FYI April 23 & 24, 2022

On This Day

1516 – The Munich Reinheitsgebot (regarding the ingredients of beer) takes effect in all of Bavaria.
The Reinheitsgebot (German pronunciation: [ˈʁaɪnhaɪtsɡəboːt] (listen), literally “purity order”) is a series of regulations limiting the ingredients in beer in Germany and the states of the former Holy Roman Empire. The best known version of the law was adopted in Bavaria in 1516 (by William IV), but similar regulations predate the Bavarian order, and modern regulations also significantly differ from the 1516 Bavarian version. Although today, the Reinheitsgebot is mentioned in various texts about the history of beer, historically it was only applied in the duchy of Bavaria and from 1906 in Germany as a whole, and it had little or no effect in other countries or regions.

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1922 – The first segment of the Imperial Wireless Chain providing wireless telegraphy between Leafield in Oxfordshire, England, and Cairo, Egypt, comes into operation.
The Imperial Wireless Chain was a strategic international communications network of powerful long range radiotelegraphy stations, created by the British government to link the countries of the British Empire. The stations exchanged commercial and diplomatic text message traffic transmitted at high speed by Morse code using paper tape machines. Although the idea was conceived prior to World War I, the United Kingdom was the last of the world’s great powers to implement an operational system.[1] The first link in the chain, between Leafield in Oxfordshire and Cairo, Egypt, eventually opened on 24 April 1922,[2] with the final link, between Australia and Canada, opening on 16 June 1928.[3]

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Born On This Day

1910 – Sheila Scott Macintyre, Scottish mathematician (d. 1960)[14]
Professor Sheila Scott Macintyre FRSE (23 April 1910 – 21 March 1960) was a Scottish mathematician best known for her work on the Whittaker constant. Macintyre is also known for co-authoring a German-English mathematics dictionary with Edith Witte.

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1906 – Mimi Smith, English nurse (d. 1991)
Mary Elizabeth “Mimi” Smith (née Stanley; 24 April 1906 – 6 December 1991) was a maternal aunt and the parental guardian of the English musician John Lennon. Mimi Stanley was born in Toxteth, Liverpool, England,[2] the oldest of five daughters. She became a resident trainee nurse at the Woolton Convalescent Hospital and later worked as a private secretary. On 15 September 1939 she married George Toogood Smith who ran his family’s dairy farm and a shop in Woolton, a suburb of Liverpool.

After her younger sister Julia Lennon separated from her husband, Julia and her son, the young John Lennon, moved in with a new partner, but Smith contacted Liverpool’s Social Services and complained about his sleeping in the same bed as the two adults. Julia was eventually persuaded to hand over the care of John to the Smiths. He lived with the Smiths for most of his childhood and remained close to his aunt, even though she was highly dismissive of his musical ambitions, his girlfriends and wives. She often told the teenage Lennon: “The guitar’s all right, John, but you’ll never make a living out of it”.

In 1965, John bought her a bungalow in Poole, Dorset, where she lived until her death in 1991. Despite later losing touch with other family members, he kept in close contact with Mimi and telephoned her every week until his death in 1980. The Smiths’ house in Liverpool was later donated to The National Trust.


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FYI

 
 
NASA: Astronomy Picture of the Day
 
 
Ernie Smith, Tedium: CNN Plus Innovation Everyone is ripping on CNN right now for shutting down CNN+ after like three weeks. Let’s remember the network’s long legacy of innovation for a second here.
 
 
By Ernie Smith, Tedium: Good Luck Opening These In the latest entry in our periodic series on failed file formats, we dig into word processor document formats that didn’t make it through to the present day.
 
 
 
 
The Hustle: The surprising afterlife of used hotel soap Hotel guests leave behind millions of half-used bars of soap every day. A nonprofit is on a mission to repurpose them.
 
 
 
 
Kathryn’s Report: Quick thinking leads to award for Dover Air Force Base (KDOV) traffic controller
 
 
Kathryn’s Report: Federal Aviation Administration apologizes for failing to alert Capitol police over parachute jump
 
 
 
 
By Aatish Bhatia and Henry Fountain Produced by Aatish Bhatia and Sean Catangui, The New York Times: ‘It’s Super Spectacular.’ See How the Tonga Volcano Unleashed a Once-in-a-Century Shockwave.
 
 
 
 
The Marginalian by Maria Popova: Yo-Yo Ma performs Richard Feynman’s ode to the wonder of life, the mystery of the world’s most majestic tree, and more
 
 
 
 
CBC News: To celebrate poetry month, two northern authors share what inspires them
 
 
 
 
By Kenneth Partridge, Mental Floss: Unraveling the Many Mysteries of Neil Diamond’s ‘Sweet Caroline’ Digging into Diamond’s inspiration and how the song became a staple at Fenway Park.

 
 
 
 
Rare Historical Photos: Old photos of daredevil bikers racing in motorcycle chariots, 1920-1930

 
 
 
 

The Marginalian by Maria Popova: The Animated Universe in Verse — the complete series, a year in the making, freely available online in its entirety
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

Ideas

By ctstarkdesigns: The Hemlock Electric Bike – a Commuter’s Dream E-bike – Designed Using Tinkercad and Fusion360!
 
 
 
 

Recipes

By Betty Crocker Kitchens: Crispy Parmesan-Ranch Roasted Veggies
 
 
By Betty Crocker Kitchens: 20 Unexpected & Tasty Takes on Tex-Mex
 
 
Taste of Home: Vintage Recipes from the ’70s Worth Trying Today
 
 
Just the Recipe: Paste the URL to any recipe, click submit, and it’ll return literally JUST the recipe- no ads, no life story of the writer, no nothing EXCEPT the recipe.
 
 
DamnDelicious
 
 


 
 

 
 

 
 
 
 

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Stacy, Carol RT Book Reviews

Welcome to the Stump the Bookseller blog!

Stump the Bookseller is a service offered by Loganberry Books to reconnect people to the books they love but can’t quite remember. In brief (for more detailed information see our About page), people can post their memories here, and the hivemind goes to work. After all, the collective mind of bibliophiles, readers, parents and librarians around the world is much better than just a few of us thinking. Together with these wonderful Stumper Magicians, we have a nearly 50% success rate in finding these long lost but treasured books. The more concrete the book description, the better the success rate, of course. It is a labor of love to keep it going, and there is a modest fee. Please see the How To page to find price information and details on how to submit your Book Stumper and payment.

Thanks to everyone involved to keep this forum going: our blogging team, the well-read Stumper Magicians, the many referrals, and of course to everyone who fondly remembers the wonder of books from their childhood and wants to share or revisit that wonder. Isn’t it amazing, the magic of a book?