On This Day
760 – Fourteenth recorded perihelion passage of Halley’s Comet.
Halley’s Comet or Comet Halley, officially designated 1P/Halley,[2] is a short-period comet visible from Earth every 75–76 years.[2][10][11][12] Halley last appeared in the inner parts of the Solar System in 1986 and will next appear in mid-2061.[13]
Halley’s returns to the inner Solar System have been observed and recorded by astronomers since at least 240 BC. Clear records of the comet’s appearances were made by Chinese, Babylonian, and medieval European chroniclers, but were not recognized as reappearances of the same object at the time. The comet’s periodicity was first determined in 1705 by English astronomer Edmond Halley, after whom it is now named.
During its 1986 apparition, Halley’s Comet became the first comet to be observed in detail by spacecraft, providing the first observational data on the structure of a comet nucleus and the mechanism of coma and tail formation.[14][15] These observations supported a number of longstanding hypotheses about comet construction, particularly Fred Whipple’s “dirty snowball” model, which correctly predicted that Halley would be composed of a mixture of volatile ices—such as water, carbon dioxide, and ammonia—and dust. The missions also provided data that substantially reformed and reconfigured these ideas; for instance, it is now understood that the surface of Halley is largely composed of dusty, non-volatile materials, and that only a small portion of it is icy.
Born On This Day
1909 – Margaret Mee, English illustrator and educator (d. 1988)
Margaret Ursula Mee, MBE (22 May 1909 – 30 November 1988)[1] was a British botanical artist who specialised in plants from the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest. She was also one of the first environmentalists to draw attention to the impact of large-scale mining and deforestation on the Amazon Basin.
Early life
Margaret Ursula Brown was born in Whitehill, Chesham in 1909. She attended Dr Challoner’s Grammar School, Amersham, followed by The School of Art, Science and Commerce, Watford. After a short period of teaching in Liverpool she decided to travel abroad.
While in Berlin in 1933, Brown witnessed the burning of the Reichstag and subsequent Jewish boycott, which confirmed her left-wing views. During the Second World War she worked in Hatfield as a draughtswoman at the de Havilland aircraft factory.[2]
Personal life
Mee married Reginald Bruce Bartlett in January 1936.[3] Like her husband, she became a committed trade union activist for the Union of Sign, Glass and Ticket Writers and joined the Communist Party.[4] Mee addressed the TUC in 1937, proposing the raising of the school-leaving age and was subsequently offered, but declined, a job with Ernest Bevin. The marriage to Bartlett was not happy and, after a long separation, ended in divorce in 1943.[5] She later married Greville Mee, who was also attending Saint Martin’s School of Art, in the late 1940s.
Career as artist
After the war Mee studied art at Saint Martin’s School of Art in London. In 1950 she attended the Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts, where she learnt her style of illustration, and received a national diploma in painting and design in 1950. She moved to Brazil with Greville Mee in 1952 to teach art in the British school of São Paulo. Her first expedition was in 1956 to Belém in the Amazon Basin. She then became a botanical artist for São Paulo’s Instituto de Botanica in 1958, exploring the rainforest and more specifically Amazonas state from 1964, painting the plants she saw, some new to science, as well as collecting some for later illustration. She created 400 folios of gouache illustrations, 40 sketchbooks, and 15 diaries.[citation needed]
Mee travelled to Washington D. C., USA in 1964 and briefly to England in 1968 for the exhibition and publication of her book, Flowers of the Brazilian Forests. She returned to Brazil and joined protests to draw international attention to the deforestation of the Amazon region.[2]
Death
Mee died following a car crash in Seagrave, Leicestershire on 30 November 1988. She was 79. In January 1989 a memorial to her life, botanical work and environmental campaigning took place in Kew Gardens.[2]
Recognition and honours
In 1976 Mee was awarded the MBE for services to Brazilian botany and a fellowship of the Linnean Society in 1986. She also received recognition in Brazil including an honorary citizenship of Rio in 1975, the Brazilian order of Cruzeiro do Sul in 1979, In her honour, after her death the Margaret Mee Amazon Trust was founded to further education and research in Amazonian plant life and conservation, by providing scholarships for Brazilian botanical students and plant illustrators who wish to study in the United Kingdom or conduct field research in Brazil.[2]
In 1990 Mee was recognised for her environmental achievements by The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and added to its Global 500 Roll of Honour.[citation needed]
The Diaries of Margaret Mee, written between 1956 and 1988, were published posthumously in 2004 and included an illustrated account of Mee’s expeditions to the Amazonian rainforest.[6] Most of her illustrations are now part of the Kew Gardens collection.[7]
See also
Margaret Mee and the Moonflower
FYI
By Bradley Brownell and Alanis King: Niki Lauda, Formula One Legend and Three-Time World Champion, Dead at 70
Andreas Nikolaus “Niki” Lauda, a legendary figure of perseverance in the face of adversity and three-time Formula One world champion who remained a fixture in the sport even after his racing days were long over, has died, according to his family members. He was 70.
Andreas Nikolaus Lauda (22 February 1949 – 20 May 2019) was an Austrian Formula One driver, a three-time F1 World Drivers’ Champion, winning in 1975, 1977 and 1984, and an aviation entrepreneur. He was the only driver in F1 history to have been champion for both Ferrari and McLaren, the sport’s two most successful constructors. He is widely considered one of the greatest F1 drivers of all time.[1] As an aviation entrepreneur, he founded and ran three airlines: Lauda Air, Niki, and Lauda. He was a Bombardier Business Aircraft brand ambassador. He was also a consultant for Scuderia Ferrari and team manager of the Jaguar Formula One racing team for two years. Afterwards, he worked as a pundit for German TV during Grand Prix weekends and acted as non-executive chairman of Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, of which Lauda owned 10%.[2]
Having emerged as Formula One’s star driver amid a 1975 title win and leading the 1976 championship battle, Lauda was seriously injured in a crash at the 1976 German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring during which his Ferrari 312T2 burst into flames, and he came close to death after inhaling hot toxic fumes and suffering severe burns.[3]
However, he survived and recovered sufficiently to race again just six weeks later at the Italian Grand Prix. Although he narrowly lost the title to James Hunt that year, he won his second Ferrari crown the year after during his final season at the team. After a couple of years at Brabham and two years’ hiatus, Lauda returned and raced four seasons for McLaren between 1982 and 1985 – during which he won the 1984 title by 0.5 points over his teammate Alain Prost.
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Great comments!
By Justin T. Westbrook: You Can Now Get the 6.2-Liter V8 in More, Cheaper Chevy Silverado Trims
My neighbor got a blue Silverado recently. My wife tells me, “Did you see that nice looking truck our neighbor just got?”
That in a nutshell is why I married her. If she had a lick of ability to separate Handsome from Fugly, I wouldn’t had had a chance to go on a date with her.
hoser68
By Jason Torchinsky: Here’s the Soviet Equivalent of the Car Chase from ‘Bullitt’
By Alanis King: U.S. Buyers Still Overwhelmingly Choose a Manual for the Subaru BRZ and WRX
It shouldn’t be much of a surprise that Subaru still has decent manual sales in a market where carmakers can’t give a third pedal away, given that its buyers are often either outdoorsy dog people or street hoons. But manual take rates in the BRZ and WRX, at least in the U.S., even manage to outshine the Mazda Miata—as well as the BRZ’s Toyota twin, the 86.
By Jennings Brown: It’s About to Get Much More Difficult to Fly DJI Drones Into Planes
Last year, when a Robinson R22 crashed outside of Charleston, South Carolina, the student pilot and instructor in the helicopter said they lost control of the aircraft as they tried to avoid a DJI Phantom quadcopter. The incident could have been one of the first drone-caused aircraft crashes in the U.S.
Great comments!
By Aaron Gordon: New York Has a Supervillain Pulling Emergency Brakes and Destroying Subway Commutes
Gizmodo Science: How Your Brain Perceives Magicians Cutting Their Assistants in Half; How Are Doves and Sparrows Ending Up Inside Baby Sharks? More ->
Colossal: A Field Recording by Phil Torres Documents the Waterfall-like Sound of Millions of Migrating Monarch Butterflies
By Christine Schmidt: Why local foundations are putting their money behind a rural journalism collaborative $660,000 to support a 50-member network will go to Solutions Journalism Network and Report for America for one year from a trio of place-based foundations.
The Rural Blog: Telemedicine can’t help the rural U.S. much until broadband access improves, researchers conclude; EPA bans 12 pesticides linked to deaths of honeybees and more ->
Gastro Obscura: Remote Livestock; Australian Camels; Polkagris and more ->
Atlas Obscura: ‘Botanical Sexism’; ‘Century Plant’; Wildflower Hotline; Duge Beipanjiang Bridge and more ->
wikimedia
- Wikimedia Commons picture of the day for October 4 October 4, 2024Picture of the day Crucifix and shadow on the wall, Abbey of Saint Peter (Assisi). Today is the feast of Francis of Assisi, Patron Saint of Ecologists.
- Wikimedia Commons picture of the day for October 3 October 3, 2024Picture of the day Philippsruhe castle in Hanau-Kesselstadt, seen from the west from the park.
Recipes
By Academy of Culinary Nutrition in Best Of Recipes: 22 Best Gluten-Free Noodle Recipes
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