On This Day
1924 – The first aerial circumnavigation is completed by a team from the US Army.
The first aerial circumnavigation of the world was conducted in 1924 by a team of aviators of the United States Army Air Service, the precursor of the United States Air Force. The trip took 175 days, covering over 27,553 miles (44,342 km).
In 1929 Australian Charles Kingsford Smith completed the second circumnavigation of the world by flight, and the first within both hemispheres, including the first trans-Pacific flight to Australia in 1928.
Born On This Day
1856 – Kate Douglas Wiggin, American author and educator (d. 1923)
Kate Douglas Wiggin (September 28, 1856 – August 24, 1923) was an American educator and author of children’s stories, most notably the classic children’s novel Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. She started the first free kindergarten in San Francisco in 1878 (the Silver Street Free Kindergarten). With her sister during the 1880s, she also established a training school for kindergarten teachers. Kate Wiggin devoted her adult life to the welfare of children in an era when children were commonly thought of as cheap labor.
Wiggin went to California to study kindergarten methods. She began to teach in San Francisco with her sister Nora Smith assisting her, and the two were instrumental in the establishment of over 60 kindergartens for the poor in San Francisco and Oakland. She moved from California to New York, and having no kindergarten work on hand, devoted herself to literature. She sent The Story of Patsy and The Bird’s Christmas Carol to Houghton, Mifflin & Co. who accepted them at once. Besides the talent for story-telling, she was a musician, sang well, and composed settings for her poems. She was also an excellent elocutionist. Her first literary work was Half a Dozen Housekeepers, a serial story which she sent to St. Nicholas. After the death of her husband in 1889, she returned to California to resume her kindergarten work, serving as the head of a Kindergarten Normal School. Some of her other works included Cathedral Courtship, A Summer in a Canon, Timothy’s Quest, The Story Hour, Kindergarten Chimes, Polly Oliver’s Problem, and Children’s Rights.[1]
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FYI
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Ideas
wikimedia
- Wikimedia Commons picture of the day for January 15 January 15, 2025Picture of the day Cluster of Breath roots (pneumatophores) of a Taxodium distichum at the water's edge. Focus stack of 4 photos.
- Wikimedia Commons picture of the day for January 14 January 14, 2025Picture of the day Mute swan (Cygnus olor) at Lake Geneva during the golden hour of sunset
Recipes
By Marti Mendenhall: Marti’s Music Kitchen Episode 5: The Bylines cook with Marti!
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