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reetings from Australia.
Welcome to this Red-Letter Day. Below you will find today's global celebrations, birthdays and events.
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Casting
my mind's eye over the whole of fiction, the only absolutely original
creation that I can think of is Don Quixote. Miguel Cervantes, author of Don Quixote; Cervantes died on April 23, 1616
Shooting stars. This electrical phenomenon
was observed on Wednesday morning last at Richmond and its vicinity,
in a manner that alarmed many, and astonished every person that beheld
it. From one until three in the morning, those starry meteors seemed
to fall from every point in the heavens, in such numbers as to
resemble a shower of sky rockets … When a star falls from the sky The bay trees in our country are all wither'd, Today is Earth Day, or, as the Bush
administration calls it, Monday. |
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The world is too much with us; late and
soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.—Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathéd horn.
William
Wordsworth (1770 - 1850); happy Earth Day from Wilson's Almanac
A pile of old copies of copies of Punch I found in the back room of a fatherly second-hand bookseller introduced me to the treasure of Charles Keene, Linley Sambourne, Randolph Caldecott and Dana Gibson. The more I poured over the intricate technical quality of these artists the more difficult did drawing appear. How impossible that one could ever become an artist! But then I came on Phil May, who combined quality with apparent facility. Once having discovered Phil May I never let him go.
David Low
(1891 - 1963), New Zealand-born British cartoonist, on Phil May, born
on April 22, 1864; Autobiography, 1956 Source
He was a stranger there, wafted thither by
what is called the course of circumstances; concerning whose
parentage, birth-place, prospects, or pursuits, Curiosity had indeed
made inquiries, but satisfied herself with the most indistinct
replies. For himself, he was a man so still and altogether unparticipating, that to question him even afar off on such particulars
was a thing of more than usual delicacy: besides, in his sly way, he
had ever some quaint turn, not without its satirical edge, wherewith
to divert such intrusions, and deter you from the like. Wits spoke of
him secretly as if he were a kind of Melchizedek, without father or
mother of any kind; sometimes, with reference to his great historic
and statistic knowledge, and the vivid way he had of expressing
himself like an eye-witness of distant transactions and scenes, they
called him the Ewige Jude, Everlasting, or as we say, Wandering
Jew.
Thomas
Carlyle on the Wandering Jew (see below, On This Day in
History, 1774); Sartor Resartus, The Life and Opinions of Herr
Teufelsdröckh, 1898
The earth is all the home I have,
the heavens my wide roof-tree
WE Aytoun (1813 - 1865), 'The Wandering Jew'
Any man whose
errors take ten years to correct is quite a man.
J Robert Oppenheimer, American
atomic scientist, born on April 22, 1904; speaking of Albert Einstein
No
man should escape our universities without knowing how little he
knows.
J Robert Oppenheimer
There
are children playing in the streets who could solve some of my top
problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception
that I lost long ago.
J Robert Oppenheimer
There
must be no barriers for freedom of inquiry. There is no place for
dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any
question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct
any errors.
J Robert Oppenheimer
Both
the man of science and the man of action live always at the edge of
mystery, surrounded by it.
J Robert Oppenheimer
The
optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist
fears it is true.
J Robert Oppenheimer; attrib. quote
I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.
Lines
from the Bhagavad Gita, recalled by nuclear physicist, J Robert
Oppenheimer, on July 16, 1945,
at the detonation of the first atomic explosion at Alamogordo, New
Mexico
Those who opt to make history and change the
course of events themselves have the advantage over those who decide to
wait passively for the results of the change.
Arizmendi (José María
Arizmendiarrieta), Basque social reformer, founder of Mondragón
Cooperative Corporation; born on April 22, 1915
To build cooperativism is not to do the
opposite of capitalism, as if this system did not have any useful features
... Cooperativism must surpass it, and for this purpose must assimilate
its methods and dynamism.
Arizmendi
He was our national hero, an entrepreneur who strutted the world stage, who mesmerised all with that Grand Canyon of a
smile ... Medical experts were procured to testify that Bond was a brain-dead ignoramus who could not take the
stand ... A couple of days before he was released after less than four years' jail for a fraud involving $1.2 billion, a Northern Territory man was sentenced to one year's jail for stealing $23 worth of cordial and biscuits. Had the same formula been applied to Bond, he would have been in jail for 50 million years.
Sydney Morning Herald, October
7, 2000, on Alan Bond, disgraced
Australian businessman, born on April 22, 1938
April
22 is
the 112th
day of the year in the Gregorian
Calendar (113th
in leap years), with 253
days remaining.
Calendar converter Almanacs,
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links on this page move address or die, I might allow them to stay here, but the
Wayback Machine might help you
locate the original.
Lyrid meteor showers (Apr 15 - Apr 28, peaking
today)
The image indicates the general region of the sky from which the Lyrid meteors appear to emanate (red dot). This point, called the radiant, is really an optical illusion – the meteors are moving along parallel paths, but appear to come from a single point, just as a stretch of parallel railroad tracks will appear to meet at a point on the horizon. Source: NASA
In April, Earth enters a stream of dusty debris shed by the non-periodic Thatcher comet, which means the annual Lyrid meteor shower is underway. The Lyrids – so named because the meteors appear to radiate from the constellation Lyra (Latin for Lyre) – are the first main shower of Spring. Lyrids have been observed for at least 2,600 years, according to Chinese records from 687 BCE describing "stars that fell like rain". In fact, it is the oldest shower to be mentioned in ancient records.
Outbursts, when the rates of visible meteors are much higher, have been seen in a number of years including, in recent times, 1803 (when observers counted 700 meteors per hour), 1922, and 1982. In 1839, Edward Herrick, an astronomer in Connecticut, USA, found records of possible Lyrid activity in 1095, 1096 and 1122. They were also recorded in Korea in 1136 and China in 15 BCE.
The Lyrid meteor shower peaks on the morning of April 22 – a typical peak for the Lyrids is about 15 shooting stars an hour, or one every few minutes. Observers watching the sky from about 3 am until dawn can expect to see a few dozen meteors (5 to 20 per hour). The Lyrids are a northern hemisphere shower. Sky watchers in the southern hemisphere might as well stay in bed. From Australia the shower won't get much above 30 degrees above the horizon, reducing the possible number visible by about 50 per cent.
NASA says: "Most years, observers of the Lyrids can expect to view one or two shooting stars every few minutes. That's just a trickle compared to the avalanche of shooting stars and fireballs seen by millions during the 1998 Leonids meteor shower, but the Lyrids are not always so meek. In 1982, for example, over 90 meteors per hour were seen for a brief time."
Mythology of the constellation Lyra
From Wikipedia: Older maps of the sky show a bird, especially a vulture (Vultur cadens), in this position, since in early times the constellation and its stars, were taken to resemble one. As such, together with other constellations in the Zodiac sign of Sagittarius (specifically, Cygnus, and Aquila, together with Sagittarius itself), Lyra may be a significant part of the origin of the myth of the Stymphalian Birds, one of The Twelve Labours of Herakles.
By taking into account slightly parallel lines of fainter stars in the centre of the constellation, it appears to resemble a lyre, and consequently lyra gradually shifted from being considered a vulture to being considered a lyre, for an intermediate period being considered a vulture which is holding a lyre. Associated with its identity as a lyre, Lyra was considered to be the lyre used by Orpheus, to produce music that charmed even Hades, which was placed into the stars upon his death.
Observing
the Lyrids List
of meteor showers Look,
Listen, Lyrids!
Were meteor showers responsible for omens in ancient sacred texts? Meteors & Native American Folklore
Sky map Thunderstones and Shooting Stars: Meteors and Meteorites in Folklore And more Yet more
Perseid meteor showers and Leonid meteor showers in the Book of Days
If you can't see nuthin' ... join the International Dark-Sky Association and help lobby for some laws to help save the human spirit!
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