Day 292 - Friday's Eve

 Today is the 5th day of the 42nd week, the 19th day of the 10th month, the 292nd day of this writing experiment, and:

• Conflict Resolution Day
• Dress LIke a Dork Day
• Evaluate Your Life Day
• Get to Know Your Customers Day - observed quarterly on the third Thursday of each quarter
• International Credit Union Day
• International Gin and Tonic Day
• International ShakeOut Day
• LGBT Center Awareness Day
• National Get Smart About Credit Day
• National Kentucky Day
• National Seafood Bisque Day
• New Friends Day - also observed on the 19th of July and the 19th of January 
• Rainforest Day
• Spirit Day
• Wear Purple for Domestic Violence Awareness Day
• World Pediatric Bone and Joint Day
• World Statistics Day - observed once every five years, but some sites have it on the 20th, not the 19th.  
• and Voyager 1 is 22h 26m 38s of light travel time from Earth

ON THIS DAY IN ....

1596 – The Spanish ship San Felipe runs aground on the coast of Japan and its cargo is confiscated by local authorities

1722 - French C. Hopffer patents the automatic fire extinguisher in England

1853 - First flour mill in Hawaii begins operations

1859 - Wilhelm Tempel discovers diffuse nebula around Pleid star Merope

1901 - Alberto Santos-Dumont proves airships are maneuverable by circling the Eiffel Tower in his airship No. 6, winning the Deutsch Prize and 100,000 francs

1901 - Edward Elgar's "Pomp & Circumstance March" premieres in Liverpool, England

1943 – Streptomycin, the first antibiotic remedy for tuberculosis, is isolated by researchers at Rutgers University.

1953 - 1st jet transcontinental nonstop scheduled service

1953 - Dystopian novel "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury is published in the US

1958 - US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site

1962 - US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site - the US used this site until 1992 for testing, and both the soil and groundwater are extremely contaminated.  Many deaths have been attributed, but the hibakusha of Nevada find getting compensation difficult.  

1966 - USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR

1967 - Mariner 5 makes fly-by of Venus

1989 - USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR - just in case you are curious, the last nuclear test was conducted by North Korea in 2017.  All told?  there have been 2,056 tests done, about 2/3 of them underground.  The US continues to be the only country to have used nuclear weapons in warfare, bombing both Hiroshima nd Nagasaki in 1945.  Currently the UN estimates there are 13,400+ nuclear weapons stockpiled and ready for use in nine countries - the US, Russia, France, China, the UK, Pakistan, India, Israel, and North Korea are confirmed as nuclear powers.  Russia and the US own roughly 90% of this arsenal.  

2015 - US scientists from University of California find evidence life on earth may have begun 4.1 billion years ago, 300 million earlier than previously thought

Quote of the day:

"In the 1950s, the average person saw science as something that solved problems. With the advent of nuclear weapons and pollution, the idealistic aura around scientific research has been replaced by cynicism."

~ Sheldon Lee Glashow, Nobel-prize winning American theoretical physicist

I think the most terrifying moment in the entire movie Oppenheimer came when they were discussing the actual bomb testing for the first time, and going through with it even though they thought there was a possibility it could set the actual atmosphere on fire.  The appalling hubris of that decision to launch the nuclear age with no real comprehension of the consequences, and then the equally cynical decision to actually bomb a city [much less to do it again after seeing the magnitude of the destruction] is just an incredibly staggering thought.   How DARE men decide to make a choice, to take a risk, like that?  OTOH, one can never be 100% certain of safety, and they trusted their calculations were correct.  

I am old enough to remember the "duck & cover" air raid drills where we were taught hiding under our desks would help us survive an actual nearby nuclear strike    It had a profound impact on all of us.  Of course, living in the Baltimore/DC area might've colored my perception too as I knew I was living in an area that would definitely be a bomb target!  That makes me wonder how my granddaughters and their generation will view the "active shooter" drills of today when they grow up.  We knew, even at a young age, that the chances of surviving a blast were just about nil - and that makes me wonder if the kids of today feel as pessimistic about their ability to survive a school shooting?

I sometimes think the seeds of the turbulence of the 1960's and the rebellion of the youth [after all, you couldn't trust anyone over 30, much less the government] that culminated in the distrust of the "establishment" were sown as we were cramped under those desks, and knew that we were being told to do something that would be totally useless in a real nuclear bombing.    Who knew that our cynicism would spread to blaming wind turbines for whales beaching themselves, claiming NASA faked the moon landing, and denying climate change for decades, ignoring scientific research in favor of "alternative facts"?  

Men like Oppenheimer have a lot to answer for.   In this day of cloning and AI, someone really should be taking a hard look at whether or not we should actually do something just because we can