Long live the long peace

The Fallen of World War II from Neil Halloran on Vimeo.

We live in a time of historic peace.

May we say that for decades to come.

...if you need reminding of that, check out the above video and the associated website.

Forty-five years ago today

That isn't a photo of the first footprint on the moon.

Sadly THE first footprint was obscured underneath a few of the next footprints as Neil Armstrong ensured that he could get back up to the lunar landing module.

That is, however, one of the first few footprints on the moon, a footprint made forty-five years ago today by Neil Armstrong and quickly followed up by Buzz Armstrong making a few of his own.

In my eyes, there hasn't been a greater accomplishment by modern mankind than our half dozen manned moon landings between 1969 and 1972.

And then we stopped.

We haven't been back.

Which is tragically sad.

Read up on Armstrong & Aldrin's short time on the moon here.

Fallen Astronaut

I know I should keep posting Christmas ephemera, but I feel like taking a little left turn today. I might fit some more Christmas something in later today.

Instead, I want to marvel at the brilliance of the only sculpture on the moon: Fallen Astronaut.

The sculpture is among the most touching, beautiful efforts of commemoration that I've ever heard of. One of the astronauts worked in advance to find as light-weight, hideable tribute to his fallen comrades (some of whom were actual, Soviet comrades - brotherhood knows no political bounds). He managed to sneak the sculpture up TO THE MOON, and then he and his fellow astronauts had to distract mission control long enough to set up a make-shift memorial.

I love the moon. I love the idea that we as a species walked on the moon. I desperately want us to get back to the moon.

More info about Fallen Astronaut on Wikipedia and at the Smithsonian.

Gone...never to return...

On December 14, 1972 at 5:55pm EST we left the moon.

Harrison Schmidt and Eugene Cernan were the last two people to ever walk on the lunar surface, the eleventh and twelfth people ever to do so, spending twenty-two hours and three minutes and fifty-seven seconds outside their lunar lander exploring the moon's surface. Cernan, as mission commander, was the last man to return to the lunar lander, but...

[b]efore Cernan left the moon on the Apollo 17 mission he remembered his daughter in a special way. “I drove the Rover about a mile away from the LM and parked it carefully so the television camera could photograph our takeoff the next day. As I dismounted, I took a moment to kneel and with a single finger, scratched [my daughter] Tracy’s initials, ‘TDC,’ in the lunar dust, knowing those three letters would remain there undisturbed for more years than anyone could imagine.” (source)

Since Cernan and Schmidt left the moon, we have never returned. In three and a half years of missions, we landed Americans on the moon six times before the Apollo program was ended for budgetary concerns, and we have never...ever...not once...left Earth's gravitational pull.

We took the greatest accomplishment that we as a species had ever managed - delivering to another celestial body our best and brightest before returning them safely to Earth - and stopped doing it because it was pricey.

We saw the glory of the universe, took the first step to spreading ourselves beyond where we were born, and we pulled back, we closed the door and seem to be at least politically content to live in our box.

This is a tragedy.

Eugene Cernana's gesture is a beautiful tribute.

Why don't you just take a picture then?

The wikipedia/media folks have a contest currently running (through the end of September) to find the best new photograph of a historical site/building added to their collection.

In the US that means finding a site on the National Register of Historic Places in your state (they even have it broken down by counties - mine, for example), then heading out to take a photo. Yeah, if you're hoping to win the contest (and one of the prizes), you're probably going to need a good camera, great weather, and an eye for photography. If you just want to help them take photos of historic sites before those historic sites go away, however, head out tomorrow and take a few snapshots.

The wikiwhatever foundation is really doing some phenomenal work documenting our world, and this is another example. Help 'em out, would ya?

Things I learned this week...

Nearly every day at school I check in to find some historical event whose anniversary we can celebrate.

My former source was the History Channel's This Day in History page, but it's begun to crash my school computer. Instead, I've been heading to Wikipedia and looking up each day of the year.

This past week I learned that in spite of the accident at the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, one of the reactors there is still operational. I always assumed that they'd shut down the entire plant. Also pretty stunning was the fact the Jimmy Carter was a nuclear (or maybe just submarine) engineer

I also learned that Cincinnati has a frighteningly impressive history of riots - eleven separate riot incidents recorded on Wikipedia's page. The 1884 Courthouse riots - whose anniversary was this week - were by far the most deadly with fifty-six people dying and the riots only being quelled when 300 national guardsmen came in with a Gatling gun to clear the streets.

And, finally, I've always heard that the purchase of Alaska from Russia was nicknamed Seward's Folly. That appears not to be true. The phrase Seward's Folly instead seems to have meant that the folly was in William Seward and Andrew Johnson trying to force the Senate to approve the treaty for the purchase of Alaska before their adjournment. I always assumed that people thought the actual purchase of Alaska was folly. Apparently that's not the case...

I love learning things...love it so much.

Wikipedia: the cause of and solution to so many of our problems

Each day I look up some date in history and write that year as today's date on the board in my classroom.

Today, for example, was 12 March, 1912 in honor of the founding of the Girl Scouts. I then draw a stick figure representation of the event and encourage my students to guess the event. Especially considering my limited art skills, they do pretty well.

It helps me that Wikipedia has an article of every day's significant (by whatever definition the Wikipedia community chooses to define that word) events, births, and deaths. Check out March 12, for example.

I also tend to check the History Channel's Today in History as another source of events and today found that the 1888 blizzard that hit NYC and dumped 40" of snow happened on this date. In the History Channel's article on the blizzard, I found this sentence...

Even "Leather Man," a fixture of New York and Connecticut history who had walked a circuit of 365 miles every 34 days for three decades, was reportedly delayed four days by the Blizzard of 1888.

Clearly, I had to head to Wikipedia to find out about this "Leather Man". I quote from their article here...

The Leatherman (ca. 1839–1889) was a particular vagabond, famous for his handmade leather suit of clothes, who traveled a circuit between the Connecticut and the Hudson River from about 1856 to 1889. Although of unknown origin, he was thought to be Canadian, or possibly French, because of his fluency in French, his broken English and the French Language prayer book found on his person after his death. His identity remains controversial, and unknown.

How fascinating is that? He apparently made his 365-mile circuit around Connecticut every thirty-four days like clockwork, regularly enough that when the blizzard delayed him, people noticed.

I love...Love...LOVE that Wikipedia has documented Leather Man (or Leatherman or Leather-Man).

Could such a person exist in today's world? They could, right? It would be weird but not unheard of, I would guess.

The best damn buggywhip makers out there

At some point, many professions become antiquated. When we look back, we often think how lucky we are that no one has to do those jobs any more.

But remember that there had to be a last of every one of those jobs...a last television repairman...a last one-room schoolhouse schoolmarm...a last frontier sheriff...a last record collector...

That last record collector hasn't been quite identified just yet, but Brain Pickings has collected seven short films about spectacular examples of people in dying professions. Each of the subjects has a heart-breaking and inspiring story about why they continue to do what they love when the world clearly has less and less use for their job with each passing day.

Check 'em, especially the one embedded below.


The Archive from Sean Dunne on Vimeo.

Today in history...

2010 – Deepwater Horizon has a big s’susplosion

1999 – Columbine High School massacre



1986 – Jordan’s 63-pt playoff game
1980 – Castro announced Cuban boatlift
1972 – Carmen Electra born
1939 – Billie Holiday records the first Civil Rights song "Strange Fruit".

 

1937 – George Takei born
1923 – Tito Puente born



1916 – The Chicago Cubs play their first game at Weeghman Park (currently Wrigley Field), defeating the Cincinnati Reds 7-6 in 11 innings
1912 – Opening day for Fenway Park in Boston, Massachusetts
1906 – San Fran firefighters stop San Fran fire (from the earthquake)
1902 – Curie isolates radium
1889 – Adolf Hitler born



1871 – The Civil Rights Act of 1871 becomes law
1862 – Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard complete the first pasteurization tests.
1861 – Lee resigns from Union army

Today in History

Today couldn't have gotten much more awesome...

30 years since the first space shuttle flight...

50 years since the first manned space flight...

150 years since the first shots fired on Ft Sumter setting off the Civil War...

How cool is all that?

Happy Anniversary, Rap

Today is the thirtieth anniversary of the appearance of "Rapper's Delight" by the Sugarhill Gang on the Billboard charts.  "Rapper's Delight" is certainly one of the contenders for the first rap song ever to chart.



The typical other contender for the title is "Rapture" by Blondie.



According to the majority of my students, "that isn't rapping.  She's white."

Your argument, folks, is clearly invalid in response to that kind of logic.

Update: As one of my students in my last bell of the day class pointed out, "If it was 1980, doesn't that make this the thirty-first anniversary?"

Yes, yes it does.  Apparently I'm not used to this whole 2011 thing just yet.