Tidbits of History

October 27 is:

Cuba Discovery Day, anniversary of the discovery of Cuba by Columbus in 1492.

Navy Day, anniversary of the establishment of the American Navy in 1775.

National American Beer Day
Foodimentary.com says:

The bittering agent in beer, Hops, is closely related to marijuana.
Brown bottles are designed to keep beer fresh.
The average American consumes nearly 23 gallons of beer annually.
According to broadcasting regulations, American beer commercials are not allowed to show anyone consuming alcohol.
Obama is the first American President to brew his own beer.

The first of the Federalist Papers, a series of essays calling for ratification of the U.S. Constitution, was published in a New York newspaper in 1787. The Federalist Papers refers to a collection of 85 articles and essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay under the collective pseudonym “Publius” to promote the ratification of the United States Constitution.

Federalist #1
Significant Quotes:

It seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force. If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may with propriety be regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind.

Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants.

In politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution.

Birthday of Theodore Roosevelt (October 27, 1858), twenty-sixth president of the United States. He became president upon the assassination of William McKinley.

Birthday of Dylan Marlais Thomas (October 27, 1914), Welsh-British poet. Authored “Do not go gentle into that good night”

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

1932 Birthday of Sylvia Plath, American poet best known for her novel ‘The Bell Jar,’ and for her poetry collections ‘The Colossus’ and ‘Ariel.’

2004: The Boston Red Sox ended the “Curse of the Bambino”—an alleged hex on the team that resulted from its 1920 sale of Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees—by defeating the St. Louis Cardinals to win the World Series title, the team’s first in 86 years.

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October 26 is:

National Mincemeat Pie Day
Per Foodimentary.com

Mince pies are descended from a huge pie baked on Christmas Eve containing chopped beef, suet, nuts, spices and fruit of which whole dried plums were an important constituent.
It was generally served as an entree.
Gradually the meat content was reduced, and today the mixture contains nuts, dried fruit (raisins, apples, pears, citrus peel, etc.), beef suet, spices and brandy or rum, but no beef.
Mincemeat is used primarily in pies and tarts.

The first Continental Congress adjourned in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Congress met from September 5 to October 26, 1774 in response to the passage of the Coercive Acts and the Congress petitioned King George III for redress of those grievances. Fifty-six delegates from all the colonies except Georgia drafted a Declaration of Rights and Grievances and elected Virginian Peyton Randolph as the first president of Congress. Patrick Henry, George Washington, John Adams, and John Jay were among the delegates.

A year later, in 1775 – King George III of Great Britain went before Parliament to declare the American colonies were in rebellion, and to authorize a military response to quell the American Revolution.

The Pony Express officially ceased operations. From April 3, 1860, to October 1861, it became the West’s most direct means of east–west communication before the telegraph was established and was vital for tying the new state of California with the rest of the country.

Wyatt Earp, his two brothers and “Doc” Holliday confronted Ike Clanton’s gang in a gunfight at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Ariz in 1881. When the dust cleared, Billy Clanton and the McLaury brothers were dead, and Virgil and Morgan Earp and Doc Holliday were wounded. Ike Clanton and Billy Claiborne had run for the hills. Sheriff John Behan of Cochise County, who witnessed the shootout, charged the Earps and Holliday with murder. A month later, however, a Tombstone judge found the men not guilty, ruling that they were “fully justified in committing these homicides.” The famous shootout has been immortalized in many movies, including Frontier Marshal (1939), Gunfight at the OK Corral (1957), Tombstone (1993) and Wyatt Earp (1994).

October 26, 1905 – Norway became independent from Sweden. Per Wikipedia: The United Kingdoms of Sweden and Norway was a personal union of the separate kingdoms of Sweden and Norway under a common monarch and common foreign policy that lasted from 1814 until its peaceful dissolution in 1905. Over the years, a divergence of Norwegian and Swedish interests became apparent. In particular, Norwegians felt that their foreign policy interests were inadequately served by Sweden’s ministry of foreign affairs. There were several driving factors behind the growing conflict:

• Norway’s economy was more dependent on foreign trade and thus more sensitive to the protectionist measures favored by the mercantalist Swedish government at the time.
• Norway had trading and other links with the United Kingdom whereas Sweden had closer links with Germany.
• Norway had more interests than Sweden did outside Europe.

In addition, Norwegian politics were increasingly dominated by liberal tendencies characterized by the extension of parliamentary democracy, while Swedish politics tended to be more conservative.

Birthday of Hillary Rodham Clinton (October 26, 1947), wife of William Jefferson Clinton; first lady 1993-2001. Clinton became the first woman to be nominated for president of the United States by a major political party when she won the Democratic Party nomination in 2016. She lost to President Donald J. Trump.

1949 – U.S. President Harry Truman raised the minimum wage from 40 to 75 cents an hour.

October 25 is:

National Greasy Foods Day

Feast Day of Saints Crispin and Crispinian, patron saints of cobblers, curriers, tanners, and leather workers. It is said that they were brothers who spread Christianity during the day and made shoes at night to support themselves. They were tortured and thrown into the river with millstones around their necks. Though they survived, they were beheaded by the Emperor on October 25th, 285 or 286.

“St. Crispin’s Day” is referred to by William Shakespeare in Henry V describing the battle of Agincourt, from which we get the phrase “the band of brothers”.

Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember’d;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers

1825 Birthday of Johann Strauss II, Austrian composer. Compositions such as The Blue Danube helped establish Strauss as “the Waltz King” and earned him a place in music history.

Birthday of Georges Bizet (October 25, 1838), French composer whose most famous work is the opera “Carmen”. Carmen has since become one of the most popular and frequently performed operas in the classical canon; the “Habanera” from act 1 and the “Toreador Song” from act 2 are among the best known of all operatic arias.

The Habanera

Birthday of Pablo Ruiz Picasso (October 25, 1881), Spanish-born painter and sculptor; founder of the Cubist school and leader in the surrealistic movement in France. Please visit Wikiart for pictures of his work.

Birthday of Richard Evelyn Byrd (October 25, 1888), American naval officer and polar explorer who made five important expeditions to the Antarctic. He was a recipient of the Medal of Honor, the highest honor for valor given by the United States, and was a pioneering American aviator, polar explorer, and organizer of polar logistics.

Former First Lady,Carolyn Harrison, wife of Benjamin Harrison, died on this day in 1892 of tuberculosis. She was the second First Lady to die while her husband was President, the first one being Letitia Tyler in 1842.

1929 Former Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall was convicted of accepting $100,000 bribe in the Teapot scandal. He was the first US Cabinet member to go to jail.

Fall was appointed to the position of Secretary of the Interior by President Warren G. Harding in March 1921. He had been a U. S. Senator from New Mexico. Soon after his appointment, Harding convinced Edwin Denby, the Secretary of the Navy, that Fall’s department should take over responsibility for the Naval Reserves at Elk Hills, California, Buena Vista, California, and Teapot Dome, Wyoming. This last setting became the namesake of the scandal to erupt in April 1922 when The Wall Street Journal reported that Secretary Fall had decided that two of his friends, oilmen Harry F. Sinclair (Mammoth Oil Corporation) and Edward L. Doheny (Pan-American Petroleum and Transport Company), should be given leases to drill in parts of these Naval Reserves without open bidding. His acceptance of bribes for the leases resulted in the Teapot Dome scandal.

From Today in Science
Microwave oven
In 1955, the first domestic microwave oven was sold by Tappan. In 1947, Raytheon demonstrated the “Radarange,” the world’s first microwave oven. Ratheon’s commercial, refrigerator-sized microwave ovens cost between $2,000 and $3,000. In 1952, Raytheon entered into a licensing agreement with Tappan Stove Company which had a consumer distribution and marketing infrastructure. In 1955, Tappan introduced the first domestic microwave oven, a 220-volt more compact wall-unit the size of a conventional oven, but less powerful microwave generating system. It had two cooking speeds (500 or 800 watts), stainless steel exterior, glass shelf, top browning element and a recipe card drawer. However, at $1,300 sales were slow.

2001 Microsoft released the Windows XP operating system.

October 24 is:

National Bologna Day
Foodimentary.com says:

Bologna sausage, sometimes phonetically spelled as baloney, boloney or polony, is a sausage derived from the Italian mortadella, a similar looking finely ground pork sausage containing cubes of lard, originally from the Italian city of Bologna.
Bologna can alternatively be made out of chicken, turkey,beef, pork, venison or soy protein.
Occasionally a slice of bologna is heated up so, as the fat renders, the round slice takes the shape of a bowl which may be filled with cheese or other fillings.
Sometimes referred to as garlic bologna, German sausage differs from traditional bologna due to various seasonings, most typically garlic being added to the recipe.
Kosher or halal bologna is typically made with only beef, but sometimes made from turkey, chicken or lamb.

1260 – The Cathedral of Chartres was dedicated in the presence of King Louis IX of France; the cathedral is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Chartres Cathedral, also known as the Cathedral of Our Lady of Chartres, is a Roman Catholic church in Chartres, France, about 80 km southwest of Paris and is the seat of the Bishop of Chartres. The cathedral is well-preserved for its age: the majority of the original stained glass windows survive intact.

The first transcontinental telegraph message was sent from California to President Abraham Lincoln in 1861. The U.S. transcontinental telegraph line linked the Atlantic and Pacific coasts by connecting the “Eastern connection” at Omaha, Nebraska with the “Western connection” at Carson City, Nevada.

The George Washington Bridge connecting New York and New Jersey was dedicated in 1931. The George Washington Bridge is the world’s busiest motor vehicle bridge, carrying over 103 million vehicles per year in 2016.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower pledged United States support to South Vietnam. in 1954.

From Today in Science
Nylon Stockings
In 1939, nylon stockings went on sale in the U.S. for the first time to employees at DuPont’s Wilmington, Delaware nylon factory. The modern materials revolution began in 1938 with DuPont’s commercialization of their nylon product, which was the first man-made fibre to be made exclusively from mineral sources. The company specifically intended to compete with silk in the women’s hosiery market. The fibre was strong, elastic, moth-proof and did not absorb moisture. Years of research led to enormous success. “Nylons,” as they were soon called, eventually replaced silk stockings. Covering only about two-thirds of a woman’s leg, from the feet to mid-thigh, stockings were fastened with garters and a belt.