the lost squandron

Among many other momentous events that occurred on this day, as our faithful chronicler Doctor Caligari reports, five US Navy Avenger torpedo-bombers took off for a three-hour training exercise from an air base in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 1945 (designated as Flight 19) with a compliment of fourteen airmen and the crew of thirteen of a Martin patrol bomber Mariner dispatched to search for the missing squadron after radio contact was suddenly lost and all disappeared without a trace.
This incident and geographically related ones led an Associated Press correspondent Edward Van Winkle Jones to speculate in the Miami Herald five years afterwards how in the modern, push-button era such mysteries and disappearances could abide—setting off a chain of embellishments that led to the concepts of the deadly Bermuda Triangle and the Limbo of the Lost, with supernatural and extraterrestrial overtones. In an article appearing in the occult, pulp fiction verging to softcore magazine Argosy (meaning a large class of merchant ship from the thalassocracies of Venice or Ragusa) in 1964, Vincent Gaddis defined the esoteric vertices as San Juan, Puerto Rico, Miami and the island of Bermuda. The triangle corresponds with one of the most heavily plied shipping lanes in the world and the frequency of vanishings can be attributed to the amount of air and sea traffic converging from all points.

geosophy

We tip our hat to highly discerning Things magazine for introducing us to the cartographic empire of educator and spatial narrator Daniel Huffman, the insightful talent behind some of the more visually stunning maps in circulation. For instance, you might have encountered lately these precision, exacting typewritten charts, unique business card ideas, commercial commissions and award winning maps for alternate histories. The title refers to the study of the world as people imagine and conceive it and the relation of dogma to environment. Much more to explore at the links above.

i’m afraid i can’t do that dave

Though matters have yet to escalate to HAL 9000 levels, Quartz reports that the first interaction between the International Space Station’s robot crew member (previously) and its human astronauts came off a little socially awkward with first impressions ranging from frosty to slightly menacing. I’m confident that relations will improve and civility will prevail but one does have to take a bit of exception to the fact that man and machine got off to this sort of start on day one of the mission.

pelagic zone

Not having grown up with the characters, it’s a little outside of my particular shibboleth but I think we can all nonetheless appreciate the artistry and world-building that went into one of the longest running animated series in history and can definitely share in the sentiment of this tribute from Dangerous Minds on the recent passing of Stephen Hillenburg.
Before becoming a cartoon artist, Hillenburg taught marine biology and set a cast of characters in The Intertidal Zone as an educational comic to better reach his students. These classroom mascots would eventually move to Bikini Bottoms but Hillenburg honed his drawing talents on other projects in the interim. Watch Hillenburg’s first short at the link above.