Tag: FYI

On This Day

 
 
1953 – The first public television station in the United States officially begins broadcasting as KUHT from the campus of the University of Houston.
KUHT, virtual and VHF digital channel 8, is a Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) member television station licensed to Houston, Texas, United States. Owned by the University of Houston System, it is sister to National Public Radio (NPR) member station KUHF (88.7 FM). The two stations share studios and offices in the Melcher Center for Public Broadcasting on the campus of the University of Houston. KUHT’s transmitter is located near Missouri City, in unincorporated northeastern Fort Bend County. In addition, the station has leased some of its studio operations to Tegna-owned CBS affiliate KHOU (channel 11) from August 2017 to February 2019 when the latter’s original studios were inundated by Hurricane Harvey.

KUHT also serves as the PBS member station to the neighboring Beaumont–Port Arthur and Victoria markets as they do not have their own PBS station. It is available on cable and satellite providers in both markets.

KUHT is notable as the first public television station in the United States.

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Born On This Day

 
 
1818 – Louise de Broglie, Countess d’Haussonville, French essayist and biographer (d. 1882)
Louise de Broglie, Countess d’Haussonville (25 May 1818 – 21 April 1882) was a French essayist and biographer, and a member of the House of Broglie, a distinguished French family. A granddaughter of the novelist Germaine de Staël, she was considered independent, liberal, and outspoken. Her 1845 portrait by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, which took three years to complete, has been exhibited in the Frick Collection in New York City since the 1930s.

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FYI

By A.G. Gancarski: Lauren Book looks to Israel for school safety insights “They’re doing something right, and I want to find out what it looks like.”
Sen. Lauren Book, one of the most influential members of the Senate Democratic Caucus, says she’s excited about many of the high profile events of the Florida Delegation trip to Israel that starts Saturday.

However, Book is perhaps most interested in what insights she can bring back in terms of school safety. It’s been a concern of hers throughout her career, which became more prominent after the Valentine’s Day 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.

The South Florida lawmaker noted that unlike in America, where school shootings happen with a numbing regularity, she “couldn’t find any incidents of targeted mass violence.”

“They’re doing something right,” Book said, “and I want to find out what it looks like.”
 
 
 
 
Forbes Estelle Erasmus Contributor: How Prolific Writer Olga Mecking Gets Published In Top Tier Bylines
10) Be humble but respect yourself. Writers walk that fine line between self-adoration and self-loathing. While both can be crippling, I think they’re important – the first keeps us reaching out for the stars. The other one keeps us humble and willing to learn.

Follow Olga on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and see her portfolio on Contently

Her series of e-books based on her former blog, are downloadable on Kindle.

One Chance in a Thousand, is Olga’s translation of her grandfather’s Holocaust memoir,
 
 
 
 
CutterLight: Morning Nature Walk, the Chigniks, Alaska: Landscapes, New Birds & the Season’s First Bear Photos
 
 

Recipes

Kitchn The Daily: 25 Grilling Recipes for an All-Star Weekend and more ->
 
 
A Taste of Alaska: Poached Garlic Dressing and the Rough Day

On This Day

 
 
1621 – The Protestant Union is formally dissolved.
The Protestant Union (German: Protestantische Union), also known as the Evangelical Union, Union of Auhausen, German Union or the Protestant Action Party, was a coalition of Protestant German states. It was formed on May 14, 1608 by Frederick IV, Elector Palatine in order to defend the rights, land and safety of each member. It included both Calvinist and Lutheran states, and dissolved in 1621.

The union was formed following two events. Firstly, the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II and Bavarian Duke Maximilian I reestablished Catholicism in Donauwörth in 1607. Secondly, by 1608, a majority of the Imperial Diet had decided that the renewal of the 1555 Peace of Augsburg should be conditional upon the restoration of all church land appropriated since 1552. The Protestant princes met in Auhausen, and formed a coalition of Protestant states under the leadership of Frederick IV on May 14, 1608. In response, the Catholic League organized the following year, headed by Duke Maximilian.[1]

Members of the Protestant Union included the Palatinate, Neuburg, Württemberg, Baden-Durlach, Ansbach, Bayreuth, Anhalt, Zweibrücken, Oettingen, Hesse-Kassel, Brandenburg, and the free cities of Ulm, Strasbourg, Nuremberg, Rothenburg, Windsheim, Schweinfurt, Weissenburg, Nördlingen, Schwäbisch Hall, Heilbronn, Memmingen, Kempten, Landau, Worms, Speyer, Aalen and Giengen.[2]

However, the Protestant Union was weakened from the start by the non-participation of several powerful German Protestant rulers, notably the Elector of Saxony. The Union was also beset by internal strife between its Lutheran and Calvinist members.[3]

In 1619, Frederick V of the Palatinate accepted the crown of Bohemia in opposition to Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II. On July 3, 1620, the Protestant Union signed the Treaty of Ulm (German: Ulmer Vertrag), declaring neutrality and declining to support Frederick V.[4] In January 1621, Ferdinand II imposed an imperial ban upon Frederick V and moved his right to elect an emperor to Maximilian. Electoral Palatinate also lost the Upper Palatinate to Bavaria. The Protestant Union met in Heilbronn in February and formally protested Ferdinand’s actions. He ignored this complaint and ordered the Protestant Union to disband its army. The members of the union complied with Ferdinand’s demand under the Mainz accord in May, and on May 14, 1621, it was formally dissolved.[5]

A new separate union without connection to this one emerged twelve years later, the Heilbronn League. It allied some Protestant states in western, central and southern Germany, and fought against the Holy Roman Emperor under the guidance of Sweden and France, which were at the same time parties to that league.

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Born On This Day

 
 
1887 – Mick Mannock, Irish soldier and pilot, Victoria Cross recipient (d. 1918)
Edward Corringham “Mick” Mannock VC, DSO & Two Bars, MC & Bar (24 May 1887 – 26 July 1918) was a British flying ace in the Royal Flying Corps and Royal Air Force during the First World War. Mannock was a pioneer of fighter aircraft tactics in aerial warfare. At his death he had amassed 61 aerial victories, the fifth highest scoring pilot of the war.

Mannock was born in 1887 to an English father, Edward Mannock, and an Irish mother. Mannock’s father served in the British Army and the family moved to India when Mannock was a small child. Mannock was sickly and developed several ailments in his formative years. Upon his return to England he became a fervent supporter of Irish nationalism and the Irish Home Rule movement but became a member of the Independent Labour Party where he satisfied his interest in politics.

In 1914 Mannock was working as a telephone engineer in Turkey. After the Ottoman Empire’s entry into the war on the side of the Central Powers he was interned. Mannock was badly treated and soon fell ill. Turkish authorities repatriated him to Britain believing him to be unfit for war service.

Mannock recovered and joined the Royal Engineers and then Royal Army Medical Corps. He moved services again and in 1916 joined Royal Flying Corps (RFC). After completing his training he was assigned to No. 40 Squadron RFC. Mannock went into combat on the Western Front participating three separate combat tours. After a slow start he began to prove himself as an exceptional pilot, scoring his first victory on 7 May 1917.

By February 1918 Mannock had achieved 16 victories and was appointed Flight Commander of No. 74 Squadron. He amassed 36 more victories from 12 April—17 June 1918. After returning from leave Mannock was appointed commanding officer of No. 85 Squadron in July 1918, and scored nine more victories that month. Days after warning fellow ace George McElroy about the hazards of flying low into ground fire, that fate befell Mannock and he was killed in action dogfighting too close to the ground on 26 July 1918.

Mannock was among the most decorated men in the British Armed Forces. He was honoured with the Military Cross twice, was one of the rare three-time recipients of the Distinguished Service Order, and was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross.

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FYI

Vector’s World: Oldtimers and more ->
 
 
 
 
Open Culture: How Computers Ruined Rock Music; Todd Rundgren’s Advice to Young Artists: Be Free and Fearless, Make Art That Expresses Your True Self, and Never Mind the Critics; New Web Project Immortalizes the Overlooked Women Who Helped Create Rock and Roll in the 1950s and more ->
 
 
 
 
By Kelly Conaboy: Does Everyone Running for President Love the Band Spoon?
Mike Gravel — Response
“Sen. Mike Gravel has never heard of Spoon. He doesn’t like bands and identifies Andrea Bocelli as his favorite musician.”
 
 
 
 
The Rural Blog: Corps OKs plan for keeping Asian carp out of Great Lakes; it’s more expensive than first draft and might not be effective; Trump announces $16 billion trade-aid package for farmers; Berea College announces winners of Appalachian narrative essay contest; top winner counterpoints Hillbilly Elegy and more ->
 
 
 
 
Fast Company Stephanie Vozza: These Navy SEAL tricks will help you perform better under pressure
 
 
 
 
The Passive Voice: U. S. Copyright Office Considers a Federal Right of Publicity; Dude, Where’s My Royalties? More ->
 
 

Recipes

New Life On A Homestead Derrick Krane: Condensed Milk Coffee – Quick and Easy

On This Day

 
 
1498 – Girolamo Savonarola is burned at the stake in Florence, Italy.
Girolamo Savonarola (Italian: [dʒiˈrɔːlamo savonaˈrɔːla]; 21 September 1452 – 23 May 1498) was an Italian Dominican friar and preacher active in Renaissance Florence. He was known for his prophecies of civic glory, the destruction of secular art and culture, and his calls for Christian renewal. He denounced clerical corruption, despotic rule and the exploitation of the poor. He prophesied the coming of a biblical flood and a new Cyrus from the north who would reform the Church. In September 1494, when Charles VIII of France invaded Italy, and threatened Florence, such prophecies seemed on the verge of fulfilment. While Savonarola intervened with the French king, the Florentines expelled the ruling Medici and, at the friar’s urging, established a “popular” republic. Declaring that Florence would be the New Jerusalem, the world centre of Christianity and “richer, more powerful, more glorious than ever”,[2] he instituted an extreme puritanical campaign, enlisting the active help of Florentine youth.

In 1495 when Florence refused to join Pope Alexander VI’s Holy League against the French, the Vatican summoned Savonarola to Rome. He disobeyed and further defied the pope by preaching under a ban, highlighting his campaign for reform with processions, bonfires of the vanities, and pious theatricals. In retaliation, the pope excommunicated him in May 1497, and threatened to place Florence under an interdict. A trial by fire proposed by a rival Florentine preacher in April 1498 to test Savonarola’s divine mandate turned into a fiasco, and popular opinion turned against him. Savonarola and two of his supporting friars were imprisoned. On 23 May 1498, Church and civil authorities condemned, hanged, and burned the three friars in the main square of Florence.

Savonarola’s devotees, the Piagnoni, kept his cause of republican freedom and religious reform alive well into the following century, although the Medici—restored to power in 1512 with the help of the papacy—eventually broke the movement. Some Protestants consider Savonarola to be a vital precursor of the Reformation.

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Born On This Day

 
 
1820 – James Buchanan Eads, American engineer, designed the Eads Bridge (d. 1887)
Captain James Buchanan Eads (May 23, 1820 – March 8, 1887) was a world-renowned[1] American civil engineer and inventor, holding more than 50 patents.[2]

Early life and education
Eads was born in Lawrenceburg, Indiana,[3] and named for his mother’s cousin, future President of the United States James Buchanan. Eads’ father, Thomas C. Eads pursued a fortune to no avail and the family moved several times.[4] Eads grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. The family lost all of their possessions in a steamboat fire as they landed in St. Louis in 1833.[4] Thomas Eads’ business ventures in St. Louis failed, and he abandoned his family and moved upriver.[4]

James Eads was largely self-educated; at the age of 13, he left school to take up work to help support the family. He sold apples on the streets of St. Louis to help support his sisters and mother, who ran a boardinghouse.[4] One of his first jobs was at the Williams & Duhring dry-goods store run by Barrett Williams. Williams allowed the young Eads to spend time in his library, located above the store. In Eads’s spare time, he read books on physical science, mechanics, machinery, and civil engineering. When Eads became successful later in life and Williams suffered hardship, Eads reciprocated Williams’ generosity by providing money for Williams’ comfort in his old age.[4]

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FYI

By 10TV Web Staff: Ohio State officer who stopped campus attack awarded Medal of Valor by President Trump
https://youtu.be/A10o9V2N_74
 
 
 
 
By Sasha Ingber: More Than 1,000 Holocaust Victims Are Buried In Belarus After Mass Grave Discovered
 
 
 
 
By John D. McKinnon: Bill would offer $700 million in aid to U.S. telecoms hurt by Huawei ban
Huawei and ZTE have previously denied that their equipment poses a security risk to the U.S. They didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on Wednesday. Many of the affected carriers are smaller rural carriers. Major wireless carriers have generally stopped deploying suspect Chinese gear since concerns began to be raised publicly around 2012.
 
 
 
 
By Paola Nalvarte/TM: Mexican journalists and their families confront the new president during his daily press conferences
Since the new Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador began his already famous daily morning press conferences, where he answers questions from the audience and the press, journalists and their families are taking the opportunity to confront the leader concerning threats to themselves and the profession.
 
 
 
 
By Chris Perez: Wrangler’s collab with rapper Lil Nas X gets boycotted by country fans
“I’m SICK,” seethed one Instagrm user. “I went all Wrangler when Levi went anti gun because wrangler was the true Cowboy brand… but of course they can’t stay true to their consumers and try to appease totally different audience that had to google what wrangler was…”

User @thomasoftheyear said, “If you have any sense, you’ll stop production and burn what’s left…I don’t buy anything made by Levi’s after their gun control stance. I’ll stop buying Wranglers just as quick for this nonsense.”

Wrangler did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday, but the company did offer a statement online saying: “Since 1947, we’ve offered jeans for a variety of wearers and occasions. Our western heritage and offering quality product for all wearers will always be the very heart of the brand.”
 
 
 
 
By Addison Nugent: She Outsold Dickens, So Why Don’t We Know Her Name?
 
Why you should care
Marie Corelli melded Victorian ideas of technology, melodrama and the occult into her novels, yet nobody reads her anymore.
 
 
Excellent comments at the end of the article.
By Boyd Kemper: I Was an EMT Until I Couldn’t Take It Anymore
Why you should care
Drive an ambulance, they said, because it’ll be nice and you’ll help people. The nice part? Not so much.

I became an EMT because I was seeking redemption. I did not get it. I worked nights for years, and I saw the worst of humanity on a regular basis.

I would never sleep on the night shift, just sit by the radio with a book listening for “A-48 come in.” That was the call sign of my truck. You never knew what you were going to get. It could be anything from a machete attack to rape to child abuse to a shooting to an overdose. The worst was when you heard “A-48, man down at [insert address], no further information.”

 
 
 
By Tim Suddard: Miata Mod Squad: Boosted Miatas Compared
 
 
 
 
The Rural Blog: Crop planting delayed because of Midwest flooding; farmers hope that won’t hurt payments from new trade-aid program; Philanthropists, including local foundations, back $660,000 rural journalism collaborative in the Mountain West; Rural Telehealth Toolkit webinar online at 1 p.m. ET June 5 and more ->
 
 
 
 
Nieman Journalism Lab: “We need all of our subscribers to embrace the iPad replica newspaper experience”; The New York Times has become a “book-deal factory” and more ->
 
 
 
 
Nipun Mehta’s Awakin Weekly By Margaret Wheatley: Uncomfortable Place Of Uncertainty
Sometimes we hesitate to listen for differences because we don’t want to change. We’re comfortable with our lives, and if we listened to anyone who raised questions, we’d have to get engaged in changing things. If we don’t listen, things can stay as they are and we won’t have to expend any energy. But most of us do see things in our life or in the world that we would like to be different. If that’s true, we have to listen more, not less. And we have to be willing to move into the very uncomfortable place of uncertainty.
 
 

Recipes

Scrappy Geek Backyard BBQ

On This Day

 
 
760 – Fourteenth recorded perihelion passage of Halley’s Comet.
Halley’s Comet or Comet Halley, officially designated 1P/Halley,[2] is a short-period comet visible from Earth every 75–76 years.[2][10][11][12] Halley last appeared in the inner parts of the Solar System in 1986 and will next appear in mid-2061.[13]

Halley’s returns to the inner Solar System have been observed and recorded by astronomers since at least 240 BC. Clear records of the comet’s appearances were made by Chinese, Babylonian, and medieval European chroniclers, but were not recognized as reappearances of the same object at the time. The comet’s periodicity was first determined in 1705 by English astronomer Edmond Halley, after whom it is now named.

During its 1986 apparition, Halley’s Comet became the first comet to be observed in detail by spacecraft, providing the first observational data on the structure of a comet nucleus and the mechanism of coma and tail formation.[14][15] These observations supported a number of longstanding hypotheses about comet construction, particularly Fred Whipple’s “dirty snowball” model, which correctly predicted that Halley would be composed of a mixture of volatile ices—such as water, carbon dioxide, and ammonia—and dust. The missions also provided data that substantially reformed and reconfigured these ideas; for instance, it is now understood that the surface of Halley is largely composed of dusty, non-volatile materials, and that only a small portion of it is icy.

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Born On This Day

 
 
1909 – Margaret Mee, English illustrator and educator (d. 1988)
Margaret Ursula Mee, MBE (22 May 1909 – 30 November 1988)[1] was a British botanical artist who specialised in plants from the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest. She was also one of the first environmentalists to draw attention to the impact of large-scale mining and deforestation on the Amazon Basin.

Early life
Margaret Ursula Brown was born in Whitehill, Chesham in 1909. She attended Dr Challoner’s Grammar School, Amersham, followed by The School of Art, Science and Commerce, Watford. After a short period of teaching in Liverpool she decided to travel abroad.

While in Berlin in 1933, Brown witnessed the burning of the Reichstag and subsequent Jewish boycott, which confirmed her left-wing views. During the Second World War she worked in Hatfield as a draughtswoman at the de Havilland aircraft factory.[2]

Personal life
Mee married Reginald Bruce Bartlett in January 1936.[3] Like her husband, she became a committed trade union activist for the Union of Sign, Glass and Ticket Writers and joined the Communist Party.[4] Mee addressed the TUC in 1937, proposing the raising of the school-leaving age and was subsequently offered, but declined, a job with Ernest Bevin. The marriage to Bartlett was not happy and, after a long separation, ended in divorce in 1943.[5] She later married Greville Mee, who was also attending Saint Martin’s School of Art, in the late 1940s.

Career as artist
After the war Mee studied art at Saint Martin’s School of Art in London. In 1950 she attended the Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts, where she learnt her style of illustration, and received a national diploma in painting and design in 1950. She moved to Brazil with Greville Mee in 1952 to teach art in the British school of São Paulo. Her first expedition was in 1956 to Belém in the Amazon Basin. She then became a botanical artist for São Paulo’s Instituto de Botanica in 1958, exploring the rainforest and more specifically Amazonas state from 1964, painting the plants she saw, some new to science, as well as collecting some for later illustration. She created 400 folios of gouache illustrations, 40 sketchbooks, and 15 diaries.[citation needed]

Mee travelled to Washington D. C., USA in 1964 and briefly to England in 1968 for the exhibition and publication of her book, Flowers of the Brazilian Forests. She returned to Brazil and joined protests to draw international attention to the deforestation of the Amazon region.[2]

Death
Mee died following a car crash in Seagrave, Leicestershire on 30 November 1988. She was 79. In January 1989 a memorial to her life, botanical work and environmental campaigning took place in Kew Gardens.[2]

Recognition and honours
In 1976 Mee was awarded the MBE for services to Brazilian botany and a fellowship of the Linnean Society in 1986. She also received recognition in Brazil including an honorary citizenship of Rio in 1975, the Brazilian order of Cruzeiro do Sul in 1979, In her honour, after her death the Margaret Mee Amazon Trust was founded to further education and research in Amazonian plant life and conservation, by providing scholarships for Brazilian botanical students and plant illustrators who wish to study in the United Kingdom or conduct field research in Brazil.[2]

In 1990 Mee was recognised for her environmental achievements by The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and added to its Global 500 Roll of Honour.[citation needed]

The Diaries of Margaret Mee, written between 1956 and 1988, were published posthumously in 2004 and included an illustrated account of Mee’s expeditions to the Amazonian rainforest.[6] Most of her illustrations are now part of the Kew Gardens collection.[7]

See also
Margaret Mee and the Moonflower
 
 

FYI

 
 
By Bradley Brownell and Alanis King: Niki Lauda, Formula One Legend and Three-Time World Champion, Dead at 70
Andreas Nikolaus “Niki” Lauda, a legendary figure of perseverance in the face of adversity and three-time Formula One world champion who remained a fixture in the sport even after his racing days were long over, has died, according to his family members. He was 70.

Andreas Nikolaus Lauda (22 February 1949 – 20 May 2019) was an Austrian Formula One driver, a three-time F1 World Drivers’ Champion, winning in 1975, 1977 and 1984, and an aviation entrepreneur. He was the only driver in F1 history to have been champion for both Ferrari and McLaren, the sport’s two most successful constructors. He is widely considered one of the greatest F1 drivers of all time.[1] As an aviation entrepreneur, he founded and ran three airlines: Lauda Air, Niki, and Lauda. He was a Bombardier Business Aircraft brand ambassador. He was also a consultant for Scuderia Ferrari and team manager of the Jaguar Formula One racing team for two years. Afterwards, he worked as a pundit for German TV during Grand Prix weekends and acted as non-executive chairman of Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, of which Lauda owned 10%.[2]

Having emerged as Formula One’s star driver amid a 1975 title win and leading the 1976 championship battle, Lauda was seriously injured in a crash at the 1976 German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring during which his Ferrari 312T2 burst into flames, and he came close to death after inhaling hot toxic fumes and suffering severe burns.[3]

However, he survived and recovered sufficiently to race again just six weeks later at the Italian Grand Prix. Although he narrowly lost the title to James Hunt that year, he won his second Ferrari crown the year after during his final season at the team. After a couple of years at Brabham and two years’ hiatus, Lauda returned and raced four seasons for McLaren between 1982 and 1985 – during which he won the 1984 title by 0.5 points over his teammate Alain Prost.

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Great comments!
By Justin T. Westbrook: You Can Now Get the 6.2-Liter V8 in More, Cheaper Chevy Silverado Trims

My neighbor got a blue Silverado recently. My wife tells me, “Did you see that nice looking truck our neighbor just got?”

That in a nutshell is why I married her. If she had a lick of ability to separate Handsome from Fugly, I wouldn’t had had a chance to go on a date with her.
hoser68
 
 
 
 
By Jason Torchinsky: Here’s the Soviet Equivalent of the Car Chase from ‘Bullitt’
 
 
 
 
By Alanis King: U.S. Buyers Still Overwhelmingly Choose a Manual for the Subaru BRZ and WRX
It shouldn’t be much of a surprise that Subaru still has decent manual sales in a market where carmakers can’t give a third pedal away, given that its buyers are often either outdoorsy dog people or street hoons. But manual take rates in the BRZ and WRX, at least in the U.S., even manage to outshine the Mazda Miata—as well as the BRZ’s Toyota twin, the 86.
 
 
 
 
By Jennings Brown: It’s About to Get Much More Difficult to Fly DJI Drones Into Planes
Last year, when a Robinson R22 crashed outside of Charleston, South Carolina, the student pilot and instructor in the helicopter said they lost control of the aircraft as they tried to avoid a DJI Phantom quadcopter. The incident could have been one of the first drone-caused aircraft crashes in the U.S.
 
 
 
 

Great comments!
By Aaron Gordon: New York Has a Supervillain Pulling Emergency Brakes and Destroying Subway Commutes
 
 
 
 
Gizmodo Science: How Your Brain Perceives Magicians Cutting Their Assistants in Half; How Are Doves and Sparrows Ending Up Inside Baby Sharks? More ->
 
 
 
 
Colossal: A Field Recording by Phil Torres Documents the Waterfall-like Sound of Millions of Migrating Monarch Butterflies
 
 
 
 
By Christine Schmidt: Why local foundations are putting their money behind a rural journalism collaborative $660,000 to support a 50-member network will go to Solutions Journalism Network and Report for America for one year from a trio of place-based foundations.
 
 
 
 
The Rural Blog: Telemedicine can’t help the rural U.S. much until broadband access improves, researchers conclude; EPA bans 12 pesticides linked to deaths of honeybees and more ->
 
 
 
 
Gastro Obscura: Remote Livestock; Australian Camels; Polkagris and more ->
 
 
Atlas Obscura: ‘Botanical Sexism’; ‘Century Plant’; Wildflower Hotline; Duge Beipanjiang Bridge and more ->
 
 

Recipes

By Academy of Culinary Nutrition in Best Of Recipes: 22 Best Gluten-Free Noodle Recipes

On This Day

 
 
293 – Roman Emperors Diocletian and Maximian appoint Galerius as Caesar to Diocletian, beginning the period of four rulers known as the Tetrarchy.

The term “tetrarchy” (from the Greek: τετραρχία, tetrarchia, “leadership of four [people]”)[a] describes any form of government where power is divided among four individuals, but in modern usage usually refers to the system instituted by Roman Emperor Diocletian in 293, marking the end of the Crisis of the Third Century and the recovery of the Roman Empire. This tetrarchy lasted until c. 313, when mutually destructive civil wars eliminated most of the claimants to power, leaving Constantine in control of the western half of the empire, and Licinius in control of the eastern half.

Terminology
Although the term “tetrarch” was current in antiquity, it was never used of the imperial college under Diocletian. Instead, the term was used to describe independent portions of a kingdom that were ruled under separate leaders. The tetrarchy of Judaea, established after the death of Herod the Great, is the most famous example of the antique tetrarchy. The term was understood in the Latin world as well, where Pliny the Elder glossed it as follows: “each is the equivalent of a kingdom, and also part of one” (regnorum instar singulae et in regna contribuuntur).[1]

As used by the ancients, the term describes not only different governments, but also a different system of government from the Diocletianic arrangements. The Judaean tetrarchy was a set of four independent and distinct states, where each tetrarch ruled a quarter of a kingdom as they saw fit; the Diocletianic tetrarchy was a college led by a single supreme leader. When later authors described the period, this is what they emphasized: Ammianus had Constantius II admonish Gallus for disobedience by appealing to the example in submission set by Diocletian’s lesser colleagues; his successor Julian compared the Diocletianic tetrarchs to a chorus surrounding a leader, speaking in unison under his command.[2] Only Lactantius, a contemporary of Diocletian and a deep ideological opponent of the Diocletianic state, referred to the tetrarchs as a simple multiplicity of rulers.[3]

Much modern scholarship was written without the term. Although Edward Gibbon pioneered the description of the Diocletianic government as a “New Empire”, he never used the term “tetrarchy”; neither did Theodor Mommsen. It did not appear in the literature until used in 1887 by schoolmaster Hermann Schiller in a two-volume handbook on the Roman Empire (Geschichte der Römischen Kaiserzeit), to wit: “die diokletianische Tetrarchie”. Even so, the term did not catch on in the literature until Otto Seeck used it in 1897.[4]

Creation
The first phase, sometimes referred to as the diarchy (“rule of two”), involved the designation of the general Maximian as co-emperor—firstly as Caesar (junior emperor) in 285, followed by his promotion to Augustus in 286. Diocletian took care of matters in the eastern regions of the empire while Maximian similarly took charge of the western regions. In 293, Diocletian thought that more focus was needed on both civic and military problems, so with Maximian’s consent, he expanded the imperial college by appointing two Caesars (one responsible to each Augustus)—Galerius and Constantius Chlorus.[5]

In 305, the senior emperors jointly abdicated and retired, allowing Constantius and Galerius to be elevated in rank to Augustus. They in turn appointed two new Caesars—Severus II in the west under Constantius, and Maximinus in the east under Galerius—thereby creating the second Tetrarchy.

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Born On This Day

 
 
1901 – Regina M. Anderson, Multiracial playwright and librarian (d. 1993)[18]
Regina M. Anderson (May 21, 1901 – February 5, 1993)[1] was an African-American playwright and librarian. She was of Native American, Jewish, East Indian, Swedish, and other European ancestry (including one grandparent who was a Confederate general); one of her grandparents was of African descent, born in Madagascar. Despite her own identification of her race as “American”,[2] she was perceived to be African-American by others.[3] Influenced by Ida B. Wells and the lack of black history teachings in school, Regina became a key member of the Harlem Renaissance.[4]

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FYI

Beyond Bylines Savannah Tanbusch: Blog Profiles: Tea Blogs
 
 
 
 
By Nadia Kounang, CNN: Study finds CBD effective in treating heroin addiction
 
 
 
 
By Lisa Respers France, CNN: ‘Pulp Fiction’: 25 fun facts in honor of the film’s 25th anniversary
 
 
 
 
20 seconds, whoo~
By NPR Camila Domonoske: Teens Who Don’t Buckle Up: Chevy Has A Surprise For You
Know a young driver who’s ignoring your pleas to buckle up? Chevrolet suggests you might try to see if they’ll listen to a different authority figure: their car.

The automaker is introducing a feature, specifically for teen drivers, that will temporarily block the auto from shifting into gear if their seat belt isn’t buckled. A message will alert the driver to buckle up in order to shift into gear.

After 20 seconds, the vehicle will operate normally.

The feature, which Chevrolet says is an industry first, will come standard in the 2020 models of the Traverse SUV, Malibu sedan and Colorado pickup truck. It will be part of the “Teen Driver” package, which can also be used to set speed alerts and a maximum speed, among other controls, and give parents “report cards” tracking a teen’s driving behavior.
 
 
 
 

By Binaj Gurubacharya | The Associated Press: Famed climber Apa Sherpa, who lives in Utah, helps Nepal kids reach greater heights
 
 
 
 
By Ben Henry: Céline Dion’s “Carpool Karaoke” Is Hilariously Extra And You Have To See It
 
 
 
 
Open Culture: Keith Moon Plays Drums Onstage with Led Zeppelin in What Would Be His Last Live Performance (1977); Discover Kōlams, the Traditional Indian Patterns That Combine Art, Mathematics & Magic and more ->
 
 
 
 
The Rural Blog: Major dairy producers invest in dairy-free products such as oat milk, leaving small farmers increasingly in the lurch; Report ranks best, worst states to live in; how did yours do? And more ->
 
 
 
 

Ideas

 
 
By seamster: How to Build a Treeless Tree House
 
 
By elewis03: Cardboard Iron Throne Cat Bed
 
 
By Ham-made: 16-Page Disposable Notebook EDC
 
 
By schwophi14: Self-wicking Rain Water Container Garden
 
 
By chinoktype: My Best Vegetable Trellis: Durable, Collapsible, Flexible
 
 
Great idea!
By l-to-the-I-to-the-double-Z-why: Simple Watering Can (cost; FREE!)
 
 
Adjustable!
By Garage_Shop_Crafter: Children’s Triple Bunk Bed
 
 
By memestra: Herb Garden Planter
 
 
By Mtpinto: How to Build Your Own Anemometer Using Reed Switches, Hall Effect Sensor and Some Scraps on Nodemcu. – Part 1 – Hardware
 
 
Our Crafty Mom: Best Mosquito Repellent Mason Jar Hack With Essential Oils

Recipes

By ruestra: Double Chocolate French Macarons
 
 
By In The Kitchen With Matt: Air Fryer Cake
 
 
By FOOD by Lyds: Creamy Flan
 
 
By Italiankiwiblog: Make Pesto Alla Genovese at Home
 
 
Our Crafty Mom: How To Make An Explosion Cake The Kids Will Love

On This Day

 
 
1645 – Yangzhou massacre: The ten day massacre of 800,000 residents of the city of Yangzhou, part of the Transition from Ming to Qing.
The Yangzhou massacre took place in May, 1645 in Yangzhou, China, during the Qing dynasty. Mass killings of residents in Yangzhou were conducted by Qing troops under the command of Prince Dodo , after they conquered the city’s defending forces which were loyal to the Southern Ming regime of the Hongguang Emperor.

The massacre is described in a contemporary account, A Record of Ten Days in Yangzhou, by Wang Xiuchu . Due to the title of the account, the events are often referred to as a ten-day massacre, but the diary shows that the slaughter was over by the sixth day,when burial of bodies commenced.[1] According to Wang, the number of victims exceeded 800,000, that number is now considered an exaggeration.[2] The defending commander, Shi Kefa, was also executed by Qing forces after he refused to submit to their authority.

The alleged reasons for the massacre were:

To punish the residents because of resistance efforts led by the Ming official Shi Kefa.
To warn the rest of the population in Jiangnan of the consequences of resisting the invaders.

Wang Xiuchu’s account has appeared in a number of English translations, including by Backhouse and Bland,[3] Lucien Mao,[4] and Lynn A. Struve. Following are excerpts from the account in the translation by Struve[5] .

Several dozen people were herded like sheep or goats. Any who lagged were flogged or killed outright. The women were bound together at the necks with a heavy rope—strung one to another like pearls. Stumbling with each step, they were covered with mud. Babies lay everywhere on the ground. The organs of those trampled like turf under horses’ hooves or people’s feet were smeared in the dirt, and the crying of those still alive filled the whole outdoors. Every gutter or pond we passed was stacked with corpses, pillowing each others arms and legs. Their blood had flowed into the water, and the combination of green and red was producing a spectrum of colours. The canals, too, had been filled to level with dead bodies.

Then fires started everywhere, and the thatched houses…caught fire and were soon engulfed in flames…Those who had hidden themselves beneath the houses were forced to rush out from the heat of the fire, and as soon as they came out, in nine cases out of ten, they were put to death on the spot. On the other hand, those who had stayed in the houses—were burned to death within the closely shuttered doors and no one could tell how many had died from the pile of charred bones that remained afterwards.

Books written about the massacres in Yangzhou, Jiading and Jiangyin were later republished by anti-Qing authors to win support in the leadup to the 1911 Xinhai Revolution.[6][7]

Born On This Day

 
 
1825 – Antoinette Brown Blackwell, the first woman to be ordained as a mainstream Protestant minister in the U.S. (d. 1921)
Antoinette Louisa Brown, later Antoinette Brown Blackwell (May 20, 1825 – November 5, 1921), was the first woman to be ordained as a mainstream Protestant minister in the United States. She was a well-versed public speaker on the paramount issues of her time, and distinguished herself from her contemporaries with her use of religious faith in her efforts to expand women’s rights.

Biography
Early life
Brown was born the youngest of seven in Henrietta, New York, to Joseph Brown and Abby Morse. Brown was recognized as highly intelligent as early as three years old. The preaching of evangelist Charles Grandison Finney from nearby Rochester led Brown’s family to join the Congregational Church.[1] After daring to inject a prayer into her family’s religious observance, Brown was accepted into the church before the age of nine. Shortly after becoming a member of the congregation, she began to preach during Sunday meetings. In 1841 at the age of 16, after completing her requisite early schooling at Monroe County Academy, Brown taught school herself. She did not intend to spend her life teaching and so she set her sights on a degree in theology from Oberlin College and a career in the pulpit.

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FYI

Fast Company Compass: MIT’s internet time capsule; Goop for men; Game of Thrones finale and more ->
 
 
 
 
The Rural Blog: Jails, especially in rural areas, struggle to fulfill their increasing role as opioid detoxification centers; Farmers seem to be sticking with President Trump in trade war with China, but they want him to win it soon; Newspapers must show their complacent communities that they are an essential civic asset, not like ‘news from Google’ and more ->
 
 
 
 
GlacierHub.org Weekly Newsletter 5-20-19: A decade-old proposal for uranium mining in Nepal’s remote, glacier-rich Upper Mustang region has gained renewed attention from government officials eager to boost prosperity. More ->
 
 
 
 
MessyNessy 13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. CCCLII): What it’s like to live at Everest base camp; If Edward Gorey did Game of Thrones; Paris during the Belle Epoque Colorized and more ->
 
 

Recipes

On This Day

 
 
1643 – Thirty Years’ War: French forces under the duc d’Enghien decisively defeat Spanish forces at the Battle of Rocroi, marking the symbolic end of Spain as a dominant land power.
The Thirty Years’ War was a war fought primarily in Central Europe between 1618 and 1648. One of the most destructive conflicts in human history,[14] it resulted in eight million fatalities not only from military engagements but also from violence, famine, and plague. Casualties were overwhelmingly and disproportionately inhabitants of the Holy Roman Empire, most of the rest being battle deaths from various foreign armies.[10] In terms of proportional German casualties and destruction, it was surpassed only by the period January to May 1945; one of its enduring results was 19th-century Pan-Germanism, when it served as an example of the dangers of a divided Germany and became a key justification for the 1871 creation of the German Empire.[15]

Initially a war between various Protestant and Catholic states in the fragmented Holy Roman Empire, it gradually developed into a more general conflict involving most of the European great powers. These states employed relatively large mercenary armies, and the war became less about religion and more of a continuation of the France–Habsburg rivalry for European political pre-eminence.

The war was preceded by the election of the new Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand II, who tried to impose religious uniformity on his domains, forcing Roman Catholicism on its peoples. The northern Protestant states, angered by the violation of their rights to choose, which had been granted in the Peace of Augsburg, banded together to form the Protestant Union. Ferdinand II was a devout Roman Catholic and much less tolerant than his predecessor, Rudolf II, who ruled from the largely Protestant city of Prague. Ferdinand’s policies were considered strongly pro-Catholic and anti-Protestant.

These events caused widespread fears throughout northern and central Europe, and triggered the Protestant Bohemians living in the then relatively loose dominion of Habsburg Austria (and also with the Holy Roman Empire) to revolt against their nominal ruler, Ferdinand II. After the so-called Defenestration of Prague deposed the Emperor’s representatives in Prague, the Protestant estates and Catholic Habsburgs started gathering allies for war. The Protestant Bohemians ousted the Habsburgs and elected the Calvinist Frederick V, Elector of the Rhenish Palatinate as the new king of the Kingdom of Bohemia. Frederick took the offer without the support of the Protestant Union. The southern states, mainly Roman Catholic, were angered by this. Led by Bavaria, these states formed the Catholic League to expel Frederick in support of the Emperor. The Empire soon crushed the perceived Protestant rebellion in the Battle of White Mountain, executing leading Bohemian aristocrats shortly after. Protestant rulers across Europe unanimously condemned the Emperor’s action.

After the atrocities committed in Bohemia, Saxony finally gave its support to the Protestant Union and decided to fight back. Sweden, at the time a rising military power, soon intervened in 1630 under its king Gustavus Adolphus, transforming what had been simply the Emperor’s attempt to curb the Protestant states into a full-scale war in Europe. Habsburg Spain, wishing to finally crush the Dutch rebels in the Netherlands and the Dutch Republic (which was still a part of the Holy Roman Empire), intervened under the pretext of helping its dynastic Habsburg ally, Austria. No longer able to tolerate the encirclement of two major Habsburg powers on its borders, Catholic France entered the coalition on the side of the Protestants in order to counter the Habsburgs.

The Thirty Years’ War devastated entire regions, resulting in high mortality, especially among the populations of the German and Italian states, the Crown of Bohemia, and the Southern Netherlands. Both mercenaries and soldiers in fighting armies traditionally looted or extorted tribute to get operating funds, which imposed severe hardships on the inhabitants of occupied territories. The war also bankrupted most of the combatant powers.

The Dutch Republic enjoyed contrasting fortune; it was removed from the Holy Roman Empire and was able to end its revolt against Spain in 1648 and subsequently enjoyed a time of great prosperity and development, known as the Dutch Golden Age, during which it became one of the world’s foremost economic, colonial, and naval powers. The Thirty Years’ War ended with the Treaty of Osnabrück and the Treaties of Münster, part of the wider Peace of Westphalia. The war altered the previous political order of European powers. The rise of Bourbon France, the curtailing of Habsburg ambition, and the ascendancy of Sweden as a great power created a new balance of power on the continent, with France emerging from the war strengthened and increasingly dominant in the latter part of the 17th century.

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Born On This Day

 
 
1903 – Ruth Ella Moore, American scientist (d. 1994)
Ruth Ella Moore (May 19, 1903 in Columbus, Ohio[1] – 1994) was a bacteriologist, who in 1933 became the first African-American woman to gain a PhD in a natural science.[2] She was a professor and head of the Department of Bacteriology at Howard University, publishing work on tuberculosis, immunology and dental caries, the response of gut microorganisms to antibiotics, and the blood type of African-Americans.

College years
Moore attended Ohio State University for both undergraduate and graduate levels. In 1926, she earned her Bachelor of Science degree, in 1927 her Masters of Science Degree and in 1933 her Ph.D. in Bacteriology.[3] Her dissertation was on the Tuberculosis bacteria and the titles were “Studies on Dissociation of Mycobacterium Tuberculosis” and “A New Method of Concentration on the Tubercule Bacilli as Applied to Sputum And Urine Examination”.[4]

Career
During her graduate school years, she taught hygiene and English at Tennessee State College now known as Tennessee State University in Nashville. In 1939, she became assistant Professor of bacteriology at Howard University College of Medicine. In 1948 she was appointed, and in 1955 she was made Head of the Department of Bacteriology. In 1960, she was appointed associate professor of microbiology. She retired in 1973 while holding position of the associate Professor of emeritus of microbiology. While in Howard, she conducted studies on blood groups and enterobacteriacea. She was a member of the American Public Health Association and the American Society of Microbiologists.[3][5] Moore retired in 1971.[6]

Moore’s publications include a 1938 discussion of the immunology of dental caries,[7] publications in the 1950s on blood types in African-Americans.[8][9] and a 1963 publication on the sensitivity of gut microorganisms to antibiotics.[10]

Honors
She is believed to be the first African-American woman to earn a Ph.D in the natural sciences.[11][12] In 2005, US representative Eddie Bernice Johnson introduced a bill recognizing Ruth Ella Moore as well as other scientists in the United States.[13]

Personal life
She died in Rockville Maryland at the age of 91 (1994).[1]
 
 

FYI

By Associated Press: Actor-comedian Sammy Shore, father of Pauly, dead at 92

Sammy Shore: wiki
 
 
 
 
Condolences
By The Associated Press: Columbine school shooting survivor found dead in home after decades fighting addiction
 
 
 
 
The Passive Voice: Deconstructing ‘I Wrote a Thing’ and more ->
 
 
 
 
Appropriate course of actions?
By Dennis Romero: Utah high school students under investigation for racist photo “No level of discipline can repair the hate,” a school district spokesman said.
The district informed federal law enforcement about the image, and it has consulted with legal counsel, according to the statement.

“No level of discipline can repair the hate, bigotry and ugliness portrayed in that one picture,” Dunham said. “The vulgar ignorance and idiocy on display are beyond repair by any small discipline we can provide.”
 
 
 
 
By CBS3 Staff: Historic Martin Tower’s 21-story headquarters In Bethlehem Imploded
 
 
 
 
By David Aaro Fox News: 135 officers arrest 50 people in massive Connecticut heroin bust: 11 suspects on the run
 
 
 
 

Open Culture: Graduation Highlight: Billionaire Robert F. Smith Announces That He’ll Pay Off the Student Loans of Morehouse’s Class of 2019; A New Archive Transcribes and Puts Online the Diaries & Notebooks of Women Artists, Art Historians, Critics and Dealers and more ->
 
 
 
 
Carol At Make A Living Writing: From food stamps to six figures as a freelance writer
 
 
 
 

Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings: Rebecca Solnit on Love, Purposeful Work, and the Meaning of Liberty: An Empowered Retelling of Cinderella; Moon: A Peek-Through Picture-Book About the Most Beloved Fixture of the Night Sky and more ->
 
 
Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings: Virginia Woolf on Being Ill and the Strange Transcendence Accessible Amid the Terrors of the Ailing Body; Lost Radio Talks from the Harvard Observatory: Cecilia Payne, Who Discovered the Chemical Fingerprint of the Universe, on the Science of Stars and the Muse of All Great Scientists
 
 
 
 
Media
It’s no longer about Content Marketing.

It’s about Personal Authorship.

Which means that most media is now focused on the individual instead of the brand. Brand is the backdrop for the community. And the brand pulls in individuals to lead that community forward and represent the brand.

So it’s your time to speak up. Your time to connect. Your time to add to a conversation. You’ve got a plethora of networks to choose from. Which one suits you best? And what do you want to see happen there?

Twitter
Everyone there wants to hear it “first” and then spread the word seamlessly with RT. (That’s a Retweet, which republicizes other’s content on your feed). You gain status on the network by affiliation, and by discovery. Conversations happen publicly or in DM’s where people move to other channels like email. There are many sub-groups and cliques which form to further dial in content discovery, which is further expedited by Twitter “lists.”

Instagram
Got taken over by memes. Stories have kept the platform alive, and shopping will be the next pump of oxygen. But it’s no longer about photography, and it’s no longer about manicuring your life to perfection. Slowly it’s shifting more towards Snapchat. Just like Facebook. More messages between friends in “private” channels. IGTV seems to have fallen off the map, and Youtube will try and eat that cake with more social-like features.

Twitch
Is about connection. People miss this because they think the main show is Gaming. But why do people spend hours watching Twitch streams? Why do people tune in week in and week out? They want to connect. But it’s nearly impossible to build up an audience there, there are no sharing features! If they get that right, the platform will grow exponentially.

Youtube
It could slowly take over your search traffic. Anything you want is there, and it’s built for you to discover based on intent rather than just popularity alone. So the niche still wins on Youtube. And there are plenty of niches left to fill. My take is that we all will find ourselves turning to Youtube more and more for queries we have about just about anything, and sometimes just for killing dead time.

Podcasts
New formats are still emerging, and celebrities and brands are still catching on. This network is conversational. Quality is a must, but it no longer needs to be overproduced. Apple’s missing the boat with their app, discoverability is still greatly lacking. Spotify will grow simply because it’s easier to have your media in one place, whereas with Apple you’re stuck trying to understand iTunes.

With all of these, cross-pollination is the key.

You build on one channel, and if you understand the nuances of each network you can start bridging between them. But it’s not easy to go Omnichannel. Many stumble trying to make the leap. Like going from Youtube to Twitch. Or Twitter to Instagram. It takes a different effort, time and dedication if it even works then.

Each network has to be thought about on an island, but does it also make sense as a whole?

In technology, follow the developers.

In media, follow the comedians.

Netflix didn’t disrupt cable TV, social media did.

Social media is about direct authorship by individuals.

Before brands rented TV ad time for attention.

Now they rent an individual’s reputation and trust.

Brands and Individuals collaborate to foster relationships between each other…

And that’s what’s so striking today. Its fluid.

We’ve blurred the lines between networks, people, brands, information…

It’s one giant ongoing conversation.

David Sherry
 
 

Recipes

On This Day

 
 
1096 – First Crusade: Around 800 Jews are massacred in Worms, Germany.
The Worms massacre was the murder of at least 800 Jews from Worms, Germany, at the hands of crusaders under Count Emicho in May 1096.

The massacre at Worms was one of a number of attacks against Jewish communities perpetrated during the First Crusade (1096–1099). Followers of Count Emicho arrived at Worms on May 18, 1096. Soon after his arrival, a rumour spread that the Jews had boiled a Christian alive, and used his corpse to contaminate water to poison the town’s wells. The local populace later joined forces with Emicho and launched a savage attack on the town’s Jews, who had been given sanctuary in Bishop Adalbert’s palace, though others chose to remain outside its walls. They were the first to be massacred.[1]

After eight days, Emicho’s army, assisted by local burghers broke in and slaughtered those seeking asylum there.[2] The Jews were in the midst of reciting the Hallel prayer for Rosh Chodesh Sivan.[3]

In all, from 800 to 1,000 Jews were killed, with the exception of some who committed suicide and a few who were forcibly baptised.[4] One, Simchah ben Yitzchak ha-Cohen, stabbed the bishop’s nephew while being baptised and was consequently killed.[3] One of the most famous victims was Minna of Worms.[5]

Born On This Day

 
 
1852 – Gertrude Käsebier, American photographer (d. 1934)
Gertrude Käsebier (May 18, 1852 – October 12, 1934) was an American photographer. She was known for her images of motherhood, her portraits of Native Americans, and her promotion of photography as a career for women.

Read more ->
 
 

FYI

 
 
Alaska Highway News Hillel Italie / The Associated Press: ‘Caine Mutiny,’ ‘Winds of War’ author Herman Wouk has died

If war had not intruded, he might have stuck to comedy sketches. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor he enlisted in the Navy and served as an officer in the Pacific. There, he received the writer’s most precious gift, free time, and wrote what became his first published novel, the radio satire “Aurora Dawn.”

Herman Wouk (/woʊk/ WOHK; May 27, 1915 – May 17, 2019) was an American author best known for historical fiction such as The Caine Mutiny (1951) which won the Pulitzer Prize. Other major works include The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, historical novels about World War II, and non-fiction such as This Is My God, an explanation of Judaism from a Modern Orthodox perspective, written for Jewish and non-Jewish audiences. His books have been translated into 27 languages.[1] The Washington Post called Wouk, who cherished his privacy, “the reclusive dean of American historical novelists.”[1] Historians, novelists, publishers, and critics who gathered at the Library of Congress in 1995 to mark Wouk’s 80th birthday described him as an American Tolstoy.[2]

Read more ->
 
 
 
 
By Gabe Fernandez: Report: Former Oregon Receiver Brought Down Gunman At A Portland High School
 
 
By Tom Ley: An Oregon Player Faked An Injury During The Fiesta Bowl So That His Teammate Could Get Into His First And Last Bowl Game
 
 
 
 
Vector’s World: A day at the beach and more ->
 
 
 
 
Great comments!
By Elizabeth Blackstock: This Railway Runs Right Through a Soccer Field
 
 
 
 
By David Murphy: Why Do Internet Speed Tests Report Different Results?
 
 
 
 
Gizmodo Science: Tooth Analysis Suggests Neanderthals and Modern Humans Split Apart Far Earlier Than We Thought; Archaeological Mystery Deepens as More ‘Jars of the Dead’ Uncovered in Laos and more ->
 
 
 
 
Info Docket Gary Price: Library of Congress Acquires Papers of Classical Soprano Jessye Norman (About 29,000 Items); Vanity Fair’s Complete Digital Archive (1913-Present) Launches; New Report From RAND: “News in a Digital Age: Comparing the Presentation of News Information over Time and Across Media Platforms” and more ->
 
 
 
 
By David Nield: Remember Google keeps a list of everything you buy – and here’s how to find it
 
 
 
 
By Annalisa van den Bergh: Why every cyclist needs a pool noodle
 
 
 
 
The Old Motor: Four Fun Friday Kodachrome Car Photographs No. 207
 
 
 
 
By Elizabeth Howell: Watch the Blue Moon of May 2019 Rise Today in a Live Webcast!
 
 
 
 
Signal 100 |Chapter 1: The story of John Boston
 
 
 
 
TED Talk of the Week Katie Hood: The difference between healthy and unhealthy love

Recipes

On This Day

 
 
1792 – The New York Stock Exchange is formed under the Buttonwood Agreement.
The Buttonwood Agreement, which took place on May 17, 1792, was an effort to organize securities trading in New York City that preceded the formation of the New York Stock & Exchange Board now called the New York Stock Exchange. This agreement was signed by 24 stockbrokers outside of 68 Wall Street. According to legend the signing took place under a buttonwood tree, but this tree may never have existed.[1]

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Born On This Day

 
 
1836 – Virginie Loveling, Belgian author and poet (d. 1923)
Virginie (Marie) Loveling (17 May 1836 – 1 December 1923) was a Flemish author of poetry, novels, essays and children’s stories. She also wrote under the pseudonym W. E. C. Walter.

Biography
Virginie Loveling was born in Nevele in East Flanders, Belgium. She was the younger sister of Rosalie Loveling, also an author, with whom she co-wrote part of her oeuvre. After the death of their father, Herman Loveling, the family moved to Ghent, where the sisters moved in circles of French-speaking, mainly anti-clerical intelligentsia before eventually returning to Nevele.

Together with her sister, she wrote realistic and descriptive poetry with a romantic undertone. They also published two collections of essays on rural communities as well as on city bourgeoisie.

After her sister’s death in 1875, she authored children’s stories along with novels and essays that paint a poignant picture of the era. With a noted intellectual and psychological angle, they treat—for that time—controversial subjects like heredity, education, religion and women’s rights. She also co-authored Levensleer (1912), a humoristic take on Ghent’s French-speaking bourgeoisie with her nephew Cyriel Buysse.

Official recognition followed with the novel Een dure eed in 1891, which received the quinquennial prize for Dutch literature.

Virginie Loveling died on 1 December 1923 in Nevele.

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FYI

By Sam Sodomsky Staff Writer: The National Break Down Every Song on Their New Album, I Am Easy to Find Band members Matt Berninger and Aaron Dessner delve into their ambitious new collaborative work with filmmaker Mike Mills.
 
 
By Ernest Macias and Cyndi Lauper: Carly Rae Jepsen and Cyndi Lauper Talk Hair Dye and Heartbreak
 
 
 
 
Arkansas Online: Walmart unveils design plans for campus of new headquarters in Northwest Arkansas
 
 
 
 
By Robert Gearty | Fox News: Parkland’s Stoneman Douglas therapy dogs featured in yearbook
 
 
 
 
By Alfred Romann: Crazy cheap cappuccinos: China’s Luckin Coffee chain goes public Luckin Coffee stores have mushroomed across Chinese cities but it’s bleeding cash. Can technology save its finances?
 
 
 
 
The Rural Blog: Longest-serving exec of a state press group wins award for public service through community journalism by Kentuckian; Former print journalist’s rural Iowa talk radio show puts local officials in the ‘Danger Zone’; U.S. bans Chinese telecom tech popular with rural carriers and more ->
 
 

Recipes

On This Day

 
 
1918 – The Sedition Act of 1918 is passed by the U.S. Congress, making criticism of the government during wartime an imprisonable offense. It will be repealed less than two years later.
The Sedition Act of 1918 (Pub.L. 65–150, 40 Stat. 553, enacted May 16, 1918) was an Act of the United States Congress that extended the Espionage Act of 1917 to cover a broader range of offenses, notably speech and the expression of opinion that cast the government or the war effort in a negative light or interfered with the sale of government bonds.[1]

It forbade the use of “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” about the United States government, its flag, or its armed forces or that caused others to view the American government or its institutions with contempt. Those convicted under the act generally received sentences of imprisonment for five to 20 years.[2] The act also allowed the Postmaster General to refuse to deliver mail that met those same standards for punishable speech or opinion. It applied only to times “when the United States is in war.” The U.S. was in a declared state of war at the time of passage, the First World War.[3] The law was repealed on December 13, 1920.[4]

Though the legislation enacted in 1918 is commonly called the Sedition Act, it was actually a set of amendments to the Espionage Act.[5] Therefore, many studies of the Espionage Act and the Sedition Act find it difficult to report on the two “acts” separately. For example, one historian reports that “some fifteen hundred prosecutions were carried out under the Espionage and Sedition Acts, resulting in more than a thousand convictions.”[6] Court decisions do not use the shorthand term Sedition Act, but the correct legal term for the law, the Espionage Act, whether as originally enacted or as amended in 1918.

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Born On This Day

 
 
1718 – Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Italian mathematician and philosopher (d. 1799)
Maria Gaetana Agnesi (Italian pronunciation: [maˈriːa ɡaeˈtaːna aɲˈɲeːzi; -ɛːzi];[1] 16 May 1718 – 9 January 1799) was an Italian mathematician, philosopher, theologian, and humanitarian. She was the first woman to write a mathematics handbook and the first woman appointed as a mathematics professor at a university.[2]

She is credited with writing the first book discussing both differential and integral calculus and was a member of the faculty at the University of Bologna, although she never served.

She devoted the last four decades of her life to studying theology (especially patristics) and to charitable work and serving the poor. She was a devout Catholic and wrote extensively on the marriage between intellectual pursuit and mystical contemplation, most notably in her essay Il cielo mistico (The Mystic Heaven). She saw the rational contemplation of God as a complement to prayer and contemplation of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.[3]

Maria Teresa Agnesi Pinottini, clavicembalist and composer, was her sister.

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FYI

By Jason Torchinsky: Guy Who Blew $4,000 Lowering His Car Is Demanding His Town Pay Because He Can’t Drive Over Speed Bumps to Get to Work
 
 
By Alanis King: Wrecker Transporting Fernando Alonso’s Wrecked Indy 500 Practice Car Also Wrecks
 
 
 
 
Great comments!
By Gabe Worgaftik: Allow Pam Grier to tell you about the time she saved Richard Pryor’s horse
 
 
 
 
Remember a woman governor signed this law.
By Randall Colburn: Tim Heidecker responds to Alabama abortion ban with charity single, “To The Men”

“To the men in theirs brown suits/ to the men passing laws,” he sings, “I just have a simple question/ to the men without flaws/ have you seen a young girl dying/ have you seen ‘em bleed to death/ have you seen a young girl dying/ have you seen ‘em take their final breath?”
 
 
 
 
Gizmodo Science: Bed Bugs Have Been Creeping Around and Sucking Blood Since the Age of Dinosaurs; Feral Parrots Are Taking Over America and more ->
 
 
 
 
Atlas Obscura: A village in France will pay you $2,240 to decipher a rock; Science Fiction Places; Bomb Carbon and more ->
 
 
 
 
By Julia Simon: Why An Indonesian Rehab Center Doesn’t Insist On Abstinence
 
 
 
 
Online Journalism: ’m holding a taster day for anyone interested in studying data or multiplatform journalism (part time or full time)
 
 
 
 
By Alex Johnson: Camp Fire, which killed 85 in California, blamed on PG&E lines Cal Fire said PG&E transmission lines caused the worst fire in state history and referred its findings to local prosecutors.
 
 
 
 
By Katie Sweeney, Biologist Steller Watch: Since when does NOAA study polar bears? We use drones to survey Steller sea lions but what about northern fur seals?
 
 
 
 
Open Culture: The Writing System of the Cryptic Voynich Manuscript Explained: British Researcher May Have Finally Cracked the Code; When Dracula Author Bram Stoker Wrote a Gushing Fan Letter to Walt Whitman (1870) and more ->
 
 
 
 

Barn Finds: Railroad Find 1944 Baldwin BLE 643 Locomotive and more ->
 
 
 
 
The Passive Voice: How to Read the Right Way: a Complete Guide; Nine-Year-Old Author Shares Her Story and Seeks to Publish; Sally Rooney’s Normal People Takes Book of the Year at British Book Awards and more ->
 
 
 
 
The Rural Blog: Life in Rural America Symposium, featuring award-winning reporter Ken Ward Jr., to livestream on May 21; Illinois editor resigns from Gatehouse paper to spare layoffs; States get ranked for their health emergency preparedness; how does yours stack up? More ->
 
 
 
 
By Corinne Purtill & Dan Kopf: After men in Spain got paternity leave, they wanted fewer kids
 
 
 
 

Ideas

Paula M. Slater Hometalker Brentwood, NY: How to Create an Indoor Growing Room For Plants
 
 
Tuula @ Color Me Thrifty Hometalker Canada: How to Make No Sew Scarf Curtains
 
 
By hometheaterz: Vertical Gardens – Lettuce Trees
 
 
By Troy Eckstein: Salad-bowl Banjo
 
 
By rocket radhi: Roof Gardening
 
 

Recipes

By In The Kitchen With Matt: Pokémon Detective Pikachu Cake
 
 
By lizbethcarr: How to Make Homemade Mochi
 
 
By PieBaby89: Homemade Strawberry Filled Hand Pies

 
 
By In The Kitchen With Matt: Chocolate Magic Cake