24 June 2017
Interesting tidbits:
1374 - A sudden outbreak of St. John's Dance causes people in the streets of Aachen, Germany, to experience hallucinations and begin to jump and twitch uncontrollably until they collapse from exhaustion.
1846 – The saxophone is patented by Adolphe Sax in Paris, France. Many people assume that almost all of today's musical instruments developed over a long time and have deep histories. Some do. But the ones that don't can be surprising. The saxophone was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in 1846. He wanted to create an instrument that would be the most powerful and vocal of the woodwinds, and the most adaptive of the brass, and would fill the middle ground between the two sections. He patented the saxophone in two groups of seven instruments each. Each series consisted of instruments of various sizes in alternating transposition. The series pitched in B-flat and E-flat, designed for military bands, has proved extremely popular and most saxophones encountered today are from this series. Instruments from the so-called "orchestral" series pitched in C and F never gained a foothold. While proving very popular in military band music, the saxophone is most commonly associated with jazz and classical music. There is substantial repertoire of concert music in the classical idiom for the members of the saxophone family.
1880 – First performance of O Canada, the song that would become the national anthem of Canada, at the Congrès national des Canadiens-Français.
1916 – Mary Pickford becomes the first female film star to sign a million dollar contract.
1938 – Pieces of a meteor, estimated to have weighed 450 metric tons when it hit the Earth's atmosphere and exploded, land near Chicora, Pennsylvania.
1947 – Kenneth Arnold makes the first widely reported UFO sighting near Mount Rainier, Washington. All modern UFO sightings, abductions, and groups (e.g. MUFON) stem from this sighting. The Arnold incident happened two weeks before the Roswell UFO crash.
1949 – The first television western, Hopalong Cassidy, is aired on NBC starring William Boyd.
1982 – "The Jakarta Incident": British Airways Flight 9 flies into a cloud of volcanic ash thrown up by the eruption of Mount Galunggung, resulting in the failure of all four engines.
Today's birthday crew:
1777 – John Ross, Scottish naval officer and Arctic explorer. In 1786, aged only nine, Ross joined the Royal Navy as an apprentice. John was the uncle of Captain Sir James Clark Ross, who explored the Arctic with him, and later led expeditions to the south pole. In 1818 he received the command of an Arctic expedition organised by the British Admiralty, the first of a new series of attempts to solve the question of a Northwest Passage. This entailed going around the extreme northeast coast of America and sailing to the Bering Strait. He was also to note the currents, tides, the state of ice and magnetism and to collect specimens he found on the way. He left London in April 1818 in the Isabella accompanied by the Alexander under Lieutenant William Edward Parry. In August he reached Lancaster Sound at the north end of Baffin Island and entered Lancaster Sound which later proved to be the eastern gate of the Northwest Passage. He sailed a number of miles west but went no further, for he was misled by a mirage which appeared to show mountains at the end of the strait. He named the apparent mountains "Crocker Hills", and returned to England despite the protests of several of his officers, including Parry and Edward Sabine who thought he should have more thoroughly examined the "mountains". The account of his voyage, published a year later, brought to light their disagreement, and the ensuing controversy over the existence of Crocker Hills ruined his reputation. This expedition failed to discover much that was new. In 1819 William Edward Parry, his lieutenant on the previous expedition, returned to the Arctic, and sailed 600 miles west beyond the "Crocker Hills", thereby discovering the main axis of the Northwest Passage.
1842 – Ambrose Bierce, American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist. He wrote the short story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and compiled a satirical lexicon The Devil's Dictionary. His vehemence as a critic, his motto "Nothing matters", and the sardonic view of human nature that informed his work, all earned him the nickname "Bitter Bierce". Despite his reputation as a searing critic, Bierce was known to encourage younger writers, including poet George Sterling and fiction writer W. C. Morrow. Bierce was funny politically, always opposed to demagogy and privilege alike, showing no faith that the common man could command politics, or the rich man transcend his greed. Split the difference between George Orwell and Herbert Spencer and you might approach the ideas of this writer who reached millions. In 1913, Bierce traveled to Mexico to gain first-hand experience of the Mexican Revolution. While traveling with rebel troops, he disappeared without a trace.
1850 – Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener, English field marshal. Kitchener won fame in 1898 for winning the Battle of Omdurman and securing control of the Sudan, after which he was given the title "Lord Kitchener of Khartoum"; as Chief of Staff (1900–02) in the Second Boer War he played a key role in Lord Roberts' conquest of the Boer Republics, then succeeded Roberts as commander-in-chief – by which time Boer forces had taken to guerrilla fighting and British forces imprisoned Boer civilians in concentration camps. His term as Commander-in-Chief (1902–09) of the Army in India saw him quarrel with another eminent proconsul, the Viceroy Lord Curzon, who eventually resigned. Kitchener then returned to Egypt as British Agent and Consul-General (de facto administrator). Kitchener's image, his fame, his press have made him such an icon that Steampunks with a destinctive British Victorian bend sometimes use him as a starting point to develop their own characters.
1915 – Fred Hoyle, English astronomer and science fiction author noted primarily for the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis.
1938 – Lawrence Block, American crime writer.
1944 – Kathryn Lasky, American fantasy author (Guardians of Ga'Hoole).
1947 – Peter Weller, American actor (Engineering an Empire).
1950 – Mercedes Lackey, American writer (Velgarth).
1967 – Scott Oden, American historical fiction writer with an "unhealthy interest" in orcs.
Happy birthday guys!