FReeper Canteen ~ Pancakes on Wednesday ~ 6 Apr 2004

Pancakes on Wednesdays

Welcome to Pancakes on Wednesdays

Wednesday, April 7, 2004

Here is an amalgamation of trivial facts and seemingly useless data.

Do not forget to hit the hyperlinks.

We have links, lots of them.

From the Radixionary

MIMSY

Prim or affected; over-refined; mincing.

Aficionados of Lewis Carroll will know a different meaning, which appears in the poem called Jabberwocky in his Through the Looking-Glass: “All mimsy were the borogoves”. Later in the book, Humpty-Dumpty explains its meaning as being a blend (he calls it a portmanteau word) of flimsy and miserable, so meaning “unhappy”. Carroll either invented it afresh or borrowed an existing English dialect word and gave it a new meaning.

In the sense of affected or over-refined, mimsy has long been known in the British Isles, especially in Scots and northern dialects; an example is in A Rock in the Baltic, by Robert Barr (1906): “In one corner of the room stood a sewing-machine, and on the long table were piles of mimsy stuff out of which feminine creations are constructed.” It’s known in other spellings, such as mimsey and mimzy; mimp is closely related; an elaborated version is miminy-piminy or niminy-piminy.

All forms seem to be built on mim. This little word may come from an imitation of pursing up the mouth in prudishness (a related form is mim-mouthed, affectedly prim and proper in speech, which appears in Virginibus Puerisque, by Robert Louis Stevenson, published in 1881: “Mim-mouthed friends and relations hold up their hands in quite a little elegiacal synod about his path: and what cares he for all this?”)

Mimsy is far from dead. It is found in the issue of The Medical Post for 6 January 2004 (published in Toronto, but the writer was remembering his childhood in Scotland): “Certainly if I had been drafted into the Armed Forces I would have been streets ahead of these mimsy Boy Scouts with their cowboy hats and their two-fingered apology for a salute.” It also appeared in an article by Griff Rhys Jones in the Independent on 24 October 2003: “This is food writing. Not mimsy pseudo-porn, but genuinely funny gastro-investigation driven by a slavering appetite.”

Happy Birthday

William Woodsworth 1770

What Heavenly Smiles!

What heavenly smiles! O Lady mine
Through my very heart they shine;
And, if my brow gives back their light,
Do thou look gladly on the sight;
As the clear Moon with modest pride
Beholds her own bright beams.
Reflected from the mountain's side
And from the headlong streams.

Happy Birthday

W.K. Kellogg 1860

The Canteen sponsor of the week; Fresh to you each morning, Straight from Battle Creek

Kellog's pancakes, the best to you each morning.

Orbit

Happy Birthday

Jersey Joe Walcott 1872

Thou shouldst eat to live; not live to eat.

Socrates

Happy Birthday

Irene Castle 1893

Irene was the first woman to BOB her hair. She and husband Vernon, invented social dancing Charleston, Turkey Trot, Vernon Walk and others.

Happy Birthday

Walter Winchell 1897

Upon his death in 1972, a front-page obituary in the New York Times eulogized Walter Winchell as "the country’s best-known, widely read journalist as well as its most influential."

Conjunction

The coincidence in right ascension of two celestial bodies (one of which is often the Sun). For example, when a planet is at the same right ascension as the Sun, it is said to be in conjunction.

What else is the function of a Conjunction?

Happy Birthday

Percy Faith 1908

Happy Birthday

Billie Holiday 1915

Ignorance, the root and the stem of every evil.

Plato

Happy Birthday
James Garner 1928

"A guy calls his lawyer. He says, 'Can I ask you two questions?'
Lawyer says, 'What's the second one?' "

Pancakes forever.

Happy Birthday

David Frost 1939

Happy Birthday

Francis Coppola 1939

Opposition

The time when the Earth lies between a planet and the Sun, making the Sun and planet appear in opposite directions as viewed from the Earth. Oppositions are the best opportunities for observing superior planets because they are well away from the glare of the Sun, and closer to the Earth than usual.

Happy Birthday

Jackie Chan 1954

Parallax

Hold out a pencil at arm's length so that it covers your view of a more distant object. Now close each eye in turn. The pencil seems to move relative to the distant object when a different eye is closed. Each eye looks at the pencil from a slightly different direction. With both eyes open you get more visual clues as to how far away any object is. The following diagram shows the situation:

Your brain instinctively determines the object's distance from the slight change in direction (measured by the angle - P). This method of measuring distances is called PARALLAX.

Parallax

Happy Birthday

Tony Dorsett 1954

We are counting yards.

Look into the center (white point) and stare for a while. How many colors can you see altogether in the object? You should see a purplish circle... and the 4 rotating 'wings' are tinted green. Make sure you always keep focused on the center.

Happy Birthday

James "Buster" Douglas 1960

Patient: "Nurse, I just swallowed my pillow!"
Nurse: "How do you feel?"
Patient: "A little down in the mouth"

Apogee

The point in the orbit of the moon or of an artificial satellite most distant from the center of the earth.

At apogee, a satellite travels more slowly than at any other point in its orbit. When viewed from the earth's surface, a satellite at or near apogee takes a long time to traverse the sky. In communications, apogee is the best time to access a satellite.

Happy Birthday

Russell Crowe 1964

Happy Birthday

Victoria Adams Beckham (Spice Girls) 1975

Today's Wednesday field trip takes us to perigee.

Parsec

A parsec is the unit for expressing distances to stars and galaxies, used by professional astronomers. It represents the distance at which the radius of the Earth's orbit subtends an angle of one second of arc; thus a star at a distance of one parsec would have a parallax of one second, and the distance of an object in parsecs is the reciprocal of its parallax in seconds of arc.

1 Parsec = 3.08568025 × 10¹⁶ meters

I am an excellent driver

We are counting cards!

On This Day

1652 - The Dutch established a settlement at Cape Town, South Africa.

On this Day

1798 - The territory of Mississippi was organized.

Astronomical Unit

On this Day

1862 - Union General Ulysses S. Grant defeated Confederates at the Battle of Shiloh, TN.

On this Day

1888 - P.F. Collier published a weekly periodical for the first time under the name "Collier’s."

Peter Collier founded the periodical, Collier's Once a Week in April 1888. It was advertised as a magazine of "fiction, fact, sensation, wit, humor, news". By 1892 it had a circulation of over 250,000 and was one of largest selling magazines in the United States.

On this Day

1914 - The British House of Commons passed the Irish Home Rule Bill.

On this Day

1922 - U.S. Secretary of Interior leased Teapot Dome naval oil reserves in Wyoming.

The Teapot Dome scandal was also called the OIL RESERVES, or ELK HILLS, SCANDAL, in American history, scandal of the early 1920s surrounding the secret leasing of federal oil reserves by the secretary of the interior, Albert B. Fall. After President Warren G. Harding transferred supervision of the naval oil reserve lands from the navy to the Department of the Interior in 1921.

On this Day

1933 - Prohibition ended in the United States.

National prohibition of alcohol (1920-33)--the "noble experiment"--was undertaken to reduce crime and corruption, solve social problems, reduce the tax burden created by prisons and poorhouses, and improve health and hygiene in America. The results of that experiment clearly indicate that it was a miserable failure on all counts. The evidence affirms sound economic theory, which predicts that prohibition of mutually beneficial exchanges is doomed to failure

On this Day

1940 - Booker T. Washington became the first black to be pictured on a U.S. postage stamp.

There are people whose abilities and energy take them far past any limitations life tries to place on them. Booker T. Washington was one of those people. He rose up from slavery and illiteracy to become the foremost educator and leader of black Americans at the turn of the century.

On this Day

1945 - The Japanese battleship Yamato, the world’s largest battleship, was sunk during the battle for Okinawa. The fleet was headed for a suicide mission.

On this Day

1948 - The musical "South Pacific" by Rogers and Hammerstein debuted on Broadway.

Adapted from two short stories by James Michener, South Pacific chronicles two love affairs.

On this Day

1948 - The United Nations' World Health Organization began operations.

On this Day

1953 - IBM unveiled the IBM 701 Electronic Data Processing Machine.

It was IBM's first commercially available scientific computer.

On this Day

1963 - At the age of 23, Jack Nicklaus became the youngest golfer to win the Green Jacket at the Masters Tournament.

I am an excellent driver.

On this Day

1963 - Josip Broz Tito was proclaimed to be the leader of Yugoslavia for life.

On this Day

1970 - John Wayne won his first and only Oscar for his role in "True Grit." He had been in over 200 films.

Don't forget the Maple Syrup.

Pancakes Wednesdays

Definitely

On This Day In history

Birthdates which occurred on April 07:
1506 St Francis Xavier Jesuit missionary to India, Malaya, & Japan
1534 José de Anchieta Spanish jesuit/missionary (Brazilian Tupi-Indians)
1629 Juan José of Austria, Spanish General/Governor of Netherlands
1648 Ferdinand van Kessel Flemish painter
1770 William Wordsworth England, poet laureate (The Prelude)
1775 Francis C Lowell founded 1st raw cotton-to-cloth textile mill
1786 William Rufus DeVane King (D) 13th US Vice President (1853)
1801 Henry Eagle Commander (Union Navy), died in 1882
1805 Francis Wilkinson Pickens (Governor-SC, Confederacy), died in 1869
1822 Gershom Mott Major General (Union volunteers)
1859 Walter Camp Connecticut, father of American football (Yale)
1860 W K Kellogg a real corn flake
1869 David Grandison Fairchild US, botanist/explorer, brought plants to US
1870 Joseph Ryeland Belgian composer/Baron
1878 Jozef C Bittremieux Flemish theologist (Virgin & Mother of God)
1882 Kurt von Schleiger German chancellor (12/2/32-1/28/33)
1884 Charles Dodd English new testament authority
1890 Marjory Stoneman Douglas environmentalist (1st Lady of Everglades)
1893 Allan W Dulles US diplomat/CIA head 1953-61 (Germany's Underground)
1893 Irene Castle dancer (leader in anti-vivisection movement)
1897 Walter Winchell Harlem New York NY, newscaster/columnist/muckracker (Untouchables)
1899 Robert Marcel Casadesus French pianist/composer (Prix Diémer)
1908 Le Duan Vietnamese politician
1915 Billie Holiday(Lady Day) [Eleanora Fagan] Philadelphia PA, singer (Ain't Nobody's Business)
1915 Henry Kuttner US, sci-fi author (Dark World, As You Were, Startling Worlds of Henry Kuttner)
1920 Ravi Shankar Benares India, sitar player (Sounds of India)
1920 Terence Edward Armstrong polar geographer
1928 James [Scott Bumgarner] Garner Norman OK, actor (Rockford Files, Bret Maverick)
1928 James White UK, sci-fi author (Star Surgeon, Star Healer)
1930 Andrew Sachs actor (Manuel-Fawlty Towers)
1931 Daniel Ellsberg whistleblower (Pentagon Papers)
1932 Louis "Mr Bo" Collins Indianola MS, blues singer (If Trouble Was Money)
1933 Wayne Rogers Birmingham AL, actor (MASH, House Calls, Chiefs)
1934 Ian Richards Edinburgh Scotland, actor (Montgomery-Ike)
1935 Hodding Carter III press secretary (Jimmy Carter)
1935 Bobby Bare Irontown OH, country singer (Detroit City)
1938 Freddie Hubbard Indianapolis IN, jazz trumpeter (Art Blakey)
1938 Yvonne Lime Glendale CA, actress (Father Knows Best, Dobie Gillis)
1938 [Edmund G] Jerry Brown Jr San Francisco CA, (Governor-Democrat-CA, 1975-83)(governor moonbeam)
1939 David Frost Tenderdon England, TV host (That Was the Week That Was)
1939 Francis Ford Coppola Detroit MI, film maker (Godfather, Apocalypse Now, American Graffiti)
1949 John Oates guitarist/vocalist (Hall & Oates-Rich Girl)
1951 Janis Ian [Janis Eddy Fink] New York NY, folk singer (Society's Child, At 17)
1951 John Dittrich Union NJ, country singer (Restless Heart-Wheels)
1954 Jackie Chan martial art actor (Rumble in the Bronx)
1954 Tony Dorsett NFL running back (Dallas Cowboys, Heisman Trophy)
1955 Andrea Fisher artist
1966 Teri Ann Linn Honolulu HI, actress (Kristen-Bold & Beautiful)
1967 Steve Wisniewski NFL guard (Oakland Raiders)

Deaths which occurred on April 07:
0030 Jesus crucified by Roman troops in Jerusalem (scholars' estimate, according to astronomer Schaefer)
0924 Berengarius I Emperor of Italy, murdered
1498 Charles VIII King of France (1483-98), dies at 27
1524 Philip of Burgundy bishop of Utrecht, dies
1614 El Greco Spanish painter (View of Toledo), dies (birth date unknown)
1719 Jean-Baptiste de la Salle French priest/theory/saint, dies at 67
1783 Ignaz Jakob Holzbauer composer, dies at 71
1789 Abdül-Hamid I 27th sultan of Turkey (1774-89), dies at 64
1803 [François Dominique] Toussaint L'Ouverture Haitian revolutionary, dies
1881 Pierre Napoleon Bonaparte Corsican MP, dies at 65
1891 P[hineas] T Barnum US circus promoter (Barnum & Bailey), dies at 80
1932 Erv A Kelley US policeman, shot to death by Pretty Boy Floyd
1950 Walter Huston dies at 66
1955 Theda Bara actress (Camille, Cleopatra, 2 Orphans), dies at 62
1961 Marian Jordan radio comedienne (Fibber McGee & Molly), dies at 62
1968 Jim Clark of Scotland, former world driving champion, dies in race car at 32
1972 "Crazy" Joe Gallo mobster, killed at his 43rd birthday party
1983 Gavin Gordon television actor (Romance, Lone Cowboy), dies at 82
1984 Frank Church (Senator-Democrat-OH, 1957-81), dies at 59
1994 Kurt Cobain grunge rocker/junkie (Nirvana), commits suicide by gun at 27

Reported: MISSING in ACTION

1965 BAKER ARTHUR D.---SAN ANTONIO TX.
[LAST SEEN ON DIVE THRU THIN CLOUDS]
1965 LEWIS JAMES W.---MARSHALL TX.
LAST SEEN ON DIVE THRU THIN CLOUDS]
1965 ROARK WILLIAM MARSHALL---BELLEVUE NE.
[REMAINS NOT RETURNED AS REPORTED 03/77, BODY RECOVERED?? USG REPORTS REMAINS ID 3/77]
1966 BARNETT ROBERT RUSSELL---GLADEWATER TX.
1966 WALKER THOMAS TAYLOR---TOLEDO OR.
1968 MC MURRAY FRED H. JR.---CHARLESTON SC.
1972 CARLSON ALBERT E.---SAN LORENZO CA.
[02/12/73 RELEASED BY PRG, ALIVE IN 98]
1972 LULL HOWARD B. JR.---DALLAS TX.
[EVADED TO XT7297 WHERE KILLED]
1972 POTTS LARRY F.---SMYRNA DE.
[CAPTURED, DIED IN QUANG BIHN]
1972 SMITH MARK A.---LIMA OH.
[02/12/73 RELEASED BY PRG, ALIVE AND WELL 98]
1972 SCHOTT RICHARD S.---ST CROIX VI.
[KILLED IN BUNKER AT XU731081]
1972 WALKER BRUCE C.---PUEBLO CO.
[EVADED 11 DAYS, NVA APPROACHING]
1972 WALLINGFORD KENNETH---HOUSTON TX.
[02/12/73 RELEASED BY PRG, ALIVE AND WELL 98]

POW / MIA Data & Bios supplied by
the P.O.W. NETWORK. Skidmore, MO. USA.

On this day...
0451 Attila's Hun's plunder Metz
1118 Pope Gelasius II excommunicated Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor
1348 Prague U, 1st university in central Europe, formed by Charles IV
1498 Crowd storms Savonarola's convent San Marco Florence Italy
1509 France declares war on Venice
1521 Inquisitor-General Adrian Boeyens bans Lutheran books
1625 Albrecht von Wallenstein appointed German supreme commander
1645 Michael Cardozo becomes 1st Jewish lawyer in Brazil
1652 Dutch establish settlement at Cape Town, South Africa
1655 Fabio Chigi replaces Pope Innocent X as Alexander VII
1712 Slave revolt (New York NY)
1724 Johann S Bach's "John Passion" premieres in Leipzig
1788 1st settlement in Ohio, at Marietta
1798 Territory of Mississippi is organized
1805 Premiere of Beethoven's "Eroica" (conducted by himself)
1818 General Andrew Jackson conquers St Marks FL from Seminole Indians
1827 English chemist John Walker invents wooden matches
1862 Grant defeats Confederates at Battle of Shiloh, Tennessee; Island #10 falls
1863 Battle of Charleston SC, failed Federal fleet attack on Fort Sumter
1865 Battle of Farmville VA
1888 Start of Sherlock Holmes adventure "Yellow Face" (BG)
1891 Nebraska introduces the 8 hour work day
1902 Texas Oil Company (Texaco) forms
1922 Naval Reserve #3, "Teapot Dome", leased to Harry F Sinclair
1923 1st brain tumor operation under local anesthetic performed (Beth Israel Hospital in NYC) by Dr K Winfield Ney
1923 Workers Party of America (NYC) becomes official communist party
1926 Mussolini's Irish wife breaks his nose
1927 Using phone lines TV is sent from Washington DC to New York NY
1933 Prohibition ends, Utah becomes 38th state to ratify 21st Amendment
1933 University Bridge, Seattle opens for traffic
1933 1st 2 Nazi anti-Jewish laws, bar Jews from legal & public service
1934 In India, Mahatma Gandhi suspends his campaign of civil disobedience
1939 Italy annexes Albania
1940 1st black to appear on US stamp (Booker T Washington)
1941 British Generals O'Connor & Neame captured in North Africa
1942 Heavy German assault on Malta
1943 British/US troops make contact at Wadi Akarit, South-Tunisia
1943 Lieutenant Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg seriously wounded in allied air raid
1945 US planes intercept Japanese fleet heading for Okinawa on a suicide mission; superbattleship Yamato & four destroyers are sunk
1946 Part of East Prussia incorporated into Russian SFSR
1948 World Health Organization established by UN
1949 Rogers & Hammerstein's "South Pacific" opens at Majestic Theater (for 1928 performances)
1951 American Bowling Congress begins 1st masters tournament
1951 US performs atmospheric nuclear test at Enwetak
1953 1st west-to-east jet transatlantic nonstop flight
1953 Dag Hammarskjöld of Sweden elected 2nd UN General-Secretary
1954 German government refuses to recognize DDR
1954 President Dwight Eisenhower fears "domino-effect" in Indo-China
1956 Spain relinquishes her protectorate in Morocco
1957 Last of New York's electric trolleys completes its final run
1958 Dodgers erect 42-foot screen in left field at Los
1959 Radar 1st bounced off sun, Stanford CA
1959 Oklahoma ends prohibition, after 51 years
1963 Public stock offering of 115,000 shares in Milwaukee Braves withdrawn after only 13,000 shares are sold to 1,600 new investors
1966 US recovers lost H-bomb from Mediterranean floor (whoops!)
1967 Israeli/Syrian border fights
1967 Tom Donahue, San Francisco dj begins new radio format - Progressive (KMPX-FM)
1969 Supreme Court strikes down laws prohibiting private possession of obscene material
1969 Ted Williams begins managing Washington Senators, they lose to Yankees 8-4
1970 Milwaukee Brewers (former Seattle Pilots) 1st game, lose to Angels 12-0
1971 Dismissal of Curt Flood's suit against baseball is upheld by Supreme Court
1971 President Richard Nixon orders Lieutenant Calley (My Lai) free
1976 Chinese Politburo fires vice-premier Deng Xiaoping
1977 Consumer Product Safety Commission bans the flame-retardant chemical "TRIS"
1978 President Jimmy Carter defers production of the neutron bomb
1978 Guttenberg bible sold for $2,000,000 in NYC
1978 US Court of Appeals upholds Commissioner Kuhn's voiding of attempted player sales by A's owner Charlie Finley in June 1976
1979 Henri La Mothe dives 28' into 12 3/8" of water
1980 Jimmy Carter breaks relations with Iran during hostage crisis
1981 Willem Klein mentally extracts 13th root of a 100-digit # in 29 seconds
1982 Iran minister of Foreign affairs Ghotbzadeh arrested
1983 STS-6 specialist Story Musgrave & Don Peterson 1st STS spacewalk
1983 Oldest human skeleton, aged 80,000 years, discovered in Egypt(Doesn't look a day over 79,992)
1984 Detroit Tiger Jack Morris pitches no-hitter against Chicago White Sox, 4-0
1985 New Jersey General Hershel Walker runs for USFL record 233 yards
1988 Russia announces it will withdraw its troops from Afghánistán
1989 New York Supreme Court takes America's Cup away from San Diego Yacht Club for using a catamaran against New Zealand; Appeals court eventually overrules
1989 Soviet sub sinks in Norwegian Sea, with about a dozen deaths
1990 John Poindexter (National Security Advisor) found guilty on Iran-Contra scandal
1990 Michael Milken pleads innocent to security law violations
1991 "Shadowlands" closes at Brooks Atkinson Theater NYC after 169 performances

Holidays
Note: Some Holidays are only applicable on a given "day of the week"

China : Ching Ming - families gather at graves of ancestors
Haiti : World Health Day (1948)
Yugoslavia : Republic Day (1963)
US : National Laugh Week Ends
US : National Publicity Stunt Week Ends
US : National Reading a Road Map Week (Day 4)
National Welding Month

Religious Observances
Orthodox : Annunciation of Mary (3/25 OS)
Roman Catholic : Memorial of St John Baptist de la Salle, priest, patron of teachers

Religious History
1541 Spanish founder of the Jesuits Francis Xavier, 35, and three friends set sail from Lisbon, Portugal for Goa. They became the first Roman Catholic missionaries to travel to India.
1628 Jonas Michaelius, 51, arrived in New Amsterdam (New York City), the first minister of the Dutch Reformed Church to come to America.
1884 Birth of C. H. Dodd, English clergyman and Bible scholar. Dodd became the most influential British New Testament scholar of the mid-20th century, and penned over a dozen books, including "The Parables of the Kingdom" (1934).
1953 Swedish statesman Dag Hammarskjld, 47, was elected Secretary General of the United Nations. Hammarskjld endeared himself to Christians, after his death in 1961, through the 1964 publication of his spiritual journal, "Markings."
1968 In a letter penned during his 83rd and final year of life, Karl Barth wrote: 'How one learns to be thankful for each day on which one can still do something.'

Source: William D. Blake. ALMANAC OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1987.

Thought for the day :
"Cheap things are of no value, valuable things are not cheap."

What a Difference 30 Years Makes
1970: Long Hair.
2000: Longing for hair.

New State Slogans...
Kansas: First Of The Rectangle States

Male Language Patterns...
"Do you love me?" REALLLY MEANS,
I've done something stupid and you might find out.

Female Language Patterns...
SOFT SIGH
Not a word, but a verbal statement. "Soft Sighs" are one of the few things that some men actually understand. She is content. Your best bet is to not move or breathe and hope she will stay content.

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