I decided not to go with a picture of a monkey because that picture is of History's only 7 masted schooner ever, lost this day 1907 and the largest known (??) pure sailing vessel as well and the only such vessel with 7 masts. That is the "official" or western description of this ship, but the exact dimensions and rigging of Zheng He's largest ships is not known with any great precision. Today is also the anniversary of the end of the Toledo War, a war between Ohio and Michigan over the "Toledo Strip". As I understand it, this was a small piece of land stolen from the Indians, and not a stage performance.
On this day in history:
1287 – The Zuiderzee sea wall in the Netherlands collapsed, killing over 50,000 people. 1650 – Anne Greene was hanged at Oxford Castle for infanticide, having concealed an illegitimate stillbirth. The following day she revived in the dissection room and was pardoned. Fickle, these magistrates. 1782 – The Montgolfier brothers first test flight of an unmanned hot air balloon. 1812 – The French invasion of Russia ended. 1836 – The Toledo War unofficially ended. That's Toledo, Ohio, not Spain. 1900 – Max Planck presented a theoretical derivation of his black-body radiation law. 1902 – The Commercial Pacific Cable Company laid the first Pacific telegraph cable, 1907 – The Thomas W. Lawson, the largest ever ship without a heat engine, ran aground and foundered near the Hellweather's Reef within the Isles of Scilly 1911 – Roald Amundsen's team became the first to reach the South Pole. 1918 – The first UK general election where women were permitted to vote occurred 1940 – Plutonium (specifically Pu-238) was first isolated at Berkeley, California. 1948 – Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann were granted a patent for their cathode-ray tube amusement device, the earliest known interactive electronic game. It involved shooting artillery at targets, naturally enough 1958 – The 3rd Soviet Antarctic Expedition became the first to reach the southern pole of inaccessibility. 1960 – UNESCO's Convention against Discrimination in Education was adopted. 1962 – NASA's Mariner 2 became the first spacecraft to fly by Venus. 1963 – The dam containing the Baldwin Hills Reservoir, which was built across an active fault line by LADWP, burst, killing five people and damaging hundreds of homes in Los Angeles, California. 1964 – The Supreme Court ruled in Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States that Congress can use the Constitution's Commerce Clause to fight discrimination. 1971 – Over 200 of East Pakistan's intellectuals were executed by the Pakistan Army and its local allies. 1985 – Wilma Mankiller took office as the first woman elected to serve as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation. 1992 – A helicopter carrying evacuees from the besieged town of Tkvarcheli was shot down by Georgian forces resulting in at least 52 deaths, including 25 children, a compound war crime that proved that Abkhazia was justified in seceding. 1994 – Construction begian on the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze river. 2008 – Muntadhar al-Zaidi threw his shoes at then-U.S. President George W. Bush during a press conference in Baghdad, Iraq. 2012 – Twenty-eight people, including the gunman, were killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
Born this day in:
For truly in nature there are many operations that are far more than mechanical. Nature is not simply an organic body like a clock, which has no vital principle of motion in it; but it is a living body which has life and perception, which are much more exalted than a mere mechanism or a mechanical motion.
~~ Anne Conway 1546 – Tycho Brahe, astronomer and chemist 1631 – Anne Conway, philosopher and author 1640 – Aphra Behn, playwright and author 1789 – Maria Szymanowska, composer and pianist 1851 – Mary Tappan Wright, novelist and short story writer ( 1866 – Roger Fry, painter and critic 1895 – Paul Éluard, poet and author 1896 – Jimmy Doolittle, general and pilot who had an amazing life 1897 – Margaret Chase Smith, educator and politician 1899 – DeFord Bailey, musician ( 1902 – Herbert Feigl, philosopher from the Vienna Circle 1904 – Virginia Coffey, civil rights activist 1909 – Edward Lawrie Tatum, geneticist and academic 1911 – Spike Jones, singer and bandleader 1911 – Hans von Ohain, physicist and engineer (d. 1998) 1914 – Rosalyn Tureck, pianist and harpsichord player 1916 – Shirley Jackson, novelist and short story writer 1917 – June Taylor, dancer and choreographer 1920 – Clark Terry, trumpet player, composer, and educator 1922 – Nikolay Basov, physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate 1922 – Don Hewitt, journalist and producer, created 60 Minutes 1927 – Richard Cassilly, tenor and actor 1930 – David R. Harris, geographer, anthropologist, and archaeologist 1932 – Charlie Rich, singer, songwriter, and guitarist 1934 – Charlie Hodge, guitarist and singer 1941 – Ellen Willis, journalist, critic, and academic 1942 – Dick Wagner, singer, songwriter, and guitarist 1943 – Emmett Tyrrell, journalist, author, and publisher, 1946 – Joyce Vincent Wilson, singer 1947 – Christopher Parkening, guitarist and educator 1949 – Cliff Williams, bass player 1953 – Wade Davis, anthropologist, author, and photographer 1955 – Jill Pipher, mathematician and academic 1958 – Mike Scott, singer, songwriter, and guitarist 1958 – Spider Stacy, singer, songwriter, and guitarist 1966 – Tim Sköld, bass player and producer 1970 – Anna Maria Jopek, singer, songwriter, pianist, and producer 1970 – Beth Orton, singer, songwriter and guitarist 1975 – Justin Furstenfeld, singer, songwriter, guitarist, and producer 1979 – Sophie Monk, singer, songwriter, and actress 1983 – Leanne Mitchell, singer and songwriter 1985 – Alex Pennie, keyboard player
Died this day in:
The highest and most lofty trees have the most reason to dread the thunder.
~~ Charles Rollin 1417 – John Oldcastle, English Lollard leader burned as a heretic 1460 – Guarino da Verona, Italian scholar and translator 1480 – Niccolò Perotti, humanist scholar 1651 – Pierre Dupuy, French historian and scholar 1741 – Charles Rollin, French historian and educator 1785 – Giovanni Battista Cipriani, Italian painter and engraver 1788 – Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, German pianist and composer 1838 – Jean-Olivier Chénier, Canadian physician 1842 – Ben Crack-O, king of several tribes around Cape Palmas who was treacherously assaulted and assassinated by Commodore Perry and his crew during what was supposed to be a peaceful palaver, a far too common fate of those foolish enough to meet with US military commanders under such conditions. 1865 – Johan Georg Forchhammer, geologist and mineralogist 1873 – Louis Agassiz, zoologist and geologist 1927 – Julian Sochocki, mathematician and academic 1935 – Stanley G. Weinbaum, author 1937 – Fabián de la Rosa, painter and educator 1953 – Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, author and academic 1963 – Dinah Washington, singer and pianist 1974 – Walter Lippmann, journalist and author 1978 – Salvador de Madariaga, historian and diplomat 1989 – Andrei Sakharov, physicist and activist 1996 – Gaston Miron, poet and author 1997 – Emily Cheney Neville, author 1997 – Kurt Winter, guitarist and songwriter 2001 – W. G. Sebald, novelist, essayist, and poet 2011 – Joe Simon, author and illustrator 2011 – Billie Jo Spears, singer-songwriter 2012 – Victoria Leigh Soto, educator 2013 – Janet Dailey, author 2013 – Dennis Lindley, statistician and academic 2014 – Theo Colborn, zoologist and academic 2017 – Yu Kwang-chung, writer
Holidays, Holy Days, Festivals, Feast Days, Days of Recognition, and such: Alabama Day (Alabama) Forty-seven Ronin Remembrance Day (Sengaku-ji, Tokyo) Monkey Day Green Monday Roast Chestnuts Day Free Shipping Day
Music goes here, iirc, well, With apologies ;-)
It's an open thread, so do your thing
Cross posted from http://caucus99percent.com