Tag: Hi-jacked

FYI January 27, 2017

https://foodimentary.com/2016/01/27/january-27th-is-national-chocolate-cake-day/

 

Chocolate cake in a mug

 

Instant chocolate cake

 

 

 

On this day:

1302 – Dante Alighieri is exiled from Florence.
Durante degli Alighieri (Italian: [duˈrante deʎʎ aliˈɡjɛːri]), simply called Dante (Italian: [ˈdante], UK /ˈdænti/, US /ˈdɑːnteɪ/; c. 1265 – 1321), was a major Italian poet of the Late Middle Ages. His Divine Comedy, originally called Comedìa (modern Italian: Commedia) and later christened Divina by Boccaccio, is widely considered the greatest literary work composed in the Italian language and a masterpiece of world literature.[1]

In the late Middle Ages, the overwhelming majority of poetry was written in Latin, and therefore accessible only to affluent and educated audiences. In De vulgari eloquentia (On Eloquence in the Vernacular), however, Dante defended use of the vernacular in literature. He himself would even write in the Tuscan dialect for works such as The New Life (1295) and the aforementioned Divine Comedy; this choice, although highly unorthodox, set a hugely important precedent that later Italian writers such as Petrarch and Boccaccio would follow. As a result, Dante played an instrumental role in establishing the national language of Italy. Dante’s significance also extends past his home country; his depictions of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven have provided inspiration for a large body of Western art, and are cited as an influence on the works of John Milton, Geoffrey Chaucer and Alfred Tennyson, among many others. In addition, the first use of the interlocking three-line rhyme scheme, or the terza rima, is attributed to him.

Dante has been called “the Father of the Italian language” and one of the greatest poets of world literature.[2] In Italy, Dante is often referred to as il Sommo Poeta (“the Supreme Poet”) and il Poeta; he, Petrarch, and Boccaccio are also called “the three fountains” or “the three crowns”.

 

1593 – The Vatican opens the seven-year trial of scholar Giordano Bruno.
Giordano Bruno (Italian: [dʒorˈdano ˈbruno]; Latin: Iordanus Brunus Nolanus; 1 January 1548 – 17 February 1600), born Filippo Bruno, was an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician, poet, and cosmological theorist.[3] He is remembered for his cosmological theories, which conceptually extended the then novel Copernican model. He proposed that the stars were just distant suns surrounded by their own exoplanets and raised the possibility that these planets could even foster life of their own (a philosophical position known as cosmic pluralism). He also insisted that the universe is in fact infinite and could have no celestial body at its “center”.

Beginning in 1593, Bruno was tried for heresy by the Roman Inquisition on charges including denial of several core Catholic doctrines, including eternal damnation, the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the virginity of Mary, and transubstantiation. Bruno’s pantheism was also a matter of grave concern.[4] The Inquisition found him guilty, and he was burned at the stake in Rome’s Campo de’ Fiori in 1600. After his death, he gained considerable fame, being particularly celebrated by 19th- and early 20th-century commentators who regarded him as a martyr for science,[5] although historians have debated the extent to which his heresy trial was a response to his astronomical views or to other aspects of his philosophy and theology.[6][7][8][9][10] Bruno’s case is still considered a landmark in the history of free thought and the emerging sciences.[11][12][13]

In addition to cosmology, Bruno also wrote extensively on the art of memory, a loosely organized group of mnemonic techniques and principles. Historian Frances Yates argues that Bruno was deeply influenced by Arab astrology (particularly the philosophy of Averroes[14]), Neoplatonism, Renaissance Hermeticism, and legends surrounding the Egyptian god Thoth.[15] Other studies of Bruno have focused on his qualitative approach to mathematics and his application of the spatial concepts of geometry to language.[16]

Imprisonment, trial and execution, 1593–1600

During the seven years of his trial in Rome, Bruno was held in confinement, lastly in the Tower of Nona. Some important documents about the trial are lost, but others have been preserved, among them a summary of the proceedings that was rediscovered in 1940.[30] The numerous charges against Bruno, based on some of his books as well as on witness accounts, included blasphemy, immoral conduct, and heresy in matters of dogmatic theology, and involved some of the basic doctrines of his philosophy and cosmology. Luigi Firpo lists these charges made against Bruno by the Roman Inquisition:[31]

holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith and speaking against it and its ministers;
holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith about the Trinity, divinity of Christ, and Incarnation;
holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith pertaining to Jesus as Christ;
holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith regarding the virginity of Mary, mother of Jesus;
holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith about both Transubstantiation and Mass;
claiming the existence of a plurality of worlds and their eternity;
believing in metempsychosis and in the transmigration of the human soul into brutes;
dealing in magics and divination.

The trial of Giordano Bruno by the Roman Inquisition. Bronze relief by Ettore Ferrari, Campo de’ Fiori, Rome.

Bruno defended himself as he had in Venice, insisting that he accepted the Church’s dogmatic teachings, but trying to preserve the basis of his philosophy. In particular, he held firm to his belief in the plurality of worlds, although he was admonished to abandon it. His trial was overseen by the Inquisitor Cardinal Bellarmine, who demanded a full recantation, which Bruno eventually refused. On 20 January 1600, Pope Clement VIII declared Bruno a heretic and the Inquisition issued a sentence of death. According to the correspondence of Gaspar Schopp of Breslau, he is said to have made a threatening gesture towards his judges and to have replied: Maiori forsan cum timore sententiam in me fertis quam ego accipiam (“Perhaps you pronounce this sentence against me with greater fear than I receive it”).[32]

He was turned over to the secular authorities. On 17 February 1600, in the Campo de’ Fiori (a central Roman market square), with his “tongue imprisoned because of his wicked words”, he was burned at the stake.[33] His ashes were thrown into the Tiber river. All of Bruno’s works were placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1603. Inquisition cardinals who judged Giordano Bruno were: Cardinal Bellarmino (Bellarmine), Cardinal Madruzzo (Madruzzi), Cardinal Camillo Borghese (later Pope Paul V), Domenico Cardinal Pinelli, Pompeio Cardinal Arrigoni, Cardinal Sfondrati, Pedro Cardinal De Deza Manuel, Cardinal Santorio (Archbishop of Santa Severina, Cardinal-Bishop of Palestrina).[citation needed]

 

1996 – Germany first observes International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
International Holocaust Remembrance Day, is an international memorial day on 27 January commemorating the victims of the Holocaust. It commemorates the genocide that resulted in the death of an estimated 6 million Jewish people, 2 million Romani people, 250,000 mentally and physically disabled people, and 9,000 homosexual men by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. It was designated by the United Nations General Assembly resolution 60/7 on 1 November 2005 during the 42nd plenary session.[1] The resolution came after a special session was held earlier that year on 24 January 2005 during which the United Nations General Assembly marked the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps and the end of the Holocaust.[2]

On 27 January 1945, Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration and death camp, was liberated by the Red Army.

Prior to the 60/7 resolution, there had been national days of commemoration, such as Germany’s Tag des Gedenkens an die Opfer des Nationalsozialismus (The Day of remembrance for the victims of National Socialism), established in a proclamation issued by Federal President Roman Herzog on 3 January 1996; and the Holocaust memorial day observed every 27 January since 2001 in the UK.

The Holocaust Remembrance Day is also a national event in the United Kingdom and in Italy.

 

 

Born on this day:

1795 – Eli Whitney Blake, American engineer, invented the Mortise lock (d. 1886)
Eli Whitney Blake, Sr. (January 27, 1795 – August 18, 1886) was an American inventor, best known for his mortise lock and stone-crushing machine, the latter of which earned him a place into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Blake studied at Leicester Academy, and was graduated at Yale in 1816, after which he studied law with Judge Gould in Litchfield, Connecticut. But this he soon abandoned at the request of his uncle, Eli Whitney, who desired his assistance in erecting and organizing the gun factory at Whitneyville. Here he made important improvements in the machinery and in the processes of manufacturing arms.

On the death of Mr. Whitney in 1825, Blake associated with himself his brother Philos, and continued to manage the business. In 1836 they were joined by another brother, John A., and, under the firm name of Blake Brothers, established at Westville a factory for the production of door locks and latches of their own invention. The business was afterward extended so as to include casters, hinges, and other articles of hardware, most of which were covered by patents. In this branch of manufacture, Blake Brothers were among the pioneers, and long held the front rank.

In 1852, Blake was appointed to superintend the macadamizing of the city streets, and his attention was directed to the want of a proper machine for breaking stone. This problem he solved in 1857 by the invention of the Blake stone breaker, which, for originality, simplicity, and effectiveness, was justly regarded by experts as unique.

Blake was one of the founders, and for several years president, of the Connecticut Academy of Science. He contributed valuable papers to the American Journal of Science and other periodicals, the most important of which he published in a single volume as Original Solutions of Several Problems in Aërodynamics (1882).

He was a nephew of Eli Whitney, the inventor of the cotton gin. He was also the father of scientist Eli Whitney Blake, Jr..

 

 

1878 – Dorothy Scarborough, American author (d. 1935)
Emily Dorothy Scarborough (January 27, 1878 – November 7, 1935) was an American writer who wrote about Texas, folk culture, cotton farming, ghost stories and women’s life in the Southwest.
Scarborough was born in Mount Carmel, Texas. At the age of four she moved to Sweetwater, Texas for her mother’s health, as her mother needed the drier climate. The family soon left Sweetwater in 1887, so that the Scarborough children could get a good education at Baylor College.
Academics and writing

Even though Scarborough’s writings are identified with Texas, she studied at University of Chicago and Oxford University and beginning in 1916 taught literature at Columbia University.

While receiving her PhD from Columbia, she wrote a dissertation, “The Supernatural in Modern English Fiction (1917)”. Sylvia Ann Grider writes in a critical introduction [1] the dissertation “was so widely acclaimed by her professors and colleagues that it was published and it has become a basic reference work.”

Dorothy Scarborough came in contact with many writers in New York, including Edna Ferber and Vachel Lindsay. She taught creative writing classes at Columbia. Among her creative writing students were Eric Walrond, and Carson McCullers, who took her first college writing class from Scarborough.[1]

Her most critically acclaimed book, The Wind (first published anonymously in 1925), was later made into a film of the same name starring Lillian Gish.

 

 

1912 – Francis Rogallo, American engineer, invented the Rogallo wing (d. 2009)
Francis Melvin Rogallo (January 27, 1912 – September 1, 2009) was an American aeronautical engineer inventor born in Sanger, California, U.S.; he is credited with the invention of the Rogallo wing, or “flexible wing”, a precursor to the modern hang glider and paraglider.[1] His patents were ranged over mechanical utility patents and ornamental design patents for wing controls, airfoils, target kite, flexible wing, and advanced configurations for flexible wing vehicles.

The Rogallo wing is one of the simplest airfoils ever created. In 1948, Gertrude Rogallo, and her husband Francis Rogallo, a NASA engineer, invented a self-inflating flexible wing they called the Parawing, also known after them as the “Rogallo Wing” and flexible wing.[1] NASA considered Rogallo’s flexible wing as an alternative recovery system for the Mercury and Gemini space capsules, and for possible use in other spacecraft landings, but the idea was dropped from Gemini in 1964 in favor of conventional parachutes.

Francis Rogallo earned an aeronautical engineering degree at Stanford University in 1935. Since 1936, Rogallo worked for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) as an aeronautics project engineer at the wind tunnels. During 1948, he and his wife Gertrude Rogallo, invented and patented a self-inflating flexible kite.[2][3] They called this kite the “flexible wing”.[4] Rogallo had originally invented the wing with the idea to create an aircraft which would be simple enough and inexpensive enough that anyone could have one. The wing was flown by Rogallo as a model glider with small payloads hung beneath the wing (thus model hang glider) and as a kite.

On October 4, 1957, the Russian Sputnik began beeping its message from orbit, and everything changed. The space race caught the imagination of the newly formed NASA and Rogallo was in position to seize the opportunity. The Rogallos released their patent to the government, and with Rogallo’s help at the wind tunnels, NASA began a series of experiments testing the Parawing (NASA renamed the Rogallo wing the Parawing, and modern hang glider pilots often refer to it as the flexible Rogallo wing) at altitudes up to 200,000 feet and as fast as Mach 3 [5] in order to evaluate them as alternative recovery system for the Gemini space capsules and used rocket stages.[6][7] By 1960, NASA had made test flights of a framed Parawing powered aircraft, called the “flying Jeep” or Fleep, and of a weight shift Parawing glider, called Paresev, in a series of several shapes and sizes, manned and unmanned.[8] A key wing configuration applying Francis Rogallo’s leadership that gave base to kited gliders with hung pilots using weight-shift control was designed by Charles Richards and constructed by the Richards team in 1961-2; such wing became a template for recreational use or Rogallo’s inventions, ending up mechanically and ornamentally in Skiplane, ski-kites, and hang gliders of the 1960-1975.

In 1967, projects focused on the Parasev were stopped by NASA in favor of round parachutes. NASA was not in the business of applying Rogallo’s family of airfoils to personal aircraft such as kites, hang gliders, and powered light aircraft; however what was already in the Paresev series of aircraft provided all the fundamental mechanics that could be simplified to lighter personal aircraft. That task of lightening and tweaking what the Paresev team had done with the Rogallo wing was taken up by independent designers around the world: Barry Palmer in 1961, Richard Miller, Thomas Purcell, and Australian Mike Burns were among the first to tap the technology for manned personal-craft glider/kite use.

As of 2003, Rogallo had new designs for kites. Gertrude died on January 28, 2008.[9] Members of the United States Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association,[10] are called “Rogallo” members. Tens of thousands of people have taken hang gliding lessons in Rogallo wing type hang gliders at Jockey’s Ridge State Park, an enormous sand dune which is located five miles from the site of the first powered aircraft flight. Mr. Rogallo was frequently seen at the park flying his own hang glider in the 1970s and 1980s. Francis Rogallo died at home on September 1, 2009, in Southern Shores, North Carolina, near Kitty Hawk, the birthplace of aviation.

 

FYI:

 

Shark Attack Messenger Bag by Meglymoo87

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avZxyoVMEK8

Videos January 27, 2017

 

 

 

 

 

FYI January 26, 2017

https://foodimentary.com/2016/01/26/january-26th-is-national-peanut-brittle-day/

 

 

 

On this day:

1915 – The Rocky Mountain National Park is established by an act of the U.S. Congress.
Rocky Mountain National Park is a United States national park located approximately 76 mi (122 km) northwest of Denver International Airport[4] in north-central Colorado, within the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. The park is situated between the towns of Estes Park to the east and Grand Lake to the west. The eastern and westerns slopes of the Continental Divide run directly through the center of the park with the headwaters of the Colorado River located in the park’s northwestern region.[5] The main features of the park include mountains, alpine lakes and a wide variety of wildlife within various climates and environments, from wooded forests to mountain tundra.

The Rocky Mountain National Park Act was signed by then–President Woodrow Wilson on January 26, 1915, establishing the park boundaries and protecting the area for future generations.[2] The Civilian Conservation Corps built the main automobile route, named Trail Ridge Road, in the 1930s.[2] In 1976, UNESCO designated the park as one of the first World Biosphere Reserves.[6] In 2015, more than four million recreational visitors entered the park, which is an increase of twenty one percent from the prior year.[7]

The park has a total of five visitor centers[8] with park headquarters located at the Beaver Meadows Visitor Center—a National Historic Landmark designed by the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture at Taliesin West.[9] National Forest lands surround the park including Roosevelt National Forest to the north and east, Routt National Forest to the north and west, and Arapaho National Forest to the west and south, with the Indian Peaks Wilderness area located directly south of the park.[5]

 

 

1926 – The first demonstration of the television by John Logie Baird.
John Logie Baird FRSE (/ˈloʊɡi bɛrd/;[1] 14 August 1888 – 14 June 1946) was a Scottish engineer, innovator, one of the inventors of the mechanical television, demonstrating the first working television system on 26 January 1926, and inventor of both the first publicly demonstrated colour television system, and the first purely electronic colour television picture tube.[2][3][4][5]

In 1928 the Baird Television Development Company achieved the first transatlantic television transmission.[4] Baird’s early technological successes and his role in the practical introduction of broadcast television for home entertainment have earned him a prominent place in television’s history.

Baird was ranked number 44 in the BBC’s list of the 100 Greatest Britons following a UK-wide vote in 2002.[6] In 2006, Baird was named as one of the 10 greatest Scottish scientists in history, having been listed in the National Library of Scotland’s ‘Scottish Science Hall of Fame’.[7] In 2015 he was inducted into the Scottish Engineering Hall of Fame.[8]

First public demonstrations
Blue plaque commemorating Baird’s first demonstration of the television at 22 Frith Street, Westminster, W1, London

On 26 January 1926, Baird repeated the transmission for members of the Royal Institution and a reporter from The Times in his laboratory at 22 Frith Street in the Soho district of London, where Bar Italia is now located.[4][23] By this time, he had improved the scan rate to 12.5 pictures per second. It was the first demonstration of a television system that could broadcast live moving images with tone graduation.[2]

He demonstrated the world’s first colour transmission on 3 July 1928, using scanning discs at the transmitting and receiving ends with three spirals of apertures, each spiral with a filter of a different primary colour; and three light sources at the receiving end, with a commutator to alternate their illumination.[24] That same year he also demonstrated stereoscopic television.[25]

In 1932, Baird was the first person in the United Kingdom to demonstrate ultra-short wave transmissions. Contrary to some reports, these transmissions were far from the first VHF telecasts. In 1931, the US Federal Radio Commission allocated VHF television bands. From 1931 to 1933, station W9XD in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, transmitted some of the first VHF television signals. The station’s 45-line, triply interlaced pictures used the U. A. Sanabria television technology.[26]

 

 

 

 

Born on this day:

1832 – George Shiras, Jr., American lawyer and jurist (d. 1924)
George Shiras Jr. (January 26, 1832 – August 2, 1924) was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States who was nominated to the Court by Republican President Benjamin Harrison. At that time, he had 37 years of private legal practice, but had never judged a case. Shiras’s only public service before he became a justice was as a federal elector in 1888, almost four years before his nomination in 1892.

Shiras was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania January 26, 1832. He attended Ohio University and graduated from Yale College, Phi Beta Kappa, in 1853.[1] He began law school at Yale Law School, but left before earning a law degree[2] He finished his training by reading law at a law office, then practiced law in Dubuque, Iowa from 1855 to 1858, and in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from 1858 to 1892. In Pittsburgh, he became a prominent corporate attorney, and he was noted for his honesty and pragmatism while representing some of the nation’s industrial giants[3]

On July 19, 1892, Shiras was nominated by President Harrison to a Supreme Court seat vacated by Joseph P. Bradley. He was recommended for the post by his cousin, Secretary of State James G. Blaine. Shiras was confirmed by the United States Senate on July 26, 1892, and received his commission the same day.

Although Shiras sat on the Court for more than 10 years authoring 253 majority decisions and 14 dissents, he is noted for his votes on just two landmark cases, Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co. (1895), and Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).[2] He sided with the majority in the 5-4 decision in Pollock to strike down the Income Tax Act of 1894 as unconstitutional. Some historians believe Shiras was the pivotal Justice who switched his vote, while other historians suspect that it was either Justice Horace Gray or Justice David Brewer.[2] Regardless, the ruling in Pollock led to the need for a constitutional amendment to impose a federal income tax, and in 1913, the Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified. Shiras also voted with the 7-1 majority in the case Plessy v. Ferguson, a case which upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation under the doctrine of separate but equal, and which was overruled in 1954.

Shiras retired from the bench on February 23, 1903, and remained in retirement until his death, in Pittsburgh, in 1924. His son, George Shiras III, served as a member of the United States House of Representatives for Pennsylvania.

 

 

 

1891 – Wilder Penfield, American-Canadian neurosurgeon and academic (d. 1976)
Wilder Graves Penfield OM CC CMG FRS[1] (January 26, 1891 – April 5, 1976) was a pioneering neurosurgeon once dubbed “the greatest living Canadian”.[2] He expanded brain surgery’s methods and techniques, including mapping the functions of various regions of the brain such as the cortical homunculus. His scientific contributions on neural stimulation expand across a variety of topics including hallucinations, illusions, and deja vu. Penfield devoted a lot of his thinking to mental processes, including contemplation of whether there was any scientific basis for the existence of the human soul.[2]

After taking a surgical apprenticeship under Harvey Cushing, he obtained a position at the Neurological Institute of New York, where he carried out his first solo operations to treat epilepsy. While in New York, he met David Rockefeller, who wished to endow an institute where Penfield could further study the surgical treatment of epilepsy. Academic politics amongst the New York neurologists, however, prevented its establishment in New York, so, in 1928, Penfield accepted an invitation from Sir Vincent Meredith to move to Montreal. There, Penfield taught at McGill University and the Royal Victoria Hospital, becoming the city’s first neurosurgeon.

In 1934, Penfield founded and became the first director of the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital[4] at McGill University, established with the Rockefeller funding. That year, he also became a Canadian citizen.[4][clarification needed]

Penfield was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1950[7] and retired ten years later in 1960. He was appointed to the Order of Merit in the 1953 New Year Honours list. He turned his attention to writing, producing a novel as well as his autobiography No Man Alone.[Notes 2]

In 1960, the year he retired, Penfield was awarded the Lister Medal for his contributions to surgical science.[8] He delivered the corresponding Lister Oration, “Activation of the Record of Human Experience”, at the Royal College of Surgeons of England on April 27, 1961.[9] In 1967, he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada and, in 1994, was posthumously inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame. Much of his archival material is housed in the Osler Library at McGill University.

 

FYI:

 

Anna Merlan: The State Department’s Senior Management Just Resigned En Masse [Updated]

 

Anastasia Thrift: Parrots For Patriots Helping Ease PTSDGeorge Dvorsky: Why Your Acid Trips Last So Very, Very Long

 

Ainsley O’Connell: How Sesame Street Taught Kids About Emotions Long Before Schools Caught On

 

Carhunter

 

 

Shawn McKeown: The Colorado Winter Sport You Didn’t Know Existed – Ice Racing

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ey76ik9RwG8

FYI January 25, 2017

https://foodimentary.com/2016/01/25/january-25th-is-national-irish-coffee-day/

 

On this day:

1755 – Moscow University is established on Tatiana Day.
Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU; Russian: Московский государственный университет имени М. В. Ломоносова, often abbreviated МГУ) is a coeducational and public research university located in Moscow, Russia. It was founded on January 25, 1755 by Mikhail Lomonosov. MSU was renamed after Lomonosov in 1940 and was then known as Lomonosov University. It also claims to house the tallest educational building in the world.[2] It is rated among the universities with the best reputation in the world. Its current rector is Viktor Sadovnichiy.

 

1858 – The Wedding March by Felix Mendelssohn is played at the marriage of Queen Victoria’s daughter, Victoria, and Friedrich of Prussia, and becomes a popular wedding processional.
Felix Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” in C major, written in 1842, is one of the best known of the pieces from his suite of incidental music (Op. 61) to Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It is one of the most frequently used wedding marches, generally being played on a church pipe organ.

At weddings in many Western countries, this piece is commonly used as a recessional, though frequently stripped of its episodes in this context. It is frequently teamed with the “Bridal Chorus” from Richard Wagner’s opera Lohengrin,[1] or with Jeremiah Clarke’s “Prince of Denmark’s March”,[2] both of which are often played for the entry of the bride.

The first time that Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” was used at a wedding was when Dorothy Carew wed Tom Daniel at St Peter’s Church, Tiverton, England, on 2 June 1847[3] when it was performed by organist Samuel Reay. However, it did not become popular at weddings until it was selected by Victoria, The Princess Royal for her marriage to Prince Frederick William of Prussia on 25 January 1858.[1] The bride was the daughter of Queen Victoria, who loved Mendelssohn’s music and for whom Mendelssohn often played while on his visits to Britain.

An organ on which Mendelssohn gave recitals of the “Wedding March”, among other works, is housed in St Ann’s Church in Tottenham.

Franz Liszt wrote a virtuoso transcription of the “Wedding March and Dance of the Elves” (S. 410) in 1849-50. Vladimir Horowitz transcribed the Wedding March into a virtuoso showpiece for piano and played it as an encore at his concerts.

 

 

1944 – Florence Li Tim-Oi is ordained in China, becoming the first woman Anglican priest.
Florence Li Tim-Oi (Chinese: 李添嬡 Cantonese Lei Tim’oi, Mandarin Li Tian’ai; 5 May 1907 in Hong Kong – 26 February 1992 in Toronto) was the first woman to be ordained to the priesthood in the Anglican Communion.
In 1931, Florence Li was present at the ordination of Deaconess Lucy Vincent at St. John’s Cathedral in Hong Kong when the preacher had asked for women to give their lives to work for Christian ministry. Being inspired by this, Li would eventually go to Canton Union Theological College to receive her theological education before returning to Hong Kong in 1938. After working for two years in All Saints Church, in Kowloon, helping refugees in Hong Kong who fled mainland China in the midst of the Second Sino-Japanese War, Li was sent by Bishop Ronald Hall to help with refugees in Macau at the Macau Protestant Chapel. Six months into her new post, she returned to Hong Kong to be ordained as a deaconess on 22 May 1941 by Bishop Hall at St. John’s Cathedral, where she received her first call.[1]

Already appointed as a deaconess to serve in the colony of Macau, Florence Li was ordained priest on 25 January 1944, by Bishop Hall in response to the crisis among Anglican Christians in China caused by the Japanese invasion. Since it was to be 30 years before any Anglican church regularised the ordination of women, her ordination was controversial and she resigned her licence (though not her priest’s orders) after the end of the war.[2][3]

When Hong Kong ordained two further women priests (Joyce M. Bennett and Jane Hwang) in 1971, she was officially recognised as a priest in the diocese.[4]

She was appointed an honorary (nonstipendiary) assistant priest in Toronto in 1983, where she spent the remainder of her life.

In 2003, the Episcopal Church fixed 24 January as her feast day in Lesser Feasts and Fasts, based on the eve of the anniversary of her ordination. In 2007, the Anglican Communion celebrated the centennial of her birth.[5]

 

1947 – Thomas Goldsmith Jr. files a patent for a “Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device”, the first ever electronic game.
Thomas Toliver Goldsmith Jr. (January 9, 1910 – March 5, 2009) was an American television pioneer, the co-inventor of the first arcade game to use a cathode ray tube, and a professor of physics at Furman University.

U.S. Patent 2,455,992, filed by Goldsmith and Estle Ray Mann in 1947, describes the world’s first cathode ray tube based game, the “Cathode-ray tube amusement device”. It was inspired by the radar displays used in World War II.[13] Goldsmith and Mann were granted their patent in 1948 making it the first ever patent for an electronic game. Entitled “Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device”, the patent describes a game in which a player controls the CRT’s electron gun much like an Etch A Sketch. The beam from the gun is focused at a single point on the screen to form a dot representing a missile, and the player tries to control the dot to hit paper targets put on the screen, with all hits detected mechanically. By connecting a cathode ray tube to an oscilloscope and devising knobs that controlled the angle and trajectory of the light traces displayed on the oscilloscope, they were able to invent a missile game that, when using screen overlays, created the effect of firing missiles at various targets.[14] To make the game more challenging, its circuits can alter the player’s ability to aim the dot. However, due to the equipment costs and various circumstances, the Cathode-Ray Tube Amusement Device was never released to the marketplace. Only handmade prototypes were ever created.[15]
Awards and honors

Goldsmith was awarded five patents essential to the improvement of television production and broadcasting. Goldsmith was a Life Fellow of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers.[16] In 1949, he won an Institute of Radio Engineers Award “For his contributions in the development of cathode-ray instrumentation and in the field of television.”[17] In 1979, the Radio Club of America honored Goldsmith with the first Allen B. DuMont Citation for “important contributions in the field of electronics to the science of television”.[18] In 1999, Goldsmith won the first Dr. Charles Townes Individual Achievement Award as part of the Innovision Technology Awards competition honoring innovation in the upstate South Carolina area.[19] A comprehensive collection of artifacts and ephemera of his life and his inventions is housed in the Library of Congress. In 1967, he was selected as an honorary member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, the national men’s music fraternity, by Furman University’s Gamma Eta chapter, which confers an annual award, in Goldsmith’s honor, to the university’s rising senior non-music major student who does the most to advance music in America.

 

Born on this day:

1783 – William Colgate, English-American businessman and philanthropist, founded Colgate-Palmolive (d. 1857)
William Colgate (January 25, 1783 – March 25, 1857) was an English manufacturer who founded in 1806 what became the Colgate toothpaste company.
William Colgate came to New York City in 1804. He there obtained employment as an apprentice to a soap-boiler, and learned the business. Young as he was, he showed even then that quickness of observation, which distinguished him later in life. He closely watched the methods practiced by his employer, noting what seemed to him to be mismanagement, and learned useful lessons for his own guidance. At the close of his apprenticeship he was enabled, by correspondence with dealers in other cities, to establish himself in the business with some assurance of success. William established a starch, soap and candle business in Manhattan, on Dutch Street in 1806. In 1820, he started a starch factory across the Hudson in Jersey City, leading to a long involvement of the company in Jersey City.

William followed his goal of prosperity through life, and became one of the most prosperous men in the city of New York. This circumstance, together with his great wisdom in counsel, and his readiness to aid in all useful and practicable enterprises, gave him a wide influence in the community, and especially in the denomination of which he was from early life an active and honored member.

Of the occurrence which led to his connection with that denomination he gave the following account.[1] For some time after coming to New York, he attended worship with the congregation of the Rev. Dr. Mason, then one of the most eminent preachers of the Presbyterian Church. Writing to his father, an Arminian Baptist, of his purpose to make a public profession of his Christian faith in connection with the Presbyterian Church, he stated the chief points of his religious belief, quoting a “thus saith the Lord” for each. He received a kind reply cordially approving of that course, and asking for a “thus saith the Lord” in proof of sprinkling as Christian baptism, and of the baptism of infants as an ordinance of Christ. Happening to read the letter in an evening company of Christian friends, members of the church he attended, he remarked on leaving them that he must go home and answer his father’s questions. “Poor young man,” exclaimed an intelligent Christian lady when he was gone, “he little knows what he is undertaking!” He found it so. And he found it equally hard to be convinced, by Dr. Mason’s reasoning, that something else than a “thus saith the Lord” would do just as well.

The Rev. William Parkinson, pastor of the First Baptist church in New York, baptized him in February, 1808. In 1811 he transferred his membership to the church in Oliver Street. In 1838 he became a member of the church worshipping in the Tabernacle, to the erection of which he had himself largely contributed.
Philanthropy and family

He annually subscribed money to assist in defraying the current expenses of Hamilton Literary and Theological Institution (later Madison University and Theological Seminary); and he was among the most strenuous opponents of their removal to the city of Rochester. He was a regular contributor to the funds of the Baptist Missionary Union, and took upon himself the entire support of a foreign missionary.

He married Mary Gilbert and had three sons, Robert, James and Samuel. James and Samuel were both benefactors of Madison University and Theological Seminary. After seven decades of the Colgates’ involvement, the school was renamed Colgate University in 1890. His son Robert purchased Stonehurst at Riverdale-on-Hudson in The Bronx about 1859 shortly after it was built; it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.[2]

William Colgate was a tither throughout his long and successful business career. He gave not merely one-tenth of the earnings of Colgate’s soap products; but he gave two-tenths, then three-tenths, and finally five-tenths of all his income to the work of God in the world. During the later days of his life he revealed the origin of his devotion to the idea of tithing. When he was sixteen years old he left home to find employment in New York City. He had previously worked in a soap manufacturing shop. When he told the captain of the canal boat upon which he was traveling that he planned to make soap in New York City the man gave him this advice: ‘Someone will soon be the leading soap maker in New York. You can be that person. But you must never lose sight of the fact that the soap you make has been given to you by God. Honor Him by sharing what you earn. Begin by tithing all you receive.’ William Colgate felt the urge to tithe because he recognized that God was the giver of all that he possessed, not only of opportunity, but even of the elements which were used in the manufacture of his products.[3]

 

1794 – François-Vincent Raspail, French chemist, physician, physiologist, and lawyer (d. 1878)
François-Vincent Raspail, L.L.D., M.D. (25 January 1794 – 7 January 1878) was a French chemist, naturalist, physician, physiologist, attorney, and socialist politician.
Raspail was born in Carpentras, Vaucluse. A member of the republican Carbonari society, Raspail was imprisoned during Louis Philippe’s reign (1830–1848) and was a candidate for presidency of the Second Republic in December 1848. However, he was then involved in the attempted revolt of 15 May 1848 and in March 1849 was again imprisoned as a result. After Louis Napoleon’s 2 December 1851 coup his sentence was commuted to exile, from which he returned to France only in 1862. In 1869, during the liberal phase of the Second Empire (1851–1870), he was elected deputy from Lyons. He remained a popular republican during the French Third Republic, after the short-term Paris Commune in 1871.

Raspail was one of the founders of the cell theory in biology. He coined the phrase omnis cellula e cellula (“every cell is derived from a [preexisting] cell”) later attributed to Rudolf Karl Virchow. He was an early proponent of the use of the microscope in the study of plants. He was also an early advocate of the use of antiseptic(s) and better sanitation and diet. His “Manuel annuaire de la santé 1834” is portrayed in the painting “Nature morte avec oignons/Still life with a plate of onions” by Vincent van Gogh (1889 Kroller-Muller).

 

1923 – Arvid Carlsson, Swedish pharmacologist and physician, Nobel Prize laureate
Arvid Carlsson (born 25 January 1923) is a Swedish neuropharmacologist who is best known for his work with the neurotransmitter dopamine and its effects in Parkinson’s disease. For his work on dopamine, Carlsson was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2000, along with co-recipients Eric Kandel and Paul Greengard.[2][3]

Carlsson was born in Uppsala, Sweden, son of Gottfrid Carlsson, historian and later professor of history at the Lund University, where he began his medical education in 1941. In 1944 he was participating in the task of examining prisoners of Nazi concentration camps, whom Folke Bernadotte, a member of the royal Swedish family, had managed to bring to Sweden. Although Sweden was neutral during World War II, Carlsson’s education was interrupted by several years of service in the Swedish Armed Forces. In 1951, he received his M.L. degree and his M.D. He then became a professor at the University of Lund. In 1959 he became a professor at the University of Gothenburg.

In 1957 Kathleen Montagu succeeded in demonstrating the presence of dopamine in the human brain; later that same year Carlsson also demonstrated that dopamine was a neurotransmitter in the brain and not just a precursor for norepinephrine.[4][5] Carlsson went on to developed a method for measuring the amount of dopamine in brain tissues. He found that dopamine levels in the basal ganglia, a brain area important for movement, were particularly high. He then showed that giving animals the drug reserpine caused a decrease in dopamine levels and a loss of movement control. These effects were similar to the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. By administering to these animals L-Dopa, which is the precursor of dopamine, he could alleviate the symptoms. These findings led other doctors to try using L-Dopa on patients with Parkinson’s disease, and found it to alleviate some of the symptoms in the early stages of the disease. L-Dopa is still the basis for most commonly used means of treating Parkinson’s disease.[2]

While working at Astra AB, Carlsson and his colleagues were able to derive the first marketed selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, zimelidine, from brompheniramine.[2] Zimelidine preceded both Fluoxetine (Prozac) and Fluvoxamine as the first SSRI, but was later withdrawn from the market due to rare cases of Guillain–Barré syndrome.[6]

Carlsson is opposed to the fluoridation of drinking water,[7][8][9] and lobbied in Sweden to make water fluoridation illegal.[10]

Still an active researcher and speaker at over 90 years of age, Carlsson, together with his daughter Maria, is working[11] on OSU6162, a dopamine stabilizer alleviating symtoms of post-stroke fatigue.[12]

 

FYI:

 

Jonathan Stray: What Do Journalists Do With Documents?

 

jessyratfink HOW TO WRITE AN INSTRUCTABLE

 

Christina Farr: How To Avoid Being Professionally Ghosted

 

 

Sturmtiger (German: “Assault Tiger”) was a World War II German assault gun built on the Tiger I chassis and armed with a large rocket launcher. The official German designation was Sturmmörserwagen 606/4 mit 38 cm RW 61. Its primary task was to provide heavy fire support for infantry units fighting in urban areas. The few vehicles produced fought in the Warsaw Uprising, the Battle of the Bulge and the Battle of the Reichswald. The fighting vehicle is also known under a large number of informal names, among which the Sturmtiger became the most popular.

Videos January 25, 2017

 

https://youtu.be/Gb9mgdGprkA

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEQlp3qfRlQ

Videos January 24, 2017

 

 

 

 

 

 

FYI January 24, 2017

 

https://foodimentary.com/2017/01/24/january-24th-is-national-peanut-butter-day-2/

 

 

 

 

 

 

On this day:

1848 – California Gold Rush: James W. Marshall finds gold at Sutter’s Mill near Sacramento.
The California Gold Rush (1848–1855) began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter’s Mill in Coloma, California.[1] The first to hear confirmed information of the gold rush were the people in Oregon, the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), and Latin America, and they were the first to start flocking to the state in late 1848. All in all, the news of gold brought some 300,000 people to California from the rest of the United States and abroad.[2] Of the 300,000, approximately half arrived by sea and half came overland on the California Trail and the Gila River trail.

The gold-seekers, called “forty-niners” (as a reference to 1849), often faced substantial hardships on the trip. While most of the newly arrived were Americans, the Gold Rush attracted tens of thousands from Latin America, Europe, Australia, and China. At first, the prospectors retrieved the gold from streams and riverbeds using simple techniques, such as panning. More sophisticated methods of gold recovery were developed and later adopted around the world. At its peak, technological advances reached a point where significant financing was required, increasing the proportion of gold companies to individual miners. Gold worth tens of billions of today’s dollars was recovered, which led to great wealth for a few. However, many returned home with little more than they had started with.

The effects of the Gold Rush were substantial. San Francisco grew from a small settlement of about 200 residents in 1846 to a boomtown of about 36,000 by 1852. Roads, churches, schools and other towns were built throughout California. In 1849 a state constitution was written. The new constitution was adopted by referendum vote, and the future state’s interim first governor and legislature were chosen. In September, 1850, California became a state as part of the Compromise of 1850.

New methods of transportation developed as steamships came into regular service. By 1869 railroads were built across the country from California to the eastern United States. Agriculture and ranching expanded throughout the state to meet the needs of the settlers. At the beginning of the Gold Rush, there was no law regarding property rights in the goldfields and a system of “staking claims” was developed. The Gold Rush also had negative effects: Native Americans were attacked and pushed off their lands and the mining has caused environmental harm. An estimated 100,000 California Indians died between 1848 and 1868 as a result of American immigration.

 

1933 – The 20th Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, changing the beginning and end of terms for all elected federal offices.
The Twentieth Amendment (Amendment XX) to the United States Constitution moved the beginning and ending of the terms of the president and vice president from March 4 to January 20, and of members of Congress from March 4 to January 3. It also has provisions that determine what is to be done when there is no president-elect. The Twentieth Amendment was adopted on January 23, 1933.[1]

Section 1. The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin.

Section 2. The Congress shall assemble at least once in every year, and such meeting shall begin at noon on the 3d day of January, unless they shall by law appoint a different day.

Section 3. If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice President elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified.

Section 4. The Congress may by law provide for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the House of Representatives may choose a President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them, and for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the Senate may choose a Vice President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them.

Section 5. Sections 1 and 2 shall take effect on the 15th day of October following the ratification of this article.

Section 6. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission.

 

 

Born on this day:

1862 – Edith Wharton, American novelist and short story writer (d. 1937)
Edith Wharton (/ˈiːdɪθ ˈwɔːrtən/; born Edith Newbold Jones; January 24, 1862 – August 11, 1937) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927, 1928 and 1930.[1] Wharton combined her insider’s view of America’s privileged classes with a brilliant, natural wit to write humorous, incisive novels and short stories of social and psychological insight. She was well acquainted with many of her era’s other literary and public figures, including Theodore Roosevelt.

Despite not publishing her first novel until she was forty, Wharton became an extraordinarily productive writer. In addition to her fifteen novels, seven novellas, and eighty-five short stories, she published poetry, books on design, travel, literary and cultural criticism, and a memoir.[44]

Wharton first began inventing stories when she was six. She would walk around the living room holding a book while reciting her story. In 1873, Wharton wrote a short story and gave it to her mother to read. Her mother criticized the story, so Wharton decided to just write poetry. While she constantly sought her mother’s approval and love, it was rare that she received either. From the start, the relationship with her mother was a troubled one.[45] Before she was fifteen, she wrote Fast and Loose (1877). In her youth, she wrote about society. Her central themes came from her experiences with her parents. She was very critical of her own work and would write public reviews criticizing it. She also wrote about her own experiences with life. “Intense Love’s Utterance” is a poem written about Henry Stevens.[16]

In 1889, she sent out three poems for publication. They were sent to Scribner’s, Harper’s and Century. Edward L. Burlingame published “The Last Giustiniani” for Scribner’s. It was not until Wharton was 29 that her first short story was published. “Mrs. Manstey’s View” had very little success, and it took her more than a year to publish another story. She completed “The Fullness of Life” following her annual European trip with Teddy. Burlingame was critical of this story but Wharton did not want to make edits to it. This story, along with many others, speaks about her marriage. She sent Bunner Sisters to Scribner’s in 1892. Burlingame wrote back that it was too long for Scribner’s to publish. This story is believed to be based on an experience she had as a child. It did not see publication until 1916 and is included in the collection called Xingu. After a visit with her friend, Paul Bourget, she wrote “The Good May Come” and “The Lamp of Psyche”. “The Lamp of Psyche” was a comical story with verbal wit and sorrow. After “Something Exquisite” was rejected by Burlingame, she lost confidence in herself. She started “travel writing” in 1894.[16]

In 1901, Wharton wrote a two-act play called Man of Genius. This play was about an English man who was having an affair with his secretary. The play was rehearsed, but was never produced. She collaborated with Marie Tempest to write another play, but the two only completed four acts before Marie decided she was no longer interested in costume plays. One of her earliest literary endeavors (1902) was the translation of the play, Es Lebe das Leben (“The Joy of Living”), by Hermann Sudermann. The Joy of Living was criticized for its name because the heroine swallows poison at the end, and was a short-lived Broadway production. It was, however, a successful book.[16]

Many of Wharton’s novels are characterized by a subtle use of dramatic irony. Having grown up in upper-class, late-nineteenth-century society, Wharton became one of its most astute critics, in such works as The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence.

 

1900 – Theodosius Dobzhansky, Ukrainian-American geneticist and biologist (d. 1975)
Theodosius Grygorovych Dobzhansky ForMemRS[2] (Ukrainian: Теодо́сій Григо́рович Добжа́нський; Russian: Феодо́сий Григо́рьевич Добржа́нский; January 25, 1900 – December 18, 1975) was a prominent American geneticist and evolutionary biologist, and a central figure in the field of evolutionary biology for his work in shaping the unifying modern evolutionary synthesis.[3] Dobzhansky was born in Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire, and became an immigrant to the United States in 1927, aged 27 years old.[4]

His 1937 work Genetics and the Origin of Species became a major influence on the synthesis and was awarded the US National Medal of Science in 1964,[5] and the Franklin Medal in 1973.

Debate on Race

Theodosius Dobzhansky and Ashley Montagu debated the use and validity of the term “race” over a period of many years without reaching an agreement, and the “debate” has continued to the present day. Montagu argued that “race” was so laden with toxic associations that it was a word best eliminated from science completely, whereas Dobzhansky strongly disagreed. He argued that science should not give into the misuses to which it had been subjected. The two men never reached an agreement, which led Dobzhansky to say in 1961, while commenting on Montagu’s autobiography, “The chapter on ‘Ethnic group and race’ is, of course, deplorable, but let us say that it is good that in a democratic country any opinion, no matter how deplorable, can be published” (Farber 2015 p. 3). The concept of “race” has been important in many life science disciplines; The Modern evolutionary synthesis revolutionized the concept of race, moving it from a strictly morphological definition based on “racial types” in humans, to a definition focused on populations differing in gene frequencies. This was done in hopes that its foundation in population genetics would undermine the deeply ingrained social prejudices associated with “race”.[13]

Dobzhansky had serious confidence that mixing races created no serious medical issues. Dobzhansky’s experience with breeding fruit flies came into play when he made this conclusion. The only medical issue Dobzhansky found in this breeding was when certain crosses could lead to having infertile offspring. However, Dobzhansky noticed no such problems when humans from different populations reproduced. When anthropologists at the time were trying to compare the means of physical measurements of people from different races Dobzhansky argued that these means had no value because there was more variation between the individuals of each population than there was among the groups (Farber 2011 p. 63). However, Dobzhansky’s work and beliefs on genetics and evolution created opposition with his views on race mixing. First, that race has to do with groups and not individuals and so in this instance it is not races that mix, it is individuals. Second, if races do not mix then they will become different species, so therefore they have to mix. All of the races that currently exist are products of past mixed races, so according to Dobzhansky there is no pure race. Third, when race had been discussed in the past it was all about comparing means of trait to which this made no sense to Dobzhansky (Farber 2011 p. 65-67).[14]

His concern with the interface between humans and biology may have come from different factors. The main factor would be the race prejudice that contributed in Europe that triggered WWII. His concern also dealt with religion in human life which he speaks about in his book The Biology of Ultimate Concern in 1967. “The pervasiveness of genetic variation provides the biological foundation of human individuality” (Ayala). Dobzhansky talks about in great detail that “human nature has 2 dimensions: the biological, which mankind shares with the rest of life, and the cultural, which is exclusive to humans.” (Ayala). Both of these are believed to have come from “biological evolution and cultural evolution” (Ayala).

Dobzhansky sought to put an end to the so called science that purports one’s genetic makeup determines their race and furthermore, their rank in society. Harrison E. Salisbury wrote in a New York Times article regarding his book Heredity and the Future of Man that Dobzhansky could not, alongside other scientists, agree upon what defines a race. Dobzhansky stated that a true bloodline for man could not be identified. He did not believe that a man’s genetic makeup did not decide whether or not he would be a great man but rather that man “has the rare opportunity ‘to direct his evolution’”. [15]

 

FYI:

Hannah Keyser: China Is Cracking Down On The Technically Illegal Golf Course Boom

 

Kristen Lee: These Are Your Most Insane Airplane Horror Stories

 

Stef Schrader: A Week Spent Searching For Places To Plug In A 2017 Ford Fusion Energi Hybrid

 

 

Jaimie Seaton: Martha Matilda Harper, the Greatest Businesswoman You’ve Never Heard Of She pioneered retail franchising and created the American hair salon industry.

Martha Matilda Harper (September 10, 1857, Oakville, Ontario – August 3, 1950, Rochester, New York) was a Canadian-American businesswoman, entrepreneur, and inventor who built an international network of franchised hair salons that emphasized healthy hair care. Born in Canada, Harper was sent away by her father when she was seven to work as a domestic servant. She worked in that profession for 25 years before she saved enough money to start working full-time producing a hair tonic she invented.[1] The product, and the creation of special hair salons that utilized it, was successful. Harper began franchising the salon model to low-income women, and by its peak the company included more than 500 franchises and an entire line of hair care products.

 

 

Martha Matilda Harper (September 10, 1857, Oakville, Ontario – August 3, 1950

 

wiki: Martha Matilda Harper Rochester, New York) was a Canadian-American businesswoman, entrepreneur, and inventor who built an international network of franchised hair salons that emphasized healthy hair care. Born in Canada, Harper was sent away by her father when she was seven to work as a domestic servant. She worked in that profession for 25 years before she saved enough money to start working full-time producing a hair tonic she invented.[1] The product, and the creation of special hair salons that utilized it, was successful. Harper began franchising the salon model to low-income women, and by its peak the company included more than 500 franchises and an entire line of hair care products.

FYI January 23, 2017

 

https://foodimentary.com/2016/01/23/january-23rd-is-national-pie-day/

 

 

 

On this day:

1556 – The deadliest earthquake in history, the Shaanxi earthquake, hits Shaanxi province, China. The death toll may have been as high as 830,000.
The 1556 Shaanxi earthquake (Chinese: 华县大地震; pinyin: Huáxiàn Dàdìzhèn) or Jiajing earthquake (Chinese: 嘉靖大地震; pinyin: Jiājìng Dàdìzhèn) was a catastrophic earthquake and is also the deadliest earthquake on record, killing approximately 830,000 people.[1] It occurred on the morning of 23 January 1556 in Shaanxi, during the Ming Dynasty. More than 97 counties in the provinces of Shaanxi, Shanxi, Henan, Gansu, Hebei, Shandong, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangsu and Anhui were affected. Buildings were damaged slightly in the cities of Beijing, Chengdu and Shanghai.[2] An 840-kilometre-wide (520 mi) area was destroyed,[3] and in some counties as much as 60% of the population was killed.[4] Most of the population in the area at the time lived in yaodongs, artificial caves in loess cliffs, many of which collapsed with catastrophic loss of life.

 

1571 – The Royal Exchange opens in London.
The Royal Exchange in London was founded in the 16th century by the merchant Thomas Gresham on the suggestion of his factor Richard Clough to act as a centre of commerce for the City of London.[1] The site was provided by the City of London Corporation and the Worshipful Company of Mercers, who still jointly own the freehold. It is trapezoidal in shape and is flanked by Cornhill and Threadneedle Street, which converge at Bank junction in the heart of the City. The design was inspired by a bourse Gresham had seen in Antwerp, and was Britain’s first specialist commercial building.

It has twice been destroyed by fire and subsequently rebuilt. The present building was designed by William Tite in the 1840s. The site was notably occupied by the Lloyd’s insurance market for nearly 150 years. Today the Royal Exchange contains offices, luxury shops and restaurants.

Traditionally, the steps of the Royal Exchange is the place where Royal Proclamations (such as the dissolution of Parliament) are read out by either a herald or a crier.

 

 

1849 – Elizabeth Blackwell is awarded her M.D. by the Geneva Medical College of Geneva, New York, becoming the United States’ first female doctor.
Elizabeth Blackwell (3 February 1821 – 31 May 1910) was a British-born physician, notable as the first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States, as well as the first woman on the UK Medical Register. She was the first woman to graduate from medical school, a pioneer in promoting the education of women in medicine in the United States, and a social and moral reformer in both the United States and in the United Kingdom. Her sister Emily was the third woman in the US to get a medical degree.

In October, 1847, Blackwell was accepted as a medical student by Hobart College, then called Geneva Medical College, located in upstate New York. Her acceptance was a near-accident. The dean and faculty, usually responsible for evaluating an applicant for matriculation, were not able to make a decision due to the special nature of Blackwell’s case. They put the issue up to a vote by the 150 male students of the class with the stipulation that if one student objected, Blackwell would be turned away. The young men voted unanimously to accept her.[6][7]

When Blackwell arrived at the college, she was rather nervous. Nothing was familiar – the surroundings, the students and the faculty. She did not even know where to get her books. However, she soon found herself at home in medical school.[1] While she was at school, she was looked upon as an oddity by the townspeople of Geneva. She also rejected suitors and friends alike, preferring to isolate herself. In the summer between her two terms at Geneva, she returned to Philadelphia, stayed with Dr. Elder, and applied for medical positions in the area to gain clinical experience. The Guardians of the Poor, the city commission that ran Blockley Almshouse, granted her permission to work there, albeit not without some struggle. Blackwell slowly gained acceptance at Blockley, although some young resident physicians still would walk out and refuse to assist her in diagnosing and treating her patients. During her time there, Blackwell gained valuable clinical experience, but was appalled by the syphilitic ward and those afflicted with typhus. Her graduating thesis at Geneva Medical College ended up being on the topic of typhus. The conclusion of this thesis linked physical health with socio-moral stability – a link that foreshadows her later reform work.[1]

On January 23, 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to achieve a medical degree in the United States. The local press reported her graduation favourably, and when the dean, Dr. Charles Lee, conferred her degree, he stood up and bowed to her.[8]

 

 

 

1957 – American inventor Walter Frederick Morrison sells the rights to his flying disc to the Wham-O toy company, which later renames it the “Frisbee”.
Walter Frederick “Fred” Morrison (January 16 1920 in Richfield, Utah – February 9, 2010 in Monroe, Utah)[1] was an American inventor and entrepreneur, best known as the inventor of the Frisbee.[2][3][4]

Morrison claimed that the original idea for a flying disc toy came to him in 1937, while throwing a popcorn can lid with his girlfriend, Lu, whom he later married. The popcorn can lid soon dented which led to the discovery that cake pans flew better and were more common. Morrison and Lu developed a little business selling “Flyin’ Cake Pans” on the beaches of Santa Monica, California.

During World War II he learned something of aerodynamics flying his P-47 Thunderbolt in Italy. He was shot down and was a prisoner of war for 48 days.

In 1946, he sketched out a design (called the Whirlo-Way) for the world’s first flying disc. In 1948 an investor, Warren Franscioni, paid for molding the design in plastic. They named it the Flyin-Saucer. After disappointing sales, Fred & Warren parted ways in early 1950. In 1954, Fred bought more of the Saucers from the original molders to sell at local fairs, but soon found he could produce his own disc more cheaply. In 1955, he and Lu designed the Pluto Platter, the archetype of all modern flying discs. On January 23, 1957, they sold the rights for the Pluto Platter to the Wham-O toy company. Initially Wham-O continued to market the toy solely as the “Pluto Platter”, but by June 1957 they also began using the name Frisbee after learning that college students in the Northeast were calling the Pluto Platter by that name. Morrison also invented several other products for Wham-O, but none were as successful as the Pluto Platter.

Morrison and his wife, Lu Nay Morrison had three children. Lu died in 1987.[5]

There is a disc golf course in Holladay, Utah named in his honor.

Morrison died in his home at the age of 90 on February 9, 2010.[6]

Born on this day:

1745 – William Jessop, English engineer, built the Cromford Canal (d. 1814)
William Jessop (23 January 1745 – 18 November 1814) was an English civil engineer, best known for his work on canals, harbours and early railways in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

The Cromford Canal ran 14.5 miles (23.3 kilometres) from Cromford to the Erewash Canal in Derbyshire, England with a branch to Pinxton. Built by William Jessop with the assistance of Benjamin Outram, its alignment included four tunnels and 14 locks.[1]

From Cromford it ran south following the 275-foot (84 m) contour line along the east side of the valley of the Derwent to Ambergate, where it turned eastwards along the Amber valley. It turned sharply to cross the valley, crossing the river and the Ambergate to Nottingham road, by means of an aqueduct at Bullbridge, before turning towards Ripley. From there the Butterley Tunnel took it through to the Erewash Valley.

From the tunnel it continued to Pye Hill, near Ironville, the junction for the branch to Pinxton, and then descended through fourteen locks to meet the Erewash Canal at Langley Mill. The Pinxton Branch became important as a route for Nottinghamshire coal, via the Erewash, to the River Trent and Leicester and was a terminus of the Mansfield and Pinxton Railway.

A 6-mile (9.7 km) long section of the Cromford canal between Cromford and Ambergate is listed as a Biological Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI)[2][3] and a Local Nature Reserve.[4][5]

In addition to purely canal traffic, there was a lively freight interchange with the Cromford and High Peak Railway, which traversed the plateau of the Peak District from Whaley Bridge in the north west, and which descended to the canal at High Peak Junction by means of an inclined plane.

 

1897 – William Stephenson, Canadian captain and spy (d. 1989)
Sir William Samuel Stephenson, CC, MC, DFC (23 January 1897 – 31 January 1989) was a Canadian soldier, airman, businessman, inventor, spymaster, and the senior representative of British intelligence for the entire western hemisphere during World War II. He is best known by his wartime intelligence codename Intrepid. Many people consider him to be one of the real-life inspirations for James Bond.[2] Ian Fleming himself once wrote, “James Bond is a highly romanticized version of a true spy. The real thing is … William Stephenson.”[3]

As head of the British Security Coordination, Stephenson handed over British scientific secrets to Franklin D. Roosevelt and relayed American secrets to Winston Churchill.[4] In addition, Stephenson has been credited with changing American public opinion from an isolationist stance to a supportive tendency regarding America’s entry into World War II.[4]

 

1918 – Gertrude B. Elion, American biochemist and pharmacologist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1999)
Gertrude Belle Elion (January 23, 1918 – February 21, 1999) was an American biochemist and pharmacologist, who shared the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with George H. Hitchings and Sir James Black. Working alone as well as with Hitchings and Black, Elion developed a multitude of new drugs, using innovative research methods that would later lead to the development of the AIDS drug AZT. She developed the first immunosuppressive drug, azathioprine, used for organ transplants.

Elion had also worked for the National Cancer Institute, American Association for Cancer Research and World Health Organization, among other organizations. From 1967 to 1983, she was the Head of the Department of Experimental Therapy for Burroughs Wellcome.

She was affiliated with Duke University as Adjunct Professor of Pharmacology and of Experimental Medicine from 1971 to 1983 and Research Professor from 1983 to 1999.[13]

Rather than relying on trial-and-error, Elion and Hitchings used the differences in biochemistry between normal human cells and pathogens (disease-causing agents such as cancer cells, protozoa, bacteria, and viruses) to design drugs that could kill or inhibit the reproduction of particular pathogens without harming the host cells. The drugs they developed are used to treat a variety of maladies, such as leukemia, malaria, organ transplant rejection (azathioprine), as well as herpes (acyclovir, which was the first selective and effective drug of its kind).[14] Most of Elion’s early work came from the use and development of purines. Elion’s inventions include:

6-mercaptopurine (Purinethol), the first treatment for leukemia and used in organ transplantation.[12][15]
Azathioprine (Imuran), the first immuno-suppressive agent, used for organ transplants.[12]
Allopurinol (Zyloprim), for gout.[12]
Pyrimethamine (Daraprim), for malaria.[12]
Trimethoprim (Proloprim, Monoprim, others),[12] for meningitis, septicemia, and bacterial infections of the urinary and respiratory tracts.
Acyclovir (Zovirax), for viral herpes.[12]
Nelarabine for cancer treatment.[16]

During 1967 she occupied the position of the head of the company’s Department of Experimental Therapy and officially retired in 1983. Despite her retirement, Elion continued working almost full-time at the lab, and oversaw the adaptation of azidothymidine (AZT), which became the first drug used for treatment of AIDS.[17][18][19]

 

 

FYI:

 

Steve Spaleta: Blastoff! Missile-Detecting Satellite Launches Aboard Atlas V Rocket

 

Valentine Rice Krispie Bars by Penolopy Bulnick

 

How to Make No Bake Homemade Snickers Bars by KitchenMason

 

How to Grow Popcorn Shoots by mtairymd

 

Videos January 22, 2017

 

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHF99VddPJk

 

 

FYI January 22, 2017

https://foodimentary.com/2017/01/22/january-22nd-is-national-blonde-brownie-day/

 

https://foodimentary.com/2017/01/22/january-22nd-is-national-southern-food-day-2/

 

On this day:

1889 – Columbia Phonograph is formed in Washington, D.C.
Columbia Records (also known simply as Columbia) is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment (SME), a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, Inc., the United States division of Sony Corporation. It was founded in 1887, evolving from an earlier enterprise named the American Graphophone Company, the successor to the Volta Graphophone Company.[1] Columbia is the oldest surviving brand name in the recorded sound business,[2][3][4] being the second major record company to produce recorded records.[5] Columbia Records went on to release records by an array of notable singers, instrumentalists, and bands. From 1961 to 1990, its recordings were released outside the U.S. and Canada by the CBS Records label (which was named after the Columbia Broadcasting System) to avoid confusion with the EMI label of the same name, before adopting the Columbia name internationally in 1990. It is one of Sony Music’s three flagship record labels alongside RCA Records and Epic Records.

Until 1989, Columbia Records had no connection to Columbia Pictures, which used various other names for record labels they owned, including Colpix Records, Colgems Records, Bell Records and later Arista Records. Rather, as above, it was connected to CBS (which stood for Columbia Broadcasting System), a broadcasting media company which had purchased the company in 1938, and had been co-founded in 1927 by Columbia Records itself. Though Arista Records was sold to Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG), it would later become a sister label of Columbia Records through its mutual connection to Sony Music. Both Columbia Records and Columbia Pictures are connected through their parent company Sony Corporation of America, which is the parent of both the music and motion picture arms of Sony in the United States.

Artists currently signed to Columbia Records include but are not limited to Adele, A R Rahman, Barbra Streisand, Beyoncé, Bring Me the Horizon, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Calvin Harris, Celine Dion, Daft Punk, David Gilmour, Earl Sweatshirt, Electric Light Orchestra, Ella Henderson, Harry Styles, James Arthur, J. Cole, Juicy J, Lavengro, Little Mix, One Direction, Passion Pit, Patti Smith, Pharrell Williams, and the casts of Fox’s hit television shows Glee and Empire. In 2012, Columbia Records gained the highest label share on adult contemporary radio in the US, and was named the number-one adult contemporary label that year.[6]

 

 

1927 – Teddy Wakelam gives the first live radio commentary of a football match anywhere in the world, between Arsenal F.C. and Sheffield United at Highbury.
Captain Henry Blythe Thornhill (Teddy) Wakelam (8 May 1893 – 10 July 1963) was an English sports broadcaster and rugby union player.

He played rugby for Harlequin F.C. and became its captain. On 15 January 1927 Wakelam gave the first ever running sports commentary on BBC radio, a Rugby International match, England v Wales (final score 11-9) at Twickenham. By today’s standard it sounded really odd: to give listeners an idea what it actually was they were hearing a picture was published in the Radio Times of the pitch divided in numbered squares. And as Wakelam described the run of play a voice in the background mentioned the square the play was happening in. It is believed the phrase “Back to Square One” comes from this, long abandoned, practice.

Wakelam was an expert on a wide variety of sports. A week after his broadcasting debut he and C.A. Lewis gave the first football commentary on British radio, Arsenal – Sheffield United, 1-1. Later in 1927 he would also cover cricket and Wimbledon. It was in London SW19 that he would prove to be an unflappable character: in the mid 1930s he accidentally set fire to his notes but kept on commentating as if nothing had happened.

The first sports commentator on BBC radio also became one of the first on BBC television in 1938, when he covered the test match at Lord’s. He also gave commentaries on boxing and even non sporting events like Tidworth Tattoo, but rugby union always remained his specialty. Only a handful of his commentaries have survived, but apparently Wakelam was quite a good reporter. John Arlott called him “a natural talker with a reasonable vocabulary, a good rugby mind and a conscious determination to avoid journalese.”[1]

Teddy Wakelam also was rugby correspondent for The Morning Post. He wrote a number of books including ‘Harlequin Story’ (1954) about the history of his old club. He is namechecked in the title of a sports book, “After Captain Teddy” by Mike Jeffrey.

 

Born on this day:

1858 – Beatrice Webb, English sociologist and economist (d. 1943)
Martha Beatrice Webb, Baroness Passfield, FBA (née Potter; 22 January 1858 – 30 April 1943), was an English sociologist, economist, socialist, labour historian and social reformer. It was Webb who coined the term “collective bargaining”. She was among the founders of the London School of Economics and played a crucial role in forming the Fabian Society.

Beatrice Potter was born in Standish House in the village of Standish, Gloucestershire, the last but one of the nine daughters of businessman Richard Potter and Laurencina Heyworth, a Liverpool merchant’s daughter. Her paternal grandfather was Liberal Party MP Richard Potter, co-founder of the Little Circle which was key in creating the Reform Act 1832.

From an early age Beatrice was self-taught and cited as important influences the cooperative movement and the philosopher Herbert Spencer. After her mother’s death in 1882 she acted as a hostess and companion for her father. In 1882, she began a relationship with twice-widowed Radical politician Joseph Chamberlain, by then a Cabinet minister in Gladstone’s second government. He would not accept her need for independence as a woman and after four years of “storm and stress” their relationship failed.[1] Marriage in 1892 to Sidney Webb established a lifelong “partnership” of shared causes. At the beginning of 1901 Beatrice wrote that she and Sidney were “still on our honeymoon and every year makes our relationship more tender and complete”.[2]

One of Beatrice’s older sisters, Catherine, became a well-known social worker. After Catherine married Leonard Courtney (see Catherine Courtney, Baroness Courtney of Penwith), Beatrice took over her work as a voluntary rent-collector in the model dwellings at Katharine Buildings, Wapping, operated by the East End Dwellings Company.[5]
Beatrice and Sidney Webb working together in 1895

The young Beatrice also assisted her cousin by marriage Charles Booth in his pioneering survey of the Victorian slums of London, work which eventually became the massive 17-volume Life and Labour of the People of London (1902-1903).

These experiences stimulated a critical attitude to current ideas of philanthropy.

In 1890 Beatrice Potter was introduced to Sidney Webb, whose help she sought with her research. They married in 1892, and until her death 51 years later shared political and professional activities. When her father died in January 1892, leaving Potter an endowment of £1,000 pounds a year, she had a private income for life with which to support herself and the research projects she pursued.

The Webbs became active members of the Fabian Society. With the Fabians’ support, Beatrice Webb co-authored books and pamphlets on socialism and the co-operative movement including The History of Trade Unionism (1894) and Industrial Democracy (1897).

In 1895, the Fabians used part of an unexpected legacy of £10,000 from Henry Hutchinson, a solicitor from Derby, to found the London School of Economics and Political Science.[6]
Contributions to theory of co-operative movement

Beatrice Webb made a number of important contributions to the political and economic theory of the co-operative movement.

In her 1891 book The Cooperative Movement in Great Britain, based on her experiences in Lancashire, she distinguished between “co-operative federalism” and “co-operative individualism”. She identified herself as a co-operative federalist, a school of thought which advocates consumer co-operative societies. She argued that consumers’ co-operatives should be set up co-operative wholesale societies (by forming co-operatives in which all members are co-operatives, the best historical example being the English Co-operative Wholesale Society) and that these federal co-operatives should then acquire farms or factories.

Webb dismissed the idea of worker co-operatives where the people who did the work and benefited from it had some control over how it was organised, arguing that – at the time she was writing – such ventures had proved largely unsuccessful, at least in ushering in her form of socialism led by volunteer committees of people like herself.[7] Examples of successful worker cooperatives did of course exist, then as now.[citation needed] In some professions they were the norm. However, the Webbs’ final book, The Truth About The Soviet Union (1942), celebrated central planning.[citation needed]

It was Webb who coined the term “collective bargaining”.[8]

1865 – Wilbur Scoville, American chemist and pharmacist (d. 1942)
Wilbur Lincoln Scoville (January 22, 1865 – March 10, 1942)[1] was an American pharmacist best known for his creation of the “Scoville Organoleptic Test”, now standardized as the Scoville scale.

He devised the test and scale in 1912 while working at the Parke-Davis pharmaceutical company to measure pungency, “spiciness” or “heat”, of various chili peppers.

Scoville was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He married Cora B. Upham on September 1, 1891 in Wollaston (Quincy, Massachusetts). They had two children: Amy Augusta, born August 21, 1892 and Ruth Upham, born October 21, 1897.[2]

Scoville wrote The Art of Compounding, which was first published in 1895 and has gone through at least 8 editions. The book was used as a pharmacological reference up until the 1960s. Scoville also wrote Extracts and Perfumes, which contained hundreds of formulations. For a time he was a professor at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences. In 1912, he devised the test and scale known as the “Scoville Organoleptic Test” while working at the Parke-Davis pharmaceutical company. It measured piquancy, or “spiciness”, of various chili peppers. It is now standardized as the Scoville scale.

In 1922, Scoville won the Ebert prize from the American Pharmaceutical Association and in 1929 he received the Remington Honor Medal. Scoville also received an honorary Doctor of Science from Columbia University in 1929.

 

FYI:

Andrew Liszewski: A Toaster Just for Bacon Will Make Every Meal So Much Better