Monday Open Thread: February 18 is Julia Butterfly Hill's birthday

February 18 is the 49th day of the year Prickle-Prickle, Chaos 49, 3185 YOLD  (discordian) And let us not forget 13.0.6.4.10 by the Mayan Long Count It is trivially easy to prove that thee are no non-interesting numbers via a recursive reductio ad absurdum. As a result, it must be the case that both 18 and 49 are interesting numbers, but neither one interests me enough at this moment to spend much time on them here. 18 is the product of a prime and the square of a prime, and 49 is the square of a prime. They add up to 67, also a prime and the sum of 5 consecutive primes. Big W00t! Their product is 882, which is not even remotely prime, but it is the year in which Oleg of Novgorod captured Kiev, and made it his capital, forming the Kievan Rus'.

-

The Kievan Rus' is/are largely unknown in the US and little taught here, as is the replacing the 19-year-long Christianization of the "Rus' Khaganate" and its roughly 19 year long Christianiztion which the Kievan Rus' supplanted and replaced. This is, in part, due to a lack of certainty as to exactly who, ethnically, they were and in great part due to the fact that they are the source of the place names "Russia" and "Belarus" and the "Russian" language as in "native speakers of Rus". whose existence must be denied in order to support certain political narratives. The Kievan Rus, and the Rus Kaganate are interesting historical background that is worth looking into, at least a little, IMHO.

-

Twenty years of schooling and they put you on the day shift, look out kid, ... On this day in history: 1268 – The Livonian Order was defeated in the Battle of Rakvere. Like the Teutonic order, their effect on history is underappreciated 1878 – John Tunstall was murdered by Jesse Evans, starting the Lincoln County War in New Mexico. 1885 – Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was published. 1930 – Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto. 1943 – The Nazis arrested the members of the White Rose movement, as governments tend to do with dissidents. 1957 – The British colonial government executed Kenyan rebel leader Dedan Kimathi. 1957 – The last instance of capital punishment in New Zealand.was carried out. 1970 – The Chicago Seven were found not guilty of conspiracy to incite riots. 1972 – The California Supreme Court invalidated California's death penalty. 2001 – FBI agent Robert Hanssen was busted for spying for the Soviet Union instead of spying on peaceniks and lefties. Born this day in: 1745 – Alessandro Volta, physicist 1838 – Ernst Mach, physicist and philosopher 1848 – Louis Comfort Tiffany, stained glass artist 1898 – Enzo Ferrari, race car driver 1909 – Wallace Stegner, novelist 1914 – Pee Wee King, singer, songwriter, and accordionist 1921 – Mary Amdur, toxicologist and public health researcher persecuted for reporting on effects of smog 1922 – Helen Gurley Brown, journalist and author 1933 – Yoko Ono, performance artist, singer, and songwriter 1934 – Skip Battin, singer, songwriter and bass player 1939 – Bobby Hart, aka The Monkees, singer and songwriter 1941 – Irma Thomas, singer 1948 – Keith Knudsen, singer, songwriter, and drummer 1952 – Randy Crawford, singer 1952 – Juice Newton, singer, songwriter, and guitarist 1953 – Robbie Bachman, drummer 1953 – Derek Pellicci, drummer 1957 – Vanna White, woman of letters 1974 – Julia Butterfly Hill, environmentalist and author Died this day in: 1455 – Fra Angelico, priest and painter 1546 – Martin Luther, famous religionist vandal 1564 – Michelangelo, sculptor and painter 1851 – Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi, mathematician 1910 – Lucy Stanton, activist, abolitionist and feminist 1915 – Frank James, businessman 1957 – Dedan Kimathi, Mau Mau rebellion leader 1973 – Frank Costello, businessman 2006 – Bill Cowsill, singer and guitarist 2013 – Kevin Ayers, singer, songwriter, and guitarist  

-

Holidays, Holy Days, Festivals, Feast Days, Days of Recognition, and such:  

-

-

Music goes here, iirc, well,

Pee Wee King

> Yoko Ono

Skip Battin

Bobby Hart

Irma Thomas

Keith Knudsen

Randy Crawford

Juice Newton

Robbie Bachman

Derek Pellicci

Bill(y) Cowsill

Kevin Ayers

-

-

Image is a Monarch Butterfly It's an open thread, so do your thing Cross posted from http://caucus99percent.com