24 June 2018 Interesting tidbits:
24 June 2018
Interesting tidbits:
1374 - A sudden outbreak of St. John's Dance caused people in the streets of Aachen, Germany, to experience hallucinations and begin to jump and twitch uncontrollably until they collapsed from exhaustion.
1846 – The saxophone was patented by Adolphe Sax in Paris, France.
1880 – First performance of O Canada, the song that would become the national anthem of Canada, at the Congrès national des Canadiens-Français.
1916 – Mary Pickford became the first female film star to sign a million dollar contract.
1938 – Pieces of a meteor, estimated to have weighed 450 metric tons when it hit the Earth's atmosphere and exploded, landed near Chicora, Pennsylvania.
1947 – Kenneth Arnold made the first widely reported UFO sighting near Mount Rainier, Washington. All modern UFO sightings, abductions, and groups (e.g. MUFON) stem from this sighting. The Arnold incident happened two weeks before the Roswell UFO crash.
1949 – The first television western, Hopalong Cassidy, is aired on NBC starring William Boyd.
1982 – "The Jakarta Incident": British Airways Flight 9 flew into a cloud of volcanic ash thrown up by the eruption of Mount Galunggung, resulting in the failure of all four engines.
Today's birthday crew:
1777 – John Ross, Scottish naval officer and Arctic explorer.
1842 – Ambrose Bierce, American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist. His vehemence as a critic, his motto "Nothing matters", and the sardonic view of human nature that informed his work, all earned him the nickname "Bitter Bierce". Bierce was funny politically, always opposed to demagogy and privilege alike, showing no faith that the common man could command politics, or the rich man transcend his greed. In 1913, Bierce traveled to Mexico to gain first-hand experience of the Mexican Revolution. While traveling with rebel troops, he disappeared without a trace.
1850 – Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener, English field marshal. Kitchener won fame in 1898 for winning the Battle of Omdurman and securing control of the Sudan, after which he was given the title "Lord Kitchener of Khartoum".
1915 – Fred Hoyle, English astronomer and science fiction author noted primarily for the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis.
1938 – Lawrence Block, American crime writer.
1944 – Kathryn Lasky, American fantasy author (Guardians of Ga'Hoole).
1947 – Peter Weller, American actor (Engineering an Empire).
1950 – Mercedes Lackey, American writer (Velgarth).
1967 – Scott Oden, American historical fiction writer with an "unhealthy interest" in orcs.
Happy birthday guys!