06/30 Open Thread - Tunguska

On June 30, 1908, there was a humongous air burst explosion near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Russia. This was Tunguska. So, what, exactly, is humongous/ Well, to be (cough) precise, it has been estimated to have been anywhere from 3 to 50 megatons; that is between 200 and 3,333.33 times the power of the bomb that flattened Hiroshima. If I understand correctly, more recent estimates are more toward the high end, like maybe 30 megatons, which would be 2,000 Hiroshimas. The hypothesis is that a meteor or asteroid about 160 to 200 feet in diameter exploded at an altitude of about 3 to 6 miles while traveling at a rate of 79 to 80 times the speed of sound. (The latest buzz in weaponry circles is hypersonic which is astoundingly super duper stuff and means a paltry speed of Mach 5 or more. We're talking Mach 80 here, 16 "hypers" or somesuch.) This was a seriously forested area, and excepting the non-impact ground zero where the blast was straight down, the forest was blown down over an 830 square mile area, bigger than Maui but smaller than Rhode Island. It was the largest such event in recorded world history. Despite all that, it is alleged to have been a mere 5.0 on the Richter scale, rare-ish, but not that rare in some parts of SoCal, and, since the Richter scale is logarithmic, only only 1/79th as big as Loma Prieta was, which was BIG, for sure, but not THAT big. The wikipedia article on this has some wonderful eyewitness accounts that you should read at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event

On June 30, 1892, Henry Clay Frick locked the employees out of Carnegie Steel, precipitating the Homestead Strike. That was part of an agreed upon plan concocted by Frick and Andrew Carnegie to break the union. It worked. Once a picket line was set up, Frick called in the Sheriff to intervene and force the strikers to allow company managers (and strikebreakers) into the plant. The sheriff's deputies assigned to the task were rounded up and sent packing by the striking workers. Frick then hired a private army, the Pinkertons, augmented by some new hires, all of whom were armed with Winchester repeating rifles and sent to break the strike via an attack from the river. (When they attempted to disembark, a firefight broke out and they were driven off. Both sides accused the other of starting it, but the NYTimes agreed with the workers, and the mercenaries had been armed with repeating rifles, seemingly for just such a purpose.)
The governor then sent in over 6,000 fully armed state militia to break the strike, which they did. Carnegie Steel became a scab run operation and the union withered and died.

On this date in 1977, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) disbanded. It had become pretty obvious that an armed takeover of the world by the mythological unilateral global communist conspiracy wasn't at all a real threat and they had been played. Created under the Truman Doctrine which called for a plethora of collective defence treaties, this was really an Eisenhower-Dulles project, hurriedly slapped together 3 months and one day after Dien Bien Phu made it obvious that we would have to take over the exploitation of French Indochina and any similar outposts of imperialism in the area. It is, however, afaik, the only such "treaty organization" to figure things out, avoid the temptations of hegemony, and bail on self-exploitation.

On this day in history:

1864 – President Abraham Lincoln granted Yosemite Valley to California for "public use, resort and recreation".

1886 – The first transcontinental train trip across Canada departed from Montreal, Quebec.

1892 – The Homestead Strike began near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

1905 – Albert Einstein sent the article On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies , in which he introduced special relativity, for publication in Annalen der Physik.

1906 – The US Congress passed the Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act.

1908 – The Tunguska Event resulted in a massive explosion over Eastern Siberia.

1922 – U.S. Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes and Dominican Ambassador Francisco J. Peynado signed the Hughes–Peynado agreement, which ended the US occupation of the Dominican Republic.

1934 – The Night of the Long Knives

1937 – The world's first emergency telephone number, 999, was introduced in London.

1960 – Belgian Congo gained independence as Republic of the Congo (Léopoldville).

1966 – The National Organization for Women was founded.

1971 – The crew of the Soviet Soyuz 11 spacecraft were killed when their air supply escapesd through a faulty valve.

1972 – The first leap second was added to the UTC time system.

1974 – The Baltimore municipal strike of 1974 begins.[19]

1977 – The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization disbanded

1986 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Bowers v. Hardwick that states can outlaw homosexual acts between consenting adults

1990 – East and West Germany merged their economies.

2013 – Protests began around Egypt against President Mohamed Morsi and the ruling Freedom and Justice Party

Some people who were born on this day:

Democracy was being saved from Communism by getting rid of democracy.

~~ Juan Bosch

1588 – Giovanni Maria Sabino, organist, composer, and educator
1685 – John Gay, poet and playwright
1789 – Horace Vernet, painter and academic
1791 – Félix Savart, physicist and psychologist
1817 – Joseph Dalton Hooker, botanist and explorer
1884 – Georges Duhamel, author and critic
1893 – Nellah Massey Bailey, politician and librarian
1895 – Heinz Warneke, sculptor and educator
1908 – Winston Graham, author
1909 – Juan Bosch, historian, author, essayist, educator and honest politician
1911 – Czesław Miłosz, novelist, essayist, and poet, Nobel Prize laureate
1912 – María Luisa Dehesa Gómez Farías, architect
1914 – Allan Houser, sculptor and painter
1917 – Lena Horne, actress, singer, and activist
1919 – Ed Yost, inventor of the modern hot air balloon
1920 – Eleanor Ross Taylor, poet and educator
1931 – Andrew Hill, pianist and composer
1933 – Cookie, Australian Major Mitchell's cockatoo, oldest recorded parrot
1934 – Harry Blackstone Jr., magician and author
1936 – Dave Van Ronk, singer, songwriter, and guitarist
1937 – Larry Henley, singer and songwriter
1939 – Tony Hatch, pianist, composer, and producer
1940 – Mark Spoelstra, singer, songwriter, and guitarist
1943 – Florence Ballard, pop/soul singer
1944 – Glenn Shorrock, singer and songwriter
1949 – Andy Scott, singer, songwriter, guitarist, and producer
1951 – Stanley Clarke, bass player and composer
1952 – Athanassios S. Fokas, mathematician and academic
1953 – Hal Lindes, guitarist and film score composer
1954 – Stephen Barlow, organist, composer, and conductor
1955 – Brian Vollmer, singer
1958 – Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor and composer
1959 – Brendan Perry, singer, songwriter, guitarist, and producer
1960 – Murray Cook, musician, actor, songwriter and producer
1961 – Lynne Jolitz, computer scientist and programmer
1961 – Clive Nolan, musician, composer and producer
1962 – Julianne Regan, singer, songwriter, and guitarist
1963 – Yngwie Malmsteen, guitarist and songwriter
1967 – Victoria Kaspi, astrophysicist and academic
1968 – Phil Anselmo, singer, songwriter, and producer
1984 – Fantasia Barrino, singer, songwriter, and actress
1995 – bbno$, singer and songwriter

Some people who died on this day:

I think housework is far more tiring and frightening than hunting is, no comparison, and yet after hunting we had eggs for tea and were made to rest for hours, but after housework people expect one to go on just as if nothing special had happened.

~~ Nancy Mitford

1649 – Simon Vouet, painter
1709 – Edward Lhuyd, botanist, linguist, and geographer
1857 – Alcide d'Orbigny, zoologist and paleontologist
1908 – Thomas Hill, painter
1916 – Eunice Eloisae Gibbs Allyn, correspondent, author, and poet
1917 – Antonio de La Gándara, painter and illustrator
1919 – John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, physicist and academic
1959 – José Vasconcelos, philosopher and politician
1961 – Lee de Forest, inventor, invented the audion tube
1966 – Margery Allingham, author of detective fiction
1968 – Ernst Marcus, zoologist
1973 – Nancy Mitford, journalist and author
1974 – Alberta Williams King, civil rights activist
1984 – Lillian Hellman, author and playwright
2001 – Chet Atkins, singer, songwriter, guitarist, and producer
2001 – Joe Henderson, saxophonist and composer
2003 – Robert McCloskey, author and illustrator
2012 – Michael J. Ybarra, journalist and author
2015 – Robert Dewar, computer scientist and academic

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

Asteroid Day (International observance)
National Meteor Day
Independence Day (Democratic Republic of the Congo)
International Sailor Moon Day
National Organization for Women Day

Today's Tunes

Asteroid day, Meteor day, Tunguska

The first leap second

Homestead strike

Lena Horne

Andrew Hill

Dave Van Ronk,

Tony Hatch

Mark Spoelstra

Florence Ballard

Glenn Shorrock

Stanley Clarke

Lee de Forest

Chet Atkins

Joe Henderson

Ok, it's an open thread, so it's up to you folks now. What's on your mind?

Cross posted from http://caucus99percent.com

open thread, Tunguska, Homestead strike, Leap Minute, Yosemite, Relativity, NOW, Lena Horne, Dave Van Rink, de Forest, Mark Spoelstra, Florence Ballard, Chet Atkins