Welcome to Tuesday, April 2, 2024, and National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day, a sandwhich which I nearly always have for lunch—when I have lunch, which I usually don’t.
To commemorate the new month, here’s a Flemish painting: “April”. A description from “ferrebeekeeper“:
Here is an illuminated page of the Grimani Breviary (which is named after a Venetian cardinal who purchased it in 1520 for 500 gold ducates). The breviary takes the form of a calendar and here is the page for April, which features a party of nobles out in the spring countryside falconing. The work is filled with infinitesimal details, but my favorite parts are the capering jester (who has somehow become entangled with a tree as he brandishes his grotesque marotte) and the opulent yet ethereal carriage of Time which, unseen, flies above the procession. The work was completed sometime around 1510 in Flanders. Note also the Crakow shoes worn by the foppish noble in shimmering green and scarlet at the right.
It’s also International Children’s Book Day (won’t someone publish mine?), International Fact-Checking Day, National Ferret Day, and World Autism Awareness Day .
Have some baby ferrets (note, I’ve never had them, but I wouldn’t recommend them as pets based on talking to my friends who have had them). They bite ankles.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 2 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*The Florida Supreme Court upheld a 15-week-maximum limit for abortion passed by the state legislature, but also upheld a much more draconian limit—six weeks—signed later by Governor DeSantis. The confusing part is that the six-week limit was written to take effect a month after the 15-week ban was upheld by the courts. And it has been.
But at the same time, the court allowed a state constitutional amendment to appear on this November’s ballot that could override both of these limits.
In a pair of significant decisions, the Florida Supreme Court ruled Monday to uphold a 15-week ban on abortion in the state, while also allowing a proposed amendment that would enshrine abortion protections in the state constitution to appear on the November ballot.
The conservative-leaning court’s decision on the 15-week ban also means that a six-week abortion ban, with exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother, that Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law last year will take effect.
But the bench’s ruling to allow the constitutional amendment to appear on the ballot this fall means voters will have a chance in just seven months to undo those restrictions.
Republicans have made multiple moves over the nearly two years since the U.S Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade to restrict access to abortion.
In 2022, Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed a 15-week abortion ban passed by the GOP-controlled Legislature that was almost immediately challenged in court.
Then, in April 2023, just weeks before he announced his presidential campaign, he signed a six-week ban — before many women even know they’re pregnant — which was also immediately challenged.
In reviewing the initial challenge to the 15-week ban, the state Supreme Court had said the six-week ban would remain blocked until the court ruled on the 15-week proposal.
If you’re wondering what the state constitutional amendment will look like, here it is:
The proposed constitutional amendment that will be on the November ballot says “no law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.” It provides for one exception that is already in the state constitution: Parents must be notified before their minor children can get an abortion.
It looks, then, that within a few weeks the 6-week ban will take effect. With that, even before many women know they’re pregnant, they’re already prohibited from having an abortion (I hope the interstate shipment of mifepristone, which works up till ten weeks of pregnancy, can ameliorate that.) The age of “viability” is conventionally taken to be 24 weeks, or six months.
And there are three bits of Israel/war news today.
*Israel has withdrawn from Al-Shifa hospital in northern Gaza after a two-week battle in which many Hamas terrorists were killed.
The headline: “what it said were Palestinian militants”. Well who else filled the hospital with ammunition and guns and were firing on the IDF?
As usual, the NYT carefully hedges what the IDF says (which invariably proves correct since the IDF doesn’t speak off the cuff), but tends to accept what Hamas says without any caveats. Note, too, how the NYT emphasizes the damage to the hospital—the inevitable result of a firefight with Hamas ensconced inside. But the NYT makes it sound as if Israel wanted to damage the hospital!
Israeli soldiers withdrew from Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City after two weeks of fighting in which they killed around 200 Palestinians and arrested hundreds of others, the Israeli military said on Monday. The troops left widespread devastation in their wake after extended gun battles with Palestinian militants in and around the complex.
Taysir al-Tanna, a longtime vascular surgeon at Al-Shifa, said many of the hospital’s main buildings — including the emergency, obstetrics and surgical wards — had been badly damaged in the fighting, and the main gate had been smashed.
“Now it looks like a wasteland,” Dr. al-Tanna said.
Mahmoud Basal, a spokesman for the Palestinian Civil Defense, said bodies were scattered in and around the complex. The final death toll remained unclear, he said, as some corpses were either under the rubble of destroyed buildings or were believed to have been buried.
“Even outside the complex itself, there are blocks of buildings that were knocked to the ground,” and people were searching for the occupants in the rubble, Mr. Basal said.
The Israeli military said the roughly 200 Palestinians it killed were militants, and that its soldiers had arrested around 900 people it suspected of being militants at the Shifa complex over the past two weeks, including senior commanders in groups like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. It said two Israeli soldiers were killed and eight were wounded in the raid.
At least they had this paragraph, which seems to me a pretty good explanation for the damage.
Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military spokesman, blamed the destruction on the militants, saying they had fortified themselves inside hospital wards, fired on soldiers and refused calls to surrender. “We had to fire on the buildings in order to stop that and to kill the terrorists,” he said.
On the NBC Evening News, administration spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said that Hamas should not have been in the hospital, but on the other the administration doesn’t want a firefight in a hospital. Taking these statements together, I’m not sure what the U.S. would want the iDF to have done. Let Hamas continue to occupy Al-Shifa without bothering them? Does the U.S. really want Hamas destroyed, as it’s always said?
The Elder of Ziyon has been covering the Western coverage of the Al-Shifa battle, calling out the media’s bias:
By every possible measure the Shifa hospital operation has been a huge success. And the world media is doing everything it can to not report that to you.
Hundreds of reporters all trying to find angles to make Israel look bad and Hamas look good. They ignore that terrorists…
— Elder of Ziyon 🇮🇱 (@elderofziyon) March 31, 2024
*In a NYT op-ed, the author of “Hamas Contained” and president of the board of al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network” tells us “Why the two-state solution isn’t a solution at all” (archived here). I believe he’s a Palestinian, which would explain why he wants a ONE STATE SOLUTION, and in that state Jews would be heavily outnumbered by Palestinians. The state would be That, of course, would lead to continual war and terrorism and ultimately to the elimination of the Jews. (How many Jews live in countries like Iran or Saudi Arabia?) First, some gross distortion by Baconi
Over the years, I’ve encountered many Western diplomats who privately roll their eyes at the prospect of two states — given Israel’s staunch opposition to it, the lack of interest in the West in exerting enough pressure on Israel to change its behavior and Palestinian political ossification — even as their politicians repeat the phrase ad nauseam.
“Israel’s staunch opposition to the two-state solution”? Who kept proposing that solution? Israel! Who kept rejecting it? Palestinians! Baconi man cannot be that ignorant, so he must be lying. (Of course, after October 7 no Israeli is keen on the two-state solution.) But wait! There’s more!
Repeating the two-state solution mantra has allowed policymakers to avoid confronting the reality that partition is unattainable in the case of Israel and Palestine, and illegitimate as an arrangement originally imposed on Palestinians without their consent in 1947. And fundamentally, the concept of the two-state solution has evolved to become a central pillar of sustaining Palestinian subjugation and Israeli impunity. The idea of two states as a pathway to justice has in and of itself normalized the daily violence meted out against Palestinians by Israel’s regime of apartheid.
Really? A pillar of sustaining Palestinian subjugation and Israeli impunity? How does that work? Baconi can’t stop the distortions:
Seen in this light, the failed attempts at a two-state solution are not a failure for Israel at all but a resounding success, as they have fortified Israel’s grip over this territory while peace negotiations ebbed and flowed but never concluded. In recent years, international and Israeli human rights organizations have acknowledged what many Palestinians have long argued: that Israel is a perpetrator of apartheid. B’Tselem, Israel’s leading human rights organization, concluded that Israel is a singular regime of Jewish supremacy from the river to the sea.
Remember that Israel gave the Palestinians a state: Gaza. And Israel ethnically cleansed Gaza of—Jews. What happened to that new Palestinian “state”? You know the rest. It’s a disaster and a haven for terrorists and Jew haters, with the people subjugated by Hamas (and mostly supporting Hamas). But Baconi actually instantiates the call for a Palestine “from the river to the sea”: one state, with the ‘right of return’: all the descendants of Arabs who fled from Israel in 1948 (mostly at the request of invading Arab states) should be part of this state, of course far outnumbering Jews. The certain result: a Big Pogrom.
A singe state from the river to the sea might appear unrealistic or fantastical or a recipe for further bloodshed. But it is the only state that exists in the real world — not in the fantasies of policymakers. The question, then, is: How can it be transformed into one that is just?
No, that fantasy state doesn’t exist in the real world, and it shouldn’t, for it could never, ever be transformed into a state that that is just and peaceful. And by that I mean one that isn’t Judenrein. Baconi is either completely ignorant about what would happen in his One State, or, more likely, he wants the Middle East free from Jews—by any means necessary. (This of course is the NYT’s own view as well.)
*This next article elicited a strong reaction from Malgorzata, “Oy! there will be outcry world over!” And indeed there were, for eight senior Iranian officials, including a top Iranian general, were killed in a deliberate Israeli airstrike on the Iranian embassy in Syria.
At least eight senior Iranian officials were killed in an explosion targeting Iran’s embassy to Syria Monday afternoon, according to Arabic media outlet reports.
According to the Saudi-based Al-Arabiya news outlet, Israeli aircraft carried out an airstrike on the Iranian embassy in Damascus, in an apparent targeted killing of senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps members.
Among the dead, according to the report, is General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force, which coordinates operations with Iran’s proxies abroad, including Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthi rebels, and various militias in Iraq and Syria.
The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed that a building owned by the Iranian mission to Syria had been hit in the airstrike Monday, adding that eight people were killed.
The fatalities include” a high-ranking leader” – likely referring to Zahedi – two Iranian advisors, and five other members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
“Israel carried out an attack on the Iranian embassy in Damascus and assassinated 8 high-ranking Iranian leaders,” the Observatory tweeted.
According to a report by Reuters, the building targeted in the strike was the Iranian consulate and the ambassador’s residence.
Syria’s state media outlet, SANA, confirmed that there were casualties in Monday’s strike, but did not provide details.
The Iranian outlet Tasnim initially reported five deaths in the airstrike.
An Israeli army spokesperson refused to confirm or deny the IDF’s involvement in the attack.
Of course Israel did it, but they will never admit it lest Iran have more excuse to go after them. In the end, I think (and I hope it’s not in my lifetime), Iran will have nuclear weapons and, if nobody does anything, Israel will be a goner. War with Iran, with our without the U.S. against them, seems to me inevitable.
*The cicadas are coming, and if you live in the SE U.S. or Illinois (as I do!), they’re coming to YOU, in the gazillions.
Trillions of evolution’s bizarro wonders, red-eyed periodical cicadas that have pumps in their heads and jet-like muscles in their rears, are about to emerge in numbers not seen in decades and possibly centuries.
Crawling out from underground every 13 or 17 years, with a collective song as loud as jet engines, the periodical cicadas are nature’s kings of the calendar.
These black bugs with bulging eyes differ from their greener-tinged cousins that come out annually. They stay buried year after year, until they surface and take over a landscape, covering houses with shed exoskeletons and making the ground crunchy.
This spring, an unusual cicada double dose is about to invade a couple parts of the United States in what University of Connecticut cicada expert John Cooley called “cicada-geddon.” The last time these two broods came out together in 1803 Thomas Jefferson, who wrote about cicadas in his Garden Book but mistakenly called them locusts, was president.
The largest geographic brood in the nation ― called Brood XIX and coming out every 13 years ― is about to march through the Southeast, having already created countless boreholes in the red Georgia clay. It’s a sure sign of the coming cicada occupation. They emerge when the ground warms to 64 degrees (17.8 degrees Celsius), which is happening earlier than it used to because of climate change, entomologists said. The bugs are brown at first but darken as they mature.
Soon after the insects appear in large numbers in Georgia and the rest of the Southeast, cicada cousins that come out every 17 years will inundate Illinois. They are Brood XIII.
“You’ve got one very widely distributed brood in Brood XIX, but you have a very dense historically abundant brood in the Midwest, your Brood XIII,” said University of Maryland entomologist Mike Raupp.
I saw Brood XIII when it was out 34 years ago, and it was amazing. I have a section n the evolution of the cicada system, with different broods and “species” with different lifetimes, in my book Speciation with Allen Orr, and really, its evolution is a big mystery. Here’s an AP video on the upcoming apocalypse:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is happy that Spring has arrived:
Hili: The world has regained color.A: Soon the lilacs are going to blossom.
Hili: Świat odzyskał barwy.Ja: Jeszcze trochę i zakwitną bzy.
*******************
From Not Another Science Cat Page:
From The Dodo Pet:
From Divy: a cat does art!
From Masih, and it has a link to her article in Iran International about overseas targeting of protestors and journalists:
“The attack on @IranIntl’s journalist @pouriazeraati in London must serve as a wake-up call to the int’l community,” dissident activist @AlinejadMasih, herself the target of a foiled assassination plot by Iran’s regime, wrote in an op-ed for @IranIntl_En. https://t.co/kLDSowlCMa
— Iran International English (@IranIntl_En) March 31, 2024
From my favorite Zioness, the indefatigable Noa Tishby:
The IDF just announced that they conducted the largest operation of the war since October 7th, capturing 358 terrorists, including numerous senior leaders from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which is another terrorist organization in Gaza. Where were they hiding? In the… pic.twitter.com/5yj6BycgDK
— (((noa tishby))) (@noatishby) March 22, 2024
I’m ashamed, because the University of Maryland is where I got my first job. Here a Congressman is shouted down, the President stops the event, and then later the President claims that it was all an example of free speech. No, President Pines, preventing others from hearing someone speaking is NOT free speech. From Luana:
After Rep. Raskin was shouted down at the University of Maryland last week, the university president bizarrely tried claim the event was an example of “free speech and academic freedom.”
Sorry, but the heckler’s veto is not free speech. https://t.co/KNVUGtAIND pic.twitter.com/spGf9xlmZL
— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) April 1, 2024
From Malcolm, apparently a real cat. But what breed?
What breed of cat is this? pic.twitter.com/ZhbuhfiAsV
— Intriguing and unexpected content! (@WriteEditPJ) March 24, 2024
Although I’m not a huge d*g fan, I do love border collies. Look at this one!
Border collie knows how to do his job well. pic.twitter.com/2BbomvWCWU
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) March 31, 2024
From the Auschwitz Memorial, something I reposted. The girl looks a bit like my sister when she was young.
Fourteen-year-old girl gassed upon arriving at Auschwitz. Every time I write this, I envision the scene of a dazed child (or adults) dragged out of a train, stripped, and then taken to a "shower" where cyanide gas came out of the nozzles, causing a painful and horrible death. https://t.co/0iTL8QrMPM
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) April 2, 2024
Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. Matthew thinks that this first tweet is one of the best ever:
🃏🤡For #AprilFoolsDay – that time @StationCDRKelly dressed as a gorilla (in a suit brought to the #ISS by brother @SenMarkKelly) and chased @astro_timpeake through the @Space_Station! https://t.co/68BcmBnjC4 #Expedition46 #YearInSpace #space
— Cady Coleman (@Astro_Cady) April 1, 2024
Matthew didn’t know that this species had males building nests for females (much less sometimes in boots), and then attracting them to those nests. I didn’t know it, either. I just hope this diligent guy got his female:
Fascinating behaviour that I have never seen before! This male wren is displaying to the female, calling her to check out his walking boot nest that he has created for her! What fabulous little birds! #GwylltHollow @Natures_Voice @RSPBCymru @WTSWW @BBCSpringwatch pic.twitter.com/TL5hBxCOJb
— WildlifeKate (@katemacrae) March 31, 2024
Has there been an official report from Hamas or any other Palestinian agency of the number of Hamas militants killed? It seems to me that the reporting from the Palestinians only mentions the number of people killed and the number of women and children, making it look like the only Palestinians ever killed are innocent civilians. That reinforces the idea that Israel is just randomly firing at civilians unprovoked.
I’ve also not found many reports on how many were captured as well.
Oh man, I saw that painting on eXtwitter and wanted to EAT it!… the painting.
I believe the one state solution is the only answer, but that the state would have to be Israel. The only way I see that happening is if the other states in the region open their doors and let the Gazans in, something they have pointedly refused to do over the decades.
From my limited knowledge of the history of the region, an influx of Palestinian refugees led to a failed coup in Jordan and was a major factor in the outbreak of civil war in Lebanon. The Egyptians are not too keen on having a large number of new militants aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood in their country either.
So essentially, everyone views the Palestinans as useless troublemakers who should rather keep pestering Israel rather than anyone else.
There are good reasons why NO Arab state or society want anything to do with the explosive, murderous, irredentist and terroristic “Palestine”.
Here are some:
https://democracychronicles.org/worst-houseguests-ever-the-palestinians/
D.A.
NYC
Thank you for posting the Auschwitz Memorials. Every day I read the person’s name and think of their age when murdered. Today’s child, Daisy, was 14. #say her name. Zero help to her, but I want to stop and honor her.
+1
+1
+100%
Ditto!
+1
I think I ODed on PB&J sandwiches in elementary school and still can’t eat them. i do love PB& bacon, though😋
My mother did not allow PB&J (bad for teeth), so I grew up eating PB and salted butter and that’s still my preference. PB is already sweet, I want salty to go with that. PB & bacon sounds delicious; I may have to try it.
PB&bacon is especially delicious on toast. Think German/Jewish pumpernickel, or, really, any kind of breas. Usually open-faced. Writing this is making me hungry😋😋
I suspect Baconi’s “two state” solution is something like this: 1) Palestine along the Jordan River, Gaza, etc. 2) The rest: “Israel” [with a majority Palestinian population since of course the solution includes “right of return”.]
The little girl must have been using Fascilitated Communication, which is completely scientific and in no way doing anything but helping the cat express itself despite its disability.
And what kind of cat is the mystery cat? I’m no expert, but my guess is electronic.
When I was small I tried to teach our cat to speak, and was rather frustrated when she turned out to be an indifferent student.
If I had to guess, I’d say the long-furred cat with the interesting eyes and “hairstyle” around the face might be ( not claiming any expertise here) a cross between a Maine coon cat and a Himalayan. From its passive expression, it seems to be thinking, “Hat hair – don’t care”.
Oy. The disinformation about Israel—including Al Shifa hospital and all the rest—is coming so fast and furious that it’s hard to keep up. If armed terrorists took up refuge at the BBC and headquartered their operations there, would the BBC serve them tea, or would they demand their removal? Hamas sympathizers and operatives working in the Al Shifa hospital serve the terrorists tea (and more), so Israel has no choice but to extricate them.
I, too, love peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which my mother lovingly made almost every day for school. The only thing I didn’t like was that the jelly would sometimes bleed through the bread and get onto my fingers. The jelly layer needs to be thin(ish) for the sandwich to make it to lunchtime without incident.
My lunches always had three components: the sandwich, a salty snack (pretzels, potato chips, or Fritos. Fritos were the best.), and a dessert (homemade chocolate chip cookies). Occasionally I also got an apple, but bruising was always a risk.
My father built two houses from scratch for my mother, their first and last, with one he bought in the middle where they raised six children (I was the oldest). He and one of his BILs also built a cabin on a lake. So you could say he likes to build nests too.
I read this as a misplaced modifier “a sandwich which I nearly always have for lunch—when I have lunch, which I usually don’t.” Perhaps i would have said (minimally modified), “My lunch is nearly always that sandwich —when I have lunch, which I usually don’t.”
And that child grew up to be Chief DEI Officer at UChicago.
Here’s one we mark high It’s from the Air Station News Pensacola viz
Mary had a little cat
It ate up all her yarn
And when the cat had kittens
They all had sweaters on
Courtesy
Holly Jahangiri
That’s published in “Our Navy, the Standard Publication of the U.S. Navy, Volume 15” May 1921. No attribution is given, there, to the poet – so either it was some poor Navy corpsman or it’s older than 1921 and probably a common nursery rhyme by then.
https://books.google.com/books?id=-4c9AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA210&fbclid=IwAR2Kq0Ep9DLSiDHq8GPTiVNKadJeVV0d9HmU3EU_xFA_0CAHBRFYO3A5tY8_aem_AcCOSAgUm27OpB4CTbuSsL7rqcnfH8pnL7izq9k1YMXcFxbUCzgQhLG9usGWt2x7zgUW_lS9ruaTJzHFtMs4bFsh#v=onepage&q&f=false
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Oops, very late today – my father-in-law is visiting from Spain.
On this day:
1513 – Having spotted land on March 27, Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León comes ashore on what is now the U.S. state of Florida, landing somewhere between the modern city of St. Augustine and the mouth of the St. Johns River.
1792 – The Coinage Act is passed by Congress, establishing the United States Mint.
1800 – Ludwig van Beethoven leads the premiere of his First Symphony in Vienna.
1902 – “Electric Theatre”, the first full-time movie theater in the United States, opens in Los Angeles.
1911 – The Australian Bureau of Statistics conducts the country’s first national census.
1912 – The ill-fated RMS Titanic begins sea trials.
1917 – American entry into World War I: President Wilson asks the U.S. Congress for a declaration of war on Germany.
1954 – A 19-month-old infant is swept up in the ocean tides at Hermosa Beach, California. Local photographer John L. Gaunt photographs the incident; 1955 Pulitzer winner “Tragedy by the Sea”.
1972 – Actor Charlie Chaplin returns to the United States for the first time since being labeled a communist during the Red Scare in the early 1950s.
1979 – A Soviet bio-warfare laboratory at Sverdlovsk accidentally releases airborne anthrax spores, killing 66 plus an unknown amount of livestock.
1980 – United States President Jimmy Carter signs the Crude Oil Windfall Profits Tax Act.
1982 – Falklands War: Argentina invades the Falkland Islands.
1991 – Rita Johnston becomes the first female Premier of a Canadian province when she succeeds William Vander Zalm (who had resigned) as Premier of British Columbia.
1992 – In New York, Mafia boss John Gotti is convicted of murder and racketeering and is later sentenced to life in prison.
2002 – Israeli forces surround the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, into which armed Palestinians had retreated.
2004 – Islamist terrorists involved in the 11 March 2004 Madrid attacks attempt to bomb the Spanish high-speed train AVE near Madrid; the attack is thwarted.
2015 – Four men steal items worth up to £200 million from an underground safe deposit facility in London’s Hatton Garden area in what has been called the “largest burglary in English legal history”.
2020 – COVID-19 pandemic: The total number of confirmed cases reach one million.
2021 – A Capitol Police officer is killed and another injured when an attacker rams his car into a barricade outside the United States Capitol.
Births:
747 – Charlemagne, Frankish king (d. 814).
1618 – Francesco Maria Grimaldi, Italian mathematician and physicist (d. 1663).
1647 – Maria Sibylla Merian, German-Dutch botanist and illustrator (d. 1717). [She was one of the earliest European naturalists to document observations about insects directly.]
1725 – Giacomo Casanova, Italian explorer and author (d. 1798).
1788 – Wilhelmine Reichard, German balloonist (d. 1848). [Today’s Woman of the Day, see next post below.]
1805 – Hans Christian Andersen, Danish novelist, short story writer, and poet (d. 1875).
1840 – Émile Zola, French novelist, playwright, journalist (d. 1902).
1875 – Walter Chrysler, American businessman, founded Chrysler (d. 1940).
1891 – Max Ernst, German painter, sculptor, and poet (d. 1976).
1914 – Alec Guinness, English actor (d. 2000).
1927 – Kenneth Tynan, English author and critic (d. 1980). [Often believed to have been the first person to say “fuck” on British television, during a live broadcast in 1965.]
1928 – Serge Gainsbourg, French singer-songwriter, actor, and director (d. 1991).
1934 – Brian Glover, English wrestler and actor (d. 1997). [Dad worked with him at the RSC and in the TV series Sounding Brass.]
1939 – Marvin Gaye, American singer-songwriter (d. 1984). [His death was noted here yesterday.]
1940 – Penelope Keith, English actress.
1945 – Linda Hunt, American actress.
1946 – Sue Townsend, English author and playwright (d. 2014).
1947 – Emmylou Harris, American singer-songwriter and guitarist.
1949 – Paul Gambaccini, American-English radio and television host.
1953 – Rosemary Bryant Mariner, 20th and 21st-century U.S. Navy aviator (d. 2019).
1957 – Caroline Dean, English biologist and academic.
1960 – Linford Christie, Jamaican-English sprinter.
1965 – Rodney King, American victim of police brutality (d. 2012).
1977 – Michael Fassbender, German-Irish actor and producer.
1980 – Adam Fleming, Scottish journalist. [His new BBC Radio 4 show Antisocial makes a fairly decent effort to hear both sides of controversial issues in the news.]
No truth can cure the sorrow we feel from losing a loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, no kindness can cure that sorrow. All we can do is see it through to the end and learn something from it, but what we learn will be no help in facing the next sorrow that comes to us without warning. (Haruki Murakami):
1872 – Samuel Morse, American painter and academic, invented the Morse code (b. 1791).
1928 – Theodore William Richards, American chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1868).
1966 – C. S. Forester, English novelist (b. 1899).
1987 – Buddy Rich, American drummer, songwriter, and bandleader (b. 1917).
1994 – Betty Furness, American actress, consumer advocate, game show panelist, television journalist and television personality (b. 1916).
2003 – Edwin Starr, American singer-songwriter (b. 1942).
2012 – Elizabeth Catlett, American-Mexican sculptor and illustrator (b. 1915).
2022 – Estelle Harris, American actress and comedian (b. 1928).
Woman of the Day:
[Text from Wikipedia]
Johanne Wilhelmine Siegmundine Reichard (née Schmidt; born on this day in 1788, died 23 February 1848) was a German aeronaut who was the first German female balloonist.
Reichard was the daughter of a cup-bearer of the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg. She married the chemist and physicist Johann Gottfried Reichard in 1807 and their first child was born in 1807. The family moved to Berlin in 1810. That same year Johann Gottfried Reichard made his first flight in a self-constructed gas balloon from Berlin, making him the second person to fly in a gas balloon in Germany.
On 16 April 1811 Wilhelmine Reichard made her first solo flight, starting in Berlin. She reached a height of over 5,000 metres (16,000 ft) and landed safely in Genshagen, 33.5 kilometres (20.8 mi) from her starting point. This was not the first solo flight by a woman in Germany; the Frenchwoman Sophie Blanchard had previously made a flight in September 1810, starting from Frankfurt. Reichard’s third flight in 1811 reached a height of approximately 7,800 metres (25,600 ft). Due to the altitude she lost consciousness and her balloon crash-landed in a forest; badly injured, she was rescued by local farmers.
After some difficulties during the Napoleonic Wars, her husband wanted to purchase a chemical factory in Döhlen. To raise the money, Wilhemine Reichard conducted several more flights. Her first flight after the accident in 1811 took place in October 1816. A later flight took place during the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle in Aachen in 1818. Flights in Prague and Vienna also made her known in Austria-Hungary. Her last flight was in October 1820, starting in Munich at the Oktoberfest, which was held on the 10th anniversary of the first Oktoberfest. In 1821, the chemical factory started operations.
Wilhelmine’s husband conducted balloon flights until 1835. He died in 1844, and Wilhelmine managed the chemical factory until her own death in 1848.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelmine_Reichard
2015: Shouldn’t that be “the largest burglary in English illegal history”, Jez?
Indeed, but the Wikipedia list is quoting the words used by the prosecutor in the case: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-34899627
It’s an interesting crime, because the perpetrators were lead by old geezers.
Collie vs sheep is such a cute animal IQ test.
My boy is an Aussie Shepherd, similar to a border collie genes wise. He’s just like that dog in the tweet. He terrorizes all sheep-like objects like that, be they trash bags, his toys, other dogs, children, etc. Everything can be herded if you’re a herder! And he’s never, ever met an actual sheep!
D.A.
NYC
us: https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2020/06/10/photos-of-readers-93/