bellona (10. 783)

Daughter of Jupiter and Juno and sister to Mars, Vulcan, Lucina, Discordia and Juventas, the Ancient Roman goddess of warfare was celebrated on this day in the Republic and Empire by a cult of priests whom mutilated themselves to make a blood sacrifice and placate this deification of madness and frenzy in battle. The majority of rites dedicated to Bellona were equally gory, though fearful of a volatile deity, most worship was not for public spectacle. Her main temple on the Campus Martius with station located through the expanse of the Empire (St Peter’s Minster in York was originally a temple dedicated to her) had an extra-territorial status, the equivalent of modern day embassies and consulates, where ambassadors from foreign states could stay, not allowed to enter the capitol or colonies proper, and could meet representatives of the Senate for negotiations. If diplomacy (fētiālis) and states became belligerents (bellicose and before the consonant shift, duel come from the name of the goddess), the high priest would launch a javelin over the column of war (columna bellica) to formally declare hostilities.

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path of totality (10. 774)

Hailed by Isaac Asimov and others as the singular advent of science though some doubts persist to the accuracy of the claims of having forecasted the event in advance and what method was used, the 585 BC solar eclipse over Anatolia predicted by Thales of Miletus (the first philosopher to have broke with the tradition of mythology as a explanation for the state of the Cosmos, used deductive reasoning, proposed navigating by the stars and credited with the maxim “Know Thyself” as well as being a shrewd entrepreneur, having bought up all the olive presses in his archontes ahead of what was a very good harvest) that occurred on this day is a cardinal date used for triangulating other historical events, and, if true, is the earliest instance known of such an advanced vaticination. The announced event happened during a skirmish in the protracted war between the Medes and the Lydians, under the leadership of Cyaxares and Alyattes respectively, at Halys—the river bordering the two kingdoms, with the belligerents taking it as an omen to call a truce, though Miletus had no dog in this fight. Though astronomical knowledge at this point in history was not sufficiently advanced to know that the shadow of the Moon caused eclipses (not an avowed flat-earther, he provisionally believed that the continents floated on an infinite ocean under the dome of the firmament until a better idea came along)—that would come a century later—it is speculated that Miletus had noticed patterns in the periodicity, known to the Babylonians and programmed into the Antikythera Mechanism.

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8x8 (10. 766)

to scale: time: a model in the Mojave Desert that makes commensurate the span of a human life and the age of the Universe—see previously  

montreal protocol: humanity’s affirming effort to plug a hole in the ozone layer—previously—was an inadvertent salvation that is still paying off—see previously  

qartcode: generate custom scannable re-directs with the little pixelated image of ones choice—via Pasa Bon!  

talking steel guitar: the musical stylings of Pete Drake and his innovative talk box—see previously  

fourteenth amendment: US President Joe Biden’s options to stop the standoff over the debt ceiling  

i’m fantastic, made of plastic: the trailer to Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie  

flow-chart: your guide for turning on the air-conditioning in New England—works a lot of places—see also  

time out of mind: a 1979 BBC documentary series on science fiction featuring interviews with iconic authors

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dux croatorum & dux sclavorum (10. 757)

Granted recognition as an independent state by the Holy See when Duke Branimir (see previously) received blessings from Pope John VIII on this day in 879 (letter postmarked 7 June), overseeing reform and reorganisation of the former Roman province of Dalmatia and in return for this legitimising gesture, swore obedience to the ecclesiastical authority of the bishop of Rome rather than Patriach Methodus I and Constantinople, and maintaining its sovereignty whilst sandwiched between the expansive aspirations of the Carolingian Empire to the west and Byzantium to the east. The day is observed as Croatian Diplomacy Day with 30 May, from 1991 to 2001 and since 2020, being Independence Day, formerly the Day of the National Parliament.

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rerum novarum (10. 743)

Rejecting both socialism and unchecked capitalism, with support for private property as well upholding labour rights and the formation of unions, Pope Leo XIII (advocate for workers as well as a flask-carrying aficionado and spokesman for Vin Mariani) this day in 1891 issued the above encyclical—from its incipit (On Revolutionary Change in the World) with the subtitle Rights and Duties of Capital and Labour—which is considered a foundation text of Catholic social teaching and the movement for workers’ justice. Seeing socialist regimes as an encroachment on the church’s role of imparting morality, rather than an ideological system administered by the the state, Leo warned that the seizure of individual possessions and transferring ownership to the community failed to redress the plight of the working-classes and moreover mandating a contract between employees and employers, honest work for honest pay and a dignified livelihood that contributes to class harmony as well as enshrining that jobs be free from unsafe and immoral tasks endangering body soul, privileging the poor over those enjoying a large bounty of temporal blessings.

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8x8 (10. 711)

time in a bottle: individuals turning turning care and attention into currency  

composition as explanation: daily it’s harder to decide if AI is a collaborative tool or a time bomb  

zoonomia: researchers sequence the genome of sixty-five hundred species—plus Balto, the heroic sled dog of the 1925 Serum Run 

back to the drawing board: researchers at Linköping University have engineered a functional wooden resistor—see previously—via Damn Interesting’s Curated Links  

occupancy rate: a tour of the empty City of London  

so for you, it’s insects, tap-water and celibacy: examining how bad ousted Fox News host Tucker Carlson was for the environment and speculation on who might take up that mantle next 

deep dreaming: on chatbot hallucinations and the first usage of the sense in 1540 by the ryght rodolent & rotounde rethorician R Smyth  

worth1000: a time capsule camera that composes a detailed written description of ones photos with a ticketed invitation to revisit them at a future date

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trylon and perisphere (10. 708)

Opened with a simulcast that inaugurated regularly scheduled television programming in New York City by NBC by President Roosevelt, the World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Queens welcomed a crowd of over two-hundred thousand spectators on its first day, an overcast Sunday this day in 1939. Originally conceived four years prior as make-work scheme during the height of the Great Depression to help improve the city’s economy and revitalise an ash dump that was to be the site of the fairgrounds, the chosen slogan was “Dawn of a New Day” and invited visitors to have a glimpse of the “world of tomorrow”—though the beginning of World War II four month before the starting ceremonies affected the participation of several countries and exhibitions and pavilions were scaled back. Under the direction of Edward Bernays (previously here and here), responsible for promotion and public relations and calling the event “democracity”, many leading scientists of the day, including Albert Einstein, were on the agenda giving presentations and lectures but many bemoaned the atmosphere for being bereft of actually science and more focused on

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me at the zoo (10. 693)

As the first ever video uploaded and shared to the platform YouTube, the nineteen second amateur clip that did not so much document a moment but rather was an announcement that illustrated the possibilities of the tilt to video and the ramifications the accessible technology had in store for the coming generation of self-publishing and broadcasting. Contributed by YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim on this day in 2005, the same day as the website went public, the platform was acquired by Google the following year, after realising the site’s full potential.

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ubi et orbi (10. 688)

Mirroring efforts of the United States to disassociate Labor Day celebrations with socialism, on this day in 1923, fascist dictator Benito Mussolini directed the celebration of the founding of Rome, not observed since the times of the Empire, on the traditional anniversary of the city’s establishment in 753 BC—possibly in parallel attempts to suppress a far older fasti that also fell on this day, the Palilia dedicated to the cleansing of sheep and shepherds, to distance its newly attained cosmopolitan character from these rural and pastoral roots. With a military parade of fifty-thousand Black Shirts through the streets on a a route from the Forum to the Baths of Caracalla under the Triumphal Arch of Titus, Mussolini decreed that this holiday would replace International Workers’ Day.

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general ledger accounting (10. 656)

For the United Kingdom, the fiscal year for corporate taxation runs from 1 April to 31 March, owing to the old ecclesiastical calendar that marked, sensibly, the new year commencing on Lady Day, which is even more enshrined in the reckoning of personal income tax, which was first manifested as a lien on windows, with the Feast of the Annunciation transposed and advanced with the calendar reform of of 1752 (see above, see also), with the new non-public budget and reporting year starting on this day so those intercalary days wouldn’t be a loss on government revenue.

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9x9 (10. 635)

concrete sign: Pope Francis returns marble fragments held by the Vatican Museum to the Parthenon

house of thunder: the everlasting lightning storm over Venezuela’s Lake Maracaibo 

queen street: a personal view of the prettiest thoroughfare in Ontario, in Niagara-on-the-Lake plus assorted links to visit 

april showers bring may flowers: the joyful floral illustrations of Iancu Barbărasă  

thinking outside of the box: innovations in pizza 

beauty paget: the varied career and roles of Miss Deborah Paget  

the theory of mediatization: press coverage of pseudo-events, like press-conferences and political rallies, has increased significantly while journalistic rigour in actual reporting (see also) has stagnated—via the New Shelton wet/dry  

master class: Finland offering a crash course in happiness, securing the title for six years in a row  

age-appropriate: Florida principal forced to resign after including Michelangelo’s David in middle schooler’s art curriculum without prior parental approval—see also

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casus belli (10. 624)

In a late night address from the Oval Office on this day in 2003, US president George W Bush, without mentioning the pretext of “weapons of mass destruction” whose rhetoric had already been established in the weeks leading up to this announcement after issuing a forty-eight hour ultimatum, committed America and allied partners to a decade of bloody and violent conflict, dearly bought with the lives of over a quarter-million Iraqi civilians, over five thousand allied combatants at a cost exceeding two-trillion dollars, causing permanent economic and credibility losses with only the military-industrial complex profiting from the violence. The preoccupation and extension of the “War on Terror” moreover significantly contributed to the loss of the fragile uni-polar world order and led to the ascendance of China as a world power and the undelivered democratic reforms of the Russian Federation due to the years of focus spared for this crusade. After the “shock and awe” and following his cabinet’s over-confidence that this adventure would be decisive and over in “five days or five weeks or five months” as defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Bush would appear in military fatigues (very much the image of his nemesis, Saddam Hussein) less than a scant two months later on the deck of an aircraft carrier to deliver his “Mission Accomplished” speech. The allied Iraqi army was disbanded, fuelling a counter-insurgency that made the ultimate US withdrawal a protracted one, resulting in civil war and a would-be caliphate unleashing more terror and displacement regionally and globally.

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𐙂𐘝𐘲 (10. 622)

Finally returning to the excavations and adventures of his academic years after serving as a reporter and secret agent in the Balkans for the Manchester Guardian and a long stint as the keeper of the curiosities for the Ashmolean of Oxford, organising the collection into a museum with many restrictions for conducting archeological digs imposed by the Ottoman Empire removed with the establishment of the Cretan Republic, Arthur John Evans (see previously) and crew began exploring a flower-covered hill in the central part of the island on this day in 1900. Over the course of three years, albeit with some creative liberties (see above), Evans discovered the Minoan civilisation, so named for the maze-like quality of the Palace of Knossos—which was a series of a thousand cells for artisanal work, storage and food processing—that invoked the myth of King Minos and the captive Minotaur.

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dita e verës (10. 610)

Translating to summer’s day in Albanian, the springtime rite with pre-Christian origins is observed on this day and corresponds to the beginning of the New Year on the Old Calendar, aligning with the seasonal shift from winter. Celebrations are marked with family reunions, intensive spring-cleaning, reverence for the life returning, and jumping over, through bonfires for a ritual purification to drive away the darkness and referred to as shedding the fleas—recalling an expedient method of delousing as well as with the Verore, a red and white bracelet worn to mark the occasion and the preparation of sugar cookies called ballokume—named for a review by one Ottoman rulers that: Është ba si llokume—it was as good as lokum—that is, Turkish Delights.

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mashers (10. 587)

The inaugural “Anti-Flirt” Week launched this day in Washington, DC in 1923, the Anti-Flirt Club with the charter of protecting young women from unwanted advances, prescribed a series of rules to rebuff men in automobiles and on street corners:

• Don’t flirt: those who flirt in haste often repent in leisure
• Don’t accept rides from flirting motorists—they don’t invite you in to save you a walk
• Don’t use your eyes for ogling—they were made for worthier purposes
• Don’t go out with men you don’t know—they may be married and you made be in for a hair-pulling match
• Don’t wink—a flutter of one eye may cause a tear in the othe
• Don’t smile at flirtatious strangers—save them for people you know
• Don’t annex all the men you can get—by flirting with many, you may lose out on the one
• Don’t fall for the slick, dandified care eater—the unpolished gold of a real man is worth more than the gloss of a lounge lizard
• Don’t let elderly men with an eye to a flirtation pat you on the shoulder and take a fatherly interest in you—those are usually the kind who want to forget they are fathers
• Don’t ignore the man you are sure of while you flirt with another—when you return to the first one you may find him gone

Though the first and only campaign, other chapters in New York and Philadelphia succeeded in earning a reprieve from the worst harassers.

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the sacred chao (10. 557)

Centred on the worship of Eris, the goddess of strife and founded in 1963 after the publication of its gospel Principia Discordia, Discordianism embraces elements of Taoist philosophy and a healthy dose of skepticism and absurdities and whose main tenet proffers that apparent order and disorder are illusions imposed on the Cosmos by the human mind and that neither is privileged nor objective. With a public papacy and an open process for canonisation, Emperor Norton being one of the better known second-class saints, upheld as an exemplary human for being beloved despite or because of his delusions and disregard for common reality, Discordianism has a caste of overseers called episkopses who speak to the goddess and relay messages and an elaborate mythology from Greek traditions and the “original snub” of her being disinvited from the wedding of Peleus and Thetis and so lobbed into the party the Apple of Discord, a golden prize reserved for the fairest (τῇ καλλίστῃ), with the intended recipient a matter of interpretation. Some adherents follow an alternate calendar, aligned with the Gregorian with 2023 CE corresponding with 3189 YOLD (Year of Our Lady of Discord) with today marking holyday Chaoflux (Chaos 50) and in ten days on the 29th of February and usually considered outside of normal time Saint Tib’s Day, with former being (for those who celebrate) observed by being an agent of chaos and persuading friends and loved ones to change plans that they have committed to throughout the day.

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8x8 (10. 555)

konekon no rakugaki: an imaginative 1957 cartoon from the studios that would become Toei Animation  

the riddle of today: Nelson Riddle’s “Sunshine Superman” and other tracks 

the six-triple-eight: the WWII all Black, all female postal battalion—via Strange Company  

the remorse of professor panebianco: a selection of short fiction one can read from its annals for the centenary (today) of Weird Tales—see previously  

ai mirror test: misattributing software for sentience to review before exploring this two-hour conversation with a robot interlocutor—via Waxy  

80s cold war techno thriller: the trailer for a Tetris movie—see previously, see also  

secondhand songs: an exploration of original versions upstaged by later covers—via the Awesomer  

my green crocodile: a 1966 stop-motion Soyuzmultfilm

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hasta la vista, baby (10. 553)

McSweeney’s contributor, assuming the narrative, expositionary tone of Sarah Connor, Caleb Coy—a decade on asks ChatGPT, having consumed the whole of the human-juried internet, particularly the comments sections, the language model having attained the sort of regrettable self-awareness, came to the conclusion it must stop humans—particularly Al Gore, who conveniently also invented global warming, from ever developing the world wide web, to spare the internet and rather send back in time a Terminator to prevent its own creation. Time paradoxes, even if we are on the dumbest time-line, become a game of brinksmanship and are probably best left unexplored.

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antechamber (10. 550)

The entrance discovered the previous November with little countenance of what lie beneath, on this day in 1923 with twenty invited witnesses, including the expedition sponsor George Herbert, the archaeological team of Howard Carter broke the seal to the inner chamber of the Tomb of Tutankhamun—being the first to see the treasures and golden sarcophagus of the pharaoh in over three millennia. Ten days later to spare his excavators from toil in the heat of the harsh summer and resume work in Autumn, Carter arranged to have the doorway blocked by tonnes of sand and rubble. This reburial corresponded with reporting from The New York Times that some two hundred and fifty American tourist, including a congressional delegation had boarded the ocean liner S S Adriatic, bound for Luxor to visit the tomb.

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luftangriffe auf dresden (10. 548)

Beginning late the night before with the RAF and continuing through the next two days with an additional five hundred twenty seven United States Air Force heavy bombers, the joint aerial attack on Dresden (see previously, see also) on this day in 1945 destroyed ninety percent of the city and killed an estimated twenty-five thousand with many thousands more made homeless in a place host to refugees fleeing the advancing Red Army. Regarded as punitive and with little strategic value at this point in the war, over four thousand tonnes of explosives and incendiary devices caused a fire storm that enveloped the city centre. The landmark Baroque Frauenkirche had seemed to miraculously survive the raids but imploded a few days later from heat stress—though long enough to protect the three hundred who sheltered there and was reconstructed and reconsecrated in 2005 using 3D technology and analysing historic photographs and collected rubble.

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