • 1980 – Institution of sharia law in Iran.
  • 1981 – U.S. President Ronald Reagan appoints Sandra Day O’Connor to become the first female member of the Supreme Court of the United States.
  • 1985 – Boris Becker becomes the youngest player ever to win Wimbledon at age 17.
  • 1992 – The New York Court of Appeals rules that women have the same right as men to go topless in public. [JAC: And yet New York doesn’t appear to be flooded with topless women.]

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1843 – Camillo Golgi, Italian physician and pathologist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1926)
  • 1860 – Gustav Mahler, Austrian composer and conductor (d. 1911)
  • 1861 – Nettie Stevens, American geneticist (d. 1912)

Stevens, a crack insect geneticist, discovered the existence of sex chromosomes (she used mealworms), a seminal finding, but, as was the case for women in those days, she neither got much credit for her discovery nor did she ever hold a regular faculty or full research position at a university. Here she is:

  • 1891 – Virginia Rappe, American model and actress (d. 1921)
  • 1930 – Hamish MacInnes, Scottish mountaineer and author
  • 1940 – Ringo Starr, English singer-songwriter, drummer, and actor
  • 1980 – Michelle Kwan, American figure skater

Those who crossed the Rainbow Bridge on this day include only one person whose death I found worth noting:

  • 1930 – Arthur Conan Doyle, British writer (b. 1859)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili finds solace in the usual way:

A: You came back wet and hungry.
Hili: Now I’m only wet.
In Polish:
Ja: Wróciłaś mokra i głodna.
Hili: Teraz jestem już tylko mokra.

Reader Jonathan from the UK sent me a scary photo he took along with a note:

I was driving home through Cumbria yesterday when I saw the road-sign on the attached picture.  I should reassure you that in the UK ‘cats-eyes’  are what we call the small reflective glass spheres in a rubber casing that mark the centre of the road so it’s not as bad as it seems!  I thought the picture might appeal to you.

Well, it was funny, but also a bit scary:

Reader Su says she found this “Happy Birthday Mom card, purchased off the rack at my local car wash.” She also deems it “sound self-defense advice, handed down.”

And from reader Ken, who shows how Kim Jong-un got Trump into North Korea by building a better mousetrap:

Two tweets from Nilou. The first shows a bat doing the breast stroke. I doubt that all species of bats can swim this well:

Apparently this statue of Melania Trump in Slovenia was meant as a homage, but went badly wrong, reminding me of this art restoration.

https://twitter.com/PersianRose1/status/1147386895191535616

A cockatoo flips the bird at the cops:

Two from Heather Hastie. First, Yoga Cat does yoga.

https://twitter.com/AwwwwCats/status/1146823683685650432

This guy survived, I think, because he showed the appropriate submissive behavior to the silverback:

Tweets from Matthew. The gets my nod for Tweet of the Month. Matthew helpfully added a link to a Current Biology quick guide to head stabilization in birds. .

This one is also very good:

Poor chunky kitty!

https://twitter.com/TenderHerbert/status/1147518322956800001

These moths seem to be alive, though I’m not sure why they don’t fly away. Is it because they don’t fly when it’s daylight?

17 thoughts on “Sunday: Hili dialogue”

  1. The strategy of banzai by the Japanese went away in later battles of WWII. Maximum defense and holding out as long as possible became the more effective way to continue the war. However, a new form, the kamikaze or “divine wind” came in especially toward the desperate end of the war. At Okinawa this was used to a deadly success.

  2. A group were catching moths at a local wildlife centre where I was attending a bat walk a few years ago (they were identified, recorded and ultimately released!) so our group got to examine a variety of moths at close range. Most of the moths that I see in the house are a dull brown colour but these were positively bejewelled. I was a butterly collector in my youth and was always amazed by the Cinnabar moth, which flies by day; some of the highly coloured and patterned moths that we saw that night were strictly nocturnal so I have always assumed that their patterning and colouration doesn’t have a particularly high cost, otherwise natural selection would also surely render them plain and brown.

    The Cinnabar moth caterpillars were known as ‘tiger tails’ (picture in link above) and they generally moved in procession from food plant to food plant – in my paddock the preferred food is Ragwort, so they can eat as much as they like!

  3. … discovered the existence of sex chromosomes (she used mealworms), a seminal finding …

    Seems an apt fluid in which to look.

  4. What am I missing about the Melania statue? Both photos look equally bad to me.

  5. Don’t forget that today is the final of the Women’s World Cup in which I hope the USA get severely trounced (nothing personal) but will probably win.

  6. Doubt FLOTUS cares much for the wooden cankles on the statue. It’s tough to get a read on the Slovenian sphinx, but whatever stress she may be under, she seems to deal with through a rigorous regimen of diet and exercise. The Donald, too.

    Ok, ok, I’m kidding about him, of course. He seems to have put on about 40 lbs. of KFC-and-cortisol bloat since taking office.

    The picture of fitness and health, he ain’t.

  8. My great, great grandfather James Van Orden did two stints for the Union Army.

    The first stint he volunteered for the New Jersey Infantry, 25th Regiment, Co K. That was a ten month commitment ending June 1863.

    In August 1864 he was drafted, serving in NJ Infantry, 8th Regiment Co A. till the war’s end.

    The fact that the Union was able to draft experienced soldiers toward the end of the war – even if it represented only a fraction of overall drafted men – can be added to the list advantages the Union had in that war.

  9. I had never noticed the chamelon’s feet before. Weird. I guess that keeps them from snagging digits on leaves or branches, and signaling their presence.

  10. Was laughing hard at the cockatoo doing the refurbishing. Especially enjoyed the thrill of the man getting attention from the gorilla. Wish it was me.

  11. I think it’s most likely these “miracles” involved rarely mentioned medical help in helping that one-day old patient and a misdiagnosis for the second patient, but the patients or relatives of the patients later on just decided to throw in the dead Italian dowser nun for gratifications instead of the actual physical humans trying to save their ungrateful lives.

  12. Today, July 7, is also James Earl and Rosalynn Carter’s 73rd wedding anniversary.

  13. Animals are amazing.

    That head stabilization, seemingly rock steady, while all the rest was twitching and moving in the gusts was amazing too.

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