dziesmotā revolūcija

Beginning in 1987 after the introduction of the policies of glasnost and perestroika that rolled back certain limitations on political expression heretofore imposed on Soviet constituent member states outside of the core of Russia, the Baltic satellites staged a peaceful Singing Revolution that culminated for Latvia on this day in 1991 declaring its independence in the midst of an attempted coup to unseat Mikhail Gorbachev from his leadership position. One of the more popular songs of the freedom movement was the trilingual (also with verses in Estonian and Lithuanian) The Baltics are Waking Up!, composed by Boriss Rezniks for a protest two years prior commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, which defined German and Soviet spheres of influence in the region, with defiant ralliers’ joining hands and forming a human chain stretching across the three countries.

miniature life

Courtesy of the always excellent Kottke, we really enjoyed the chance to revisit the creative tiny landscapes of Tatsuya Tanaka (田中 達也, previously) crafted daily out of everyday objects in a way that makes us regard our microcosm and macrocosm differently and peopled with proportional figures. Be sure to check out the link up top to see a video of Tanaka at work and connect to calendar pages, diary-entries dating back to 2011.

treaty of rawalpindi

Marking the anniversary of the Anglo-Afghan peace of 1919 that ended the protectorate status under the British Empire, ratified on this day, Afghanistan Independence Day is commemorated as its national holiday.

British forces had occupied Kabul since 1842 with Wazir Akbar Khan routing the army of Major-General Elphinstone on the road to Jalalabad, eventually precipitating a second Anglo-Afghan war that resulted in a negotiated settlement that created Mandatory Afghanistan with Britain responsible for defence and foreign relations, in exchange for protection from Russia and Persia, maintaining this state of affairs as a buffer for the Raj, stipulating that for external matters Afghanistan would “have no windows looking on the outside world, except towards India.” Despite protestations from the Ottoman Empire, Afghanistan remained neutral during World War I, and having suffered heavy losses, a process of demobilisation began as the global conflict was coming to an end, fighting broke out at the frontier, ultimately resulting in a truce that established the border at the Durand Line, presently the land border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and an agreement not to foment revolt in the Indian colonies. A marble triumphal arch, the Taq-e Zafar, was erected in the the city of Paghman to mark the treaty that restored the country’s independence.

happy blogoversary—we are now thirteen years old

As PfRC passes this milestone, we wanted to again extend our gratitude to our readership for your encouragement and sustaining interest, and hope that we’ve given you all something to pique your curiosity and aspire to keep the internet engaging and old school.

Since our last celebration, here are the most popular posts:

10. An entry about the pirate broadcaster Radio Caroline



9. The “Washington Wives” call for the Parents’ Music Resource Center


8. General Motors commissions a trio of pro-capitalist propaganda cartoons during the height of the Red Scare



7. An entry comparing emojis for ringed planets




6. Live-tweeting revolutions, from previous years’ top ten.




5. Speculation about the etymology of OK, also from past years.



4. A cross-post from Art for Housewives about author and journalist Martha Gellhorn, Ernest Hemingway’s third wife



3. A treasury of typographical and graphic design resources curated by the Internet Archive




2. A post looking at Cyrillic numerals


1. Tying for number one are a duo of posts about the equal sign, one reminding us to practise social distance and about the advent of the glyph itself


Salutations to all of you and wishing you nothing but the best for the balance of 2021.

niemand hat die absicht, eine mauer zu errichten!

Dividing the city and nation physically and ideologically until 1989, construction of the Berlin Wall began on this day in 1961, isolating and making an exclave of West Berlin. Officially referred to by authorities of East Germany as an Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart (see also — Anti-faschistischer Schutzwall) to protect the population from forces trying to confound their attempts at forming a socialist state, the Burgermeister of West Berlin, Willy Brandt called it “Schandmauer”—Wall of Shame, becoming a metonym for the Iron Curtain and political schism between East and West. As with the above quotation, Communist politician Walter Ulbricht empathetically denied the possibility two months earlier during a press conference despite no one mentioning a wall.  The border closure and following fortification was called by Berliners Stacheldrahtsonntag—that is Barbed-Wire Sunday, some eight hundred fleeing through the temporary barriers before the solid structure was built by the end of the day.

your daily demon: astaroth

Our twenty-ninth spirit is an infernal grand duke ruling from today through 17 August is part of the unholy trinity along with Beelzebub and Lucifer and likely derives his identity from the goddess Astarte, consort of Ishtar. Presenting as a fallen angel and commanding forty legions, Astaroth chiefly lures individuals to do wrong through laziness, self-doubt and rationisation but can be compelled to impart skill in mathematics and handicrafts as well as the power of invisibility. Treasurer of the Underworld, Astaroth is countered by the guardian angel Reyiyel as well as appeals to Bartholomew the Apostle who can repel the archdemon’s vices.

journée du 10 août

Symbolically, a year to the day after storming of the Tuileries Palace during which the Nation Guard of the Paris commune and confederates from Marseille and Brittany overpowered a detachment of Swiss Guards and took Louis XVI and the royal family into custody, the pivotal event that eventually led to the declaration of a republic, the adjacent Musée du Louvre was officially opened in 1793. Fortified in the late twelfth century to rebuff attacks from on the western side of the city by English Normandy, the name of the palace may be derived from an ancient wolf hunting lodge (lupus, lupara) originally on that site. In 1846, the US Congress charters the Smithsonian Institution (previously), after its benefactor and namesake English mineralogist James Smithson of the Royal Society, dying without an heir, bequeaths an endowment of half a million dollars. By dint of another coincidence, another grand institution of Europe, the Natural History Museum of Vienna (as das k. u. k.—kaiserlich und königlich—Hof-Naturalienkabinette) held its official opening ceremony on this day as well in 1865, sourced from the personally acquisitions of the Double Monarchy, by Emperor Franz Joseph I.

7x7

70% côte d’ivoire, 66% cyprus, 65% republic of ireland: doodle world flags and let a computer guess—via Web Curios  

peaky finders: a selection of interactive mapping application still functional and chugging along a decade later  

cult of the sun: a look at the Athon, a 1980 Lamborghini concept car  

ss experiment: an unsuccessful ferry, powered by eight horses on a treadmill  

astronomia: a lovely antique deck of playing cards with celestial charts and information on the planets and stars 

flsa: US congressional representation introducing legislation for a four-day work week—see previously here and here  

google doodle: a selection of the best commemorative banners—via Things Magazine

emojional rescue

Via the always brilliant Present /&/ Correct —please check out their sundries, we are reminded that today is Emoji Day (see previously) with the original character set as designed by Shigetaka Kurita in 1999.

ales stenar

Sticking to the southern coast, we came to a megalithic so called stone ship (see previously)—a burial setting from the late Nordic Iron Age, most likely, of an oval of colossal stone pillars weighing up to five tonnes with larger ones stern and aft. It’s true purpose a matter of dispute, researchers are divided whether the Ale‘s Stones were primarily a funerary monument, a worship site or a sort of lunisolar calendar as there are points of correspondence throughout the year with the turning of the seasons.  The outline of an astral boat, seventy meters long and consisting of fifty-nine boulders,  overlooking the sea reserves some mysteries and projects a certain energy.

equidistance

Due to calendar conventions, in common years 2 July marks the midpoint with one hundred eighty-two days having passed of the current year and one- hundred eighty two days to go until the next year and will fall on the same day of the week as New Year’s. Depending on one’s location—in the northern or southern hemisphere and whether one employs daylight saving time or not plus whether it’s a leap year—the exact point of transition falls at high noon.

saut de seconde

Introduced for the first time on this day in 1972 and originally delegated to the Bureau International de l’Heure (BIH, the International Time Bureau at the Paris Observatory) to schedule their addition or subtraction, leap seconds (see also) are a way to adjust Universal Coordinated Time and synchronise the invariable atomic clocks that informs most civilian timekeeping with observed solar time, the Earth’s rotation prone to go off-kilter a bit due to geological, climatic changes or meteor impacts. Though implemented as a means to ensure accuracy and uniformity in an increasing interconnected and networked world and announced six months in advance, the irregularity of leap seconds can also reveal flaws in underlying programming, the pictured time-stamp causing Linux-based systems to crash back on that date.

siebenschläfertag

This feast day marking the legend of the Seven Sleepers, a group of companions who hid in a cave outside of Ephesus to escape Roman emperor Decius’ persecution of Christians and emerged three-centuries later, also recalls one of the oldest and widespread artefacts of forecasting and weather lore (see also here, here and here) stemming from medieval Europe. The conditions on this day are supposed to be preview of how the skies and temperatures will be for the rest of the summer. I’d say, judging from here and now, we have a fine season ahead of us.

fors fortūna

Here depicted in the Carmina Burana manuscript, the Roman personification of fortune and luck often includes in her iconography a gubernaculum—that is a ship’s rudder for steering rather blindly for boon or for bane, the name of the goddess and what she represents seems to derive from vortumna—she who revolves throughout the year and whose temple was dedicated on this day, marked by celebrants floated downstream on the Tiber to the Forum Boarium for the event only after secret rituals were expected to row back to the city, bedecked with garland. The goddess has numerous aspects that were celebrated throughout the year and during life-events, including Fortuna Annonaria, luck in harvest, Fortuna Virilis, a lucky match, Fortuna Redux, to return home safely, Fortuna Huiuse Diei, luck of the moment and Fortuna Barbata, good luck in adolescents becoming adults.

midsommarafton

Roughly corresponding with the June solstice and supplanting age-old rituals marking the changing season and agricultural and husbandry chores by calling it the eve of the Feast of John the Baptist, who according to liturgical sources was six months before Jesus, the festivities of midsummer making when the days start to diminish again after waxing longer to turn again on midwinter and Christmas, a reflection of the doctrine that John was preparing the way for Jesus and had to yield the stage at the right time. Customs leading up to the celebration include the lighting of bonfires and leaping over them—especially on the beaches, and the gathering of medicinal plants as those collected including verbena, rosemary, fennel, foxglove and Saint John’s Wort on this day are imbued with special potency. Originally titled St John’s Night on the Bare Mountain, Modest Mussorgsky’s iconic composition was renamed and revised to include a final daybreak movement and the peal of church bells to hasten away the mischievous and malevolent.

stonehenge free festival

Though possible precursors began a couple of years prior—and down through ancient times too of course, the first well-documented modern music fair to be held at the prehistoric monolith (previously) was held on this day, the Summer Solstice, in 1974—after disbanding the Winsor Free Fest and itself suppressed after a decade’s run of gathering at the stones, a victim of its own popularity. Participating bands included Thompson Twins, Dexys Midnight Runners, The Raincoats, Killing Joke and several counter-culture representatives like Circus Normal, the Peace Convoy and New Age Travellers. A wealth of pictures, first-person accounts and ephemera from those years through 1984 and related events are at the resource at the link up top.

8x8

here fishy, fishy, fishy: a tale of a talking fishing lure and sixty counts of mail fraud  

goldenrod: behind-the-scenes footage of droids C3PO and R2-D2 trying on their costumes  

plastic tracker: monitor the likely course of one’s discarded waste to the seas—see also—via Maps Mania 

discothek: a commercial photographer captured the golden age of nightclubs with all their eccentricities and exuberance  

juneteenth: America gets a new federal holiday to commemorate the end of chattel enslavement in the United States  

downfall: dégringolade n. a rapidly deterioration of circumstance or position, from the French to take a sudden tumble 

foreign exchange: a beautiful animated short of grains of sand and fiat currency explores the tenuous, specious agreements that underpin capitalism and the global economy  

the most compact, neatest, cheapest, and durable reel on the market: advertising niche that distresses and antiques modern sundries

endianness

In what sounds like a passage out of Gulliver’s Travels (which etymologically speaking, it does and I think about the Big-Endians when I put eggs in the egg-cooker for breakfast on the weekends and sometimes have difficulty telling which way goes up) the little-endian method of day-month-year described the sequence of expressing dates (numerically) in most European countries. In German dots are used as separators to indicate ordinal numbers, “der zweite erste” for the second of January for example or the 2.1.—and while a leading zero for days of the month under ten is permissible in Switzerland or Austria, the grammatical rules particular to Germany do not allow for it. The format leading year-month-day, going from general to specific, is called the above big-endian method and used in China and much of Asia and the style employed in the United States, uniquely, month-day-year, is called middle-endian, used as an auxiliary method by virtually no other polity.

antonio di padua

Priest and Franciscan friar and Doctor of the Church, Anthony of Lisbon (*1195 - †1231 in the commune west of Venice) is one of the most popular and quickly canonised among the cult of the saints and was acclaimed in his lifetime for giving powerful and persuasive sermons, even keeping a school of fish in rapt attention once and reputation for care for the poor and sick. Invoked in the name of lost things—credited first with the restoration of his own psalter full of notes when Anthony feared it was gone forever—his extensive patronage (see previously) includes things prone to going missing like mail, mariners, shipwrecks, travellers and lost souls, though not all who wander… Anthony in the extended sense is also the protector of the elderly, fisherfolk, amputees, Native Americans, harvests, watermen, horses, travel hosts and counter-revolutionaries.

pcфcp

Called the Day of the Adoption of the Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR, a transitional state during the dissolution of the USSR) or Russia Day for short, this national holiday of the Russian Federation commemorates the passage of structural reform by the First Congress of People’s Deputies on this day in 1990, establishing primacy of the constitution, equal rights for all citizens and political parties and the separation of powers among three co-equal branches of government: the executive, legislative and judicial. The acclaim is not universal with quite a lot of ambivalence towards celebrating this declaration but the holiday is generally marked with awards assemblies, firework displays, parades and concerts.