astrochimp

The first chimpanzee and first hominid to be launched into suborbital space flight (see also) and safely returned as part of the US space programme’s Project Mercury flew in the Mercury-Redstone 2 mission on this day in 1961, we learn courtesy of our faithful chronicler, Doctor Caligari. Known only as Number 65 of the candidate group until after splash down and return to Earth in order to avoid the bad press that would come if a named chimpanzee came to harm, the successful test subject was given the acronym, backronym for the Holloman Aerospace Medical Centre in Alamogordo, New Mexico—and by extension the former base commander and namesake LTC Hamilton “Ham” Blackshear. Expertly discharging his flight duties after extensive training and proving that commands and protocols could be carried out in the strictures of a space suit and with changing gravitational and other environmental stressors, directly contributing to later, advanced mission, Ham was allowed to retire to first the National Zoo in Washington, DC before living out his final eight years with a group of other captive chimpanzees in a reserve in North Carolina, dying aged twenty-seven in September 1980.

winter soldier investigations

Beginning on this day in 1971, the three-day Detroit media event hosted by the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) was a multidisciplinary workshop aiming to bring to the public attention the atrocities committed by the United States military in South East Asia and demonstrate that the recently exposed massacre at My Lai and spillage into Laos and Cambodia (see previously) were widespread and not the rare and isolated occurrences that they were portrayed as. The event’s name was proposed by organiser Mark Lane in contrast to what English Enlightenment philosopher Thomas Paine described in his 1776 pamphlet on the war for independence and The First American Crisis, opening: “These are the times that try men’s souls: The summer soldier and the Sunshine Patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.” Veteran member and future lieutenant-governor, senator, presidential candidate, secretary of state and now special envoy for climate John Kerry echoed those same words speaking before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April of that year. Testimony presented was a harsh indictment against US foreign policy and a painful reflection of American brutality and racism. There were similar panels held in later years for US involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

measure by octave

Arguing that ordinary arithmetic, we learn from Futility Closet, had already become “mysterious to Women and Youths and often troublesome to the best Artists,” the Right Reverend Hugh Jones, Mathematics Professor at the College of William and Mary in colonial Williamsburg, strongly advocated the use of a base-eight system (rather than base-ten, which he incorrectly believed was universal to human reckoning) for weights and measures. His belief that eight was more harmonious and complete was an extension of Jones’ efforts at calendar reform, proposing a perpetual, perennial Georgian Calendar (after George II of Great Britain) of three-hundred sixty-four days, divided into thirteen months of twenty-eight days each—with a few intercalary days inserted every few years to correct for drift, believing that the Earth would orbit the Sun in a perfect circle instead of an ellipse on a neatly divisible cycle had God not been forced to visit the world with the Great Flood, which threw things off-kilter. Octave powers, instead of ones, tens, hundreds and so on, Jones proposed be called –ers, -ests, -thousets, with for example yard, yarder and yardests measuring distance or ounce, ouncer and ouncest for weight. Find more delectable curiosities at Futility Closet at the link up top.

pigs is pigs

The Friz Freleng short first released on this day in 1937 relays the seemingly insatiable gluttony of one Piggy Hamhock (Porky’s brother, though last seen in this cartoon) and the hardship it has caused the family.

Falling into a food coma after receiving chiding and warnings from his mother that he needs to reform his eating habits, Piggy has a fugue-like dream that he is lured into the laboratory of a mad scientist, who subjects Piggy to a force-feeding by a tireless machine. Piggy waddles away but on the way out the door, takes a drumstick, which proves too much. Awakened from the dream, Piggy is relieved that he is back home and unharmed but devours breakfast without restraint—apparently none the wiser for his experience. Though Freleng’s cartoon shares the same name it does not tell the same story about a rapidly reproducing pair of guinea pigs whose numbers soon grow out of control from a 1905 Ellis Parker Butler work—which went on to inspire a Disney animation in 1954 and the 1967 “The Trouble with Tribbles.”

ferienhaus

Some property-scouting from Things Magazine directs our attention to the estate agents who have recently placed a MidCentury Modern vacation village on the market. This ensemble of chalets with amenities are part of a campground on the Italo-Swiss border outside of the community of Cremenaga with seventeen of the twenty-seven units (plus communal buildings and facilities) designed by renowned Zürich lecturer and architect Justus Dahinden (*1925 - †2020), whose other works include some iconic, Brutalist concrete sacred buildings, a ziggurat-inspired clinic and numerous community centres, multi-purpose halls and holiday resorts. Much more to explore at the links above. 

it’s a party marge. it doesn’t have to make sense.

Though other sources date the song’s release to next month, just for the chance to indulge listening to one of the best rock power ballads ever, we are going with this day in 1980 for the debut of the lead single from Journey’s sixth studio album Departure. Influenced by the music of Irish band Thin Lizzy, the collaboration between singer and librettist Steve Perry and guitarist Neal Schon did fared modestly but respectably in contemporary charts but enjoys an enduring legacy.

tyromancy

Though dismissed as among the most unreliable means of divination and fortune-telling, the association between cheese and magic, cheese-making and cosmology recognised by such luminaries as Artemidorus Daldianus, a second century medium that wrote the authoritative volume on dream interpretation, the Oneirokrtikon, and Hildegard von Bingen struck us as quite intriguing—via Strange Company—and tempting further investigation. There’s a litany of curses and benedictions to be found at the link to the source above, most of which are fantastically straightforward and to the point, like the featured and instigating incantation “you may fascinate a woman by giving her a piece of cheese,” since the charms of cheese require little in the way of explanation.

every frame of this movie look like someone’s last known photograph

First airing on this day in 1993, “Manos” The Hands of Fate (previously) as lampooned by the crew of the Satellite of Love has been ranked by critics and fans as the number one episode of the franchise and the defining height of the genre of breaking the fourth wall, watching a movie and making fun of it. The show begins with the continuation of the short Hired! and an invention exchange prelude before launching into the 1966 Harold P. Warren horror vehicle with a young family taking a road trip near El Paso, Texas in search of “Valley Lodge.” They ultimately stop and ask for directions at what turns out to be a cult compound and are welcomed by a satyr called Torgo, who tends the ground while the Master is away. Despite objections from both his wife and Torgo, the father (portrayed by writer, director, producer Warren) asks if they might stay the night after a long day of driving. “The Master would not approve.”