The Chevrolet Corvette on This Day in History

The Corvette Song by George Jones

This Day In History: The first Chevrolet Corvette rolled off the assembly line in Flint, Michigan on this day in 1953. The cost of that Vette was $3498.00 at the time (which would be over $31,000 in today's dollars). In 2006 that same 1953 model sold for $1,100,000.00. The first production C8 Corvette went for an impressive $3 million at Barrett Jackson’s 2020 Scottsdale Auction, and the 2020 Chevy Corvette Coupe runs for $103,615. While the Corvette is a fan favorite, the heavy price tag keeps it from being one of the top 5 selling Chevy models of all time. Those honors go to the Silverado, Camaro, Cavalier, Impala and the Caprice. In fact, the highest production year for the corvette was in 1978 with just 53,807 units.

The Corvette is the longest produced sports car in the world and it gets its name from the Corvette warships which have been around since the 1600's. 

The Corvette has been used as the pace car of the Indianapolis 500 thirteen times, more than any other vehicle.

One of the first appearances of the corvette in a movie was 1955's Kiss Me Deadly, but that certainly wasn't the last appearance of a Vette on the silver screen. I'm old enough to remember Corvette Summer with Mark Hamill, but also the '59 Corvette in Animal House. There is also the 1965 Vette roadster in The Spy Who Shagged Me and a '67 Vette in Con Air. The Fast and Furious franchise had Vettes in two movies (XXX and Fast Five). According to Hagerty, the best Corvettes appeared in the Elvis Presley movie Clambake (1967).

Also, "From 1981 to 2011, the 1984 Chevy Corvette proved the most-stolen model year, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB). Overall, 90,427 Corvettes were stolen in the U.S. and Puerto Rico during those 30 years." ~Automobilemag

According to autoblog.com, the Chevy Corvette is one of the most dangerous cars to drive with a fatal accident rate of 9.8 cars per billion (the worst is the Mitsubishi Mirage).

Everything We Know About The Corvette Stingray SUV

Economic Humorist & Storyteller Frederic Bastiat on This Day in History

The Law, by Bastiat

This Day In History: Economist Frederic Bastiat was born on this day in 1801. Economics is often called the "Dismal Science" but this became less so with Bastiat often injecting humor into it. Robert Heilbroner writes in his "Worldly Philosophers": "There was...a man who has been almost forgotten in the march of economic ideas. He is Frederic Bastiat, an eccentric Frenchman, who lived from 1801 to 1850, and who in that short space of time and an even shorter space of literary life—six years—brought to bear on economics that most devastating of all weapons: ridicule...Bastiat had a gift for pointing out absurdities; his little book Economic Sophisms is as close to humor as economics has ever come." For instance, in his Candlemakers’ Petition he wrote of candlemakers petitioning the Government to help them combat their enemy the sun, as sunlight was hurting their business.

"If a posthumous Nobel Prize were to be awarded to just one person for crystal-clear writing and masterful storytelling in economics, no one would be more deserving of it than Bastiat. Here is the great pity of his short time on this earth: while he lived and ever since, his own country never possessed the collective wisdom to give him the honor and attention he deserved. His selfless courage in expressing timeless, irrefutable truths while almost all around him wallowed in fallacy constitutes a great moral victory indeed."~Lawrence W. Reed

He was also one of the earliest opponents of Socialism. “Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.” 

Other great quips from Bastiat: “The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.” 

“If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?” 

“When goods do not cross borders, soldiers will.” 

“When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.” 

“The most urgent necessity is, not that the State should teach, but that it should allow education. All monopolies are detestable, but the worst of all is the monopoly of education.” 

“The politician attempts to remedy the evil by increasing the very thing that caused the evil in the first place: legal plunder.” 

“Legal plunder has two roots: One of them, as I have said before, is in human greed; the other is in false philanthropy.” 

“The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable.” 

Download the Bastiat Collection here

Bastiat- The Broken Window Fallacy

In his essay, That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen, Bastiat introduced the parable of the broken window to illustrate why destruction, and the money spent to recover from destruction, is not actually a net benefit to society.

See also The History & Mystery of Money & Economics-250 Books on DVDrom

See my Economics blog at http://fredericbastiat1850.blogspot.com/

Prophet of Totalitarianism, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, on This Day in History

 

This day in history: Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born on this day in 1712. Rousseau was a sharp critic of inequality and private property, hence he may have influenced Karl Marx. He died before the failed French Revolution, but many held him responsible for it. As the evil tyrant Robespierre put it, 'Rousseau is the one man who, through the loftiness of his soul and the grandeur of his character, showed himself worthy of the role of teacher of mankind.'

 

He also taught guidelines on raising children, while abandoning his own five children to an orphanage. He was kind of a dick in many aspects.

"Rousseau eschewed conventional morality and replaced it with amoralism in his personal life. He was a liar, a cheat, and a whim-worshipper writ large. He once stole a ribbon from his then-patroness and allowed a maid to take the blame and be punished. When a friend with whom he was taking a walk had an epileptic fit, he took advantage of the crowd that then gathered to abandon his friend and disappear from the scene. In his writings he glorified as irreducible and admirable primaries the impulses of the 'Noble Savage' to whose way of life humanity ought to repair—at least to the extent feasible given the enormity of humanity’s backsliding from its original 'noble savagery.'"

"With Rousseau the individual has no rights at all to deviate from the general will, so this democracy is compatible with a complete absence of personal freedom. Here was the first formulation in Western philosophy of some of the basic ideas underlying the great totalitarian movements of the 20th century, Communism and Fascism—which likewise claimed to represent the people, and to have mass support, and even to be democratic, while denying individual rights; and which also allotted a key role to charismatic leaders; and which waged both hot and cold war against the Anglo-Saxon democracies who based themselves on Lockean principles."~Lindsay Perigo

"Rousseau, for all his emphasis on 'the general will,' left the interpretation of that will to elites. He likened the masses of the people to 'a stupid, pusillanimous invalid....Jacques Rousseau in the eighteenth century, whose depiction of 'the noble savage' served as a rebuke to European civilization." Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society

"Voltaire, with whom Rousseau shared a long and violent animosity, caricatured him as a 'tramp who would like to see the rich robbed by the poor, the better to establish the fraternal unity of man.' During the Cold War, critics such as Berlin and Jacob Talmon presented Rousseau as a prophet of totalitarianism. Now, as large middle classes in the West stagnate and billions elsewhere move out of poverty while harboring unrealizable dreams of prosperity, Rousseau’s obsession with the psychic consequences of inequality seems even more prophetic and disturbing."

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/08/01/how-rousseau-predicted-trump

Paul Johnson, who's first chapter of "Intellectuals" featured Rousseau, concluded: "It is all very baffling and suggests that intellectuals are as unreasonable, illogical and superstitious as anyone else. The truth seems to be that Rousseau was a writer of genius but fatally unbalanced both in his life and in his views. He is best summed up by the woman who, he said, was his only love, Sophie d'Houdetot. She lived on until 1813 and, in extreme old age, delivered this verdict : 'He was ugly enough to frighten me and love did not make him more attractive. But he was a pathetic figure and I treated him with gentleness and kindness. He was an interesting madman.'"

Bertrand Russell said "Hitler is an outcome of Rousseau; Roosevelt and Churchill, of Locke"?

Isaiah Berlin condemned Rousseau as “the most sinister and most formidable enemy of liberty in the whole history of modern thought.”

Rousseau was also a plagiarist. "He reproaches Mably with having borrowed, without acknowledgment, his philosophical systems; and the Benedictine, Don Joseph Cajot, brings a charge of plagiarism against Rousseau's 'Emile.' Nor is this all: the Abbe Du Laurens, known as the author of 'Compere Mathieu,' in a work published in 1788, asserts that Rousseau copied his 'Contrat Social,' word for word, from Ulric Huber's Latin work, 'De Jure Civitatis Libri III.' 'We shall be told,' adds Du Laurens, 'that M. Rousseau, like a second Prometheus, stole the sacred fire from heaven: our answer is, that he stole his fire, not from heaven, but from a library.'" 

https://thebookshelf2015.blogspot.com/2018/05/the-plagiarism-of-rousseau-voltaire-and.html

The Killing of Mormon Leader Joseph Smith on This Day in History

This day in history: Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter Day Saint (Mormom) movement, and his brother Hyrum Smith, were killed by a mob at the Carthage, Illinois jail on this day in 1844.

Joseph Smith was mayor of Nauvoo Illinois, and he ordered the printing presses at the Nauvoo Expositor destroyed as the reporters there were writing articles critical of him. 

The destruction of the press led to public outrage, and Smith and other members of the Nauvoo City Council were charged with inciting a riot. Smith declared martial law in Nauvoo and called on the Nauvoo Legion to protect the city. After briefly fleeing Illinois, Smith returned and voluntarily traveled to the county seat at Carthage to face charges. After surrendering to authorities, Smith and his brothers were also charged with treason against Illinois for declaring martial law.

The brothers were in the Carthage Jail awaiting trial when an armed mob of about 200 men stormed the building, their faces painted black with wet gunpowder. Joseph's brother Hyrum was killed immediately when he was shot in the face. Joseph Smith was then shot and killed while trying to escape from a second-story window.

Five men were indicted for the killings but were acquitted at a jury trial. At the time of his death, Smith was also running for president of the United States, making him the first U.S. presidential candidate to be assassinated. His death marked a turning point for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and since then, members of the Latter Day Saint movement have generally viewed him and his brother as religious martyrs who were "murdered in cold blood".

James Strang, who claimed to have been appointed to be the successor of Joseph Smith as leader of the Church was also assassinated in 1856. 

Early Mormon history is one that is marked by violence, violence perpetrated against them, and violence enacted by them. Mormons being viewed as a violent faith also made it into the first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet. There is even a wikipedia entry on Mormonism and violence. 

One reason why the Mormons were so hated was their belief in polygamy. They officially denied practicing it until after Brigham Young succeeded Joseph Smith. Many of the leaders including Joseph Smith also practiced polyandry (marrying other living men’s wives). These practices were considered sexually deviant and despicable.

Also, when Mormons moved into an area, they would completely change the voting patterns in that area, which enraged the community.

 

Warren (The Myth of Male Power) Farrell on This Day in History

 

https://warrenfarrell.com/product/the-myth-of-male-power-ebook/

This day in history: Author Warren Farrell was born on this day in 1943. He wrote one of the first "red pill" books I have read, "The Myth of Male Power."

From the above link: "The Myth of Male Power documents how virtually every society that survived did so by persuading its sons to be disposable–disposable in war, disposable at work–and therefore, indirectly, disposable as dads. Universities teach our children that we live in a patriarchal world controlled by men to benefit men at the expense of women. Dr. Warren Farrell’s The Myth of Male Power says 'false': the world has not been controlled by men, but by the need to survive."

"If men are the powerful sex…

• Why are they the suicide sex? (Why are we unaware that our grandfathers are 1350 percent more likely to commit suicide than our grandmothers?)

• Why did men live one year less than women in 1920 but five years less than women in 2013?

• Why are our dads more likely to die earlier of the leading causes of death even as we have seven federal offices of women’s health, and none of men’s health?

• Why are our sons still sex expected to pay more for the 5 D’s: drinks; dinners; dates; driving expenses; and diamonds (as in “every kiss begins with Kay”)?

• Why do myths such as 'men earn more money for the same work' persist even though they’ve been disproven?

• Why do men receive longer prison sentences for identical crimes?"

One of the examples that Farrell uses to illustrate male powerlessness is male-only draft registration. He writes that if any other single group (the examples he lists are Jews, African-Americans, and women) were selected based on their birth characteristics to be the only group required by law to register for potential death, we would call it anti-Semitism, racism or genocidal sexism. Men, he says, have been socialized to call it "glory" and "power," and as a result do not view this as a negative.

Do men really earn more? "Women are 15 times as likely as men to become top executives in major corporations before the age of 40. Never-married, college-educated males who work full time make only 85 percent of what comparable women earn. Female pay exceeds male pay in more than 80 different fields, 39 of them large fields that offer good jobs, like financial analyst, engineering manager, sales engineer, statistician, surveying and mapping technicians, agricultural and food scientists, and aerospace engineers. A female investment banker's starting salary is 116 percent of a male's. Part-time female workers make $1.10 for every $1 earned by part-time males."~John Leo

"There are 80 jobs in which women earn more than men - positions like financial analyst, speech-language pathologist, radiation therapist, library worker, biological technician, motion picture projectionist."

Where men do earn more is in work that is risky, dangerous, stressful with a willingness to locate to undesirable locations. 

"...when The Jobs Related Almanac ranked 250 jobs from best to worst based on a combination of salary, stress, work environment, outlook, security and physical demands, they found that 24 of the 25 worst jobs were almost-all-male jobs....Some examples: truck driver, sheet-metal worker, roofer, boilermaker, lumberjack, carpenter, construction worker or foreman, construction machinery operator, football player, welder, millwright, ironworker. All of these 'worst jobs' have one thing in common: 95 to 100 percent men. And within a given death profession, the more dangerous the assignment, the more likely it is to be assigned to a man....One reason the jobs men hold pay more, then, is because they are more hazardous. The additional pay might be called the 'Death Profession Bonus.'" Sun-Sentinel

Men are also willing to work longer hours than women.

Heinz Schmitz

The Fork on This Day in History

 

Jerry Seinfeld on the Chinese and Forks

This Day in History: The Fork was introduced to American dining by Governor Winthrop on this day in 1630, though it did not really catch on until the American Revolution a century and a half later. Before forks people used their fingers, or simply a knife. Some used bread (trenchers) to scoop up food with. The fork was a relative late-comer to Western dining, unless you were Italian. But by the mid-14th century, Italians had taken to eating pasta with a fork, which makes sense if you've ever eaten spaghetti. Even with the natural pairing of pasta and the fork, many continued to eat spaghetti by the fistful. Some early critics shunned the fork as it resembled the devil's pitchfork. Around the beginning of the 18th century, Louis XIV forbade his children to eat with forks.

When forks became more mainstream, the well-to-do would actually walk around with a small case that handled their cutlery, including their forks.

There are now many different types of forks, including the Asparagus fork, Barbecue fork, Beef fork, Berry fork, Carving fork, Cheese fork, Chip fork, Cocktail fork, Cold meat fork, Crab fork, Dessert fork, Dinner fork, Extension fork, Fish fork, Fondue fork, Fruit salad fork, Granny fork, Ice cream fork, Knork, Meat fork, Olive fork, Oyster fork, Pastry fork, Pickle fork, Pie fork, Relish fork, Salad fork, Sardine fork, Spaghetti fork, Sporf (a spoon, a fork and a knife combination) Spork (patented 1874), Sucket fork, Tea fork, Terrapin fork and a Toasting fork.

In fork etiquette, the European style has the diner with the fork in their left hand, while in the American style (which is also observed in France) the fork is shifted between the left and right hands.

The Dancing Plague on This Day in History

This Day in History: A sudden outbreak of the Dancing Mania happened on the streets of Aachen, Germany, on this day in 1374. (I was born in the Aachen area). The Dancing mania (also known as dancing plague, choreomania, St. John's Dance and St. Vitus's Dance) was a social phenomenon that involved groups of people dancing erratically, sometimes thousands at a time. It's hard to explain what caused this mass hysteria. Perhaps it was some sort of poisoning, others claim demon possession, or high levels of psychological distress. Whatever the cause, people would dance, often to the point of death.

Another big outbreak occurred in July 1518, in Strasbourg, where a woman began dancing in the street and between 50 and 400 people joined her. Further incidents occurred during the 16th century, when the mania was at its peak: in 1536 in Basel, involving a group of children; and in 1551 in Anhalt, involving just one man. In the 17th century, incidents of recurrent dancing were recorded by professor of medicine Gregor Horst, who noted:

"Several women who annually visit the chapel of St. Vitus in Drefelhausen... dance madly all day and all night until they collapse in ecstasy. In this way they come to themselves again and feel little or nothing until the next May, when they are again... forced around St. Vitus' Day to betake themselves to that place... [o]ne of these women is said to have danced every year for the past twenty years, another for a full thirty-two."

Dancing mania appears to have completely died out by the mid-1600s. According to John Waller, although numerous incidents were recorded, the best documented cases are the outbreaks of 1374 and 1518, for which there is abundant contemporary evidence.

A History of Madness in Sixteenth-Century Germany

JFC Hecker M.D. wrote in 1859 about the 14th century dancing mania:

THE effects of the Black Death had not yet subsided, and the graves of millions of its victims were scarcely closed, when a strange delusion arose in Germany, which took possession of the minds of men, and, in spite of the divinity of our nature, hurried away body and soul into the magic circle of hellish superstition. It was a convulsion which in the most extraordinary manner infuriated the human frame, and excited the astonishment of contemporaries for more than two centuries, since which time it has never reappeared. It was called the dance of St. John or of St. Vitus, on account of the Bacchantic leaps by which it was characterized, and which gave to those affected, whilst performing their wild dance, and screaming and foaming with fury, all the appearance of persons possessed. It did not remain confined to particular localities, but was propagated by the sight of the sufferers, like a demoniacal epidemic, over the whole of Germany and the neighbouring countries to the north-west, which were already prepared for its reception by the prevailing opinions of the times.

Download and Read: History of Dancing from the Earliest Ages to Our Own Times

So early as the year 1374, assemblages of men and women were seen at Aix-la-Chapelle who had come out of Germany, and who, united by one common delusion, exhibited to the public both in the streets and in the churches the following strange spectacle. They formed circles hand in hand, and appearing to have lost all control over their senses, continued dancing, regardless of the bystanders, for hours together in wild delirium, until at length they fell to the ground in a state of exhaustion. They then complained of extreme oppression, and groaned as if in the agonies of death, until they were swathed in cloths bound tightly round their waists, upon which they again recovered, and remained free from complaint until the next attack. This practice of swathing was resorted to on account of the tympany which followed these spasmodic ravings, but the by-standers frequently relieved patients in a less artificial manner, by thumping and trampling upon the parts affected. While dancing they neither saw nor heard, being insensible to external impressions through the senses, but were haunted by visions, their fancies conjuring up spirits whose names they shrieked out; and some of them afterwards asserted that they felt as if they had been immersed in a stream of blood, which obliged them to leap so high. Others, during the paroxysm, saw the heavens open and the Saviour enthroned with the Virgin Mary, according as the religious notions of the age were strangely and variously reflected in their imaginations.

Where the disease was completely developed, the attack commenced with epileptic convulsions. Those affected fell to the ground senseless, panting and labouring for breath. They foamed at the mouth, and suddenly springing up began their dance amidst strange contortions. Yet the malady doubtless made its appearance very variously, and was modified by temporary or local circumstances, whereof non-medical contemporaries but imperfectly noted the essential particulars, accustomed as they were to confound their observation of natural events with their notions of the world of spirits.

It was but a few months ere this demoniacal disease had spread from Aix-la-Chapelle, where it appeared in July, over the neighbouring Netherlands. In Liege, Utrecht, Tongres, and many other towns of Belgium, the dancers appeared with garlands in their hair, and their waists girt with cloths, that they might, as soon as the paroxysm was over, receive immediate relief on the attack of the tympany. This bandage was, by the insertion of a stick, easily twisted tight: many, however, obtained more relief from kicks and blows, which they found numbers of persons ready to administer ; for wherever the dancers appeared, the people assembled in crowds to gratify their curiosity with the frightful spectacle. At length the increasing number of the affected excited no less anxiety than the attention that was paid to them. In towns and villages they took possession of the religious houses, processions were everywhere instituted on their account, and masses were said and hymns were sung, while the disease itself, of the demoniacal origin of which no one entertained the least doubt, excited everywhere astonishment and horror. In Liege the priests had recourse to exorcisms, and endeavoured, by every means in their power, to allay an evil which threatened so much danger to themselves; for the possessed assembling in multitudes, frequently poured forth imprecations against them, and menaced their destruction. They intimidated the people also to such a degree that there was an express ordinance issued that no one should make any but square-toed shoes, because these fanatics had manifested a morbid dislike to the pointed shoes which had come into fashion immediately after the Great Mortality, in 1350. They were still more irritated at the sight of red colours, the influence of which on the disordered nerves might lead us to imagine an extraordinary accordance between this spasmodic malady and the condition of infuriated animals; but in the St. John's dancers this excitement was probably connected with apparitions consequent upon their convulsions. There were likewise some of them who were unable to endure the sight of persons weeping. The clergy seemed to become daily more and more confirmed in their belief that those who were affected were a kind of sectarians, and on this account they hastened their exorcisms as much as possible, in order that the evil might not spread amongst the higher classes, for hitherto scarcely any but the poor had been attacked, and the few people of respectability among the laity and clergy who were to be found among them, were persons whose natural frivolity was unable to withstand the excitement of novelty, even though it proceeded from a demoniacal influence. Some of the affected had indeed themselves declared, when under the influence of priestly forms of exorcism, that if the demons had been allowed only a few weeks more time, they would have entered the bodies of the nobility and princes, and through these have destroyed the clergy. Assertions of this sort, which those possessed uttered whilst in a state which may be compared with that of magnetic sleep, obtained general belief, and passed from mouth to mouth with wonderful additions. The priesthood were, on this account, so much the more zealous in their endeavours to anticipate every dangerous excitement of the people, as if the existing order of things could have been seriously threatened by such incoherent ravings. Their exertions were effectual, for exorcism was a powerful remedy in the fourteenth century; or it might perhaps be that this wild infatuation terminated in consequence of the exhaustion which naturally ensued from it; at all events, in the course of ten or eleven months the St. John’s dancers were no longer to be found in any of the cities of Belgium. The evil, however, was too deeply rooted to ‘give way altogether to such feeble attacks.

A few months after this dancing malady had made its appearance at Aix-la-Chapelle, it broke out at Cologne, where the number of those possessed amounted to more than five hundred and about the same time at Metz, the streets of which place are said to have been filled with eleven hundred dancers. Peasants left their ploughs, mechanics their workshops, housewives their domestic duties, to join the wild revels, and this rich commercial city became the scene of the most ruinous disorder. Secret desires were excited, and but too often found opportunities for wild enjoyment; and numerous beggars, stimulated by vice and misery, availed themselves of this new complaint to gain a temporary livelihood. Girls and boys quitted their parents, and servants their masters, to amuse themselves at the dances of those possessed, and greedily imbibed the poison of mental infection. Above a hundred unmarried women were seen raving about in consecrated and unconsecrated places, and the consequences were soon perceived. Gangs of idle vagabonds, who understood how to imitate to the life the gestures and convulsions of those really affected, roved from place to place seeking maintenance and adventures, and thus, wherever they went, spreading this disgusting spasmodic disease like a plague; for in maladies of this kind the susceptible are infected as easily by the appearance as by the reality. At last it was found necessary to drive away these mischievous guests, who were equally inaccessible to the exorcisms of the priests and the remedies of the physicians. It was not, however, until after four months that the Rhenish cities were able to suppress these impostures, which had so alarmingly increased the original evil. In the mean time, when once called into existence, the plague crept on, and found abundant food in the tone of thought which prevailed in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and even, though in a minor degree, throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth, causing a permanent disorder of the mind, and exhibiting, in those cities to whose inhabitants it was a novelty, scenes as strange as they were detestable.

Heinz Schmitz

The Coldest Temperature on This Day in History

 

This day in history: A temperature of -117 degrees F was recorded at the South Pole on this day in 1982. At the time, this was the coldest temperature ever recorded. A year later on July 21, 1983, a temperature of -128.6 F (-89.2 C) was recorded at Vostok Station in Antarctica. 136 F (57.8 C) is the hottest temperature ever recorded on Earth. It was recorded on September 13, 1922 in Al 'Aziziyah located in Libya.

The hottest man-made temperature ever recorded is 7.2 trillion degrees F, or about four billion degrees C. This was made at the Brookhaven Natural Laboratory in New York, in a 2.4-mile-long Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider by smashing gold ions together. I can't even imagine that, but then, with a 28 trillion dollar US debt maybe I'm not trying hard enough. In comparison, the temperature at the surface of the Sun is about 10,000 F (5,600 C).

Absolute zero is -459.67 degrees F (-273.15 degrees C), and it's the lowest possible temperature that can ever be achieved, according to the laws of physics as we know them. The lowest man-made temperature achieved to date is 450 picokelvin above absolute zero. (I don't know what that means...don't ask me.) This happened on September 12 2003 at MIT.

https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/lowest-manmade-temperature

When lightning strikes it can reach up to 54,000 degrees F (30,000 degrees C).

Sponges hold more cold water than hot and rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.

There is something known as the Pinocchio Effect, and this is where lying causes your nose to heat up. "Researchers at the University of Granada, in Spain, have shown that being dishonest, causes anxiety which in turn, causes the temperature of your nose and the muscles around the eye to increase by 0.6-1.2 °C. This incredible finding, to no one’s surprise, has been dubbed “The Pinocchio Effect” by the researchers. The research team has since used these findings to design a lie detection model based on thermography." onio.com

Cold weather kills 20 times as many people as hot weather, according to an international study analyzing over 74 million deaths in 384 locations across 13 countries. 

Heinz Schmitz

The Doughnut on This Day in History

 

This day in history: The Doughnut was created on this day (June 22) in 1847 by an American 16 year old named Hanson Gregory. Gregory was dissatisfied with the greasiness of doughnuts twisted into various shapes and with the raw center of regular doughnuts. He claimed to have punched a hole in the center of dough with the ship's tin pepper box. 

The earliest mention of a dough-nut was in Washington Irving's 1809 book A History of New York, from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty:

"Sometimes the table was graced with immense apple-pies, or saucers full of preserved peaches and pears; but it was always sure to boast of an enormous dish of balls of sweetened dough, fried in hog’s fat, and called dough-nuts, or oly koeks: a delicious kind of cake, at present scarce known in this city, excepting in genuine Dutch families."

However, it does appear that doughnuts were described in the Bible at Leviticus 7:12.

Per capita, Canadians consume the most doughnuts, and Canada has the most doughnut stores per capita. Tim Hortons is the most popular Canadian doughnut and coffee franchise, and one of the most successful quick service restaurants in the country.

Guinness recorded the largest doughnut made was one which used up of 90,000 individual doughnuts in Sydney Australia in 2007 as part of a celebration for the release of The Simpsons Movie.

Over 10 billion doughnuts are made in America each year. Dunkin' Donuts ("America Runs on Dunkin") plans to open another 9000 locations. Krispy Kreme (headquartered in Winston-Salem) has 1005 locations. Ten people in the United States have the last name Doughnut or Donut. Boston has the most doughnut shops per person.

In France, doughnuts were called Nun's Farts (pets de nonne).

A German superstition states that eating jelly donuts on New Year's Eve will bring you good luck.

It is said that if you added a doughnut a day to your diet, you would gain about one extra pound every 10 days. A chocolate glazed doughnut has about 5 teaspoons of sugar. Renée Zellweger ate 20 doughnuts a day to gain weight for the Bridget Jones sequel. One man, Travis Mallouf, actually died while eating a doughnut. He choked trying to eat a half pound glazed donut as part of a challenge hosted by Voodoo Doughnuts in Denver in 2017.

In economics the size of the hole in a doughnut correlates with a good or bad economy. The worse the economy, the bigger the doughnut hole.

Heinz Schmitz

Preacher of Evil, Niccolò Machiavelli on This Day in History

This Day in History: Niccolò Machiavelli died on this day in 1527. He is best known for writing The Prince, a pessimistic look at human nature and political philosophy. As he writes: “It is much safer to be feared than loved because ... love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails.” He argued that the ruler or government ought to do good when possible, but they must not be afraid to do evil to stay in power. Other men are willing to do evil in order to overturn the leader's rule, and because of this fatal tendency, leaders must also do evil from time to time. 

As a result, the word “Machiavellian” has come to denote someone who is cunning and unscrupulous. The Prince made it into the Catholic Church's first "Index of Forbidden Books" in 1557.

"Niccolò Machiavelli was reviled throughout Europe during the 16th century and on into the next two centuries. He was considered to be someone unique in the history of the West, a conscious preacher of evil, a diabolic figure who had unleashed the demons in the world of politics. The English used his given name as a synonym for the Devil, 'Old Nick.' As Macaulay put it, 'Out of his surname they have coined an epithet for a knave, and out of his Christian name a synonym for the Devil.'"~Murray N. Rothbard

Italian dictator Benito Mussolini wrote a discourse on The Prince. 

Soviet leader Joseph Stalin read The Prince and annotated his own copy. 20th-century Italian-American mobsters were influenced by The Prince. 

Hitler kept a copy of The Prince by his bedside.

John Gotti and Roy DeMeo would regularly quote The Prince and consider it to be the "Mafia Bible".

In the movie "A Bronx Tale", local mob boss says that while in jail, he passed the time by reading Machiavelli, whom he describes as "a famous writer from 500 years ago"—and then tells him how Machiavelli's philosophy, including his famous advice about how it is preferable for a leader to be feared rather than loved if he cannot be both—have made him a successful mob boss.

Rapper Tupac Shakur read Machiavelli while in prison and was so influenced by his work that he eventually changed his rap name from 2Pac to Makaveli.

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See also Machiavelli the Visionary 1892

Machiavelli's Prince, Article in The Nation 1891

Machiavelli Wasn't Machiavellian

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Lizzie Borden's Acquittal on This Day in History

Lizzie Borden by the Chad Mitchell Trio 1962

This Day In History: Lizzie Borden was acquitted on this day in 1893 of the murders of her father and stepmother. You may have heard the poem:

Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks.
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.

In reality, her mother received 19 whacks, and her father only 11.

Lizzie is quite popular, but another woman who was born only a few months before Borden, Belle Gunness, killed anywhere up to 40 people in Illinois and Indiana. 

The 1800's actually had its fair share of female serial killers:

Delphine LaLaurie (who tortured and murdered slaves in her household), 

Elizabeth Van Valkenburgh (who poisoned her husbands), 

Hélène Jégado (who killed 36 people with arsenic), 

Hannah Hanson Kinney (who also poisoned her husbands), 

Sarah Dazley (who also poisoned her husbands), 

Mary Ann Cotton (who also poisoned her husbands), 

Catherine Wilson (a nurse who poisoned her patients), 

Lydia Sherman (who poisoned her husbands and eight children), 

Margaret Waters (killed 19 children), 

Amelia Dyer (who also killed the children in her care), 

Catherine Flannagan and Margaret Higgins (they poisoned five people), 

Maria Swanenburg (suspected of killing more than 90 people with poison), 

Mary Bateman (aka the Yorkshire Witch, who was responsible for countless deaths), 

Anna Maria Zwanziger (killed four people with poison), 

Jane Toppan (poisoned 31 people), 

Mary Ann Britland (killed three people with poison), 

Lizzie Halliday (killed four people), 

Louise Vermilya (poisoned nine people),

and Frances Knorr (known as the Baby Farming Murderess, was a nanny who strangled babies in her care).

See also Poison Mysteries in History by C.J.S. Thompson 1899
https://thebookshelf2015.blogspot.com/2018/06/poison-mysteries-in-history-by-cjs.html

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Juneteenth & the Forgotten History of Slavery

White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britain's White Slaves in America

This Day In History: Today is Juneteenth, an unofficial American holiday that commemorates the freedom of slaves in the South. While African slavery was tragic, there is a lot of misinformation about slavery. Senator Tim Kaine once remarked that the United States created Slavery. Clearly he's never cracked open a Bible or a history book. Slavery has been around for thousands of years, and we are all descendants of slaves. All sorts of people owned slaves. Most of the slaves brought here from Africa were purchased from black slave owners in Africa. One of the very first slave owners in America was Anthony Johnson, a black man from Angola. Thousands of blacks owned slaves in America. Even native Americans owned black slaves. The first slaves in America were white, and the word "Slave" comes from "Slav"...Slavs were white Europeans heavily targeted by Slavers. The white slaves in early America are often labelled "indentured servants" to give them some sense of privilege, but their limited contracts meant they were worked harder, often to the point of death.

"Who wants to be reminded that half—perhaps as many as thirds—of the original American colonists came here, not of their own free will, but kidnapped, shanghaied, impressed, duped, beguiled, and yes, in chains?... we tend to gloss over it... we’d prefer to forget the whole sorry chapter...“(Elaine Kendall, Los Angeles Times, Sept. 1, 1985).

Brazil was actually THE hotbed of slavery in the Americas. During the Atlantic slave trade era, Brazil received more African slaves than any other country. Even before the slave trade, members of one tribe would enslave captured members of another.

It has been recently discovered that a million or more European Christians were enslaved by Muslims in North Africa between 1530 and 1780 - a far greater number than had ever been estimated before. 

The book "The Renegade History of the United States" tells of a lesser known side of slavery: "Contrary to what popular images of emancipation tell us, when given the opportunity to leave the plantation, most slaves stayed...By contrast, only 9 percent left immediately after emancipation. Again and again, the ex-slaves told of regret when freedom came."

Oh, and both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris ancestors were slaveholders.

When Blacks Owned Slaves, by Calvin Dill Wilson 1905
https://thebookshelf2015.blogspot.com/2017/02/when-blacks-owned-slaves-by-calvin-dill.html

See also: A History of White Slavery by Charles Sumner 1853 and When the Irish were Slaves, article in The Month 1890

When Europeans Were Slaves: Research Suggests White Slavery Was Much More Common Than Previously Believed

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The Forgotten History of Britain's White Slaves in America

Forgotten Mystery Writer Carolyn Wells on This Day in History

This Day in History: Mystery writer Carolyn Wells was born on this day (June 18) in 1862 in Rahway, New Jersey. She initially started her writing career authoring poems and children's books, but after hearing one of Anna Katharine Green's mystery novels being read aloud, she was fascinated by the unraveling of the puzzle, and so she devoted the rest of her career to writing in the Mystery genre. Her book, The Clue, is considered essential reading according to Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone. 

Carolyn Wells wrote a total 170 books. While quite the prolific writer, she is not the most prolific. According to Guinness World Record's, Brazilian author Ryoki Inoue holds the record for being the most prolific author with 1,075 books published under many pseudonyms. 

Wells, writing in 1913, wrote of the Mystery Story:

To trace the origin and history of the mystery story is simply to trace the origin and history of man's mind. Mystery stories were told and wonder tales invented before the days of old Rameses, before the Sphinx was hewn or Samson born. And indeed the rousing of latent curiosity, the tempting with a promise to divulge, which is the vital principle of the mystery story, began no later than with the subtlety of the Primal Serpent.

There is no country which has not its quota of traditional and folk-lore tales, founded almost invariably on some element of mystery, surprise or suspense. And why? Because the interest of the eternal audience is "gripped" by a desire to know the unknown. Because the ancients told and retold stories of mystery with never failing success. These tales lived. Translated, re-written, paraphrased, they are still living, because of their ever new appeal to the very human trait of curiosity.

Take the story of "The Clever Thief." It comes from the Tibetan, from an ancient Buddhist book that goes back nearly a thousand years. But even then it was not new. Missionaries had carried it thither from India in an odd corner of their bags, or in some chamber of the memory not filled with the riddles of being. Where did they get it? Who can say? It was old when Herodotus wandered through sun-lit Egypt twenty-four centuries ago, gleaning tales from the priests of Amen and of Ptah. He tells it, point for point, as did those Buddhist missionaries, but lays it in the days of Rameses, nigh four thousand years ago. Everything is there; the cutting off of the head to elude detection, the tricks by which the relatives mourn over the headless trunk, the snare set for the thief and his outwitting it. And that same tale, like good merchandise, was carried both east and west. It found its way to India, over the vast Himalayas, to the gray roof of the world. It came with equal charm to the Mediterranean isles, up the Adriatic coasts, and as far as Venice. There Ser Giovanni told it, transmogrifying Pharaoh of the Nile into a worshipful Doge, as he had already been made over into a Buddhist magnate, but in no way altering the motive, the suspense, the artfulness of the tale. What is this story then? Is it Venetian? Is it Pharaonic? Is it Greek? Is it Tibetan? It is all these, and perhaps something more, vastly older than them all. Its craft, mayhap, goes back to that primal serpent who, more subtle than all the beasts of the field, has ever inspired darkling feints and strategies.

Stories whose motive is a subtly discerned clew are not less primordial. The most vivid of these tales of deduction are, perhaps, those which come to us through the Arabs, in their treasure store,"The Thousand and One Nights." The Arabs gleaned them from every land in southern Asia, and from most ancient Egypt, in those days when Moslem power overshadowed half the world. And then they retold them with a charm, a vivid freshness, a roguishness, and a dash of golden light through it all that make them the finest story-tellers in the world.

Can we fix the dates of these Arabian stories? Only in a general way. Some of them came from Cairo, some from Syria, some from the Euphrates and Tigris Valleys, some from Persia and India and China; and they were gathered together, it would appear, in the century before Shakespeare was born, by some big-hearted, humorous fellow, among the great anonymous benefactors of mankind. But he made no claim of inventing them. If he had he would have been laughed at for his pains. For old men had heard them from their grandfathers, generation after generation, and the gray grandsires always began to tell them, saying: "So 'twas told to me when I was such a tiny child as thou art."

Though many of these tales excite merely wonder and surprise, others have the germ of that analytic deduction from inconspicuous clues, that we call ratiocination, or the detective instinct.

There is an Arabic story, called "The Sultan and his Three Sons." From this we quote two illuminative passages which employ the principle of deductive analysis:

And they stinted not faring till the middle way, when behold they came upon a mead abounding in herbage and in rain-water lying sheeted. So they sat them down to rest and to eat of their victual, when one of the brothers, casting his eye upon the herbage, cried, "Verily a camel hath lately passed this way laden half with Halwa-sweetmeats and half with Hamiz-pickles." "True," cried the second, "and he was blind of an eye." Hardly, however, had they ended their words when lo! the owner of the camel came upon them (for he had overheard their speech and had said to himself, "By Allah, these three fellows have driven off my property, inasmuch as they have described the burden and eke the beast as one-eyed"), and cried out, "Ye three have carried away my camel!" "By Allah we have not seen him," quoth the Princes, "much less have we touched him;" but quoth the man, "By the Almighty, who could have taken him except you? and if you will not deliver him to me, off with us, I and you three, to the Sultan." They replied, "By all manner of means; let us wend to the sovereign." So the four hied forth, the three princes and the Cameleer, and ceased not faring till they reached the capital of the King.

Presently, asked the Sultan, "What say ye to the claims of this man and the camel belonging to him?" Hereto the Princes made answer, "By Allah, O King of the Age, we have not seen the camel much less have we stolen him." Thereupon the Cameleer exclaimed, "O my lord, I heard yonder one say that the beast was blind of an eye; and the second said that half his load was of sour stuff. They replied, "True, we spake these words;" and the Sultan cried to them, "Ye have purloined the beast, by this proof." They rejoined, "No, by Allah, O my lord. We sat us in such a place for repose and refreshment and we remarked that some of the pasture had been grazed down, so we said: This is the grazing of a camel; and he must have been blind of one eye as the grass was eaten only on one side. But as for our saying that the load was half Halwa-sweetmeats and half Hamiz-pickles, we saw on the place where the camel had knelt the flies gathering in great numbers while on the other were none; so the case was clear to us (as flies settle on naught save the sugared) that one of the panniers must have contained sweets and the other sours." Hearing this the Sultan said to the Cameleer, "O man, fare thee forth and look after thy camel; for these signs and tokens prove not the theft of these men, but only the power of their intellect and their penetration."

Later Voltaire used this method for his "Zadig," Poe for his "Dupin," and Gaboriau for his "M. Lecoq;" while later still it reappeared as the basis of the "Sherlock Holmes" stories.

The story of "The Visakha" is nearly a thousand years old, but the following quotation will prove that the element of acute observation is the same as that described in a previous story proving the wisdom of Solomon.

After she had taken charge of the boy the father died. A dispute arose between the two women as to the possession of the house, each of them asserting that it belonged to her. They had recourse to the King. He ordered his ministers to go to the house and to make inquiries as to the ownership of the son. They investigated the matter, but the day came to an end before they had brought it to a satisfactory conclusion. In the evening they returned to their homes. Visakha again questioned Mrgadhara, who told her everything. Visakha said, "What need is there of investigation? Speak to the two women thus: 'As we do not know to which of you two the boy belongs, let her who is the strongest take the boy.' When each of them has taken hold of one of the boy's hands, and he begins to cry out on account of the pain, the real mother will let go, being full of compassion for him, and knowing that if her child remains alive she will be able to see it again; but the other, who has no compassion for him, will not let go. Then beat her with a switch, and she will thereupon confess the truth as to the whole matter. That is the proper test."

Mrgadhara told this to the ministers, and so forth, as is written above, down to the words, "The king said, 'The Champa maiden is wise.'"

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Riddles in Mystery Stories by Carolyn Wells 1913

Heinz Schmitz

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