I’m back in Chicago, and today is Tuesday, July 9, 2019, and it’s National Sugar Cookie Day, celebrating the most puerile of all cookies. This evening begins the Bahá’í holiday of the Martyrdom of the Báb (executed on this day in 1850), and it’s also Constitution Day in both Australia and Pulau.
And all the ducks are still alive and thriving. More later.
Stuff that happened on July 9 include these things:
- 1540 – King Henry VIII of England annuls his marriage to his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves.
Queen Anne couldn’t produce an heir, and Wikipedia explains:
Despite Henry’s very vocal misgivings, the two were married on 6 January 1540 at the royal Palace of Placentia in Greenwich, London, by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer. The phrase “God send me well to keep” was engraved around Anne’s wedding ring. Immediately after arriving in England, Anne conformed to the Anglican form of worship, which Henry expected. The couple’s first night as husband and wife was not a successful one. Henry confided to Cromwell that he had not consummated the marriage, saying, “I liked her before not well, but now I like her much worse.”
In February 1540, speaking to the Countess of Rutland, Anne praised the King as a kind husband, saying: “When he comes to bed he kisseth me, and he taketh me by the hand, and biddeth me ‘Good night, sweetheart’; and in the morning kisseth me and biddeth ‘Farewell, darling.'” Lady Rutland responded: “Madam, there must be more than this, or it will be long ere we have a duke of York, which all this realm most desireth.”
Anne of Cleves was not beheaded, but died of cancer at age 42. But wait! There’s more!
- 1776 – George Washington orders the Declaration of Independence to be read out to members of the Continental Army in Manhattan, while thousands of British troops on Staten Island prepare for the Battle of Long Island.
- 1816 – Argentina declares independence from Spain.
- 1850 – U.S. President Zachary Taylor dies after eating raw fruit and iced milk; he is succeeded in office by Vice President Millard Fillmore.
- 1850 – Persian prophet Báb is executed in Tabriz, Persia. [JAC: see above]
- 1893 – Daniel Hale Williams, American heart surgeon, performs the first successful open-heart surgery in United States without anesthesia.
Without anesthesia????
- 1896 – William Jennings Bryan delivers his Cross of Gold speech advocating bimetallism at the 1896 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
- 1943 – World War II: The Allied invasion of Sicily soon causes the downfall of Mussolini and forces Hitler to break off the Battle of Kursk.
- 1986 – The New Zealand Parliament passes the Homosexual Law Reform Act legalising homosexuality in New Zealand.
- 1993 – The Parliament of Canada passes the Nunavut Act leading to the 1999 creation of Nunavut, dividing the Northwest Territories into arctic (Inuit) and sub-arctic (Dene) lands based on a plebiscite.
Notables born on this day include:
- 1819 – Elias Howe, American inventor, invented the sewing machine (d. 1867)
- 1858 – Franz Boas, German-American anthropologist and linguist (d. 1942)
- 1901 – Barbara Cartland, prolific English author (d. 2000)
- 1925 – Guru Dutt, Indian actor, director, and producer (d. 1964)
Dutt produced and starrred in the 1960 Urdu-language movie Chaudhvin Ka Chand (“Full Moon”), which contains this eponymous song—my favorite Bollywood movie song. Here Dutt sings it to his inamorata (I believe Waheeda Rehman). The song was composed by Rafi, and, as usual in these films, was sung not by the actor, but by a playback singer—in this case Mohammed Rafi.
- 1927 – Ed Ames, American singer and actor
Here’s a famous incident when Ames tried to teach Johnny Carson to throw a tomahawk. Carson’s comment at the end is priceless:
- 1932 – Donald Rumsfeld, American captain and politician, 13th United States Secretary of Defense
- 1933 – Oliver Sacks, English-American neurologist, author, and academic (d. 2015)
- 1937 – David Hockney, English painter and photographer
- 1947 – O. J. Simpson, American football player and actor
- 1956 – Tom Hanks, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter
- 1964 – Courtney Love, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actress
Those who bought the farm on this day include:
- 1441 – Jan van Eyck, Dutch painter
- 1797 – Edmund Burke, Irish-English philosopher, academic, and politician (b. 1729)
- 1850 – Báb, Persian religious leader, founded Bábism (b. 1819)
- 1856 – Amedeo Avogadro, Italian chemist and academic (b. 1776)
- 1880 – Paul Broca, French physician and anatomist (b. 1824)
- 1938 – Benjamin N. Cardozo, American lawyer and jurist (b. 1870)
- 1974 – Earl Warren, American jurist and politician, 14th Chief Justice of the United States (b. 1891)
- 1992 – Eric Sevareid, American journalist (b. 1912)
- 2004 – Isabel Sanford, American actress (b. 1917)
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili evinces some superstition:
Hili: The soil is totally dried out.A: We have to organize a collective meowing for rain.
Hili: Ta ziemia jest kompletnie wysuszona.
Ja: Musimy zorganizować kolektywne miauczenie o deszcz.
From Facebook via Stash Krod:
Yesterday’s daily New Yorker cartoon, courtesy of reader John:
A tweet I found:
My husband @ecologistMC out there weighing wood duck ducklings in solo cups and it’s so fluffy I wanna die pic.twitter.com/CEmjL3QAPN
— Imogene Cancellare (@biologistimo) July 6, 2019
A tweet from Grania (I found a few more buried deep in my email “in” box):
"Virtual Insanity" is Jamiroquai's best known music video. At the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards in September 1997, it earned 10 nominations, winning four awards, including "Breakthrough Video" and the "Best Video of the Year." pic.twitter.com/HETmxLLOOe
— Dick King-Smith HQ (@DickKingSmith) October 29, 2018
A tweet from reader Blue. Remember Philomena’s old claim: “How do we know the Earth is round? Because of globes!” Well, here’s how they used to make them. Look at all that work!
I love things like this, how globes were once made….. pic.twitter.com/Fmw3YA1NUj
— Daniel Holland (@DannyDutch) July 8, 2019
A lovely tweet from Heather Hastie:
https://twitter.com/Mr_Meowwwgi/status/1146824881931206656
Tweets from Matthew, who says that the author of the first one is the deputy director of Jodrell, the world’s only scientific UNESCO Heritage site. Matthew adds that Tim is a good bloke despite being a United fan (Matthew likes Man City):
We just arrived back from Azerbaijan and as we flew into Manchester we had a great view of the UK's newest @UNESCO World Heritage Site @jodrellbank 😀 @_TeresaAnderson #JodrellBankWorldHeritage pic.twitter.com/zHdBCE2uCl
— Tim O'Brien (@ProfTimOB) July 8, 2019
This armadillo really loves his shower:
Our Armadillo at the San Antonio Aquarium loves his water!🥰 pic.twitter.com/1ovWRonjK7
— San Antonio Aquarium (@SAAquarium) July 7, 2019
This tweet puzzles me, as it implies that the British Library reading room is full of believers:
Well at least it'll be a bit easier to get a seat in the British Library. https://t.co/cEHcZJACNs
— Jonathan Healey (@SocialHistoryOx) July 8, 2019
A beautiful fossilized foot:
This is a real dinosaur foot.
It's from a practically complete skeleton of the Cretaceous dinosaur Tenontosaurus and was collected in Montana, USA.
The specimen is part of an ongoing study, which will hopefully appear next year. #FossilFriday pic.twitter.com/9I0xSJwN7u
— Dr Dean Lomax (@Dean_R_Lomax) July 5, 2019
As the character in a Sidney Harris cartoon might put it, I think Her Majesty needed to be a bit more explicit concerning a step two. 🙂
Like Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady?
… … silly and childish perhaps, but I .love.love. them =
sugar cookies ! w / sprinkles o’clove =
aaaah, comestible o”th Goddess, I declare.
Blue
I heard some wag yesterday refer to Donald Trump’s Fourth of July speech as “the Forgettysburg Address.”
+10 ! I have, Mr Kukec, soooo relished since Independence Day
this particular one o’th’ bagazillion of Flubs de Drumphfbs !
Within ALL of its snarkish manners online !
( Yeah, that’s right: I do not care = how nugatory and petty I be. )
Blue
I thought the third mom duck was named Daphne–not Phoebe?
Whoops, I get them mixed up. Yes, it’s Daphne. I’ll fix it, thanks!
A duck-labeling (ankle-rings, or poo-DNA) sesion awaits your return to Chicago.
After reading the Declaration of Independence to the army George Washington could begin the retreat, something they became very good at doing over the next several years. Meanwhile the British practiced urban warfare.
I’ll assume that you’re right on the actions in the terrorist insurrection of 1775 onwards, but I don’t get the implication that an effective military strategy is somehow “wrong” because … well, because why? The Germans brought a few weeks of survival for the 3rd Reich by effective urban warfare. Britain planned extensive urban warfare in the event of a German invasion – including suicide weapons and terrorist cells (“the scallywags”) manned by avowed communists and future Prime Ministerial candidates. The Paras have long developed some of the best training and strategies for countering urban warfare using villages commandeered during the War – because of their expectation of needing these skills during a Civil War over the Irish Question (the pre-Brexit version). It’s a wonderful series of strategies for tieing down many times your number of soldiers if the terrain allows. Not such fun if you’re the goose rather than the gander, but that’s how legitimized massacres work.
I was afraid this would be taken wrong, the word urban warfare but did not know what to use. I refer to the fact that first of all, the revolutionary army spent a great deal of time evading the British. Live to fight or retreat another day. The British on the other hand, first camped out in Boston, then New York City and then Philly and then back to New York. Camping out in a tent in the woods was not their style. I should have said Urban Camping ( In someone else’s house). The British never figured out what the center of gravity was in the revolutionary war. An excellent way to not do well.
in re “ … … responded: ‘ Madam, there must be
more than this, or it will be long ere we
have a duke of York, which all this realm
most desireth. ‘ “
I have no idea as to the ( scientific, say, )
veracity of what I was once truly taught
within an early 1970’s Cornell University –
New York Hospital School of Nursing ( now
defunct and long – closed ) classroom:
Humans did not put ‘it’ together until
~y1908, that … … semen contained sumpin’
inside of it all that caused somethin’ else
inside her to, voilà, ultimately result in
a lump that grew and grew and eventually
quickened in to something she could
‘recognize’ as a babe occurring and residing
within her innards.
At the time and my being a huge fan of the
darling Marshall Matt Dillon ( Mr James
Arness ) and his Ms Kitty ( Ms Amanda Blake )
of her lovely saloon, why, I at that time
of this lesson envisioned then that this must
be true as well: Doc Adams ( Mr Milburn
Stone ) inside his horse and buggy headed
outta Dodge City to very, very many a
birthing circa his Kansan countryside, whilst
at the same time, … … he had had no learned
knowledge as to how ‘it’ a c t u a l l y came
to be that Ms Pioneer Woman was about
to become, likely repeatedly, … …
A(nother) Mama Woman.
And as well my further thinking at that
y1970s’ time: no one else .before.
Doc Adams’ time … … had had as to
this “miracle” of her fecundity … …
a True Blue’s Clue either !
Blue
Pretty good stuff. I’m not sure doc knew where all the bullets came from that he kept pulling out of people but it was a good bet that Matt Dillon put most of them in.
Matthew Cobb wrote a literal book on this – the Great Egg and Sperm Race – about 5 or 6 years ago.
That there were “somethings” in semen was established about 1800, by experiments involving frogs in little taffeta trousers.
I thought the romance between Matt and Ms Kitty was frustratingly undeveloped through the entire series.
I definitely recommend reading some of the other replies to that rapture Tweet.
Also on the replies to Jonathan Healy’s own thread, there is talk of an atheist in Florida who runs Rapture Kennels. For a monthly fee, she will take care of your pet after the Rapture.
It turns out that it really exists but it is a joint venture between a Christian and an atheist and they have changed their pricing structure to a one time fee because of accusations of fraud.
Now that is a business plan!
You have to wonder why Williams would perform the open-heart surgery without anesthetic. Various substances from alcohol to cocaine had been used in the past.
In 1800 Humphry Davy discovered that nitrous oxide, laughing gas, had effective anesthetic properties. It is curious that the method was not immediately followed up by surgeons, but it was ignored. I cringe to think of all the unnecessary pain experienced over the years.
When I was a small child, N2O was still being used for dentistry, and I appreciated it’s convenience. At some point, the dentist switched to a long sharp needle, which he stabbed into my mouth repeatedly. I was not a happy camper. I wonder if anyone else here had that traumatic experience.
Have never experienced the N2O that I know of. Just lots of needles over the years however, it is not nearly as bad today as it use to be. They are getting much better with pain than in the past.
They are certainly getting infinitely better.
3 decades ago, when I finally had to go to the dentist (after a lapse of a decade), it was the most fear-inducing thing I ever did. Not the actual visit, but forcing myself to drive there. It was several orders of magnitude more frightening than booking myself into hospital for heart surgery (which just gave me mild nervousness).
But I can now go to the dentist without a qualm. The worst thing is holding my jaw open – which is to say, trivial.
cr
Back in the day, they would just push a shot of whiskey down your throat and whack you with a bat ’til you stopped moving. Modern medicine, hallelujah!
Nitrous oxide is used as a recreational drug, in the form of so-called whippets, just FYI.
One of the more esoteric bits of knowledge you can acquire from mud testing is that you can get N2O in cartridges for “whipped cream making” (Cynical? Moi?) with which to pressurise your mud without greatly affecting it’s pH.
Who could be against whipped mud?
As long as the shear-rate versus viscosity profile is right …
Good to know. I prefer my mud well-balanced, full-bodied, with plenty of nose on the finish.
It’s Ken’s Mud Pie, by a nose at the finish!
Sniffing mud – in particular, sniffing the gases vented from distilling it – is an important part of catching H2S kicks early. Those kicks kill people. Or worse – leave them alive but seriously neurologically compromised.
I worked once with an Egyptian Company Man – a mobile sphincter of a humanoid, who was looking forward to his retirement to spend more time with his 3 wives and dozen-odd children. So when I returned to that country about 5 years later, “What are you doing here?”. It turns out his brother had taken a H2S hit, and was now a barely animated vegetable. And Mr Sphincter had to support his 3 wives, dozen children AND his couple of sisters-in-law and their rising number of children (brother was not completely inanimate). So … back to work at 70-odd.
Before you ask – they were non-resident workers. Health and Safety laws didn’t apply.
I had the delightful experience of being “gassed” to have all four wisdom teeth out.
The gas worked for number 1.
I felt number 2 and woke up, but couldn’t move and my screams were ignored as “normal”
I really felt number 3 being torn out and had regained enough muscle control to be able to punch the dentist across the room. At which point, they realised that something was probably wrong and let me regain full consciousness.
A different dentist did number 4 a few weeks later with a needle and a burly assistant on hand. The next time I went to a dentist was nearly a decade later.
Sounds like they should have kept you on the gas at a sustaining level. Quite the dentist you chose!
Chose? No, it wast the only clinic in town.
I seem to remember that chloroform was used by the end of the 19th century, too …. hmm!
Chloroform? Wouldn’t it have been easier just to read the Book of Mormon? 🙂
Probably. It’s a stunning book.
Three if by air: a big thanks to my old friend krod for bringing this to jerry’s attention.
Please reconsider your knock of the sugar cookie.
I recently lost 100 pounds in 10 months. The one thing I would cheat for is a sugar cookie. Preferably plain, except maybe for a dusting of sugar.