The Tease of Things I Don't Need

2009: Day 191

A rather busy date, this!

Much of London burned to the ground on this date in 1212. Gradually, they built more and more of the city using stone. Good thinkin'.

Feeling enslaved to the total service of sin? Morally unable to follow God, and certain that unless God picks you you cannot be saved? Well, it doesn't necessarily mean you've gone nuts -- it could just be that it's John Calvin's 500th birthday. (Either way, though, I'd suggest seeking psychological help.)

Should your mind wander to the topic of logarithmic spirals - perhaps considering the sweep of a large hurricane or a cross-section of nautilus shell - give a quick nod to mathematician Roger Cotes (1682), who would have turned 327 today. He also spent a few years working with Newton on expansions and revision of his Principia (mentioned back on July 5th) for its second edition.

In 1789 the explorer Alexander MacKenzie discovered what he would call "Disappointment River" because it didn't lead to Cook Inlet in Alaska (as with many explorers, he was looking for the Northwest Passage to the Pacific), but which was later named MacKenzie River in his honor. (The river led to the Arctic Ocean, btw.)

On this date in 1821 the United States took possession of Florida as a consequence of the Adams-Onis Treaty, which it had recently bought from Spain. It is unknown if an almost mystically attractive force for elderly Jews manifested immediately or took many years to form.

Inventor, mechanical and electrical engineer and in many ways a conceptual prototype for an occasionally "mad" scientist, the visionary Nikola Tesla was born on this date in 1856.

French novelist, essayist and critic Marcel Proust (1871) would have been 138, providing a surfeit of past remembrances...

Today in 1890 Wyoming was admitted as the 44th state.

Gentleman Jack - John "Legs" Diamond - Prohibition-era bootlegger and gangster, was born today in 1897. He survived so many attempts on his life from other gangsters that he was known as the "clay pigeon of the underworld." One enemy said to his gang, "Ain't there nobody that can shoot this guy so he don't bounce back?"

Another of those forgotten stars, I read with interest the rise and spiteful fall of silent era film star John Gilbert, born on this date in 1899.

In 1913, in Death Valley, the highest temperature in the United States - 134 °F (~56.7 °C) was recorded.

Not Jor-El, but half of the Superman creative team, Joe Shuster, was born in 1914. His immigrant parents had come from the Netherlands (father) and Ukraine (mother), had Jerry in Canada but managed to escape that doomed world and flee to Cleveland, Ohio when Joe was 10... (Sorry. I had to do that for Dwight.)

TV's Mr. Wizard, Don Herbert, was born on this date in 1917.

Newscaster David Brinkley was born today in 1920.

Credited with the creation of the Smiley, Harvey Ball was born today in 1921.

Sometimes dead isn't better. Fred Gwynne would have turned 83 today. Stage, screen and television actor, along with painter and illustrator.

Muppet puppeteer Jerry Nelson (Sherlock Hemlock, Herry Monster, Dr. Julius Strangepork, and Count Von Count, among others) turns 75 today.

Known primarily for the role of Varla in the 1965 film Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, Tura Satana turns 74 today. Give her write-up a look and I'm betting you'll join me in saying her life is far more film-worthy than any of the stories she was paid to act in.

Whether you remember him as would-be novelist, Detective Ron Harris from Barney Miller, Derrial Book from Firefly, or as a demon come to grant a few wishes and claim a soul in the 1985 "I of Newton" episode of the '80s version of Twilight Zone, it's actor Ron Glass' 64th birthday today.

Lolita -- or, rather, Sue Lyon, who played the illegal object of an older man's obsessions in Kubrick's 1962 film adaptation - turns 63 today.

American folk singer Arlo Guthrie turns 62 today. I still find that I can wait until next Thanksgiving to listen to Alice's Restaurant Massacree again.

Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan turns 52 today. While she may have wobbled off the path here and there I still wholly support the core thrust of her political action.

In 1958 the highest tsunami wave ever recorded, 524m (~1,720 ft.) high, occurred at Lituya Bay, Alaska.

Telstar, the world's first communications satellite, was launched into orbit today back in 1962.

English actor and musician John Simm -- who I know mainly as Detective Sam Tyler from the BBC series Life On Mars and as the most recent actor to portray The Master in the Doctor Who series. Today he turns 39.

Until I was preparing this entry I had never heard of the Seveso disaster of 1976, named for the small Italian town that was primarily affected. It was an industrial chemical accident that gave rise to standardized industrial safety regulations.

Today in 1985 French DGSE agents bombed and sank Rainbow Warrior, a Greenpeace vessel in the waters off Aukland, New Zealand in a move to prevent Greenpeace from interfering with a scheduled nuclear test in Moruroa.