Author: Michael Falkner

The Thing About Today – July 19

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July 19, 2020
Day 201 of 366

 

July 19th is the 201st day of the year. It is Liberation Day in Nicaragua.

 

In the United States, today is “celebrated” as National Daiquiri Day and National Ice Cream Day (which is typically observed on the third Sunday in July).

 

Historical items of note:

  • In 64 AD, the Great Fire of Rome caused widespread devastation. It raged for six days and destroyed half of the city.
  • In 1553, Lady Jane Grey was replaced by Mary I of England as Queen of England after only nine days on the throne.
  • In 1865, Charles Horace Mayo was born. He was the surgeon who founded the Mayo Clinic.
  • In 1883, Austrian-American animator and producer Max Fleischer was born.
  • In 1900, the first line of the Paris Métro opened for operation.
  • In 1924, actor and producer Pat Hingle was born.
  • Also in 1924, director, producer, and screenwriter Arthur Rankin Jr. was born.
  • In 1942, Dmitri Shostakovich’s 7th Symphony premiered in New York City by the NBC Symphony Orchestra under Arturo Toscanini in a concert broadcast nationwide on NBC radio.
  • In 1961, the first in-flight movie was shown on a TWA flight. Trans World Airlines (TWA) was a major American airline that existed from 1930 until 2001.
  • In 1962, actor and director Anthony Edwards was born.
  • In 1963, Joe Walker flew a North American X-15 to a record altitude of 106,010 meters (347,800 feet) on X-15 Flight 90. By exceeding an altitude of 100 km, the flight qualified as a human spaceflight under international convention.
  • In 1976, actor Benedict Cumberbatch was born.
  • In 1977, the world’s first Global Positioning System (GPS) signal was transmitted from Navigation Technology Satellite 2 (NTS-2) and received at Rockwell Collins in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, at 12:41 a.m. Eastern time (ET).
  • In 1981, in a private meeting with United States President Ronald Reagan, French President François Mitterrand revealed the existence of the Farewell Dossier. This collection of documents showed that the Soviet Union had been stealing American technological research and development.
  • In 1982, actor Jared Padalecki was born.
  • In 1983, the first three-dimensional reconstruction of a human head in a CT scan was published.
  • In 2011, Captain America: The First Avenger premiered.

 

July 19th is National Daiquiri Day. The daiquiri is a family of cocktails whose main ingredients are rum, citrus juice (typically lime juice), and sugar or other sweeteners.

Daiquirí is also the name of a beach and an iron mine near Santiago de Cuba, and is a word of Taíno origin. The drink was supposedly invented by an American mining engineer named Jennings Cox, who was in Cuba at the time of the Spanish–American War. According to the legend, United States Congressman William A. Chanler purchased the Santiago iron mines in 1902 and introduced the daiquiri to clubs in New York that year.

Originally, the drink was served in a tall glass packed with cracked ice. A teaspoon of sugar was poured over the ice and the juice of one or two limes was squeezed over the sugar. Two or three ounces of white rum completed the mixture. The glass was then frosted by stirring with a long-handled spoon. It later evolved to be mixed in a shaker with the same ingredients (but with shaved ice) to be poured into a chilled coupe glass.

The drink remained localized until Navy medical Rear Admiral Lucius W. Johnson tried it and introduced it to the Army and Navy Club in Washington, D.C. It became quite popular, particularly during World War II when rum was much easier to come by thanks to the Good Neighbor Policy, and was one of the favorite drinks of writer Ernest Hemingway and President John F. Kennedy.

The basic recipe for a daiquiri is also similar to the grog British sailors drank aboard ship from the 1780s as a means of preventing scurvy. By 1795, the Royal Navy daily grog ration contained rum, water, ¾ ounce of lemon or lime juice, and 2 ounces of sugar. This was a common drink across the Caribbean, even when water was replaced by ice.

A popular alternative is a frozen daiquiri, which is made in a blender using ice to achieve a smoothie-like consistency. Other variations are achieved by using different fruit combinations including strawberries, bananas, and avocados.

 

The Thing About Today is an effort to look at each day of 2020 with respect to its historical context.

For more creativity with a critical eye, visit Creative Criticality.

 

 

The Thing About Today – July 18

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July 18, 2020
Day 200 of 366

 

July 18th is the 200th day of the year. It is Constitution Day in Uruguay.

 

In the United States, today is “celebrated” as National Sour Candy Day, National Caviar Day, National Strawberry Rhubarb Wine Day, and Toss Away the “Could Haves” and “Should Haves” Day. The last two are typically observed on the third Saturday in July.

 

Historical items of note:

  • In 1290, King Edward I of England issued the Edict of Expulsion, banishing all Jews from England. In total, about 16,000 Jewish people were affected, and this was Tisha B’Av on the Hebrew calendar, a day that commemorates many Jewish calamities.
  • In 1870, the First Vatican Council decreed the dogma of papal infallibility.
  • In 1913, actor and comedian Red Skelton was born.
  • In 1921, astronaut John Glenn was born.
  • In 1938, director Paul Verhoeven was born.
  • In 1940, actor James Brolin was born.
  • In 1961, actress Elizabeth McGovern was born.
  • In 1966, Gemini 10 was launched from Cape Kennedy on a 70-hour mission that included docking with an orbiting Agena target vehicle. It was the 8th crewed Gemini flight, the 16th crewed American flight, and the 24th spaceflight of all time. It was crewed by John W. Young and Michael Collins.
  • In 1967, actor, director, producer, and screenwriter Vin Diesel was born. He is Groot.
  • In 1968, Intel was founded in Mountain View, California.
  • In 1976, Nadia Comăneci became the first person in Olympic Games history to score a perfect 10 in gymnastics at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
  • In 1980, actress and comedian Kristen Bell was born.
  • In 1992, a picture of Les Horribles Cernettes was taken. It became the first-ever photo posted to the World Wide Web.

 

In 1918, Nelson Mandela was born. He was a South African lawyer and politician, an anti-apartheid revolutionary, the first President of South Africa, and a Nobel Prize laureate.

Elected in a fully representative democratic election, his government focused on dismantling the legacy of apartheid by tackling institutionalized racism and fostering racial reconciliation. A Xhosa, he was born to the Thembu royal family in Mvezo, Union of South Africa. He worked as a lawyer in Johannesburg and became involved in anti-colonial and African nationalist politics, joining the African National Congress (ANC) in 1943 and co-founding its Youth League in 1944.

After the National Party’s white-only government established apartheid, a system of racial segregation that privileged whites, he and the ANC committed themselves to overthrowing the system. As president of the ANC’s Transvaal branch, he rose to prominence, was repeatedly arrested for seditious activities, and was unsuccessfully prosecuted in the 1956 Treason Trial. Influenced by Marxism, he secretly joined the banned South African Communist Party (SACP), which changed him from non-violent protests to co-founding the militant Umkhonto we Sizwe in 1961. His sabotage campaign against the government got his arrested and imprisoned in 1962, and he was subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment for conspiring to overthrow the state following the Rivonia Trial.

He served 27 years in prison before growing domestic and international pressure, along with fears of racial civil war, forced President F. W. de Klerk to release him in 1990. Together, they led efforts to negotiate an end to apartheid, which resulted in the 1994 multiracial general election in which Mandela led the ANC to victory and became president.

Nelson Mandela International Day (or Mandela Day for short) is an annual international day in honor of his legacy, celebrated annually on his birthday. The day was officially declared by the United Nations in November 2009, and it was first celebrated in 2010.

Mandela Day is a global call to action that celebrates the idea that each individual has the power to transform the world and the ability to make an impact.

 

The Thing About Today is an effort to look at each day of 2020 with respect to its historical context.

For more creativity with a critical eye, visit Creative Criticality.

 

 

The Thing About Today – July 17

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July 17, 2020
Day 199 of 366

 

July 17th is the 199th day of the year. It is World Emoji Day, created by Jeremy Burge based on the way that the calendar emoji looks on the iPhone.

 

In the United States, today is “celebrated” as National Lottery Day, National Peach Ice Cream Day, National Tattoo Day, Wrong Way Corrigan Day, and National Yellow Pig Day.

 

Historical items of note:

  • In 1717, King George I of Great Britain sailed down the River Thames with a barge of 50 musicians, where George Frideric Handel’s Water Music was premiered.
  • In 1867, the Harvard School of Dental Medicine was established in Boston, Massachusetts. It was the first dental school in the United States that was affiliated with a university.
  • In 1899, actor and dancer James Cagney was born.
  • In 1912, Canadian-American radio and television host Art Linkletter was born.
  • In 1917, actress, comedian, and voice artist Phyllis Diller was born.
  • In 1918, the RMS Carpathia, the ship that rescued the 705 survivors from the RMS Titanic, was sunk off Ireland by the German SM U-55. Five lives were lost.
  • In 1935, actor and producer Donald Sutherland was born.
  • In 1952, actor, singer, and producer David Hasselhoff was born.
  • In 1954, author, screenwriter, and producer J. Michael Straczynski was born.
  • In 1955, Disneyland was dedicated and opened by Walt Disney in Anaheim, California.
  • In 1964, actress Heather Langenkamp was born.
  • In 1975, an American Apollo and a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft docked with each other in orbit, marking the first such link-up between spacecraft from the two nations.
  • In 1984, the national drinking age in the United States was changed from 18 to 21.
  • In 1989, the first flight of the B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber occurred.
  • In 2018, twelve new moons were discovered orbiting Jupiter.

 

July 17th is International Firgun Day, a holiday where people share compliments or express genuine pride in the accomplishment of others on social media.

Firgun (פירגון in Hebrew) is an informal modern Hebrew term and concept in Israeli culture. It describes genuine, unselfish delight or pride in the accomplishment of the other person. It also describes a generosity of spirit, or an unselfish, empathetic joy that something good has happened, or might happen, to another person.

The concept does not have a one-word equivalent in English. The word can be traced back to the Yiddish word farginen (a cognate of the German word vergönnen). As a relatively modern addition to Hebrew, the word was initially used in the 1970s and gained momentum in subsequent decades.

Tamar Katriel, a professor of communications at the University of Haifa, has stated that firgun differs from giving compliments since it is “about an affinity that is authentic and without agenda”. The absence of negativity is an integral part of the concept of firgun, and the concept can be found in Talmudic Hebrew as ayin tova or ayin yafa – “a good eye”.

 

The Thing About Today is an effort to look at each day of 2020 with respect to its historical context.

For more creativity with a critical eye, visit Creative Criticality.

 

 

The Thing About Today – July 16

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July 16, 2020
Day 198 of 366

 

July 16th is the 198th day of the year. It is Holocaust Memorial Day in France.

 

In the United States, today is “celebrated” as National Corn Fritters Day, National Personal Chef’s Day, and Get to Know Your Customers Day (which is still observed on the third Thursday of each quarter).

 

Historical items of note:

  • In 622, the Islamic calendar began.
  • In 1661, the first banknotes in Europe were issued by the Swedish bank Stockholms Banco.
  • In 1769, Father Junípero Serra founded California’s first mission, Mission San Diego de Alcalá. Over the following decades, it evolved into the city of San Diego, California (which is one of my favorite Navy cities).
  • In 1790, the District of Columbia was established as the capital of the United States after signature of the Residence Act.
  • In 1862, David Farragut was promoted to rear admiral, becoming the first officer in United States Navy to hold an admiral rank.
  • Also in 1862, Ida B. Wells was born. A journalist and activist, she was one of the founding members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
  • In 1907, farmer and businessman Orville Redenbacher was born. He founded the famous popcorn company.
  • Also in 1907, actress Barbara Stanwyck was born.
  • In 1910, John Robertson Duigan made the first flight of the Duigan pusher biplane, the first aircraft built in Australia.
  • In 1935, the world’s first parking meter was installed in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
  • In 1945, the Atomic Age began when the United States successfully detonated a plutonium-based test nuclear weapon as part of the Manhattan Project near Alamogordo, New Mexico.
  • In 1946, actor Richard LeParmentier was born.
  • In 1963, actress Phoebe Cates was born.
  • In 1967, actor and comedian Will Ferrell was born.
  • In 1969, Apollo 11 was launched from Kennedy Space Center at Cape Kennedy, Florida. It would become the first mission to land astronauts on the Moon.
  • In 2017, the BBC announced that Jodie Whittaker would take on the role of the Doctor, becoming the first female lead of the long-running Doctor Who franchise.

 

July 16th is Engineer’s Day in Honduras.

Only one of many such observances on various days around the world, Engineer’s Day recognizes the  professionals who invent, design, analyze, build, and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets, and materials. All of these functions fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the limitations imposed by practicality, regulation, safety, and cost.

Engineers design and build everything that keeps the world moving, from power systems to machines, information systems, and infrastructure. This work forms the link between scientific discoveries and their subsequent applications to human and business needs and quality of life.

As of November 20, 2019, the World Federation of Engineering Organizations (WFEO) designated March 4th as “World Engineering Day for a Sustainable World”.

 

The Thing About Today is an effort to look at each day of 2020 with respect to its historical context.

For more creativity with a critical eye, visit Creative Criticality.

 

 

Timestamp #205: The Next Doctor

Michael Falkner5 Comments

Doctor Who: The Next Doctor
(Christmas Special, 2008)

 

The Doctor who wasn’t really the Doctor.

The TARDIS materializes under an archway in a snowstorm. The Doctor strides out with a smile on his face, happy to be in London for Christmas in 1851. His joy is interrupted by someone screaming “Doctor!”, and he finds a growling creature behind a door wearing a copper Cyberman mask, a frantic woman, and a man claiming to be the Doctor.

This other Doctor, armed with his own “sonic” screwdriver, tries to lasso the primitive assimilation as it runs up a wall. The Tenth Doctor grabs on and the pair finds themselves dragged along until companion Rosita cuts the rope with a hatchet. The Doctors laugh about their adventure while Rosita chides them. While she goes to check the traps, the Doctor rambles along, mistakenly believing that the other Doctor is a future regeneration. He soon figures out that the other Doctor has memory loss, something that happened just before the Cybermen arrived.

The Tenth Doctor adopts the John Smith alias as the other Doctor rushes off to a funeral.

The Cybermen, led by a new Cyber Leader and a human ally named Mercy Hartigan, review the Cybershade’s surveillance footage while they prepare for the rise of the Cyber King. These Cybermen are the Pete’s World variety, somehow left behind when the worlds merged.

The other Doctor and Rosita observe the funeral procession of Reverend Aubrey Fairchild before springing into action. Rosita heads to the “TARDIS” while the other Doctor investigates the house of the deceased. He’s joined by Mr. Smith, and he explains that the Cybermen presence is linked to a number of murders and child abductions across the city. The rash of crimes started with the death of a man named Jackson Lake and have led to the reverend’s demise by some advanced form of electrocution.

The pair find a pair of infostamps, one of which contains the history of London from 1066 to 1851. The other Doctor has a flashback to his “regeneration” and memory of another infostamp. They also uncover a Cyberman home invasion and have to run. While they flee, John Smith reveals himself as the real Doctor and the other Doctor bypasses the safeties on the infostamp to overload the pursuing Cybermen.

The other Doctor is troubled by the happenings. The Doctor promises to help him.

At the reverend’s graveside service, Miss Hartigan crashes the proceedings with an admission: The reverend had to die in order to get the mourners in one place. She dispatches the Cybermen to attack them, sparing only a few as the rest are deleted.

The Doctors return to Rosita’s side at their home base. Jackson Lake’s belongings are stacked by the wall, kept as evidence of his disappearance, and the Tenth Doctor finds another infostamp in the luggage. The other Doctor shows off his TARDIS – a gas balloon, fueled by the local gasworks for a substantial fee, long-form called Tethered Aerial Release Developed In Style – and dreams of flying it one day.

The Doctor now knows that this man is not him. He shares the story of the Battle of Canary Wharf, presuming that some of the survivors fell through time and landed in London, 1851. He draws the parallels between Jackson Lake and the man’s memories, even showing him the JL inscription on his fob watch. The man, truly Jackson Lake, was flashed with an infostamp that contained all of the Cybermen’s information the Doctor, thus side-booting his brain with an alternate identity.

There’s still one missing piece that Jackson can’t remember, but the Doctor helps him remember based on the amount of luggage on hand: Jackson remembers how the Cybermen invaded his home and killed his wife Caroline. His fugue state ends as he breaks down in tears.

While Jackson Lake mourns and is consoled by Rosita, the infostamps start to chime. The Doctor finds a whole cache of them and realizes that the Cybermen are on the move. The Doctor rushes out, and Jackson sends Rosita after him.

Miss Hartigan fits her survivors with Cyberman EarPods and uses them to fulfill tasks for her. The Doctor and Rosita find the survivors marching children from their workhouses and orphanages to the River Thames. The procession is guarded by Cybershades and Cybermen, and it ends at the court of the Cyber King.

The Doctor and Rosita are ambushed by Miss Hartigan and the Cybermen. The Cybermen don’t recognize the Doctor because of the corrupted data on the infostamp, but they repair it. The Cybermen march on the Doctor and Rosita, but are stopped by Jackson Lake and his cache of infostamps. The trio run (after Rosita sucker punches Miss Hartigan!) and Jackson reveals that his cellar may be a gateway into their operations.

Miss Hartigan, in it for her own social liberation from this patriarchal society, takes control of the child workforce after killing the EarPod-clad men. Meanwhile, the Doctor’s trio finds a Dimension Vault in Jackson’s cellar. The Cybermen used the Dalek technology to travel through time and escape the Void. They follow the tunnels to the enemy base as the Cybermen attempt to convert Miss Hartigan and provide her liberation (from her anger and rage) as their Cyber King.

Unfortunately for them, she’s too strongwilled for conversion. Her mind is too powerful to control, and she uses her new powers to obliterate the Cyber Leader when it tries to intervene.

The conversion has also moved up the CyberKing’s timetable. Since they’re no longer needed, the Cybermen try to delete the children, but the Doctor and Rosita free them instead. While the children run, Jackson remembers that the Cybermen had also abducted his son, and he finds the boy among the workforce. Unfortunately, Frederic is trapped on a ledge, so the Doctor swashbuckles his way up and rescues him.

As the base ignites around them, the Doctor, Jackson, and Frederic run. Outside, a giant mechanical CyberKing rises from the Thames with Miss Hartigan on the throne, ready to convert millions into Cybermen as it rampages through London. Jackson, Frederic, and Rosita rush to safety.

The Doctor grabs the Dimension Vault and uses the “TARDIS” balloon to look the CyberKing in the eye. He offers Miss Hartigan one last chance at mercy, extending the opportunity for the Cybermen to travel using the Dimension Vault to a place where they can live in peace. She rejects him, so he uses the cache of infostamps against her. The assault breaks the cyber connection and leaves her mind open to see what she’s become. The shock and terror of her reasserted humanity destroys all of the Cybermen, leaving the giant automaton to stumble about until the Doctor uses the Dimension Vault to transport it into the time vortex where it will be disintegrated.

Jackson Lake addresses the onlookers and rallies them to cheer for the Doctor as he drifts above the city. Later on, they discuss the Lake family’s future, including Rosita as Frederic’s new nursemaid. The Doctor offers Jackson a look inside the real TARDIS. Jackson is amazed by the sight, but Jackson has had quite enough adventure. He asks the Doctor about his companions, to which the Doctor turns maudlin.

Jackson offers the Doctor a Christmas dinner in honor of all those that they’ve lost. The Doctor accepts.

 

I’m of two minds about this story. The Jackson Lake mystery is simultaneously amusing and tragic, adding a compelling throughline to the Cyberman invasion plot. The flip side is that the climax of the Cyberman story – the Pacific Rim-style CyberKing – is utterly ridiculous.

It’s a shame, really, because this story balloon really flies along until the cyber-mech lets the air right out.

There are some good but minor things that help tie things off:

The infostamp memory files of the Doctor’s lives come from The Time Meddler, The Ice Warriors, Terror of the Autons, City of Death, Arc of Infinity, The Mysterious Planet, Time and the Rani, Doctor Who (The Movie), The Parting of the Ways, and The Family of Blood, none of which are actuallyCyberman stories. The War Doctor does not appear in the library files, which makes sense from a production standpoint, but doesn’t quite jive from an internal chronological standpoint.

Finally, I also love the character development as the Tenth Doctor considers that his time may be coming to an end. He’s excited to think that he won’t be the last of his regenerations, and his joy is infectious.

I just wish that the cyber jaeger hadn’t been a thing.

 

Rating: 4/5 – “Would you care for a jelly baby?”

 

 

Keeping in mind that the Timestamps Project is following the franchise chronologically at this point…

UP NEXT – Sarah Jane Adventures: From Raxacoricofallapatorius with Love

 

The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.

 

 

The Thing About Today – July 15

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July 15, 2020
Day 197 of 366

 

July 15th is the 197th day of the year. It is the Festival of Santa Rosalia, the patron saint of Palermo in Italy, Camargo, Chihuahua, and three towns in Venezuela: El Hatillo, Zuata, and Anzoátegui. She is especially important internationally as a saint invoked in times of plague (disease), and this year she is being invoked by the citizens of Palermo to protect the city from COVID-19.

 

In the United States, today is “celebrated” as National Give Something Away Day, National I Love Horses Day, National Tapioca Pudding Day, National Pet Fire Safety Day, and National Gummi Worm Day.

 

Historical items of note:

  • In 484 BC, the Temple of Castor and Pollux in ancient Rome was dedicated.
  • In 1099, Christian soldiers took the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem during the First Crusade after the final assault of a difficult siege.
  • In 1149, the reconstructed Church of Holy Sepulchre was consecrated in Jerusalem.
  • In 1606, Dutch painter and etcher Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was born.
  • In 1738, Baruch Laibov and Alexander Voznitzin were burned alive in St. Petersburg, Russia. Vonitzin had converted to Judaism with Laibov’s help, with the consent of Empress Anna Ivanovna.
  • In 1789, Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, was named by acclamation Colonel-General of the new National Guard of Paris.
  • In 1799, the Rosetta Stone was found in the Egyptian village of Rosetta by French Captain Pierre-François Bouchard during Napoleon’s Egyptian Campaign.
  • In 1834, the Spanish Inquisition was officially disbanded after nearly 356 years.
  • In 1838, Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered the Divinity School Address at Harvard Divinity School, discounting Biblical miracles and declaring Jesus a great man, but not God. The Protestant community reacted with outrage.
  • In 1916, William Boeing and George Conrad Westervelt incorporated Pacific Aero Products in Seattle, Washington. It was later renamed Boeing.
  • In 1944, actor Jan-Michael Vincent was born.
  • In 1952, actor Terry O’Quinn was born.
  • In 1961, actor Forest Whitaker was born.
  • In 1963, actress Brigitte Nielsen was born.
  • In 1967, actor and special effects designer Adam Savage was born.
  • In 1974, television news reporter Christine Chubbuck shot herself, becoming the first person to commit suicide in a live television broadcast.
  • In 1975, the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project featured the dual launch of an Apollo spacecraft and a Soyuz spacecraft on the first joint Soviet-United States human-crewed flight. It was both the last launch of an Apollo spacecraft and the Saturn family of rockets.
  • In 1977, actress Lana Parrilla was born.
  • In 1988, Die Hard was released.
  • In 2003, AOL Time Warner disbanded Netscape. The Mozilla Foundation was established on the same day.
  • In 2006, Twitter was publicly launched, later becoming one of the largest social media platforms in the world.

 

July 15th is the Bon Festival, known as Obon (お盆) or Bon (盆), a Japanese Buddhist custom to honor the spirits of one’s ancestors.

The Buddhist-Confucian custom has evolved into a family reunion holiday. People have been known to return to ancestral family places and visit and clean their ancestors’ graves when the spirits of ancestors are supposed to revisit the household altars. The custom has been celebrated in Japan for more than 500 years and traditionally includes a dance, known as Bon Odori.

The festival of Obon lasts for three days, but the starting date varies within different regions of Japan. When the lunar calendar was changed to the Gregorian calendar at the beginning of the Meiji era, the localities in Japan responded differently, which resulted in three different times of Obon.

Shichigatsu Bon (Bon in July) is based on the solar calendar and is celebrated in eastern Japan (Kantō region such as Tokyo, Yokohama, and the Tōhoku region). This also coincides with the Ghost Festival Chūgen.

Hachigatsu Bon (Bon in August) is based on the lunar calendar and is celebrated around August 15th. It is the most commonly celebrated time. Kyū Bon (Old Bon) is celebrated on the 15th day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar, thus varying each year between August 8th and September 7th.

One exception was in 2008 and 2019 when the solar and lunar calendars matched, so Hachigatsu Bon and Kyū Bon were celebrated on the same day.

The Buddhist tradition originates from the story of Maha Maudgalyayana (Mokuren), a disciple of the Buddha, who used his supernatural powers to look upon his deceased mother only to discover she had fallen into the Realm of Hungry Ghosts and was suffering. Greatly disturbed, he went to the Buddha and asked how he could release his mother from this realm. Buddha instructed him to make offerings to the many Buddhist monks who had just completed their summer retreat on the fifteenth day of the seventh month. Mokuren did this, securing his mother’s release, but he also began to see the true nature of her past selflessness and the sacrifices she had made for him during her lifetime. The disciple, happy because of his mother’s release from suffering and grateful for her many kindnesses, danced with joy. This gave birth to the Bon Odori or “Bon Dance”, a time during which ancestors and their sacrifices are remembered and appreciated.

 

The Thing About Today is an effort to look at each day of 2020 with respect to its historical context.

For more creativity with a critical eye, visit Creative Criticality.

 

 

The Thing About Today – July 14

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July 14, 2020
Day 196 of 366

 

July 14th is the 196th day of the year. It is Black Country Day in the United Kingdom, which celebrates the area’s role in the Industrial Revolution. The Black Country consists of what traditionalists call “the area where the coal seam comes to the surface”, which tends to encompass “West Bromwich, Coseley, Oldbury, Blackheath, Cradley Heath, Old Hill, Bilston, Dudley, Tipton, Wednesfield, and parts of Halesowen, Wednesbury, and Walsall but not Wolverhampton, Stourbridge and Smethwick or what used to be known as Warley” according to locals.

 

In the United States, today is “celebrated” as National Grand Marnier Day, National Tape Measure Day, National Nude Day, and National Mac & Cheese Day.

 

Historical items of note:

  • In 1798, the Sedition Act became law in the United States. The act made it a federal crime to write, publish, or utter false or malicious statements about the United States government. The Sedition Act expired on March 3, 1801.
  • In 1874, the Chicago Fire of 1874 burned down 47 acres of the city, destroying 812 buildings, killing 20, and resulting in the fire insurance industry demanding municipal reforms from Chicago’s city council.
  • In 1877, the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 began in Martinsburg, West Virginia, when wages of Baltimore and Ohio Railroad workers were cut for the third time in a year. The strike was ended on September 4th by local and state militias and federal troops.
  • In 1881, Billy the Kid was shot and killed by Pat Garrett outside Fort Sumner.
  • In 1910, animator, director, producer, and actor William Hanna was born. He co-founded Hanna-Barbera.
  • In 1926, actor Harry Dean Stanton was born.
  • In 1933, all political parties in Germany were outlawed except the Nazi Party. The Nazi eugenics programs began with the proclamation of the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring that called for the compulsory sterilization of any citizen who suffers from alleged genetic disorders.
  • In 1936, astronaut Robert F. Overmeyer was born.
  • In 1943, in Diamond, Missouri, the George Washington Carver National Monument became the first United States National Monument in honor of an African American.
  • In 1960, Jane Goodall arrived at the Gombe Stream Reserve in present-day Tanzania to begin her famous study of chimpanzees in the wild.
  • Also in 1960, actress Jane Lynch was born.
  • In 1976, capital punishment was abolished in Canada.
  • In 1985, actress Phoebe Waller-Bridge was born.
  • In 1992, 386BSD was released by Lynne Jolitz and William Jolitz, thus beginning the Open Source operating system revolution. Linus Torvalds released his Linux soon afterward.
  • In 2015, NASA’s New Horizons probe performed the first flyby of Pluto, thus completing the initial survey of the Solar System.

 

July 14th is Bastille Day, the national day of France. In French, it is formally called Fête nationale.

The French Revolution was a period of social and political upheaval in both France and its colonies, beginning in 1789 and ending in 1799. The Revolution overthrew the monarchy, established a republic, catalyzed violent periods of political turmoil, and finally culminated in a dictatorship under Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon brought many of the revolution’s principles to areas he conquered in Western Europe and beyond.

Inspired by liberal and radical ideas such as equality before the law, the Revolution influenced the decline of absolute monarchies while replacing them with republics and liberal democracies.

It was on this day in 1789 that citizens of Paris stormed the Bastille, a medieval armory, fortress, and political prison that symbolized royal authority in the center of Paris. The fall of the Bastille marked a major turning point in the Revolution, quickly resulting in the abolition of feudalism and the proclamation of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen).

One year later, the citizens of Paris celebrated the unity of the French people and the national reconciliation in the Fête de la Fédération, a massive holiday festival. At the time, the first French Constitution was still being drafted, but the spirit of it was understood by everyone. The Marquis de La Fayette, a hero of the American Revolutionary War and key figure in the French Revolution, led the President of the National Assembly and deputies in a solemn oath:

We swear to be forever faithful to the Nation, to the Law and to the King, to uphold with all our might the Constitution as decided by the National Assembly and accepted by the King, and to remain united with all French people by the indissoluble bonds of brotherhood.

 

The Thing About Today is an effort to look at each day of 2020 with respect to its historical context.

For more creativity with a critical eye, visit Creative Criticality.

 

 

The Thing About Today – July 13

Michael FalknerLeave a comment

July 13, 2020
Day 195 of 366

 

July 13th is the 195th day of the year. It is Statehood Day in Montenegro, commemorating the day in 1878 on which the Berlin Congress recognized Montenegro as the twenty-seventh independent state in the world.

 

In the United States, today is “celebrated” as National French Fry Day, National Beans ‘N’ Franks Day, and National Delaware Day.

 

Historical items of note:

  • In 1793, journalist and French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat was assassinated in his bathtub by Charlotte Corday, a member of the opposing political faction.
  • In 1814, the Carabinieri, the national gendarmerie of Italy, was established.
  • In 1863, The New York City draft riots began. Opponents of conscription began three days of rioting which will be later regarded as the worst in United States history.
  • In 1919, the British airship R34 landed in Norfolk, England, completing the first airship return journey across the Atlantic in 182 hours of flight.
  • In 1923, the Hollywood Sign was officially dedicated in the hills above Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. It originally read “Hollywoodland” but the four last letters were dropped after renovation in 1949.
  • In 1926, director, producer, and production manager Robert H. Justman was born. He worked on many American TV series including Lassie, The Life of Riley, Adventures of Superman, The Outer Limits, Star Trek, Mission: Impossible, and Then Came Bronson.
  • In 1940, English actor, director, activist, and producer Patrick Stewart was born.
  • In 1942, actor and producer Harrison Ford was born.
  • In 1951, actress and singer Didi Conn was born.
  • In 1956, the Dartmouth workshop commenced, being the first conference on artificial intelligence.
  • In 1977, New York City, amidst a period of financial and social turmoil, experienced an electrical blackout lasting nearly 24 hours that led to widespread fires and looting.
  • Also in 1977, actress Ashley Scott was born.

 

In 1985, the Live Aid benefit concert took place.

Live Aid was a benefit concert that became an ongoing music-based fundraising initiative. The original event was organized by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure to raise funds for the relief of the ongoing Ethiopian famine. This “global jukebox” event was held simultaneously at Wembley Stadium in London, England (attended by about 72,000 people) and John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (attended by exactly 89,484 people).

On the same day, concerts inspired by the initiative were held in other countries, such as the Soviet Union, Canada, Japan, Yugoslavia, Austria, Australia, and West Germany. It was one of the largest-scale satellite link-ups and television broadcasts of all time, with an estimated audience of 1.9 billion across 150 nations who watched the live broadcast.

When organizer Bob Geldof was persuading artists to take part in the concert, he promised them that it would be a one-off event and would never be seen again. Therefore, the concert was never recorded in its complete original form and only secondary television broadcasts were recorded. ABC erased its own broadcast tapes, but copies were donated to the Smithsonian Institution before being presumed lost. MTV decided to keep recordings of its broadcast, but many songs in these tapes were cut short by MTV’s ad breaks and presenters.

An official four-disc DVD set of the Live Aid concerts was released in November 2004, using BBC video sources. Videos from the 1985 event can be found on the YouTube Live Aid channel.

 

The Thing About Today is an effort to look at each day of 2020 with respect to its historical context.

For more creativity with a critical eye, visit Creative Criticality.

 

 

The Thing About Today – July 12

Michael Falkner1 Comment

July 12, 2020
Day 194 of 366

 

July 12th is the 194th day of the year. It is Independence Day in Kiribati (which separated from the United Kingdom in 1979) and São Tomé and Príncipe (which separated from Portugal in 1975).

 

In the United States, today is “celebrated” as National Simplicity Day, National Different Colored Eyes Day National Pecan Pie Day, Paper Bag Day, and Eat Your Jello Day.

 

Historical items of note:

  • In 100 BC, Roman politician and general Julius Caesar was born.
  • In 1493, Hartmann Schedel’s Nuremberg Chronicle, one of the best-documented early printed books, was published.
  • In 1817, essayist, poet, and philosopher Henry David Thoreau was born.
  • In 1854, George Eastman was born. He founded the Eastman Kodak company.
  • In 1862, the Medal of Honor was authorized by the United States Congress.
  • In 1895, architect and engineer Buckminster Fuller was born. He designed the Montreal Biosphère and published more than 30 books, coining or popularizing terms such as “Spaceship Earth”, “Dymaxion” (applied to a house, car, and map), ephemeralization, synergetic, and “tensegrity”. Since he popularized the widely known geodesic dome, the carbon molecules known as fullerenes were named in his honor for their structural and mathematical resemblance to geodesic spheres.
  • Also in 1895, director, producer, and songwriter Oscar Hammerstein II was born.
  • In 1943, German Wehrmacht and Soviet forces engaged in one of the largest armored engagements of all time, known as the Battle of Prokhorovka.
  • In 1951, actress Cheryl Ladd was born.
  • In 1957, astronaut Rick Husband was born. He was the commander of Space Shuttle Columbia when it disintegrated upon re-entry during mission STS-107.
  • In 1971, the Australian Aboriginal Flag was flown for the first time.

 

July 12th is The Twelfth, also known as the Glorious Twelfth or Orangemen’s Day, an Ulster Protestant celebration that celebrates the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the victory of Protestant King William of Orange over Catholic King James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. As noted yesterday, this began the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland.

The event is celebrated with large parades held by the Orange Order and Ulster loyalist marching bands, and streets are bedecked with British flags and bunting while large towering bonfires are lit. The Twelfth is mainly celebrated in Ulster and is a public holiday in Northern Ireland. The Twelfth involves thousands of participants and spectators.

In Ulster, where about half the population is from a Protestant background and half from a Catholic background, the Twelfth has been accompanied by violence since its inception. Many see the Orange Order and its marches as sectarian, triumphalist, and supremacist, as well as a politically unionist and loyalist organization. This violence related to The Twelfth in Northern Ireland worsened during the 30-year ethno-political conflict known as the Troubles.

This violence is often downplayed as the event is presented as a family-friendly cultural event open to tourists, though small factions still tend to stir up trouble.

 

The Thing About Today is an effort to look at each day of 2020 with respect to its historical context.

For more creativity with a critical eye, visit Creative Criticality.

 

 

The Thing About Today – July 11

Michael Falkner1 Comment

July 11, 2020
Day 193 of 366

 

July 11th is the 193rd day of the year. It is Eleventh Night in Northern Ireland, the night before the Twelfth of July, a yearly Ulster Protestant celebration. Large bonfires are lit to celebrate the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the victory of Protestant King William of Orange over Catholic King James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, which began the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland.

It’s also Free Slurpee Day and National 7-Eleven Day at participating 7-Eleven stores in North America. Get yourself some free frozen sugar water!

 

In the United States, today is “celebrated” as National Cheer Up The Lonely Day, National Rainier Cherry Day, National Blueberry Muffin Day, All American Pet Photo Day, and National Mojito Day.

 

Historical items of note:

  • In 1274, Scottish king Robert the Bruce was born.
  • In 1302, the Battle of the Golden Spurs – Guldensporenslag in Dutch – in which a coalition around the Flemish cities defeated King Philip IV of France’s royal army. It is commemorated annually as Feestdag van de Vlaamse Gemeenschap, or the Day of the Flemish Community of Belgium.
  • In 1405, Ming admiral Zheng He set sail to explore the world for the first time. His seven maritime expeditions, the Ming treasure voyages, took place between 1405 and 1433.
  • In 1798, the United States Marine Corps was re-established after having been disbanded after the American Revolutionary War.
  • In 1801, French astronomer Jean-Louis Pons made his first comet discovery. Over the next 27 years, he discovered another 36 comets, more than any other person in history.
  • In 1804, Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr mortally wounded former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton in a duel.
  • In 1893, the first cultured pearl was obtained by Japanese entrepreneur Kōkichi Mikimoto.
  • In 1895, brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière demonstrated movie film technology to scientists.
  • In 1899, essayist and journalist E. B. White was born. He was the author of several highly popular books for children, including Stuart Little (1945), Charlotte’s Web (1952), and The Trumpet of the Swan (1970), as well as a co-author of The Elements of Style, an English language style guide.
  • In 1919, the eight-hour day and free Sunday became law for workers in the Netherlands.
  • In 1920, Russian actor and dancer Yul Brynner was born.
  • In 1921, former President of the United States William Howard Taft was sworn in as 10th chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, becoming the only person ever to hold both offices.
  • In 1950, actor Bruce McGill was born.
  • In 1956, actress Sela Ward was born.
  • In 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee was first published in the United States.
  • In 1962, the first transatlantic satellite television transmission took place.
  • In 1966, actor Greg Grunberg was born.
  • In 1973, Varig Flight 820 crashed near Paris, France on approach to Orly Airport, killing 123 of the 134 onboard. In response, the Federal Aviation Administration banned smoking in airplane lavatories.
  • In 1977, Martin Luther King, Jr. was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
  • In 1979, America’s first space station, Skylab, was destroyed as it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere over the Indian Ocean.

 

July 11th is World Population Day. Established by the United Nations, it’s a day that seeks to raise awareness of population issues, such as the importance of family planning, gender equality, poverty, maternal health, and human rights.

It was inspired by the public interest in Five Billion Day on July 11, 1987, the approximate date on which the world’s population reached five billion people. While press interest and general awareness in the global population surges only at the increments of whole billions of people, the world population increases annually by 100 million approximately every 14 months.

On January 1st, it was estimated at 7,621,019,000 people. Today it is approximately 7,797,200,000. It is estimated that the world population reached one billion for the first time in 1804. 123 years later, in 1927, it reached two billion, but it took only 33 years to reach three billion in 1960. Thereafter, it reached four billion in 1974, five billion in 1987, six billion in 1999, and, according to the United States Census Bureau, seven billion in March 2012.

The United Nations, however, estimated that the world population reached seven billion in October 2011.

According to current projections, the global population will reach eight billion by 2024, and is likely to reach around nine billion by 2042.

 

The Thing About Today is an effort to look at each day of 2020 with respect to its historical context.

For more creativity with a critical eye, visit Creative Criticality.