Inici de campana
Efímer entre els arbres
Fora porta de tarda.
La pols dels blats
Apaga un or trèmul en punxes
Blanquinoses de plana.
L'àmbit vincla i perdura
Comiats d'enyorances
D'avui mateix.
Desvari
De vies solitàries.
Argila i calç.
Argila i calç.
Finestres
De la casa tancada
Quan torno
D'horabaixa
Girant-me adesiara
Inici de campana
Efímer entre els arbres
Fora porta de tarda.
Bartomeu Rosselló-Pòrcel
.jpg)
The 1936-1937 Flint sit-down strike, also known as the General Motors sit-down strike, or the great GM sit-down strike, was a sitdown strike at the General Motors plant in Flint, Michigan, United States. It changed the United Automobile Workers (UAW) from a collection of isolated local unions on the fringes of the industry into a major labor union, and led to the unionization of the domestic automobile industry.
GM employed 208,981 hourly workers before the Great Depression. These workers were paid around $1,195 annually. After the Great Depression jobs were increasing but GM had 30,000 fewer employees than before the Great Depression. This is similar to the pay that GM was giving. The pay was increasing in 1936 but at GM the pay was stagnant. Work Progress estimated for a four-person family $1,434.79 was needed. GM's records document that the annual average for full time workers was $1,200 to $1,300. Even with the declining pay rates, workers were required to work at a faster pace to make up for the loss from the Great Depression.
The United Automobile Workers (UAW) labor union had only just been formed in 1935 and held its first convention in 1936. Shortly thereafter the union decided it could not survive by organizing campaigns at smaller plants as it had in the past. Instead they would organize automobile workers and go after the biggest and most powerful employer, General Motors Corporation. They would do this by focusing on their most valuable plants in Flint, Michigan. As stated by Henry Kraus, a UAW organizer of the strike, It was the heart-and-nerve center of the vast combine. Creators of fortunes, incomparable benefactor to the chosen few, prize milch-cow of America's most patrician family, the du Ponts, whose 10,000,000 shares of GM stock assured them a one-fourth cut of the corporation's unabating profits, whatever happened in this central city of the corporation, in this non-descript over-size village, reverberated throughout the financial capitalists of the nation.
The importance of these plants to GM cannot be understated: the production plants in Flint were essential to the multiple lines of GM cars, and to the cars of GM's subsidiary companies like Chevrolet and Buick. As explained by Henry Kraus, The great concentration of autoworkers in Flint was not at the body plants but at Chevrolet and Buick which employed 14,000 and 16,000 men respectively – the largest of all general Motors' 60-odd factories.
Another Chevrolet factory, Plant No. 4, would be critical to the sit-down strike as it produced the engines for all Chevrolet cars sold at the time. These plants were vital to production and strikes would cripple GM production throughout the country. The UAW recently separated from the much larger union, The American Federation of Labor (AFL).
Organizing in Flint was a difficult and dangerous plan. GM controlled city politics in Flint and kept a close eye on outsiders. As Wyndham Mortimer, the first UAW officer put in charge of organizing the campaign in Flint, entered the town, he was noticed. The day after he entered Flint, in early June 1936, he was being followed by people who were probably from the General Motors Company, When he went through the front door, the other put his paper down and followed him out into the street. And thereafter, he or one of two others always managed to be with him.
GM also maintained an extensive network of spies throughout its plants. Mortimer concluded after talking to Flint auto workers that the existing locals, which had only 122 members out of 45,000 auto workers in Flint, were riddled with spies. Accordingly, he decided that the only safe way to organize Flint was simply to bypass those locals. Mortimer, Eric Branoff, Roy Reuther, Henry Kraus, and Ralph Dale began meeting with Flint auto workers in their homes, keeping the names of new members a closely guarded secret from others in Flint and at UAW headquarters.
As the UAW studied its target, it discovered that GM had only two factories that produced the dies from which car body components were stamped: one in Flint that produced the parts for Buicks, Pontiacs, and Oldsmobiles, and another in Cleveland that produced Chevrolet parts. The union planned to strike these plants after the New Year, when Frank Murphy would become Governor of Michigan.
Events forced the union to accelerate its plans when the workers at Cleveland's Fisher Body plant went on strike on December 28, 1936, due to two brothers being fired from the assembly line. The UAW immediately announced that it would not settle the Cleveland strike until it reached a national agreement with GM covering all of its plants. At the same time the union made plans to shut down Fisher #1 in Flint. Genora Johnson Dollinger was one of the main organizers and protester for the Flint sit-down. Robert Travis was the UAW organizer during the strike.
On December 30, at 8:00 AM, the union learned that GM was planning to move the dies out of Fisher #1. UAW lead organizer Bob Travis immediately called a lunchtime meeting at the union hall across the street from the plant, explained the situation, then sent the members across the street to occupy the plant. The Flint sit-down strike began.
In a conventional strike, union members leave the plant and establish a picket line to discourage other employees from entering, thus preventing the employer from operating. In a sit-down strike, the workers physically occupy the plant, keeping management and others out. By remaining inside the factory rather than picketing outside of it, striking workers prevented owners from bringing strikebreakers to resume production. It was in some ways easier to maintain the morale of participants in a sit-down than in a conventional strike. The strikers were removed from outside pressures and the hostility of the community that their action might have induced. Bad weather did not constitute a problem for sit-downers as it did for the pickets in an outside strike.
The Flint sit-down strikers set up their own civil system within the strike. A mayor and other civic officials were elected by the workers to maintain order within the plant. Departments included Organized Recreation, Information, Postal Service, and Sanitation. All rules were enforced by what was called a Kangaroo Court by the workers. Any person who broke the rules was given a trial, and punishments ranged from washing dishes to expulsion from the plant (in the most extreme cases).
More information: CNN
It was important for the strikers to maintain order in the plant; if property damage occurred, the Governor would intervene with the National Guard. In addition to maintaining order, the civic government also ensured a steady stream of supplies from friendly vendors outside the plant. Most of the meals for the approximately 2,000 workers occupying the plant were provided free of charge by a diner across the street.
The police, armed with guns and tear gas, attempted to enter the Fisher Body 2 plant on January 11, 1937. The strikers inside the plant pelted them with hinges, bottles, and bolts, led by Bob Travis and Roy Reuther. They were able to withstand several waves of attack, eventually ending the standoff. The strikers dubbed this The Battle of Running Bulls, a mocking reference to the police (bulls). Fourteen strikers were injured by gunfire during the battle.
At the time, Vice President John Nance Garner supported federal intervention to break up the Flint Strike, but this idea was rejected by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The president urged GM to recognize a union so the plants could re-open.
GM obtained a second injunction against the strike on February 2, 1937. GM was granted the injunction by Judge Edward S. Black. Judge Black owned over three thousand shares of GM. Judge Black was disbarred from the case after the UAW found out about the revelation. The union not only ignored the order, but spread the strike to Chevrolet Plant #4. To avoid tipping its hand, the union let it be known in the hours before the move that it intended to go after another plant in the complex, changing directions only at the last minute. GM, tipped off by an informant within the UAW, was ready and waiting for the union at the other plant and caught completely off guard at Plant #4. The strike ended after 44 days.
The agreement that GM consented to was to rehire workers that were a part of the strike, allow workers to wear buttons and other symbols that represented unions, and granted 6 months of negotiations in the plants that participated in a strike to UAW-CIO.
As short as this agreement was, it gave the UAW instant legitimacy. The workers there also got a 5% increase in pay and were allowed to talk about the union during lunch. The UAW capitalized on that opportunity, signing up 100,000 GM employees and building the union's strength through grievance strikes at GM plants throughout the country.
The Sit-Down Strike projected a principle weapon of mass organization in the labor industry projecting nearly 5000 strikes to come within the next year. Giving labor workers newfound unionization regardless of race, education status creating opportunities for membership agreements, payroll negotiation, and even government protection for workers.
The Sit-Down Strike provoked a newfound impact in the labor industry, giving the workers a newfound confidence to join unions and use their voice.
More information: Sloan Longway Planetarium
Noam Chomsky
Ara digueu: "La ginesta floreix,
arreu als camps hi ha vermell de roselles.
Amb nova falç comencem a segar
el blat madur i, amb ell, les males herbes."
Ah, joves llavis desclosos després
de la foscor, si sabíeu com l'alba
ens ha trigat, com és llarg d'esperar
un alçament de llum en la tenebra!
Però hem viscut per salvar-vos els mots,
per retornar-vos el nom de cada cosa,
perquè seguíssiu el recte camí
d'accés al ple domini de la terra.
Vàrem mirar ben al lluny del desert,
davallàvem al fons del nostre somni.
Cisternes seques esdevenen cims
pujats per esglaons de lentes hores.
Ara digueu: "Nosaltres escoltem
les veus del vent per l'alta mar d'espigues."
Ara digueu: "Ens mantindrem fidels
per sempre més al servei d'aquest poble."
Salvador Espriu
.jpg)
Maximilian Raoul Steiner (10 May 1888-28 December 1971) was an Austrian composer and conductor who emigrated to America and became one of Hollywood's greatest musical composers. Steiner was a child prodigy who conducted his first operetta when he was twelve and became a full-time professional, proficient at composing, arranging, and conducting, by the time he was fifteen. Threatened with internment in England during World War I, he fled to Broadway; and in 1929 he moved to Hollywood, where he became one of the first composers to write music scores for films. He is often referred to as the father of film music, as Steiner played a major part in creating the tradition of writing music for films, along with composers Dimitri Tiomkin, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Franz Waxman, Alfred Newman, Bernard Herrmann, and Miklós Rózsa.
Steiner composed over 300 film scores with RKO Pictures and Warner Bros., and was nominated for 24 Academy Awards, winning three: The Informer (1935); Now, Voyager (1942); and Since You Went Away (1944). Besides his Oscar-winning scores, some of Steiner's popular works include King Kong (1933), Little Women (1933), Jezebel (1938), and Casablanca (1942), though he did not compose its love theme, As Time Goes By. In addition, Steiner scored The Searchers (1956), A Summer Place (1959), and Gone with the Wind (1939), which ranked second on the AFI's list of best American film scores, and is the film score for which he is best known.
He was also the first recipient of the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, which he won for his score for Life with Father. Steiner was a frequent collaborator with some of the best known film directors in history, including Michael Curtiz, John Ford, and William Wyler, and scored many of the films with Errol Flynn, Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, and Fred Astaire. Many of his film scores are available as separate soundtrack recordings.
Max Steiner was born on 10 May 1888, in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, as the only child in a wealthy business and theatrical family of Jewish heritage.
The music of Edmund Eysler was an early influence in the pieces of Max Steiner;however, one of his first introductions to operettas was by Franz Lehár who worked for a time as a military bandmaster for Steiner's father's theatre.
Between 1907 and 1914, Steiner traveled between Britain and Europe to work on theatrical productions. Steiner first entered the world of professional music when he was fifteen.
In England, Steiner wrote and conducted theater productions and symphonies. But the beginning of World War I in 1914 led him to be interned as an enemy alien. Fortunately, he was befriended by the Duke of Westminster, who was a fan of his work, and was given exit papers to go to America, although his money was impounded. He arrived in New York City in December 1914, with only $32. Unable to find work, he resorted to menial jobs such as a copyist for Harms Music Publishing, which quickly led him to jobs orchestrating stage musicals.
In New York, Max Steiner quickly acquired employment and worked for fifteen years as a musical director, arranger, orchestrator, and conductor of Broadway productions. These productions include operettas and musicals written by Victor Herbert, Jerome Kern, Vincent Youmans, and George Gershwin, among others.
When adding a music score to a picture, Steiner used a spotting process in which he and the director of the film would watch the film in its entirety and discuss where underscoring of diegetic music would begin and end. Another technique Steiner used was the mixing of realistic and background music.
More information: Max Steiner
Max Steiner
.jpg)
Diethyl ether, or simply ether, is an organic compound with the chemical formula (CH3CH2)2O, sometimes abbreviated as Et2O. It is a colourless, highly volatile, sweet-smelling (ethereal odour), extremely flammable liquid. It belongs to the ether class of organic compounds. It is a common solvent. It was formerly used as a general anesthetic.
Most diethyl ether is produced as a byproduct of the vapor-phase hydration of ethylene to make ethanol. This process uses solid-supported phosphoric acid catalysts and can be adjusted to make more ether if the need arises: Vapor-phase dehydration of ethanol over some alumina catalysts can give diethyl ether yields of up to 95%.
2 CH3CH2OH → (CH3CH2)2O + H2O
Diethyl ether can be prepared both in laboratories and on an industrial scale by the acid ether synthesis.
The dominant use of diethyl ether is as a solvent. One particular application is in the production of cellulose plastics such as cellulose acetate.
It is a common solvent for the Grignard reaction in addition to other reactions involving organometallic reagents. These uses exploit its basicity. Diethyl ether is a popular non-polar solvent in liquid-liquid extraction. As an extractant, it is immiscible with and less dense than water.
Although immiscible, it has significant solubility in water (6.05 g/(100 ml) at 25 °C) and dissolves 1.5 g/(100 g) (1.0 g/(100 ml)) water at 25 °C.
Diethyl ether has a high cetane number of 85–96 and, in combination with petroleum distillates for gasoline and diesel engines, is used as a starting fluid because of its high volatility and low flash point. Ether starting fluid is sold and used in countries with cold climates, as it can help with cold starting an engine at sub-zero temperatures. For the same reason it is also used as a component of the fuel mixture for carbureted compression ignition model engines.
A cytochrome P450 enzyme is proposed to metabolize diethyl ether.
Diethyl ether inhibits alcohol dehydrogenase, and thus slows the metabolism of ethanol. It also inhibits metabolism of other drugs requiring oxidative metabolism. For example, diazepam requires hepatic oxidization whereas its oxidized metabolite oxazepam does not.
Diethyl ether is extremely flammable and may form explosive vapour/air mixtures.
Since ether is heavier than air it can collect low to the ground and the vapour may travel considerable distances to ignition sources. Ether will ignite if exposed to an open flame, though due to its high flammability, an open flame is not required for ignition. Other possible ignition sources include –but are not limited to– hot plates, steam pipes, heaters, and electrical arcs created by switches or outlets.
Vapour may also be ignited by the static electricity which can build up when ether is being poured from one vessel into another. The autoignition temperature of diethyl ether is 160 °C. The diffusion of diethyl ether in air is 9.18 × 10−6 m2/s.
Ether is sensitive to light and air, tending to form explosive peroxides. Ether peroxides have a higher boiling point than ether and are contact explosives when dry.
Commercial diethyl ether is typically supplied with trace amounts of the antioxidant butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT), which reduces the formation of peroxides. Storage over sodium hydroxide precipitates the intermediate ether hydroperoxides. Water and peroxides can be removed by either distillation from sodium and benzophenone, or by passing through a column of activated alumina.
Due to its application in the manufacturing of illicit substances, it is listed in the Table II precursor under the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances as well as substances such as acetone, toluene and sulfuric acid.
The compound may have been synthesised by either Jābir ibn Hayyān in the 8th century or Ramon Llull in 1275.
It was synthesised in 1540 by Valerius Cordus, who called it sweet oil of vitriol (oleum dulce vitrioli) –the name reflects the fact that it is obtained by distilling a mixture of ethanol and sulfuric acid (then known as oil of vitriol)– and noted some of its medicinal properties.
At about the same time, Paracelsus discovered the analgesic properties of the molecule in dogs. The name ether was given to the substance in 1729 by August Sigmund Frobenius.
It was considered to be a sulfur compound until the idea was disproved in about 1800.
The synthesis of diethyl ether by a reaction between ethanol and sulfuric acid has been known since the 13th century.
More information: PubChem
Brian Greene
.jpg)
As usual, there will be no shortage of arrangements of the traditional Christmas carols or premieres by Catalan composers expressly invited to write works for this very special concert, the most important of the year for the Orfeó Català family.
Performers
Program
F. Civil: Les dotze van tocant, Catalan folk carol from El nostre Nadal, arrangement by Joan Vives (Cor Jove de l'Orfeó Català)
El desembre congelat, Catalan folk carol, arrangement by Bernat Vivancos (Cor de Cambra del Palau)
M. Oltra: Nadal (Cor de Cambra del Palau)
Nadal, popular Minorcan Christmas carol, arrangement by Baltasar Bibiloni (Cor Petits and Cor Mitjans de l'Orfeó Català)
Cançó de l’infant, Catalan folk carol, arrangement by Bernat Vivancos (Cor de Noies de l'Orfeó Català)
El rabadà, Catalan folk carol, arrangement by Jordi Domènech (Cor Infantil de l'Orfeó Català)
Bi gabon-kanta, Basque folk carols, arrangement (premiere) by Eva Ugalde (Orfeó Català)
J. Lamote de Grignon: La Nit de Nadal, arrangement (premiere) by Jordi Morales Mateu (Orfeó Català, Cor de Cambra del Palau, Cor de Noies, Cor Jove and Cor Infantil de l'Orfeó Català)
Musical interlude (Joan Seguí, organ)
The first Nowell, English folk carol, arrangement by Ola Gjeilo (Cor Jove de l’Orfeó Català)
Deck the hall, English folk carol, arrangement by John Rutter (Orfeó Català)
The heavenly aeroplane, anonymous American text from 1935, arrangement by John Rutter, vocal arrangement by Xavier Puig (Cor de Cambra del Palau; thanks to the TNC for the loan of costume accessories)
E. Pola i G. Wyle: It's the most wonderful time of the year, arrangement (premiere) by Joan Mas Soler (Cor Petits, Cor Mitjans, Cor Infantil, Cor de Noies and Cor Jove de l’Orfeó Català, Metropolitan Union)
Pero mira como beben, traditional Castilian, arrangement by Francesc d’Assís Pagès (Metropolitan Union)
J. González Sarmiento: Villancico tropical (Cor Infantil and cantaires de l'Orfeó Català)
Candombe del 6 de enero, traditional Afro-Uruguayan,arrangement (premiere) by Álvaro Metzger (Cor de Noies de l'Orfeó Català)
Saalam Aleikum, popular Moroccan, arrangement by Nass Marrakech (Cor Petits and Cor Mitjans de l’Orfeó Català)
De Nadal a Sant Josep, four Catalan folk carol, arrangement (premiere) by Xavier Pastrana (tall choirs)
More information: Palau de la Música Catalana
Joan Maragall
.jpg)
Pompeu Fabra was born in Gràcia, which at that time was still separate from Barcelona, in 1868. He was the last of twelve children born to Josep Fabra i Roca and his wife Carolina Poch i Martí. When Pompeu was six, the family moved to Barcelona.
From a fairly young age Fabra dedicated himself to the study of the Catalan language. Through the journal and publishing house Tipografia de L'Avenç, he participated in a campaign to reform Catalan orthography between 1890-92. He published Tractat d'ortografia catalana with the writer and publisher Jaume Massó i Torrents and Joaquim Casas i Carbó, a notable lawyer and writer, in 1904.
Despite his personal interest in linguistics, Fabra studied industrial engineering in Barcelona and in 1902 accepted a chair of chemistry position at the School of Engineering in Bilbao. During his tenure in Bilbao, Fabra participated actively in the First International Congress of the Catalan Language held in 1906. This event gave him a certain prestige in the field of Catalan linguistics.
In 1911, he returned to Barcelona to become a professor (catedràtic) of Catalan -a position created by the diputació (local government) of Barcelona- and a member of the department of philology at the newly created Institut d'Estudis Catalans, of which he would later become president.
In 1912 he published his Gramática de la lengua catalana.
The Institute published the Normes ortogràfiques in 1913, the Diccionari ortogràfic in 1917, and its official Gramàtica catalana in 1918. That same year, Fabra also edited the textbook Curs mitjà de gramàtica catalana, published by l'Associació Protectora de l'Ensenyança Catalana. His Converses filològiques, first published in the newspaper La Publicitat, were later collected as Popular Barcino. Probably his most famous work was the Diccionari General de la Llengua Catalana (1932), the first edition of which later became the Institute's official dictionary.
In 1932, owing to his scientific prestige, he was unanimously named a professor (catedràtic) of the Republican Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, not to be confused with the later Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona created in the 1960s during the Francoist régime. The following year he was named President of the University's governing council, which resulted in his imprisonment in 1934 following the events of 6 October when troops of the Second Spanish Republic put down a Catalan government uprising led by Lluis Companys.
Fabra was reinstated as a professor after the elections of February 1936, but in July of that year the Spanish Civil War began and he had to flee his country when Barcelona was invaded by Franco's army.
In 1939 he went into exile in France, where he suffered many hardships. He lived in Paris and Montpellier, where he presided over the Jocs Florals literary contest in 1946. The Spanish government, led by Francisco Franco, fine him Pompeu Fabra for being, the fine says, A separatist element against the general interests of Spain. He eventually moved to Prada de Conflent, in the Catalan-speaking part of France, where he died on December 25, 1948.
At some point during his exile, he made a will in Andorra, to be made in a country where Catalan was the official language.
Every year, his tomb in the Cuixà monastery near Prada is visited by thousands of Catalans.
The Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona bears his name.
The metro station in Barcelona Badalona Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona Metro) bears Pompeu Fabra's name and legacy.
More information: GenCat
Work, and work every day,
because the cultivation of a language can never be abandoned.
Pompeu Fabra
.jpg)
Takata was trained in Reiki by Chujiro Hayashi in Tokyo, Japan and became a Master Practitioner by 1940.
Hayashi had learned from Mikao Usui, the first teacher of Reiki, in the early 1900s. Identification of training lineage is common among Reiki practitioners. Within the tradition, Takata is sometimes known as Reiki Grand Master Teacher Hawayo Takata.
Takata lied about Reiki's history of development to make Reiki more appealing to the West. To this end she made a relation of Reiki with Jesus Christ and not with Buddhism. She also falsely presented Usui as the dean of a Christian school. While he had obtained the knowledge of Reiki from the Buddhist religious book Tantra of the Lightning Flash, Takata claimed that he had been inspired from the story of Jesus Christ, who had healed with the touch of his hand, and so had come to America to learn Reiki. She told this to spread Reiki among Christians too, believing it would otherwise be extinct. However, Reiki originated from Buddhism.
Takata died at 2.45 a.m. on December 11, 1980 at Van Buren County Memorial Hospital, in Keosauqua, Iowa.
Reiki is a pseudoscientific form of energy healing, a type of alternative medicine originating in Japan.
Reiki practitioners use a technique called palm healing or hands-on healing through which, according to practitioners, a universal energy is transferred through the palms of the practitioner to the client, to encourage emotional or physical healing. It is based on qi (chi), which practitioners say is a universal life force, although there is no empirical evidence that such a life force exists.
Reiki is used as an illustrative example of pseudoscience in scholarly texts and academic journal articles. The marketing of reiki has been described as fraudulent misrepresentation, and itself as a nonsensical method, with a recommendation that the American government agency NCCAM should stop funding reiki research because it has no substantiated health value and lacks a scientifically plausible rationale.
Clinical research does not show reiki to be effective as a treatment for any medical condition, including cancer, diabetic neuropathy, anxiety or depression. There is no proof of the effectiveness of reiki therapy compared to placebo. Studies reporting positive effects have had methodological flaws.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the English alternative medicine word reiki comes from Japanese reiki (霊気) mysterious atmosphere, miraculous sign, combining rei universal and ki vital energy—the Sino-Japanese reading of Chinese língqì (靈氣) numinous atmosphere.
A session usually lasts for approximately one hour. A Level 1 practitioner places their hand or hands on or near various parts of the body for several minutes. During this time, a vital energy is meant to flow from the practitioner into the client's body. Level 2 practitioners alternatively may offer their services at a distance with no skin contact.
Mikao Usui originated the practice in Japan. According to the inscription on his memorial stone, Usui taught his system of reiki to more than 2,000 people during his lifetime. While teaching reiki in Fukuyama, Usui suffered a stroke and died on 9 March 1926.
The first reiki clinic in the United States was started in 1970 by Hawayo Takata, a student of Chujiro Hayashi, who was a disciple of Usui.
More information: AETW
Hawayo Hiromi Takata
.jpg)
Kalashnikov was, according to himself, a self-taught tinkerer who combined innate mechanical skills with the study of weaponry to design arms that achieved battlefield ubiquity. Even though Kalashnikov felt sorrow at the weapons' uncontrolled distribution, he took pride in his inventions and in their reputation for reliability, emphasizing that his rifle is a weapon of defense and not a weapon for offense.
Kalashnikov was born in the village of Kurya, in present-day Altai Krai, Russia, as the seventeenth child of the 19 children of Aleksandra Frolovna Kalashnikova (née Kaverina) and Timofey Aleksandrovich Kalashnikov, who were peasants.
In his youth, Mikhail suffered from various illnesses and was on the verge of death at age six. He was attracted to all kinds of machinery, but also wrote poetry, dreaming of becoming a poet. He later went on to write six books and continued to write poetry all of his life.
In 1930, his father and most of his family had their properties confiscated and were deported as kulaks to the village of Nizhnyaya Mokhovaya, Tomsk Oblast. After deportation, his family had to combine farming with hunting, and thus Mikhail frequently used his father's rifle in his teens. Kalashnikov continued hunting into his 90s.
After completing seventh grade, Mikhail, with his stepfather's permission, left his family and returned to Kurya, hiking for nearly 1,000 km. In Kurya, he found a job in mechanics at a tractor station. A party organizer embedded within the factory noticed the man's dexterity and issued him a directive (napravlenie) to work at a nearby weapons design bureau, where he was employed as a tester of fitted stocks in rifles.
In 1938, he was conscripted into the Red Army. Because of his engineering skills he was assigned as a tank mechanic, and later became a tank commander. While training, he made his first inventions, which concerned not only tanks, but also small weapons, and was personally awarded a wrist watch by Georgy Zhukov.
Kalashnikov served on the T-34s of the 24th Tank Regiment, 108th Tank Division stationed in Stryi before the regiment retreated after the Battle of Brody in June 1941. He was wounded in combat in the Battle of Bryansk in October 1941 and hospitalised until April 1942.
In the last few months of being in hospital, he overheard some fellow soldiers bemoaning their current rifles, which were plagued with reliability issues, such as jamming. As he continued to overhear the complaints that the Soviet soldiers had, as soon as he was discharged, he went to work on what would become the famous AK-47 assault rifle.
From 1949, Mikhail Kalashnikov lived and worked in Izhevsk, Udmurtia. He held a degree of Doctor of Technical Sciences (1971) and was a member of 16 academies.
Over the course of his career, he evolved the basic design into a weapons family. The AKM in Russian Автомат Кала́шникова Модернизированный, (Kalashnikov modernized assault rifle), first brought into service in 1959, was lighter and cheaper to manufacture, owing to the use of a stamped steel receiver in place of the AK-47's milled steel receiver and contained detail improvements such as a re-shaped stock and muzzle compensator. From the AKM, he developed a squad automatic weapon variant, known as the RPK, in Russian Ручной пулемет Кала́шникова (Kalashnikov light machine gun).
He also developed the general-purpose PK machine gun, in Russian Пулемет Кала́шникова, (Kalashnikov machine gun), which used the more powerful 7.62×54mmR cartridge of the Mosin-Nagant rifle. It is cartridge belt-fed, not magazine-fed, as it is intended to provide heavy sustained fire from a tripod mount, or be used as a light, bipod-mounted weapon. The common characteristics of all these weapons are their simple design, ruggedness and ease of maintenance in all operating conditions.
Approximately 100 million AK-47 assault rifles had been produced by 2009, and about half of them are counterfeit, manufactured at a rate of about a million per year. Izhmash, the official manufacturer of AK-47 in Russia, did not patent the weapon until 1997, and in 2006 accounted for only 10% of the world's production.
Kalashnikov stated that his motivation was always to serve his country, not to earn money.
Kalashnikov's grandson, Igor, ran a German company called Marken Marketing International. The company revamps trademarks and produces merchandise carrying the Kalashnikov name, such as vodka, umbrellas and knives. One of the items is a knife named for the AK-74.
During a visit to the United States in the early 2000s, Kalashnikov was invited to tour a Virginia holding site for the forthcoming American Wartime Museum. Kalashnikov, a former tank commander, became visibly moved at the sight of his old tank in action, painted with his name in Cyrillic.
After a prolonged illness, Kalashnikov was hospitalized on 17 November 2013, in an Udmurtian medical facility in Izhevsk, the capital of Udmurtia and where he lived. He died 23 December 2013, at age 94 from gastric hemorrhage.
In January 2014, a letter that Kalashnikov wrote six months before his death to the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, was published by the Russian daily newspaper Izvestia.
In the letter, he stated that he was suffering spiritual pain about whether he was responsible for the deaths caused by the weapons he created. Translated from the published letter he states, I keep having the same unsolved question: if my rifle claimed people's lives, then can it be that I... a Christian and an Orthodox believer, was to blame for their deaths?.
The patriarch wrote back, thanked Kalashnikov, and said that he was an example of patriotism and a correct attitude toward the country. Kirill added about the design responsibility for the deaths by the rifle, the church has a well-defined position when the weapon is defense of the Motherland, the Church supports its creators and the military, which use it.
He became one of the first people buried in the Federal Military Memorial Cemetery.
More information: The Engineer
Mikhail Kalashnikov
.jpg)
The asteroid is a member of the Phocaea family (701), a large family of stony S-type asteroids with nearly two thousand known members. It was an outer Mars-crossing asteroid with perihelion less than 1.666 AU until July 2017.
For comparison, asteroid 4222 Nancita will become a Mars-crosser in June 2019. (6454) 1991 UG1 was a Mars-crossing asteroid until January 2016.
Brucia has a synodic rotation period of 9.463 hours as of 1998. According to the survey carried out by the Infrared Astronomical Satellite, Brucia measures 35.82 kilometers in diameter and its surface has an albedo of 0.1765.
More information: In The Sky
Today, The Grandma has been practising one of her favourite hobbies, crosswords, and has remembered the first crossword puzzle, that was published in the New York World on a day like today in 1913.
Arthur Wynne (June 22, 1871-January 14, 1945) was the British-born inventor of the modern crossword puzzle.
Arthur Wynne was born on June 22, 1871, in Liverpool, England, and lived on Edge Lane for a time. His father was the editor of the local newspaper, the Liverpool Mercury. He emigrated to the United States on June 6, 1891, at the age of 19, settling for a time in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
While in Pittsburgh, Wynne worked on the Pittsburgh Press newspaper and played the violin in the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. He later moved to New York City and worked on the New York World newspaper. He is best known for the invention of the crossword puzzle in 1913, when he was a resident of Cedar Grove, New Jersey.
Wynne created the page of puzzles for the Fun section of the Sunday edition of the New York World.
For the December 21, 1913, edition, he introduced a puzzle with a diamond shape and a hollow center, with the letters F-U-N already being filled in. He called it a Word-Cross Puzzle.
Although Wynne's invention was based on earlier puzzle forms, such as the word diamond, he introduced a number of innovations. He subsequently pioneered the use of black squares in a symmetrical arrangement to separate words in rows and columns. With the exception of the numbering scheme, the form of Wynne's Word-Cross puzzles is that used for modern crosswords.
A few weeks after the first Word-Cross appeared, the name of the puzzle was changed to Cross-Word as a result of a typesetting error. Wynne's puzzles have been known as crosswords ever since.
Arthur Wynne became a naturalized US citizen in the 1920s. He died in Clearwater, Florida, on January 14, 1945.
On December 20, 2013, he was honoured with an interactive Google Doodle commemorating the 100th anniversary of the first crossword puzzle with a puzzle by Merl Reagle. Numerous other constructors also created tribute puzzles to Wynne to commemorate the anniversary.
A crossword or crossword puzzle is a word game consisting of a grid of black and white squares, into which solvers enter words or phrases (entries) crossing each other horizontally (across) and vertically (down) according to a set of clues. Each white square is typically filled with one letter, while the black squares are used to separate entries. The first white square in each entry is typically numbered to correspond to its clue.
Crosswords commonly appear in newspapers and magazines. The earliest crosswords that resemble their modern form were popularized by the New York World in the 1910s. Many variants of crosswords are popular around the world, including cryptic crosswords and many language-specific variants.
Crossword construction in modern times usually involves the use of software. Constructors choose a theme, except for themeless puzzles, place the theme answers in a grid which is usually symmetric, fill in the rest of the grid, and then write clues.
A person who constructs or solves crosswords is called a cruciverbalist. The word cruciverbalist appears to have been coined in the 1970s from the Latin roots crucis, meaning cross, and verbum, meaning word.
More information: Express
Amber Heard
.jpg)
Captain America's civilian identity is Steven "Steve" Rogers, a frail man enhanced to the peak of human physical perfection by an experimental super-soldier serum after joining the United States Army to aid the country's efforts in World War II. Equipped with an American flag–inspired costume and a virtually indestructible shield, Captain America and his sidekick Bucky Barnes clashed frequently with the villainous Red Skull and other members of the Axis powers.
In the final days of the war, an accident left Captain America frozen in a state of suspended animation until he was revived in modern times. He resumes his exploits as a costumed hero and becomes leader of the superhero team the Avengers, but frequently struggles as a man out of time to adjust to the new era.
The character quickly emerged as Timely's most popular and commercially successful wartime creation upon his original publication, though the popularity of superheroes declined in the post-war period and Captain America Comics was discontinued in 1950. The character saw a short-lived revival in 1953 before returning to comics in 1964, and has since remained in continuous publication.
Captain America's creation as an explicitly anti-Nazi figure was a deliberately political undertaking: Simon and Kirby were stridently opposed to the actions of Nazi Germany and supporters of U.S. intervention in World War II, with Simon conceiving of the character specifically in response to the American non-interventionism movement. Political messages have subsequently remained a defining feature of Captain America stories, with writers regularly using the character to comment on the state of American society and government.
Having appeared in more than ten thousand stories in more than five thousand media formats, Captain America is one of the most popular and recognized Marvel Comics characters, and has been described as an icon of American popular culture. Though Captain America was not the first United States -themed superhero, he would become the most popular and enduring of the many patriotic American superheroes created during World War II.
Captain America was the first Marvel character to appear in a medium outside of comic books, in the 1944 serial film Captain America; the character has subsequently appeared in a variety of films and other media, including the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where he was portrayed by actor Chris Evans from the character's first appearance in Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) to his final appearance in Avengers: Endgame (2019).
In 1940, Timely Comics publisher Martin Goodman responded to the growing popularity of superhero comics -particularly Superman at rival publisher National Comics Publications, the corporate predecessor to DC Comics -by hiring freelancer Joe Simon to create a new superhero for the company. Simon began to develop the character by determining who their nemesis could be, noting that the most successful superheroes were defined by their relationship with a compelling villain, and eventually settled on Adolf Hitler. He rationalized that Hitler was the best villain of them all as he was hated by everyone in the free world, and that it would be a unique approach for a superhero to face a real-life adversary rather than a fictional one.
Captain America Comics #1 was published on December 20, 1940, with a cover date of March 1941.
Simon wrote the first two issues of Captain America Comics before becoming the editor for the series; they were the only Captain America stories he would ever directly write.
Captain America made his ostensible return in the anthology Strange Tales #114 (November 1963), published by Atlas' corporate successor Marvel Comics. In an 18-page story written by Lee and illustrated by Kirby, Captain America reemerges following years of apparent retirement, though he is revealed as an impostor who is defeated by Human Torch of the Fantastic Four.
Captain America is one of the most popular and widely recognized Marvel Comics characters, and has been described as an icon of American popular culture. He is the most well-known and enduring of the United States-themed superheroes to emerge from the Second World War and inspired a proliferation of patriotic-themed superheroes in American comic books during the 1940s. This included the American Crusader, the Spirit of '76, Yank & Doodle, Captain Flag, and Captain Courageous, among numerous others.
Though none would achieve Captain America's commercial success, the volume of Captain America imitators was such that three months after the character's debut, Timely published a statement indicating that there is only one Captain America and warning that they would take legal action against publishers that infringed on the character.
After being dismissed from Timely, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby would themselves create a new patriotic superhero, the Fighting American, for Prize Comics in 1954; the character became the subject of a lawsuit from Marvel in the 1990s after Rob Liefeld attempted to revive the character following his own departure from Marvel.
More information: Get Comics
Marjane Satrapi
.jpg)
The mine was operated by the Pittsburgh Coal Company. It was located on the west side of the Youghiogheny River and along the route of the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad. Most of the miners and other mine laborers lived in the nearby community of Jacobs Creek and took a sky ferry (aerial tramway) across the Youghiogheny River to the mine entrance. Others lived in nearby Van Meter.
An inquiry carried out after the disaster determined that the blast was the result of miners carrying open lamps in an area cordoned off the previous day by the fire boss. The mine's owner, the Pittsburgh Coal Company was not held responsible, but did abandon the use of open lamps after the disaster.
The Darr Mine blast was the third major mine disaster in December 1907, which would become the deadliest mine fatality month in US history; it followed Yolande mine in Alabama explosion on December 16, the Monongah Mining disaster in West Virginia on December 6 that killed 362 miners and the Naomi Mine explosion on December 1 that killed thirty-four people in Fayette City, Pennsylvania.
More information: Clio
Tim Murphy
.jpg)
Pitt first gained recognition as a cowboy hitchhiker in the Ridley Scott road film Thelma & Louise (1991). Pitt emerged as a star taking on leading man roles in films such as the drama A River Runs Through It (1992), the western Legends of the Fall (1994), the horror film Interview with the Vampire (1994), and the crime thriller Seven (1995).
Pitt found greater commercial success starring in Steven Soderbergh's heist film Ocean's Eleven (2001), and reprised his role in its sequels. He cemented his leading man status starring in blockbusters such as the historical epic Troy (2004), the romantic crime film Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), the horror film World War Z (2013), and the action film Bullet Train (2022).
Pitt won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for playing a stuntman in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019). He was Oscar-nominated for his roles in the science fiction drama 12 Monkeys (1995), the fantasy romance The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) and the sports drama Moneyball (2011).
He also starred in acclaimed films such as Fight Club (1999), Babel (2006), The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007), Burn After Reading (2008), Inglourious Basterds (2009), The Tree of Life (2011), and The Big Short (2015).
In 2001, Pitt co-founded the production company Plan B Entertainment. As a producer he won the Academy Award for Best Picture for 12 Years a Slave (2013) and was nominated for Moneyball (2011) and The Big Short (2015). Pitt was named People's Sexiest Man Alive in 1995 and 2000.
William Bradley Pitt was born on December 18, 1963, in Shawnee, Oklahoma, to William Alvin Pitt, the proprietor of a trucking company, and Jane Etta (née Hillhouse), a school counselor.
More information: GQ
Brad Pitt
