This is Take Your Cat to Work Day. Something of a wild and crazy idea, especially if it results in multiples of cats in an open office layout. I imagine a room full of data entry people "assisted" by a large number of cats and find myself grinning.
It is also World Refugee Day. As a US citizen, it would be preposterous for me to even think of writing upon upon such a subject. It says nothing about "some" or "wealthy" or "highly skilled or educated" refugees. There is nothing that implies one should be more accepting of tyrants fleeing their populace than of people fleeing their tyrants or any of the other hallmarks of the US approach to refugees, so I'll just take a pass on the subject.
By all means also by aware of Nystagmus and enjoy some Kouign Amann.
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On this day in history:
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1180 – The first Battle of Uji, which started the Genpei War in Japan
1756 – A British garrison was imprisoned in the Black Hole of Calcutta.
1782 – The U.S. Congress adopted the Great Seal of the United States.
1789 – Deputies of the French Third Estate took the Tennis Court Oath.
1819 – The SS Savannah arrived at Liverpool, becoming the first steam-propelled vessel to cross the Atlantic
1840 – Samuel Morse received a patent for the telegraph.
1863 – West Virginia was admitted as the 35th U.S. state
. 1877 – Alexander Graham Bell installed the world's first commercial telephone service
1893 – Lizzie Borden was acquitted of the murders of her father and stepmother.
1895 – The Kiel Canal was officially opened.
1900 – The Imperial Chinese Army began a 55-day siege of the Legation Quarter in Beijing, China.
1921 – Workers of Buckingham and Carnatic Mills in India, begin a four-month strike.
1940 – The Soviet Union occupied Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.
1943 – The Detroit race riot broke out
1944 – The Battle of the Philippine Sea aka the "Great Marianas Turkey Shoot" ended.
1944 – The experimental MW 18014 V-2 rocket reached an altitude of 176 km, becoming the first man-made object to reach outer space.
1945 – The United States Secretary of State approved the transfer of Wernher von Braun and his team of Nazi rocket scientists to the U.S. under Operation Paperclip.
1948 – The Deutsche Mark was introduced in Western Allied-occupied Germany. The Soviet Military Administration in Germany responded by imposing the Berlin Blockade four days later.
1963 – The Soviet Union and the US signed an agreement to establish the so-called "red telephone" link between Washington, D.C. and Moscow.
1972 – An 18½-minute gap appeared in the tape recording of the conversations between President Nixon and his advisers regarding Watergate
1973 – The Ezeiza massacre of left-wing Peronists in Buenos Aires went down
1979 – ABC News correspondent Bill Stewart was shot dead by a Nicaraguan National Guard soldier under the regime of Anastasio Somoza Debayle
1990 – Asteroid Eureka was discovered.
1991 – The German Bundestag voted to move seat of government from to Berlin.
2003 – The Wikimedia Foundation was created in St. Petersburg, Florida.
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Some people who were born on this day:
Since when do we have to agree with people to defend them from injustice?
~~ Lillian Hellman
1717 – Jacques Saly, sculptor and painter
1723 – (O.S.) Adam Ferguson, philosopher and historian
1756 – Joseph Martin Kraus, composer and educator
1761 – Jacob Hübner, entomologist and author
1763 – Wolfe Tone, rebel leader
1786 – Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, poet and author
1819 – Jacques Offenbach, cellist and composer
1847 – Gina Krog, suffragist and women's rights activist
1858 – Charles W. Chesnutt, novelist and short story writer
1859 – Christian von Ehrenfels, philosopher
1861 – Frederick Gowland Hopkins, biochemist and academic
1865 – George Redmayne Murray, biologist and physician
1867 – Leon Wachholz, scientist and medical examiner
1870 – Georges Dufrénoy, painter and academic
1875 – Reginald Punnett, geneticist, statistician, and academic
1884 – Mary R. Calvert, astronomer and author
1887 – Kurt Schwitters, painter and illustrator
1889 – John S. Paraskevopoulos, astronomer and academic
1894 – Lloyd Hall, chemist and academic
1896 – Wilfrid Pelletier, pianist, composer, and conductor
1897 – Elisabeth Hauptmann, author and playwright
1899 – Jean Moulin, soldier and engineer
1905 – Lillian Hellman, playwright and screenwriter
1907 – Jimmy Driftwood, singer, songwriter, and banjo player
1910 – Josephine Johnson, author and poet
1912 – Anthony Buckeridge, author
1914 – Muazzez İlmiye Çığ, archaeologist and academic
1916 – T. Texas Tyler, country music singer, songwriter, and guitarist
1917 – Helena Rasiowa, mathematician and academic
1920 – Danny Cedrone, guitarist and bandleader
1920 – Thomas Jefferson, trumpet player
1923 – Peter Gay, historian, author, and academic
1924 – Chet Atkins, singer, songwriter, guitarist, and producer
1924 – Fritz Koenig, sculptor and academic, designed The Sphere
1927 – Simin Behbahani, poet and activist
1928 – Eric Dolphy, saxophonist, flute player, and composer
1928 – Asrat Woldeyes, surgeon and educator
1929 – Anne Weale, journalist and author
1929 – Edith Windsor, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights activist
1930 – Magdalena Abakanowicz, sculptor and academic
1932 – Robert Rozhdestvensky, poet and author
1933 – Claire Tomalin, journalist and author
1936 – Billy Guy, singer
1936 – Enn Vetemaa, author and screenwriter
1937 – Jerry Keller, singer and songwriter
1938 – Mickie Most, music producer
1942 – Brian Wilson, singer, songwriter, and producer
1945 – Anne Murray, singer and guitarist
1946 - enhydra lutris, ne'er do well sixties radical, part time blogger
1946 – David Kazhdan, mathematician and academic
1946 – André Watts, pianist and educator
1947 – Dolores "LaLa" Brooks, pop singer
1948 – Alan Longmuir, bass player and songwriter
1949 – Lionel Richie, singer, songwriter, pianist, producer, and actor
1951 – Paul Muldoon, poet and academic
1952 – Vikram Seth, author and poet
1955 – E. Lynn Harris, author
1958 – Kelly Johnson, hard rock guitarist and songwriter
1960 – John Taylor, singer, songwriter, bass player, and actor
1967 – Dan Tyminski, singer and songwriter
1969 – Misha Verbitsky, mathematician and academic
1970 – Athol Williams, poet and social philosopher
1971 – Jeordie White, singer, songwriter, guitarist, and bass player
1973 – Chino Moreno, singer and songwriter
1977 – Amos Lee, singer and songwriter
1982 – Example, singer/rapper
1987 – A-fu, singer and songwriter
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Some people who died on this day:
Don't be afraid of poetry
~~ Clifton Fadiman
930 – Hucbald, monk and music theorist
1597 – Willem Barentsz, cartographer and explorer
1787 – Carl Friedrich Abel, viol player and composer
1840 – Pierre Claude François Daunou, historian and politician
1870 – Jules de Goncourt, historian and author
1876 – John Neal, writer, critic, editor, lecturer, and activist
1945 – Bruno Frank, author, poet, and playwright
1947 – Bugsy Siegel, businessman, Las Vegas Casino investor
1958 – Kurt Alder, chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
1963 – Raphaël Salem, mathematician and academic
1966 – Georges Lemaître, priest, physicist, and astronomer
1969 – Bishnu Prasad Rabha, artist, painter, actor, dancer, writer, music composer and politician
1975 – Suzanne Comhaire-Sylvain, anthropologist
1995 – Emil Cioran, philosopher and educator
1997 – Cahit Külebi, poet and author
1999 – Clifton Fadiman, game show host, author, and critic
2001 – Gina Cigna, soprano
2002 – Erwin Chargaff, biochemist and academic
2005 – Larry Collins, journalist, historian, and author
2005 – Jack Kilby, physicist and engineer, Nobel Prize laureate
2010 – Harry B. Whittington, palaeontologist and academic (b. 1916) 2012 – LeRoy Neiman, painter
2015 – Miriam Schapiro, painter and sculptor
2017 – Prodigy, music artist
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Some Holidays, Holy Days, Festivals, Feast Days, Days of Recognition, and such:
National Kouign Amann Day
Nystagmus Awareness Day
Take Your Cat To Work Day
World Refugee Day (International)
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Today's Tunes
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Jacques Offenbach
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Jimmy Driftwood
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T. Texas Tyler
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Danny Cedrone
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Thomas Jefferson
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Chet Atkins
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Eric Dolphy
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Billy Guy
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can't leave out Brian Wilson
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Andre Watts
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Dolores "Lala" Brooks
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Lionel Ritchie
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John Taylor
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Carl Friedrich Abel
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Ok, it's an open thread, so it's up to you folks now. So what's on your mind?
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Cross posted from http://caucus99percent.com
open thread, Cats, telegraph, telephone, NAZI scientists, Lillian Hellman, Clifton Fadiman, Offenbach, Jimmy Driftwood, Danny Cedrone, Chet Atkins, Eric Dolphy, Billy Guy, Dolores Brooks, Lionel Ritchie