On this day in 1830, the first locomotive built in America, the Tom Thumb, traveled from Baltimore to Ellicotts Mill in Maryland. It was designed and constructed by Peter Cooper in 1829 to convince owners of the newly formed Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (the first railroad in America) to use steam engines. It is especially remembered as a participant in a race with a horse-drawn car, which the horse won after Tom Thumb suffered a mechanical failure. However, the demonstration was successful, and the railroad committed to the use of steam locomotion and held trials in the following year for a working engine.
Testing was performed on the first section, built in 1829, of the company’s future main line to Wheeling, Virginia (now West Virginia). The first section linked Baltimore and Ellicott Mills (now Ellicott City, Maryland), along the upper branch of the Patapsco River Valley. Cars were pulled by horses. Two tracks had been constructed, which led the owners of Stockton and Company, a local stagecoach line providing passenger and freight service, to challenge the new locomotive to a race over the 8 miles (13 km) between the Relay House and Baltimore.
The challenge accepted, Tom Thumb was easily able to pull away from the horse until the belt slipped off the blower pulley. Without the blower, the boiler did not draw adequately and the locomotive lost power, allowing the horse to pass and win the race. Nonetheless, it was recognized that the locomotive offered superior performance. The B&O stopped using horses in 1831.
Tom Thumb replica alongside B&O EMC EA/EB #51, 1937. Both locomotives are on display at the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore.
Vegetarian…
Physics…
Another stupid executive order????
Men?
SIGNZEZ…
Today is the birthday, in 1965, of Shania Twain, Canadian singer, (Eilleen Regina Edwards). Her 1997 album ‘Come On Over’, became the best-selling album of all time by a female musician in any genre, and the best-selling country album of all time selling more than 40 million copies worldwide. Twain has won 5 Grammy Awards and 27 BMI Songwriter awards and is sometimes referred to as “The Queen of Country Pop”, she is one of the most commercially successful artists of all time, having sold over 80 million albums. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJL4UGSbeFg
On this day in 1859, the world’s first commercially successful oil well was completed in Titusville, Pennsylvania. Tiitusville was first settled in 1796 by Jonathan Titus. It was known for it’s lumber industry.
Oil was known to exist there, but there was no practical way to extract it. Its main use at that time had been as a medicine for both animals and humans. In 1851, Samuel Kier had discovered a way to extract kerosene from oil and use it as a lamp oil. At the time, whale oil was used for most lamps but was becoming expensive. At the time, petroleum was collected from ground seeps or shallow salt wells. The Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company was formed to try to find a better way to collect petroleum.
Edwin Drake was hired by the company to investigate suspected oil deposits near Titusville. Drake decided to drill and invented the idea of using iron pipes to prevent the well from collapsing. Drilling was slow and they ran out of money. Drake took out a personal loan to keep the operation going.
On August 27, 1859, Drake had persevered and his drill bit had reached a total depth of 69.5 feet (21 m). At that point the bit hit a crevice. The men packed up for the day. The next morning Drake’s driller, Billy Smith, looked into the hole in preparation for another day’s work. He was surprised and delighted to see crude oil rising up. Drake was summoned and the oil was brought to the surface with a hand pitcher pump. The oil was collected in a bath tub.
A railroad was built to carry the oil and later a pipeline as oil production in the area soared. The first oil millionaire was Jonathan Watson, a resident of Titusville. He owned the land where Drake’s well was drilled. He had been a partner in a lumber business prior to the success of the well. At one time it was said that Titusville had more millionaires per capita than anywhere else in the world.
Drake (with top hat) with the nation’s first oil well near Titusville, Pennsylvania
A decision was made…
Screenshot
The grass…
How to sell your home…
woof!
design…
‘real Unicorn’…
Eat Well!!!
On this day in 1986, Tina Turner received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Turner began her career with Ike Turner’s band Kings of Rhythm in 1957, under the name Little Ann. Turner has sold more than 100 million records worldwide, becoming one of the best-selling recording artists of all time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fN8ks3zNHqE
On this day in 1920, the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution was certified. The amendment prohibits the United States and its states from denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States on the basis of sex, in effect recognizing the right of women to vote. The amendment was the culmination of a decades-long movement for women’s suffrage in the United States.
The United States Constitution, adopted in 1789, left the boundaries of suffrage undefined. The only directly elected body created under the original Constitution was the U.S. House of Representatives, for which voter qualifications were explicitly delegated to the individual states. While women had the right to vote in several of the pre-revolutionary colonies in what would become the United States, after 1776, with the exception of New Jersey, all states adopted constitutions that denied voting rights to women. New Jersey’s constitution initially granted suffrage to property-holding residents, including single and married women, but the state rescinded women’s voting rights in 1807 and did not restore them until New Jersey ratified the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920.
In 1918, President Wilson faced a difficult midterm election and would have to confront the issue of women’s suffrage directly. Fifteen states had extended equal voting rights to women and, by this time, the President fully supported the federal amendment. Between January 1918 and June 1919, the House and Senate voted on the federal amendment five times. Each vote was extremely close and Southern Democrats continued to oppose giving women the vote. Suffragists pressured President Wilson to call a special session of Congress and he agreed to schedule one for May 19, 1919. On May 21, 1919, the amendment passed the House 304 to 89, with 42 votes more than was necessary. On June 4, 1919, it was brought before the Senate and, after Southern Democrats abandoned a filibuster, 36 Republican senators were joined by 20 Democrats to pass the amendment.
By June 1920, after intense lobbying suffrage organizations, the amendment was ratified by 35 of the necessary 36 state legislatures. Ratification would be determined by Tennessee. In the middle of July 1920, both opponents and supporters of the Anthony Amendment arrived in Nashville to lobby the General Assembly. On August 18, 1920, Tennessee narrowly approved the Nineteenth Amendment, with 50 of 99 members of the Tennessee House of Representatives voting yes. Upon signing the ratification certificate, the Governor of Tennessee sent it by registered mail to the U.S. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby, whose office received it at 4:00 a.m. on August 26, 1920. Once certified as correct, Colby signed the Proclamation of the Women’s Suffrage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Nina Allender political cartoon aimed at President Wilson published in The Suffragist on October 3, 1917
ballerina Olga Lepeshinskaya and her marksmanship circa 1940, in preparation for town defense during the war…
Birthday Signs…
It’s Brazil…
MAGA?
(Thanks, Debra)
BADA BING BING BING…
Growing up teachers always told me there was no such thing as a stupid question. 6 years in retail has determined that was a lie.
Sarah Palin, No Longer Dumbest Person to Set Foot in Alaska.
Nice try, Alaska Boy, but still not distracted. Release the files.
The fact that my entire body cracks like a glowstick whenever I move, yet refuses to actually glow, is very disappointing.
Uganda has discovered 31M tons of gold ore containing 320,000 tons of refined gold, valued at $12T. The United States has decided Uganda needs more democracy and freedom.
Alaska hotel guests found papers with sensitive details about the Putin/Trump meeting in the hotel’s public printer.
I’ve reached the age where I’ve come to accept that I will never be old enough to know better.
Every morning for years, at about 11:30, the telephone operator in a small Sierra-Nevada town received a call from a man asking the exact time. One day the operator summed up nerve enough to ask him why the regularity. “I’m foreman of the local sawmill,” he explained. “Every day, I have to blow the whistle at noon, so I call you to get the exact time.” The operator giggled, “That’s odd,” she said. “All this time, we’ve been setting our clock by your whistle.”
Elephants are born weighing 250 pounds. They are the biggest babies on earth except for the people mad about male cheerleaders in the NFL.
If my memory were any worse, I could plan my own surprise party.
These days most things in my body hurt and what doesn’t hurt doesn’t work.
This is your daily reminder that people suck and you’re going to get pissed off today. Do what you gotta do. Just stay out of jail.
I’m not afraid of aging… I’m afraid of stairs, tiny print, and chairs that sit too low!
I want to grow my own food but I can’t find bacon seeds.
A flat tire can really leave you feeling deflated.
MAGA is against abortion because it cuts into their dating pool.
Most days I’m happy with my life choices. But someone on Gavin Newsom’s social team is getting paid to bully tRUMP and I didn’t know that was a career option.
It’s hilarious how they put jokes on the back of Oreo packages. Listen to this one… Serving Size: 2 cookies.
On this day in 1965, Sonny & Cher were at No.1 on the UK singles chart with ‘I Got You Babe’, the duo’s only UK No.1. Sonny Bono was inspired to write the song to capitalise on the popularity of the term “babe,” as heard in Bob Dylan’s ‘It Ain’t Me Babe’. Bono wrote the lyrics and composed the music of the song for himself and his then-wife, Cher, late at night in their basement. When Cher was woken up to sing the lyrics, she hated the song, not thinking it would be a hit, and immediately went back to bed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5fFlI7MFeM
On this day in 1835, the first article of ‘The Great Moon Hoax’ was published in the New York Sun about the supposed discovery of life and civilization on the Moon. The discoveries were falsely attributed to Sir John Herschel and his fictitious companion Andrew Grant. The articles described animals on the Moon, including bison, single-horned goats, mini zebras, unicorns, bipedal tail-less beavers and bat-like winged humanoids (“Vespertilio-homo“) who built temples. There were trees, oceans and beaches. These discoveries were supposedly made with “an immense telescope of an entirely new principle”. Five additional articles followed with more detailed descriptions.
Eventually, the authors announced that the observations had been terminated by the destruction of the telescope, by means of the Sun causing the lens to act as a “burning glass”, setting fire to the observatory.
According to legend, The Sun‘s circulation increased dramatically because of the hoax and remained permanently greater than before, thereby establishing The Sun as a successful paper. It brought the journal to international fame, and the hoax resembled crime reports that allowed the readers to play detective, trying to discover the truth. It was not discovered to be a hoax for several weeks after its publication and, even then, the newspaper did not issue a retraction.
A lithograph of the hoax’s “ruby amphitheater”, as printed in The Sun
Most things…
Forgot about the trailer…
Uh oh…
Puns? What puns???
Uh oh…
This summer…
Gavin Newsom trolling…
Long joke…
I had lunch with 2 of my unmarried friends. One is engaged, one is a mistress, and I, the third one, have been married for 20+ years.
We were chatting about our relationships and decided to amaze our men by greeting them at the door wearing a black bra, stiletto heels and a mask over our eyes. We agreed to meet in a few days to exchange notes.
Here’s how it all went.
My engaged friend:
The other night when my boyfriend came over he found me with a black leather bodice, tall stilettos, and a mask. He saw me and said, ‘You are the woman of my dreams…I love you.’ Then we made passionate love all night long.
The mistress:
‘Me too! The other night I met my lover at his office and I was wearing a raincoat, under it only the black bra, heels and mask over my eyes. When I opened the raincoat he didn’t say a word, but he started to tremble and we made wild love all night.’
Then I had to share my story:
‘When my husband came home I was wearing the black bra, black stockings, stilettos and a mask over my eyes. When he came in the door and saw me he said,
On this day in 1902 the Cadillac Automobile Company was founded. Cadillac is among the first automotive brands in the world, fourth in the United States only to Autocar Company (1897) and fellow GM marques Oldsmobile (1897) and Buick (1899). It was named after Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac (1658–1730), who founded Detroit, Michigan. The Cadillac crest is based on his coat of arms.
By the time General Motors purchased the company in 1909, Cadillac had already established itself as one of America’s premier luxury car makers. The complete interchangeability of its precision parts had allowed it to lay the foundation for the modern mass production of automobiles. It was at the forefront of technological advances, introducing full electrical systems, the clashless manual transmission and the steel roof. The brand developed three engines, with its V8 setting the standard for the American automotive industry.
Cadillac had the first U.S. car to win the Royal Automobile Club of the United Kingdom’s Dewar Trophy by successfully demonstrating the interchangeability of its component parts during a reliability test in 1908; this spawned the firm’s slogan “Standard of the World”. It won the trophy again in 1912 for incorporating electric starting and lighting in a production automobile.
On July 29, 1909,[1] Cadillac was purchased by the General Motors (GM) conglomerate. Cadillac became General Motors’ prestige division, devoted to the production of large luxury vehicles. The Cadillac line was also GM’s default marque for “commercial chassis” institutional vehicles, such as limousines, ambulances, hearses and funeral home flower cars, the last three of which were custom-built by aftermarket manufacturers. It became positioned at the top of GM’s vehicle hierarchy.
1929 Cadillac Fleetwood
The case of the missing sausage – a mystery…
Housing costs…
Nice Motto…
The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, also known as The Great Wave or simply The Wave, is a woodblock print by the Japanese ukiyo-e artist Hokusai. It was published sometime between 1829 and 1833 in the late Edo period as the first print in Hokusai’s series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji.
It is so iconic it has been imitated and used countless times…
Cookie monster version…
Lego version…
This photo from 2007 is of Rice paddy art (tanbo āto) in the village of Inakadate in northern Japan —
Christian Dior also paid homage to Hokusai in his 2007 couture collection —
and, of course, cats…
Thanks, Debra!
Old…
SIGNZZZ…
MEOW…
Today is the birthday, in 1961, of English musician, singer-songwriter, Roland Orzabal, from Tears For Fears, who scored the 1985 US No.1 & UK No.2 single ‘Everybody Wants To Rule The World’, plus over 12 other UK top 40 singles. Their second album, Songs from the Big Chair, released in 1985, reached No.1 on the US Billboard 200. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGCdLKXNF3w
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