centuriation (10. 041)

We’ve always been a sucker for aesthetic city map generators (see previously here and here) this Pretty Mapp App—via Web Curios (lots more to explore there)—is no exception. Here is the city plan for Wiesbaden.  The palette and themes are fully customisable as well as the zoom and detail specifications for whipping up some quick and attractive cartographical renders. Try summoning up a bird’s eye survey of the town of your choice.

dasymetric (10. 040)

Via the always interesting Map Mania, we are directed towards a clever and potentially revealing visualisation from Engaging Data that allows one to watch a world atlas be assembled in ascending or descending order of a range of demographic parameters like population or the featured vignette of life expectancy.  More at the links above

the piper at the gates of dawn (10. 039)

Debut album title taken from the seventh chapter of the 1908 Kenneth Grahame novel The Wind in the Willows—a favourite of Syd Barrett’s and featuring the single, anomalous appearance of the god Pan—the first record from the band Pink Floyd (previously) was released on this day in 1967. Consistently ranked among the best and most influential albums of all time, there have been multiple reissues and features tracks including “Astronomy Dominé,” “Interstellar Overdrive” and “The Scarecrow.”

que sera, sera (10. 038)

On this day in 1956, Doris Day topped UK music charts with her rendition of “Whatever Will Be, Will Be” from the Alfred Hitchcock film The Man Who Knew Too Much (having premiered in Cannes in April of that year), featuring Day and Jimmy Stewart in the leading roles. A bit of cheerful fatalism, the song is not some traditional bit of folk music but made by the songwriting team of Jay Livingston and Ray Evans (the prolific duo responsible for over seven hundred standards for television and the cinema) for the movie—the couple having become unwittingly embroiled in an international assassination attempt, and foiling that find their son kidnapped and held for ransom. Day—who would come to adopt this piece as her signature tune—performs the song loudly as a cue to find their kidnapped son.

7x7 (10. 037)

@artbutsports: juxtaposing scenes from professional sports with classical painting  

nearly right: an intriguing Chinese language t-shirt circulating on social media  

sommelier: a Rube Goldbergesque contraption that we would be far too impatient for  

flying down to rio: a profile of movie star Lolita Dolores Martínez Asunsolo López Negrette 

requiescat in pace: an obituary of antipope Michael, who believed that there had been no legitimate pontiff since Vatican II  

wikenigma: compiling a compendium of unknowns—via Pasa Bon!  

pop cars: visit an exhibit of Andy Warhol’s colourful automobiles alongside the classic models that inspired them

local group (10. 036)

The relatively nearby and sizable galaxy called Dwingeloo 1 evaded detection until this day in 1994 owing to its location in the so called Zone of Avoidance—Zone of Galactic Obscuration, that part of the sky covered up by the light and dust of the plane of the Milky Way—by an operation ran out of a radio observatory in the northeast Netherlands called the Dwingeloo Obscured Galaxy Survey (DOGS) which filled in more gaps in the map of the firmament by filtering by differing radio wavelengths (the foreground stars and dust clouds absorb visible light). Two other more massive and close by galaxies that occupy this same blindspot were discovered in 1968 by pioneering infrared astronomer Paolo Maffei—whom has two namesake galaxies in the constellation of Cassiopeia which if not blocked by our ZOA would be among the brightest and biggest objects in the night sky.

she keeps her moët & chandon in a pretty cabinet (10. 035)

Though unclear if the attribution is entirely accurate as sparking did not become the dominant style of the wine region until the nineteenth century, this day in 1693 is the traditional date ascribed to the invention of Champagne by Benedictine monk and cellarer Dom Pierre Pérignon at the Abbey of Saint-Pierre d’Hautvillers and our abbot can certainly be credited with innovating the techniques and practises of in bottle fermentation, which beforehand was an acute occupational hazard since if wine was bottled prematurely, they would become literal time-bombs liable to explosion due to an excess of carbon dioxide. Pérignon further championed purity in wine-making and prescribed a set of protocols for harvesting and crushing grapes. The popular quote of Pérignon’s first impression of drinking his Champagne— « Venez mes frères, je bois des étoiles » (“Come quickly my brothers, I am tasting the stars!”)—is also unfortunately a fin de siècle marketing myth meant to distance the drink’s associations with decadence and tie it to the diligence of a hard working monk.

primal therapy or songs from the big chair (10. 034)

Via our faithful chronicler not only do we learn that on this day in 1985, Tears for Fears attained the top of US charts for a second time with Shout, moreover we discover that the title squares with the duo’s affinity for psychologist Arthur Janov (though also meant as a statement in support of protests during the Cold War) and his school of thought that posits that repressed pain of childhood trauma results in neuroses and can be exorcised by re-experiencing them in a fashion less cerebral and re-packaged and rather more immediate than in traditional talking sessions. Originally billed as the History of Headaches, the band learned about this form of psychotherapy which gained public attention when John Lennon endorsed it and renamed themselves after a dictum elaborated on in Janov’s book Prisoners of Pain.