Tag: Hi-jacked

https://foodimentary.com/2017/02/21/february-21st-is-national-sticky-buns-day/

Easy Vegan Sticky Buns

Easy Caramel Sticky Buns

On this day:

1245 – Thomas, the first known Bishop of Finland, is granted resignation after confessing to torture and forgery.
Thomas (Finnish: Tuomas) is the first known Bishop of Finland. Only a few facts are known about his life. He resigned in 1245 and died in Visby three years later.
The only reference to Bishop Thomas during his episcopate in Finland is a letter signed by him in Nousiainen in 1234, which granted certain lands around the parish to his chaplain Wilhelm.[1] The lands may be related to the papal permission from Pope Gregory IX in early 1229 that authorized the church to take over all non-Christian places of worship in Finland.[2] The letter is the oldest surviving letter written in Finland.

No further information on the bishop’s activities has survived before he was granted resignation by Pope Innocent IV on 21 February 1245.[3] According to the Pope, Thomas had admitted committing several felonies, such as torturing a man to death, and forging a papal letter.[4] Church representatives to oversee the resignation were the Archbishop of Uppsala and the Dominican prior of the Dacian province.[5] Thomas donated his books to the newly established Dominican convent in Sigtuna[6] and went on to live his last years in the Dominican convent in Visby, Gotland. He died there in 1248,[7] shortly before the Second Swedish Crusade, which cemented Swedish rule in Finland for more than 550 years.

During Thomas’ episcopate, Finland is listed among the lands under the papal legate in the Baltic region, originally the Bishop of Zemgale, Baldwin, and then William of Modena, first on 28 January 1232 and last on 15 July 1244.[8] This was a radical realignment of the bishopric’s position, since the Pope had earlier used Swedish bishops to assist the Finnish church, as evident from papal letters from 1171 (or 1172), 1221 and 1229. On 24 November 1232, the Pope even asked the Livonian Brothers of the Sword to provide forces for the unnamed Bishop of Finland to defend the country against the Novgorodian attacks.[9]

After Thomas had resigned in 1245, there was no immediate successor to him. The diocese was overseen by William at least until 5 June 1248.[10] Finland is not listed among the Swedish dioceses in surviving documents from 1241 and 1248, but appears among them in 1253.[11]

Even though Thomas is the first known Bishop of Finland, it is certain that he was not the first bishop overall. An unnamed Bishop of Finland is mentioned dead in a letter by Pope Innocent III already in 1209.[12] A 15th-century chronicle names bishops Henry, Rodulff and Folquinus before him, but no indisputable records survive of them.

1828 – Initial issue of the Cherokee Phoenix is the first periodical to use the Cherokee syllabary invented by Sequoyah.
The Cherokee Phoenix (Cherokee: ᏣᎳᎩ ᏧᎴᎯᏌᏅᎯ, translit. Tsalagi Tsulehisanəhi) was the first newspaper published by Native Americans in the United States and the first published in a Native American language.[1][2] The first issue was published in English and Cherokee on February 21, 1828, in New Echota, capital of the Cherokee Nation (present-day Georgia). The paper continued until 1834. The Cherokee Phoenix was revived in the 20th century, and today it publishes both print and Internet versions.

In the mid-1820s the Cherokee tribe was being pressured by the government, and by Georgia in particular, to remove to new lands west of the Mississippi River, or to end their tribal government and surrender control of their traditional territory to the United States (US) government. The General Council of the Cherokee Nation established a newspaper, in collaboration with Samuel Worcester, a missionary, who cast the type for the Cherokee syllabary. The Council selected Elias Boudinot as the first editor.[3]

Named Galagina Oowatie (ᎦᎴᎩᎾ ᎤᏩᏘ) in the Cherokee language, Elias Boudinot was born in 1804 at Oothcaloga, Cherokee Nation, near present-day Chatsworth, Georgia.[3] He chose the name of Elias Boudinot after meeting the statesman, while on his way to the Foreign Mission School in Cornwall, Connecticut, where he graduated. There Boudinot married Harriet Ruggles Gold, daughter of a prominent Congregational family. They returned to live at New Echota. Boudinot edited the newspaper for its first four and a half years.[citation needed]

Boudinot named the Cherokee Phoenix as a symbol of renewal, for the mythical bird that rose to new life from ashes of fire. The Nation founded the paper to gather support and to help keep members of the Cherokee Nation united and informed. The newspaper was printed in English and Cherokee, using the Cherokee syllabary developed in 1821 by Sequoyah. According to Langguth, those who could only read Cherokee received the paper free, while those who could read English paid according to a sliding scale:$2.50 a year if they paid in advance and $3.50 a year if they waited a year.[4] It served as the primary vehicle of communication among the many Cherokee townships that constituted the Cherokee Nation. The Nation occupied parts of what are now Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama and Georgia.[citation needed]

The first issue appeared February 21, 1828. It contained five columns on each of its four pages. The editor announced that, because translation between English and Cherokee was slow, initially the paper would print only three columns each week in the Cherokee language. The first issue covered a variety of subjects. Samuel Worcester wrote an article praising Sequoyah’s invention of the syllabary, and Boudinot’s first editorial criticized white settlers wanting Cherokee land. As the issue of removal attracted attention in the United States (US), the newspaper arranged a fund-raising and publicity tour, which attracted new subscribers from almost all areas of the US and Europe. Boudinot gradually published mostly in English, trying to reach that larger audience.[3]

In 1829, Boudinot renamed the Cherokee Phoenix as the Cherokee Phoenix and Indians’ Advocate, reflecting his intention to influence an audience beyond the Cherokee. He addressed issues which Indians across the United States and its territories faced related to assimilation and removal from their traditional homelands. The paper no longer related solely the Cherokee tribe. The paper also offered stories about debates over Indian removal and U.S. Supreme Court cases that affected Indian life.[5]

Boudinot believed removal was inevitable and that the Cherokee should protect their rights by treaty. He was allied with Major Ridge in this view. His views were opposed by the majority of the Cherokee, including Principal Chief John Ross, elected by the constitutional republic in 1828. The Council forced Boudinot to resign in 1832.[citation needed]

Elijah Hicks, an anti-removal Cherokee, replaced Boudinot as editor. When the federal government failed to pay the annuity to the Cherokee in 1834, the paper ceased publication. In August 1835 a contingent of the Georgia Guard took the printing press to prevent any further publication. The real objective was to prevent the newspaper from falling under the influence of John Ross.[6] The state militia was organized to police the Cherokee territory which the state had claimed.[3]
Recent developments

The Cherokee Phoenix published intermittently after Cherokee removal to Indian Territory. Since the late 20th century, it has been revived and is now published by the Cherokee Nation as a monthly broadsheet in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. The newspaper has modernized. It publishes on the Internet and is available on the iPhone, and there is a print version.[7]

A digitized, searchable version of the paper is available through the University of Georgia libraries and the Digital Library of Georgia.[8] Transcriptions of the English-language portions of the 19th-century newspaper can be found at Western Carolina University’s Hunter Library’s Web site.[9]

Artists Jeff Marley and Frank Brannon completed a collaborative project on October 19, 2013, in which they printed using Cherokee syllabary type in the print shop at New Echota. This was the first time syllabary printing type was used at New Echota since 1835.[10]

Born on this day:

1556 – Sethus Calvisius, German astronomer, composer, and theorist (d. 1615)
Sethus Calvisius or Setho Calvisio, originally Seth Kalwitz (21 February 1556 – 24 November 1615), was a German music theorist, composer, chronologer, astronomer, and teacher of the late Renaissance.
He was born into a peasant family at Gorsleben in present-day Thuringia. By the exercise of his musical talents he earned money enough for the start, at Helmstedt, of a university career, which the aid of a wealthy patron enabled him to continue at Leipzig. He became director of the music-school at Pforta in 1572. In 1594 he was transferred to Leipzig in the same post, including directing the Thomanerchor at the Thomaskirche.[1] He retained this post until his death in Leipzig, despite the offers successively made to him of mathematical professorships at Frankfurt and Wittenberg.

Calvisius was also a significant astronomer: in his Opus Chronologicum (Leipzig, 1605, 7th ed. 1685) he expounded a system based on the records of nearly 300 eclipses. An ingenious, though ineffective, proposal for the reform of the calendar was put forward in his Elenchus Calendarii Gregoriani (Frankfurt, 1612); and he published a book on music, Melodiae condendae ratio (Erfurt, 1592). He composed choral pieces including Unser Leben währet siebzig Jahr.[1]

1788 – Francis Ronalds, British scientist, inventor and engineer (d. 1873)
Sir Francis Ronalds FRS (21 February 1788 – 8 August 1873) was an English scientist and inventor, and arguably the first electrical engineer.[1] He was knighted for creating the first working electric telegraph.
Upbringing and family
Born to merchants Francis Ronalds and Jane née Field at their cheesemonger business in Upper Thames Street, London, he attended Unitarian minister Eliezer Cogan’s school before being apprenticed to his father at the age of 14. He ran the large business for some years. The family later resided in Highbury Terrace Islington, at Kelmscott House in Hammersmith, Queen Square in Bloomsbury, at Croydon, and on Chiswick Lane.[2]

Several of Ronalds’ eleven brothers and sisters also led noteworthy lives. His youngest brother Alfred authored the classic book The Fly-fisher’s Entomology (1836) before migrating to Australia and their brother Hugh was one of the founders of the city of Albion in the American Midwest. Their sisters married Samuel Carter[3] – a railway solicitor and MP – and sugar-refiner Peter Martineau of the famous Martineau family. Another sister Emily epitomised the family’s interest in social reform through her collaborations with early socialists Robert Owen and Fanny Wright.

Chemistry professor Edmund Ronalds and artist Hugh Carter[4] are two of Ronalds’ nephews and his nurseryman uncle Hugh Ronalds published the revered book Pyrus Malus Brentfordiensis: or, a Concise Description of Selected Apples (1831).[5]
Early electrical science and engineering
Ronalds was conducting electrical experiments by 1810: those on atmospheric electricity were outlined in George Singer’s text Elements of Electricity and Electro-Chemistry (1814).[6] He published his first papers in the Philosophical Magazine in 1814 on the properties of the dry pile, a form of battery that his mentor Jean-André Deluc helped to develop. The next year he described the first electric clock.[7]

Other inventions in this early period included an electrograph to record variations in atmospheric electricity through the day; an influence machine that generated electricity with minimal manual intervention; and new forms of electrical insulation, one of which was announced by Singer.[1][2] He was also already creating what would become the renowned Ronalds Library[8] of electrical books and managing his collection with perhaps the first practical card catalogue.[9]

His theoretical contributions included an early delineation of the parameters now known as electromotive force and current; an appreciation of the mechanism by which dry piles generated electricity; and the first description of the effects of induction in retarding electric signal transmission in insulated cables.[1][2][10]
Electric Telegraph
Elements of the subterranean electric telegraph built by Francis Ronalds in 1816

Ronalds’ most remembered work today is the electric telegraph he created at the age of 28. Foreshadowing both a future electrical age and mass communication, he wrote:

electricity, may actually be employed for a more practically useful purpose than the gratification of the philosopher’s inquisitive research… it may be compelled to travel… many hundred miles beneath our feet… and… be productive of… much public and private benefit…

why… add to the torments of absence those dilatory tormentors, pens, ink, paper, and posts? Let us have electrical conversazione offices, communicating with each other all over the kingdom…
give me materiel enough, and I will electrify the world.[11]

He complemented his vision with a working telegraph system built in and under the family’s garden at Hammersmith.[12] It was infamously rejected on 5 August 1816 by Sir John Barrow, Secretary at the Admiralty, as being “wholly unnecessary”. Commercialisation of the telegraph only began two decades later in the UK, led by William Fothergill Cooke and Charles Wheatstone, who both had links to Ronalds’ earlier work.[12][13]

Grand Tour
The period 1818–20 was Ronalds’ “Grand Tour” to Europe and the Near East. Embarking on his trip alone, he met up with numerous people along the way, including his friend Sir Frederick Henniker,[14] archaeologist Giovanni Battista Belzoni, artist Giovanni Battista Lusieri, merchant Walter Stevenson Davidson,[15] Revd George Waddington, Italian numismatist it:Giulio Cordero di San Quintino and Spanish geologist es:Carlos de Gimbernat. Ronalds’ travel journal and sketches have been published on the web.[16] On his return, he published his atmospheric electricity observations made in Palermo, Sicily, and near the erupting crater of Vesuvius.[11]
Mechanical design and manufacture
Ronalds next focussed on mechanical and civil engineering and design. Two surveying tools he designed and used to aid the production of survey plans were a modified surveyor’s wheel that recorded distances travelled in graphical form and a double-reflecting sector to draw the angular separation of distant objects. He also invented a forerunner to the fire finder patented in 1915 to pinpoint the location of a fire and various accessories for the lathe. Some of these devices were manufactured for sale by toolmaker Holtzapffel.[2]
Perspective machines and tripod stand

In 1825, he patented two drawing instruments for producing perspective sketches.[17] The first produced a perspective view of an object directly from drawings of the plan and elevations. The second machine enabled a scene or person to be traced from life onto paper with considerable precision; he and Dr Alexander Blair used it to document the important Neolithic monuments at Carnac, France, with “almost photographic accuracy”.[18][19] He also created the ubiquitous portable tripod stand with three pairs of hinged legs to support his drawing board in the field. He manufactured these instruments himself and several hundred of them were sold.[2] One of his first customers was mining engineer John Taylor.

Kew Observatory
In 1842, Ronalds set up the Kew Observatory for the British Association for the Advancement of Science and he remained Honorary Director of the facility until late 1853. It was through the quality of his achievements there that Kew survived its early years and it went to become one of the most important meteorological and geomagnetic observatories in the world. This was despite ongoing efforts by George Airy, Director of the Greenwich Observatory, to undermine the work at Kew.[20]
Continuously recording camera
Ronalds’ most noteworthy innovation at Kew, in 1845, was the first successful camera to make continuous recordings of an instrument 24 hours per day.[21] The British Prime Minister Lord John Russell gave him a financial award in recognition of the importance of the invention for observational science.[22]

He applied his technique in electrographs to observe atmospheric electricity, barographs and thermo-hygrographs to monitor the weather, and magnetographs to record the three components of geomagnetic force. The magnetographs were utilised by Edward Sabine in his global geomagnetic survey while the barograph and thermo-hygrograph were employed by the new Met Office to assist its first weather forecasts. Ronalds also supervised the manufacture of his instruments for other observatories around the world (the Radcliffe Observatory under Manuel John Johnson and the Colaba Observatory in India are two examples) and some continued in use until late in the 20th century.[2]
Meteorological instruments and observations
Further instruments created at Kew included an improved version of Regnault’s aspirated hygrometer that was employed for many years; an early meteorological kite; and the storm clock used to monitor rapid changes in meteorological parameters during extreme events.[20]

To observe atmospheric electricity, Ronalds created a sophisticated collecting apparatus with a suite of electrometers; the equipment was later manufactured and sold by London instrument-makers. A dataset of five years’ duration was analysed and published by his observatory colleague William Radcliffe Birt.[23]

The phenomenon now known as geomagnetically induced current was observed on telegraph lines in 1848 during the first sunspot peak after the network began to take shape. Ronalds endeavoured to employ his atmospheric electricity equipment and magnetographs in a detailed study to understand the cause of the anomalies but had insufficient resources to complete his work.[2]
Last years
Ronalds’ final foreign sojourn in 1853-62 was to northern Italy, Switzerland and France, where he assisted other observatories in building and installing his meteorological instruments and continued collecting books for his library. Some of his ideas documented in this period concerned electric lighting and a combined rudder and propeller for ships that was honed in the 20th century.

He died at Battle, near Hastings, aged 85, and is buried in the cemetery there. The Ronalds Library was bequeathed to the newly formed Society of Telegraph Engineers (soon to become the Institution of Electrical Engineers and now the Institution of Engineering and Technology) and its accompanying bibliography was reprinted by Cambridge University Press in 2013.[24]

Ronalds had a very modest and retiring nature and did little to publicise his work through his life.[25] During his last years, however, his key accomplishments became well known and revered in the scientific community, aided in particular by his friends Josiah Latimer Clark and Edward Sabine and his brother-in-law Samuel Carter. He was knighted at the age of 82. Colleagues at the Society of Telegraph Engineers regarded him as “the father of electric telegraphy”,[26] while his continuously recording camera was noted to be “of extreme importance to meteorologists and physicists, and… employed in all first-rate observatories”.[27] His portrait was painted by Hugh Carter.[28] Commemorative plaques have been installed on two of his former homes[29] and a road was named after him in Highbury.

FYI:

Barry Petchesky: Vladimir Tarasenko Makes A Little Girl’s Birthday

Cale Guthrie Weissman: An Italian Coffee Giant On The Future Of Sustainability

CSteven Melendez: Building An Iranian App Ecosystem That Promotes Business And Pushes Boundaries

Kristen Lee: Your True Stories Of The Stupidest Things You’ve Ever Done In Cars

Stef Schrader: Watch This Driver Avoid Crashing After Insane 160 MPH Spin On The Nürburgring

MindMeister Collaborative mind mapping

Debra’s List: 1000s of Toxic Free Products & Websites

Andrew Liszewski: Playing Retro Games on These Tiny Arcade Cabinets Is Still More Fun Than on a Smartphone

Graverobber: For $3,250, Could This 1961 International C-120 Camper Help You Get Away From It All?

Van life is interesting.  Living in a tiny camp trailer is nothing special.  What do these two do for money?  I believe they are just living on the cheap which is not rocket science or anything new~
Just A Car Guy: Living and traveling on the road

https://foodimentary.com/2016/02/20/february-20th-is-national-muffin-day/

On this day:

1935 – Caroline Mikkelsen becomes the first woman to set foot in Antarctica.
Caroline Mikkelsen (1906 – late 1990s) was born in Denmark and in 1935 was the first woman to set foot on Antarctica,[1] although whether this was on the mainland or an island is a matter of dispute.
Antarctic exploration

In the winter of 1934-1935, Mikkelsen accompanied her Norwegian husband, Captain Klarius Mikkelsen, on an Antarctic expedition sponsored by Lars Christensen, on the resupply vessel Thorshavn, with instructions to look for Antarctic lands that could be annexed for Norway.[2][3] Mount Caroline Mikkelsen is named for her.[4]

On 20 February 1935, the expedition made landfall somewhere on the Antarctic continental shelf.[5] Mikkelsen left the ship and participated in raising the Norwegian flag and in building a memorial cairn.[6] Mikkelsen never made any recorded claims to have landed on the mainland, but was initially thought to have landed on the Vestfold Hills not far from the present Davis Station.[1] She did not publicly speak about her Antarctic voyage until sixty years after her landing in 1995 when she spoke about her journey to the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten having been contacted by Davis Station Leader Diane Patterson.[7]

In 1998 and 2002, Australian researchers published historical articles in the Polar Record concluding that the landing party from the Thorshavn—and thus Mikkelsen—landed on the Tryne Islands where a marker at Mikkelsen’s Cairn can still be seen today).[8][9][10][11] The landing site is a approximately five kilometres from the Antarctic mainland. No alternative mainland landing site for the Mikkelsen party has been discovered, in spite of years of searching by Davis Station workers.[12][13] Consequently, Mikkelsen is regarded as the first woman to set foot on an Antarctic island, and Ingrid Christensen, the first to stand on the Antarctic mainland.

1943 – American movie studio executives agree to allow the Office of War Information to censor movies.
The United States Office of War Information (OWI) was a United States government agency created during World War II to consolidate existing government information services and deliver propaganda both at home and abroad. OWI operated from June 1942 until September 1945. Through radio broadcasts, newspapers, posters, photographs, films and other forms of media, the OWI was the connection between the battlefront and civilian communities. The office also established several overseas branches, which launched a large-scale information and propaganda campaign abroad.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt promulgated the OWI on June 13, 1942 by Executive Order 9182[1] to consolidate the functions of the Office of Facts and Figures (OWI’s direct predecessor), the Office of Government Reports, and the Division of Information of the Office for Emergency Management. The Foreign Information Service, a division of the Office of the Coordinator of Information, became the core of the Overseas Branch of the OWI.

At the onset of World War II, the American public was in the dark regarding wartime information. One American observer noted: “It all seemed to boil down to three bitter complaints…first, that there was too much information; second, that there wasn’t enough of it; and third, that in any event it was confusing and inconsistent”.[2] Further, the American public confessed a lack of understanding as to why the world was at war, and held great resentment against other Allied Nations.[3] President Roosevelt established the OWI to both meet the demands for news and less confusion, as well as resolve American apathy towards the war.

The OWI’s creation was not without controversy. The American public, and the United States Congress in particular, were wary of propaganda for several reasons. First, the press feared a centralized agency as the sole distributor of wartime information.[4] Second, Congress feared an American propaganda machine that could resemble Joseph Goebbels’ operation in Nazi Germany.[5] Third, previous attempts at propaganda under the Committee on Public Information/Creel Committee during WWI were viewed as a failure.[6] And fourth, America was experiencing endemic isolationism and was hesitant to become involved in a global propaganda campaign and subsequently a global war.

But in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the need for coordinated and properly disseminated wartime information from the military/administration to the public outweighed the fears associated with American propaganda. President Roosevelt entrusted the OWI to beloved journalist and CBS newsman Elmer Davis, with the mission to take “an active part in winning the war and in laying the foundations for a better postwar world”.[7]

President Roosevelt ordered Davis to “formulate and carry out, through the use of press, radio, motion picture, and other facilities, information programs designed to facilitate the development of an informed and intelligent understanding, at home and abroad, of the status and progress of the war effort and of the war policies, activities, and aims of the Government”.[8] The OWI’s operations were thus divided between the Domestic and Overseas Branches.

The OWI Domestic Radio Bureau produced series such as This is Our Enemy (spring 1942), which dealt with Germany, Japan, and Italy; Uncle Sam, which dealt with domestic themes; and Hasten the Day (August 1943), which focussed on the Home Front, the NBC Blue Network’s Chaplain Jim. The radio producer Norman Corwin produced several series for OWI, including An American in England, An American in Russia, and Passport for Adams, which starred Robert Young, Ray Collins, Paul Stewart and Harry Davenport.[9]

In 1942 OWI established the Voice of America (VOA), which remains in service as of 2015 as the official government broadcasting service of the United States. The VOA initially borrowed transmitters from the commercial networks. The programs OWI produced included those provided by the Labor Short Wave Bureau, whose material came from the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations.

In conjunction with the War Relocation Authority, the OWI produced a series of documentary films related to the internment of Japanese Americans. Japanese Relocation and several other films were designed[by whom?] to educate the general public on the internment, to counter the tide of anti-Japanese sentiment in the country, and to encourage Japanese-American internees to resettle outside camp or to enter military service. The OWI also worked with camp newspapers to disseminate information to internees.[10]

During 1942 and 1943 the OWI boasted two photographic units whose photographers documented the country’s mobilization during the early years of the war, concentrating on such topics as aircraft factories and women in the workforce. In addition, the OWI produced a series of 267 newsreels in 16 mm film, The United Newsreel which were shown overseas and to US audiences. These newsreels incorporated U.S. military footage. For examples see this Google list.
(404. That’s an error.
The requested URL /videosearch was not found on this server. That’s all we know. )

The OWI Bureau of Motion Pictures (BMP) worked with Hollywood to produce films that advanced American war aims. According to Elmer Davis, “The easiest way to inject a propaganda idea into most people’s minds is to let it go through the medium of an entertainment picture when they do not realize that they are being propagandized.”[11] Successful films depicted the Allied armed forces as valiant “Freedom fighters”, and advocated for civilian participation, such as conserving fuel or donating food to troops.[12]

By July 1942 OWI administrators realized that the best way to reach American audiences was to present war films in conjunction with feature films. OWI’s presence in Hollywood deepened throughout World War II, and by 1943 every Hollywood studio (except for Paramount) allowed OWI to examine all movie scripts.[13] OWI evaluated whether each film would promote the honor of the Allies’ mission.[14]

Born on this day:

1819 – Alfred Escher, Swiss businessman and politician (d. 1882)
Johann Heinrich Alfred Escher vom Glas, known as Alfred Escher (20 February 1819 in Zurich – 6 December 1882 in Zurich/Enge) was a Swiss politician, business leader and railways pioneer. Thanks to his numerous political posts and his significant role in the foundation and management of the Swiss Northeastern Railway, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Credit Suisse, Swiss Life and the Gotthard Railway, Escher had an unmatched influence on Switzerland’s political and economic development in the 19th century

“The rail tracks are approaching Switzerland, moving nearer on all sides. People are coming up with plans to route the railways around Switzerland. There is thus a danger that Switzerland will be entirely circumvented and that, in the future, it will be left with no option but to present to the world the sad face of Europe’s forgotten backwater.”[12] With these words uttered in late 1849 Alfred Escher expressed his concern that modernity risked passing Switzerland by. And he had good cause for such concern, since at the time when the distances covered by railway tracks in Europe were steadily increasing, driving economic development as they did, Switzerland was doing little to join in. The fate of the new Swiss Confederation established in 1848 became inextricably bound up with the advent of the railways. There was basic agreement on the need for railways, but precious little agreement on how or where they should be built. In 1852 Escher helped push through a railway law drafted entirely in line with his own conceptions: railway construction and operation would be left to private companies. This soon led to a veritable railway boom in Switzerland. Within a very short period of time competing railway companies were set up, including in 1852-53 the Swiss Northeastern Railway, with Escher at its helm. In this way the Swiss rapidly closed the gap in rail-related knowledge and technology between themselves and foreign operators.[13]
Federal Polytechnic Institute

The railway boom was accompanied by a call for people with the technical training required in the new economic sector. In Switzerland there were then no educational establishments for engineers and technicians. Escher was in the forefront of the struggle to rise to the technological and manufacturing challenges of the time. After years of political wrangling the Federal Polytechnic Institute (now known as ETH Zurich) was finally founded in 1854/55. From 1854–1882 Escher was vice-chairman of the Federal School Council, the governing body of the Polytechnic Institute. The establishment of this institution for technology and the natural sciences was the key act in laying the foundation for Switzerland’s later pre-eminence in education and research.[14]

The large amounts of capital involved in constructing railways posed new challenges to the rail companies. The capital had to be raised outside Switzerland because there were no institutions within the country able to make money available in the huge quantities required. This dependence on foreign lenders resulted in those lenders seeking to influence the growth and development of the Swiss rail companies. Alfred Escher did not like this state of affairs. In 1856 he succeeded in establishing a new bank, Schweizerische Kreditanstalt (now known as Credit Suisse), primarily for the purpose of securing financing for his own rail company, the Swiss Northeastern Railway. Increasingly, however, Escher’s bank financed other public and private sector endeavours too, thereby developing into an important lender for the Swiss economy and the founding institution of the Zurich’s financial centre.[15]

Despite the expansion of the rail network in the 1850s, there was still a danger that Switzerland would be left out of the wider European scheme of things. Although connections with the main Swiss towns and cities had soon been established, there was still no major north-south route. Alfred Escher initially favoured a trans-Alpine link via the Lukmanier, he changed his mind and became an advocate of the Gotthard project. Escher threw all the economic and political resources at his command behind this ambitious project. He consulted engineers and other experts, and conducted negotiations with the authorities at home and abroad. At the international Gotthard conference held in the autumn of 1869, the final decision was made in favour of the Gotthard line. In 1871 the Gotthardbahn-Gesellschaft (Gotthard Railway Company) was established, with Escher as its chairman. The construction phase was hampered by a variety of problems in realising the project and a – given the scale of the project, rather modest – budget overrun of around 11%. Escher was exposed to increasingly vociferous criticism, prompting him to resign as chairman of the Gotthard Rail Company in 1878. When the builders of the Gotthard tunnel broke through in 1880, he was not invited to attend. In 1882 this landmark project was finally completed and the Gotthard tunnel was ceremoniously opened. This time, Escher was invited but unable to attend the opening celebrations because of his poor health. The Gotthard tunnel played a vital part in putting Switzerland on the international transport map. In the years following its inauguration the volume of goods and passengers passing through soared, turning Switzerland into an important transit country.[16]

 
1893 – Elizabeth Holloway Marston, American psychologist and author (d. 1993)
Elizabeth “Sadie” Holloway Marston (February 20, 1893 – March 27, 1993) was an American attorney and psychologist. She is credited both for partially inspiring the comic book character Wonder Woman and having been involved in the nature of the character’s creation, with her husband, William Moulton Marston (pen name Charles Moulton)[1][2][3] and his mistress, Olive Byrne.[4][5] She also participated with Marston in the development of the systolic blood-pressure test used to detect deception.[2][6]

Marston was born Elizabeth Holloway in the Isle of Man and raised in Boston, Massachusetts.[3] As noted by Boston University, “In an era when few women earned higher degrees, Elizabeth received three.”[2] She received her BA in psychology from Mount Holyoke College in 1915[2] and would have liked to go on to join her then-fiance, William Marston, at Harvard Law School. However, according to an interview she gave to the New York Times in 1992, “Those dumb bunnies at Harvard wouldn’t take women […] so I went to Boston University.”[3] According to Marston’s granddaughter, Susan Grupposo, when Marston asked her father to support her through law school, “He told her: ‘Absolutely not. As long as I have money to keep you in aprons, you can stay home with your mother.’ Undeterred, Holloway peddled cookbooks to the local ladies’ clubs. She needed $100 for her tuition, and by the end of the summer she had it. She married Marston that September, but still she paid her own way.” Marston received her LLB from the Boston University School of Law in 1918,[7] and was “one of three women to graduate from the School of Law that year. [She later stated] ‘I finished the [Massachusetts Bar] exam in nothing flat and had to go out and sit on the stairs waiting for Bill Marston and another Harvard man . . . to finish.'”[2]
Systolic blood-pressure test

Both William and Elizabeth next joined the psychology department at Harvard. Because Harvard’s doctoral program was restricted to men, Elizabeth was in the master’s program at the neighboring Radcliffe College. Elizabeth worked with William on his dissertation, which concerned the correlation between blood pressure levels and deception. William later developed this into the systolic blood-pressure test used to detect deception that was the predecessor to the polygraph test.

This work led to a PhD for William from Harvard and an MA for Elizabeth from Radcliffe in 1921.[2] Furthermore, according to their son, Elizabeth suggested to William, “When she got mad or excited, her blood pressure seemed to climb.”[2] Although Elizabeth is not listed as William’s collaborator in his early work, a number of writers refer directly and indirectly to Elizabeth’s work on her husband’s deception research. She also appears in a picture taken in his polygraph laboratory in the 1920s, reproduced in a 1938 publication by William.[2][8][9]
Career and family

Marston was a career woman, a position that was controversial for the time in which she lived: “She indexed the documents of the first fourteen Congresses, lectured on law, ethics, and psychology at American and New York Universities, [and] served as an editor for Encyclopædia Britannica and McCall’s magazine.”[2] In 1933, Marston became the assistant to the chief executive at Metropolitan Life Insurance, a position she held until she was 65 years old.[2]

In 1920, Marston gave birth to a stillborn child, Fredericka. She had her second child, Pete, at the age of 35 and continued to work, which was rare for women at the time. Her third child was Olive Ann, named after Olive Byrne, who lived with the couple in an extended relationship. Marston also supported the two children of Olive Byrne. These children, Byrne and Donn, were legally adopted by the Marstons.[2] While Olive stayed home to raise the children, Elizabeth supported the family when William was out of work and after his death in 1947. This included financing the college and graduate education of all four children and supporting Olive until her death in the 1980s.[2]
Wonder Woman

Marston’s involvement in the creation of the DC Comics character Wonder Woman was discussed in detail in a 1992 New York Times article published one year before her death:

Our Towns reveals the true identity of Wonder Woman’s real Mom. She is Elizabeth Holloway Marston. She’s not 1,000; she’s 99 come Thursday […] One dark night as the clouds of war hovered over Europe again, Mr. Marston consulted his wife and collaborator, also a psychologist. He was inventing somebody like that new Superman fellow, only his character would promote a global psychic revolution by forsaking Biff! Bam! and Ka-Runch! for The Power of Love. Well, said Mrs. Marston, who was born liberated, this super-hero had better be a woman […] Wonder Woman was created and written in the Marston’s suburban study as a crusading Boston career woman disguised as Diana Prince […] Meanwhile, in a small Connecticut town, Wonder Woman’s Mom has disguised herself as a retired editor who lives in postwar housing.[3]

Her 1993 obituary stated that she was the inspiration for Wonder Woman. It also quoted her son Pete as stating that Marston had told William (after he was asked to develop a new superhero in the early 1940s), “Come on, let’s have a Superwoman! There’s too many men out there.”[10] A 2001 article in the Boston University Alumni Magazine, which included extensive interviews with her family, further noted that “William Moulton Marston, a psychologist already famous for inventing the polygraph (forerunner to the magic lasso), struck upon an idea for a new kind of superhero, one who would triumph not with fists or firepower, but with love. ‘Fine,’ said Elizabeth. ‘But make her a woman.'”[2]

Lillian S. Robinson, however, has argued that both Olive Byrne and Elizabeth were the models for the character.[11] In addition, Marston contributed some of Wonder Woman’s signature exclamations, such as “Suffering Sappho” and “Great Hera.”[12]

Marston lived to be 100 years old, dying March 27, 1993, just after her hundredth birthday.

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On this day:

356 – Emperor Constantius II issues a decree closing all pagan temples in the Roman Empire.

Anti-paganism policy of Constantius II
The anti-paganism policy of Constantius II lasted from 337 till 361. It was marked by laws and edicts that punished pagan practices.[1][2] Laws dating from the 350s prescribed the death penalty for those who performed or attended pagan sacrifices, and for the worshipping of idols;[1][3][4] temples were shut down,[2][5] and the Altar of Victory was removed from the Senate meeting house.[6] There were also frequent episodes of ordinary Christians destroying, pillaging, desecrating, vandalizing many of the ancient pagan temples, tombs and monuments.[7][8][9][10] Paganism was still popular among the population at the time. The emperor’s policies were passively resisted of many governors and magistrates.[5][11][12][13] Herbermann contends that the anti-paganism legislation had an unfavourable influence on the Middle Ages and become the basis of the Inquisition.[14]

1859 – Daniel E. Sickles, a New York Congressman, is acquitted of murder on grounds of temporary insanity. This is the first time this defense is successfully used in the United States.

Sickles shoots Key in 1859

Sickles was censured by the New York State Assembly for escorting a known prostitute, Fanny White, into its chambers. He also reportedly took her to England, while leaving his pregnant wife at home. He presented White to Queen Victoria, using as her alias the surname of a New York political opponent.[4]

In 1859, in Lafayette Square, across the street from the White House, Sickles shot and killed Philip Barton Key II, the district attorney of the District of Columbia;[7] he was the son of Francis Scott Key. Sickles had discovered that Philip Key was having an affair with his young wife.[2][8]

Sickles surrendered at Attorney General Jeremiah Black’s house, a few blocks away on Franklin Square, and confessed to the murder. After a visit to his home, accompanied by a constable, Sickles was taken to jail. He was able to receive visitors, and so many came that he was granted the use of the head jailer’s apartment to receive them.[10] He received numerous perquisites, including being allowed to retain his personal weapon, and receive numerous visitors. They included many congressmen, senators, and other leading members of Washington society. President James Buchanan sent Sickles a personal note.[citation needed]
The trial of Sickles. Engraving from Harper’s.

Harper’s Magazine reported that the visits of his wife’s mother and her clergyman were painful for Sickles. Both told him that Teresa was distracted with grief, shame, and sorrow, and that the loss of her wedding ring (which Sickles had taken on visiting his home) was more than Teresa could bear.[citation needed]

Sickles was charged with murder. He secured several leading politicians as defense attorneys, among them Edwin M. Stanton, later to become Secretary of War, and Chief Counsel James T. Brady, like Sickles associated with Tammany Hall. Sickles pleaded temporary insanity—the first use of this defense in the United States.[11] Before the jury, Stanton argued that Sickles had been driven insane by his wife’s infidelity, and thus was out of his mind when he shot Key. The papers soon trumpeted that Sickles was a hero for “saving all the ladies of Washington from this rogue named Key”.[12]

Sickles had obtained a graphic confession from Teresa; it was ruled inadmissible in court, but, was leaked by him to the press and printed in the newspapers in full. The defense strategy ensured that the trial was the main topic of conversations in Washington for weeks, and the extensive coverage of national papers was sympathetic to Sickles.[13] In the courtroom, the strategy brought drama, controversy, and, ultimately, an acquittal for Sickles.[citation needed]

Sickles publicly forgave Teresa, and “withdrew” briefly from public life, although he did not resign from Congress. The public was apparently more outraged by Sickles’s forgiveness and reconciliation with his wife, than by the murder and his unorthodox acquittal.[14]

Born on this day:

1859 – Svante Arrhenius, Swedish physicist and chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1927)
Svante August Arrhenius (19 February 1859 – 2 October 1927) was a Nobel-Prize winning Swedish scientist, originally a physicist, but often referred to as a chemist, and one of the founders of the science of physical chemistry. He received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1903, becoming the first Swedish Nobel laureate, and in 1905 became director of the Nobel Institute where he remained until his death.[1] His lasting contributions to science are exemplified and memorialized by the Arrhenius equation, Arrhenius definition of an acid, lunar crater Arrhenius, the mountain of Arrheniusfjellet and the Arrhenius Labs at Stockholm University, all named after him. He was the first to use basic principles of physical chemistry to calculate estimates of the extent to which increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide increase Earth’s surface temperature through the greenhouse effect, leading him to conclude that human-caused carbon dioxide emissions are large enough to cause global warming.[2]

1941 – David Gross, American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
David Jonathan Gross (/ɡroʊs/; born February 19, 1941) is an American theoretical physicist and string theorist. Along with Frank Wilczek and David Politzer, he was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery of asymptotic freedom. He is the former director and current holder of the Frederick W. Gluck Chair in Theoretical Physics at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics of the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is also a faculty member in the UC Santa Barbara Physics Department and is currently affiliated with the Institute for Quantum Studies at Chapman University in California. He is the Foreign Member of Chinese Academy of Sciences.[2]

1942 – Will Provine, American biologist, historian, and academic (d. 2015)
William Ball “Will” Provine (February 19, 1942 – September 1, 2015) was an American historian of science and of evolutionary biology and population genetics. He was the Andrew H. and James S. Tisch Distinguished University Professor at Cornell University and was a professor in the Departments of History, Science and Technology Studies, and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
Provine was born in Tennessee. He held a B.S. in Mathematics (1962), and an M.A. (1965) and Ph.D (1970) in History of Science from the University of Chicago.[1] He joined the Cornell faculty in 1969. He suffered seizures in 1995 due to a brain tumour.[2] Provine died on September 1, 2015, due to complications from the tumor.[3]
History of theoretical population genetics

Provine’s Ph.D. thesis, later published as a book,[4] documented the early origins of theoretical population genetics in the conflicts between the biostatistics and Mendelian schools of thought. He documented later developments in theoretical population genetics in his biography of Sewall Wright,[5] who was still alive and available for interviews. In this book, Provine criticizes Wright for confounding three different concepts of adaptive landscape: genotype to fitness landscapes, allele frequency to fitness landscapes, and phenotype to fitness landscapes. Provine later grew critical of Wright’s views on genetic drift, instead attributing observed effects to the consequences of inbreeding and consequent selection at linked sites. John H. Gillespie credits Provine with stimulating his interest in the topic of hitchhiking or “genetic draft” as an alternative to genetic drift.[6] Provine later published his critique of genetic drift in a book.[7] Provine defended the importance of mathematics’ contribution to the modern evolutionary synthesis.[8]
Education reform

In 1970, Provine was instrumental in the founding of Cornell’s Risley Residential College. He was the first faculty member in residence.
Philosophy

Provine was a philosopher, atheist, and critic of intelligent design. He engaged in prominent debates with theist philosophers and scientists about the existence of God and the viability of intelligent design. He debated the founder of the intelligent design movement, Phillip E. Johnson, and the two had a friendly relationship. Provine said that his course on evolutionary biology began by having his students read Johnson’s book, Darwin on Trial.[9]

Provine was a determinist in biology, but not a determinist in physics or chemistry; he rejected the idea that humans exercise free will.[2][10] Provine believed that there is no evidence for the existence of God, is no life after death, no absolute foundation for moral right and wrong, and no ultimate meaning or purpose for life.[11]
In popular culture
Professor Provine appeared in Ben Stein’s movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Provine supervised the thesis written by Bad Religion member Greg Graffin. Graffin was a student of paleobiology at Cornell. Provine also supervised the sociology thesis of Steve Leveen in 1982.

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She was also a pioneering publisher and, later, a princess.

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On this day:

1819 – The United States House of Representatives passes the Missouri Compromise for the first time.
The Missouri Compromise is the title generally attached to the legislation passed by the 16th Congress of the United States on May 8, 1820. The measures provided for the admission of the District of Maine as a state free to ratify a state constitution that both did not recognize and prohibited slavery within the state. Further, the Compromise provided that the Missouri territory was free to enact a state constitution that both recognized as legal and permitted (through affirmative state legislation and state government regulation), the institution of chattel slavery. In addition, it outlawed as a matter of Federal law both the recognition and legality of the institution of chattel slavery in the Federal territory that remained of the Louisiana Purchase that was still unorganized and north of the 36°30′ parallel (excepting Missouri, hence “Missouri Compromise”) within the Purchase lands. With these actions, the Compromise committed the largest remaining portion of Purchase territory to free soil. It did not permit either the plantation of or the expansion of slavery in the Purchase, as the territory became populated and organized first into Federal territories, and eventually into states of the union. However, South of the parallel no slavery restrictions were imposed in the Arkansas Territory, which later became Indian territory, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. There also were not any statements about restrictions or recognition of the institution of slavery at or South of the latitude, or in territory possessed by Spain. President James Monroe signed the legislation on April 6, 1820.[1]

The compromise bills served to quell the furious sectional debates that had first erupted during the final session of the 15th Congress. On February 3, 1819, Representative James Tallmadge, Jr., a Jeffersonian Republican from New York State, had submitted two amendments to Missouri’s request for statehood. The first proposed to federally prohibit further slave migration into Missouri; the second would require all slave offspring, born after statehood, freed at 25 years of age.[2] At issue among southern legislators was the encroachment by their northern free state colleagues in what they considered a purely sectional concern: slave labor.[3]

Northern critics including Federalists and Republicans, objected to the expansion of slavery into the Louisiana Purchase territory on the Constitutional inequalities of the three-fifths rule, which conferred Southern representation in the federal government, derived from a states’ slave population. Nonetheless, the more populous North held a firm numerical advantage in the House.[4] Jeffersonian Republicans in the North ardently maintained that a strict interpretation of the Constitution required that Congress act to limit the spread of slavery on egalitarian grounds.[5]

The slave-holding states were acutely aware that maintaining a balance in the number of free-to-slave states was necessary to ensure political equilibrium in the US Senate. With the Senate evenly split at the opening of the debates, both sections possessing 11 states, the admission of Missouri would give the South a two-seat advantage in the upper house and diminish the Northern lower house majority. The South sought to enlist Missouri to maintain Southern political preeminence and ensure security of their institutions.[6][7]

The Missouri question in the 15th Congress ended in stalemate on March 4, 1819, the House sustaining its northern antislavery position, and the Senate blocking a slavery restricted statehood.[8] Antislavery agitation grew in the North in the aftermath of the debates, leading to widespread opposition to slavery in Missouri.[9] As the 16th Congress assembled in December 1819, the two houses remained thoroughly polarized over slavery in the Louisiana Purchase territories.[10][11]

When the free-soil District of Maine offered its petition for statehood, the Senate quickly linked the Maine and Missouri bills, making Maine admission a condition for Missouri entering the Union with slavery unrestricted. Senator Jesse B. Thomas of Illinois added a compromise proviso, excluding slavery from all remaining lands of the Louisiana Purchase north of the 36 30’ parallel. The combined measures passed the Senate, only to be voted down in the House by those Northern representatives who held out for a free Missouri. Speaker of the House of Representatives Henry Clay of Kentucky, in a desperate bid to break the deadlock, divided the Senate bills. Clay and his pro-compromise allies succeeded in pressuring half the anti-restrictionist House Southerners to submit to the passage of the Thomas proviso, while maneuvering a number of restrictionist House northerners to acquiesce in supporting Missouri as a slave state. This was the Missouri Compromise.[12][13]

The legislation extracted by the compromisers served to effect a “brokered truce” or “armistice” rather than a genuine compromise. The crux of the Compromise was that it circumvented the deepening disaffection among Jeffersonian Republicans.[14][15]

The Missouri crisis would spur the formation of two powerful political organizations – the Democratic and Whig Parties – both committed to preserving the federal Union by means of sectional compromise and the suppression of the explosive proslavery and antislavery arguments that had surfaced over Missouri statehood. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise in the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 would hasten the growth of a mass antislavery coalition – the Republican Party – whose precepts of which were first formulated by Jeffersonian Republican restrictionists during the Missouri crisis.[16]

 
1959 – Project Vanguard: Vanguard 2: The first weather satellite is launched to measure cloud-cover distribution.
Project Vanguard was a program managed by the United States Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), which intended to launch the first artificial satellite into Earth orbit using a Vanguard rocket[1] as the launch vehicle from Cape Canaveral Missile Annex, Florida.

In response to the surprise launch of Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957, the U.S. restarted the Explorer program, which had been proposed earlier by the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA). Privately, however, the CIA and President Dwight D. Eisenhower were aware of progress being made by the Soviets on Sputnik from secret spy plane imagery.[2] Together with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), ABMA built Explorer 1 and launched it on January 31, 1958. Before work was completed, however, the Soviet Union launched a second satellite, Sputnik 2, on November 3, 1957. Meanwhile, the spectacular televised failure of Vanguard TV3 on December 6, 1957 deepened American dismay over the country’s position in the Space Race.

On March 17, 1958, Vanguard 1 became the second artificial satellite successfully placed in Earth orbit by the United States. It was the first solar-powered satellite. Just 152 mm (6 in) in diameter and weighing just 1.4 kg (3 lb), Vanguard 1 was described by then-Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev as, “The grapefruit satellite.”[3]

Vanguard 1 is the oldest artificial satellite still in space, as Vanguard’s predecessors, Sputnik 1, Sputnik 2, and Explorer 1, have decayed from orbit.

Born on this day:

1781 – René Laennec, French physician, invented the stethoscope (d. 1826)
René-Théophile-Hyacinthe Laennec[2] (French: [laɛnɛk]; 17 February 1781 – 13 August 1826) was a French physician. He invented the stethoscope in 1816, while working at the Hôpital Necker, and pioneered its use in diagnosing various chest conditions.

He became a lecturer at the Collège de France in 1822 and professor of medicine in 1823. His final appointments were that of Head of the Medical Clinic at the Hôpital de la Charité and Professor at the Collège de France. He died of tuberculosis in 1826 at the age of 45.

René Laennec wrote the classic treatise De l’Auscultation Médiate, published in August 1819[4][5] The preface reads:

In 1816, I was consulted by a young woman laboring under general symptoms of diseased heart, and in whose case percussion and the application of the hand were of little avail on account of the great degree of fatness. The other method just mentioned [direct auscultation] being rendered inadmissible by the age and sex of the patient, I happened to recollect a simple and well-known fact in acoustics, … the great distinctness with which we hear the scratch of a pin at one end of a piece of wood on applying our ear to the other. Immediately, on this suggestion, I rolled a quire of paper into a kind of cylinder and applied one end of it to the region of the heart and the other to my ear, and was not a little surprised and pleased to find that I could thereby perceive the action of the heart in a manner much more clear and distinct than I had ever been able to do by the immediate application of my ear.

Laennec had discovered that the new stethoscope was superior to the normally used method of placing the ear over the chest, particularly if the patient was overweight. A stethoscope also avoided the embarrassment of placing the ear against the chest of a woman.[citation needed]
The first drawing of a stethoscope, 1819
A modern stethoscope

Laennec is said to have seen schoolchildren playing with long, hollow sticks in the days leading up to his innovation.[6] The children held their ear to one end of the stick while the opposite end was scratched with a pin, the stick transmitted and amplified the scratch. His skill as a flautist may also have inspired him. He built his first instrument as a 25 cm by 2.5 cm hollow wooden cylinder, which he later refined to comprise three detachable parts.

His clinical work allowed him to follow chest patients from bedside to the autopsy table. He was therefore able to correlate sounds captured by his new instruments with specific pathological changes in the chest, in effect pioneering a new non-invasive diagnostic tool. Laennec was the first to classify and discuss the terms rales, rhonchi, crepitance, and egophony – terms that doctors now use on a daily basis during physical exams and diagnoses.[6] In February 1818, he presented his findings in a talk at the Académie de Médecine, later publishing his findings in 1819.[citation needed]

Laennec coined the phrase mediate auscultation (indirect listening), as opposed to the popular practice at the time of directly placing the ear on the chest (immediate auscultation). He named his instrument the stethoscope, from stethos (chest), and skopos (examination).
One of the original stethoscopes belonging to Rene Theophile Laennec made of wood and brass

Not all doctors readily embraced the new stethoscope. Although the New England Journal of Medicine reported the invention of the stethoscope two years later in 1821, as late as 1885, a professor of medicine stated, “He that hath ears to hear, let him use his ears and not a stethoscope.” Even the founder of the American Heart Association, L. A. Connor (1866–1950) carried a silk handkerchief with him to place on the wall of the chest for ear auscultation.[7]

Laennec often referred to the stethoscope as “the cylinder,” and as he neared death only a few years later, he bequeathed his own stethoscope to his nephew, referring to it as “the greatest legacy of my life.”

The modern binaural stethoscope with two ear pieces was invented in 1851 by Arthur Leared. George Cammann perfected the design of the instrument for commercial production in 1852, which has become the standard ever since.
Other medical contributions
Laennec auscultates a patient before his students

He developed the understanding of peritonitis and cirrhosis. Although the disease of cirrhosis was known, Laennec gave cirrhosis its name, using the Greek word (kirrhos, tawny) that referred to the tawny, yellow nodules characteristic of the disease.

He coined the term melanoma and described metastases of melanoma to the lungs. In 1804, while still a medical student, he was the first person to lecture on melanoma. This lecture was subsequently published in 1805. Laennec actually used the term ‘melanose,’ which he derived from the Greek (mela, melan) for “black.” Over the years, there were bitter exchanges between Laennec and Dupuytren, the latter objecting that there was no mention of his work in this area and his role in its discovery.

He also studied tuberculosis. Coincidentally, his nephew, Mériadec Laennec, is said to have diagnosed tuberculosis in Laennec using Laennec’s stethoscope.[6][8]

Laennec advocated objective scientific observation. Professor Benjamin Ward Richardson stated in Disciples of Aesculapius that “the true student of medicine reads Laennec’s treatise on mediate auscultation and the use of the stethoscope once in two years at least as long as he is in practice. It ranks with the original work of Vesalius, Harvey and Hippocrates.” [9]

1864 – Banjo Paterson, Australian journalist, author, and poet (d. 1941)
Andrew Barton “Banjo” Paterson, CBE[2] (17 February 1864 – 5 February 1941)[3] was an Australian bush poet, journalist and author. He wrote many ballads and poems about Australian life, focusing particularly on the rural and outback areas, including the district around Binalong, New South Wales, where he spent much of his childhood. Paterson’s more notable poems include “Waltzing Matilda”, “The Man from Snowy River” and “Clancy of the Overflow”.

Andrew Barton Paterson was born at the property “Narrambla”, near Orange, New South Wales, the eldest son of Andrew Bogle Paterson, a Scottish immigrant from Lanarkshire, and Australian-born Rose Isabella Barton,[3] related to the future first Prime Minister of Australia Edmund Barton.[4] Paterson’s family lived on the isolated Buckinbah Station near Yeoval NSW[5] until he was five when his father lost his wool clip in a flood and was forced to sell up.[6] When Paterson’s uncle John Paterson died, his family took over John Paterson’s farm in Illalong, near Yass, close to the main route between Melbourne and Sydney. Bullock teams, Cobb and Co coaches and drovers were familiar sights to him. He also saw horsemen from the Murrumbidgee River area and Snowy Mountains country take part in picnic races and polo matches, which led to his fondness of horses and inspired his writings.[3]

Paterson’s early education came from a governess, but when he was able to ride a pony, he was taught at the bush school at Binalong. In 1874 Paterson was sent to Sydney Grammar School, performing well both as a student and a sportsman. During this time, he lived in a cottage called Rockend, in the suburb of Gladesville. The cottage is now listed on the Register of the National Estate. He left the prestigious school at 16 after failing an examination for a scholarship to University of Sydney. He went on to become a law clerk with a Sydney-based firm headed by Herbert Salwey and was admitted as a solicitor in 1886.[7]

In the years he practised as a solicitor, Paterson also started a writing career. From 1885, he began submitting and having poetry published in the The Bulletin, a literary journal with a nationalist focus. His earliest work was a poem criticising the British war in the Sudan, which also had Australian participation. Over the next decade, the influential journal provided an important platform for Paterson’s work, which appeared under the pseudonym of “The Banjo”, the name of his favourite horse.[8] As one of its most popular writers through the 1890s, he formed friendships with other significant writers in Australian Literature, such as E.J. Brady, Harry Breaker Morant and Henry Lawson. In particular, Paterson became engaged in a friendly rivalry of verse with Lawson about the allure of bush life.[9]

Paterson became a war correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age during the Second Boer War, sailing for South Africa in October 1899. His graphic accounts of the relief of Kimberley, surrender of Bloemfontein (the first correspondent to ride in) and the capture of Pretoria attracted the attention of the press in Britain.[3] He also was a correspondent during the Boxer Rebellion, where he met George “Chinese” Morrison and later wrote about his meeting.[3] He was editor of the Sydney Evening News (1904–06) and of the Town and Country Journal (1907–08).[10]

In 1908 after a trip to the United Kingdom he decided to abandon journalism and writing and moved with his family to a 40,000-acre (160 km2) property near Yass.[6]

In World War I, Paterson failed to become a correspondent covering the fighting in Flanders, but did become an ambulance driver with the Australian Voluntary Hospital, Wimereux, France. He returned to Australia early in 1915 and, as an honorary vet, travelled on three voyages with horses to Africa, China and Egypt. He was commissioned in the 2nd Remount Unit, Australian Imperial Force on 18 October 1915,[3] serving initially in France where he was wounded and reported missing in July 1916 and latterly as commanding officer of the unit based in Cairo, Egypt. He was repatriated to Australia and discharged from the army having risen to the rank of major in April 1919.[11] His wife had joined the Red Cross and worked in an ambulance unit near her husband.[6]

Just as he returned to Australia, the third collection of his poetry, Saltbush Bill JP, was published and he continued to publish verse, short stories and essays while continuing to write for the weekly Truth.[6] Paterson also wrote on rugby league football in the 1920s for the Sydney Sportsman.[12]

Paterson died of a heart attack in Sydney on 5 February 1941 aged 76. Paterson’s grave, along with that of his wife, is in the Northern Suburbs Memorial Gardens and Crematorium, Sydney.
1877 – Isabelle Eberhardt, Swiss explorer and author (d. 1904)
Isabelle Eberhardt (17 February 1877 – 21 October 1904) was a Swiss explorer and writer. She was educated in Switzerland by her father, who was a tutor, and published short stories under a male pseudonym as a teenager. She took an interest in North Africa and wrote about the area with “remarkable insight and knowledge” despite having only heard about it via correspondence. Upon invitation Eberhardt relocated to Algeria in May 1897, where she dressed as a man and converted to Islam, eventually adopting the name Si Mahmoud Saadi. Eberhardt’s unorthodox behaviour made her a social pariah from both the European settlers in Algeria and the French administration.

Eberhardt was accepted into the Qadiriyya, which convinced the French administration that she was either a spy or an agitator. She survived an assassination attempt shortly thereafter. In 1901 she was ordered to leave Algeria by the French administration though was allowed to return the following year after she married her long-time partner Slimane Ehnni, an Algerian soldier. After returning to Algeria she found employment at a newspaper and also worked for General Hubert Lyautey. In 1904 she was killed in a flash flood in Aïn Sefra at the age of 27. The majority of her writings, which found critical acclaim, were not published until after her death. Anti-colonialism was a regular theme of her writings.

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On this day:

1874 – Silver Dollar becomes legal US tender.
The dollar coin is a United States coin worth one United States dollar. It is the second largest American coin currently minted in terms of physical size, with a diameter of 1.043 inches (26.5 mm) and a thickness of .079 inches (2 mm), coming second to the half dollar. Dollar coins have been minted in the United States in gold, silver, and base metal versions. The term silver dollar is often used for any large white metal coin issued by the United States with a face value of one dollar, whether or not it contains some of that metal. The Sacagawea and Presidential dollars are sometimes referred to as golden dollars. Silver dollars, the first dollar coin issue, were minted beginning in 1794. Gold dollars and gold-colored dollars have also been produced by the United States.

Dollar coins have never been very popular in the United States since the removal of specie coins from circulation. Despite efforts by the government to promote their use, such as the Presidential $1 Coin Program, most Americans currently use the one-dollar bill rather than dollar coins.[2] For this reason, since December 11, 2011 the Mint ceased production of dollar coins for general circulation, and all coins produced after that date have been specifically for collectors and can be ordered directly from the Mint,[3][4] and pre-2012 circulation dollar coins are able to be obtained from most U.S. banks.

1933 – The Blaine Act ends Prohibition in the United States.
The Blaine Act was sponsored by Wisconsin Senator John J. Blaine and passed by the United States Senate on February 17, 1933. It initiated the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which established Prohibition in the United States. The repeal was formally adopted as the 21st Amendment to the Constitution on December 5, 1933.
1937 – Wallace H. Carothers receives a United States patent for nylon.
Wallace Hume Carothers (April 27, 1896 – April 29, 1937) was an American chemist, inventor and the leader of organic chemistry at DuPont, credited with the invention of nylon.[1]

Carothers was a group leader at the DuPont Experimental Station laboratory, near Wilmington, Delaware, where most polymer research was done.[2] Carothers was an organic chemist who, in addition to first developing nylon, also helped lay the groundwork for neoprene. After receiving his Ph.D., he taught at several universities before he was hired by DuPont to work on fundamental research.

He married Helen Sweetman on February 21, 1936. Carothers had been troubled by periods of depression since his youth. Despite his success with nylon, he felt that he had not accomplished much and had run out of ideas. His unhappiness was compounded by the death of his sister, Isobel, and on the evening of April 28, 1937 he checked into a Philadelphia hotel room and committed suicide by drinking a cocktail of lemon juice laced with potassium cyanide, knowing the citric acid would catalyze the effects of the poison.[3][4] His daughter, Jane, was born on November 27, 1937.

1968 – In Haleyville, Alabama, the first 9-1-1 emergency telephone system goes into service.
9-1-1[1][2] is an emergency telephone number for the North American Numbering Plan (NANP), one of eight N11 codes. Like other emergency numbers around the world, this number is intended for use in emergency circumstances only, and using it for any other purpose (such as making false or prank calls) is a crime in certain jurisdictions.

In over 98% of locations in the United States and Canada, dialing “9-1-1” from any telephone will link the caller to an emergency dispatch office—called a Public-Safety Answering Point (PSAP) by the telecom industry—which can send emergency responders to the caller’s location in an emergency. In approximately 96 percent of the U.S., the Enhanced 9-1-1 system automatically pairs caller numbers with a physical address.[1]

In the Philippines, the 9-1-1 emergency hotline has been available to the public since August 1, 2016, although it was first available in Davao City. It is the first of its kind in Asia-Pacific region.[3] It replaces the previous emergency number 117 used outside Davao City.

999 is used in the United Kingdom and many British territories. 112 is the equivalent emergency number used in the European Union and various other countries. In the US, some carriers, including AT&T, map the number 112 to the emergency number 9-1-1.[4]

Born on this day:

1856 – Ossian Everett Mills, American academic, founded Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia (d. 1920)
Ossian Everett Mills (February 16, 1856 – December 26, 1920) was the founder of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia Fraternity of America, at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, on October 6, 1898.

“Let our friendship be marked by kind words, kind deeds, and lasting cooperation in our common work; and, remembering that our inspiration is from on High, from the God of all creatures, we should ever be constant in our humble attitude to this great source. Let our sincerity be manifest to all. Hypocrisy should be unknown to us, and a solicitude for our fellows should dominate our every word and action. Then our nobility will shine forth in our characters…” (The President’s Message, 1902)

The National Philanthropy of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia continues to be known as the Mills Music Mission, named for Ossian Everett Mills. In 1886, Mills originated the practice of taking a group of New England Conservatory students to perform for patients in Boston hospitals on Christmas and Easter. The students would sing, play music and give recitations. The students would also bring flowers to distribute to the patients. Mills’ “flower missions,” as they came to be known, brought joy to the lonely and hope to the destitute. The Mills Music Mission was accepted as Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia’s National Philanthropy in 2003. It is unique among fraternity philanthropies in that Sinfonians make a personal sacrifice to help individuals and lift spirits through music. During the week of February 11–18, 2006, almost 200 chapters and alumni associations participated in Mills Music Missions in observance of Ossian Everett Mills’ 150th birthday.

The Fraternity presents the Ossian E. Mills Award to a Sinfonian who, through his leadership and dedication, has immeasurably furthered the cause of Phi Mu Alpha on a national scale and who embodies the ideals of the Fraternity. The first recipient was former national executive director Edward A. Klint, who received the award at the 1988 national convention. Subsequent recipients have included James H. Patrenos, Henry Charles, T. Jervis Underwood, and Richard A. Crosby.

Mills’ memory and contributions are commemorated annually by the members of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia on October 6, which is designated as the Fraternity’s Founders Day. During the Fraternity’s Centennial celebration in October 1998, a memorial service was held at Mills’ grave site, utilizing a format based on a ceremony used to dedicate Mills’ monument which was placed in 1928. The Fraternity’s Founders Day Ceremony is based on this ceremony.

Mills’ writings are often used during the probationary membership process to provide instruction and insight into the philosophies and values that guided Mills and other members in the establishment of the Fraternity and to provide a framework for fulfilling the obligations of membership.

1920 – Anna Mae Hays, American general
Brigadier General Anna V. Mae McCabe Hays (born February 16, 1920) was the first woman in the U.S. Armed Forces to be promoted to a general officer rank.
Hays was born in 1920 in Buffalo, New York. Following graduation from high school, she enrolled at General Hospital School of Nursing, from which she graduated in 1941, having obtained a diploma in nursing. She then joined the Army Nurse Corps in early 1942, and was sent to the China Burma India Theater.[1]

Stationed in India for the duration of World War II, she was on leave in the United States when the war ended. Remaining with the Corps, she saw service during the Korean War. A succession of academic posts followed including a stint at Walter Reed Hospital, and she also earned a Master in Science in Nursing degree. She was promoted on June 11, 1970, after being appointed by President Richard Nixon on May 15, of that year. She was chief of the Army Nurse Corps from September 1, 1967 until her retirement on August 31, 1971.[1]

On the same day, directly after the promotion of Colonel Hays, Elizabeth P. Hoisington was also promoted to Brigadier General.

1953 – Roberta Williams, American video game designer, co-founded Sierra Entertainment
Roberta Williams (born February 16, 1953) is an American video game designer, writer, and a co-founder of Sierra On-Line (later known as Sierra Entertainment), who developed her first game while living in Simi Valley, California. She is most famous for her pioneering work in the field of graphic adventure games with titles such as Mystery House, the King’s Quest series, and Phantasmagoria. She is married to Ken Williams and retired from her career in 1999. Roberta Williams is one of the most influential PC game designers of the 1980s and 1990s,[1][2] and has been credited with creating the graphic adventure genre.[3]

In the 1980s and 1990s, Roberta and her husband, Ken Williams, were leading figures in the development of graphical adventure games.[4] In 1980, they founded the company On-Line Systems, which later became Sierra On-Line.[4] The first Williams’ title was Mystery House (1980), the first graphical adventure game.[5][6] The second title, Wizard and the Princess (1980), added color graphics.[7] But the first serious success was the King’s Quest series, which featured a “large expansive world” that could be explored by players.[4] After that, Roberta Williams designed such titles as Mixed-Up Mother Goose (1987), The Colonel’s Bequest (1989), and Phantasmagoria (1995), which was the first in her career to be developed in the full-motion video technology.[5] Phantasmagoria featured extreme violence and rape scenes. The game has received mixed reviews.[8] Though Sierra was sold in 1996, Williams’ production credits date to 1999, when she retired from Sierra On-Line.[9] Roberta posed for the cover of the game Softporn Adventure by Chuck Benton, published by On-line Systems.[9] She also posed much later with her children as Mother Goose for the cover photograph of Mixed-Up Mother Goose. The end sequence of Leisure Suit Larry 3 features her as an in-game character.[10]

Ars Technica stated that Roberta Williams was “one of the more iconic figures in adventure gaming”.[9] GameSpot named her as the number ten in their list of “the most influential people in computer gaming of all time” for “pushing the envelope of graphic adventures” and being “especially proactive in creating games from a woman’s point of view, and titles that appealed to the mainstream market, all the while integrating the latest technologies in graphics and sound wherever possible.”[11] In 1997, Computer Gaming World ranked her as number 10 on the list of the most influential people of all time in computer gaming for adventure game design.[12] In 2009, IGN placed the Williams at 23rd position on the list of top game creators of all time, expressing hope that “maybe one day, we’ll see the Williams again as well.”[4]

Since her retirement in 1999 (stated at the time to be a “sabbatical”[13]), she has stayed away from the public eye and rarely gives interviews to talk about her past with Sierra On-Line. However, in a 2006 interview, she admitted that her favorite game she created was Phantasmagoria and not King’s Quest: “If I could only pick one game, I would pick Phantasmagoria, as I enjoyed working on it immensely and it was so very challenging (and I love to be challenged!). However, in my heart, I will always love the King’s Quest series and, especially, King’s Quest I, since it was the game that really ‘made’ Sierra On-Line.”[3]

In a 2006 interview, Williams said that designing computer games was in the past for her then and that she intended to write a historical novel.[3] However, in 2011, the video game website Gamezebo reported that Roberta Williams was working on a social network game Odd Manor.[14]
Personal life

As a young timid child Roberta was known to have a wild imagination unlike most kids, she would make up these elaborate stories, which she called her “movies”, and use them to entertain her family. Later on in high school, she met her future husband, Ken Williams, at the age of 17. In Petter Holmberg’s biography he shares the couple’s story about how Roberta and Ken met. Petter says, “She was dating a friend of his and two months after a double date where they had both met, Ken unexpectedly called her and asked her out. Roberta wasn’t very impressed with him in the beginning. He was shy and insecure, like her, but also overly pushy at times. He asked her to go steady the first week. It took some time, but at one point Roberta suddenly realized that he was very intelligent and quite different from the other boys she had dated. Ken wanted them to have a permanent commitment and they got married when Roberta was only 19 years old,”[15] on November 4, 1972.[16] They have two children, D.J. (born 1973) and Chris (born 1979). The Williams family now has homes in Seattle, France and Mexico and they spend most of there time traveling to new and exciting places on their family owned yacht.[17]

Quotes
    “My definition of an adventure game is really an interactive story set with puzzles and obstacles to solve and worlds to explore. I believe that the ‘true’ adventure game genre will never die any more than any type of storytelling would ever die.” — Roberta Williams said on the future of adventure games in an interview with Adventure Classic Gaming.” [18]
    “But best of all, I could see that you truly are the ones to take King’s Quest into the 21st century and reintroduce it to a whole new generation.” [17]
    “The experience of creating my adventure games was, other than marrying my husband and bringing into the world my two sons, the most fulfilling, wonderful experience I could ever have had,” [18]

FYI:

Kristen V. Brown: Here’s Why Today’s Decision Over Who Invented CRISPR Matters

David Tracy: Heroic Driver Sacrifices His Tesla To Save Unconscious Man In Runaway Volkswagen

Nagi: Fridge Forage: 30+ Recipes From the Pantry

by Eric Grundhauser: It’s Not Always Easy Being Iceland’s Best Witchcraft Museum Modern-day lessons abound when you’re immersed in 17th century sorcery.

Ann Carrington

https://foodimentary.com/2016/02/15/february-15-is-national-gumdrop-day/

On this day:

1870 – Stevens Institute of Technology is founded in New Jersey, USA and offers the first Bachelor of Engineering degree in Mechanical Engineering.
Stevens Institute of Technology (SIT) is a private, coeducational research university located in Hoboken, New Jersey, United States. The university also has a satellite location in Washington, D.C.. Incorporated in 1870, it is one of the oldest technological universities in the United States, and was the first college in America solely dedicated to mechanical engineering.[7] The campus encompasses Castle Point, the highest point in Hoboken, and several other buildings around the city.

Founded from an 1868 bequest from Edwin Augustus Stevens,[8] enrollment at Stevens includes more than 5,000 undergraduate and graduate students representing 47 states and 60 countries throughout Asia, Europe and Latin America.[6] The university is home to three national Centers of Excellence as designated by the U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. Department of Homeland Security.[9][10][11] Two members of the Stevens community, as alumni or faculty, have been awarded the Nobel Prize: Frederick Reines (class of 1939), in Physics, and Irving Langmuir (Chemistry faculty 1906–1909), in chemistry.[12]

1879 – Women’s rights: US President Rutherford B. Hayes signs a bill allowing female attorneys to argue cases before the Supreme Court of the United States.
Today in Legal History: Women Lawyers Allowed to Practice Before U.S. Supreme Court

Lockwood_Belva“On February 15, 1879, President Rutherford B. Hayes signed legislation allowing women to be admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court. Belva Lockwood became the first woman admitted to practice under the new law on March 3, 1879.” From Jurist.com

“Belva Lockwood was born on a farm in Niagara County, New York. She began to teach school at fifteen and married at nineteen. When her husband died soon after, she was left with an infant daughter to support. She returned to teaching and determined to continue her education. In 1857 she graduated with honors from Genesee College (later Syracuse University). After a move to Washington, D.C., she married Ezekiel Lockwood. She was nearly forty when she decided to study the law. She finally found a law school that would admit her, but even there her diploma was held up until she demanded action. Lockwood was admitted to the bar of the District of Columbia, but was refused admission to practice before the Supreme Court. She spent five years energetically lobbying a bill through Congress, and in 1879 Belva Lockwood became the first woman to practice law before the US Supreme Court. In 1884 she accepted the nomination of the National Equal Rights Party and ran for president. Although suffrage leaders opposed her candidacy, Lockwood saw it as an entering wedge for women. She polled over 4,000 votes and ran again in 1888. Using her knowledge of the law, she worked to secure woman suffrage, property law reforms, equal pay for equal work, and world peace. Thriving on publicity and partisanship, and encouraging other women to pursue legal careers, Lockwood helped to open the legal profession to women.” From National Women’s Hall of Fame

Born on this day:

1845 – Elihu Root, American lawyer and politician, 38th United States Secretary of State, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1937)
Elihu Root (/ˈɛlᵻhjuː ˈruːt/; February 15, 1845 – February 7, 1937) was an American lawyer and statesman who served as the Secretary of War (1899–1904) under two presidents, including President Theodore Roosevelt. He moved frequently between high-level appointed government positions in Washington, D.C. and private-sector legal practice in New York City. For that reason, he is sometimes considered to be the prototype of the 20th century political “wise man,” advising presidents on a range of foreign and domestic issues. He was elected by the state legislature as a U.S. Senator from New York and served one term, 1909–1915. Root was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1912.

Root was a leading lawyer, whose clients included major corporations and such powerful players as Andrew Carnegie. Root served as president or chairman of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. As Secretary of War under McKinley and Roosevelt, Root designed American policies for the new colonial possessions, especially the Philippines and Cuba. His role in suppressing a Filipino revolt angered anti-imperialist activists at home. Root favored a paternalistic approach to colonial administration, emphasizing technology, engineering, and disinterested public service, as exemplified by the ethical standards of the Progressive Era. He helped design the Foraker Act of 1900, the Philippine Organic Act (1902), and the Platt Amendment of 1901, which authorized American intervention in Cuba in the future if needed to maintain a stable government. He was a strong advocate of what became the Panama Canal, and he championed the Open Door to expand world trade with China.[1]

Root was the leading modernizer in the history of the War Department, transforming the Army from a motley collection of small frontier outposts and coastal defense units into a modern, professionally organized, military machine comparable to the best in Europe. He restructured the National Guard into an effective reserve, and created the Army War College for the advanced study of military doctrine and most important set up a general staff. As Secretary of State under Theodore Roosevelt, Root modernized the consular service by minimizing patronage, promoted friendly relations with Latin America, and resolved frictions with Japan over the immigration of unskilled workers to the West Coast. He negotiated 24 bilateral treaties that committed the United States and other signatories to use arbitration to resolve disputes, which led to the creation of the Permanent Court of International Justice.[2][3] In the United States Senate, Root was part of the conservative Republican support network for President William Howard Taft. He played a central role at the Republican National Convention in 1912 in getting Taft renominated. By 1916–17, he was a leading proponent of preparedness, with the expectation the United States would enter World War I. President Woodrow Wilson sent him to Russia in 1917 in an unsuccessful effort to establish an alliance with the new revolutionary government that had replaced the czar.[4] Root supported Wilson’s vision of the League of Nations, but with reservations along the lines proposed by Republican Senator Henry Cabot Lodge.

1910 – Irena Sendler, Polish nurse and humanitarian, Righteous Gentile (d. 2008)
Irena Sendler (née Krzyżanowska), also referred to as Irena Sendlerowa in Poland, nom de guerre “Jolanta” (15 February 1910 – 12 May 2008),[1] was a Polish nurse, humanitarian, and social worker who served in the Polish Underground in German-occupied Warsaw during World War II, and was head of the children’s section of Żegota,[2][3] the Polish Council to Aid Jews (Polish: Rada Pomocy Żydom), which was active from 1942 to 1945.

Assisted by some two dozen other Żegota members, Sendler smuggled approximately 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto and then provided them with false identity documents and shelter outside the Ghetto, saving those children from the Holocaust.[4] With the exception of diplomats who issued visas to help Jews flee Nazi-occupied Europe, Sendler saved more Jews than any other individual during the Holocaust.[5]

The German occupiers eventually discovered her activities and she was arrested by the Gestapo, tortured, and sentenced to death, but she managed to evade execution and survive the war. In 1965, Sendler was recognised by the State of Israel as Righteous among the Nations.[6] Late in life, she was awarded the Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest honor, for her wartime humanitarian efforts.

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February 14 is Saint Valentine’s Day

On this day:

YouTube
YouTube is an American video-sharing website headquartered in San Bruno, California. The service was created by three former PayPal employees—Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim—in February 2005. In November 2006, it was bought by Google for US$1.65 billion.[4] YouTube now operates as one of Google’s subsidiaries.[5] The site allows users to upload, view, rate, share, add to favorites, report and comment on videos, and it makes use of WebM, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, and Adobe Flash Video technology to display a wide variety of user-generated and corporate media videos. Available content includes video clips, TV show clips, music videos, short and documentary films, audio recordings, movie trailers and other content such as video blogging, short original videos, and educational videos.

Most of the content on YouTube has been uploaded by individuals, but media corporations including CBS, the BBC, Vevo, and Hulu offer some of their material via YouTube as part of the YouTube partnership program.[6] Unregistered users can only watch videos on the site, while registered users are permitted to upload an unlimited number of videos and add comments to videos. Videos deemed potentially offensive are available only to registered users affirming themselves to be at least 18 years old. In December 2016, the website was ranked as the second most popular site by Alexa Internet, a web traffic analysis company.[1]

YouTube earns advertising revenue from Google AdSense, a program which targets ads according to site content and audience. The vast majority of its videos are free to view, but there are exceptions, including subscription-based premium channels, film rentals, as well as YouTube Red, a subscription service offering ad-free access to the website and access to exclusive content made in partnership with existing users.

Born in this day:

1838 – Margaret E. Knight, American inventor (d. 1914)
Margaret E. Knight (February 14, 1838 – October 12, 1914) was an American inventor, notably of the flat-bottomed paper bag. She has been called “the most famous 19th-century woman inventor”.[1]

Early life

Margaret Knight was born on February 14th, 1838 in York, Maine to James Knight and Hannah Teal. Her father died when she was a little girl. She received a basic education, but had to leave school at 12 in order to work at a cotton mill for several years.[citation needed]
Career

In 1868, while living in Springfield, Massachusetts, Knight invented a machine that folded and glued paper to form the flat-bottomed brown paper bags familiar to shoppers today. Knight built a wooden model of the device, but needed a working iron model to apply for a patent. Charles Annan, who was in the machine shop where Knight’s iron model was being built, stole her design and patented the device. Knight filed a successful patent interference lawsuit and was awarded the patent in 1871.[2] With a Massachusetts business partner, Knight established the Eastern Paper Bag Co. and received royalties.

Her many other inventions included a numbering machine, a window frame and sash, patented in 1894, and several devices relating to rotary engines, patented between 1902 and 1915.[3]
Later life and legacy

Knight was awarded the Decoration of the Royal Legion of Honour[citation needed] by Queen Victoria in 1871.[4][better source needed]

Knight never married and died on October 12, 1914 at the age of 76.

A plaque recognizing her as the “first woman awarded a U.S. patent” and holder of 87 U.S. patents hangs on the Curry Cottage at 287 Hollis St in Framingham. However, Knight was not actually the first: either Mary Kies or Hannah Slater has that honour.[5][6][7][8]

Knight was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2006.[9] The original bag-making machine is in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C..

FYI:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnVuqfXohxc