Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
We have some lovely black and white landscape photos today courtesy of reader Bill Zorn. His captions are indented.
Here are a few landscapes. I made these photographs with a Linhof Master Technika 2000 camera, a variety of Kodak 4×5” films, which I processed and printed on Ilford paper using Ansel Adam’s technique.
Today’s Google Doodle (click on screenshot) honors the 197th birthday of Mary Ann Shadd (1823-1893). As C|Net notes, Shadd was “an American-Canadian newspaper editor and publisher. . . Shadd Cary is credited as North America’s first Black female newspaper editor and publisher. She was also the second Black woman to earn a law degree in the US, and fought for abolition and women’s suffrage.
News of the day: It seems likely that there will be no more Trump/Biden debates since the “President” has refused to participate in the next debate, which was required to be virtual, with the candidates in separate locales. Trump says he’ll have a rally instead. We don’t know whether there will be a final debate, as that depends, among other things, on the President’s infection status. The White House refuses to say when the last time Trump tested negative for the coronavirus.
Ironically, Trump might have been helped medically by a procedure whose development he opposed. (h/t Matthew):
"The drug is a monoclonal antibody cocktail developed by Regeneron.
"The stem cells used to develop the drug… were originally derived from an embryonic kidney…
"The 2020 Republican party platform explicitly opposes embryonic stem cell research"https://t.co/IvXjAnOqoM
This was almost inevitable given today’s political climate. Six loons, members of a right-wing militia group called (LOL) the Wolverine Watchmen, were charged with plotting to kidnap Wisconsin governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, among other planned crimes. They couldn’t abide her supposed “violations of the Constitution”. If convicted, the Watchmen could face life in prison. (h/t Jez)
They are suspected of attempting to identify the homes of law enforcement officers to “target them, made threats of violence intended to instigate a civil war”. They also planned and trained for an operation to attack the Michigan capitol building and to kidnap government officials, including the governor, Nessel said.
The New York Times has a nice interview piece with Louis Glück, who won the Nobel Prize for Poetry yesterday. She’s a bit laconic, but here she is on mortality:
What is the new collection about?
Falling apart. There’s a lot of mourning in the book. There’s also a lot of comedy in the book, and the poems are very surreal.
I’ve written about death since I could write. Literally when I was 10, I was writing about death. Yeah, well, I was a lively girl. Aging is more complicated. It isn’t simply the fact that you’re drawn closer to your death, it’s that faculties that you counted on — physical grace and strength and mental agility — these things are being compromised or threatened. It’s been very interesting to think about and write about.
Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 212,678, an increase of about 1,000 deaths over yesterday’s report. The world death toll remains at “1.0 million +”, with 6,239 deaths reported yesterday.
I saw this clock when I visited Prague years ago; it’s in the Old Town Hall, and is the oldest clock still operating. A video and a photo (learn more here):
Koreans wrote in classical Chinese until that year.
1604 – Kepler’s Supernova is the most recent supernova to be observed within the Milky Way.
Since 1604 we’ve seen no new supernovas appear in the Milky Way galaxy. Here’s a recent photo of the remnants:
(From Wikipedia): A false-color composite (CXO/HST/Spitzer Space Telescope) image of the supernova remnant nebula from SN 1604
1701 – The Collegiate School of Connecticut (later renamed Yale University) is chartered in Old Saybrook.
1874 – The Universal Postal Union is created by the Treaty of Bern.
1919 – The Cincinnati Reds win the World Series, resulting in the Black Sox Scandal.
These eight members of the Chicago White Sox were accused of deliberately throwing the Series. They were acquitted in court, but banned from both baseball for life and from entry into the Hall of Fame:
1967 – A day after his capture, Ernesto “Che” Guevara is executed for attempting to incite a revolution in Bolivia.
It’s worth reading a good biography of Guevara, as his short life was fascinating. Here’s his body after he was executed:
(from Wikipedia): The day after his execution on 10 October 1967, Guevara’s corpse was displayed to the news media in the laundry house of the Vallegrande hospital. (photo by Freddy Alborta) Face Side angle Shoes
1981 – President François Mitterrand abolishes capital punishment in France.
1986 – The Phantom of the Opera, eventually the second longest running musical in London, opens at Her Majesty’s Theatre.
2006 – North Korea conducts its first nuclear test.
One from Matthew himself. That’s Harry on the table, who bit the hell out of Ollie’s tail the other day. It’s useless to try keeping cats off of tables, at least in my experience:
This guy does an amazing job with old film. Matthew adds: “The thread contains the original b&w film, and comments from the guy who makes these things, along with links to other old films he has treated this way.”
Some things never change. Snowball fight 124 years ago. Lyon, France, 1896. Colorized and speed adjusted. Original in black and white by Louis Lumiere.pic.twitter.com/UOu5voQufH
According to the blog post below by Barry Duke at the Patheos site TheFreeThinker, and also from an article in the Otago Daily Times, a new hospital in Dunedin, New Zealand decided it would devote its chapel space to a multifaith facility rather than a Christian one. This has pissed off a lot of Christians, including the Anglican Bishop of Dunedin, all of whom petitioned the Health Board to guarantee there would be a Christian chapel. No dice—the facility doesn’t have sufficient space. Read for yourself, especially the ludicrous justification for a specifically Christian chapel in the hospital.
Have a look at this one:
An excerpt from the paper (my emphasis)
. . . a petition signed by 52 people, mainly leaders of Presbyterian congregations across the South, but also including the Anglican Bishop of Dunedin, the Right Rev Stephen Benford, seeks assurance from the health board that a Christian chapel and an office for chaplains be given priority for the new hospital.
The signatures are attached to a letter to New Dunedin Hospital programme director Hamish Brown, from Leith Valley Presbyterian Church minister the Rev Richard Dawson, which calls for hospital planners to revisit their plans and include a “discernable Christian presence” in the new hospital.
“Hospitals and the health systems in which they operate can largely be said to be an invention of the church and they certainly rely on values espoused by the church throughout its 2000-year history,” Mr Dawson writes.
“More than this, however, is the concern that the Christian faith will not be primarily represented within a city founded on Christian principles and a country in which, still, the largest group of people claiming religious adherence are Christian.”
He argued non-denominational chaplains at the new hospital would administer to the spiritual needs of anyone using the hospital, but said the nature of modern hospitals was due to the impact of Christian churches on ancient military hospitals.
And he asked that “the faith tradition upon which this nation and this city have relied on to guide them in forming an holistic health system be duly recognised”.
This is pathetic. While I don’t mind that they create a place to worship the supernatural in a hospital—after all, hospitals are places of grief and pain, and for those who are religious there’s no harm in creating a quiet for meditation or prayer—I do mind them prioritizing Christianity. And the rationale for that—that Christianity invented hospitals—would be ludicrous even if it were true. But it doesn’t seem to be true, as you find out quickly when you consult the Wikipedia article on “hospital”:
In early India, Fa Xian, a Chinese Buddhist monk who travelled across India c. AD 400, recorded examples of healing institutions. According to the Mahavamsa, the ancient chronicle of Sinhalese royalty, written in the sixth century AD, King Pandukabhaya of Sri Lanka (r. 437–367 BC) had lying-in-homes and hospitals (Sivikasotthi-Sala). A hospital and medical training centre also existed at Gundeshapur, a major city in southwest of the Sassanid Persian Empire founded in AD 271 by Shapur I. In ancient Greece, temples dedicated to the healer-god Asclepius, known as Asclepeion functioned as centres of medical advice, prognosis, and healing. The Asclepeia spread to the Roman Empire. While public healthcare was non-existent in the Roman Empire, military hospitals called valetudinaria did exist stationed in military barracks and would serve the soldiers and slaves within the fort. Evidence exists that some civilian hospitals, while unavailable to the Roman population, were occasionally privately built in extremely wealthy Roman households located in the countryside for that family, although this practice seems to have ended in 80 AD.
So much for that, but even if the very first hospital was constructed by the Christian church, that gives Christians no priority over other faiths in having a dedicated place of worship in a hospital. As for the “faith tradition” of the country and which is supposedly majority Christian, well, the paper adds this:
[Hospital Programme Director Hamish Brown’s] report noted that between the 2006 and 2018 censuses the number of Otago people who identifed as Christian dropped from more than half (54.1%) to about a third (33.4%).
Those identifying with no religion rose from 38.8% in 2006 to 55.8% in 2018.
It seems to me that they need a Secular Center, not a Christian one!
This is one of the more blatant examples of racial discrimination that I have seen, outstripping what I consider a useful form of discrimination: affirmative action in universities and other organizations. But in this case the affirmative action seems invidious, for it’s taking the form of giving students of color more access to in-person learning in Evanston public schools (a town just north of Chicago) as a way to remedy racism.
Since the article is in the Wall Street Journal, you won’t be able to read more than a few lines by clicking on the screenshot, but judicious inquiry will yield a copy.
The plan is to let students of color have more access to in-person learning than white students because, on average, the former do less well in school (but apparently not always; Evanston is a pretty wealthy town, and a college town that harbors Northwesterne University).
An excerpt (my emphasis in all that follows):
This summer, school superintendent Devon Horton told the residents of this city north of Chicago that for “oppressed minorities,” the coronavirus was only the latest chapter in their long history of persecution—the pandemic of “inequity and racism and classism” had been holding them down for a lot longer.
In recognition of the impact of racism, Dr. Horton said, Evanston schools would give students from marginalized groups first priority for seats for in-person learning and all other students would be taught remotely. This is “about equity for Black and brown students, for special education students, for our LGBTQ students,” he said during a public meeting, held via Zoom.
. . .Even this city, which has been proactive around the issue of race relations, has been overtaken by demands for change sparked by the May killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. Protests this summer called for racial equity in general and an end to police brutality against Black people. That public rage has led to a shake-up at schools, which are struggling to accommodate competing demands from teachers, parents and students. Resolutions and curriculum reviews from just a year or two ago, which were designed to recognize the harm done to Black people in America, are no longer considered enough by some. Calls for deliberation have been labeled obstructionist and racist.
Giving students preferential treatment on the basis of race has faced legal challenges elsewhere, such as in college admissions. Dr. Horton frames the issue as addressing an achievement gap that falls along racial lines in his district. In Evanston, Black and Latino students are about one-third as likely as white students to meet college readiness benchmarks, according to a 2019 Evanston schools report. White families have average household incomes three times that of Black and Latino families here, according to federal data.
The school board defended the policy, equating opposition to it as a form of white supremacy!
In July, during a public Zoom meeting, he said that all students would begin the school year online. Later this fall, should conditions permit, a fraction of students would be able to return to the classroom. The rest would continue to take class online.
After the slew of angry letters aimed at Dr. Horton, the school board responded with an open letter to the community.
“When you challenge policies and protocols established to ensure an equitable experience for Black and brown students,” the board said in its letter, “you are part of a continuum of resistance to equity and desire to maintain white supremacy.”
This is Critical Race Theory embodied.
Why do I favor affirmative action for colleges but oppose this protocol? For several reasons. Students in secondary schools do not have an opportunity to go to another school if they’re denied in-person learning, while under affirmative action a minority student denied admission to one college can find a place in another. There is recourse in the second case, but not in the first. Further, there is no ranking of merit or need in the Evanston case, in contrast to colleges, which rank minority students and, while giving them an admissions boost, still admit those who are most promising. In contrast, the Evanston students of color are apparently not ranked on the basis of merit and need (in this case, those who need in-person education most are presumably those who aren’t doing very well), but are simply given priority based on race. White students who really need help badly, but aren’t “of color”, don’t get much of a chance.
In other words, based on their known performance, students who don’t need in-person learning, but who are minorities, get priority over non-minorities who badly need in-person learning. Needs are presumably known to the teachers. The prioritization of race over need in such a case seems invidious and counterproductive, for the net result will be a decrease in overall learning compared to a needs-based protocol. That itself will still allow affirmative action of a sort because minority students apparently need more help than others. Prioritizing based on need, in other words, still has the effect of increasing in-class diversity.
Further, this kind of partitioning assumes that all black students are weaker than all white students, which simply cannot be the case. That is racism, pure and simple. And there is no inherent advantage of diversity in this kind of partitioning—one rationale for affirmative action in colleges. The diversity is already there, as these are public schools that all children are required to attend.
Finally, why do LGBTQ students get any priority at all? What they need is not more learning—assuming they’re not in general deficient compared to “straight” students—but equal treatment as people.
Evanston has screwed up here, and it’s no surprise that many people are mad.
Oh, and there’s one more thing on Dr. Horton’s agenda:
Dr. Horton has hired a dean of culture and climate and a diversity hiring specialist for the district. He wants the teaching staff to reflect the demographics of the district, which is about 23% Black and 21% Hispanic. Currently, 13% of the district’s teachers are Black and 9% are Hispanic.
Every teacher in his district will be required to take antiracist training, he said. The expectation will be that they should teach and grade equitably. Most are now, Dr. Horton said. Teachers who are not hitting the district’s goals will be “coached up,” he said.
The Evanston teachers union didn’t return calls seeking comment.
Dr. Horton said he wouldn’t hire a teacher who didn’t support the district’s antiracist agenda and said he doesn’t believe teachers should be licensed by the state if they aren’t trained in antiracism.
“If you’re not antiracist, we can’t have you in front of our students,” he said.
The paper below, which has just been published (click on screenshot to go to page, then click the “download” button to the left to get the pdf), has a unique twist that may say something about evolution in pathogens, but the evolutionary angle hasn’t been mentioned. It’s a complex and technical paper, using rat models (i.e., tissue and analyses), to study whether the Covid-19 virus has the ability to reduce pain.
There’s also a publicity piece from the University of Arizona that explains the results in simpler language, and a two-minute video below that dumb things down a bit, but gives the gist.
Rajesh Khanna, PhD. (Photo: Kris Hanning/University of Arizona Health Sciences)“It made a lot of sense to me that perhaps the reason for the unrelenting spread of COVID-19 is that in the early stages, you’re walking around all fine as if nothing is wrong because your pain has been suppressed,” said Dr. Khanna. “You have the virus, but you don’t feel bad because your pain is gone. If we can prove that this pain relief is what is causing COVID-19 to spread further, that’s of enormous value.”
The paper, “SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein co-opts VEGF-A/Neuropilin-1 receptor signaling to induce analgesia,” was published today in PAIN, the journal of the International Association for the Study of Pain.
. . .The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released updated data Sept. 10 estimating that 50% of COVID-19 transmission occurs prior to the onset of symptoms and 40% of COVID-19 infections are asymptomatic.
“This research raises the possibility that pain, as an early symptom of COVID-19, may be reduced by the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein as it silences the body’s pain signaling pathways,” said UArizona Health Sciences Senior Vice President Michael D. Dake, MD. “University of Arizona Health Sciences researchers at the Comprehensive Pain and Addiction Center are leveraging this unique finding to explore a novel class of therapeutics for pain as we continue to seek new ways to address the opioid epidemic.”
In other words, the virus’s famous spike protein nullifies the effect of another protein, VEGF—one of the several proteins that normally causes pain. And that’s all ye need to know unless you work on this system.
But here’s where the evolution comes in. Remember, pain is an adaptation whose evolution was doubtlessly prompted by its ability to tell us that there’s something wrong, like “Hey, your hand is in the fire.” People who don’t feel pain, like those with Hansen’s disease (leprosy) and some rare neurological conditions, often incur severe damage to their bodies because they’re unaware of injuries. The reason Hansen’s sufferers lose their fingers and other bits is not because the bacteria eat away at those bits; rather, it’s because the bacteria numb feelings of pain, and so you start damaging your body without being aware of it. So pain is a good thing to have, even though it feels bad.
But if a virus that normally causes pain because it injures your innards can somehow block that pain, it might spread faster. This would be true for viruses like COVID-19, which is spread by human-to-human contact, and depends on its transmission for people going about and infecting others. If you take to bed because you’re in pain, the virus won’t spread as well.
And what that means is that mutant variants of the virus that reduce pain will spread faster than forms that cause pain. This differential would create natural selection for the mutants that reduce pain, and the virus “species” would evolve painlessness as one “symptom”.
As far as I can see, nobody in either the paper or the puff pieces have mentioned this possibility. Now we don’t know if this speculation is true, or if it’s just fortuitous that the spike protein blocks pain receptors. Further, while this might be an evolved property of the virus, it could also be an inherent property of the spike protein, evolved for other reasons, that simply allowed the virus to spread quickly.
I’m merely suggesting this as one possibility in a field called “Darwinian medicine,” which analyzes symptoms of diseases from an evolutionary viewpoint. Other suggestions from this area involve things like malaria. When you have a malaria outbreak, the malaise and fever put you flat on your back. And that facilitates the spread of the malaria pathogen (a protozoan), because that protozoan is transmitted by mosquitoes. When you’re prostrate in bed and sick, you’re not as liable to slap a biting mosquito as when you’re walking around, and so those protozoans that knock you flat will more readily find a mosquito vector. (This is all speculation, of course.)
Another suggestion involves the virus for the common cold. It doesn’t debilitate you, but rather makes you a bit grotty but still able to walk around—and transmit the virus to other people. If a common cold were to knock you out like malaria, the virus wouldn’t spread so well.
And so many of the symptoms that are caused by pathogens may well have evolved in those pathogens to facilitate their own transmission. This must certainly be true in some cases, but of course proving it is very hard to do. You couldn’t do experiments in humans, though I suppose you could in model animals like rats, but I wouldn’t be keen on hurting animals to test evolutionary hypotheses. (I even anesthetized all my fruit flies before killing them.) It is curious, though, that I haven’t seen this new and striking result mentioned as a possible example of natural selection in the virus.
Here’s the video, though you might not learn much if you’ve read what’s above.
I importune you again to send in your wildlife photos. I have a decent backlog, but remember that it depletes at the rate of seven posts per week.
Today we are again counting “street photography” (one of my favorite genres of photos) as “wildlife photography.” And Joe Routon contributes some lovely photos. His comments are indented.
Here are men in Morocco having a serious discussion.
If I see a person who has an interesting face, I’ll ask if I can take a “street portrait.” Here’s one from India.
This was in France. I was immediately attracted to the colorful sheets, so this one is in color.
One of my street photos during a demonstration. It’s hard to tell if the child’s ears are being blasted or if he’s intently feeling the emotion and the message of the moment. His hands seem to be signaling “Hold it down! Hold it down!”
Young love in Prague.
A baby-carrier in Myanmar.
Jerry, this is one that you’ll appreciate, but you probably won’t want to include it. [JAC: Of course I included it!] I shot it during the National Democratic Convention in Philadelphia. A group from “the most obnoxious and rabid hate group in America,” Westboro Baptist Church, from Topeka, Kansas, was on hand to demonstrate and create havoc. They’re the ones who spew hatred—their web site is “God Hates Fags,” and they regularly disrupt military funerals and other solemn, meaningful events.
So, while they were preaching vitriolic venom over their loudspeakers, others were giving them a hard time. Notice the sign that one person was holding in front of them, “I love sinning,” and over on the left side is a guy with a green trombone blaring out, completely obliterating the poisonous, bitter “preaching.” It was very entertaining.
Good morning on Thursday, October 8, 2020: National Fluffernutter Day. This is one of the year’s worst food days, for a “Fluffernutter” is a peanut butter sandwich on white bread liberally spread with marshmallow “creme”. Here, take my fluffernutter—please!
And it is a One Bun Day, that is, I saw one Eastern cottontail (Sylvilagus floridanus) on my walk to work. According to my superstition, that means the day will be just okay (the number of bunnies is proportional to the quality of the upcoming day). The record, set not too long ago, was a Four Bun Day, but nothing particularly good happened. Ergo, my superstition is false.
News of the day: The Commission on Presidential Debates has just announced that the next Biden/Trump debate, a week from today, will be virtual:
“The second presidential debate will take the form of a town meeting, in which the candidates would participate from separate remote locations,” the commission said in a statement. “The town meeting participants and the moderator, Steve Scully, Senior Executive Producer & Political Editor, C-SPAN Networks, will be located at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County in Miami, Florida. The White House Pool will provide coverage of the second presidential debate.”
Important News: The Fat Bear Contest, run by Katmai National Park in Alaska, has finished, and we have a winner. It’s bear 747. As the site declares, “747’s voluminous visage eclipsed 32’s chunky chassis. No longer the runner-up, 747 fulfills the fate of the fat and fabulous as he heads off to hibernation.” Here are the two finalists, with the portly winner at the bottom (h/t Jez).
Look at that porker, 747!
You’ll want to read this new (and free) article in Nature on face masks. The verdict: worn properly, they can be efficacious, but you need to know what kind of mask to where and when and how to wear it. Click on the screenshot:
Here’s a photo from that article:
US baseball players wore masks while playing during the 1918 influenza epidemic.Credit: Underwood And Underwood/LIFE Images Collection/Getty
As for the debate last night, well I lasted through only the first half, as it was boring and, as one reader said, a series of stump speeches rather than answers. Both candidates bobbed and weaved rather than answer questions, but Pence also lied and, contrary to the rules, went way overtime with his answers and interrupted Harris. It was, as expected, a referendum on Trump’s presidency, which Harris hit hard. But that won’t move Trump supporters. All things told, and given Harris’s calm demeanor and Pence’s lies, I count it a win for the Democrats, but the moderators of these things need to be far more strict.
The NYT also has “Six takeaways from the first Vice-Presidential debate,” but they, like the debate itself, are a snoozer. I take issue with one of their “takeaways”. “Pence’s interruptions revealed the stage’s gender dynamics.” True, Harris set out her credentials, which the paper says is a requirement for a woman but not a man, but one could say that not all voters know her as well as Pence. And then there’s this:
There were other gender dynamics at play, including Mr. Pence’s regular interruptions.
“I’m speaking,” Ms. Harris pushed back at one point. “Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking,” she said at another. “He interrupted me, and I’d like to just finish, please,” she said a third time.
It was hard not to see the interjections and pushback refracted through the lens of gender in a contest where the outsize support of women is lifting the Democratic ticket. (In the end, CNN calculated the two candidates had almost equal time.)
For sure Pence interrupted Harris a lot, but Trump interrupted Biden, who is not, to my knowledge, a woman. It may be true that this reflects sexism on Pence’s part, but it could also be that he was following Trump’s strategy, or is just someone who interrupts everyone. You can see it through several lenses, and the Times‘s analysis here, seeing it “through the lens of gender,” is the choice of a woke paper.
The best thing about the debate was THE FLY!:
More news: “President” Trump has declared that his contracting Covid-19 was a “blessing from God”. Why a blessing? Listen to him in the tweet below. The sick thing is, beyond his claim that his own experience will now virtually halt the whole pandemic, that I don’t even think Trump believes in a god.
On another viral note, Rick Bright, former director of the NIH’a Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, explained at the Washington Post why he resigned. In short:
Public health and safety have been jeopardized by the administration’s hostility to the truth and by its politicization of the pandemic response, undoubtedly leading to tens of thousands of preventable deaths. For that reason, and because the administration has in effect barred me from working to fight the pandemic, I resigned on Tuesday from the National Institutes of Health.
Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 211,750, an increase of about 1,000 deaths over yesterday’s report. The world death toll remains at “1.0 million +”, with 5,994 deaths reported yesterday.
Stuff that happened on October 8 includes:
1645 – Jeanne Mance open the first lay hospital in North America.
The Chicago fire did start in or near the O’Leary’s barn, but there’s no evidence that a cow kicked over a lantern.
1918 – World War I: Corporal Alvin C. York kills 28 German soldiers and captures 132 for which he was awarded the Medal of Honor.
York was originally a conscientious objector, as portrayed by Gary Cooper in the famous 1941 movie about the soldier, “Sergeant York.” Here’s the real Alvin York, wearing the Medal of Honor (on the left).
1939 – World War II: Germany annexes western Poland.
1944 – World War II: Captain Bobbie Brown earns a Medal of Honor for his actions during the Battle of Crucifix Hill, just outside Aachen.
1956 – The New York Yankees’s Don Larsen pitches the only perfect game in a World Series.
1967 – Guerrilla leader Che Guevara and his men are captured in Bolivia.
1970 – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wins the Nobel Prize in literature.
Which reminds me; the Nobel Prize in literature will be awarded today, and we had a contest. I’m sure there will be a winner unless the new Laureate is very obscure.
1978 – Australia’s Ken Warby sets the current world water speed record of 317.60 mph at Blowering Dam, Australia.
1982 – After its London premiere, Cats opens on Broadway and runs for nearly 18 years before closing on September 10, 2000.
2001 – U.S. President George W. Bush announces the establishment of the Office of Homeland Security.
2014 – Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person in the United States to be diagnosed with Ebola, dies.
There were four confirmed Ebola cases in the U.S., and one person died. That’s a far cry from the current pandemic. Duncan contracted the disease in Liberia, where the infection and death rates were much higher.
Notables born on this day include:
1883 – Otto Heinrich Warburg, German physiologist and physician, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1970)
1890 – Eddie Rickenbacker, American soldier and pilot, Medal of Honor recipient (d. 1973)
Rickenbacker was the U.S.’s most prolific fighter pilot “ace”, bringing down 26 planes during WWI. Here he is in his SPAD S.XIII. Note the machine guns synchronized to fire through the propeller:
1895 – Juan Perón, Argentinian general and politician, 29th President of Argentina (d. 1974)
1939 – Harvey Pekar, American author and critic (d. 2010)
A bit of one of Pekar’s “underground” comics:
1943 – Chevy Chase, American comedian, actor, and screenwriter
1949 – Sigourney Weaver, American actress and producer
1970 – Matt Damon, American actor, producer, and screenwriter
1985 – Bruno Mars, American singer-songwriter, producer, and actor
Those whose lives were quenched on October 8 include:
1754 – Henry Fielding, English novelist and playwright (b. 1707)
1944 – Wendell Willkie, American captain, lawyer, and politician (b. 1892)
1967 – Clement Attlee, English soldier, lawyer, and politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1883)
2015 – Paul Prudhomme, American chef and author (b. 1940)
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the Hili dialogue gets an explanation from Malgorzata: “The morning news was, as usual, horrible. Hili wants Andrzej to calm down and go into the garden to see all the beauty, for picking tasty apples gives some balance and perspective.
Hili: Get a basket, we will go and pick apples.
A: Now?
Hili: Yes, it will do you good after morning news.
In Polish:
Hili: Weź kosz, pójdziemy zrywać jabłka.
Ja: Teraz?
Hili: Tak, to bardzo dobrze robi po porannych wiadomościach.
I tweeted, but the original tweet was sent by Matthew:
This is exactly why they shouldn't ban or censor films like Riefenstahl's pro-Hitler documentary. It shows that those who don't remember history are doomed to repeat it. https://t.co/z7I4XKVFGG
Look at this fantastic owl! I hope it’s okay. They don’t hunt by sight, so the poor sight of albinos wouldn’t be much of a handicap. Maybe the color would be extra visible at night, though.
