Saturday: Hili dialogue

September 7, 2019 • 6:30 am

It’s the weekend: Saturday, September 7, 2019, to be exact. It’s also National Beer Lover’s Day, but once again the apostrophe is misplaced. Who, exactly, is just one Beer Lover being celebrated, and who is it? On top of that, it’s International Vulture Awareness Day (didn’t we just have one of those?), Aunt’s Day (again with the apostrophe: we’re celebrating one aunt), and National Hummingbird Day.

News of the Day: Strongman and dictator Robert Mugabe died in Singapore at age 95.

Stuff that happened on September 7 include:

  • 1776 – According to American colonial reports, Ezra Lee makes the world’s first submarine attack in the Turtle, attempting to attach a time bomb to the hull of HMS Eagle in New York Harbor (no British records of this attack exist).
  • 1857 – Mountain Meadows massacre: Mormon settlers slaughter most members of peaceful, emigrant wagon train.

The attackers were a combination of suspicious Mormons and Paiute Indians, and they killed 120 men, women, and children, sparing only the youngest children. Only one man was ever convicted of the crime, though eight were indicted.

  • 1864 – American Civil War: Atlanta is evacuated on orders of Union General William Tecumseh Sherman.
  • 1907 – Cunard Line‘s RMS Lusitania sets sail on her maiden voyage from Liverpool, England, to New York City.

The ship was torpedoed by a German submarine on May 7, 1915, helping bring the U.S. into the war two years later.  1,198 passengers and crew died in the attack. Here’s the ship:

  • 1911 – French poet Guillaume Apollinaire is arrested and put in jail on suspicion of stealing the Mona Lisa from the Louvre museum.
  • 1921 – In Atlantic City, New Jersey, the first Miss America Pageant, a two-day event, is held.

Here are the contestants in that contest, and I suppose this is the bathing suit competition:

  • 1936 – The last thylacine, a carnivorous marsupial named Benjamin, dies alone in its cage at the Hobart Zoo in Tasmania.

Here’s some rare video of Benjamin taken in 1933. Since he expired, there have been many reported sightings and reports of tracks, but nothing has been confirmed. Sadly, this lovely species is probably extinct:

More news from September 7:

  • 1953 – Nikita Khrushchev is elected first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
  • 1977 – The Torrijos–Carter Treaties between Panama and the United States on the status of the Panama Canal are signed. The United States agrees to transfer control of the canal to Panama at the end of the 20th century.
  • 1978 – While walking across Waterloo Bridge in London, Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov is assassinated by Bulgarian secret police agent Francesco Gullino by means of a ricin pellet fired from a specially-designed umbrella.
  • 1996 – Rapper and hip hop artist Tupac Shakur is fatally shot in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada. He succumbs to his injuries six days later.
  • 2017 – Equifax announced a cyber-crime identity theft event potentially impacting approximately 145.5​ million U.S. consumers.

Notables born on this day include:

Here’s the famous “primitive” painter with a fluffly kitten. She lived to be 101:

  • 1885 – Elinor Wylie, American author and poet (d. 1928)
  • 1887 – Edith Sitwell, English poet and critic (d. 1964)
  • 1909 – Elia Kazan, Greek-American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 2003)
  • 1923 – Peter Lawford, English-American actor (d. 1984)
  • 1926 – Samuel Goldwyn Jr., American director and producer (d. 2015)
  • 1936 – Buddy Holly, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1959)
  • 1951 – Chrissie Hynde, American singer-songwriter and guitarist

Those who bought it on September 7 include:

  • 1933 – Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon, English ornithologist and politician, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (b. 1862)
  • 1949 – José Clemente Orozco, Mexican painter and illustrator (b. 1883)
  • 1962 – Karen Blixen, Danish memoirist and short story writer (b. 1885)

Karen Blixen published under the name Isak Dinesen, and wrote one of my all-time favorite books, Out of Africa.  Although the movie isn’t completely accurate, she did have a star-crossed romance with a hunter and guide, Denys Finch Hatton, who, like Robert Redford in the movie, died in a plane crash. Here’s Blixen:

  • 1969 – Everett Dirksen, American lieutenant and politician (b. 1896)
  • 1978 – Keith Moon, English drummer (The Who) (b. 1946)
  • 1981 – Christy Brown, Irish author, poet, and painter (b. 1932)
  • 2003 – Warren Zevon, American singer-songwriter (b. 1947)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili inspires some political commentary.

Hili: I’m calling to your attention the fact that we have a rotten apple in the garden.
A: The situation in the state is much worse.
In Polish:
Hili: Zwracam ci uwagę, że mamy w ogrodzie zgniłe jabłko.
Ja: Sytuacja w państwie jest znacznie gorsza.

 

The Origin of Ceiling Cat (h/t Stash Krod):

 

From Jesus of the Day via Stephen Fry on Twitter (and yes, Fry’s tweet is real):

This tweet was sent to me by Grania on April 5. Do read the linked article on gorilla funerals, and see if you buy the notion:

 

Look how fetal baby pandas are:

Two tweets from Heather Hastie via Ann German. What a wag Stephen Fry is! I found the second tweet on the same thread, which is full of salacious wags:

And a rambunctious cat amusing itself:

Four tweets from Matthew. The first one was accompanied by an email header that said “Odd to find oneself agreeing with Ferguson”. Of course I don’t know who “Ferguson” is.

AstroJessica, really Jessica Meir, is the first author of a paper showing that bar-headed geese (shown as the floofs below), have the physiological ability to fly over Mount Everest, where they’ve reportedly been spotted. I’m still a bit dubious about that spotting, though.

More amazing facts about nature; this time we have what seems to be the world’s oldest animal:

If this photo isn’t posed, it’s pretty amazing:

21 thoughts on “Saturday: Hili dialogue”

  3. Crikey ! in re “1857 – Mountain Meadows
    massacre: Mormon settlers slaughter most
    members of peaceful, emigrant wagon train,”
    the wikipedia accounting thereof is utterly
    just horrific !

    I know I do not recall every ‘little’ thing,
    but I am fairly certain within .any. course
    and class of historical instruction, that
    I was never taught of this deal. I would ‘ve
    remembered about it; that much I do know.

    Yet one more time yet again, I am reminded
    of ALL of the parts of history which are
    s e l e c t i v e l y .LEFT OUT. of
    any course’s syllabus. Determinedly … …
    the ‘keepers’ of history, almost all of them
    of one gender only, make certain that:
    we ( of under, say, ~three decades’ worth
    of years ) are never taught such deals.

    Blue

    1. I suspect part of the reason is this kind of history is normally taught at the high school level. There the tendency is, given the time allotted, to just hit the biggest events. Mormons, in US history are a sideline. I’m sure there are numerous similar events involving other cults which are not touched on. So, it may not be entirely a matter of filtering for vulnerable minds. At the college level, only American history majors are likely to get into the level of detail we are talking about with the Mountain Meadows massacre. Atheists do find this out when they explore the absurdities inherent in various religious cults.

  4. The photo with all the cats piled in a box is wonderful. Sometimes I have piles of three, but that’s it. I doubt the photo is posed…. think about it: how could one get eight cats to pose like that? They have to be there of their own “free will!” It’s probably chilly in that room/greenhouse, which would explain the pile.

  5. IIRC, the Lusitania rests at a fairly shallow depth, just 3x its length. Not much shallower and survivors might’ve been able to hang onto the funnels.

    And re. the massacre, from the W’pedia link, “At Lee’s sentencing, as required by Utah Territory statute, he was allowed to choose the method of his own execution – being hanged, shot, or beheaded” I know that for a long time UT had the choice between rope or lead, but this is the first I’ve heard that beheading was ever a possible execution method anywhere in the US or territory.

  6. Further sadly re. the Lusitania, on checking it rests @ 93m while its max height – to the top of the aerials, was 50m – much shallower than I recalled. One end may have actually hit bottom before the other end went under.

    Also, I knew that three of the four propellers had been salvaged in the late 20th century, and one’s on display outside at a marine museum in Liverpool. But look at where another wound up – in Dallas!

    1. On a slight aside, sinking ships do not ‘suck’ the shipwrecked down, but the huge amounts of air escaping from a sinking ship makes it impossible to support a swimming body, the victims basically fall into the abyss.
      Learning that was one of those enlightening moments.

        1. Paul, I respectfully disagree, it is very different, they are not ‘sucked’ (maybe suckered?).
          As a youngster I always found that sucking down incomprehensible, ‘sucking’ does not really involve a lack of buoyancy, but a kind of downward current, which is absent. The air bubbles do affect buoyancy and explain the phenomenon. As said, one of these enlightening explanations.

  7. “1977 – The Torrijos–Carter Treaties between Panama and the United States on the status of the Panama Canal are signed. The United States agrees to transfer control of the canal to Panama at the end of the 20th century.”
    If you were around in 1980, you may recall that “He gave away the Panama Canal” was one of the attack lines that helped defeat Carter. Today, does anyone really care who owns the canal?

  8. I hope someone can resurrect the Thylacine species someday. Perhaps we’ll find a few hiding somewhere. Stranger things have happened.

    BTW, I imagine its bite to be quite powerful. Benjamin could definitely rip your face off!

    1. The extermination of the Thylacine (I prefer ‘Tasmanian wolf’ to ‘Tasmanian tiger’, since their skulls -apart from the palate- closely resemble those of a wolf. Convergence.} is a truly sad story. They were blamed for killing sheep, but it is not clear at all they were important predators of sheep. Nevertheless there was a bounty placed on killing them.
      The fate of the Tasmanians (then humans) is, btw, equally tragic.
      They (the thylacines) were (AFAIK) restricted to Tasmania because they could not compete with the dingo’s, introduced by early humans, in the long run. How that competition worked is not really clear. An individual thylacine could/would probably tear an individual dingo apart, but then, dingo’s are gregarious animals, we do not really know if thylacines were, probably not.
      I hope the Thylacine can be revived from extant DNA, it should prima facie be easier to ‘revive’ a marsupial then a placental.

      1. IIRC, (I stand to be corrected) these geese fly at about 10.000m altitude, well above the highest peaks of the Himalayas, including Mt Everest.
        It must be pretty cold up there, luckily they have genuine goose down isolation 🙂

        1. I suspect a study of the oxygen-binding curves of Bar-headed goose hemoglobin would be quite interesting. Suspect –> search –> find! (And the crystal structure has also been deetermined, cf ref 57). Also one in J Mol Biol from 2001).

  10. Talking about Mr ‘Bojo’ Johnson, there is a nice column by him from May 12, 2013:

    “If we left the EU, we would end this sterile debate, and we would have to recognise that most of our problems are not caused by “Bwussels”, but by chronic British short-termism, inadequate management, sloth, low skills, a culture of easy gratification and underinvestment in both human and physical capital and infrastructure,[….] Why are we still, person for person, so much less productive than the Germans? That is now a question more than a century old, and the answer is nothing to do with the EU. In or out of the EU, we must have a clear vision of how we are going to be competitive in a global economy.”
    Nuff said, methinks.

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