Day 237 - finally it's Friday

Today is the 6th day of the 34th week, the 25th day of the 8th month, the 237th day of 2023, and:

• Daffodil Day [down under]
• Forgive Your Foe Day
• Independence Day - Uruguay from Brazil in 1825
• Kiss and Make Up Day
• National Banana Split Day
• National Park Service Founders Day - the US Department of the Interior formed the National Park Service in 1916
• National Second-hand Wardrobe Day
• National Whiskey Sour Day
• and Voyager 1 is 22h 16m 10s of light travel time from Earth 

On this day in....

1543 – António Mota and a few companions become the first Europeans to visit Japan.

1609 - Galileo demonstrates his first telescope to Venetian lawmakers, including to the Doge (ruler) of Venice, Leonardo Donato

1768 - Captain James Cook departs from Plymouth, England, on his first voyage on board the Endeavour, bound for the Pacific Ocean

1835 - New York Sun publishes Moon hoax story about John Herschel

1875 - Captain Matthew Webb makes the first observed and unassisted swim across the English Channel in 21 hours and 45 minutes

1894 - Japanese scientist Shibasaburo Kitasato discovers the infectious agent of the bubonic plague and publishes his findings in The Lancet

1919 - the first scheduled passenger service by airplane leaves Paris bound for London

1932 - Amelia Earhart completes transcontinental non-stop flight, the first by a woman, landing in Newark, New Jersey

1936 - Odorless cornstarch is patented in the US by Ralph W. Kerr

1952 - Puerto Rico becomes a US commonwealth

1958 - Momofuku Ando markets the first package of precooked instant noodles (Chikin Ramen)

1962 - USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR

1962 - USSR performs nuclear test at Novaya Zemlya USSR

1973 - France performs nuclear test at Mururoa atoll

1974 - France performs nuclear test at Mururoa atoll

1981 - Voyager 2's closest approach to Saturn (63,000 miles/100,000 km)

1989 – Voyager 2 spacecraft makes its closest approach to Neptune, the last planet in the Solar System at the time, due to Pluto being within Neptune's orbit from 1979 to 1999

1984 - USSR performs underground nuclear test

1988 - NASA launches space vehicle S-214

1989 - After 12-year, 4-billion-mile journey, Voyager 2 flies over cloud tops of Neptune and its moon Triton, sending back photographs of what appears to be swamps

1991 - Linux is born when Linus Torvalds sends off an email announcing his project to create a new computer operating system

2003 – NASA successfully launches the Spitzer Space Telescope into space

2006 - Hyperion, the world's tallest living tree, a Redwood standing 115.55 m (379.1 ft), discovered by naturalists Chris Atkins and Michael Taylor in Redwood National and State Parks, California

2012 - Voyager 1 spacecraft, becomes the 1st spacecraft to enter interstellar space (launched in 1977)

2019 - NASA investigates possibly the first crime in space over astronaut Anne McClain illegally accessing a joint bank account from space during a separation 

2022 - California votes to ban the sale of all new gasoline-powered cars by 2035

Quote of the Day:
"All right everyone, line up alphabetically according to your height."
~ Casey Stengel,  originally a right fielder and manager of both New York teams, famous for his malapropisms

As listed above, Galileo demonstrated his telescope publicly back on this day in 1609.  He was able to observe Jupiter and its moons, Venus, the sun, and the moon, running afoul of the established scientific and religious beliefs of the day by proclaiming heliocentrism as fact rather than theory.  And then 403 years later on the same day, Voyager 1 left not just the solar system, but the heliosphere entirely

Pretty amazing, huh?  And it was just 188 years ago that a local New York newspaper posted a series of six articles that proved there was life on the Moon, citing the Edinburgh Journal of Science [which had stopped publication years earlier].  Two years later, the paper admitted it had been a hoax, believed to have been written by Richard Adams Locke.  Today it is viewed as satire, or even some of the first published science fiction stories.  The scientist referenced in the articles, Sir John Herschel, was at first amused by the stories, but later became exasperated with those who insisted on believing them even after the hoax was revealed and constantly asked him about his "discoveries".  In 2012, political analyst Hank Sheinkipf stated, "What happened in 1835 is kind of like politics.  We want to believe but then are disillusioned - and we can't hold on to our belief." 

Today, sadly, we see the power of belief trumping facts everyday playing out in our politics and our government.  The glowering mug shot taken last night will be published everywhere [it actually is a rather decent picture for a mug shot].  

How did it come to this?  I lived through it, watched the erosion of the middle class, the rise of income inequity, the changes that allowed oligarchs to buy politicians.  And for the past seven years I have listened to 'alternative facts' that have resulted in so many living in a different reality than the one I live in, convinced that I need to be dragged into their world and rewriting history to make it so.  

In just 74 years, we have lost our way.  We don't know how to line up or even if we should be lining up at all!