PCC(E) is in transit back to the Windy City. Meanwhile, in Dobrzyn, Hili is showing that with age comes wisdom.
Szaron: I’m going to check whether there are any rodents.
Hili: It’s not worth the trouble.
.
.
In Polish:
Szaron: Idę zobaczyć, czy tam nie ma jakichś gryzoni.
Hili: Szkoda zachodu.
Hili: Szkoda zachodu.
I’ll say it again, these focused Hili Dialogues are really good for me – this one is very clever – bug they all are.
bug -> but
“bug” works too.😉
….
….
Well I’ll be…
I mean
Bee
But not ‘grub’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VdMdboymT8
I meant ‘gub’ (:
Oh God, classic Allen! I haven’t seen this in a long, long time. Busted a gut again, thanks!
On this day:
1338 – The Battle of Arnemuiden, in which a French force defeats the English, is the first naval battle of the Hundred Years’ War and the first naval battle in which gunpowder artillery is used.
1561 – King Philip II of Spain issues cedula, ordering a halt to colonizing efforts in Florida.
1846 – Astronomers Urbain Le Verrier, John Couch Adams and Johann Gottfried Galle collaborate on the discovery of Neptune.
Births:
63 BC – Augustus, Roman emperor (d. 14 AD).
1215 – Kublai Khan, Mongolian emperor (d. 1294).
1756 – John Loudon McAdam, Scottish engineer (d. 1836). [Invented a new process, “macadamisation”, for building roads with a smooth hard surface, using controlled materials of mixed particle size and predetermined structure, that would be more durable and less muddy than soil-based tracks. Tarmac (from “tar McAdam”) is named after him.]
1838 – Victoria Woodhull, American journalist and activist (d. 1927).
1851 – Ellen Hayes, American mathematician and astronomer (d. 1930).
1861 – Robert Bosch, German engineer and businessman, founded Robert Bosch GmbH (d. 1942).
1863 – Mary Church Terrell, American author and activist (d. 1954).
1865 – Emma Orczy, Hungarian-English author and playwright (d. 1947).
1865 – Suzanne Valadon, French model and painter (d. 1938).
1867 – John Lomax, American teacher, musicologist, and folklorist (d. 1948).
1889 – Walter Lippmann, American journalist and publisher, co-founded The New Republic (d. 1974)
1897 – Paul Delvaux, Belgian painter (d. 1994).
1897 – Walter Pidgeon, Canadian-American actor and singer (d. 1984).
1907 – Tiny Bradshaw, American singer-songwriter and pianist (d. 1958).
1920 – Mickey Rooney, American actor, singer, director, and producer (d. 2014).
1926 – John Coltrane, American saxophonist and composer (d. 1967).
1930 – Ray Charles, American singer-songwriter, pianist, and actor (d. 2004).
1934 – Per Olov Enquist, Swedish journalist, author, and playwright (d. 2020).
1939 – Henry Blofeld, English cricketer and journalist. [His father (Thomas Robert Calthorpe Blofeld, 1903–1986) was at Eton with Ian Fleming and his name is believed to have been the inspiration for the name of James Bond supervillain, Ernst Stavro Blofeld.]
1941 – George Jackson, American activist and author, co-founded the Black Guerrilla Family (d. 1971).
1943 – Julio Iglesias, Spanish singer-songwriter.
1949 – Bruce Springsteen, American singer-songwriter and guitarist.
1962 – Deborah Orr, Scottish journalist (d. 2019).
Death twitches my ear. “Live,” he says. “I am coming.”
1675 – Valentin Conrart, French author, founded the Académie française (b. 1603).
1835 – Vincenzo Bellini, Italian composer (b. 1801).
1889 – Wilkie Collins, English novelist, short story writer, and playwright (b. 1824).
1939 – Sigmund Freud, Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist (b. 1856).
1973 – Pablo Neruda, Chilean poet and diplomat, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1904).
1987 – Bob Fosse, American actor, dancer, choreographer, and director (b. 1927).
1994 – Robert Bloch, American author and screenwriter (b. 1917).
2006 – Malcolm Arnold, English trumpet player and composer (b. 1921).
2006 – Etta Baker, American singer and guitarist (b. 1913).
2012 – Sam Sniderman, Canadian businessman, founded Sam the Record Man (b. 1920).
2013 – Ruth Patrick, American botanist and immunologist (b. 1907).
Jez, thank you for the reference to mathematician, Ellen Hayes, yet another remarkable individual of whom few of us have ever heard.
You’re very welcome, Jim. She was certainly an interesting woman: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Hayes
Ahh… John McAdam– my lack of knowledge of either him or the etymology of the word “tarmac” caused my Jeopardy run to end. On my second show, the Final Jeopardy category was “Scottish Inventors”. Knowing Alex Trebek was Canadian, and that Jeopardy answers often included a Canadian element, I thought that Alexander Graham Bell, the Scotsman who invented the telephone in Canada, might be involved. (I had won the previous show by knowing that St. Andrew’s cross was on the flag of Nova Scotia.)
When the Final Jeopardy answer turned out to be “He was appointed inspector of roads in Bristol England in 1815”, I had no clue, and responded with “Who is James Watt?”, the only Scottish inventor of the right time period vaguely connected to roads that I could think of.
Another contestant and I had been in a back-and-forth contest for the lead; he also responded with “James Watt”. The third contestant, far behind but from England, got it right. Because my close competitor had wagered very little, he wound up winning.
GCM
A great story! I had recently become quite addicted to the game, though I am sure I could never come close to making the cut (except for their recent series of celebrity Jeopardy).
That’s a great anecdote, Greg. Although I knew the etymology of tarmac, I wouldn’t have known his first name (and would have erroneously have assumed his surname was “MacAdam”).
I knew about tarmac and John McAdam, but I probably would have said Thomas Telford in answer to the question.
There is now this new format for commenting which does not automatically load login credentials. Although it isn’t bad at completing ones’ login. Anyone else experiencing this?
The pop-ups to subscribe are gone, though, and that is a good thing.
Yes, I haven’t seen the pop-ups for a couple of days. I was flummoxed by the new commenting system yesterday, but am getting used to it now.
The pop-ups are gone! And, yes, there is the new format for commenting. It isn’t nearly as bothersome, but it seems an unnecessary change.
When the pop-ups were polluting the screen, I “subscribed” as requested hoping to be rid of them. It didn’t work. Then when I tried to “unsubscribe” from getting emails of every post, I would get a “we’re sorry,” our site seems to be having “hiccups” right now; please refresh the page. Hiccups, indeed. I have found it impossible to unsubscribe from those email alerts.
When I comment, my login credentials are automatically loaded. My comment box looks like this
https://sincereflatteryblog.files.wordpress.com/2023/09/screenshot-2023-09-24-at-12.53.15.png
Yikes! Email posts Instantly? Would rather have time to think…
just a test.
another test. interesting: posting via Google Chrome, does shop up instantly. via safari, no. but now it wants my name/email every time, and will not let me chose between “instantly / daily / weekly”
Note that today (in about 20 minutes, actually), NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission will deliver its sample from asteroid Bennu.
https://www.nasa.gov/live
Cor, ducky, that’s some nominative determination right there.