by Matthew Cobb
In other news, in 1973, Doonesbury delivered this verdict on Nixon’s attorney general, John Mitchell. It would be two more years before Mitchell was convicted. Be patient, folks.
Meanwhile, in Dobrzyn, Hili is being a cat:
A: May I sit down here?
Hili: If you have to.
In Polish:
Ja: Czy mogę tu usiąść?
Hili: Jak musisz.
On this day:
1057 – King Macbeth is killed at the Battle of Lumphanan by the forces of Máel Coluim mac Donnchada.
1843 – Tivoli Gardens, one of the oldest still intact amusement parks in the world, opens in Copenhagen, Denmark.
1914 – A servant of American architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, sets fire to the living quarters of Wright’s Wisconsin home, Taliesin, and murders seven people there.
1914 – The Panama Canal opens to traffic with the transit of the cargo ship SS Ancon.
1935 – Will Rogers and Wiley Post are killed after their aircraft develops engine problems during takeoff in Barrow, Alaska.
1939 – Twenty-six Junkers Ju 87 bombers commanded by Walter Sigel meet unexpected ground fog during a dive-bombing demonstration for Luftwaffe generals at Neuhammer. Thirteen of them crash and burn.
1939 – The Wizard of Oz premieres at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Los Angeles, California.
1941 – Corporal Josef Jakobs is executed by firing squad at the Tower of London at 07:12, making him the last person to be executed at the Tower for espionage.
1945 – Emperor Hirohito broadcasts his declaration of surrender following the effective surrender of Japan in World War II; Korea gains independence from the Empire of Japan.
1947 – India gains independence from British rule after near 190 years of British company and crown rule and joins the Commonwealth of Nations.
1947 – Founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah is sworn in as first Governor-General of Pakistan in Karachi.
1948 – The First Republic of Korea (South Korea) is established in the southern half of the peninsula.
1961 – Border guard Conrad Schumann flees from East Germany while on duty guarding the construction of the Berlin Wall.
1962 – James Joseph Dresnok defects to North Korea after running across the Korean Demilitarized Zone. Dresnok died in 2016.
1963 – Execution of Henry John Burnett, the last man to be hanged in Scotland.
1965 – The Beatles play to nearly 60,000 fans at Shea Stadium in New York City, an event later regarded as the birth of stadium rock.
1969 – The Woodstock Music & Art Fair opens in Bethel, New York, featuring some of the top rock musicians of the era.
1970 – Patricia Palinkas becomes the first woman to play professionally in an American football game.
1971 – President Richard Nixon completes the break from the gold standard by ending convertibility of the United States dollar into gold by foreign investors.
1973 – Vietnam War: The USAF bombing of Cambodia ends.
1977 – The Big Ear, a radio telescope operated by Ohio State University as part of the SETI project, receives a radio signal from deep space; the event is named the “Wow! signal” from the notation made by a volunteer on the project.
1995 – Tomiichi Murayama, Prime Minister of Japan, releases the Murayama Statement, which formally expresses remorse for Japanese war crimes committed during World War II.
1998 – Northern Ireland: Omagh bombing takes place; 29 people (including a woman pregnant with twins) killed and some 220 others injured.
1998 – Apple introduces the iMac computer.
2005 – Israel’s unilateral disengagement plan to evict all Israelis from the Gaza Strip and from four settlements in the northern West Bank begins.
2013 – The Smithsonian announces the discovery of the olinguito, the first new carnivorous species found in the Americas in 35 years.
2021 – Kabul falls into the hands of the Taliban as Ashraf Ghani flees Afghanistan along with local residents and foreign nationals, effectively reestablishing the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
Births:
1702 – Francesco Zuccarelli, Italian painter and Royal Academician (d. 1788).
1717 – Blind Jack, English engineer (d. 1810). [The first professional road builder to emerge during the Industrial Revolution. Blind from the age of six, Metcalf had an eventful life; he was an accomplished diver, swimmer, card player and fiddler, but was better known for the period between 1765 and 1792 when he built about 180 miles (290 km) of turnpike road, mainly in the north of England and as such, he became known as one of the fathers of the modern road.]
1769 – Napoleon Bonaparte, French general and emperor (d. 1821).
1771 – Walter Scott, Scottish novelist, playwright, and poet (d. 1832).
1785 – Thomas De Quincey, English journalist and author (d. 1859).
1810 – Louise Colet, French poet (d. 1876).
1845 – Walter Crane, English artist and book illustrator (d. 1915).
1856 – Keir Hardie, Scottish politician and trade unionist (d. 1915).
1858 – E. Nesbit, English author and poet (d. 1924).
1863 – Aleksey Krylov, Russian mathematician and engineer (d. 1945).
1875 – Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, English pianist, violinist, and composer (d. 1912). [Not to be confused with the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.]
1882 – Gisela Richter, English archaeologist and art historian (d. 1972).
1885 – Edna Ferber, American novelist, short story writer, and playwright (d. 1968).
1904 – George Klein, Canadian inventor, invented the motorized wheelchair (d. 1992).
1912 – Julia Child, American chef and author (d. 2004). [Her death was noted here on Sunday.]
1924 – Hedy Epstein, German-American Holocaust survivor and activist (d. 2016).
1925 – Rose Maddox, American singer-songwriter and fiddle player (d. 1998).
1925 – Oscar Peterson, Canadian pianist and composer (d. 2007).
1928 – Nicolas Roeg, English director and cinematographer (d. 2018).
1933 – Bobby Helms, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1997). [Best remembered for his 1957 Christmas hit “Jingle Bell Rock”.]
1933 – Stanley Milgram, American social psychologist (d. 1984).
1935 – Jim Dale, English actor, narrator, singer, director, and composer.
1946 – Jimmy Webb, American singer-songwriter and pianist.
1954 – Stieg Larsson, Swedish journalist and author (d. 2004).
1958 – Simon Baron-Cohen, English-Canadian psychiatrist and author. [In 1997, he formulated the foetal sex steroid theory of autism, the key test of which was published in 2015.]
1972 – Ben Affleck, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter.
1985 – Nipsey Hussle, American rapper (d. 2019).
1990 – Jennifer Lawrence, American actress.
But Sir, the danger, and the glory of death.
A young and dashing life gone up in flames. Blonde maidens weeping.
To die for one’s country.
To set forth in a silver lance to joust with the forces of darkness.
778 – Roland, Frankish military leader.
1274 – Robert de Sorbon, French theologian and educator, founded the College of Sorbonne (b. 1201).
1594 – Thomas Kyd, English playwright (b. 1558).
1758 – Pierre Bouguer, French mathematician, geophysicist, and astronomer (b. 1698).
1951 – Artur Schnabel, Polish pianist and composer (b. 1882).
1967 – René Magritte, Belgian painter (b. 1898).
1999 – Hugh Casson, English architect and interior designer (b. 1910). [Appointed director of architecture of the Festival of Britain on the South Bank in 1948 at the age of 38, he set out to celebrate peace and modernity through the appointment of other young architects. For example, the Modernist design of the Royal Festival Hall was led by a 39-year-old, Leslie Martin. Private Eye magazine gives the Sir Hugh Casson Award for the “Worst New Building of the Year”.]
2001 – Kateryna Yushchenko, Ukrainian computer scientist and academic (b. 1919).
2008 – Jerry Wexler, American journalist and producer (b. 1917. [Coined the term “rhythm and blues”, and was integral in signing and/or producing many of the biggest acts of the time, including Ray Charles, the Allman Brothers, Chris Connor, Aretha Franklin, Led Zeppelin, Wilson Pickett, Dire Straits, Dusty Springfield and Bob Dylan. Wexler was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987 and in 2017 to the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame.]
Jimmy Webb interview with Rick Beato : https://youtu.be/j8pRKAgMaP4
Went to get the tunes – glad for it.
By The Time I Get to Phoenix
Galveston
… there are more – Wichita Lineman I think is Webb’s.
A quote from Thomas De Quincey
Solitude, though it may be silent as light, is like light, the mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential to man. All men come into this world alone; all leave it alone. -Thomas De Quincey, writer (15 Aug 1785-1859)
I must say that I’ve liked everything I’ve heard by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. Here’s a good example: https://youtu.be/iG02ev-ot54
Thanks. I needed that.
You’re welcome! It makes a delightful earworm.🎶
Nice one
And thus on this day endeth the saga of King Macbeth who might also be listed today among those “To set forth in a silver lance to joust with the forces of darkness”.
91 criminal charges against Trump now. Maybe he should be put out on a far away Island. I was thinking of Devils Island.
Good idea. Can we send a dozen of his closest criminal cronies with him?
He’s been indicted in Georgia for violating the RICO act! I thought that was the sort of thing the MAFIA allegedly (allegedly) did.
I would like to see Ken’s thoughts on how RICO differs from charging a “simple” conspiracy. To this layman, maybe RICO refers to an ongoing conspiracy with an established structure? Ken? Help please.
Oops! I mean ‘Mafia’.
I was watching the rollout of charges last night. Good times!
One of the talking heads had a good comment. Paraphrasing, imagine an alternate timeline where after the 2020 election results, Trump just said something like “You can have it, I’ll run again in ‘24.” And that’s it, no coup attempt, no crazy conspiracy theories, no hiding of classified documents. Results: Republicans almost certainly would have done better in ‘22 without Trump’s reputation dragging them down, the country wouldn’t feel like we were skirting the edge of political collapse, no criminal charges for Trump and friends and Trump would have a much stronger shot at winning in ‘24. But that couldn’t happen because of how Trump thinks.
Trump seems to be under a compulsion to stir the hornet’s nest, to remain in the public eye, as if he thought he would disappear without it. Maybe like an infant crying for milk.
“Trump seems to be under a compulsion to stir the hornet’s nest, to remain in the public eye, as if he thought he would disappear without it.”
“This guy wants to be president. . . . He is prepared to go to any extremes in order to secure some mention of his name in the press. I really believe that nothing will be so effective in combating his particular kind of trouble-making as to ignore him. This he cannot stand.”
–President Dwight Eisenhower on Sen. Joe McCarthy
Yeah, it is a real clinical show to watch how a toxic narcissist just cannot make it all about them. His time as president must have been a real wet dream with all that attention and adoration at rally after rally while being in that job.
In football news: Sweden loses to Spain. Apparently losing at this point has been a real pattern for Sweden, and I feel for them.
The Doonesbury reference to John Mitchell reminded me that in 1991, when I was working in the legal processing department of a major bank, I was tasked by IRS, via the bank, to find the record of a particular bank check made out by him in the amount of $100,000.
Computer records were still pretty new then, so most of my searching involved microfiche records … and after a couple days of research, I found it!
IRS sent a letter thanking me for my efforts, but a supervisor at the bank criticized me for devoting so much time to the task, saying that it was company policy to protect their clients, not expose them.
I have no idea why IRS was interested in this check, but I imagined it probably involved something criminal. I hated Nixon and his gang of thugs, so I was pleased that I may have had some small impact on that ring of anti-democratic conspirators, even if it was only retroactive.
(Wikipedia reminds me that Mitchell died in 1988.)
Thank you for doing the good thing, even if your bosses didn’t approve.
“It was company policy to protect their clients”—typical banker’s mentality. Swiss banks had the same policy toward their Nazi clients
Thank you. I know that Swiss banks had worked with the Nazi Party (and with their Vatican collaborators). But in reviewing a Wikipedia article, I ran across an interesting passage (with my additions in brackets):
• • •
During World War II, UBS [Union Bank of Switzerland] also maintained accounts for hundreds of German Jewish businesspeople and households. After the Banking Law of 1934 was passed, the bank aggressively protected assets of the “enemies of Nazi Germany”. When Hitler announced an (aborted) invasion of Switzerland in 1940 [a Wikipedia editor marked this “dubious”], UBS contracted the Swiss Armed Forces to blockade their retail banks and transport Jewish assets to underground military bunkers. The Swiss Bank Corporation (SBC) and Credit Suisse, did likewise.
• • •
Is this true? I don’t know.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banking_in_Switzerland
Sixty Symbols analyzes the RT superconductor paper. Spoiler : they say it is bad science. I still have to check it out : https://youtu.be/zl-AgmoZ5mo
There are new claims for room temperature superconductors every year or so these days. Room temperature superconductor claims go back decades, even before so-called high temperature superconductors were discovered. Some of them get enough notice they make it to popular news articles. If you see one, don’t start getting excited until and unless it is confirmed by at least a couple other labs. That hasn’t happened yet for any room temperature superconductor claim.
Back in 2020 there was a claim for a hydrogen rich compound that was supposedly a room temperature superconductor at very high pressure (which even if real, probably wouldn’t have much practical use, but would be scientifically interesting). It got some notice in the popular press, but as usual, there was very little notice in the popular press when the paper was later retracted.
For some reason, this LK99 claim went viral and was all over the news. One comment by an expert looking at the papers called them amateurish. This video gives an example of that.
As I always do with such claims, I assumed it was a false claim but hoped I wrong, and waited to see what experts found. I expected the story would fade away in a month or so, which is what’s happening. On the positive side, there were a number of attempts at replication even though I’m sure the experts thought it was unlikely to pan out.