07/24 is Simon Bolivar Day (Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia, and Bolivia)
~~ Simon Bolivar
Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar Palacios Ponte y Blanco aka Simon Bolivar was a Venezuelan rebel who led New Granada, Venezuela, Panama, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, to independence from Spain. (Those countries included what is now Colombia; Venezuela, New Granada, Ecuador, and Panama were, for a while, merged into Gran Colombia. He served various of these "states" as a military leader and a political leader at various times. He freed the slaves, by edict, in areas he controlled. Some have criticized him as being too autocratic, blithely ignoring the fact that there was a war of revolution ging on, actually several, with a lot of intrique and that he was a military as well as a political leader. In this regard it should be noted that in South and Central America, where it matters, he is known as "liberator", El Liberatador", not "conqueror", Conquistador". He died of TB.
The SS Eastland capsized while docked, killing 844 passengers and crew, the greatest loss of life from any shipwreck on the Great Lakes at the time. A hard luck passenger ship christened in May 1903, she ran into and sank a tug tied to a dock in July of that year and then suffered a mutiny in August, shortly after which her captain was replaced. Because her speed wasn't up to specs and her draft was too deep for Michigan's Black River, she was sent back for modifications that September. The modifications increased her speed and raised her draft, while making her less stable than she had been. After that she had several changes of ownership and a habit of listing to one side or the other, especially when loading, once listing as far as 25 degrees. There were also additional modifications to attempt to deal with this issue, some of which reduced her passenger capacity, removed staterooms, and the like. Finally, after less that 12 years of service she capsized at the dock in Chicago with a great loss of life. Given her history, her owners did the only thing they could do, they raised her and sold her to the Navy, which, after some modifications, named her the USS Wilmette, and used her as a training ship on the great lakes.
On this day in history:
1534 -- Jacques Cartier claimed the Gaspe' Peninsula for France
1823 -- Chile abolished Slavery
1823 -- The Battle of Lake Maracaibo cemented independence for the Gran Colombia.
1847 -- Brigham Young led 148 Mormons into Salt Lake Valley
1901 -- O. Henry was released from prison after doing time for embezzlement
1911 -- Machu Picchu was re-discovered by Hiram Bingham III
1915 – The SS Eastland capsized while tied to a dock in the Chicago River killing 844.
1922 -- The draft of the British Mandate of Palestine was formally confirmed by the League of Nations
1929 -- The Kellogg-Briand Pact, renouncing war as an instrument of foreign policy, went into effect, heh
1943 -- Operation Gomorrah (bombing of Hamburg) began, eventually killing over 30,000 people
1950 -- Cape Canaveral Air Force Station began operating and launched a rocket
1959 – Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev have their famous "Kitchen Debate".
1974 -- The Supremes ordered Tricky Dick to turn over the tapes
1983 -- The Sri Lankan Civil War began
Some people who were born on this day:
The United States appear to be destined by Providence to plague America with misery in the name of liberty.
~~ Simon Bolivar
1783 -- Simon Bolivar, revolutionary, military commander, politician
1786 -- Joseph Nicollet, mathematician and astronomer who mapped the upper Mississippi
1802 -- Alexandre Dumas, novelist and playwright
1860 -- Alphonse Mucha, painter and illustrator
1889 -- Agnes Meyer Driscoll, aka Madam X, a cryptanalyst
1895 -- Robert Graves, poet, novelist & critic
1897 -- Amelia Earhart, pilot and author
1900 -- Zelda Fitzgerald, writer, first US flapper
1912 -- Essie Summers, major romance novelist
1914 -- Frances Oldham Kelsey, pharmacologist and FDA reviewer, refused to approve thalidomide
1916 -- John D. MacDonald, author
1920 -- Bella Abzug, aka Battling Bella, lawyer, activist, politician and hat fancier
1921 -- Billy Taylor, jazz pianist
1935 -- Pat Oliphant, political cartoonist
1942 -- Heinz, bassist, singer and songwriter (Telstar)
1942 -- David Miner, guitarist, singer, songwriter, co-founder of The Great Society
1944 -- Jim Armstrong, guitarist
1946 -- Herve Vilard, singer and songwriter
1953 -- Jon Faddis, trumpet player
1969 -- Jennifer Lopez, actress, singer and dancer
Some people who died on this day:
“He wanted to live life so intensely that he could die at any moment without regrets.”
~~ Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
1601 -- Joris Hoefnagel, painter and printmaker
1927 – Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, author wrote Rashomon and Other Stories
1986 -- Fritz Albert Lipmann, biochemist, co-discoverer of coenzyme A
1991 – Isaac Bashevis Singer, novelist and short story writer
1992 -- Arletty, star of Les Enfants du Paradis
1994 – Helen Cordero, Cochiti Pueblo potter
2011 – Harald Johnsen, bassist and composer
2012 -- Larry Hoppen, singer and guitarist, co-founder of Orleans
2012 – Robert Ledley, physiologist and physicist, invented the CT scanner
2013 – Virginia E. Johnson, half of Masters and Johnson
Some Holidays, Holy Days, Festivals, Feast Days, Days of Recognition, and such:
Simon Bolivar Day (Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia, and Bolivia)
Pioneeer Day (Utah)
Amelia Earhart Day
Today's Tunes
The Kellogg-Briand Pact
Cape Canaveral
Billy Taylor
Heinz
David Miner
Jim Armstrong
Herve Vilard
John Faddis
J-Lo
Larry Hoppen
Bonus:
Billy Taylor --
David Miner / The Great Society --
I will not be here when this posts
Ok, it's an open thread, so it's up to you folks now. So what's on your mind?
Cross posted from http://caucus99percent.com
Open Thread,The Kellogg-Briand Pact, Simon Bolivar, Amelia Earhart, Frances Oldham Kelsey, UB-40, Larry Hoppen, The Great Society
Comments
Good morning...
Doing a little deck repair today on a spot where flower pots once sat and rotted the ends of the deck boards. Shouldn't be too bad a job (I hope).
The Grayzone has a piece about Ecuador.
Threatened by lawsuits and standing in the way of billions of dollars worth of raw material deemed necessary to drive the "green" renewable energy transition, an indigenous family is defending their rainforest, while a multinational mining company and the Ecuadorian government find ways to circumvent constitutionally enshrined indigenous rights.
Over and over again my friends.
Thanks for the OT and all the music!
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
Big difference between liberator and conqueror
Good for Simon Bolivar. Wish the primary education system could
parse that one out. Teach the children well.
Thanks for the OT and hope you are on the mend!
question everything
I think that today --
I'm going to listen to the background music for Star Trek: The Animated Series:
The animation wasn't very good, but the music was!
The ruling classes need an extra party to make the rest of us feel as if we participate in democracy. That's what the Democrats are for. They make the US more durable than the Soviet Union was.
Ahh, the music of the spheres
thanks cassi
question everything
Russophobia is rampant in the Baltic states.
Not the weather forecast that people were hoping for.
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/4116279-heatwave-expected-to-ex...
Ukraine in a nutshell.
Well, here's a new development
... not certain what the strategy is.
Or what this means.
I have no idea but having checked out @allaboutgold it is
apparent that the individual leans left. I have not been able to verify if the tweet is credible.
Interesting,
if real. The index file certainly contains entries that sound salacious enough. Hope a lot of people are downloading and archiving this before the dobers come out...
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
I am told
that there is nothing new there, and the last file date was 2019. Sounds like it was a false alarm.
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
Monday Monday
la da da, la da da,
Hi all, Hey EL! Hope it's all good out there!
As a youth collecting stamps we would get these bags of assorted worldwide stamps, for about a penny each, often on paper still. It was a great way to learn Geography and History, and sometimes natural history. I knew all the countries of the world and their flags years ahead of same-age students, except another stamp-collector, because of it. One common theme was stamps from South American countries with Simon' Bolivar on them. The only person on so many stamps from so many countries was the Queen of England. I guess the key difference being countries using her image were generally not doing it out of choice, and for a liberator.
Somehow missed this one in school...
1929 -- The Kellogg-Briand Pact, renouncing war as an instrument of foreign policy, went into effect, heh
well, it was nice while it lasted...
back to sweltering...
have good ones all!
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein