gb 12982-2004

Adopted this day in 1949 and first flown by the People's Liberation Army over Tiananmen Square three days later, the national flag of China charged with five golden stars representing unity among the social classes had its construction details presented the following during the first plenary session of the People's Political Consultative Conference.
The design by economist Zeng Liansong (*1971 - †1999) was selected by Zhou Enlai (though choosing to edit out the hammer and sickle in the large star in the canton, the upper-most hoist quarter of flags) out of some three thousand entrants. The published instructions, then distributed across the country, are filed under a mandatory standard Guobiao (国标, GB), similar to (and conforming with in most cases) ISO or DIN.

a christening

During a naming ceremony for the eponymous RRS Sir David Attenborough—a polar research vessel (see previously), attended by the esteemed naturalist with thousands of onlookers and hosted by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge at the shipyard at Cammel Laird, poet laureate Simon Armitage commemorated the occasion with a special commission entitled Ark, with a very powerful and haunting refrain:

They sent out a dove: it wobbled home,
wings slicked in a rainbow of oil,
a sprig of tinsel snagged in its beak,
a yard of fishing-line binding its feet.

Bring back, bring back the leaf.

They sent out an artic fox:
it plodded the bays of the northern fringe
in muddy socks
and a nylon cape.

Bring back, bring back the leaf.
Bring back the reed and the reef,
set the ice sheet back on its frozen plinth,
tuck the restless watercourse into it bed,
sit the glacier down on its highland throne.
put the snow cap back on the mountain peak.

Let the northern lights be northern lights
not the alien glow over Glasgow or Leeds.

A camel capsized in a tropical flood.
Caimans dozing in Antarctic lakes.
Polymers rolled in the sturgeon’s blood.
Hippos wandered the housing estates.

Bring back, bring back the leaf.
Bring back the tusk and the horn
unshorn.
Bring back the fern, the fish, the frond and the fowl,
the golden toad and the pygmy owl,
 revisit the scene
where swallowtails fly
through acres of unexhausted sky.

They sent out a boat.
Go little breaker,
splinter the pack-ice and floes, nose
through the rafts and pads
of wrappers and bottles and nurdles and cans,
the bergs and atolls and islands and states
of plastic bags and micro-beads
and the forests of smoke.

Bring back, bring back the leaf,
bring back the river and bring back the sea.

blok p

Built in the mid-1960s and finally demolished in 2012, this long resident hall in the capital Nuuk was constructed under the direction of the Folketinget’s programme to moderise its autonomous overseas territory by enticing people to move from coastal settlements, once housing one percent of the population of the world’s largest island—recalling this compound in Alaska.
Made to continental standards, however, the apartments began to prove unpopular with their occupants, finding doors and passageways too narrow for residents coming in wearing full winter gear, absent other storage space, fishing gear crowded balconies and fire-escapes and there was often problems with the plumbing, bath tubs being the only practical place to carve up their catch. One face of the building was emblazoned with the Greenlandic flag, made of discarded pieces of apparel stitched together by a local artist and photographer called Julie Edel Hardenberg with the help of school children. The last tenants were rehoused in estates elsewhere in the Qinngorput district by the airport.

noforn

codex

On this day in 1789, the US Congress approved twelve articles of amendments to the Constitution addressing guarantees of personal liberties and rights. Articles three through twelve became the Bill of Rights, ratified by member states. The second article was eventually ratified in 1992 as the Twenty-Seventh Amendment.
The Congressional Apportionment Amendment (originally titled Article the First) is still pending and proffers a mathematical formula for setting the number of representatives in the lower house by population, one per every thirty thousand citizens. Congress had generally followed this convention by statue up until 1911 when the number of districts (though not their boundaries) were set at 435, with six additional non-voting members, American Samoa at-large, the District of Columbia at-large, Guam at-large, Puerto Rico at-large, the US Virgin Islands at-large, and the Northern Mariana Islands at-large, who mostly caucus with the Democratic party. A seat for the Cherokee Nation has also been established but has never been filled. The Philippines and Cuba also sent resident commissioners to Congress—also with no voting rights but well before the present scheme was established in the early 1970s, the exclusion based on the fact that these colonies accorded no citizenship rights and therefore retained the right secede from the Union, unlike the incorporated lands

reisebüro

Though one could always question the decision of the UK government to refuse a bailout to the world’s oldest tour company, Thomas Cook collapsing after one hundred and seventy-eight years of operation and a victim of progress plus its own mismanagement—especially when repatriation costs are already approaching half of the requested funds to keep the company solvent, Germany has chosen to intervene in the case of its domestic affiliates with the state stepping in to offer a bridge loan to keep the company—headquartered in Oberursel (previously)—whilst it restructures.

publick occurrences both forreign and domestick

Intended to be a monthly publication or “if any Glut of Occurences happen, offener,” the first multipage newspaper in the Americas (broadsides, single page notices had been printed in Cambridge in the colony of Massachusetts since the previous year), released its inaugural and final edition on this day in 1690 in Boston. Though the paper had consisted of four pages, there was only enough content to fill three (see also). There was no second edition due to the paper being closed by the colonial government four days after the first issue for failing to obtain the proper license for publication—“without the least Privity and Countenace of Authority.”