On This Day
1806 – Construction is authorized of the Great National Pike, better known as the Cumberland Road, becoming the first United States federal highway.
The National Road (also known as the Cumberland Road)[1] was the first major improved highway in the United States built by the federal government. Built between 1811 and 1837, the 620-mile (1,000 km) road connected the Potomac and Ohio Rivers and was a main transport path to the West for thousands of settlers. When improved in the 1830s, it became the second U.S. road surfaced with the macadam process pioneered by Scotsman John Loudon McAdam.[2]
Construction began heading west in 1811 at Cumberland, Maryland, on the Potomac River.[3] After the Financial Panic of 1837 and the resulting economic depression, congressional funding ran dry and construction was stopped at Vandalia, Illinois, the then capital of Illinois, 63 miles (101 km)[4] northeast of St. Louis across the Mississippi River.
The road has also been referred to as the Cumberland Turnpike, the Cumberland–Brownsville Turnpike (or Road or Pike), the Cumberland Pike, the National Pike, and the National Turnpike.[5]
In the 20th century with the advent of the automobile, the National Road was connected with other historic routes to California under the title, National Old Trails Road. Today, much of the alignment is followed by U.S. Route 40, with various portions bearing the Alternate U.S. Route 40 designation, or various state-road numbers (such as Maryland Route 144 for several sections between Baltimore and Cumberland).
In 1976, the American Society of Civil Engineers designated the national road as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark. In 2002, the full road, including extensions east to Baltimore and west to St. Louis, was designated the Historic National Road, an All-American Road.[6]
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Born On This Day
1873 – Tullio Levi-Civita, Jewish-Italian mathematician and academic (d. 1941)
Tullio Levi-Civita, ForMemRS[1] (English: /ˈtʊlioʊ ˈlɛvi ˈtʃɪvɪtə/, Italian: [ˈtulljo ˈlɛːvi ˈtʃiːvita]; 29 March 1873 – 29 December 1941) was an Italian mathematician, most famous for his work on absolute differential calculus (tensor calculus) and its applications to the theory of relativity, but who also made significant contributions in other areas. He was a pupil of Gregorio Ricci-Curbastro, the inventor of tensor calculus. His work included foundational papers in both pure and applied mathematics, celestial mechanics (notably on the three-body problem), analytic mechanics (the Levi-Civita separability conditions in the Hamilton–Jacobi equation)[2] and hydrodynamics.[3][4]
FYI
Beverly Atlee Cleary (née Bunn; April 12, 1916 – March 25, 2021) was an American writer of children’s and young adult fiction. One of America’s most successful authors, 91 million copies of her books have been sold worldwide since her first book was published in 1950.[2] Some of her best known characters are Ramona Quimby and Beezus Quimby, Henry Huggins and his dog Ribsy, and Ralph S. Mouse.[3]
The majority of Cleary’s books are set in the Grant Park neighborhood of northeast Portland, Oregon, where she was raised, and she has been credited as one of the first authors of children’s literature to figure emotional realism in the narratives of her characters, often children in middle-class families.[4][5] Her first children’s book was Henry Huggins after a question from a kid when Cleary was a librarian. Cleary won the 1981 National Book Award for Ramona and Her Mother[6][a] and the 1984 Newbery Medal for Dear Mr. Henshaw. For her lifetime contributions to American literature, she received the National Medal of Arts, recognition as a Library of Congress Living Legend, and the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal from the Association for Library Service to Children.[7] The Beverly Cleary School, a public school in Portland, was named after her, and several statues of her most famous characters were erected in Grant Park in 1995. Cleary died on March 25, 2021, at the age of 104.
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Recipes
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DamnDelicious
- Breakfast Tacos June 3, 2023An absolute crowd favorite! Served in warm tortillas with crispy bacon, potatoes, scrambled eggs and your favorite toppings! Oh-so-crisp bacon strips, golden brown potatoes, and perfectly cheesy scrambled eggs all tucked in a warm tortilla. It’s simply perfect for breakfast (and lunch and dinner) as it comes together pretty quickly, using one skillet for everything. […]Chungah @ Damn Delicious
- Honey Fried Chicken and Waffles May 20, 2023Super crispy fried chicken, drizzled with a warm honey glaze, served with the fluffiest buttermilk waffles! There’s a few steps involved in this, but my goodness is it a labor of love (of 45 minutes of course). And the end result is so worth it. With the crispiest chicken (breasts or thighs can be used here) […]Chungah @ Damn Delicious
RecipeTinEats
- Ham and cheese omelette June 2, 2023I’ve updated the way I make omelettes. This “scrambled egg” approach is easier and yields a better result without having to worry about raw egg in the middle. Today’s omelette recipe is filled with ham and cheese. Sauté your ham first! Ham and cheese omelette I used to cook omelettes using the technique whereby you... […]Nagi
- Antipasto Chickpea Salad May 31, 2023I love this chickpea salad because it involves little more than opening jars, it keeps well for days and the chickpeas keep me full for longer. It’s like an antipasto platter, in the form of a protein-laden, good-for-you meal! Antipasto Chickpea Salad Professional food writers would probably describe chickpeas as a blank canvas for flavour.... […]Nagi
wikimedia
- Wikimedia Commons picture of the day for June 3 June 3, 2023Picture of the day Amphycribral vascular bundle of a Fern Rhizome Pteridium aquilinum. Big cells with red cell wall are tracheids. They serve in the transport of water. Around the xylem there are xylem parenchyma and phloem cells. A single row layer of small cells (with red content) located circumferentially is endoderm. In the parenchyma […]
- Wikimedia Commons picture of the day for June 2 June 2, 2023Picture of the day Ascent to the steeple of the St. Viktor Church, Dülmen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
AV Club Wiki Wormhole
- Elliot Page recounts the time a famous acquaintance told him being gay "doesn't exist" June 3, 2023Elliot Page’s new memoir, Pageboy, comes out next week—which means that excerpts from the non-fiction book are already starting to spread online. The book details Page’s life in the entertainment industry, starting from when he was a child star, up through coming out as gay in 2014 and as trans in 2020. As revealed by…Read […]William Hughes
- Matthew Broderick says John Hughes wasn't the chillest dude June 3, 2023Read more...Peter Scobel
- Anna Cathcart talks XO, Kitty and raps Ludacris' verse from "Baby" June 2, 2023Read more...Peter Scobel
- Barbie used up the world's supply of pink paint June 2, 2023One of the things that’s immediately eye-catching about Greta Gerwig’s upcoming Barbie—the Little Women director’s attempt to say something cinematically satirical and funny about the inner life of the iconic doll—is that so much of what Gerwig and her team have created for the film’s world has been done with…Read more...William Hughes
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Welcome to the Stump the Bookseller blog!
Stump the Bookseller is a service offered by Loganberry Books to reconnect people to the books they love but can’t quite remember. In brief (for more detailed information see our About page), people can post their memories here, and the hivemind goes to work. After all, the collective mind of bibliophiles, readers, parents and librarians around the world is much better than just a few of us thinking. Together with these wonderful Stumper Magicians, we have a nearly 50% success rate in finding these long lost but treasured books. The more concrete the book description, the better the success rate, of course. It is a labor of love to keep it going, and there is a modest fee. Please see the How To page to find price information and details on how to submit your Book Stumper and payment.
Thanks to everyone involved to keep this forum going: our blogging team, the well-read Stumper Magicians, the many referrals, and of course to everyone who fondly remembers the wonder of books from their childhood and wants to share or revisit that wonder. Isn’t it amazing, the magic of a book?