xxii olympiad (10. 003)

Beginning on this day and running through 1980 Summer Games hosted by the Soviet capital was the first such event held in a communist country until 2008 Beijing Games, with quite low participation—the US leading a boycott by sixty-six countries over the Russo-Afghan War. A few countries took part but competed under the Olympic banner rather than as a national team, and Philadelphia hosted an alternate Liberty Bell Classic for those not participating in the other venue. The Soviet and Eastern Bloc athletes reciprocated by staying out of the 1984 games hosted in Los Angeles with the closing ceremony absent conspicuous elements of the handover.

match of the century

The opening game occurring on this day in 1972, the World Chess Championship pitted US challenger Bobby Fischer against defending champion Boris Spassky of the USSR (see previously), the former after twenty-one matches played over the course of five weeks ending a twenty-four year Soviet monopoly on the title. The tournament was hosted in Reykjavík, and Fischer didn’t score a win until round three, most ending in a draw (the scoring convention was a bit skewed and encouraged whomever was in the lead to play for ties rather than an outright conquest)—though at 12½ to 8½, Fischer could be proclaimed as the undisputed overall victor under those rules.

band shell

Situated in a natural amphitheare in a shaded canyon just below the Hollywood Hills—a popular picnicking spot called “Daisy Dell” that also saw a number of outdoor performances and pageants, the Hollywood Bowl was officially opened on this day in 1922 with a concert by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducted by Alfred Hertz, playing the overture from Richard Wagner’s Rienzi, der letzte der Tribunen (after the Edward Bulwer-Lytton novel of the same name—the author best known for his coinage of stock phrases like “the great unwashed masses,” “dweller on the threshold” and the opening “it was a dark and stormy night”), movements from Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, a selection of Hungarian Dances from Brahms, a suite from Peer Gynt and the overture from William Tell—regular theme tune fare from the perspective of this centenary. The distinctive arched proscenium—later remodelled due to acoustic problems—was first added in 1926.

alien autopsy

Reporting on events from the previous day and quickly retracted by the Public Affairs Office to read “conventional weather balloon,” on this day in 1947, the Roswell Daily Record published a press release from the airbase that they had salvaged the wreckage of a “flying disc.” The incident promptly left the public imagination—as there were other UFOs to chase—and not revitalised and established as a bulwark of conspiracy theories and cover-ups until the late 1970s on the testimony of retired military officers who relayed that the recovered debris was in fact of extra-terrestrial origin. Despite such claims being thoroughly debunked, the events in New Mexico still loom large and inspires.

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did someone say beveragino: the rise of the hun culture and naff couture 

to california and back again: more on the prolific, pioneering photographer Lora Webb Nichols (previously)—via Messy Nessy Chic  

satanic panic: the enigmatic Guidestones monument (previously) in the US state of Georgia was demolished following blast  

rats, sinking ship, you know the drill: a tranche of key minister and secretaries leave the Johnson government, demand his resignation  

μελιτζάνα: entrepreneurs from the island of Crete produce a promotional video to boost candied eggplant sales 

shift happens: modifier keys and more on the history and development of keyboards, via Waxy 

baade’s window: a selection of superlative photographs of the Milky Way for the Star Festival 

poolboy: more roséwave playlists from NPR

surprise witness

An unscheduled sixth public hearing during what was originally called as an extended adjournment of the United States House Select Committee on the January Sixth Attack on the Capitol was an unexpected bombshell with testimony (albeit the majority of information secondhand but significantly delivered under oath which is not an obligation the witness’ detractors can claim or need to adhere by) from an insider that portrays Trump as a willing participant in the attempted insurrection, wanting to personally accompany the rioters and directing that security barriers and metal detectors be removed in order that a larger crowd could gather, dismissing the fact that they were armed and violent, saying that their anger (over a patent lie that the election had been stolen) wasn’t directed at him. Trump’s security detail did not allow him to go to the Capitol, though he struggled to wrest away control of the presidential limousine and was returned to the White House to sulk—delaying his calls to quell the violence, even as reports came that the mob was chanting “Hang Mike Pence!,” whom Trump offered deserved it. The testimony of former aide to Trump and his chief of staff increases the chances that the US Department of Justice could bring criminal charges against Trump.

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cutting-corners: skimpflation and other consumer caveats   

section 30 order: Holyrood to hold second independence referendum in October  

edutainment: a new volume on poet Emily Dickinson concludes with a Math Blaster style game from LitHub  

wade in u.s.a.: protest is the court of last resort  

white rabbits: an unsung group of women sculptors employed during the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893—via Messy Nessy Chic  

adobe flash: watch a time-lapse of a luxury villa with pool built out of mud and bamboo via Everlasting Blört  

allons-y alonzo: assonances, alliterations and vowel harmonisation in French and other languages

coffee siren: the origins of the ubiquitous café mascot (see also here and here)

better call saul

A distinctly foreign concept outside the United States and maybe we’ve been too indulgent of its hegemony on the internet and elsewhere of late but the 1977 decision of the US Supreme Court, issued on this day in 1977, upheld the right of attorneys to advertise their services, arguing that as commercial speech, it was entitled to protection under the first amendment to the US constitution—as promulgated through the fourteenth. In Bates v the State Bar of Arizona, the justices emphasised the benefits of information and disclosure to consumers through the vehicle of advertising and makes services more accessible to the general public and enhance the overall administration of justice. The American Bar Association had allowed for legal services to be listed in telephone directories but held that newspaper or hoarding advertisement—especially one with a price-list—goes too far. The court sided with the plaintiffs, as it had done the previous summer for the pharmaceutical industry, ruling that the consumer-interest in transparency in costs outweighed the desire to maintain collegial decorum among apothecaries.

§219a

While most providers and recipients are prosecuted, abortion remains illegal (with broad exceptions) in Germany but there are pledges and plans to wholly decriminalise it—with the first major step in this direction coming with a government coalition moving to strike a law from the criminal code that dates back to Nazi times, which states that anyone publicly advertising or offers abortion services can face imprisonment or fines. Though sparingly enforced, the restriction (Werbung für den Abbruch der Schwangerschaft) meant a distinct dearth of information accessible for those in a situation dealing with family-planning—such as the credibility of potential providers, possible side-effects and after-care processes. This decision was carried through on the same day as the US Supreme Court announced that they would be overturning the landmark case Roe v Wade, which guaranteed generally the liberty of choice to terminate a pregnancy.

texas v johnson

The landmark decision announced on this day in 1989, a split US Supreme Court invalidated prohibitions against the desecration of the American flag, which at the time of issuance were on the books of forty eight of fifty state jurisdictions, ruling first that the category of protected speech as defined by the US constitution as amended extends to symbolic acts and that counter arguments against the plaintiff’s right of expression of a compelling interest to protect a venerated symbol and to prevent a “breach of peace” that allowing the above might incite failed to reach the threshold for its continued abridgment. The defendant, activist Gregory “Joey” Johnson, then an associate of the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade, had engaged in a political demonstration during the 1984 Republican National Convention, held in Dallas, which re-nominated the Reagan administration, culminating in dousing a flag in kerosene and burning it, chanting “America, the red, white and blue—we spit on you! You stand for plunder, you will go under!” The protest was peaceful but some spectators were profoundly offended by the act, prompting one onlooker to collect the ashes and inter them in their backyard. Johnson’s conviction was initial not upheld by the state judges under the same logic and appeals elevated the matter to the high court, represented by civil rights attorney William Kunstler. There have been numerous attempts by congress to subvert the ruling by introducing an amendment to the constitution excluding the national flag from first amendment protections, which have been generally introduced around the anniversary of this ruling and have all failed to pass the senate. On 20 June 2016 while protesting the RNC in Cleveland, Johnson was arrested after burning a US flag on unclear charges, with the state of Ohio paying him nearly a quarter of a million dollars in restitution three years later, admitting his arrest was unwarranted and a violation of his free speech

lift every voice and sing

On the anniversary of the 1862 prohibition of chattel slavery in the unincorporated territories of the United States—a compromise and even-split that in another form continues to this day—and more than two years after president Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on New Year’s Day 1863, freeing the enslaved individuals in all the secessionists states of the Confederacy, Union Major General Gordon Granger arrived on the island of Galveston on this day in 1865 to take command of two thousand federal troops deployed to enforce manumission and oversee reconstruction efforts, delivering General Order Three:

The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labour.

Though freedom did not come uniformly to the South and borderlands, along with the rest of the country, and there is much work to be done yet to achieve social justice and harmony, Juneteenth marks a pivotal moment in the history of the struggle for recognition and equality. Though officially commemorated in some jurisdictions, with the status of a state holiday, since 1980, it was not until 2021 it became a national wide observance as a second and consequential independence day.

ash heap of history

In town for the Queen’s thirtieth jubilee celebrations (plus on a grand tour of the continent) and having already expressed his characterisation of the Soviet Union as an “evil empire,” Ronald Reagan delivered his Westminster Speech before the House of Commons on this day in 1982, declaiming that, “I believe we are now at a turning point…the march of freedom and democracy will leave Marxism and Leninism on the ash heap of history.” Though coined at the end of the nineteenth century by essayist and politician Augustine Birell, the last notable evocation of the phrase before Reagan’s was by Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky, referring to the Menshevik faction that staged a walk-out in protest of the All-Russian Congress of the Soviets in 1917. A full transcript of the speech can be found at the link.

let us discard all these things and unite as one people

Dedicated on this day (the then fixed date for the Memorial Day federal holiday, also known as Decoration Day) in 1922 at the western terminus of the National Mall in Washington, DC, the Beaux-Arts neoclassical temple by architect Henry Bacon and featuring colossal marble statue of the United States sixteenth president by Daniel Chester French and executed by the Piccirilli family, the Lincoln Memorial has always been a draw to visitors and since its early days throughout the past century has been a symbolic focus for race relations and social justice in America. Planning begun in 1910 to erect a suitable monument to the individual whose administration and sacrifice helped preserve the union and ended chattel slavery as a government sanctioned institution and many felt that the Doric temple was too ostentatious for an individual of humble character and championed a log cabin shrine though Paris’ proposal ultimately passed. Chief Justice William Howard Taft (who had been appointed president of the memorial’s planning commission during his term as president of the United States), president Warren G Harding and Robert Todd Lincoln, the statesman’s eldest son, officially opened the venue with a delegation of prominent Black politicians of the day, including Mississippi congressional representative Perry Howard, journalist and editor Emmett Jay Scott and real estate businessman Whitefield McKinlay, invited—only to discover that they were cordoned off in a segregated section guarded by a contingent of marines. Its reputation as a sacred and aspirational place has since been established, with one of the first instances being Eleanor Roosevelt offering the venue in 1939 to contralto Marian Anderson when the Daughters of the American Revolution refused her to perform to an integrated audience at Constitution Hall.

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city in a bottle: a bit of micro-coding from Frank Force (previously) decoded—via Waxy    

kr: the Icelandic Graphic Design Association (FÍT, Félag íslenskra teiknara) issues a challenge to come up with a glyph for their króna  

nécessaire: a French borrowing—see also—for kit and carry  

enough: TIME magazine’s cover lists the two-hundred thirteen US cities that have had mass-shootings this year, so far  

social sentinel: a look at the dubious pre-crime predictive software that ill-serves society and the reliance on tech to come to the rescue in general  

party line: last bank of public phones removed from New York City—see also here, here, here and here  

swiss miss: Tina Roth Eisenberg celebrates her seventeenth blogoversary tesserae: MIT Lab develops autonomous modular tiles to create structures and habitats in space

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nebeský most 721: a walkway spanning two peaks in in eastern Bohemia 

shunpikes: byways constructed to bypass toll roads, like spite houses

‘no way to prevent this,’ says only nation where this regularly happens: America’s gun culture enshrined by an eighteenth century constitution illustrated in seven charts—via Miss Cellania 

i guess i have to put your flat feet on the ground: astronaut Sally Ride (*1951)  

imagen: Google tool turns input text to images—see previously  

security detail: firearms off-limits during Trump’s speech to the National Rifle Association Leadership Forum—via Boing Boing  

fahrenheit 451: Margaret Atwood’s fire-resistant edition of The Handmaid’s Tale—see previously 

liminal places: a portrait of the Estonian border town of Narva on the frontier of the EU and NATO and the Russian Federation

long island lolita

Prompting three separate made-for-television dramatisations of the incident starring in chronological order of release date (all within a year afterwards) Noelle Parker, Alyssa Milano and Drew Barrymore, seventeen-year-old high school student Amy Fisher, increasingly jealous of the wife of the thirty-five year old auto mechanic she was hoping to sustain a relationship with that had been going on since two years, shot Mary Jo Buttafuoco in the face on this day in 1992. Fisher confronted Buttafuoco when she answered the door of their house in Long Island and informed her that her husband was having an affair with Fisher’s imaginary younger sister—offering a tee-shirt from her husband’s auto body shop as proof. The situation escalated quickly when Buttafuoco demanded that Fisher leave the premises and fired at her with a pistol. Buttafuoco survived, divorced her husband (albeit a decade later, coming to the realisation through writing her memoir that this man who had committed statutory rape against a fifteen year old girl is a manipulative sociopath) and became a motivational speaker.

unvollständigkeitssatz

Futility Closet relates an anecdote from the live of mathematician Kurt Gödel in residence at Princeton University Institute for Advanced Studies and his friendship with fellow resident scholars physicists Albert Einstein (previously) John von Neumann and economist Oskar Morgenstern, whom felt obliged to make sure their younger charge’s tendency for over-thinking remained an asset and not his undoing and monitored Gödel’s preparation for the US citizenship exam in 1947, Einstein himself naturalised seven years earlier. The prodigal and influential logistician widely settled the impossibility of formulating a self-consistent and complete set of rules governing all of mathematics at the tender age of twenty-five, Gödel assayed the project of his examination with signature tenacity and revealed to his wardens that in his research, he had uncovered a fatal-flaw in the American constitution that could led to dictatorship, the corruption and consequence of totalitarian democracy. Einstein and company implored him not to share this discovery and the test was actually a much simpler affair, though basic civics and recent history might have suggested otherwise. The proctor for the citizenship test inquired of Gödel his state of origin and its form of government—to which Gödel replied Austria and a republic, but owed that “the constitution was such that it soon become a dictatorship.” Despite the examiner’s insistence that the same could not happen in the USA and Gödel’s refutation with the offer of proof, the panel stuck to the business at hand and conducted the test. No mention was made in their collective memoirs what that finding might have been and we suppose won’t know it until it’s happened.

onward victoria

Standing later for the office of president in the 1872 election, Victoria Woodhull accepted the nomination of her party, the Equal Rights, at Apollo Hall in New York City on this day of the same year—though a few detractors have reservations in acknowledging her to be the first woman to run for high office in America on the technicality (albeit a constitutional one) that she would have been six months shy of her thirty-fifth birthday on inauguration day. Self-made twice over, Woodhull first earned—and subsequently lost—a substantial fortune in magnetic healing and afterward entered into arguably more legitimate enterprises with her sister, Tennessee Claflin, to open the first female-ran stock brokerage and used profits from trading to open a newspaper. Running on a platform of universal suffrage, labour reform, equality and free love—that is the right to marry, divorce, bear children or not without social prejudice or government interference, Woodhull also declared this day her running-mate to be respected statesman and abolitionist Frederick Douglass though unbeknownst to him, Douglass did not take part in the convention or campaign in any way. Wary of Woodhull’s reputation as an investigative journalist and having previously introduced patriarch Cornelius to the above pseudoscientific therapy, heir to the vast estate William Henry Vanderbilt paid Woodhull and her sister $1000 to leave the country. Newly divorced and with her political career behind her, she accepted the offer and moved to London and founded a charter school and lectured on education reform.

dmsmh

Celebrated as Dianetics Day in the Church of Scientology (previously), today marks the 1950 anniversary of the first sales of the foundational book by L Ron Hubbard subtitled The Modern Science of Mental Health. Colloquially and canonically referred to as “Book One,” it outlines the system developed by the author out of personal experience, his understanding of some tenants of Eastern philosophy and the psychoanalytic traditions of Sigmund Freud. Despite outright rejection by the community of medical and mental health professions and most critics who compared the repetitious and immature tautologies to the works of Wilhelm Reich, it was a best-seller and found an audience as well as an attendant religious movement, which number their years relative to its publication—this year being 72 AD—that is, after Dianetics.

project kansas

Lingering until the summer of 2002 (see next) and suspected by some as a marketing ploy to boost sagging sales of its flagship beverage—reintroduced and rebranded as Coca-Cola Classic, the reformulated version, New Coke, was introduced on this day in 1985 to much derision—with production of the original production halted later the same week. Under the titular code name (having polled the demographic considered Middle America but failing to take into account nostalgia and the attachment to tradition), the secret project to launch a new flavour of soft-drink was in response to test marketing that suggested that palettes preferred sweeter tastes and Pepsi (see also) faring better in new markets. Despite the sustained backlash, the corporation continued with aggressive commercial campaigns, including bringing on spokesman Max Headroom (previously—caution, flashing images) in 1986.