On July 21, 1904, Louis Rigolly became the first man to break the 100 mph barrier on land. On July 21, 1925, Malcolm Campbell became the first man to exceed 150 mph on land. It was the Roaring Twenties, we had cars, fast cars even, speedboats, submarines, farm tractors and even airplanes. But, all the same,in between those dates and beyond, time, in Tennessee, seemingly remained frozen somewhere around 1600 or thereabouts. The US has always had more than its fair share of thought police, a huge percentage of whom were partisans of some one or another religious sect who wanted to force the entire world to think believe and act in accordance with the "teachings" of their specific thought leader. Though these sects and their respective thought leaders had numerous differences, they also had large areas of agreement and were thus often able to get sundry "blue laws" requiring the victims citizenry to adhere to some behavioral conformity with some putative religious precept. One such law was The Butler Act, a Tennessee law prohibiting the teaching of "human evolution" in public schools, within said state. This brings us to the Scopes Trial or Scopes Monkey Trial as it was often known, which was held in Dayton Tennessee and decided on July 21, 1925. The "Monkey Trial" designation derived from the fact that a great many of the "thought leaders" of the various sects falsely asserted that the theory of evolution held that humans had descended from monkeys and their followers did not bother to look into the matter because it was their practice to go along with whatever their respective thought leader said about pretty much anything and everything.

The victim defendant, John Thomas Scopes wasn't at all sure that he had actually taught human evolution in public school in Tennessee,but was willing to state that he had done so, all the same. The trial really wasn't so much about truth and facts, let alone reality as it was about the validity of the law. The defense was initially looking to get the law overturned on the grounds that it violated the First Amendment and then added an argument that evolution didn't necessarily violate the bible, an argument irrelevant to the issue of whether the law was violated as well as to whether the law was constitutional. Scopes was convicted and fined $100, which was big money back in the day. The case was appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court which, of course, upheld the law, though they did use some fatuous arguments in so doing, but, surprisingly tossed out the conviction on a technicality. It seems that the judge set the fine but Tennessee judges couldn't set fines that high, so it should've been done by the jury. It did eventually get overturned by the US Supreme Court but not until 1968, by which time it was moot, the Butler Act having been repealed by Tennessee in 1967.

The 1952 Kern County earthquake was a big mother. It says below that it was a 7.3Mw, which stands for moment magnitude, which I can't compare to anything, though, as a Californian, I've been through tons of quakes including some seriously big ones, but I grew up in the Richter Scale universe, not the moment magnitude scale universe. I tried finding a comparison chart to no avail, so I turned to google, specifically, its "AI Overview" and repeatedly asked it what moment magnitude is a __ on the Richter scale and discovered that a 1 Richter is less than 1.6 Mw, 2 is n/a, 3 is 3, 4 is 4, 5 is 5, and so on up through 9 is 9, whereupon I got bored. For my simplistic " Huh (or wow), what was that one?" purposes I'm back where I was; 3 and below is meh, 5 is getting pretty big, 7 and 8 are big mothers and somewhere around 9 they veer off into "ginormous". Hope this helps some of my fellow geezers and geezettes.

On this day in history:

356 BC – The Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, was destroyed by arson.

365 – The Crete earthquake shook the Greek island of Crete with a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (Extreme), causing a destructive tsunami that hammered the coasts of Libya and Egypt, especially Alexandria. Many thousands were killed.

1645 – Qing dynasty regent Dorgon issues an edict ordering all Han Chinese men to shave their forehead and braid the rest of their hair into a queue identical to those of the Manchus.

1718 – The Treaty of Passarowitz between the Ottoman Empire, Austria and the Republic of Venice was signed.

1774 – Russia and the Ottoman Empire signed the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca

1865 – In the market square of Springfield, Missouri, Wild Bill Hickok shot and killed Davis Tutt in what is regarded as the first western showdown.

1873 – In Adair, Iowa, the James–Younger Gang pulled off the first successful train robbery in the old west

1904 – Louis Rigolly became the first man to break the 100 mph barrier on land.

1907 – The passenger steamer SS Columbia sank after colliding with the steam schooner San Pedro off Shelter Cove, California presaging, in some ways, the loss of the Titanic years later

1920 – The "Belfast Pogrom" set off two years of violence with the expulsion of thousands of Catholic shipyard, factory and linen mill workers from their jobs.

1925 – In Dayton, Tennessee, high school biology teacher John T. Scopes was found guilty of teaching human evolution

1925 – Malcolm Campbell becomes the first man to exceed 150 mph on land.

1936 – The Central Committee of Antifascist Militias of Catalonia was constituted, establishing an anarcho-syndicalist economy in Catalonia.

1949 – The United States Senate ratified the North Atlantic Treaty.

1952 – The 7.3 Mw  Kern County earthquake struck Southern California with a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (Extreme), killing 12 and injuring hundreds.

1954 – The Geneva Conference temporarily partitioned Vietnam into North Vietnam and South Vietnam.

1959 – NS Savannah, the first nuclear-powered cargo-passenger ship, was launched

1969 – At 02:56 UTC, astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the Moon

1970 – After 11 years of construction, the Aswan High Dam in Egypt was completed.

1973 – In Lillehammer, Norway, Mossad agents killed an innocent waiter

1983 – The world's lowest temperature in an inhabited location was recorded at Vostok Station, Antarctica at −89.2 °C (−128.6 °F).

1990 – Taiwan's military police forced mainland Chinese immigrants into sealed holds of a fishing boat, causing 25 people to die from suffocation.

2011 – NASA's Space Shuttle program ended with the landing of Space Shuttle Atlantis on mission STS-135

2012 – Erden Eruç completed the first solo human-powered circumnavigation of the world.

Some people who were born on this day:

The Medium is the message

~~ Marshall McLuhan

1620 – Jean Picard, astronomer
1664 – Matthew Prior, poet and diplomat
1808 – Simion Bărnuțiu, historian, academic, and politician
1810 – Henri Victor Regnault, chemist and physicist
1816 – Paul Reuter, journalist, founded Reuters
1858 – Lovis Corinth, painter
1866 – Carlos Schwabe, Symbolist painter and printmaker
1880 – Milan Rastislav Štefánik, astronomer, general, and politician
1882 – David Burliuk, futurist author and illustrator
1896 – Sophie Bledsoe Aberle, anthropologist, physician and nutritionist
1898 – Sara Carter, singer and songwriter
1899 – Hart Crane, poet
1899 – Ernest Hemingway, novelist, short story writer, and journalist, Nobel Prize laureate
1903 – Russell Lee, photographer and journalist
1911 – Marshall McLuhan, author and theorist
1920 – Isaac Stern, violinist and conductor
1922 – Philomena Franz, author
1922 – Kay Starr, singer
1923 – Rudolph A. Marcus, chemist and academic
1930 – Helen Merrill, singer
1931 – Sonny Clark, pianist and composer
1931 – Plas Johnson, saxophonist
1932 – Kaye Stevens, singer and actress
1933 – John Gardner, novelist, essayist, and critic
1938 – Anton Kuerti, pianist, composer, and conductor
1939 – Jamey Aebersold, saxophonist and educator
1939 – Kim Fowley, singer, songwriter, producer, and manager
1943 – Henry McCullough, guitarist, singer and songwriter
1948 – Cat Stevens, singer,songwriter, and guitarist
1948 – Garry Trudeau, cartoonist
1949 – Hirini Melbourne, singer, songwriter, and poet
1953 – Eric Bazilian, singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, arranger, and producer
1953 – Jeff Fatt, keyboard player
1955 – Howie Epstein, bass player, songwriter, and producer
1955 – Taco, singer and entertainer
1960 – Amar Singh Chamkila, singer and songwriter
1961 – Jim Martin, singer, songwriter, and guitarist
1969 – Emerson Hart, singer, songwriter, guitarist, and producer
1970 – Michael Fitzpatrick, singer and songwriter
1972 – Korey Cooper, singer and guitarist
1975 – Cara Dillon, singer and songwriter
1978 – Damian Marley, singer, songwriter, and producer
1981 – Paloma Faith, singer, songwriter, and actress
1981 – Blake Lewis, musician
1981 – Romeo Santos, singer and songwriter
1986 – Rebecca Ferguson, singer and songwriter
1998 – Maggie Lindemann, singer and songwriter
2000 – Lia, singer

Some people who died on this day:

O, wad some Power the giftie gie us

To see oursels as others see us!

It wad frae monie a blunder free us,

An' foolish notion.

~~ Robert Burns

1403 – Henry Percy, soldier, Shakespeare's Hotspur & much more
1796 – Robert Burns, poet and songwriter
1798 – Anthony Perry, rebel leader
1878 – Sam Bass, businessman
1920 – Fiammetta Wilson, astronomer and educator
1944 – Claus von Stauffenberg, soldier who attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler
1948 – Arshile Gorky, painter and illustrator
1966 – Philipp Frank, physicist, mathematician, and philosopher, Vienna Circle member
2005 – Long John Baldry, singer and actor
2014 – Louise Abeita, Isleta Pueblo writer, poet, and educator
2015 – Robert Broberg, singer and songwriter
2015 – E. L. Doctorow, novelist, short story writer, and playwright
2020 – Annie Ross, singer and actress
2023 – Tony Bennett, singer

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

Global Hug Your Kids Day
Take a Monkey to Lunch Day

Today's Tunes

Wild Bill

Scopes Trial

Erden Eruç

Earthquakes

Sara Carter

Isaac Stern

Kay Starr

Helen Merrill

Sonny Clark

Plas Johnson

Kaye Stevens

Anton Kuerti

Jamey Aebersold

Kim Fowley

Henry McCullough

Cat Stevens

Hirini Melbourne

Howie Epstein

Damian Marley

Robert Burns

Long John Baldry

Annie Ross

Tony Bennett

Speaking of monkeys:

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, Scopes Trial, earthquakes, Marshall Mcluhan, Robert Burbs, Cat Stevens, Hirini Melbourne, Long John Baldry