On this day in 1682, the city of Philadelphia was founded by William Penn. Before colonization, the area had been inhabited by the Lenape people.
The first exploration of the area by Europeans was in 1609, when a Dutch expedition led by Henry Hudson entered the Delaware River valley in search of the Northwest Passage. The Valley, including the future location of Philadelphia, became part of the New Netherland claim of the Dutch Republic.
A group of Swedish colonists reached Delaware Bay in March 1638, and the settlers began to build a fort at the site of present-day Wilmington, Delaware. They named it Fort Christina, in honor of the twelve-year-old Queen Christina of Sweden. It was the first permanent European settlement in the Delaware Valley.
The Dutch never recognized the legitimacy of the Swedish claim and, in the late summer of 1655, Director-General Peter Stuyvesant of New Amsterdam mustered a military expedition to the Delaware Valley to subdue the rogue colony. After the English defeated the Dutch and took over their North American colonies, King Charles II gave Penn a large piece of his newly acquired American land holdings to repay a debt the king owed to Admiral Sir William Penn, Penn’s father. This land included present-day Pennsylvania and Delaware.
Penn later journeyed up the river and founded Philadelphia with a core group of accompanying Quakers and others seeking religious freedom on lands he purchased from the local chieftains of the Lenape or Delaware nation. Penn himself designed the layout of the city, based in part on the city design of the Latin tract Utopia by Thomas More. He also planned that the city’s streets would be set up in a grid, with the idea that the city would be more like the rural towns of England than its crowded cities. The homes would be spread far apart and surrounded by gardens and orchards. It didn’t work out that way.
Philadelphia’s skyline at twilight from the southwest on South Street Bridge with the Schuylkill River on the left in July 2016
When the steaks are high…
Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn
Mom: Do you want to wear a scary costume or a princess costume?
Girl: I don’t know!
Mom: You can be both! You can be a queen who got her head cut off!
Girl: Yeah, let’s do that!
Boy: I want to have my head cut off!
Mom: How about you be the king that murdered her?
Boy: Well, okay. But how will people know I did it?
Mom: Let me tell you a scary story, a true story…
Scream’s distant Alabama cousin, ‘Holler’
On this day in 1977, Baccara were at No.1 in the UK singles chart with Yes Sir, I Can Boogie. They were the first Spanish act to score a UK No.1, and the first female duo to do so. ‘Yes Sir, I Can Boogie’ is also one of the thirty all-time singles to have sold 10 million (or more) copies worldwide. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32wDFCM7iSI
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