Moon of the Day

Man landed on the moon on this day in 1969.

"The sun and the moon and the stars would have long ago disappeared...had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands." -- Havelock Ellis.

They smelled a Surratt

A blow was struck for equality on this day in 1865. Mary Surratt became the first woman executed by hanging by the federal government. She was the proprietress of a boarding house in Washington, D. C. Her son was a friend of the actor John Wilkes Booth. Those two and some other conspirators met in the house to plot the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, which was carried out on April 14, 1865. Mary Surratt was arrested and tried for conspiracy, and sentenced to death by a military commission. Whether she was guilty is still is a controversy. She and four others were hanged on July 7. Her son, who had fled,  was found and later brought to trial, but released when the government failed to bring an indictment.

The story is the subject of an excellent 2010 movie called "The Conspirator." Robin Wright (shown in picture), the former Mrs. Sean Penn, played Mary Surratt.  

It's an okay old flag

On June 14, 1777, the Continental Congress approved a resolution creating a national flag. It hardly made a ripple. No one outside of the government knew about it until a blurb in a Pennsylvania newspaper mentioned it three months later.

Happy Flag Day!

Success takes drive

On June 6, 1933, Richard Hollingsworth opened the world's first drive-in movie theater, in Camden, New Jersey. More than 600 people drove in, at 25 cents a head plus 25 cents per car, to see Wives Beware, starring Adolphe Menjou.  

Hollingsworth had come up with the idea some years before, when he took some friends outside to show them home movies, because it was too hot indoors. He set up his projector atop his Model A and showed his movies on a sheet draped from his garage door. It was a hit. His first impulse was to show movies at gas stations, but he found that gas-station owners wouldn't pay for it. So he built his own theater, which featured ramps that tilted cars up so that people could see over the cars in front of them.

Relevant trivia:  Adolphe Menjou had earlier starred in the movies Road Show, A Kiss in the Dark, and Open All Night.

Somewhere, across the ocean

On May 20, 1932, Amelia Earhart flew solo across the Atlantic, five years to the day after Lindbergh's flight.  She was not only the first woman to do it solo, she was also the first person to cross the Atlantic twice. Her time of flight beat a 13-year record set by two British fliers.

Earhart disappeared in 1937 while attempting to be the first person to fly around the world.

Just the fax

The first fax service, between the cities of Paris and Lyon, France, a distance of over 200 miles, was established on this date in the year—got a guess? How about 1865, eleven years before Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone?

Better than that, the fax machine was actually patented in 1843, by Alexander Bain, a Scottish clockmaker. He called it a pantelegraph, because he envisioned it transmitting messages over telegraph lines. His invention used pendulums at each end of the line to transmit messages, and he never could them to synchronize, so he threw in the towel. 

Twenty years later, a Catholic priest named Giovanni Caselli and his partner, Gustav Froment, got the bugs out and unveiled a fax that sent messages written on ordinary paper, and could send several simultaneously. They demonstrated their device to Emperor Napoleon III of France, who liked it so much he passed a law establishing the world’s first fax service.   

We'd like to see more blood, though

The first Academy Awards presentation to be shown on TV was on this day in 1953.

"We are drawn to our television sets each April the way we are drawn to the scene of an accident." -- Vincent Canby.

And the price of stamps went up on the 21st

The U. S. Post Office was established on this day in 1792.

“I have received no more than one or two letters that were worth the postage.” 

          -- Henry David Thoreau.

Ignorance is bliss

August 21, 1878: The American Bar Association was formed.


"Lawyers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished." -- Jeremy Bentham.

Especially at night

The first cross-country automobile race was held on this day in 1923.


“Thanks to the Interstate highway system, it is now possible to travel from coast to coast without seeing anything.” -– Charles Kuralt.

There's something evil in the air

The first trans-Atlantic air service began on this day in 1939.

“The conquest of the air, so jubilantly hailed by general opinion, may turn out the most sinister event that ever befell us.” -– John Galsworthy.

Well, he was blind, you know

Beethoven gave his first public performance on this day in 1795, in Vienna.
"Beethoven always sounded to me like the upsetting of bags of nail, with here and there an also dropped hammer." -- John Ruskin.

Yes, sir, sir!

The U. S. Navy was established on this day in 1794.

"Military men are the scourges of the world." -- Guy de Maupassant.

We'd like to see more blood, though

The first Academy Awards presentation to be shown on TV was on this day in 1953.

"We are drawn to our television sets each April the way we are drawn to the scene of an accident." -- Vincent Canby.

And you have to wait longer for a doctor

On this date in 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell was granted a medical degree from Geneva College in New York, becoming the first female to be officially recognized as a physician in U.S. history.

"God heals, and the doctor takes the Fees."  --  Ben Franklin.

The doctor had told him more than a year ago, on the subject of his knees and hip, that he ought to get more exercise. Sully sat on his ass all day at work, and then when he got off he headed straight for the Note and sat on his ass there, and there wasn’t any reason he couldn’t get out and walk a little on his days off. Except that he didn’t want to. Besides, it pained him to walk very far, and if that was the case then he couldn’t see how it was doing him any good. Fuck the doctor, Sully thought. Fuck doctors. They were all quacks.  --  Chapter 5, The Misforgotten.

Hold it right there now, Pilgrim

The Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock on this day in 1620.

"A Pilgrim Father was one who, leaving Europe in 1620 because not permitted to sing psalms through his nose, followed it to Massachusetts, where he could personate God according to the dictates of his conscience." – Ambrose Bierce.

"It is a pity that instead of the Pilgrim Fathers landing on Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Rock had not landed on the Pilgrim Fathers." – Chauncey Depew.

Not exactly a lofty sentiment

Today is Wright Brothers day. The first successful powered flight on the morning of December 17, 1903, in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, lasted 12 seconds and spanned approximately 120 feet.

"The conquest of the air...may turn out to be the most sinister event that ever befell us." -- John Galsworthy.

Rejected motto of the South Pole Bureau of Tourism

The South Pole was discovered on this day in 1911.

"Great God! this is an awful place!" -- Robert F. Scott, Polar explorer.

Not a real kick for him

November 6, 1869 -- First college football game played.

"To watch a football game is to be in prolonged neurotic doubt as to what you're seeing." -- Jacques Barzun.
 
Sully had a theory that Americans’ lust for this idiotic game was explained by their shrinking attention span. Six seconds of actual play, sandwiched in between interminable stretches of players standing around while a crew of crazed announcers—were they on steroids, too?—told viewers what they’d just seen and what they were just about to see, was the perfect diversion, or religion in many cases.  -- Chapter 36, The Misforgotten.

Moon of the Day

Man landed on the moon on this day in 1969.

"The sun and the moon and the stars would have long ago disappeared...had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands."  --  Havelock Ellis.

He carried his things around and set them on the deck, pulled a sweatshirt from his bag and walked out onto the beach. A moon as big as a basketball was shining on the sea. Sully found a lounge chair and settled into it. In the distance he could see a twinkling of lights, but the shoreline here was as desolate as the surface of the moon. Which man had now attained. Mankind. Sully lay back and ogled the shimmering disk, and recognized, in the outline of shadows formed by craters and cliffs, not the Man in the Moon but a bird perched on a crag, poised to take flight.  --  Chapter 15, The Misforgotten.