The world's first publicly marketed instant noodles, Chikin Ramen, were introduced on this day in 1958. The number of kids who were able to get through school largely by converting ramen into a dietary staple is incalculable, but surely enormous. One could add anything and everything they had handy to a bowl of ramen and call it a meal.

Linus Torvalds announced the first version of what would become Linux on this day in 1991.
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Apropos:
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Attribution: Larry Ewing

James Lick was born on this day in 1796. He became a carpenter at a young age because his father was one and then learned piano making and set up his own shop making pianos. Upon learning that a lot of his pianos were being exported to South America he moved to Argentina and set up shop there. After a variety of adventures and relocations he guessed that the US would soon go to war with Mexico and annex California, so he moved to San Francisco bringing with him his tools, $30,000 in gold and 600 pounds of chocolate. He arrived just before gold was discovered at Sutters Mill and began buying up San Francisco real estate. He made out like a bandit in the ensuing housing boom and his stash of chocolate sold like hotcakes. Accordingly, he contacted his neighbor in Peru, a confectioner named Domingo Ghirardelli and talked him into moving to San Francisco, where his shop and products became a fixture. Meanwhile he kept buying up real estate and branched out into farming, planting orchards all over the San Jose area. In 1874, he suffered a massive stroke, at which time he owned a lot of property in San Francisco, Santa Clara County, Lake Tahoe, Los Angeles County and all of Santa Catalina Island. He was, in fact, the richest man in California. He stipulated in his will that all of his fortune should be used for the public good (he was seemingly some sort of no-good commie rat.) Among the things created by this legacy were the Conservatory of Flowers in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, and the Lick Observatory atop Mount Hamilton which was given to the University of California, Berkeley, for its astronomy department. At the time it housed the world's largest refracting telescope and was the worlds first mountain top Observatory. It is still in use and still making contributions to science.

Hans Adolph Krebs was born on this day in 1900. He was a biologist, physician, and biochemist as well as a Nobel Prize winner. He was a pioneer in the study of cellular respiration. He is best known for discovering the citric acid cycle, aka Krebs Cycle, and the urea cycle. In case you forgot your high school biology, the Krebs Cycle is as follows:

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Attribution: Narayanese, WikiUserPedia, YassineMrabet, TotoBaggins, CC BY-SA 3.0
, via Wikimedia Commons

On this day in history:

1543 – António Mota and a few companions became the first Europeans to visit Japan.

1609 – Galileo Galilei demonstratesd one of his first telescopes to Venetian lawmakers.

1630 – Portuguese forces were defeated by the Kingdom of Kandy at the Battle of Randeniwela in Sri Lanka.

1814 – On the second day of the Burning of Washington, British troops torched the Library of Congress, United States Treasury, Department of War, and other public buildings.

1825 – The Thirty-Three Orientals declared the independence of Uruguay from Brazil.

1830 – The Belgian Revolution began
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1835 – The first Great Moon Hoax article was published in The New York Sun

1875 – Captain Matthew Webb became the first person to swim across the English Channel

1894 – Kitasato Shibasaburō discovered the infectious agent of the bubonic plague and published his findings in The Lancet.

1912 – The Kuomintang was founded in Peking.

1916 – The United States National Park Service was created.

1933 – Nazi Germany and the Zionist Federation of Germany signed the Haavara Agreement which became a major factor in breaking the anti-Nazi boycott of 1933 and facilitated Jewish emigration from Germany and into Palestine.

1939 – The United Kingdom and Poland formed a military alliance in which the parties mutually promised to lend military assistance to each other in case of an attack by any European nation.

1941 – The United Kingdom and the Soviet Union jointly staged an invasion of the Imperial State of Iran.

1944 – Paris was liberated by the Allies.

1945 – U.S. agent John Birch, assigned to help the defeated Japanese, their collaborators, and the fascist KMT take over China and drive out the Communists was executed in mid-mission by Communist soldiers.

1945 – Vietnam's August Revolution ended as Emperor Bảo Đại abdicated, ending the Nguyễn dynasty.

1948 – The House Un-American Activities Committee held its first-ever televised congressional hearing

1950 – To avert a threatened strike during the Korean War, President Truman ordered Secretary of the Army Frank Pace to seize control of the nation's railroads

1958 – The world's first publicly marketed instant noodles, Chikin Ramen, were introduced

1967 – George Lincoln Rockwell, founder of the American Nazi Party, was assassinated by a fellow Nazi **

1981 – Voyager 2 spacecraft made its closest approach to Saturn.

1989 – Voyager 2 spacecraft made its closest approach to Neptune, the last planet in the Solar System at the time, due to Pluto being within Neptune's orbit from 1979 to 1999.

1989 – Pakistan International Airlines Flight 404, carrying 54 people, disappeared over the Himalayas after takeoff and was never found

1991 – Belarus gained its independence from the Soviet Union.

1991 – Linus Torvalds announced the first version of what would become Linux.

2005 – Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Florida; "Brownie" did a heck of a job.

2012 – Voyager 1 spacecraft entered interstellar space, becoming the first man-made object to do so.

2017 – Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas as a powerful Category 4 hurricane

** The American Nazi Party and many other Nazi and Neo-Nazi groups have adopted that spelling even though NAZI, itself, is an acronym and not some sort of proper noun. I guess historicity doesn't matter to those folks, nor meaning nor content.

Some people who were born on this day:

A bird in the hand is a certainty, but a bird in the bush may sing.

~~ Bret Harte

1561 – Philippe van Lansberge, astronomer and mathematician
1724 – George Stubbs, painter and academic
1744 – Johann Gottfried Herder, poet, philosopher, and critic
1758 – Franz Teyber, organist and composer
1793 – John Neal, writer, critic, editor, lecturer, and activist
1796 – James Lick, carpenter and piano builder
1829 – Carlo Acton, pianist and composer
1836 – Bret Harte, short story writer and poet
1841 – Emil Theodor Kocher, physician and academic
1850 – Charles Richet, physiologist and occultist,
1898 – Helmut Hasse, mathematician and academic
1900 – Hans Adolf Krebs, physician and biochemist,
1902 – Stefan Wolpe, composer and educator
1909 – Ruby Keeler, actress, singer, and dancer
1913 – Walt Kelly, illustrator and animator (Pogo)
1916 – Frederick Chapman Robbins, pediatrician and virologist,
1918 – Leonard Bernstein, pianist, composer, and conductor
1919 – William P. Foster, marching band leader and educator
1928 – Karl Korte, composer and academic
1928 – Herbert Kroemer, physicist, engineer, and academic,
1933 – Patrick F. McManus, journalist and author
1933 – Wayne Shorter, saxophonist and composer
1945 – Daniel Hulet, cartoonist
1947 – Keith Tippett, jazz pianist and composer
1948 – Ledward Kaapana, singer and slack key guitarist
1949 – Gene Simmons, singer, songwriter, producer, and actor
1950 – Willy DeVille, singer and songwriter
1950 – Charles Fambrough, bassist, composer, and producer
1952 – Geoff Downes, keyboard player, songwriter, and producer
1954 – Elvis Costello, singer, songwriter, guitarist, and producer
1955 – John McGeoch, guitarist
1961 – Billy Ray Cyrus, singer, songwriter, guitarist, and actor
1962 – Vivian Campbell, rock guitarist and songwriter
1964 – Maxim Kontsevich, mathematician and academic
1965 – Mia Zapata, singer
1966 – Derek Sherinian, keyboard player, songwriter, and producer
1967 – Jeff Tweedy, singer, songwriter, musician, and producer
1968 – Stuart Murdoch, singer and songwriter
1968 – Spider One, singer, songwriter, and producer
1968 – Rachael Ray, chef, author, and television host
1968 – Takeshi Ueda, singer, songwriter, and bass player
1969 – Olga Konkova, pianist and composer
1970 – Jo Dee Messina, country singer and songwriter
1987 – Amy Macdonald, singer, songwriter, and guitarist
1992 – Miyabi Natsuyaki, singer and actress
1995 – Ong Seong-wu, singer and actor
1995 – Dowoon, musician
1998 – China Anne McClain, actress and singer
2000 – Nicki Nicole, rapper, singer, and songwriter

Some people who died on this day:

Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

~~ Friedrich Nietzsche,

AD 79 – Pliny the Elder, commander and philosopher
1330 – Sir James Douglas, guerrilla leader
1368 – Andrea Orcagna, painter, sculptor, and architect
1632 – Thomas Dekker, author and playwright
1688 – Henry Morgan, privateer and politician, Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica
1742 – Carlos Seixas, organist and composer
1774 – Niccolò Jommelli, composer and educator
1776 – David Hume, economist, historian, philosopher, skeptic, and empiricist
1819 – James Watt, engineer and instrument maker
1822 – William Herschel, astronomer and composer
1867 – Michael Faraday, physicist and chemist
1900 – Friedrich Nietzsche, philologist, philosopher, and critic
1904 – Henri Fantin-Latour, painter and lithographer
1908 – Henri Becquerel, physicist and chemist,
1916 – Mary Tappan Wright, novelist and short story writer
1945 – John Birch, spook
1967 – George Lincoln Rockwell, commander, politician, and activist, founded the American Nazi Party
1971 – Ted Lewis, singer and clarinet player
1976 – Eyvind Johnson, novelist and short story writer,
1979 – Stan Kenton, pianist, composer, and bandleader
1982 – Anna German, singer
1984 – Truman Capote, novelist, playwright, and screenwriter
1995 – Doug Stegmeyer, bass player and producer
1999 – Rob Fisher, keyboard player and songwriter
2000 – Jack Nitzsche, pianist, composer, and producer
2000 – Allen Woody, bass player and songwriter
2001 – Aaliyah, singer and actress
2013 – Raghunath Panigrahi, singer and songwriter
2014 – Nico M. M. Nibbering, chemist and academic
2014 – Uziah Thompson, drummer and producer
2022 – Mable John, blues vocalist

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

Instant Ramen Day
National Banana Split Day
National Whisky Sour Day
National Park Service Founders Day
Motorist Consideration Monday (yeah, riiight)

Today's Tunes

Battle of Randeniwela

Carlo Acton

Stefan Wolpe

Leonard Bernstein

Karl Korte

Wayne Shorter

Keith Tippett

Ledward Kaapana

Willy DeVille

Charles Fambrough

Geoff Downes

Elvis Costello

John McGeoch

Vivian Campbell

Derek Sherinian

Jeff Tweedy **

Olga Konokova

Amy MacDonald

Dowoon

Stan Kenton

Rob Fisher

Jack Nitzsche

Allen Woody

Mable John

** I know that Tweedy founded and fronted a band called Wilco that was quite popular for a while, but I didn't stumble across any good you tubes of anything by Wilco, the band, that I really liked. Beyond that, it was a poor choice of names. Wilco, THE Wilco, is the guitarist in black clothing on the left with who played both lead and rhythm simultaneously

Hey Joe revisitado

y mas

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, ramen, James Lick, Hans Krebs, Bret Harte, David Hume, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jack Nitzsche