Category: This Day In History

Many of us will be watching NFL games today. But some of us remember this day in history from long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away: Fans fill the stands as a horse-drawn carriage arrives at the annual UChicago-Michigan Thanksgiving Day game in 1895. Chicago founded its football team in 1892 and played its first big rivalry game against the Wolverines on Nov. 13 that year. From then until 1905, the two teams traditionally ended the season with a Thanksgiving Day matchup.

For my Columbus Cousin: JV football at its very finest!

For my wife: Not PSU, but it was Big 10, so it’ll have to do.

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A UChicago Maroon spread from earlier this year, titled “Brains Over Brawn,” is here. After the 1939 season, UChicago quit playing big time D-1 football. But even in my day (the late 1970’s) there was stiff student resistance to the reinstatement of an inter-collegiate football program, even at a D-3 level.

Ah well, I guess you can’t please all of the people all of the time. Somebody famous said that. I think it was maybe either Abe Lincoln or Amos Alonzo Stagg? You make the call.

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Happy Football and Turkey Day, y’all!

Most people live in places where light pollution prevents them from seeing any but the brightest of stars at night. We are fortunate to live in a place that’s shielded from downtown Denver’s lights by a tall wall of jutting red rocks. Roxborough Park is known as a “dark sky community,” which means there are no streetlights and strict regulations limiting outside lighting. For instance, night lights must have motion sensors and down-pointing shades and be on a short timer. All of that means that the Milky Way is clearly visible in our sky, at least at the time of new moon each month. And this time of year there’s an added benefit. What’s that, I hear you ask? Well, now that you mention it….

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The following comes from a site called “Your Daily Dose of History.”

A bit long, but well worth the read.

The Lakota people were so amazed by the event that they reset their calendar to commemorate it. Joseph Smith, traveling with Mormon refugees, noted in his diary that it was surely a sign of the Second Coming. Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglas, and Harriet Tubman, among many others, described seeing it. It became known as “The Night the Stars Fell.”

So, what was this amazing occurrence?

Many of those who witnessed it interpreted it as a sign of the Biblical end times, remembering words from the gospel of St. Mark: “And the stars of heaven shall fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken.” But Yale astronomer Denison Olmsted sought a scientific explanation, and shortly afterwards he issued a call to the public—perhaps the first scientific crowd-sourced data gathering effort. At Olmsted’s request, newspapers across the country printed his call for data: “As the cause of ‘Falling Stars’ is not understood by meteorologists, it is desirable to collect all the facts attending this phenomenon, stated with as much precision as possible. The subscriber, therefore, requests to be informed of any particulars which were observed by others, respecting the time when it was first discovered, the position of the radiant point above mentioned, whether progressive or stationary, and of any other facts relative to the meteors.”

Olmsted published his conclusions the following years, the information he had received from lay observers having helped him draw new scientific conclusions in the study of meteors and meteor showers. He noted that the shower radiated from a point in the constellation Leo and speculated that it was caused by the earth passing through a cloud of space dust. The event, and the public’s fascination with it, caused a surge of interest in “citizen science” and significantly increased public scientific awareness.

Nowadays we know that every November the earth passes through the debris in the trail of a comet known as Tempel-Tuttle, causing the meteor showers we know as the Leonids. Impressive every year, every 33rd year or so they are especially spectacular, although very rarely attaining the magnificence of the 1833 event.

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That’s today’s Daily Dose of History. More from NASA on comet Tempel-Tuttle is here.  Its last pass around the sun was in 2002, so – with a periodicity of 33 years – the next big Leonid storm will occur in November of 2035. Stay tuned for details on your late local news at 11.

We live in what FEMA calls the “wildland-urban interface” (or, WUI) of the arid Mountain West. Accordingly, we celebrate Fourth of July weekend around here by flying the flag, but not by setting off fireworks.

And lest anyone forget, below is a photo taken in our neighborhood on July 1 , 2012 – eleven years ago today – after the Waldo Canyon Fire burned down much of Mountain Shadows. A remembrance is here.

Let’s all be careful out there.

Happy 4th, y’all.

If you’re a history buff and grew up around where I did, I highly recommend a site, here, called Ye Old Sulphur Spa Historical Society. In a recent FB post they feature a grand old house in town I remember from when I was maybe 4 years old: My dad was inside discussing taxes (I think) with Ross Koons. His wife Alice would later be my 1st grade teacher at York Springs Elementary – almost sixty years ago. A real blast from the past!

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For those history buffs who may remember my maternal grandpa, Willis R. Wiley, here’s a double-barrel blast from the past, part II.

For what it’s worth, Grandpa Wiley was a trickster and a joker. I inherited my twisted sense of humor from him. And just in case there was any question on the humor front, here’s a Titanic submersible sub meme he definitely would have appreciated.

Happy April Fools Day from the biggest fool of all. No, wait, I take it back: I run a distant second to William Henry Harrison, our 9th president. At the time of his inauguration on March 4, 1871 he was the oldest president ever to take office. A month later he was dead of pneumonia. Dang, I guess maybe he shoulda worn that coat after all?

The rest of today’s offerings consist of everything from maternal tranquilizer darts to true taco miracles to sage marital advice from Henry VIII.  Enjoy!  And may this April 1st find you perfectly whelmed – unlike our coatless 9th POTUS: May he rest in peace.

A wee bit of non-matrimonial history is here.

Happy TMI Day, everybody! On this day in history 44 years ago, an accident at the nuclear reactor on Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna River (10 miles downstream from Harrisburg) led to a radiation release that made it the worst accident in the history of the U.S. nuclear power industry. A full blow-by-blow account from History.com is here. A previous post focusing on environmental health impacts of radiation exposure is here. And for those of you keeping score at home: “The reactor had come within less than an hour of a complete meltdown.”

Today’s bonus quiz concerns the name “Three Mile Island.” If TMI is located ten miles from the state capitol, then what is it three miles from? A plethora of good vibes – and perhaps even a valuable prize? – await the first person with the correct answer in the comments section.  Good luck!

I’ll post an extended comment tomorrow explaining all the gory details of the name’s origin. For what it’s worth, it isn’t as simple as you might at first think. And for those of you who can’t bear to wait, you can read it for yourself right now, right here.

When I first posted This Day in History for this day four years ago (you can read all about the end of the line for the AMC Pacer, here) I didn’t realize what depth of riches history held for this particular date. But now? I do. And here at dewconsulting.net we’re always willing to admit our mistakes. And not only that, but to correct them as well. So, without further ado, here are just a few of the earth-shattering events from December 3rd through the years….

1947 – Stella!

A Streetcar Named Desire premiered on Broadway, starring Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski and Jessica Tandy as Blanche Dubois. You can read all about it, here.

1776 – Washington Crosses the Delaware.

Iconic artistic renderings aside, I really love this meme.

1992 – First SMS text message sent.

There may have been a time when this kind of news was not big. But trust me folks, it’s definitely earth-shattering now. Read all about it, here.

Neil Papworth, a 22-year-old engineer, uses a personal computer to send the text message “Merry Christmas” via the Vodafone network to the phone of a colleague.

1967 – First Human Heart Transplant.

Dr. Christiaan Barnard performs the first human heart transplant on 53-year-old Louis Washkansky, a grocer dying from chronic heart disease, at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa. Full story is here.

1984 – Worst Industrial Accident in History.

 

An explosion at a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India leads to the worst industrial accident in history. At least 2,000 people died and another 200,000 were injured when toxic gas enveloped the city.

 

All the gory details are here, just in case you thought the Exxon Valdez plus a few oily fish and birds were bad in Prince William Sound (March 24, 1989).

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So there you have it. I challenge anyone to find another day of the year with this much important stuff happening. Go ahead, I’ll wait… And btw, let’s not forget about the demise of the AMC Pacer: Tragic stuff, that.