Crabs and Beer!

On this day in 1914, the RMS Empress of Ireland sank near the mouth of the St. Lawrence River following a collision in thick fog with the Norwegian collier Storstad. Although the ship was equipped with watertight compartments and, in the aftermath of the Titanic disaster two years earlier, carried more than enough lifeboats for all aboard, she foundered in only 14 minutes. Of the 1,477 people on board, 1,012 died, making it the worst peacetime maritime disaster in Canadian history.

Empress of Ireland departed Quebec for Liverpool and eached Pointe-au-Père in the early hours of 29 May 1914, where the pilot disembarked. She soon sighted the masthead lights of SS Storstad, a Norwegian collier, on her starboard bow at a distance of several miles. Likewise, Storstad sighted Empress of Ireland‘s masthead lights. These first sightings were made in clear weather conditions, but fog soon enveloped the ships. The ships resorted to repeated use of their fog whistles. At 01:56 local time, Storstad crashed into Empress of Ireland‘s starboard side at around midships.

Empress of Ireland lurched heavily to starboard and began settling by the stern. There was no time to shut the watertight doors. Water entered through open portholes, some only a few feet above the water line, and inundated passageways and cabins. Most of the passengers and crew located in the lower decks drowned quickly. Those berthed in the upper decks were awakened by the collision and immediately boarded lifeboats on the boat deck. Within a few minutes, the ship’s list was so severe that the port lifeboats could not be launched.

Ten minutes after the collision, the ship rolled violently over her starboard side, allowing as many as 700 passengers and crew to crawl out of the portholes and decks onto her port side. The ship lay upon her side for a minute or two, having seemingly run aground. Shortly afterwards at 02:10, about 14 minutes after the collision, the bow rose briefly out of the water and the ship finally sank.

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Today is the birthday, in 1955, of Mike Porcaro, bassist with American rock band Toto who had the 1980s Top 5 hits ‘Hold the Line’, ‘Rosanna’, and ‘Africa’. The band has released 17 studio albums, and has sold over 40 million records worldwide. Porcaro died on 15th March 2015 following a battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s Disease). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTQbiNvZqaY

Today is the anniversary of the Battle of Tshushima in 1905. It was the final naval battle of the Russo-Japanese War, fought on 27–28 May 1905 in the Tsushima Strait. A devastating defeat for the Imperial Russian Navy. The battle was described by contemporary Sir George Clarke as “by far the greatest and the most important naval event since Trafalgar”.

The battle involved the Japanese Combined Fleet under Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō and the Russian Second Pacific Squadron under Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky, which had sailed over seven months and 18,000 nautical miles (33,000 km) from the Baltic Sea. All 11 Russian battleships were lost, of which seven were sunk and four captured. Only a few warships escaped, with one cruiser and two destroyers reaching Vladivostok, and two auxiliary cruisers as well as one transport escaping back to Madagascar.

The battle had a profound cultural and political impact on the world. It was the first defeat of a European power by an Asian nation in the modern era. It also heightened the alarm of “The Yellow Peril” as well as weakening the notion of white superiority that was prevalent in some Western countries. Mahatma Gandhi , Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Sun Yat-sen and Jawaharlal Nehru were amongst the future national leaders to celebrate this defeat of a colonial power.

Painting by Tōjō Shōtarō depicting Admiral Tōgō on the “Compass Deck” above the bridge of Mikasa at the start of the battle. The signal flag being hoisted represents the letter Z, a special instruction to his fleet.

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Some old-time funk from Chaka Khan and Rufus with a great chorus… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cm_cFzVAoo8

On this day in 1703, Tsar Peter the Great founded the city of Saint Petersburg. It is the second-largest city in Russia, after Moscow. Saint Petersburg is the fourth-most populous city in Europe, the most populous city on the Baltic Sea, and the world’s northernmost city of more than 1 million residents. the nation’s capital.

The city was founded on the site of a captured Swedish fortress, and was named after the apostle Saint Peter. In Russia, Saint Petersburg is historically and culturally associated with the birth of the Russian Empire and Russia’s entry into modern history as a European great power. It served as a capital of the Tsardom of Russia, and the subsequent Russian Empire, from 1712 to 1918 (being replaced by Moscow for a short period between 1728 and 1730). After the October Revolution in 1917, the Bolsheviks moved their government to Moscow. The city was renamed Leningrad after Lenin’s death in 1924. It was the site of the siege of Leningrad during World War II, the most lethal siege in history. In June 1991, only a few months before the Belovezha Accords and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, voters in a city-wide referendum supported restoring the city’s original name.

Peter the Great

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perfect tie-in…

Tarot Cards!

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BADA BING!

Kash Patel is reportedly furious and threatening to sue anyone who calls him “J. Edgar Boozer.” So calling him Rumdog Millionaire is still on the table.

A Murder of Crows descended on an Embarrassment of Pandas. The pandas were mortified. The zoologists who observed this were a Prank of Taxonomists.

Hey, think about it this way, you’re not as dumb as you look.

Cottage Cheese is not really a cheese at all. It’s just a curd to me.

When I was a kid, I went to a Christian school and they were absolutely convinced Harry Potter was a ploy from the devil to get kids into witchcraft. It was actually a ploy to get kids reading which is far more dangerous to Christianity.

My favorite song about allergies is “Blowin’ in the Wind” by Peter Pollen Mary.

If really good looking people are called, “Eye Candy”,I guess I’m somewhere in the “Eye Broccoli” category.

Her: I think we should stop seeing each other for a while. Him, covering his eyes: Ok, tell me when I can look again.

Retirement – The pay sucks but the hours are really good.

I don’t have time to Google lyrics. I sing what I hear. “Dancing queen, young and sweet, only seven teeth”.

How many of you hate drama, but if you see it on your timeline, you read all 368 comments.

It’s just a matter of time before they add the word ‘Syndrome’ after my last name.

Sarah left a Dr Pepper on a gas pump 61 miles south of Tampa Florida.\ That’s where Sarasota is.

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Here’s Shakira! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcnDmrtj6Sk

On this day in 1908, drilling in Masjed Soleyman (in Persia) struck commercial quantities of petroleum as a fifty-foot gusher shot up the drilling rig.

In the late 19th century Britain’s Royal Navy, under the leadership of Sir Winston Churchill decided to shift its fuel source from coal to oil; therefore the British admiralty and the War office became the de facto force behind the British government’s quest for oil. During the 1890s, research and reports were collected by the British foreign office indicating that Persia had great oil potential.

The British Foreign office selected William Knox D’Arcy, a millionaire investor, and provided him with the reports, promising him greater wealth and governmental support if he invested in the excavation of oil. In April 1909, D’Arcy was appointed a director of the newly founded Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC), which would later become British Petroleum (BP). By 1911, APOC had run a pipeline from the oil field in Masjed Soleyman to a refinery at Abadan.

Workers of the APOC in 1908

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Today is the birthday, in 1948, of merican singer-songwriter Stevie Nicks, from Fleetwood Mac who scored the 1987 UK No.5 single ‘Little Lies’ and 1977 US No.1 single ‘Dreams’, taken from the world-wide No.1 album Rumours. She scored the solo, 1981 US No.1 & UK No.11 album Bella Donna, and the 1989 hit single ‘Rooms On Fire’. Nicks joined Fleetwood Mac in 1975 along with her then boyfriend, Lindsey Buckingham. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3ywicffOj4

On this day in 1906, the Wright Brothers were granted patent number 821,393 for their “Flying-Machine”. The patent’s importance lies in its claim of a new and useful method of controlling a flying machine, powered or not. The technique of wing-warping is described, but the patent explicitly states that other methods instead of wing-warping could be used for adjusting the outer portions of a machine’s wings to different angles on the right and left sides to achieve lateral (roll) control.

Glenn Curtiss and other early aviators devised ailerons to emulate lateral control described in the patent and demonstrated by the Wrights in their public flights. Soon after the historic July 4, 1908, one-kilometer flight by Curtiss in the AEA June Bug, the Wrights warned him not to infringe their patent by profiting from flying or selling aircraft that used ailerons.

Curtiss refused to pay license fees to the Wrights and sold an airplane equipped with ailerons to the Aeronautic Society of New York in 1909. The Wrights filed a lawsuit, beginning a years-long legal conflict.

From 1910 until his death from typhoid fever in 1912, Wilbur took the leading role in the patent struggle, traveling incessantly to consult with lawyers and testify in what he felt was a moral cause, particularly against Curtiss, who was creating a large company to manufacture aircraft. The Wrights’ preoccupation with the legal issue stifled their work on new designs, and by 1911 Wright airplanes were considered inferior to those of European makers. Indeed, aviation development in the U.S. was suppressed to such an extent that, when the U.S. entered World War I in April 1917, no acceptable American-designed airplanes were available, and American forces were compelled to use French machines.

The Wright Aeronautical Corporation (successor to the Wright-Martin Company), and the Curtiss Aeroplane company, merged in 1929 to form the Curtiss-Wright Corporation, which remains in business today producing high-tech components for the aerospace industry.

Orville demonstrating the Flyer to the U.S. Army, Fort Myer, Virginia September 1908.

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WARNING!

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Today is the birthday, in 1950, of Bernie Taupin, English lyricist, poet, and singer and Elton John’s long-time song writing partner. Rod Stewart, Cher, The Motels, John Waite, Starship and Alice Cooper have all recorded his songs. In 1967, Taupin answered an advertisement placed in the UK music paper New Musical Express by Liberty Records, a company that was seeking new songwriters, Elton John responded to the advertisement, and the pair were brought together. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jf2Te1IfjuA