I found a very cool permission slip allowing a student to the chemistry and pharmacy lectures of Benjamin Silliman, who was the first professor of chemistry (and science generally) at Yale College. I've read that Silliman allowed women into his lectures, so it would've been additionally cool if E. M. Beardley had been a "Miss."
Born March 26, 1904, Joseph Campbell taught comparative mythology and comparative religion, and wrote notable works like "The Hero with a Thousand Faces." George Lucas acknowledged the book's influence. When Campbell died in 1987, he had recently completed a series of interviews with Bill Moyers, "The Power of Myth." That was the year when Beth and I moved to Flagstaff to teach at Northern Arizona University. I was an all-but-dissertation instructor, teaching world religions for the first time. The interviews were so helpful as I got my bearings in the subject, which turned out to be a career-long specialty. https://odyssey.antiochsb.edu/literary/joseph-campbell-the-heros-journey/?fbclid=IwY2xjawJRcelleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHfXIe9YjM6TkkC95S74ShxubBKw9GEq3VAAY4Po4brTOf-F5iyFCxhsEFQ_aem_zJ6iCN12SQLOnoDWB_JkUg
Northern Arizona University
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Beethoven died on March 26, 1827. This was an interesting article. Beethoven's genetic profile from his hair shows a genetic predisposition to liver disease, which he did have. https://www.cnn.com/style/article/beethoven-hair-study-scn/index.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawJROaxleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHQaN4fOV14JU7lLiOV7OJCyqlIdqaRv5RP8hA7B44shJUTytVMj2MUvIIg_aem_90gCevGkhaA-9ONG8M95pw
Yesterday I learned that this was Beethoven's last major completed work. He also wrote a substitute finale for his Op. 130 string quartet, as the original finale ("the Great Fugue") was disproportionately long and difficulty. These were written In the fall of 1826.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hxpIQ3XhXA
One of the major figures of post-war classical music, composer and conductor Pierre Boulez was born March 26, 1925! 100 years ago. He was known for (1) significant modernist compositions like Le Marteau sans maître, Pli selon pli, and Répons; (2) polemical essays on modernism in music, e.g., the blunt "Schoenberg is Dead"; and (3) being one of the great 20th century conductors. Fun fact: at a party, Boulez kept calling Paul Simon "Al" and Simon's wife Peggy as "Betty." The mistakes inspired Simon to write the song, "You Can Call Me Al."
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Born August 15, 1917, St. Óscar Romero was the Salvadoran Roman Catholic archbishop assassinated on March 24, 1980 while celebrating Mass. He was declared a martyr of the church and then beatified in 2015. He was canonized in 2018. In 2010, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed March 24th as the "International Day for the Right to the Truth Concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims." https://www.un.org/en/observances/right-to-truth-day
I've been on the board of the Yale Alumni Fund for a few years. The fund, which is he oldest annual giving program in the U.S, began 125 years ago today! On March 24, 1890, a group of alums met informally to figure out how to help build Yale's unrestricted funds.
I posted this on Facebook in 2019, but I don't seem to have shared it on this site.
"I took a drive this morning up Gravois Road in St Louis and took pictures of interesting signs, and the Bevo Mill. Then I went up Tucker to the ball park area and got a few more signs, plus the disused MacArthur Bridge auto ramps, from the years the bridge carried car traffic. Then I came back Chippewa and got the Donut Drive-In sign."
It's crazy that I first joined the Illinois State Historical Society fifty years ago, when I was first interested in Vandalia history. As the joke goes, I'm only 39. Friend Mary Burtschi had an article in the 1975 issue that was the first I received. Then I had an article in a 1987 issue.
Born March 22, 1783, Sarah Goodin Barrett Moulton was the only daughter of a madeira merchant and his wife who were landowners of English background in Jamaica. One of Sarah's brothers became the father of poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Sarah--known as Pinkie within her family--was sent to England for her education.. Her lonely grandmother in Jamaica commissioned a full-length portrait, "by one of the best Masters, in an easy Careless attitude". So Sarah was soon painted by renowned artist Thomas Lawrence. Lawrence placed the horizon low. (The painting is about 5 feet by 3 feet.) Sadly, Sarah died the following year, aged 12. "Pinkie" has become one of the world's most famous paintings. The painting has no relationship to Thomas Gainsborough's 1770 painting, "The Blue Boy," except that they hang in the same room in The Huntington. (I'd like to visit someday!). But the two paintings are sometimes associated, as if they were portraits of siblings. .... I have a wonderful old book of my mom's, "World Famous Paintings" ed. by Rockwell Kent (1939), that I liked to look through as a kid. The book features both of these paintings.
My 4th great-grandfather Paul Colburn died 200 years ago this week: February 27, 1825. He is buried in the Sulphur Springs Cemetery in Loami, IL in Sangamon County. His marker is a small plate at the foot of the stone of his son and daughter in law, William and Achsa Colburn. (The first three photos are from Find-a-Grave because I can't find my own at the moment.) Paul's great-great-grandfather, Edward Colburn (1618-1700) was an emigrant from England and the first settler of Dracut, MA. I learned recently that Paul was a stone carver whose work can be seen in cemeteries in southern New Hampshire and northern Massachusetts. Paul and his wife Mehitibel and some of their children decided to go west, which took them five years, 1815-1820. They settled in Pittsburgh for a while, waiting for the Ohio River to be suitable for raft travel, then they settled in Marietta, OH. When they stopped in Louisville, KY, one of their sons and his wife died, leaving children orphaned. Then Mehitibel died as they went through Shawneetown, IL. Finally they settled in Sangamon County as one of the first pioneers of small Loami, IL. They arrived in the county a few months before Elijah Iles, who is considered the founder of nearby Springfield. The two early Sangamon histories give their story, which I copied: https://paulstroble.wordpress.com/2011/06/11/my-family-the-carsons-and-colburns/?fbclid=IwY2xjawIrWE1leHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHbmgzRvGsAErD9pSf2iGxlzMH0wzyTcyjyYFrrtQp4ZrVx1wQXpdN3emkw_aem_LmdtoJDDmBvLlUhFU7F4yA These are ancestors through Dad's beloved maternal grandmother Alice Carson. The Colburns went through such hardship to move to Illinois, that I'm glad that I know Paul's death date and can share their story.
Pluto was discovered on February 18, 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, AZ. A planet beyond Neptune had been theorized since the 1840s. Percival Lowell himself searched for a number of years. He caught faint image of Pluto in 1915 but, sadly for him, they were not recognized as the ninth planet. Tombaugh's discovery was confirmed by followup photographs, and was announced on March 13, 1930. In the years since, the Kuiper Belt has been discovered: a very large belt of objects from asteroids to dwarf planets. Pluto is one such planet in the belt. The object Eris is larger than Pluto. Since other planets and their moons (if any) have a "clear" orbit of their own around the Sun (unlike Pluto and its many Kuiper objects), the International Astronomical Union "demoted" Pluto to dwarf planet status. A certain amount of unhappiness resulted, even including resolutions in state legislatures to affirm Pluto as a planet! Pluto orbits the Sun once in 248 Earth years. So it has made a little over 1/3rd of its journey since 1930. During some Earth years, Pluto's atypical orbit brings it closer to the Sun than Neptune. It has five satellites, and a surface temperature that can reach 33 degrees K (-400 degrees F).
Picture from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto#/media/File:Pluto_in_True_Color_-_High-Res.jpg
The Voyager 1 space probe was launched in 1977 to study the outer Solar System. On February 14, 1990, when the probe had traveled about 3.7 billion miles, the probe's camera was turned around to get a final photo of Earth. Earth appears as a tiny, bright dot in the band of light on the right. Carl Sagan, who proposed the idea of the picture, wrote a book Pale Blue Dot (1994) in which he reflects on our smallness in the universe. "It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."
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Some beautiful paintings that I've seen posted on Facebook lately. (Copied under fair use.)
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On the Episcopal calendar, the Four Chaplains are honored today, the anniversary of their deaths in 1943 when their ship, the SS Dorchester, was torpedoed by a German sub and sunk. Rev. George Fox was a Methodist Minister, Rev. John P. Washington was a Catholic priest, Dr. Alexander D. Goode was a Reform rabbi, and Rev. Clark V. Pooling was a Reformed Church minister. As the ship sank, they assisted soldiers in boarding lifeboats, calmed the men, and gave their own life jackets to soldiers. They prayed for the men and sang hymns together, their arms joined, and went down with the ship. Dr. Goode also prayed in Hebrew, and Fr. Washington in Latin. Only 230 of the 904 crew members were rescued.
The four chaplains are honored in numerous ways, including the 1948 postage stamp pictured here. I first learned of the men when I was little and collected stamps, and my dad, who was a Pacific war veteran, told me the story.
On this day in 1809, Congress passed legislation that established the Illinois Territory. Ninian Edwards, the namesake of nearby Edwardsville, IL (and father of Lincoln's brother-in-law), was governor for nearly all of the territorial period. Fun fact: Edwards' daughter Julia married politician Daniel Pope Cook, who became the namesake for Cook County, Illinois. There has never been a history focused upon Illinois territory and its government, but "The Illinois Country, 1673-1818" by Clarence Alvord (1918) is a classic study that has sufficed.
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Grant Wood, Spring in Town, 1941. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
I discovered this artist this evening. Born February 2, 1827, Oswald Achenbach isn't so well known today but was acclaimed in his own time. Here are his paintings "Fireworks in Naples" (1875), "Morning" (1854), and "Constantine's Triumphal Arch in Rome" (1886).
"Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,/ In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore...."
"The Raven" was first published in the New York Evening Mirror on January 29, 1845. Poe used internal rhyme and alliteration, and based the rhythm on Elizabeth Barrett's poem "Lady Geraldine's Courtship". Of course, the poem is about an agonized lover who becomes more upset by the single word spoken by his avian visitor.
(We used to have ravens in our Arizona backyard. They're nearly two feet long, depending on the type. If one flew into my house, I wouldn't talk to it, I'd run away, LOL)
The poem brought Poe little income but acclaim as a poet.
Great ball players! Jackie Robinson, and Ernie "Mr. Cub" Banks, and also Nolan Ryan, were all born on January 31st (1919, 1931, 1947).
