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On this day in 1787, the First Fleet departed Portsmouth, England on a voyage of 15,000 miles lasting 220 days transporting settlers to Australia and marking the beginning of British colonization of Australia. It consisted of two Royal Navy vessels, three storeships and six convict transports under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip. The ships held more than 1,400 convicts, marines, sailors, colonial officials and free settlers heading to Botany Bay.

Governor Arthur Phillip rejected Botany Bay choosing instead Port Jackson (later known as Sydney Harbor), to the north, as the site for the new colony; they arrived there on 26 January 1788, establishing the colony of New South Wales, as a penal colony which would become the first British settlement in Australia.

The decision to establish a colony in Australia was made by Thomas Townshend, Lord Sydney, Secretary of State for the Home Office. This was taken for two reasons: the ending of transportation of criminals to North America following the American Revolution, as well as the need for a base in the Pacific to counter French expansion.

The Fleet reached Rio de Janeiro on 5 August and stayed for a month. The ships were cleaned and water taken on board, repairs were made, and Phillip ordered large quantities of food. The Fleet left Rio de Janeiro on 4 September to run before the westerlies to the Table Bay in southern Africa, which it reached on 13 October. This was the last port of call, so the main task was to stock up on plants, seeds and livestock for their arrival in Australia.

This was one of the world’s greatest sea voyages – eleven vessels carrying about 1,487 people and stores had traveled for 252 days for more than 15,000 miles (24,000 km) without losing a ship. Forty-eight people died on the journey, a death rate of just over three percent. Twenty children were born during the voyage.

Lithograph of the First Fleet entering Port Jackson, 26 January 1788, by Edmund Le Bihan

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I guess Henry VIII and such…

BADA BING!!!

Flying the confederate flag…Irony is telling people “go back to your country” while flying the flag of a country that doesn’t exist in the country that defeated it.

We’re about 3 lines deep into the “first they came for” poem. It’s not a very long poem.

Q: How dd you meet your husband? A: I’m a pharmacist. He came in to buy condoms and asked for XXXXL. And it was only after we got married that I realized he stutters.

(sing along)… If your happy and you know it, it’s your meds.

If I was a plastic surgeon I would 100% put a squeaky toy in every breast implant.

I’m broke but not like poor broke. I’m classy type of broke. I’m broque’.

I think telling kids they’ll have less toys for Christmas because of tariffs while you have yourself a multi-million dollar military birthday parade is kind of a dick move. But what do I know…

If you donate your $400,000 salary but spend $90,000,000 on an unnecessary military parade, you’re in the hole $89,600,000.

If a little girl doesn’t need 30 dolls, then billionaires don’t need 20 cars, 2 yachts, and 10 homes.

90% of bald men still own a comb. They just can’t part with it. 

Doctor: Your son has the measles because he wasn’t vaccinated. Mom: I want a second opinion. Doctor: You’re an idiot.

I have been lying to my cat for years. Anytime he meows at me, I say, “I know I know!” But I don’t know.

My goal is to be that old person everyone is afraid to take out in public.

I found that l have been happier since I changed from coffee in the morning to orange juice. My doctor explained that it’s the vitamin C and natural sugars but l really think it’s the vodka.

Sometimes the thoughts in my head get bored so they go out for a stroll through my mouth. This is rarely a good thing.

I just paid my taxes. The roads should be fixed any day now.

Unfortunately some people were not put here to evolve. They are here to remind you what it looks like if you don’t.

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Today is the birthday, in 1950, of American musician, singer, songwriter, record producer, and multi-instrumentalist Stevie Wonder. A child prodigy who developed into one of the most creative musical figures of the late 20th century. Wonder who has been blind from shortly after birth, signed with Motown’s Tamla label at the age of eleven and continues to perform and record for Motown to this day. Wonder has scored over 40 US & UK Top 40 singles. Albums include Talking Book, Innervisions and Songs in the Key of Life. He wrote and sang this song about his daughter, Aisha. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oE56g61mW44

Today is the birthday, in 1820, of Florence Nightingale. She was was an English social reformer, statistician and the founder of modern nursing. Nightingale came to prominence while serving as a manager and trainer of nurses during the Crimean War, in which she organized care for wounded soldiers at Constantinople. She significantly reduced death rates by improving hygiene and living standards. Nightingale gave nursing a favorable reputation and became an icon of Victorian culture, especially in the persona of “The Lady with the Lamp” making rounds of wounded soldiers at night.

In 1860, she laid the foundation of professional nursing with the establishment of her nursing school at St Thomas’ Hospital in London. It was the first secular nursing school in the world and is now part of King’s College London.

Her social reforms included improving healthcare for all sections of British society, advocating better hunger relief in India, helping to abolish prostitution laws that were harsh for women, and expanding the acceptable forms of female participation in the workforce.

Nightingale was an innovator in statistics; she represented her analysis in graphical forms to ease drawing conclusions and actionables from data. She is famous for usage of the polar area diagram, also called the Nightingale rose diagram, which is equivalent to a modern circular histogram. This diagram is still regularly used in data visualization.

In her honor, today is International Nurses Day. Thank a nurse.

By Henry Hering (1814-1893) – NPG x82368 from National Portrait Gallery, London, Public Domain

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Land Rover giving birth…

I hope everyone had a good Mothers’ Day!

Moms Speak!!

Thanks to Debra and Bob for great Mothers’ Day thoughts

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Today is the birthday, in 1948, of Czech-born American musician, filmmaker, record producer and singer-songwriter Ivan Král. He played bass with Blondie, Patti Smith and Iggy Pop. His songs have been recorded by such artists as U2, Pearl Jam, David Bowie, Simple Minds and John Waite, among others. He died on 2 February 2020 age 71. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGU_4-5RaxU

On this day in 1785, Joseph Bramah patented a Beer Pump of the type still in use today in many British pubs.

Bramah was an English inventor and locksmith. He is best known for having improved the flush toilet and inventing the hydraulic press. He can be considered (along with William Armstrong) one of the two fathers of hydraulic engineering. He patented an improved flush toilet in 1778 and an improved lock in 1784.

Bramah’s most important invention was the hydraulic press. Bramah’s hydraulic press had many industrial applications and still does today. Bramah was a very prolific inventor, though not all of his inventions were as important as his hydraulic press. They included, in addition to the beer pump: a planing machine (1802), a paper-making machine (1805), a machine for automatically printing bank notes with sequential serial numbers (1806), and a machine for making quill pen nibs (1809). He also patented the first extrusion process for making lead pipes and also machinery for making gun stocks.

The historian Ian Mortimer summarizes Bramah thus:

“Joseph Bramah – that blessing of a genius who gives us the modern flushing loo – is also the inventor of the beer pump. Few people in history can claim to have done so much for our physical comfort – both in filling ourselves up at one end and in emptying ourselves at the other.”

The Brazilian Brahma beer brand is named for him.

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This is dum

Need some advice???

(thanks, Debra)

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The NEW POPE from Chicago!!!

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Today is the birthday, in 1995, of American singer-songwriter, filmmaker, and record producer Collins Obinna Chibueze better known by his stage name Shaboozey. In 2024 he released the country single “A Bar Song (Tipsy)”, which peaked at the top of the Billboard Hot 100. As it succeeded Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold ‘Em” at the top, it made for the first time in history that two consecutive black artists held the No.1 position. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7bQwwqW-Hc

Today is Victory in Europe Day (V-E Day), on which day the second world war Allies formally accepted an unconditional surrender by the armed forces of Germany and the end of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich, after six years of the bloodiest conflict in human history.

It was not until August that year that Japan surrendered after the US dropped the first two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Second World War came to an end six years and one day after it started on September 2nd 1945, when official surrender documents were signed on the deck of the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay by the Japanese.

In Russia and some other East European countries, this event is marked on Victory day on May 9th due to time differences.

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Ronald Reagan always struggled with chopsticks…

Paw-ception, the furrmula is broken
byu/kinghrag infunny

Restaurants!!!! I’ve actually been to three of these…

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On this day in 1965, The filming of the promotional film for Bob Dylan’s ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ took place at the side of the Savoy Hotel in London. Actors in the background were Allen Ginsberg and Bob Neuwirth. The original clip was actually the opening segment of D. A. Pennebaker’s film, Dont Look Back, a documentary on Bob Dylan’s 1965 tour of England. In the film, Dylan, who came up with the idea, holds up cue cards for the camera with selected words and phrases from the lyrics. The cue cards were written by Donovan, Allen Ginsberg, Bob Neuwirth and Dylan himself. While staring at the camera, he flipped the cards as the song played. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGxjIBEZvx0

On this day in 1429, Joan of Arc led the French forces against the English and relieved the siege of Orléans.

The siege of Orléans occurred during the Hundred Years’ War, an inheritance dispute over the French throne between the ruling houses of France and England. The conflict had begun in 1337 when England’s King Edward III decided to press his claim to the French throne, a claim based on his status as the son of Isabella of France and thus of the contested French royal line.

Following a decisive victory at Agincourt in 1415, the English gained the upper hand in the conflict, occupying much of northern France. Orléans, situated on the Loire River, was seen as the key, whose capture would open up Central France to conquest by the English and their Burgundian allies. The English armies surrounded Orléans intending to starve the city into submission.

Joan of Arc, a young peasant girl, believed she was divinely ordained to rescue the Dauphin Charles and deliver him to his coronation at Reims. She persuaded the Dauphin and French leaders to let her lead the French army to relieve Orléans.

On the morning of May 7, she led the French assault on Boulevart-Tourelles, an English redoubt at the southern end of the bridge over the Loire. Early in the morning, Joan was struck down while standing in the trench to the south of Les Tourelles, by a longbow arrow between the neck and left shoulder and was hurriedly taken away. Further assaults against Les Tourelles during the day were beaten back.

As evening was approaching, Joan went off for a period of quiet prayer, then returned to the area south of Les Tourelles, telling the troops that when her banner touched the fortress wall the place would be theirs. When one soldier shouted “It’s touching! (the wall)”, Joan replied “Tout est vostre – et y entrez!” (“All is yours, – go in!”). The French soldiery rushed in, swarming up the ladders into the fortification and forcing the English out.

The battle was a turning point in the war and the Dauphin Charles, with Joan at his side, was finally consecrated as King Charles VII of France on 17 July 1429.

Jeanne d’Arc at the Siege of Orléans by Jules Eugène Lenepveu, painted 1886–1890.

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More Executive Orders means more drinking…

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SIGNSSESS

Today is the birthday, in 1951, of English rock and blues guitarist Bernie Marsden. He is known for his work with Whitesnake, having written or co-written with David Coverdale many of the group’s hit songs, such as ‘Fool for Your Loving’, ‘Walking in the Shadow of the Blues’, ‘Ready an’ Willing’ and ‘Here I Go Again’. Marsden had also worked with UFO, Glenn Cornick’s Wild Turkey in 1973, Cozy Powell’s band Cozy Powell’s Hammer and Babe Ruth. He died on 24 August 2023 from bacterial meningitis age 72. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyF8RHM1OCg