So much to think about, ponder, and consider! So many books to be read and understood. So today enjoy these “Bits and Pieces” of interesting topics.
Bits: Did you know that the engineers who developed the wireless connection “Bluetooth” in the 1990s named it after King Harald Bluetooth, who united and ruled Denmark and Norway in the 10th Century?
Pieces: Read an obituary in The Chicago Tribune for Rudelf Danel (1915-2019) and learned that he played the trumpet while at Auschwitz as a prisoner in 1941. I guess it seems so incongruous that the condemned would be allowed to participate in an orchestra!
Bits: In June we have more than 15 hours of daylight. By October there are only 10 hours of light for each day. No wonder I hibernate in the Winter months!
Pieces: The last state to adopt a progressive income tax was Connecticut in 1996. When the median tax rate soared 13%, the well-off fled to Florida. This left the state with $3.7 Billion budget deficit. The Illinois Democratic legislature has raised taxes on gasoline, cigarettes, gambling, and parking, among other things. Illinois residents now pay the second highest property taxes in the country after New Jersey. Unless voters stop it in November 2020, the progressive tax party in Illinois is just getting started. The voracious spending machine of the Democrats will proceed unabated to the final conclusion of State bankruptcy. Illinois middle class wage-earners will not only have to watch their wallets, but every single dollar they have earned inside them.
Bits: President Woodrow Wilson brought in a flock of sheep in 1918 to reduce the White House gardening staff and economize during WWI. At auction, their wool raised almost $53,000 for the Red Cross which adjusted for inflation, would be approximately $850,000 today.
Pieces: The Manet exhibit at the Art Institute in Chicago was quite spectacular. On display was even a tiny paint box used by the artist. Enchanting, it was.
NASA photo
Bits: Fifty years ago Frank Sinatra’s recording of “Fly Me to the Moon” was played by Buzz Aldrin while on the moon’s surface. Apollo 11 sped to the moon and consumed 240,000 miles which took three days to traverse. Eight hundred pounds of moon rock were brought back from the trip by Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Aldrin. If you say that the earth’s size is equal to a nickel, then the moon’s size is equal to one coffee bean. Fascinating stuff!
Pieces: Did you know that the Paris aqueduct of Chaillot was built by Bernard de Palissy on the orders of Catherine de Medicis? She wanted water from Saint-Cloud brought to the gardens of the Tuileries. It was along this stretch of river-front below where the Trocadero now stands, that American Robert Fulton made his first experiments with a power-driven boat.
Bits: A part of a human skull has been identified as the earliest sign of man outside Africa. It’s estimated age is 210,000 years older than an upper jaw bone from Israel that was reported in 2018. It shows our species began leaving Africa much earlier than previously thought.
Pieces: Woodsy Owl, the U.S. Forest Service mascot, has encouraged children to protect the environment for four decades. One of his classic mottos is “Give a hoot. Don’t pollute.”
Bits: Joliet and Marquette were the first Europeans known to visit the site of Chicago in 1673. Explorer and fur trader Jean Baptist Point du Sable built the first permanent cabin in 1779. Fort Dearborn, a blockhouse and stockade, was constructed in 1804, but fell to an Indian massacre in 1812. The village name was derived from the Algonquin word “checagou” meaning “wild garlic” or “skunks.”
Pieces: Omar Khayyam wrote “Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.”