Today is the birthday, in 1745, of Kazimierz Michał Władysław Wiktor Pułaski, anglicised as Casimir Pulaski. He was a Polish nobleman, soldier, and military commander who has been called “The Father of American cavalry” or “The Soldier of Liberty”.
Born in Warsaw and following in his father’s footsteps, he became interested in politics at an early age. He soon became involved in the military and in revolutionary affairs in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Pulaski was one of the leading military commanders for the Bar Confederation and fought against the Commonwealth’s foreign domination. When this uprising failed, he was driven into exile.
Following a recommendation by Benjamin Franklin, Pulaski traveled to North America to help in the American Revolutionary War. He distinguished himself throughout the revolution, most notably when he saved the life of George Washington. Pulaski became a general in the Continental Army, and he and his friend, the Hungary-born colonel commandant Michael Kovats, raised Pulaski’s Legion and reformed the American cavalry as a whole. At the siege of Savannah, while leading a cavalry charge against British forces, he was fatally wounded by grapeshot and died shortly after.
Pulaski is remembered as a hero who fought for independence and freedom in Poland and the United States. Numerous places and events are named in his honor, and he is commemorated by many works of art. Pulaski is one of only eight people to be awarded honorary United States citizenship.
Pulaski at Częstochowa, an 1875 painting by Józef Chełmoński.
Some people are just really hungry…
today is the birthday, in 1678, of Antonio Lucio Vivaldi, an Italian composer, virtuoso violinist and impresario of Baroque music. Regarded as one of the greatest Baroque composers, Vivaldi’s influence during his lifetime was widespread across Europe, giving origin to many imitators and admirers. His best-known work is a series of violin concertos known as The Four Seasons. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LiztfE1X7E
On this day in 1938, oil was discovered in in commercial quantities at Dammam oil well No. 7 in 1938 in what is now modern day Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.
On January 15, 1902, Ibn Saud took Riyadh from the Rashid tribe. In 1913, his forces captured the province of al-Hasa from the Ottoman Turks. In 1922, he completed his conquest of the Nejd, and in 1925, he conquered the Hijaz. In 1932, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was proclaimed with Ibn Saud as king. Without stability in the region, the search for oil would have been difficult, as evidenced by early oil exploration in neighboring countries such as Yemen and Oman.
In 1922, Ibn Saud met a New Zealand mining engineer, Major Frank Holmes. During World War I, Holmes had been to Gallipoli and then Ethiopia, where he first heard rumors of the oil seeps of the Persian Gulf region. n 1923, the king signed a concession with Holmes allowing him to search for oil in eastern Saudi Arabia. In 1925, Holmes signed a concession with the sheikh of Bahrain, allowing him to search for oil there. He then proceeded to the United States to find an oil company that might be interested in taking on the concession. He found help from Gulf Oil.
Meanwhile Ibn Saud had dispatched American mining engineer Karl Twitchell to examine eastern Arabia. Twitchell found encouraging signs of oil, asphalt seeps in the vicinity of Qatif, but advised the king to await the outcome of the Bahrain No.1 well before inviting bids for a concession for Al-Ahsa. To the American engineers working in Bahrain, standing on the Jebel Dukhan and gazing across a twenty-mile (32 km) stretch of the Persian Gulf at the Arabian Peninsula in the clear light of early morning, the outline of the low Dhahran hills in the distance were an obvious oil prospect.
the California Arabian Standard Oil Company (CASOC) was set up to develop the oil concession. SOCAL also joined forces with the Texas Oil Company when together they formed CALTEX in 1936 to take advantage of the latter’s formidable marketing network in Africa and Asia. they identified a promising site and named it Dammam No. 7, after a nearby village. Over the next three years, the drillers were unsuccessful in making a commercial strike, but chief geologist Max Steineke persevered. He urged the team to drill deeper, even when Dammam No. 7 was plagued by cave-ins, stuck drill bits and other problems, before the drillers finally struck oil on 3 March 1938. This discovery would turn out to be first of many, eventually revealing the largest source of crude oil in the world.
Dammam No. 7, the first commercial crude oil well in Saudi Arabia, struck oil on March 3, 1938.
BADA BING!!!!!!!!
My wife keeps acquiring new tastes in music. First it was Sixpence None the Richer, then 50 Cent, now Nickelback. I think she’s going through the change.
Trump Invites Caucasian Half Of Alysa Liu To Visit White House.
I couldn’t beat a computer in a game of chess, but it would be no match for me in kickboxing. In a related development, my monitor and my toe are broken.
The Finland hockey team, who won Bronze, was not at the Olympic medal awards because they were Finish-ed.
State of the Union Fact Check: None Detected.
If the president invites you to the White House or the State of the Union Address, you go. If a pedophile invites you anywhere, tell them to fuck off.
What’s worse than a racist, authoritarian president? The people that support him.
Don’t bother walking a mile in my shoes, that would be boring. Spend 30 seconds in my head, that’ll freak you right out.
Sometimes I feels like my brain has a lot of things to hold and no pockets.
People who think you get boring as you age have obviously never experienced the thrill of seeing two hummingbirds at the feeder at the same time.
Someone asked me what the 9th letter of the alphabet is. I had to think about it, but I was correct.
You know what seems odd to me? Numbers that aren’t divisible by two.
People in the 80s: I bet they have flying cars in 40 years. Meanwhile on a pizza box in 2026: Open box before eating pizza.
The years passed, mankind became stupider at a frightening rate. Some had high hopes the genetic engineering would correct this trend in evolution, but sadly the greatest minds and resources were focused on conquering hair loss and prolonging erections.
I went outside once… The graphics were great but the story was horrible.
Today is the birthday, in 1779, of Joel Roberts Poinsett, an American physician, botanist, politician, and diplomat. He was the first U.S. agent in Hispanic America, a member of the South Carolina Legislature, and later a United States Representative from 1821 to 1825. In 1825, he was appointed by John Quincy Adams as the first United States Minister to Mexico and serving through the first year of Andrew Jackson’s administration in 1829. He represented the United States government to the First Mexican Empire and the First Mexican Republic in Mexico City.
Poinsett was a strong supporter of Andrew Jackson and Jacksonian democracy. He was a Unionist leader in South Carolina during the Nullification Crisis in 1832 and 1833, when the state refused to enforce federal tariffs, declaring them unconstitutional. Poinsett was subsequently appointed 15th U.S. Secretary of War under Martin Van Buren. He was a co-founder of the earlier National Institute for the Promotion of Science and the Useful Arts in 1840, a predecessor of the modern Smithsonian Institution.
Beginning in 1801, Poinsett traveled the European continent. In the spring of 1803 he arrived in Switzerland and stayed at the home of Jacques Necker and his daughter, Madame de Stael. On one occasion, Robert Livingston, the United States minister to France, was invited for a visit. Poinsett was compelled to assume the role of interpreter between the deaf Livingston and the aged Necker, whose lack of teeth made his speech almost incomprehensible. Fortunately, Madame de Stael tactfully assumed the duty of translation for her elderly father.
Poinsett arrived in the Russian capital of Saint Petersburg in November 1806. Learning that Poinsett was from South Carolina, the Empress asked him if he would inspect the cotton factories under her patronage. Poinsett made some suggestions on improvement, which the Dowager Empress accepted. In January 1807, Czar Alexander and Poinsett dined at the Palace. Czar Alexander attempted to entice Poinsett into the Russian civil or military service. Poinsett was hesitant, which prompted Alexander to advise him to “see the Empire, acquire the language, study the people”, and then decide. Always interested in travel, Poinsett accepted the invitation and left Saint Petersburg in March 1807 on a journey through southern Russia. He was accompanied by his English friend Philip Yorke, Viscount Royston and eight others. They were among the last westerners to see Moscow before its burning in October 1812 by Napoleon’s forces.
They were provided with a Cossack escort as they traveled in Dagestan, but when a Tartar dignitary claimed that this would only provoke danger, the escort was bypassed for the security of the Tartar chiefs. This new security increased the numbers in Poinsett’s company, which they believed made it less vulnerable to attack as it passed out of Russia proper. Thus, they were joined by a Persian merchant, who was transporting young girls he had acquired in Circassia to harems in Turkey. With a strong Persian and Kopak guard, the party left Derbent and entered the realm of the Khan of Kuban.
Upon his return to Moscow, Czar Alexander discussed the details of Poinsett’s trip with him and offered him a position as colonel in the Russian Army. However, news had reached Russia of the attack of the Chesapeake affair, and war between the United States and Great Britain seemed certain. Poinsett eagerly sought to return to his homeland.
He served as a “special agent” to two South American countries from 1810 to 1814, Chile and Argentina. President James Madison appointed him in 1809 as Consul in General. Poinsett was to investigate the prospects of the revolutionists, in their struggle for independence from Spain.
In 1820, Poinsett won a seat in the United States House of Representatives for the Charleston district. As a congressman, Poinsett continued to call for internal improvements, but he also advocated the maintenance of a strong army and navy. Poinsett simultaneously served as a special envoy to Mexico from 1822 to 1823, when the government of James Monroe became concerned about the stability of newly independent Mexico. On January 12, 1828, in Mexico City, Poinsett signed the first treaty between the United States and Mexico, the Treaty of Limits, a treaty that recognized the U.S.-Mexico border established by the 1819 Adams–Onís Treaty between Spain and the U.S.
After visiting an area south of Mexico City near Taxco de Alarcón, Poinsett saw what later became known in the United States as the poinsettia. (In Mexico it is called Flor de Nochebuena, Christmas Eve flower, or Catarina). Poinsett, an avid amateur botanist, sent samples of the plant to the United States, and by 1836 the plant was widely known as the “poinsettia”. Also a species of Mexican lizard, Sceloporus poinsettii, is named in Poinsett’s honor.
Poinsett served as Secretary of War from March 7, 1837, to March 5, 1841, overseeing the forced ethnic cleansing and dispossession of land from Native Americans to European settlers known as the Trail of Tears. reduced the fragmentation of the army by concentrating elements at central locations; equipped the light batteries of artillery regiments as authorized by the 1821 army organization act; and again retired to his plantation at Georgetown, South Carolina, in 1841. He died of tuberculosis, hastened by an attack of pneumonia and is buried at the Church of the Holy Cross Episcopal Cemetery.
Joel Roberts Poinsett, Secretary of War
(this image does not depict a horngus (or anything else) attached to a dongfish — a creature that does not exist. It’s an altered version of a Wikipedia entry for Aristotle’s theory of biology, which includes a site note describing that “Aristotle recorded that the embryo of a dogfish was attached by a cord to a kind of placenta (the yolk sac)”)
Snow Sculpture Contest…
Don’t order the pineapple pizza…
TEA??
Spring is in the air!
SIGNZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
Today is the birthday, in 1950, of American singer and drummer Karen Carpenter, who with The Carpenters had the 1973 UK No.2 single ‘Yesterday Once More’ plus 3 US No.1’s including the 1975 US No.1 single ‘Please Mr Postman’. Their 1974 UK & US No.1 album ‘The Singles 1969-1973 spent 125 weeks on the UK chart. The Carpenters album and single sales total more than 90 million making them one of the best-selling music artists of all time. She died on 4 February 1983 of anorexia nervosa. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hJCr9cq5co
Today is the birthday, in 1891, of David Sarnoff, a Russian-born American businessman who played an important role in the American history of radio broadcasting and television. He led the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) for most of his career in various capacities from shortly after its founding in 1919 until his retirement in 1970.
David Sarnoff was born to a Jewish family in Uzlian, a small town in Minsk Governorate, Russian Empire, the son of Abraham Sarnoff and Leah Privin. Abraham emigrated to the United States and raised funds to bring the family. Sarnoff spent much of his early childhood in a yeshiva studying and memorizing the Torah. He emigrated with his mother and three brothers and one sister to New York City in 1900, where he helped support his family by selling newspapers.
At age 15 Sarnoff went to work to support the family. He had planned to pursue a full-time career in the newspaper business, but a chance encounter led to a position as an office boy at the Commercial Cable Company. When his superior refused him leave for Rosh Hashanah, he joined the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America on September 30, 1906, and started a career of over 60 years in electronic communications. Over the next 13 years, Sarnoff rose from office boy to commercial manager of the company, learning about the technology and the business of electronic communications on the job and in libraries. He also served at Marconi stations on ships and posts on Siasconset, Nantucket and the New York Wanamaker Department Store.
Over the next two years, Sarnoff earned promotions to chief inspector and contracts manager for a company. Sarnoff also demonstrated the first use of radio on a railroad line, the Lackawanna Railroad Company’s link between Binghamton, New York, and Scranton, Pennsylvania. Sarnoff used H. J. Round’s hydrogen arc transmitter to demonstrate the broadcast of music from the New York Wanamaker station.
Unlike many who were involved with early radio communications, who often viewed radio as point-to-point, Sarnoff saw the potential of radio as point-to-mass. One person (the broadcaster) could speak to many (the listeners). When General Electric arranged the purchase of American Marconi and reorganized it as the Radio Corporation of America, Sarnoff realized his dream and revived his proposal in a lengthy memo on the company’s business and prospects. Although his superiors again ignored him, he contributed to the rising postwar radio boom by helping arrange for the broadcast of a heavyweight boxing match between Jack Dempsey and Georges Carpentier in July 1921. Up to 300,000 people listened to the broadcast of the fight, and demand for home radio equipment bloomed that winter.
In 1925, RCA purchased its first radio station (WEAF, New York) and launched the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), the first radio network in America. Four years later, Sarnoff became president of RCA. NBC had by that time split into two networks, the Red and the Blue. The Blue Network eventually became ABC Radio. In 1929, Sarnoff engineered the purchase of the Victor Talking Machine Company, the nation’s largest manufacturer of gramophone records and phonographs, merging radio-phonograph production at Victor’s large manufacturing facility in Camden, New Jersey. The acquisition became known as RCA Records.
in April 1939, regularly scheduled, electronic television in America was initiated by RCA under the name of their broadcasting division at the time, The National Broadcasting Company (NBC). Opening day ceremonies at The World’s Fair were telecast in the medium’s first major production, featuring a speech by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the first US president to appear on television. Sarnoff served on Eisenhower’s communications staff, arranging expanded radio circuits for NBC to transmit news from the invasion of France in June 1944. In France, Sarnoff oversaw the construction of a radio transmitter powerful enough to reach all of the allied forces in Europe, called Radio Free Europe.
Sarnoff retired in 1970, at the age of 79 and died the following year, aged 80. He is interred in a mausoleum featuring a stained-glass vacuum tube in Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York. His son, Robert succeeded him as chairman of RCA. Sarnoff was one of the many immigrants who helped build America.
David Sarnoff, in 1922 he was the general manager and vice-president of RCA, the Radio Corporation of America. Photo taken and published in September 1922
Today is the birthday, in 1960, of Johnny Roy Van Zant, American musician and the current lead vocalist of Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd. He is the younger brother of the late Lynyrd Skynyrd co-founder and former lead vocalist Ronnie Van Zant and of the 38 Special founder Donnie Van Zant. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJZrXhMBG1E
On this day in 1616, Galileo Galilei was formally banned by the church from teaching that the earth revolves around the sun (heliocentrism). In 1610, Galileo published his Sidereus Nuncius (Starry Messenger) describing the observations that he had made with his new, much stronger telescope, amongst them the Galilean moons of Jupiter. With these observations and additional observations that followed, such as the phases of Venus, he promoted the heliocentric theory of Nicolaus Copernicus published in De revolutionibus orbium coelestium in 1543. Galileo’s opinions were met with opposition within the Catholic Church, and in 1616 the Inquisition declared heliocentrism to be both scientifically indefensible and heretical.
In the Catholic world prior to Galileo’s conflict with the Church, the majority of educated people subscribed to the Aristotelian geocentric view that the Earth was the center of the universe and that all heavenly bodies revolved around the Earth, though Copernican theories were used to reform the calendar in 1582. Geostaticism agreed with a literal interpretation of Scripture in several places, such as 1 Chronicles 16:30, Psalm 93:1, Psalm 96:10, Psalm 104:5, Ecclesiastes 1:5.
On February 19, 1616, the Inquisition asked a commission of theologians, known as qualifiers, about the propositions of the heliocentric view of the universe. On February 24 the Qualifiers delivered their unanimous report: the proposition that the Sun is stationary at the center of the universe is “foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture”.
On February 26, Galileo was ordered: “to abstain completely from teaching or defending this doctrine and opinion or from discussing it… to abandon completely… the opinion that the sun stands still at the center of the world and the earth moves, and henceforth not to hold, teach, or defend it in any way whatever, either orally or in writing.”
Galileo facing the Roman Inquisition by Cristiano Banti (1857)
Well, of course…
Today is the birthday, in 1932, of Johnny Cash US country singer, songwriter who was considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. Although he is remembered as a country icon, his songs spanned other genres including rock and roll and rockabilly and blues, folk, and gospel. This crossover appeal won Cash the rare honor of induction in the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the Gospel Music Hall of Fame. During the last stage of his career, Cash covered songs by several late 20th-century rock artists, most notably ‘Hurt’ by Nine Inch Nails. Cash died of respiratory failure on September 12th 2003, aged 71. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wG0fS4DoGUc
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