Assumiràs la veu d'un poble i serà la veu del teu poble, i seràs, per a sempre, poble, i patiràs, i esperaràs, i aniràs sempre entre la pols, et seguirà una polseguera.
I tindràs fam i tindràs set, no podràs escriure els poemes i callaràs tota la nit mentre dormen les teues gents, i tu sols estaràs despert, i tu estaràs despert per tots.
No t'han parit per a dormir: et pariren per a vetlar en la llarga nit del teu poble.
Tu seràs la paraula viva, la paraula viva i amarga.
Ja no existiran les paraules, sinó l'home assumint la pena del seu poble, i és un silenci.
Deixaràs de comptar les síl∙labes, de fer‐te el nus de la corbata: seràs un poble, caminant entre una amarga polseguera, vida amunt i nacions amunt, una enaltida condició.
No tot serà, però, silenci.
Car diràs la paraula justa, la diràs en el moment just.
No diràs la teua paraula amb voluntat d'antologia, car la diràs honestament, iradament, sense pensar en ninguna posteritat, com no siga la del teu poble.
Potser et maten o potser se'n riguen, potser et delaten; tot això són banalitats.
Allò que val és la consciència de no ser res si no s'és poble.
I tu, greument, has escollit.
Després del teu silenci estricte, camines decididament.
Assumiràs la veu d'un poble i serà la veu del teu poble, i seràs, per a sempre, poble, i patiràs, i esperaràs, i aniràs sempre entre la pols, et seguirà una polseguera.
Al meu país la pluja no sap ploure O plou poc o plou massa Si plou poc és la sequera Si plou massa és la catàstrofe
Qui portarà la pluja a escola? Qui li dirà com s'ha de ploure? Al meu país la pluja no sap ploure No anirem mai més a escola
Fora de parlar amb els de la teua edat Res no vares aprendre a escola Ni el nom dels arbres del teu paisatge Ni el nom de les flors que veies Ni el nom dels ocells del teu món Ni la teua pròpia llengua
A escola et robaven la memòria Feien mentida del present La vida es quedava a la porta Mentre entràvem cadàvers de pocs anys
Oblit del llamp, oblit del tro De la pluja i del bon temps Oblit de món del treball i de l'estudi "Por el Imperio hacia dios"
Des del carrer Blanc de Xàtiva Qui em rescabalarà dels meus anys De desinformació i desmemòria?
Al meu país la pluja no sap ploure O plou poc o plou massa Si plou poc és la sequera Si plou massa és la catàstrofe Qui portarà la pluja a escola? Qui li dirà com s'ha de ploure? Al meu país la pluja no sap ploure
Today, The Grandma has been reading about Erasmus of Rotterdam, the Dutch humanist and philosopher, who was born on a day like today in 1466.
Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (28 October c. 1466-12 July 1536), commonly known in English as Erasmus of Rotterdam or simply Erasmus, was a Dutch Christian humanist, Catholic priest and theologian, educationalist, satirist, andphilosopher.
Through his vast number of translations, books, essays, prayers and letters, he is considered one of the most influential thinkers of the Northern Renaissance and one of the major figures of Dutch and Western culture.
Erasmus was an important figure in classical scholarship who wrote in a spontaneous, copious and natural Latin style. As a Catholic priest developing humanist techniques for working on texts, he prepared pioneering new Latin and Greek scholarly editions of the New Testament and of the Church Fathers, with annotations and commentary that were immediately and vitally influential in both the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Reformation. He also wrote On Free Will, The Praise of Folly, The Complaint of Peace, Handbook of a Christian Knight, On Civility in Children, Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style and many other popular and pedagogical works.
Erasmus lived against the backdrop of the growing European religious reformations. He developed a biblical humanistic theology in which he advocated the religious and civil necessity both of peaceable concord and of pastoral tolerance on matters of indifference. He remained a member of the Catholic Church all his life, remaining committed to reforming the church from within.
He promoted the traditional doctrine of synergism, which some prominent reformers such as Martin Luther and John Calvin rejected in favor of the doctrine of monergism. His influential middle-road approach disappointed, and even angered, partisans in both camps.
Erasmus's almost 70 years may be divided into quarters.
-First was his medieval Dutch childhood, ending with his being orphaned and impoverished;
-Second, his struggling years as a canon (a kind of semi-monk), a clerk, a priest, a failing and sickly university student, a would-be poet, and a tutor;
-Third, his flourishing but peripatetic High Renaissance years of increasingfocus and literary productivity following his 1499 contact with a reformist English circle notably John Colet and Thomas More, then with radical French Franciscan Jean Vitrier (or Voirier), and later with the Greek-speaking Aldine New Academy in Venice; and
-Fourth, his financially more secure Reformation years near the Black Forest: as a prime influencer of European thought through his New Testament and increasing public opposition to aspects of Lutheranism, first in Basel and then as a Catholic religious refugee in Freiburg.
On July 12, 1536, he died at an attack of dysentery.
Today, The Grandma has been remembering her last travel to Amsterdam, the capital of theNetherlands, that was founded on a day like today in 1275.
Amsterdam is the capital and most populous city of the Netherlands.Foundwithin the province of NorthHolland, Amsterdam is colloquiallyreferred to as the Venice of the North,due to the large number of canals which form a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Amsterdam was founded at theAmstel, that was dammed to control flooding; the city's name derives from the Amstel dam. Originating as a small fishing village in the late 12th century, Amsterdambecame one of the most important ports in the world during the Dutch Golden Age of the 17th century, and became the leading centre for finance and trade.
In
the 19th and 20th centuries, the city expanded and many new
neighbourhoods and suburbs were planned and built. The 17th-century
canals of Amsterdam and the 19–20th century Defence Line of Amsterdam are on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Sloten, annexed in 1921 by the municipality of Amsterdam, is the oldest part of the city, dating to the 9th century.
Amsterdam's main attractions
include its historic canals, the Rijksmuseum, the Van Gogh Museum, the
Stedelijk Museum, Hermitage Amsterdam, the Concertgebouw, the Anne Frank
House, the Scheepvaartmuseum, the Amsterdam Museum, the Heineken
Experience, the Royal Palace of Amsterdam, Natura Artis Magistra, Hortus
Botanicus Amsterdam, NEMO, the red-light district and many cannabis
coffee shops. It drew more than 5 million international visitors in
2014.
The
city is also well known for its nightlife and festival activity; with
several of its nightclubs (Melkweg, Paradiso) among the world's most
famous. Primarily known for its artistic heritage, elaborate canal
system and narrow houses with gabled façades; well-preserved legacies of
the city's 17th-century Golden Age. These characteristics are arguably responsible for attracting millions of Amsterdam'svisitors annually. Cycling is key to the city's character, and there are numerous bike paths.
The Amsterdam Stock Exchange is considered the oldest modernsecurities market stock exchange in the world. As the commercial capital of the Netherlands and one of the top financial centres in Europe, Amsterdam is considered an alpha world city by the Globalization and World Cities (GaWC) study group.
The city is also the cultural capital of the Netherlands.
Many large Dutch institutions have their headquarters in the city,
including: the Philips conglomerate, AkzoNobel, Booking.com, TomTom, and
ING. Moreover, many of the world's largest companies are based in Amsterdam or have established their European headquarters in the city, such as leading technology companies Uber, Netflix and Tesla.
The Port of Amsterdam is the fifth largest in Europe. The KLM hub and Amsterdam's
main airport, Schiphol, is the Netherlands' busiest airport as well as
the third busiest in Europe and 11th busiest airport in the world.
The Dutch capital is considered one of the most multicultural cities in the world.
A few of Amsterdam's notable residents throughout history include: painters Rembrandt and Van Gogh, the diarist Anne Frank, and philosopher Baruch Spinoza.
Due to its geographical location in what used to be wet peatland, the founding of Amsterdam
is of a younger age than the founding of other urban centers in the Low
Countries. However, in and around the area of what later became
Amsterdam, local farmers settled as early as three millennia ago. They
lived along the prehistoric IJ river and upstream of its tributary Amstel.
The prehistoric IJ was a shallow and quiet stream in peatland behind beach
ridges. This secluded area could grow there into an important local
settlement center, especially in the late Bronze Age, the Iron Age and
the Roman Age.
Neolithic and Roman artefacts have also been found downstream of this area, in the prehistoricAmstel bedding under Amsterdam's
Damrak and Rokin, such as shards of Bell Beaker culture pottery
(2200-2000 BC) and a granite grinding stone (2700-2750 BC). But the
location of these artefacts around the river banks of the Amstel
probably point to a presence of a modest semi-permanent or seasonal
settlement of the previous mentioned local farmers. A permanent
settlement would not have been possible, since the river mouth and the
banks of the Amstel in this period in time were too wet for permanent habitation.
The origins of Amsterdam is linked to the development of the peatland called Amestelle, meaning watery area, from Aa(m) river + stelle site at a shoreline,river bank.
Amsterdam was granted city rights in either 1300 or 1306. From the 14th century on, Amsterdam
flourished, largely from trade with the Hanseatic League. In 1345, an
alleged Eucharistic miracle in Kalverstraat rendered the city an
important place of pilgrimage until the adoption of the Protestant
faith.
In the 16th century, the Dutch rebelled against Philip II of Spain and hissuccessors.
The main reasons for the uprising were the imposition of new taxes, the
tenth penny, and the religious persecution of Protestants by the newly
introduced Inquisition. The revolt escalated into the Eighty Years' War,
which ultimately led to Dutch independence.
Strongly pushed by Dutch Revolt leader William the Silent, the Dutch Republicbecame known for its relative religious tolerance.
Jews from the Iberian Peninsula, Huguenots from France, prosperous
merchants and printers from Flanders, and economic and religious
refugees from the Spanish-controlled parts of the Low Countries found
safety in Amsterdam. The influx of Flemish printers and the city's intellectual tolerance made Amsterdam a centre for the European free press.
The 17th century is considered Amsterdam's Golden Age, during which it became the wealthiest city in the western world. Ships sailed from Amsterdam to
the Baltic Sea, North America, and Africa, as well as present-day
Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, and Brazil, forming the basis of a
worldwide trading network.
Amsterdam's merchants had the largest share in both the Dutch East India Company and the Dutch West India Company. These companies acquired overseas possessions that later became Dutch colonies.
Amsterdam was Europe's most important point for the shipment of goods and was the leading financial centre of the western world.
In 1602, the Amsterdam
office of the international trading Dutch East India Company became the
world's first stock exchange by trading in its own shares.
The Bank of Amsterdam started operations in 1609, acting as a full-service bank for Dutch merchant bankers and as a reserve bank.
Amsterdam's
prosperity declined during the 18th and early 19th centuries. The wars
of the Dutch Republic with England and France took their toll on Amsterdam.
During the Napoleonic Wars, Amsterdam's significance reached its lowest
point, with Holland being absorbed into the French Empire. However, the
later establishment of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1815 marked a turning point.
The end of the 19th century is sometimes called Amsterdam's
second Golden Age. New museums, a railway station, and the
Concertgebouw were built; in this same time, the Industrial Revolution
reached the city. The Amsterdam-Rhine Canal was dug to give Amsterdam a direct connection to the Rhine,
and the North Sea Canal was dug to give the port a shorter connection
to the North Sea. Both projects dramatically improved commerce with the
rest of Europe and the world. In 1906, Joseph Conrad gave a brief
description of Amsterdam as seen from the seaside, in The Mirror of the Sea.
Shortly before the First World War, the city started to expand again, and new suburbs were built.
Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands on 10 May 1940 and took control of the country. Some Amsterdam
citizens sheltered Jews, thereby exposing themselves and their families
to a high risk of being imprisoned or sent to concentration camps. More
than 100,000 Dutch Jews were deported to Nazi concentration camps, of
whom some 60,000 lived in Amsterdam.
Perhaps the most famous deportee was the young Jewish girl Anne Frank, who died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
Many new suburbs, such as Osdorp, Slotervaart, Slotermeer and Geuzenveld, were built in the years after the Second World War.
The required large-scale demolitions began in Amsterdam's
former Jewish neighborhood. Smaller streets, such as the
Jodenbreestraat and Weesperstraat, were widened and almost all houses
and buildings were demolished. At the peak of the demolition, the
Nieuwmarktrellen broke out; the rioters expressed their fury about the
demolition caused by the restructuring of the city.
As
a result, the demolition was stopped and the highway into the city's
centre was never fully built; only the metro was completed. Only a few
streets remained widened. The new city hall was built on the almost
completely demolished Waterlooplein. Meanwhile, large private
organizations, such as StadsherstelAmsterdam, were founded to restore the entire city centre.
Although
the success of this struggle is visible today, efforts for further
restoration are still ongoing. The entire city centre has reattained its
former splendour and, as a whole, is now a protected area. Many of its
buildings have become monuments, and in July 2010 the Grachtengordel (the three concentric canals: Herengracht, Keizersgracht, and Prinsengracht) was added to the UNESCO WorldHeritage List.
In the 21st century, the Amsterdam
city centre has attracted large numbers of tourists: between 2012 and
2015, the annual number of visitors rose from 10 to 17 million. Real
estate prices have surged, and local shops are making way for
tourist-oriented ones, making the centre unaffordable for the city's
inhabitants. These developments have evoked comparisons with Venice, a
city thought to be overwhelmed by the tourist influx.
Amsterdam experienced an influx of religions and cultures after the Second World War. With 180 different nationalities, Amsterdam is home toone of the widest varieties of nationalities of any city in the world.
The proportion of the population of immigrant origin in the city proper
is about 50% and 88% of the population are Dutch citizens.
Amsterdam has been one of the municipalities in the Netherlands which provided immigrants with extensive and free Dutch-language courses, which have benefited many immigrants.
Amsterdam lives and breathes creativity. One moment you walk into a building from the 17th century, and the next you find yourself in a hub of creative start-up companies.
Today, The Grandma has been reading about the Football Association, the English body of association football, that was founded on a day like today in 1863.
The Football Association or the FA is the governing body of association football in England and the Crown Dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man.
Formed in 1863, it is the oldest football association in the world and is responsible for overseeing all aspects of the amateur and professional game in its territory.
The FA facilitates all competitive football matches within its remit at national level, and indirectly at local level through the county football associations. It runs numerous competitions, the most famous of which is the FA Cup. It is also responsible for appointing the management of the men's, women's, and youth national football teams.
The FA is a member of both UEFA and FIFA and holds a permanent seat on the International Football Association Board (IFAB) which is responsible for the Laws of the Game. As the first football association, it does not use the national name English in its title.
The FA is based at Wembley Stadium, London.
The FA is a member of the British Olympic Association, meaning that the FA has control over the men's and women's Great Britain Olympic football team.
All of England's professional football teams are members of the Football Association. Although it does not run the day-to-day operations of the Premier League, it has veto power over the appointment of the league chairman and chief executive and over any changes to league rules. The English Football League, made up of the three fully professional divisions below the Premier League, is self-governing, subject to the FA's sanctions.
For centuries before the first meeting of the Football Associationin the Freemasons' Tavern on Great Queen Street, London on 26 October 1863,there were no universally accepted rules for playing football.
Ebenezer Cobb Morley, as captain of Barnes, in 1862 wrote to Bell's Life newspaper proposing a governing body for the sport with the object of establishing a definite code of rules for the regulation of the game; the letter led to the first meeting at
The Freemasons' Tavern that created the FA in 1863. Morley was a founding member. Six meetings near London's Covent Garden, at 81–82 Long Acre, ended in a split between the Association football and Rugby football. Both of them had their own uniforms, rituals, gestures and highly formalised rules.
In each public school the game was formalised according to local conditions; but when the schoolboys reached university, chaos ensued when the players used different rules, so members of the University of Cambridge devised and published a set of Cambridge Rules in 1848 which was widely adopted. Another set of rules, the Sheffield Rules, was used by a number of clubs in the North of England from the 1850s.
Eleven London football clubs and schools representatives met on 26 October 1863 to agree on common rules.
The first version of the rules for the modern game was drawn up over a series of six meetings held in The Freemasons' Tavern from October till December. Of the clubs at the first meeting, Crusaders, Surbiton and Charterhouse did not attend the subsequent meetings, replaced instead by the Royal Navy School, Wimbledon School and Forest School.
After many years of wrangling between the London-based Football Association and the Sheffield Football Association, the FA Cup brought the acceptance that one undisputed set of laws was required. The two associations had played 16 inter-association matches under differing rules; the Sheffield Rules, the London Rules and Mixed Rules.
In April 1877, those laws were set with a number of Sheffield Rules being incorporated.
In 1890 Arthur Kinnaird replaced Major Francis Marindin, becoming the fourth president of the Football Association. Kinnaird had at that time been a FA committeeman since the age of 21, in 1868. Kinnaird remained president for the next 33 years, until his death in 1923.
The FA Cup was initially contested by mostly southern, amateur teams, but more professionally organised northern clubs began to dominate the competition during the early 1880s; The turning point, north replacing south, working class defeating upper and professionals impinging upon the amateurs' territory, came in 1883.
Hitherto, public school sides had played a dribbling game punctuated by violent tackles, but a new passing style developed in Scotland was successfully adopted by some Lancashire teams, along with a more organised approach to training. Blackburn Olympic reached the final in March 1883 and defeated Old Etonians. Near-neighbours Blackburn Rovers started to pay players, and the following season won the first of three consecutive FA Cups.
The FA initially tried to outlaw professionalism but, in the face of a threatened breakaway body (the British Football Association), by 1885 was forced to permit payments to players. Three years later, in 1888, the first Football League was established, formed by six professional clubs from northwest England and six from the midlands.
In 1992, the Football Association took control of the newly created Premier League which consisted of 22 clubs who had broken away from the First Division of the Football League. The Premier League reduced to 20 clubs in 1995 and is one of the richest football leagues in the world.
By 1921 women's football had become increasingly popular through the charitable games played by women's teams during and after the First World War. In a move that was widely seen as caused by jealousy of the crowds' interest in women's games which frequently exceeded that of the top men's teams, in 1921 theFootball Association banned all women's teams from playing on grounds affiliated to the FA because they thought football damaged women's bodies. For several decades, this meant that women's football virtually ceased to exist.
The decision to exclude women was only reversed from 1969 when, after the increased interest in football caused by England's 1966 World Cup triumph, the Women's Football Association was founded, although it would take a further two years -and an order from UEFA- to force the (men's) Football Association to remove its restrictions on the playing rights of women's teams.
It was not until 1983 that the WFA was able to affiliate to the FA as a County Association and only in 1993 did the FA found the Women's Football Committee to run women's football in England.
The Women's Football Conference, as it is now known, has representation on the FA Council equivalent to a County Football Association.
People have no idea how hard football is, absolutely no idea. It's all about pace. You can say, 'Yeah, you've got speed of thought' -but you've got to have a little bit of a zip.
Today, The Grandma has been reading about Taiyō Matsumoto, Japanese manga artist, who was bornon a day like today in 1967.
Taiyō Matsumoto, in Japanese 松本 大洋,Hepburn Matsumoto Taiyō, born October 25, 1967, is aJapanese manga artist.
Matsumoto was born in Tokyo. Originally, he wanted to become a soccer player, but changed to artist as an occupation instead. After his initial success in the Comic Open contest, he began touring France in 1986, an event that became a significant point in his career.
Matsumoto published his first manga in 1987 at the age of 20 in Kodansha'sMorning magazine. While he published a few works there, he didn't gain enough popularity and was eventually not able to publish anymore in big magazines like Morning. Instead, he came in contact with Yasuki Hori, editor at Shogakukan, who pushed him to draw a manga about boxing, which became Zero and was published in the magazine Big Comic Spirits between 1990 and 1991.
In 1993, he began work on the Tekkonkinkreetmanga, which became a success in the Big Spirits magazine, and published a series of short stories in a collection called Nihon no Kyodai that was publicized at the time by Comic Aré magazine. Ping Pong appeared in Big Spirits in 1996, soon followed by the series No. 5 in Shogakukan's Monthly Ikki magazine in 2000.
The Tekkonkinkreetanime was released in Japan in late 2006, and both the anime and manga have been published in English.
The manga he produced covers a variety of topics, from sports manga to family comedies to science fiction epics. Manga critic Natsume Fusanosuke divided his manga series in 2021 into different distinct categories: Manga like Zero,Hanaotoko and Ping Pong that work within the artistic framework of shōnen manga and seinen manga and that were developed with the pressure of editors in mind that wanted him to fit into the industry's standards. However, dystopian science-fiction manga like Tekkonkinkreet and No. 5 as well as the autobiographical orphanage story Sunny in a lot of ways break with many conventions of the manga industry's norms. Fusanosuke analyzes that these manga follow a path that has been developed after the success of Katsuhiro Otomo and are influenced by French bande dessinée.
His work is seen as meta manga, often criticizing the genres within which they operate.
Matsumoto draws free-hand, with sketchy wavering lines. He often uses extreme close-ups with perspectives inspired by a fisheye lens, which creates a cinematic effect. He also experiments with panel composition, using it for example in Ping Pong to evoke the feeling of speed.
Matsumoto has cited Moebius, Enki Bilal, Katsuhiro Otomo, Shotaro Ishinomori and Tsuchida Seiki as influences on his work. He has been influenced by the New Wave movement in manga.
Today, The Grandma has been reading about William Lassell, the English astronomer, who discovered Umbriel and Ariel,on a day like today in 1851.
William Lassell (18 June 1799-5 October 1880) was an English merchant and astronomer,well-known for his improvements to the reflecting telescope and ensuing discoveries of four planetary satellites.
William Lassell was born in Bolton, Lancashire, on 18 June 1799. He received his early education in Bolton and later attended Rochdale Academy. After the death of his father, William Lassell was apprenticed to a merchant in Liverpool from 1814 to 1821. He later made his fortune as a beer brewer, which afforded him the means to pursue his passion for astronomy.
He built an observatory at his house Starfield in West Derby, a suburb of Liverpool. There he had a 610 mm aperture metal mirror reflector telescope, aka the two-foot telescope, for which he pioneered the use of an equatorial mount for easy tracking of objects as the Earth rotates. He ground and polished the mirror himself, using equipment he constructed. The observatory was later (1854) moved further out of Liverpool, to Bradstones.
In 1846, Lassell discovered Triton, the largest moon of Neptune, just 17 days after the discovery of Neptune itself by German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle, using his self-built instrument.
In 1848, he independently co-discovered Hyperion, a moon of Saturn.
In 1851, he discovered Ariel and Umbriel, two moons of Uranus.
In 1855, he built a 1,200 mm telescope, which he installed in Malta because of the observing conditions that were better than in often-overcast England. While in Malta his astronomical observing assistant was Albert Marth. On his return to the UK after several years in Malta, he moved to Maidenhead and operated his 24-inch (610 mm) telescope in an observatory there. The telescope was dismantled and was eventually scrapped. The 24-inch telescope was later moved to Royal Observatory, Greenwich in the 1880s, but eventually dismantled.
Lassell was a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society (FRAS) from 1839, won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1849, and served as its president for two years starting in 1870.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1849 and won their Royal Medal in 1858. Lassell was also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL). He was furthermore elected an honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (HonFRSE) and of the Society of Sciences of Upsala, and received an honorary LL.D. degree from the University of Cambridge in 1874.
Lassell died in Maidenhead in 1880 and is buried at St. Luke's Church. Upon his death, he left a fortune of £80,000, roughly equivalent to £10,100,000 in 2023. His telescope was presented to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich.
The crater Lassell on the Moon, a crater on Mars, the asteroid 2636 Lassell and a ring of Neptune are named in his honour. At the University of Liverpool, the WilliamLassell prize is awarded to the student with the highest grades graduating the B.Sc. program in Physics with Astronomy each year.
Today, The Grandma has been readingabout the first Parliament of the Kingdom of Great Britain, that wasestablished on a day like today in 1707.
The first Parliament of the Kingdom of Great Britain was established in 1707 after the merger of the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland.
It was in fact the 4th and last session of the 2nd Parliament of Queen Anne suitably renamed: no fresh elections were held in England or in Wales, and the existing members of the House of Commons of England sat as members of the new House of Commons of Great Britain.
In Scotland, prior to the union coming into effect, the Scottish Parliament appointed sixteen peers and 45 Members of Parliaments to join their English counterparts at Westminster.
Queen Anne did declare it to be expedient that the existing House of Commons of England sit in the first Parliament of Great Britain.
The Parliament of Scotland duly passed an Act settling the manner of electing the sixteen peers and forty five commoners to represent Scotland in the Parliament of Great Britain.
The Kingdom of Great Britain came into existence on 1 May 1707.
The last English parliament officially began on 14 June 1705 and sat for three sessions. The first session met from 25 October 1705 to 19 March 1706, the second from 3 December 1706 to 8 April 1707 and the third from 14 April 1707 to 24 April 1707.
According to a clause of the Act of Union, Anne had until 1 May 1707 to convert the current sitting members of the English parliament into the English members of a British parliament, otherwise she would have to call for fresh elections.
In her closing speech of 24 April 1707, Anne informed the English parliament of her intention to exercise the treaty clause before 1 May and have current members of the English parliament sit in the first British parliament. After the speech, at Anne's command, parliament was prorogued until 30 April.
On 29 April, as promised in her speech, Anne invoked the clause of the Act of Union reviving the parliament by proclamation. In another proclamation on 5 June, Anne listed the Scottish members (16 peers and 45 commissioners) by name and, without issuing new writs of summons, the Queen scheduled the first parliament of Great Britain to meet and be holdenon 23 October 1707.
It was not immediately clear, for the purposes of the 1694 Triennial Act, whether the First Parliament of Great Britain would count as a new parliament or as a continuation of the current English parliament that had already sat for two years. Some argued that it was a continuation, as it was not summoned by fresh writs, and thus expected its term would expire 14 June 1708, and it would have to be dissolved and new elections called before the deadline. But others argued that because Anne's proclamation of 29 April did not renew the prorogation of the last English parliament, set to expire on 30 April, then the last English parliament was legally defunct and the First British Parliament was new, and the triennial clock was reset. Although it seems that Marlborough's opinion prevailed, it was not tested as ultimately the First British Parliament would sit through only one session and be dissolved in April 1708, before the triennial deadline.
The matter of continuity remains ambiguous in the records. The authoritative 19th-century parliamentary historian William Cobbett considered the First British Parliament a new and distinct parliament, and separated it from the Anne's last English parliament.
The ambiguity of continuity mattered to the case of John Asgill, a member of parliament for Bramber, elected in 1705, who was arrested on 12 June 1707 and imprisoned at Fleet Prison for debt. Although this was in the interval between the closure of the English parliament and the opening of the British one, Asgill appealed to parliamentary immunity from arrest on the grounds that he was a member of a current parliament. Asgill's appeal was debated in the British House of Commons shortly after opening.
Although the House ended up agreeing, on 16 December, that Asgill had retained immunity in that period, ought to have the privilege, they did not explain why, nor declare precisely of which parliament he was a member at the time of his arrest. Nonetheless, two days after ordering his release, the House voted to expel Asgill on different grounds, authoring a blasphemous book.
Today, The Grandma has been reading about the Ladoga Canal, the historical water transport route that was completed on a day like today in 1730.
The Ladoga Canal, in Russian Лaдожский канал and romanized Ladozhsky Canal, is a historical water transport route, now situated in Leningrad Oblast, linking the Neva and the Svir River so as to bypass the stormy waters of Lake Ladoga which lies immediately to the northwest.
It is about 117 kilometres long and comprises two distinct but overgrown canals, Old Ladoga Canal (built in 1719-1810, previously known as Peter the First Canal) and New Ladoga Canal (built in 1866-1883), running in parallel from Sviritsa on the Svir through Novaya Ladoga on the Volkhov to Shlisselburg on the Neva.
The Ladoga Canal was one of the first major canals constructed in Russia. It was one of the projects of Peter the Great, who ordered its construction in 1718. Rapid economic development in Russia required a significant expansion of routes, especially waterways. One part of the Vyshny Volochyok Waterway (1709) linking the Volga river to the Baltic Sea, passed through Lake Ladoga. The Ladoga section of the route was one of the most difficult and dangerous because the lake is prone to winds and storms which destroyed hundreds of cargo ships.
Peter the Great decided to avoid the navigation in the huge and stormy lake by building a bypass canal. The construction started in 1719. Prince Menshikov put his friend General Skornyakov-Pisarev in charge of the project, but he eventually had to step down amid charges of incompetence, carelessness, and procrastination.
In autumn 1723, the Tsar personally inspected the construction site and was not satisfied with the pace of construction; so much so that he ordered the arrest of Skornyakov-Pisarev and his German specialists. The task of completing the canal was taken from private hands and entrusted to Burkhard Christoph von Münnich who liberally utilized soldier labour.
A 29-kilometre long section between the Volkhov River and the village of Chornoe was completed and opened to traffic in 1726. This greatly accelerated work, as the completed section was used to deliver supplies to the construction site. The locks were constructed at Shlisselburg and Novaya Ladoga to maintain the depth needed for navigation.
Construction of the canal was completed on October 22, 1730, and in spring 1731 the first boats were able to sail along the canal between the Volkhov River and the Neva River (Ladoga Canal proper).
It turned out that the canal had a depth of less than one metre, considerably less than envisioned by Peter I. This was a major disappointment to the government. Although the canal was one of the largest hydroengineering facilities in 18th-century Europe, it was still too shallow to maintain a considerable traffic. Catherine the Great decided to expand the canal by building another section between the Volkhov and Syas Rivers. This project was implemented between 1765 and 1802 (so-called Syas Canal). The third part of the Ladoga Canal, connecting the Syas and the Svir, was built over the years 1802 to 1810 (so-called Svir Canal).
In the course of the 19th century, the Ladoga Canal was used by about 15,000 vessels and 10,000 rafts heading towards St. Petersburg every year, but silted up so badly that Alexander II's government decided that it was more practicable to build a new canal instead of repairing the old facilities.
The New Ladoga Canal was built closer to Lake Ladoga between 1866 and 1883.
The Old Ladoga Canal was overgrown with grass and had become disused by 1940.
The New Ladoga Canal is still used by small boats.
Today, The Grandma has been reading For Whom the Bell Tolls, a novel written by Ernest Hemingway and published on a day like today in 1940.
For Whom the Bell Tolls is a novel by Ernest Hemingway published in 1940.
It tells the story of Robert Jordan, a young American volunteer attached to a Republican guerrilla unit during the Spanish Civil War. As a dynamiter, he is assigned to blow up a bridge during an attack on the city of Segovia.
It was published just after the end of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), whose general lines were well known at the time. It assumes the reader knows that the war was between the government of the Second Spanish Republic, which many foreigners went to Spain to help and which was supported by the Communist Soviet Union, and the Nationalist faction, which was supported by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. In 1940, the year the book was published, the United States had not yet entered World War II, which began on September 1, 1939, with Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland.
The novel is regarded as one of Hemingway's best works, along with The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and The Old Man and the Sea.
Ernest Hemingway wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls in 1939 from three locations: Havana, Cuba; Key West, Florida; and Sun Valley, Idaho.
In Cuba, he lived in the Hotel Ambos Mundos, where he worked on the manuscript. The novel was finished in July 1940 at the InterContinental New York Barclay Hotel in New York City and published in October.
The story is based on Hemingway's experiences during the Spanish Civil War as a reporter for the North American Newspaper Alliance and features an American who fights alongside Spanish guerillas for the Republicans. The novel graphically describes the brutality of the war and is told primarily through the thoughts and experiences of the protagonist, Robert Jordan.
The characters in the novel include those who are purely fictional, those based on real people but fictionalized, and those who were actual figures in the war. Set in the Sierra de Guadarrama mountain range between Madrid and Segovia, the action takes place during four days and three nights.
For Whom the Bell Tolls became a Book of the Month Club choice, sold half a million copies within months, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and became a literary triumph for Hemingway.
Published on October 21, 1940, the first edition print run was 75,000 copies priced at $2.75.
The book's title is taken from the metaphysical poet John Donne's series of meditations and prayers on health, pain, and sickness (written while Donne was convalescing from a nearly fatal illness) published in 1624 as Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, specifically Meditation XVII. Hemingway quotes part of the meditation (using Donne's original spelling) in the book's epigraph. Donne refers to the practice of funeral tolling, universal in his time.
The novel takes place in late May 1937, during the second year of the Spanish Civil War. References made to Valladolid, Segovia, El Escorial, and Madrid suggest the novel takes place within the build-up to the Republican attempt to relieve the siege of Madrid.
The earlier battle of Guadalajara and the general chaos and disorder (and, more generally, the doomed cause of Republican Spain) serve as a backdrop to the novel: Robert Jordan notes, for instance, that he follows the Communists because of their superior discipline, an allusion to the split and infighting between anarchist and communist factions on the Republican side.
On November 5, 2019, BBC News listed For Whom the Bell Tolls on its list of the 100 most inspiring novels.
In 1941, the Pulitzer Prize committee for letters unanimously recommended For Whom the Bell Tolls be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel for that year. The Pulitzer Board agreed. However, Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia University and ex officio head of the Pulitzer board at that time, found the novel offensive and persuaded the board to reverse its determination; no Pulitzer was given for the category of novel that year.
In Spain, it was initially viewed very suspiciously by the Francoist censorship office; in 1942-43 the Spanish diplomatic corps went to great lengths in trying to influence the final edit of the Hollywood film based on the novel, which was not permitted to be shown in Spanish cinemas.
Today, The Grandma has been listening to some music. She has chosen LynyrdSkynyrd, the American band, that suffered a tragic plane crash on a day like today in 1977.
Lynyrd Skynyrd is an American rock band formed in Jacksonville, Florida in 1964. The group originally formed as My Backyard and comprised Ronnie Van Zant (vocals), Gary Rossington (guitar), Allen Collins (guitar), Larry Junstrom (bass), and Bob Burns (drums).
The band spent four years touring small venues under various names and with several lineup changes before deciding on Lynyrd Skynyrd in 1968.
The band released its first album in 1973. By then, they had settled on a lineup that included bassist Leon Wilkeson, keyboardist Billy Powell, and guitarist Ed King. Burns left and was replaced by Artimus Pyle in 1974.
King left in 1975 and was replaced by Steve Gaines in 1976. At the height of their fame in the 1970s, the band popularized the Southern rock genre with songs such as Sweet Home Alabama and Free Bird.
Following a performance at the Greenville Memorial Auditorium in Greenville, South Carolina, on October 20, 1977, the band boarded a chartered Convair CV-240 bound for Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where they were scheduled to appear at LSU the following night. After running out of fuel, the pilots attempted an emergency landing before crashing in a heavily forested area five miles northeast of Gillsburg, Mississippi.
Killed on impact were Ronnie Van Zant and Steve Gaines, along with backup singer Cassie Gaines (Steve's older sister), assistant road manager Dean Kilpatrick, pilot Walter McCreary and co-pilot John Gray. Other band members (Collins, Rossington, Wilkeson, Powell, Pyle, and Hawkins), tour manager Ron Eckerman, and several road crew members suffered serious injuries.
The accident came just three days after the release of the group's fifth studio album Street Survivors. Following the crash and the ensuing press, StreetSurvivors became the band's second platinum album and reached No. 5 on the Billboard 200, their highest position on the chart. The single What's Your Name reached No. 13 on the single charts in 1978.
The original cover sleeve for Street Survivors had featured a photograph of the band amid flames, with Steve Gaines nearly obscured by fire. Out of respect for the deceased (and at the request of Teresa Gaines, Steve's widow), MCA Records withdrew the original cover and replaced it with the album's back photo, a similar image of the band against a simple black background. However, the group would restore the original image for the 30th anniversary deluxe edition of the album.
Lynyrd Skynyrd disbanded after the tragedy, reuniting only on one occasion to perform an instrumental version of Free Bird at Charlie Daniels' Volunteer Jam V in January 1979. Collins, Rossington, Powell, and Pyle were joined by Daniels and members of his band. Leon Wilkeson, who was still undergoing physical therapy for his badly broken left arm, was in attendance, along with Judy Van Zant, Teresa Gaines, JoJo Billingsley, and Leslie Hawkins.
In 1987, Lynyrd Skynyrd reunited for a full-scale tour with five major members of the pre-crash band: crash survivors Gary Rossington, Billy Powell, Leon Wilkeson and Artimus Pyle, along with guitarist Ed King, who had left the band two years before the crash.
On November 28, 2005, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announced that Lynyrd Skynyrd would be inducted alongside Black Sabbath, Blondie, Miles Davis, and the Sex Pistols.
On January 25, 2018, Lynyrd Skynyrd announced their Last of the Street Survivors Farewell Tour, which started on May 4, 2018. Supporting acts included Kid Rock, Hank Williams Jr., Bad Company, the Charlie Daniels Band, the Marshall Tucker Band, .38 Special, Cheap Trick, Blackberry Smoke, the Randy Bachman Band, Blackfoot, Massive Wagons, and Status Quo. Concerts were usually on Fridays and Saturdays.
On January 8, 2020, Rossington stated in an interview that while they would no longer be touring, they will continue to play occasional live shows.
On March 19, 2019, Johnny Van Zant announced that the band intended to go into the studio to record one last album after completing the tour with several songs ready or in the can. They appeared at the Kaaboo Texas festival on May 11, 2019.
Rossington, the last founding member of the band, died on March 5, 2023, leaving no original members left alive.
In April 2023, the band confirmed that they would continue as a band. There had previously been agreements about how many pre-crash members had to be in the band in order for it to be active and legal, but this appears to be no longer applicable since Rossington's death.
Today, The Grandma has been reading about Streptomycin, the first antibioticremedy for tuberculosis, that was isolated by researchers at Rutgers University, on a day like today in 1943.
Streptomycin is an antibiotic medication used to treat a number of bacterial infections, including tuberculosis, Mycobacterium avium complex, endocarditis, brucellosis, Burkholderia infection, plague, tularemia, and rat bite fever. For active tuberculosis it is often given together with isoniazid, rifampicin, and pyrazinamide. It is administered by injection into a vein or muscle.
Common side effects include vertigo, vomiting, numbness of the face, fever, and rash. Use during pregnancy may result in permanent deafness in the developing baby. Use appears to be safe while breastfeeding. It is not recommended in people with myasthenia gravis or other neuromuscular disorders.
Streptomycin is an aminoglycoside. It works by blocking the ability of 30S ribosomal subunits to make proteins, which results in bacterial death.
Albert Schatz first isolated streptomycin in 1943 from Streptomyces griseus. It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines. The World Health Organization classifies it as critically important for human medicine.
Streptomycin also is used as a pesticide, to combat the growth of bacteria beyond human applications. Streptomycin controls bacterial diseases of certain fruit, vegetables, seed, and ornamental crops. A major use is in the control of fireblight on apple and pear trees. As in medical applications, extensive use can be associated with the development of resistant strains.
Streptomycin could potentially be used to control cyanobacterial blooms in ornamental ponds and aquaria. While some antibacterial antibiotics are inhibitory to certain eukaryotes, this seems not to be the case for streptomycin,especially in the case of anti-fungal activity.
Streptomycin, in combination with penicillin, is used in a standard antibiotic cocktail to prevent bacterial infection in cell culture.
When purifying protein from a biological extract, streptomycin sulfate is sometimes added as a means of removing nucleic acids and ribonuclear proteins. Since it binds to ribosomes and precipitates out of solution, it serves as a method for removing rRNA, mRNA, and even DNA if the extract is from a prokaryote.
Streptomycin was first isolated on October 19, 1943, by Albert Schatz, a PhD student in the laboratory of Selman Abraham Waksman at RutgersUniversity in a research project funded by Merck and Co. Waksman and his laboratory staff discovered several antibiotics, including actinomycin, clavacin, streptothricin, streptomycin, grisein, neomycin, fradicin, candicidin, and candidin. Of these, streptomycin and neomycin found extensive application in the treatment of numerous infectious diseases.
Streptomycin was the first antibiotic cure for tuberculosis (TB).
In 1952, Waksman was the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in recognition for his discovery of streptomycin, the first antibiotic active against tuberculosis. Waksman was later accused of playing down the role of Schatz who did the work under his supervision, claiming that Elizabeth Bugie had a more important role in its development. Schatz sued both Dr. Waksman and the Rutgers Research and Endowment Foundation, wanting to be given credit as co-discover and to receive the royalties for the streptomycin.
By the end of the settlement, Waksman would receive a 10% royalty, while Schatz got 3% and compensation for his missed royalties. The rest of the lab shared the remaining 7% of the royalties, in which Bugie received 0.2%.
In learning to utilize antibiotics for the control of human and animal diseases, the medical and veterinary professions have acquired powerful tools for combating infections and epidemics.
Today, The Grandma has been reading about PuertoRico, that was taken by the United States in possession on a day like today in 1898.
Puerto Ricois a self-governing Caribbean archipelago and island organized as an unincorporated territory of the United States under the designation of commonwealth.
Located about 1,600 km southeast of Miami, Florida, between the Dominican Republic in the Greater Antilles and the U.S. Virgin Islands in the Lesser Antilles, it consists of the eponymous main island and numerous smaller islands, including Vieques, Culebra, and Mona.
With approximately 3.2 million residents, it is divided into 78 municipalities, of which the most populous is the capital municipality of San Juan, followed by those within its surrounding metropolitan area. Spanish and English are the official languages of the government, though Spanish predominates.
Puerto Rico was settled by a succession of peoples beginning 2,000 to 4,000 years ago; these included the Ortoiroid, Saladoid, and Taíno. It was claimed by Spain following the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1493 and colonization by Juan Ponce de León in 1508.
Puerto Rico was contested by other European powers, but remained a Spanish possession for the next four centuries. An influx of African slaves and Spaniard settlers, primarily from the Canary Islands and Andalusia, vastly changed the cultural and demographic landscape of the island. Within the Spanish Empire, Puerto Rico played a secondary but strategic role compared to wealthier colonies like Peru and New Spain.
By the late 19th century, a distinct Puerto Rican identity began to emerge, centered around a fusion of indigenous, African, and European elements.
In 1898, following the Spanish–American War, Puerto Rico was acquired by the United States.
Puerto Ricans have been U.S. citizens since 1917, and can move freely between the island and the mainland. However, Puerto Ricans who do not reside in a U.S. state are disenfranchised from federal elections and generally do not pay federal income tax.
In common with four other territories, Puerto Rico sends a nonvoting representative to the U.S. Congress, called a Resident Commissioner, and participates in presidential primaries; as it is not a state, Puerto Rico does not have a vote in the U.S. Congress, which oversees it under the Puerto RicoFederal Relations Act of 1950.
Congress approved a territorial constitution in 1952, allowing residents of the archipelago and island to elect a governor in addition to a senate and house of representatives. The political status of Puerto Rico is an ongoing debate.
Beginning in the mid-20th century, the U.S. government, together with the Puerto Rico Industrial Development Company, launched a series of economic projects to develop Puerto Rico into an industrial high-income economy. It is classified by the International Monetary Fund as a developed jurisdiction with an advanced, high-income economy; it ranks 40th on the Human Development Index. The major sectors of Puerto Rico's economy are manufacturing (primarily pharmaceuticals, petrochemicals, and electronics) followed by services (namely tourism and hospitality).
Puerto Rico is Spanish for rich port. Puerto Ricans often call the island Borinquen, a derivation of Borikén, its indigenous Taíno name, which is popularly said to mean Land of the Valiant Lord. The terms boricua, borinqueño, and borincano are commonly used to identify someone of Puerto Rican heritage, and derive from Borikén and Borinquen respectively. The island is also popularly known in Spanish as La Isla del Encanto, meaning the island of enchantment.
Columbus named the island San Juan Bautista, in honor of Saint John the Baptist, while the capital city was named Ciudad de Puerto Rico(Rich Port City). Eventually traders and other maritime visitors came to refer to the entire island as Puerto Rico, while San Juan became the name used for the main trading/shipping port and the capital city.
The official name of the entity in Spanish is Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico (Free Associated State of Puerto Rico), while its official English name is Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.
In 1898, during the Spanish-American War, Puerto Rico was invaded and subsequently became a possession of the U.S. The first years of the 20th century were marked by the struggle to obtain greater democratic rights from the U.S.
The Foraker Act of 1900 established a civil government, ending rule by American generals and the Department of War. A U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Ortega v. Lara, 202 U.S. 339, 342 (1906), involving the Foraker Act and referring to the island as the acquired country, soon affirmed that the U.S. Constitution applied within its territory and that any domestic Puerto Rican laws which did not conflict with it remained in force.
The Jones Act of 1917, which made Puerto Ricans U.S. citizens, paved the way for the drafting of Puerto Rico's Constitution and its approval by Congress and Puerto Rican voters in 1952. However, the political status of Puerto Rico, a Commonwealth controlled by the U.S., remains an anomaly.
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