Today is Father Walter Lini Day, a public holiday in Vanuatu on February 21st each year. This holiday commemorates an important figure in the history of this South Pacific nation on the anniversary of his death in 1999.
Father Lini was born on Pentecost, one of the larger of what were then the New Hebrides, a Y-shaped cluster of islands administered jointly by Britain and France. He had studied for the ministry in New Zealand and was serving as a priest and as leader of the New Hebrides National party when the colonial rulers announced plans to withdraw by 1980.
Because his party dominated the colonial parliament, Father Lini was poised to become Prime Minister. But a month before independence, a French-speaking planter named Jimmy Stevens led 600 bowmen to take control of the island of Espiritu Santo. Supported by some local French-speakers, Mr. Stevens wanted to withdraw the island from the about-to-be-proclaimed nation of Vanuatu, which means ”our eternal land.”
Father Lini sought aid from Britain, which, over the objections of France, reluctantly sent 200 Royal Marines, who served as a peacekeepers on Espiritu Santo long enough for the independence ceremonies to proceed on schedule. Once the new flag went up, Father Lini signed a defense pact with Papua New Guinea, which sent forces to replace the British Marines, quickly arrested Mr. Stevens and put down the rebellion.
The country Father Lini took over was poor in almost everything but fish. It had only 30 college graduates. Still, Vanuatu found itself vulnerable to geopolitical pressures. It sought to trade fishing rights to both China and Taiwan. Father Lini’s Government angered France by its support for independence groups in New Caledonia and its opposition to nuclear testing in the Pacific. It irritated the United States by calling for a reduction in United States naval traffic, recognizing Libya, and welcoming Vietnam and Cuba to establish embassies while holding off the United States.
Lini also pushed for what he called “Melanesian socialism” – a system based on the traditional Polynesian idea that a people’s land is owned in common.
On this day in 1872, Luther Crowell patented a machine for making flat-bottomed paper bags. However, he was not the first to do so and his invention was merely an improvement. The first person to patent machinery for making flat-bottomed paper bags was Margaret Knight.
She was born in Maine and grew up in New Hampshire where she went to work in the cotton mills at the age of 12. 12-year-old Knight witnessed an accident at the mill in which a worker was stabbed by a steel-tipped shuttle that shot out of a mechanical loom. Within weeks she invented a safety device for the loom, which was later adopted by other Manchester mills.
Knight’s first patent, issued in 1870, was for an “improvement in paper-feeding machines”, a “pneumatic paper-feeder” with applications in printing presses and paper-folding machines; her paper bag machine would feature a three-step folding process in forming the flat bottom. At the time, many female inventors and writers concealed their gender by using only an initial instead of their given name, but Margaret E. Knight was identified in this patent.
Knight moved to Springfield, Massachusetts in 1867 and was hired by the Columbia Paper Bag Company. She noticed that the envelope-shaped machine-made paper bags they produced were weak and narrow, and could not stand on their bases.They were also poorly suited to bulky items, such as groceries and hardware goods. Machines for producing these envelope-style bags were the subject of three patents issued to Francis Wolle in 1852, 1855, and 1858. Flat-bottomed paper bags, which were sturdier and more useful, were expensively made by hand.
1868 Knight invented a machine that cut, folded, and glued paper to form the flat-bottomed brown paper bag familiar to shoppers today. This machine enabled the mass manufacture of flat-bottomed bags, increasing the speed of production. Charles Annan, a machinist who visited the machine shop where Knight’s iron model was being built, stole her design and patented it first. When Knight attempted to patent her work, she discovered Annan’s patent and filed a patent interference lawsuit in the fall of 1870. Annan argued that “she could not possibly understand the mechanical complexities of the machine”, exploiting prejudice against women. She spent the then-large sum of $100 (equivalent to $2,409 in 2023) per day in legal costs for the 16-day hearing, which resulted in victory. She received her patent in 1871.
She was decorated by Queen Victoria for her invention and went on to receive 87 more patents for a variety of inventions.
Budget cuts at local police department…
and they say there are no jobs…
It’s COLD out there!!!
SIGNZ
Today is the birthday, in 1941, of American singer-songwriter, musician, and social activist Buffy Sainte-Marie, who had the 1971 UK No.7 single ‘Soldier Blue’. She wrote ‘Up Where We Belong’ the 1982 US No.1 & UK No.7 hit for Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes from the film An Officer and a Gentleman, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 55th Academy Awards. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjrOcrisGyI
On this day in 1881, Kansas became the first state to prohibit all alcoholic beverages. Primarily due to the ‘dry crusade’.
The dry crusade was led by the national Prohibition Party, founded in 1869, and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), founded in 1874. Arrested over 30 times and fined and jailed on multiple occasions, prohibition activist Carrie Nation attempted to enforce the state’s ban on alcohol consumption. She walked into saloons, scolding customers, and used her hatchet to destroy bottles of liquor. Nation recruited ladies into the Carrie Nation Prohibition Group, which she also led. While Nation’s vigilante techniques were rare, other activists enforced the dry cause by entering saloons, singing, praying, and urging saloonkeepers to stop selling alcohol. Other dry states, especially those in the South, enacted prohibition legislation, as did individual counties within a state.
Prohibition represented a conflict between urban and rural values emerging in the United States. Given the mass influx of migrants to the urban centers of the United States, many individuals within the prohibition movement associated the crime and morally corrupt behavior of American cities with their large, immigrant populations.
Prohibition was formally introduced nationwide under the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified on January 16, 1919. Prohibition ended with the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment, which repealed the Eighteenth Amendment on December 5, 1933.
Beer barrels are destroyed by prohibition agents at a dump in New York City, June 18, 1931. (AP Photo)
This bear has seen things…
cute…
BADA BING!!!!
Deja Poo – The feeling of having heard this crap before.
I finally got to see my doctor on Monday and I showed him the rash on my bottom. But he just ignored me and kept pushing his cart through Costco.
I looked up opaque, but the definition wasn’t very clear.
I spent my Valentine’s Day at a nice restaurant shouting, “Well you moved on pretty quickly”, to random couples walking in.
The square root of 69 is 8 something.
I finally know why they call me a grown-up. I groan every time I get up.
My mom always told me, “You might not be the dumbest guy in the world, but you better hope he doesn’t die”.
Just because deodorant says 48 hours, doesn’t mean you should accept the challenge.
I was getting most of my clothes online, but my neighbors have started taking their laundry in at night.
The worst part of online shopping is having to get up and get your card.
Just went to the Oreo website and hit “accept all cookies”. And now I wait…
I went to my doctor yesterday with a suspicious-looking mole. She said they all look like that and I should just put him back in the garden.
I told my doctor that I break out every time I eat strawberries and asked whether he could help. He said that he hated to make rash promises!
Apparently, Elon is upset that folks have started calling Teslas swasticars. So whatever you do don’t share this.
We’re having our HVAC system replaced today for something more powerful and yet at the same time more efficient, and what that means for me is that there are strangers in my house and I have to wear pants.
I think it’s so cute how all of our names will be on the same watchlist.
I’m gonna see if this political climate turns into a Civil War before I bother to make another car payment.
And, lo, the people were offered a choice: human rights and dignity, or cheaper eggs. And, lo, the people chose eggs. And, lo, a plague descended upon the chickens. And, lo, the people blamed DEI.
I love being me. It pisses off all the right people.
Do female terrorists get 72 male virgins after they die? 72 male virgins isn’t paradise, it’s an IT department.
Them: “Why are you so worried now?” Me: “Because I paid attention in history class.”
There are two types of tRUMP supporters, billionaires and idiots. Check your bank account to see which one you are.
Believing that billionaires are fighting for the working class requires a comical level of delusion.
Author R. Kennedy’s book…How to avoid vaccines and die like a medieval peasant.
Live so that if your life was turned into a book, Florida would ban it.
But it was assigned Gulf of Mexico at birth!
Today is the birthday, in 1940, of American singer, songwriter, record producer, and former record executive Smokey Robinson. With The Miracles he had the 1970 UK & US No.1 single ‘The Tears Of A Clown’. As a solo artist Robinson scored the 1981 UK No.1 & US No.2 single ‘Being With You’. He became the vice President of Motown Records in 1972. During the course of his 50-year career in music, Robinson has accumulated more than 4,000 songs to his credit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCwkZrj2VT4
Today is Independence Day, a public holiday in The Gambia. This is the National Day of The Gambia and marks independence from Britain on 18 February 1965.
Located on the west coast of Africa, The Gambia is the smallest country on mainland Africa. it is surrounded by Senegal on all sides except for the western part, which is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean.[10]
Its territory is on both sides of the lower reaches of the Gambia River, which flows through the center of the country and empties into the Atlantic. The national namesake river demarcates the elongated shape of the country, which has an area of 11,300 square kilometres (4,400 sq mi) and a population of 2,769,075 people in 2024. Arab Muslim merchants traded with native West Africans in The Gambia throughout the 9th and 10th centuries. At the beginning of the 14th century, most of what is today called The Gambia was part of the Mali Empire. The Portuguese reached this area by sea in the mid-15th century and began to dominate overseas trade.In 1455, the Portuguese were the first Europeans to enter The Gambia, although they never established significant trade there. The British Empire established a colony in 1765.
During the 1950s political parties emerged. In 1960, elections were held under a new constitution, with the People’s Progressive Party, led by David Jawara, emerging as a powerful voice and the dominant political party after further elections in 1962.
Following agreements between the British and Gambian Governments in July 1964, The Gambia achieved independence as a constitutional monarchy on 18 February 1965, with Queen Elizabeth II, represented by a governor-general, as head of state and Jawara as the first prime minister.
Uh Oh…
Just Don’t!!
Hmmm…
Today is the birthday, in 1952, of Juice Newton, American pop and country singer, songwriter, and musician who had the 1981 US No.2 single, ‘Queen Of Hearts’. Newton has received five Grammy Award nominations in the Pop and Country Best Female Vocalist categories. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0DK-0fIKCw
Today is the anniversary of the day, in 1803, when the Supreme Court, led by John Marshall, issued their decision in Marbury v. Madison. Marbury is regarded as the single most important decision in American constitutional law. It established that the U.S. Constitution is actual law, not just a statement of political principles and ideals. It also helped define the boundary between the constitutionally separate executive and judicial branches of the federal government.
Marbury v. Madison was the first case in which the Supreme Court struck down a federal law as unconstitutional and it is most significant for its role in establishing the Supreme Court’s power of judicial review, or the power to invalidate laws as unconstitutional. As Marshall put it, “it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.”
The power of the Supreme Court to strike down laws that it sees as unconstitutional is a foundation of our three-part government. Marbury also established that the power of judicial review covers actions by the executive branch—the President and his cabinet members. However, American courts’ power of judicial review over executive branch actions only extends to matters in which the executive has a legal duty to act or refrain from acting, and does not extend to matters that are entirely within the President’s discretion, such as whether to veto a bill or whom to appoint to an office. This power has been the basis of later important Supreme Court decisions. In its 1974 decision United States v. Nixon, for example, the Supreme Court held that President Richard Nixon had to comply with a subpoena to provide tapes of his conversations for use in a criminal trial related to the Watergate scandal, which ultimately led to Nixon’s resignation.
I expect that this will be an important principle in the next few weeks, months and years.
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