1906, THE ROYAL GALICIAN ACADEMY STARTS WORKING

Today, The Grandma has visited The Royal Galician Academy in A Coruña to commemorate the anniversary of an institution that was born on a day like today in 1906.

The Royal Galician Academy, in Galician Real Academia Galega, RAG, is an institution dedicated to the study of Galician culture and especially the Galician language; it promulgates norms of grammar, spelling, and vocabulary and works to promote the language. The Academy is based in A Coruña, Galicia.

In 1905, the Sociedade Protectora da Academia Gallega was founded in La Habana, Cuba. Then on September 30, 1906, thanks to the efforts of writers Manuel Curros Enríquez and Xosé Fontenla Leal, it was reestablished as the Real Academia Galega. Manuel Murguía was its first president.

In 1972, the Academy standardized the design of the coat of arms of the Kingdom of Galicia. 

Some years later, the Academy persuaded the Galician government to commemorate the old coat of arms by superimposing it on the existing civil flag; the resulting flag is used today. Its terminological branch is Termigal.

More information: Real Academia Galega (Galician Verion)

Galician, also known as Galego, is a Western Ibero-Romance language. 

Around 2.4 million people have at least some degree of competence in the language, mainly in Galicia. 

The language is also spoken in some border zones of the neighbouring regions of Asturias and Castile and León, as well as by Galician migrant communities.

Modern Galician is part of the West Iberian languages group, a family of Romance languages that includes the Portuguese language.  

Galician evolved locally from Vulgar Latin and developed, by the 13th century, into what modern scholars have called Galician-Portuguese. 

The earliest document written integrally in the local Galician variety dates back to 1230, although the subjacent Romance permeates most written Latin local charters since the High Middle Ages, being specially noteworthy in personal and place names recorded in those documents, as well as in terms originated in languages other than Latin. 

More information: O Portal da Lingua Galega

The earliest reference to Galician-Portuguese as an international language of culture dates to 1290, in the Regles de Trobar by Catalan author Jofre de Foixà, where it is simply called Galician (galego).

Dialectal divergences are observable between the northern and southern forms of Galician-Portuguese in 13th-century texts but the two dialects were similar enough to maintain a high level of cultural unity until the middle of the 14th century, producing the medieval Galician-Portuguese lyric. The divergence has continued to this day, most frequently due to innovations in Portuguese, producing the modern languages of Galician and Portuguese.

The lexicon of Galician is predominantly of Latin extraction, although it also contains a moderate number of words of Germanic and Celtic origin, among other substrates and adstrates, having also received, mainly via Spanish, a number of nouns from Andalusian Arabic.

The language is officially regulated in Galicia by the Royal Galician Academy. 

Other organizations without institutional support, such as the Galician Association of Language and the Galician Academy of the Portuguese Language, include Galician as part of the Portuguese language.

More information: Google Arts & Culture

Porque a verdadeira tradición non emana do pasado,
nin está no presente, nin no porvenir;
non é servinte do tempo.
A tradición non é a historia.
A tradición é a eternidade.

Because true tradition does not emanate from the past,
nor is it in the present, nor in the future;
You are not a servant of time.
Tradition is not history.
Tradition is eternity.

Alfonso Rodríguez Castelao

THE WORLD’S 1ST PRACTICAL PUBLIC ELECTRIC TRAMWAY

Today, The Grandma has been reading about the Blackpool Tramway, one of the oldest electric tramways in the world, that was opened in Blackpool, England on a day like today in 1885.

The Blackpool Tramway runs from Blackpool to Fleetwood on the Fylde Coast in Lancashire, England. 

The line dates back to 1885 and is one of the oldest electric tramways in the world. It is operated by Blackpool Transport (BT) and runs for 18 km. It carried 4.8 million passengers in 2019/20.

It is the second-oldest electric tramway in the United Kingdom, the first being Volk's Electric Railway in Brighton, which opened two years earlier and similarly runs on a reserved track along the seafront. These are also the two surviving first-generation town tramways in the UK, though the majority of services on the line have since 2012 been operated by a fleet of modern Bombardier Flexity 2 trams. 

A heritage service using the traditional trams operates year-round on weekends, certain weekdays and bank holidays, as well as during the Blackpool Illuminations. Excluding museums, it is one of only a few tramways in the world to still use double-deck trams, the others including the Hong Kong Tramways and the Trams in Alexandria, Egypt.

The first part opened on 29 September 1885, a conduit line from Cocker Street to Dean Street on Blackpool Promenade.

It was one of the first practical electric tramways in the world, just six years after Werner von Siemens first demonstrated electric traction. The inauguration was presided over by Holroyd Smith, the inventor of the system and Alderman Harwood, the Mayor of Manchester.

It was operated by the Blackpool Electric Tramway Company until 1892, when its lease expired and Blackpool Corporation took over. A line was added in 1895 from Manchester Square along Lytham Road to South Shore, extended to South Pier with a line on Station Road connecting Lytham Road to the promenade in 1897.

More information: Blackpool Transport

Conduit operation, in which trams took electricity from a conduit below and between the tracks, though very successful in locations such as town or city centres, proved to be very problematic on a line so close to the coast. 

During bad weather, sea water washed over the track and into the conduit where it short circuited the traction supply and operated the circuit breakers in the power station. Sand from the beaches was blown across the tracks and filled up the conduits. It was constantly necessary to remove this sand, as the addition of sea water would leave the conduits filled with wet sand which short circuited the supply. 

Another problem was that electrical resistance was greater than anticipated and the voltage in portions of the conduit was far less than that generated at Blundell Street -230 V dropped to 210 V at the junction with the main line on the Promenade, 185 V at Cocker Street and 168 V at South Pier, then Victoria Pier.

In 1899, 550 V overhead wiring was installed and the conduit removed. In 1900, the line was extended north to Gynn Square where it linked up with the Blackpool and Fleetwood Tramroad. 

In 1901, the Marton loop was opened, connecting Talbot Square and Central Station along Church Street, Devonshire Square, Whitegate Drive, Waterloo Road and Central Drive. A new depot was built on Whitegate Drive in Marton. A line was added from Talbot Square along Talbot Road to Layton in 1902. By 1903, the promenade line had reached the Pleasure Beach.

More information: Blackpool Heritage

Each year the Fleetwood Transport Festival, known locally as Tram Sunday, is held on the third Sunday in July. It celebrated its 21st anniversary in 2005. It attracts thousands of visitors, and takes place on the full length of the main street, Lord Street. There are vintage tram rides from Fishermans Walk to Thornton Gate.

In 2007, the festival, despite its popularity, was nearly cancelled due to a lack of support organising the day. A last-minute appeal for help resulted in the festival being saved.

Tickets are purchased from the conductor on board, with daily, three-day, seven-day and monthly 'saver' tickets also available, which can be used on trams (excluding heritage trams) and Blackpool Transport buses.

Heritage tram tickets are available for a round trip tour between Pleasure Beach and Cabin. Family day tickets are also available, one adult and four children, or two adults and three children. In addition to heritage tours, heritage day tickets can also be used on all Blackpool Transport trams and buses as well as autumn illumination tours.

National Rail tickets to Blackpool stations with a Plusbus add-on includes unlimited tram travel between Thornton Gate and Starr Gate.

More information: Live Blackpool

 Travel is a new experience that can transport you
out of your everyday routine
to create memories with the ones you love.

Brian Chesky

BENJAMIN EARL NELSON, 'SAVE THE LAST DANCE FOR ME'

Today, The Grandma has been listening to some music. She has chosen Ben E.King's songs, the American singer, who was born on a day like today in 1938.

Benjamin Earl King (September 28, 1938-April 30, 2015) was an American soul and R&B singer and record producer. 

He is best known as the singer and co-composer of Stand by Me -U.S. Top 10 hit, both in 1961 and later in 1986 (when it was used as the theme to the film of the same name), a number one hit in the United Kingdom in 1987, and number 25 on the RIAA's list of Songs of the Century- and as one of the principal lead singers of the R&B vocal group The Drifters, notably singing the lead vocals of one of their biggest global hit singles (and only U.S. No. 1 hit), Save the Last Dance for Me.

Besides Stand By Me, his songs There Goes My Baby and Spanish Harlem also appeared on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's list of 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll.

More information: Ben E. King

Ben E. King was born Benjamin Earl Nelson on September 28, 1938, in Henderson, North Carolina, and moved to Harlem, New York, at the age of nine in 1947. 

King began singing in church choirs, and in high school formed the Four B's, a doo-wop group that occasionally performed at the Apollo Theater.

In 1958, King (still using his birth name) joined a doo-wop group called the Five Crowns. Later that year, the Drifters' manager George Treadwell fired the members of the original Drifters, and replaced them with the members of the Five Crowns.

King had a string of R&B hits with the group on Atlantic Records. He co-wrote and sang lead on the first Atlantic hit by the new version of the Drifters, There Goes My Baby (1959). He sang lead on a succession of hits by the team of Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, including Save the Last Dance for Me, This Magic Moment, and I Count the Tears. 

King recorded only thirteen songs with the Drifters -two backing other lead singers and eleven lead vocal performances- including an unreleased song called Temptation (later redone by Drifters vocalist Johnny Moore). The last of the King-led Drifters singles to be released was Sometimes I Wonder, which was recorded May 19, 1960, but not issued until June 1962.

In May 1960, King left the Drifters, assuming the stage name Ben E. King in preparation for a solo career. Remaining with Atlantic Records on its Atco imprint, King scored his first solo hit with the ballad Spanish Harlem (1961).

His next single, Stand by Me, written with Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, ultimately would be voted as one of the Songs of the Century by the Recording Industry Association of America. King cited singers Brook Benton, Roy Hamilton and Sam Cooke as influences for his vocals of the song.

Stand by Me, There Goes My Baby, Spanish Harlem, and Save the Last Dance for Me were all named in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll; and each of those records has earned a Grammy Hall of Fame Award. 

King's other well-known songs include Don't Play That Song (You Lied), Amor, Seven Letters, How Can I Forget, On the Horizon, Young Boy Blues, First Taste of Love, Here Comes the Night, Ecstasy, and That's When It Hurts. 

In the summer of 1963, King had a Top 30 hit with I (Who Have Nothing), which reached the Top 10 on New York's radio station, WMCA.

More information: Soul Music

King's records continued to place well on the Billboard Hot 100 chart until 1965. British pop bands began to dominate the pop music scene, but King still continued to make R&B hits. Some of these hits include What is Soul?, Tears, Tears, Tears, So Much Love, and Til I Can't Take It Anymore. 

In 1975, King made a comeback on the top 40 Billboard Hot 100 chart with the Disco hit Supernatural Thing. Supernatural Thing peaked at number 5 on Billboard Hot 100 and peaked at number 1 on the Billboard R&B Charts. It was also nominated for a Grammy at the 18th Annual Grammy Awards in 1975 for best R&B vocal performance, male. 

In 1977, King collaborated with Average White Band in releasing the album Benny & Us. The album spawned two top 40 R&B hits, A Star in the Ghetto and Get It Up.

King returned to the Drifters in late 1982 in the United Kingdom, and sang with them until the group's break-up and reorganization in 1986. From 1983 until the band's break-up, the other members of this incarnation of the Drifters were Johnny Moore, Joe Blunt, and Clyde Brown.

He was inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame in 2009.

On March 27, 2012, the Songwriters Hall of Fame announced that Stand By Me would receive its 2012 Towering Song Award and that King would be honored with the 2012 Towering Performance Award for his recording of the song.

King was active in his charitable foundation, the Stand By Me Foundation, which helps to provide education to deserving youths. He was a resident of Teaneck, New Jersey, from the late 1960s onwards.

King toured the United Kingdom in 2013 and played concerts in the United States as late as 2014, despite reported health problems.

Following a brief illness, he died at Hackensack University Medical Center on April 30, 2015, at the age of 76.

More information: Min-On Concert Association

 In my vocal, I think you can hear something
of my earlier times when I'd sing in subway halls
for the echo and perform doo-wop on street corners.
But I had a lot of influences, too
-singers like Sam Cooke, Brook Benton and Roy Hamilton.

Ben E. King

DAWN, STUDYING THE PROTOPLANETS VESTA & CERES

Today, The Grandma has received the wonderful visit of Joseph de Ca'th Lon, one of her best friends. 

 

Joseph loves Astronomy and they have been talking about Dawn, the spacecraft that was launched by NASA on a day like today in 2007.

Dawn is a retired space probe that was launched by NASA in September 2007 with the mission of studying two of the three known protoplanets of the asteroid belt: Vesta and Ceres. 

In the fulfillment of that mission -the ninth in NASA's Discovery Program- Dawn entered orbit around Vesta on July 16, 2011, and completed a 14-month survey mission before leaving for Ceres in late 2012. It entered orbit around Ceres on March 6, 2015. 

In 2017, NASA announced that the planned nine-year mission would be extended until the probe's hydrazine fuel supply was depleted.

On November 1, 2018, NASA announced that Dawn had depleted its hydrazine, and the mission was ended. The spacecraft is currently in a derelict, but stable, orbit around Ceres.

Dawn is the first spacecraft to orbit two extraterrestrial bodies, the first spacecraft to visit either Vesta or Ceres, and the first to orbit a dwarf planet.

The Dawn mission was managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, with spacecraft components contributed by European partners from Italy, Germany, France, and the Netherlands.

More information: NASA

It was the first NASA exploratory mission to use ion propulsion, which enabled it to enter and leave the orbit of two celestial bodies. Previous multi-target missions using rockets powered by chemical engine, such as the Voyager program, were restricted to flybys.

The first working ion thruster in the US was built by Harold R. Kaufman in 1959 at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Ohio. The thruster was similar to the general design of a gridded electrostatic ion thruster with mercury as its propellant. Suborbital tests of the engine followed during the 1960s, and in 1964 the engine was tested on a suborbital flight aboard the Space Electric Rocket Test 1 (SERT 1). It successfully operated for the planned 31 minutes before falling back to Earth. This test was followed by an orbital test, SERT-2, in 1970.

Deep Space 1 (DS1), which NASA launched in 1998, demonstrated the long-duration use of a xenon-propelled ion thruster on a science mission, and validated a number of technologies, including the NSTAR electrostatic ion thruster, as well as performing a flyby of an asteroid and a comet. In addition to the ion thruster, among the other technologies validated by the DS1 was the Small Deep Space Transponder, which is used on Dawn for long-range communication.

The Dawn mission was designed to study two large bodies in the asteroid belt in order to answer questions about the formation of the Solar System, as well as to test the performance of its ion thrusters in deep space. 

Ceres and Vesta were chosen as two contrasting protoplanets, the first one apparently "wet" and the other "dry", whose accretion was terminated by the formation of Jupiter. The two bodies provide a bridge in scientific understanding between the formation of rocky planets and the icy bodies of the Solar System, and under what conditions a rocky planet can hold water.

More information: NASA-Jet Propulsion Laboratory

The Dawn mission's goal was to characterize the conditions and processes of the Solar System's earliest eon by investigating in detail two of the largest protoplanets remaining intact since their formation.

Although the mission has finished, the data analyses and interpretations will continue for many years. The primary question that the mission addresses is the role of size and water in determining the evolution of the planets.

Ceres and Vesta are highly suitable bodies with which to address this question, as they are two of the most massive of the protoplanets. Ceres is geologically very primitive and icy, while Vesta is evolved and rocky. Their contrasting characteristics are thought to have resulted from them forming in two different regions of the early Solar System.

There are three principal scientific drivers for the mission. First, the Dawn mission can capture the earliest moments in the origin of the Solar System, granting an insight into the conditions under which these objects formed. Second, Dawn determines the nature of the building blocks from which the terrestrial planets formed, improving scientific understanding of this formation. 

Finally, it contrasts the formation and evolution of two small planets that followed very different evolutionary paths, allowing scientists to determine what factors control that evolution.

More information: NASA

 NASA wanted to assure its ability to examine
the spacecraft in orbit for signs of damage.

Marc Garneau

ROBERT ALLEN PALMER, HE WAS 'SIMPLY IRRESISTIBLE'

Today, The Grandma has been listening to some music. She has chosen Robert Palmer's songs, the English singer, who died on a day like today in 2003.

Robert Allen Palmer (19 January 1949-26 September 2003) was an English musician, record producer and singer-songwriter.

He was known for his powerful, distinctive, gritty, soulful voice and sartorial elegance, and for combining soul, funk, jazz, rock, pop, reggae, and blues.

Palmer's involvement in the music industry began in the 1960s and included a spell with the band Vinegar Joe. He found success both in his solo career and with the Power Station, and had Top 10 songs in the United Kingdom and the United States in the 1980s. Three of his hit singles, I Didn't Mean to Turn You On, Addicted to Love and Simply Irresistible, were accompanied by music videos directed by British fashion photographer Terence Donovan.

Palmer received a number of awards throughout his career, including two Grammy Awards for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance and an MTV Video Music Award. He was nominated by the Brit Award for Best British Male Solo Artist. He died at age 54, following a heart attack on 26 September 2003.

More information: Robert Palmer

Robert Palmer was born in 1949 in Batley, Yorkshire. When he was only a few months old, he moved with his family to Malta, where his father worked in British naval intelligence. He was influenced as a child by blues, soul, and jazz music on American Forces Radio and by his parents' musical tastes.

Island Records signed Palmer to a solo deal in 1974. His first solo album, Sneakin' Sally Through the Alley, recorded in 1974 in New Orleans, Louisiana, was heavily influenced by the music of Little Feat and the funk fusion of the Meters, who acted as the backing band along with producer/guitarist Lowell George of Little Feat. Unsuccessful in the UK, both the album and single reached the top 100 in the US. Notably, Sailin' Shoes (the album's first track, and a Little Feat cover), Palmer's own Hey Julia, and the Allen Toussaint-penned title track carry virtually the same rhythm, and were packaged on the album as a trilogy without a pause between them.

Palmer died from a heart attack in a Paris hotel room on 26 September 2003 at age 54. He had been in the French capital after recording a television appearance in London for Yorkshire TV, a retrospective titled My Kinda People. His long-term partner, Mary Ambrose, was not with him at his death. Among those who paid tribute were Duran Duran, stating: He was a very dear friend and a great artist. This is a tragic loss to the British music industry. He was buried in Lugano, Switzerland.

More information: Medium

 Trying to describe something musical
is like dancing to architecture, it's really difficult.

Robert Palmer

MARK RICHARD HAMILL, THE ETERNAL LUKE SKYWALKER

Today, The Grandma has been reading about Mark Hamill, the American actor and writer, who was born on a day like today in 1951.

Mark Richard Hamill (born September 25, 1951) is an American actor and writer.

He is known for his role as Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars film series, beginning with the original 1977 film and subsequently winning three Saturn Awards for his performances in The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Return of the Jedi (1983), and The Last Jedi (2017). His other film appearances include Corvette Summer (1978) and The Big Red One (1980). Hamill has also appeared on stage in several theater productions, primarily during the 1980s.

He is a prolific voice actor who has portrayed characters in numerous animated television series, films and video games. Hamill is known for his long-standing role as the Joker in various DC Comics projects, commencing with Batman: The Animated Series (1992-1994). He has also voiced the Hobgoblin in Spider-Man (1994-1998), Fire Lord Ozai in Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005–2008), and Skips in Regular Show (2010-2017).

Mark Richard Hamill was born on September 25, 1951, in Oakland, California, to Virginia Suzanne and William Thomas Hamill, a U.S. Navy Captain. He is one of seven children, having two brothers, Will and Patrick, and four sisters, Terry, Jan, Jeanie, and Kim. His father has English, Scottish, Irish, and Welsh ancestry and his mother was of half Swedish and half English descent.

His father's changes of station and attendant family moves led to the Hamill children switching schools often. In his elementary years, he went to Walsingham Academy in Williamsburg, Virginia, and Edgar Allan Poe Middle School in Annandale, Virginia.

At age 11, he moved to the 5900 block of Castleton Drive in San Diego, California, where he attended Hale Junior High School. During his first year at James Madison High School in San Diego, his family moved back to Virginia, and Hamill attended Annandale High School. By his junior year, his father was stationed in Japan, where Hamill attended and was a member of the Drama Club at Nile C. Kinnick High School, from which he graduated in 1969. He later enrolled at Los Angeles City College, majoring in drama.

More information: Twitter-Mark Hamill

Hamill's early career included a recurring role on the soap opera General Hospital, and a starring role on the short-lived sitcom The Texas Wheelers. He portrayed the oldest son, David, in the pilot episode of Eight Is Enough, though the role was later performed by Grant Goodeve. He also had guest appearances on The Bill Cosby Show, The Partridge Family, Room 222 and One Day at a Time. He appeared in multiple television films such as The City, and Sarah T. Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic.

Robert Englund was auditioning for a role in Apocalypse Now when he walked across the hall where auditions were taking place for George Lucas's Star Wars. After watching the auditions for a while, he realized that Hamill, his friend, would be perfect for the role of Luke Skywalker. He suggested to Hamill that he audition for the role; as it turned out, Hamill's agent had already set up the audition that gave him the role.

Released in May 1977, Star Wars was an enormous, unexpected success and had a huge effect on the film industry. 

Hamill also appeared in the less-than-successful Star Wars Holiday Special in 1978 and later starred in the successful sequels The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. During the time between the first two films, Hamill was involved in a serious automobile accident, fracturing his nose and left cheekbone. False rumors spread that he required plastic surgery on his face. For both of the sequels, Hamill was honored with the Saturn Award for Best Actor given by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films.

Hamill reprised the role of Luke Skywalker for the radio dramatizations of both Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. For the Return of the Jedi radio drama, the role was played by a different actor.

After the success of Star Wars, Hamill found that audiences identified him very closely with the role of Luke Skywalker, after which he became a teen idol and appeared on teen magazine covers such as Tiger Beat and others.

More information: Star Wars

Acting in 'Star Wars' I felt like a raisin in a giant fruit salad,
and I didn't even know who the cantaloupes were.

Mark Hamill

'LA MARE DE DÉU DE LA MERCÈ', PATRON OF BARCELONA

Today is an important day in Barcelona. The city celebrates one of its three patrons, and The Grandma wants to share this event with everybody.

La Mercè is the annual festival, in Catalan festa major, of the city of Barcelona in Catalonia.

It has been an official city holiday since 1871, when the local government first organized a program of special activities to observe the Roman Catholic feast day of Our Lady of Mercy, La Mare de Déu de la Mercè in Catalan. Although the actual feast day is September 24, the festivities begin a few days beforehand. Some of the most important features of the festival were introduced in the year 1902, when parades included papier maché giants known as gegants i capgrossos and a popular dance from Empordà that was becoming popular throughout Catalonia: the Sardana. The holiday has enjoyed immense local popularity ever since.

Among more recently introduced traditions are the annual Catalan Wine Fair, a special correfoc, a 10 km race and the pyro-musical, a display featuring synchronized fireworks, water fountains and music conducted at the base of the Montjuïc mountain.

The celebration of La Mercè has religious origins, honoring the Virgin of Grace (Mare de Déu de la Mercè), patron saint of the archdiocese of Barcelona, and co-patroness -along with Saint Eulàlia and Santa Madrona- of the city.

In Catalan, the word mercè has meanings related to service, help, a sense of compassion, and loving mercy. In the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona, there is a basilica dedicated to the Virgin, where a wooden image of her is venerated.

More information: Granda

The festival has been celebrated since the Middle Ages. When in 1687 Barcelona suffered a plague of locusts, the Consell de Cent, which then governed the city, voted to ask the Virgin for assistance with their fight against the insects. When the city was delivered from the pestilence, she was named patroness of the city of Barcelona -although this was only recognized by the Pope in 1868. Since that time, an annual festival has been celebrated in the city in honor of the Virgin.

During the week-long festival, close to two million people attend cultural and artistic presentations held throughout the city. The most traditional activities of the festival are based in the popular culture of Catalonia. Especially noteworthy are the street parades, originating from the spectacular processions which took place centuries ago for the celebration of Corpus Christi. Each day of the festival is celebrated with its own parade filled with mythical characters and traditional drumming.

There are about 600 events spread throughout the plazas, streets, museums, and parks. All entertainment is free. Street theater is a distinct element of the artistic events. Dance, circus, bands, fringe, and touring shows make up the bulk of the events. In order to bring Barcelona's people closer to different cultures, each year, through the Guest City program, another city from elsewhere in the world is invited to present its culture and artists.

Castellers are human towers and a prominent part of La Mercè. Castells, Catalan for castles, are a cultural phenomenon particular to Catalonia and consist of erecting human towers. This tradition originated at the end of the 18th century in Valls, when rival groups of people called colles began to compete in constructing the different kinds of human towers.

More information: Barcelona

 Popular culture is one of the sites
where this struggle for and against a culture
of the powerful is engaged: it is also the stake
to be won or lost in that struggle.
It is the arena of consent and resistance.

Stuart Hall

NEPTUNE IS DISCOVERED AT THE BERLIN OBSERVATORY

Today, The Grandma has received the wonderful visit of Joseph de Ca'th Lon, one of her best friends. 

 

Joseph loves Astronomy and they have been talking about Neptune, the planet that was discovered on a day like today in 1846.

Neptune is the eighth planet from the Sun and the farthest known solar planet. In the Solar System, it is the fourth-largest planet by diameter, the third-most-massive planet, and the densest giant planet. It is 17 times the mass of Earth, and slightly more massive than its near-twin Uranus. 

Neptune is denser and physically smaller than Uranus because its greater mass causes more gravitational compression of its atmosphere. It is referred to as one of the solar system's two ice giant planets, the other one being Uranus.

Being composed primarily of gases and liquids, it has no well-defined solid surface. The planet orbits the Sun once every 164.8 years at an average distance of 30.1 AU (4.5 billion km; 2.8 billion mi). It is named after the Roman god of the sea and has the astronomical symbol ♆, representing Neptune's trident.

Neptune is not visible to the unaided eye and is the only planet in the Solar System found by mathematical prediction rather than by empirical observation. Unexpected changes in the orbit of Uranus led Alexis Bouvard to hypothesise that its orbit was subject to gravitational perturbation by an unknown planet. After Bouvard's death, the position of Neptune was predicted from his observations, independently, by John Couch Adams and Urbain Le Verrier.

More information: NASA

Neptune was subsequently observed with a telescope on 23 September 1846 by Johann Galle within a degree of the position predicted by Le Verrier. Its largest moon, Triton, was discovered shortly thereafter, though none of the planet's remaining 13 known moons were located telescopically until the 20th century.

The planet's distance from Earth gives it a very small apparent size, making it challenging to study with Earth-based telescopes.  

Neptune was visited by Voyager 2, when it flew by the planet on 25 August 1989; Voyager 2 remains the only spacecraft to have visited Neptune. The advent of the Hubble Space Telescope and large ground-based telescopes with adaptive optics has recently allowed for additional detailed observations from afar.

Like Jupiter and Saturn, Neptune's atmosphere is composed primarily of hydrogen and helium, along with traces of hydrocarbons and possibly nitrogen, though it contains a higher proportion of ices such as water, ammonia and methane. However, similar to Uranus, its interior is primarily composed of ices and rock; Uranus and Neptune are normally considered ice giants to emphasise this distinction.

Along with Rayleigh scattering, traces of methane in the outermost regions in part account for the planet's blue appearance. Newest data from the Gemini observatory shows the blue color is more saturated than the one present on Uranus due to thinner haze of Neptune's more active atmosphere.

In contrast to the hazy, relatively featureless atmosphere of Uranus, Neptune's atmosphere has active and visible weather patterns. For example, at the time of the Voyager 2 flyby in 1989, the planet's southern hemisphere had a Great Dark Spot comparable to the Great Red Spot on Jupiter. More recently, in 2018, a newer main dark spot and smaller dark spot were identified and studied.

In addition, these weather patterns are driven by the strongest sustained winds of any planet in the Solar System, with recorded wind speeds as high as 2,100 km/h. Because of its great distance from the Sun, Neptune's outer atmosphere is one of the coldest places in the Solar System, with temperatures at its cloud tops approaching −218 °C. Temperatures at the planet's centre are approximately 5,100 °C.

Neptune has a faint and fragmented ring system (labelled "arcs"), which was discovered in 1984, then later confirmed by Voyager 2.

More information: NASA

 What I want to look at with Webb is
what we call ice giants in our solar system
-the planets Neptune and Uranus.

Heidi Hammel

MARCEL MARCEAU, THE MIME ARTIST & 'BIP THE CLOWN'

Today, The Grandma has been reading about Marcel Marceau, the French actor and mime artist, who died on a day like today in 2007.

Marcel Marceau (born Marcel Mangel; 22 March 1923-22 September 2007) was a French actor and mime artist most famous for his stage persona, Bip the Clown.

He referred to mime as the art of silence, and he performed professionally worldwide for over 60 years. As a Jewish youth, he lived in hiding and worked with the French Resistance during most of World War II, giving his first major performance to 3,000 troops after the liberation of Paris in August.  Following the war, he studied dramatic art and mime in Paris.

In 1959, he established his own pantomime school in Paris, and he subsequently set up the Marceau Foundation to promote the art in the U.S. Among his various awards and honors, he was made Grand Officier de la Légion d'Honneur (1998) and was awarded the National Order of Merit (1998) in France.

He won the Emmy Award for his work on television, was elected member of the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin, and was declared a National treasure in Japan. He had a 20-year friendship with Michael Jackson, who said he used some of Marceau's techniques in his own dance steps.

More information: Smithsonian Magazine

Marcel Marceau was born in Strasbourg, France, to a Jewish family. His father, Charles Mangel, was a kosher butcher originally from Będzin, Poland. His mother, Anne Werzberg, came from Yabluniv, present-day Ukraine. Through his mother's family, he was a cousin of Israeli singer Yardena Arazi. When Marcel was four years old, the family moved to Lille, but they later returned to Strasbourg.

After France's invasion by Nazi Germany, Marcel, 17, fled with his family to Limoges. His cousin Georges Loinger, one of the members of the French Jewish Resistance in France (Organisation Juive de Combat-OJC, aka Armée Juive), urged him to join the French Jewish Resistance in France in the rescue of Jews during the Holocaust. The OJC, which was composed of nine clandestine Jewish networks, rescued thousands of children and adults during the Holocaust in France.

Marceau joined Jean-Louis Barrault's company and was soon cast in the role of Arlequin in the pantomime, Baptiste (which Barrault had interpreted in the film Les Enfants du Paradis). 

Marceau's performance won him such acclaim that he was encouraged to present his first mimodrama, Praxitele and the Golden Fish, at the Bernhardt Theatre that same year. The acclaim was unanimous and Marceau's career as a mime was firmly established.

In 1947, Marceau created Bip the Clown, whom he first played at the Théâtre de Poche (Pocket Theatre) in Paris. In his appearance he wore a striped pullover and a battered, be-flowered silk opera hat. The outfit signified life's fragility and Bip became his alter ego, just as the Little Tramp had become Charlie Chaplin's.

Bip's misadventures with everything from butterflies to lions, from ships and trains to dancehalls and restaurants, were limitless. As a stylist of pantomime, Marceau was acknowledged without peer. Marceau, during a televised talk with Todd Farley, expresses his respect for the mime techniques that Charlie Chaplin used in his films, noting that Chaplin seemed to be the only silent film actor who used mime.

More information: History

His silent mimed exercises, which included The Cage, Walking Against the Wind, The Mask Maker, and In The Park, all became classic displays. Satires on everything from sculptors to matadors were described as works of genius.

Of his summation of the ages of man in the famous Youth, Maturity, Old Age and Death, one critic said: He accomplishes in less than two minutes what most novelists cannot do in volumes. During an interview with CBS in 1987, Marceau tried to explain some of his inner feelings while creating mime, calling it the art of silence.

Marceau performed all over the world in order to spread the art of silence (L'art du silence).

Marceau died in a retirement home in Cahors, France, on 22 September 2007 at the age of 84. At his burial ceremony, the second movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21 (which Marceau long used as an accompaniment for an elegant mime routine) was played, as was the sarabande of Bach's Cello Suite No. 5.

Marceau was interred at the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

More information: John Cabot University

Mime is an art beyond words. It is the art of the essential.
And you cannot lie. You have to show the truth.

Marcel Marceau

THE 1938 NEW ENGLAND & LONG ISLAND HURRICANE

Today, The Grandma has been reading about the New England Hurricane, a terrible tropical cyclon that struke Long Island, New York, and New England on a day like today in 1938.

The 1938 New England Hurricane (also referred to as the Great New England Hurricane and the Long Island Express Hurricane) was one of the deadliest and most destructive tropical cyclones to strike Long Island, New York, and New England.

The storm formed near the coast of Africa on September 9, becoming a Category 5 hurricane on the Saffir–Simpson hurricane scale, before making landfall as a Category 3 hurricane on Long Island on Wednesday, September 21. It is estimated that the hurricane killed 682 people, damaged or destroyed more than 57,000 homes, and caused property losses estimated at $306 million ($4.7 billion in 2017).

Multiple other sources, however, mention that the 1938 hurricane might have really been a more powerful Category 4, having winds similar to Hurricanes Hugo, Harvey, Frederic and Gracie when it ran through Long Island and New England. Also, numerous others estimate the real damage between $347 million and almost $410 million. 

Damaged trees and buildings were still seen in the affected areas as late as 1951. It remains the most powerful and deadliest hurricane in recorded New England history, perhaps eclipsed in landfall intensity only by the Great Colonial Hurricane of 1635.

More information: Hurricanes Science 

At the time, roughly half of the 1938 New England hurricane's existence went unnoticed. The Atlantic hurricane reanalysis in 2012 concluded that the storm developed into a tropical depression on September 9 off the coast of West Africa, but the United States Weather Bureau was unaware that a tropical cyclone existed until September 16; by then, it was already a well-developed hurricane and had tracked westward toward the Sargasso Sea.

It reached hurricane strength on September 15 and continued to strengthen to a peak intensity of 260 km/h near The Bahamas four days later, making it a Category 5-equivalent hurricane. The storm was propelled northward, rapidly paralleling the East Coast before making landfalls on Long Island and Connecticut as a Category 3-equivalent hurricane on September 21. After moving inland, it transitioned into an extratropical cyclone and dissipated over Ontario on September 23.

The majority of the storm damage was from storm surge and wind. Damage was estimated at $308 million, the equivalent of $5.1 billion adjusted for inflation in 2016 dollars, making it among the most costly hurricanes to strike the U.S. mainland. It is estimated that, if an identical hurricane had struck in 2005, it would have caused $39.2 billion in damage due to changes in population and infrastructure.

Approximately 600 people died in the storm in New England, most in Rhode Island, and up to 100 people elsewhere in the path of the storm. An additional 708 people were reported injured.

More information: Mass Moments

In total, 4,500 cottages, farms, and other homes were reported destroyed and 25,000 homes were damaged. Other damages included 26,000 automobiles destroyed and 20,000 electrical poles toppled. The hurricane also devastated the forests of the Northeast, knocking down an estimated two billion trees in New York and New England. Freshwater flooding was minimal, however, as the quick passage of the storm decreased local rainfall totals, with only a few small areas receiving over 250 mm.

Over 35% of New England's total forest area was affected. In all, over 2.7 billion board feet of trees fell because of the storm, although 1.6 billion board feet of the trees were salvaged. The Northeastern Timber Salvage Administration (NETSA) was established to deal with the extreme fire hazard that the fallen timber had created.

In many locations, roads from the fallen tree removal were visible decades later, and some became trails still used today. The New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad from New Haven to Providence was particularly hard hit, as countless bridges along the Shore Line were destroyed or flooded, severing rail connections to badly affected towns such as Westerly, Rhode Island.

Due to the lack of technology in 1938, Long Island residents were not warned of the hurricane's arrival, leaving no time to prepare or evacuate. Long Island was struck first, before New England and Quebec, earning the storm the nickname the Long Island Express. The winds reached up to 240 km/h, with waves surging to around 7-10 m high.

More information: New England Historical Society

 Hurricane season brings a humbling reminder that,
despite our technologies,
most of nature remains unpredictable.

Diane Ackerman

JAMES JOSEPH CROCE AKA JIM CROCE, 'I GOT A NAME'

Today, The Grandma has been listening to some music. She has chosen Jim Croce's songs, who died on a day like today in 1973.

James Joseph Croce (January 10, 1943-September 20, 1973) was an American folk and rock singer-songwriter.

Between 1966 and 1973, he released five studio albums and numerous singles. During this period, Croce took a series of odd jobs to pay bills while he continued to write, record, and perform concerts. After he formed a partnership with songwriter and guitarist Maury Muehleisen, his fortunes turned in the early 1970s.

His breakthrough came in 1972; his third album, You Don't Mess Around with Jim, produced three charting singles, including Time in a Bottle, which reached No. 1 after his death. The follow-up album, Life and Times, included the song Bad, Bad Leroy Brown, which was the only No. 1 hit he had during his lifetime.

On September 20, 1973, at the height of his popularity and the day before the lead single to his fifth album I Got a Name was released, Croce and five others died in a plane crash. His music continued to chart throughout the 1970s following his death. Croce's wife Ingrid was his early songwriting partner. She continued to write and record after his death and their son A. J. Croce became a singer-songwriter in the 1990s.

More information: Jim Croce

Croce was born January 10, 1943, (although some sources say 1942) in South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to James Albert Croce and Flora Mary (Babusci) Croce, Italian Americans from Trasacco and Balsorano in Abruzzo and Palermo in Sicily.

Croce grew up in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, and attended Upper Darby High School. Graduating in 1960, he studied at Malvern Preparatory School for a year before enrolling at Villanova University, where he majored in psychology and minored in German.

Croce received a Bachelor of Science in Social Studies degree in 1965. He was a member of the Villanova Singers and the Villanova Spires. When the Spires performed off-campus or made recordings, they were known as The Coventry Lads.

Croce was also a student disc jockey at WKVU, which has since become WXVU.

On the night of Thursday, September 20, 1973, during Croce's Life and Times tour and the day before his ABC single I Got a Name was released, Croce and five others were killed when their chartered Beechcraft E18S crashed into a tree during takeoff from the Natchitoches Regional Airport in Natchitoches, Louisiana. Croce was 30 years old. Others killed in the crash were pilot Robert N. Elliott, Croce's bandmate Maury Muehleisen, comedian George Stevens, manager and booking agent Kenneth D. Cortese, and road manager Dennis Rast. An hour before the crash, Croce had completed a concert at Northwestern State University's Prather Coliseum in Natchitoches; he was flying to Sherman, Texas, for a concert at Austin College.

Croce was buried at Haym Salomon Memorial Park in Frazer, Pennsylvania.

More information: Song Facts

 There's something about approaching universal truths
with the simplicity of the acoustic guitar.
You can take it anywhere,
and it helps me reach listeners of all ages and walks of life.

Jim Croce

SCOTT FAHLMAN, THE FIRST DOCUMENTED EMOTICONS

Today, The Grandma has been reading about Scott Fahlman, the computer scientist who posted the first documented emoticons on a day like today in 1982.

Scott Elliott Fahlman (born March 21, 1948) is a computer scientist and Professor Emeritus at Carnegie Mellon University's Language Technologies Institute and Computer Science Department.

He is notable for early work on automated planning and scheduling in a blocks world, on semantic networks, on neural networks (especially the cascade correlation algorithm), on the programming languages Dylan, and Common Lisp (especially CMU Common Lisp), and he was one of the founders of Lucid Inc.

During the period when it was standardized, he was recognized as the leader of Common Lisp. From 2006 to 2015, Fahlman was engaged in developing a knowledge base named Scone, based in part on his thesis work on the NETL Semantic Network.

Fahlman was born in Medina, Ohio, the son of Lorna May (Dean) and John Emil Fahlman. He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he received a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) and Master of Science (M.S.) degree in electrical engineering and computer science in 1973, and a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in artificial intelligence in 1977. 

More information: Sci Hi

His master's thesis advisor was Patrick Winston and his doctoral thesis advisor was Gerald Sussman. He has noted that his doctoral diploma says the degree was awarded for original research as demonstrated by a thesis in the field of Artificial Intelligence and suggested that it may be the first doctorate to use that term. He is a fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence.

Fahlman acted as thesis advisor for Donald Cohen, David B. McDonald, David S. Touretzky, Skef Wholey, Justin Boyan, Michael Witbrock, and Alicia Tribble Sagae.

From May 1996 to July 2001, Fahlman directed the Justsystem Pittsburgh Research Center.

Fahlman was not the first to suggest the concept of the emoticon -a similar concept for a marker appeared in an article of Reader's Digest in May 1967, although that idea was never put into practice.

Fahlman is credited with originating the first smiley emoticon, which he thought would help people on a message board at Carnegie Mellon to distinguish serious posts from jokes. He proposed the use of :-) and :-( for this purpose, and the symbols caught on. The original message from which these symbols originated was posted on 19 September 1982.

More information: The Culture Trip

I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers: :-)

Read it sideways.  

Actually, it is probably more economical 

to mark things that are NOT jokes, given current trends.  

For this, use :-(

 

Scott Fahlman

JAMES J. GANDOLFINI JR, THE ETERNAL TONY SOPRANO

Today, The Grandma has been watching some TV series. She has chosen The Sopranos, whose main character was interpreted by James Gandolfini, the AMerican actor, who was born on a day like today in 1961.

James Joseph Gandolfini Jr. (September 18, 1961-June 19, 2013) was an American actor.

He was best known for his role as Tony Soprano, the Italian-American Mafia crime boss in HBO's television series The Sopranos, for which he won three Emmy Awards, five Screen Actors Guild Awards, and one Golden Globe Award.  

Gandolfini's portrayal of Tony Soprano has been described as one of the greatest and most influential performances in television history.

Gandolfini's notable film roles include mob henchman Virgil in True Romance (1993), Lieutenant Bobby Dougherty in Crimson Tide (1995), Colonel Winter in The Last Castle (2001), and Mayor of New York in The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009). Other roles are enforcer and stuntman Bear in Get Shorty (1995) and impulsive Wild Thing Carol in Where the Wild Things Are (2009).

For his performance as Albert in Enough Said (2013), Gandolfini posthumously received much critical praise and several awards, including a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination and the Boston Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actor.

In 2007, Gandolfini produced Alive Day Memories: Home from Iraq, a documentary in which he interviewed injured Iraq War veterans and in 2010, Wartorn: 1861-2010 examining the impact of post-traumatic stress disorder on soldiers and families throughout several wars in U.S. history from 1861 to 2010. In addition to Alive Day Memories, he also produced the television film Hemingway & Gellhorn (2012), which gained him a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Limited Series nomination. In 2013, Gandolfini died of a heart attack in Rome at the age of 51.

More information: New Jersey Monthly

Gandolfini was born in Westwood, New Jersey, on September 18, 1961. His mother, Santa (née Penna), was a high school food service worker of Italian descent who was born in the United States and raised in Naples. His Italian-born father, James Joseph Gandolfini Sr. (born Giacomo Giuseppe Gandolfini) a native of Borgo Val di Taro (in the Northeastern Italian region of Emilia-Romagna), worked as a bricklayer and cement mason and later was the head custodian at Paramus Catholic High School.

James Sr. earned a Purple Heart in World War II. Gandolfini's parents were devout Catholics who spoke Italian at home. Due to the influence of his parents, he developed a strong sense of Italian-American identity and visited Italy regularly. He had two sisters.

Gandolfini grew up in Park Ridge, New Jersey, and graduated from Park Ridge High School in 1979, where he played basketball, acted in school plays, and was awarded the title Class Flirt in his senior yearbook.

He earned a BA in Communications from Rutgers University-New Brunswick in 1983, where he worked as a bouncer at an on-campus pub. He also worked as a bartender and club manager in Manhattan prior to his acting career. He was introduced to acting while living in New York City, when he accompanied his friend Roger Bart to a Meisner technique acting class. He studied for two years under Kathryn Gately at The Gately Poole Conservatory.

In 1995, television writer and producer David Chase pitched the original idea for The Sopranos to multiple television networks, including commercial broadcast networks Fox and CBS, before premium network HBO picked it up.

More information: The Guardian

The series revolves around Tony Soprano, a New Jersey-based Italian-American mobster, who tries to balance his family life with his role as boss of the Soprano crime family. Gandolfini was invited to audition for the part of Tony Soprano after casting director Susan Fitzgerald saw a short clip of his performance in True Romance, ultimately receiving the role ahead of several other actors including Steven Van Zandt and Michael Rispoli.

Chase, in a 2013 interview with The Guardian, stated Gandolfini stopped and left in the middle of his audition before finishing it in his garage later that night. According to Chase, Gandolfini said that he didn't prepare right for the audition.

Gandolfini died unexpectedly at the age of 51 in Rome on June 19, 2013. He was expected to travel to Sicily a few days later to receive an award at the Taormina Film Fest.

While word of his death spread, state and national politicians took to the internet to pay tribute to Gandolfini. Governor Chris Christie ordered all New Jersey State buildings to fly flags at half staff on June 24 to honor Gandolfini when his body was returned to the United States. The day after Gandolfini's death, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, which has long featured Sopranos co-star Steven Van Zandt on guitar, dedicated a performance of their classic album Born to Run by doing a rendition for Gandolfini.

Gandolfini's body was returned to the United States on June 23. The marquee lights of Broadway theaters were dimmed on the night of June 26 in Gandolfini's honour.  

Gandolfini's funeral service was held on June 27, 2013, at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Morningside Heights, Manhattan, New York City. He was cremated, with his ashes given to his family.

More information: The New York Times

Actors will say, 'My character wouldn't say that.'
Who said it was your character?

James Gandolfini