This is the archive for December 2011
From wikipedia:
Robert Grant Aitken (December 31, 1864 – October 29, 1951) was an American astronomer.
He worked at Lick Observatory in California. He systematically studied double stars, measuring their positions and calculating their orbits around one another. He methodically created a very large catalog of such stars, which was published in 1932 and entitled New General Catalogue of Double Stars Within 120o of the North Pole, with the orbit information enabling astronomers to calculate stellar mass statistics for a large number of stars. Aitken also measured positions and computed orbits for comets and natural satellites of planets.
Read The Binary Stars by Robert Grant Aitken, free from Google Books.
Posted by courier at 10:02 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From wikipedia:
John White Geary (December 30, 1819 – February 8, 1873) was an American lawyer, politician, Freemason, and a Union general in the American Civil War. He was the final alcalde and first mayor of San Francisco, a governor of the Kansas Territory, and the 16th governor of Pennsylvania.
Geary was born near Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania, in Westmoreland County—in what is today the Pittsburgh metropolitan area. He was the son of Richard Geary, an ironmaster and schoolmaster, and Margaret White, a native of Maryland. Starting at the age of 14, he attended nearby Jefferson College in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, studying civil engineering and law, but was forced to leave before graduation due to the death of his father, whose debts he assumed. He worked at a variety of jobs, including as a surveyor and land speculator in Kentucky, earning enough to return to college and graduate in 1841. He worked as a construction engineer for the Allegheny Portage Railroad. In 1843, he married Margaret Ann Logan, with whom he had several sons, but she died in 1853. Geary then married the widowed Mary Church Henderson in 1858 in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
Learn more about John W. Geary and San Francisco history, free from SFCityGuides.org.
Posted by courier at 10:53 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From wikipedia:
Robert C. Baker (December 29, 1921 – March 13, 2006) was an inventor and Cornell University professor who invented the chicken nugget as well as many other poultry related inventions. Due to his contributions to the poultry sciences, he is a member of the American Poultry Hall of Fame.
Education
A Lansing, New York native, Baker earned a bachelor's degree from Cornell University in 1943 and then went on to major in Pomology at the university's College of Agriculture. For his graduate work, Baker took his master's degree at Penn State University and his doctorate at Purdue University. Baker was a member of the Alpha Zeta fraternity.
Read Cornell University's obituary for Robert C. Baker.
Posted by courier at 12:25 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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Earl Kenneth Hines, universally known as Earl "Fatha" Hines, (28 December 1903 near Pittsburgh – 22 April 1983 in Oakland, California) was a jazz pianist.
Early life
Earl Hines was born in the Pittsburgh suburb of Duquesne, Pennsylvania. His father was a brass band cornetist and his stepmother a church organist.Hines at first intended to follow his father's example and play cornet but "blowing" hurt him behind the ears — while the piano didn't.He took classical piano lessons but also developed an ear for popular show tunes and was able to remember and play songs he heard in theaters. Hines claimed that he was playing piano around Pittsburgh "before the word 'jazz' was even invented".
Listen to a discussion of Earl Hines' 65 Piano Solo, featuring examples of Hine's playing from the original recording, free from National Public Radio's npr.org.
Posted by courier at 12:14 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From wikipedia:
Cyrus Stephen Eaton (December 27, 1883 – May 9, 1979) was a Canadian-born investment
banker, businessman and philanthropist in the United States, with a career that spanned seventy years.
For decades one of the most powerful financiers in the American midwest, Cyrus Eaton was also a colorful and often-controversial figure. He was chiefly known for his longevity in business, for his opposition to the dominance of eastern financiers in the America of his day, for his occasionally ruthless financial manipulations, and for his outspoken criticism of America’s Cold War brinkmanship.
He funded and helped organize the first Pugwash Conferences on World Peace, in 1955.
Read more about Cyrus S. Eaton in 100 Minds That Made the Market, by Kenneth L. Fisher, free from Google Books.
Posted by courier at 07:45 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From wikipedia:
Benjamin Rush (January 4, 1746 [O.S. December 24, 1745] – April 19, 1813) was a Founding Father of the United States. Rush lived in the state of Pennsylvania and was a physician, writer, educator, humanitarian and a Christian Universalist, as well as the founder of Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
Rush was a signatory of the Declaration of Independence and attended the Continental Congress. He served as Surgeon General in the Continental army, and was an opponent of Gen. George Washington. Later in life, he became a professor of chemistry, medical theory, and clinical practice at the University of Pennsylvania. Despite having a wide influence on the development of American government, he is not as widely known as many of his American contemporaries. Rush was also an early opponent of slavery and capital punishment.
Visit the website of the Benjamin Rush society.
Posted by courier at 12:45 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From wikipedia:
Madam C.J. Walker (December 23, 1867 – May 25, 1919), born Sarah Breedlove, was an African-American businesswoman, hair care entrepreneur and philanthropist. She made her fortune by developing and marketing a hugely successful line of beauty and hair products for black women under the company she founded, Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company.
Madam C.J. Walker was born Sarah Breedlove, on December 23, 1867 in Delta, Louisiana to Owen and Minerva Breedlove. She was one of six children; she had a sister Louvenia and 4 brothers: Alexander, James, Solomon, and Owen, Jr. Her parents and elder siblings were slaves on a Madison Parish plantation owned by Robert W. Burney. Her mother died, possibly from cholera, in 1872. Her father remarried and died shortly afterward when she was seven years old.
Visit "The Official" Madam C.J. Walker website.
Posted by courier at 09:14 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From wikipedia:
Edwin Arlington Robinson (December 22, 1869 – April 6, 1935) was an American poet who won three Pulitzer Prizes for his work.
Robinson was born in Head Tide, Lincoln County, Maine, but his family moved to Gardiner, Maine, in 1870. He described his childhood in Maine as "stark and unhappy": his parents, having wanted a girl, did not name him until he was six months old, when they visited a holiday resort; other vacationers decided that he should have a name, and selected a man from Arlington, Massachusetts to draw a name out of a hat.
Learn more about Edwin Arlington Robinson, and his hometown, Gardiner, Maine, at earobinson.com.
Posted by courier at 12:43 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From wikipedia:
Kan'ichi Asakawa (December 20, 1873 – August 10, 1948) was a Japanese academic, author, historian, librarian, curator and peace advocate. Asakawa was Japanese by birth and citizenship, but he lived the major portion of his life in the United States.
He was born in Nihonmatsu, Japan, and was educated at the Fukushima-ken Jinjo School in Fukushima Prefecture and at Waseda University in Tokyo before he traveled to the United States to study at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. He was awarded his BA degree in 1899. He continued his studies at Yale University, earning his Ph.D. in 1902.
Read "The Treaty of Portsmouth" by Kan'ichi Asakawa, free from the Russ0-Japanese War Research Society.
Posted by courier at 12:30 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From wikipedia:
George Davis Snell (December 19, 1903 – June 6, 1996) was an American mouse geneticist and basic transplant immunologist.
George Snell shared the 1980 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Baruj Benacerraf and Jean Dausset for their discoveries concerning "genetically determined structures on the cell surface that regulate immunological reactions". Snell specifically "discovered the genetic factors that determine the possibilities of transplanting tissue from one individual to another. It was Snell who introduced the concept of H antigens." Snell's work in mice led to the discovery of HLA, the major histocompatibility complex, in humans (and all vertebrates) that is analogous to the H-2 complex in mice. Recognition of these key genes was prerequisite to successful tissue and organ transplantation.
Read George D. Snell's Nobel Prize lecture, free from Nobelprize.org.
Posted by courier at 12:46 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From wikipedia:
Joseph Grimaldi (18 December 1778 – 31 May 1837), was an English actor and comedian who is perhaps best known for his invention of the modern day whiteface clown. He chiefly appeared at Drury Lane in pantomime where his greatest success was appearing in Harlequin and Mother Goose; or the Golden Egg and followed with a successful performance at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden. Born in Clare Market, London, he was introduced to the stage at Drury Lane; at the age of three and began to appear at the Sadler's Wells theatre.
Read the Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi, free from the Internet Archive.
Posted by courier at 12:37 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From wikipedia:
Charles Olson (27 December 1910 – 10 January 1970), was a second generation American modernist poet who was a link between earlier figures such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and the New American poets, which includes the New York School, the Black Mountain School, the Beat poets, and the San Francisco Renaissance. Consequently, many postmodern groups, such as the poets of a language school, include Olson as a primary and precedent figure. He described himself not so much as a poet or writer but as "an archeologist of morning.
Watch Charles Olson read 'Maximus to Gloucester, Letter 27 [withheld]', via YouTube.
Posted by courier at 07:32 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From wikipedia:
George Santayana (born
Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás in Madrid, December 16, 1863; died September 26, 1952, in Rome) was a philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. A lifelong Spanish citizen, Santayana was raised and educated in the United States and identified himself as an American. He wrote in English and is generally considered an American man of letters. At the age of forty-eight, Santayana left his position at Harvard and returned to Europe permanently, never to return to the United States. His last will was to be buried in the Spanish Pantheon of the Cimitero Monumentale del Verano in Rome.
Read The Life of Reason by George Santayana, one of
eight of his works available free from Project Gutenberg.
Posted by courier at 07:32 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From wikipedia:
Emilio Jacinto (December 15, 1875 - April 16, 1899), was a Filipino revolutionary known as the Brains of the Katipunan.
Born in Trozo,Tondo, Manila. Jacinto was the son of Mariano Jacinto and Josefa Dizon. His father died shortly after Jacinto was born, forcing his mother to send him to his uncle, Don José Dizon, so that he might have a better standard of living.
Learn more about Emilio Jacinto and other heroes of the Philippines, free from globalpinoy.com.
Posted by courier at 12:14 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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Note: Each week, The Courier will spotlight books newly arrived, or expected to arrive, in the James Logan High School Media Center
Farishta by Patricia McArdle
Hardcover: 368 pages
Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1594487960
ISBN-13: 978-1594487965
From Amazon.com
Twenty-one years ago, diplomat Angela Morgan witnessed the death of her husband during the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. Devastated by her loss, she fled back to America, where she hid in the backwaters of the State Department and avoided the high-profile postings that would advance her career. Now, with that career about to dead-end and no true connections at home, she must take the one assignment available-at a remote British army outpost in northern Afghanistan. Unwelcome among the soldiers and unaccepted by the local government and warlords, Angela has to fight to earn the respect of her colleagues, especially the enigmatic Mark Davies, a British major who is by turns her staunchest ally and her fiercest critic. Frustrated at her inability to contribute to the nation's reconstruction, Angela slips out of camp disguised in a burka to provide aid to the refugees in the war-torn region. She becomes their farishta, or "angel," in the local Dari language-and discovers a new purpose for her life, a way to finally put her grief behind her.
Posted by courier at 11:23 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From wikipedia:
Paul Éluard, born
Eugène Émile Paul Grindel (14 December 1895 – 18 November 1952), was a French poet who was one of the founders of the surrealist movement.
Éluard was born in Saint-Denis, Seine-Saint-Denis, France, the son of Clément Grindel and wife Jeanne Cousin. At age 16 he contracted tuberculosis and interrupted his studies. He met Gala, born Elena Ivanovna Diakonova, who he married in 1917, in the Swiss sanatorium of Davos. Together they had a daughter named Cécile. Around this time Éluard wrote his first poems. He was particularly inspired by Walt Whitman. In 1918, Jean Paulhan “discovered” him and introduced him to André Breton and Louis Aragon. After having collaborated earlier with German Dadaist Max Ernst in 1921, in 1922 Ernst entered France illegally and entered into a menage a trois living arrangement with Éluard and Gala.
Read a collection of Paul Éluard's poems, in french.
Posted by courier at 07:39 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From wikipedia:
Belle da Costa Greene (December 13, 1883 in Washington, D.C. - May 10, 1950 in New York City, New York) was the librarian to J. P. Morgan and after his death in 1913, Belle continued as librarian under his son, Jack Morgan. In 1924 the private collection was incorporated by the State of New York as a library for public uses, and the Board of Trustees appointed Belle first director of the Pierpont Morgan Library.
Visit the Morgan Library and Museum online.
Posted by courier at 07:57 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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William Learned Marcy (December 12, 1786 – July 4, 1857) was an American statesman, who served as U.S. Senator and the 11th Governor of New York, and as the U.S. Secretary of War and U.S. Secretary of State.
Marcy was born in Southbridge, Massachusetts. He graduated from Brown University in 1808, taught school in Dedham, Massachusetts and in Newport, Rhode Island, studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1811, and commenced practice in Troy, New York. Marcy served in the War of 1812. Afterwards he was recorder of Troy for several years, but as he sided with the Anti-Clinton faction of the Democratic-Republican Party, known as the Bucktails, he was removed from office in 1818 by his political opponents. He was the editor of the Troy Budget. On April 28, 1824, he married Cornelia Knower (1801–1889, daughter of Benjamin Knower) at the Knower House in Guilderland, New York, and their children were Edmund Marcy (b. ca. 1833) and Cornelia Marcy (1834–1888).
Read more about William Learned Marcy, free from the University of Virginia.
Posted by courier at 12:36 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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John Ronald Skirth (11 December 1897–1977) served in the Royal Garrison Artillery during the First World War. His experiences during the Battle of Messines and the Battle of Passchendaele led him to resolve not to take human life, and for the rest of his army service he made deliberate errors in targeting calculations to try to ensure the guns of his battery missed their aiming point on the first attempt, giving the enemy a chance to evacuate. Many years later, after retiring from a career as a teacher, he wrote a memoir of his years in the army, describing his disillusionment with the conduct of the war and his conversion to pacifism. In 2010 the memoir was published as
The Reluctant Tommy.
Read a review of The Reluctant Tommy, free from the Daily Mail Online.
Posted by courier at 12:24 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From wikipedia:
Melville Louis Kossuth (Melvil) Dewey (December 10, 1851 – December 26, 1931) was an American librarian and educator, inventor of the Dewey Decimal system of library classification, and a founder of the Lake Placid Club.
Education and personal life
Dewey was born in Adams Center, New York, the fifth and last child of Joel and Eliza Greene Dewey. He attended rural schools and determined early that his destiny was to be a reformer in educating the masses. At Amherst College he belonged to Delta Kappa Epsilon, earning a bachelor's degree in 1874 and a master's in 1877.
Read Melvil Dewey's obituary, free from the New York Times.
Posted by courier at 12:08 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From wikipedia:
Emmett Leo Kelly (December 9, 1898 – March 28, 1979), a native of Sedan, Kansas, was an American circus performer, who created the memorable clown figure "Weary Willie", based on the hobos of the Depression era.
Kelly began his career as a trapeze artist. By 1923, Emmett Kelly was working his trapeze act with John Robinson's circus when he met and married Eva Moore, another circus trapeze artist. They later performed together as the "Aerial Kellys" with Emmett still performing occasionally as a white face clown.
Visit the Emmett Kelly museum online.
Posted by courier at 12:44 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From wikipedia:
Eli Whitney (December 8, 1765 – January 8, 1825) was an American inventor best known for inventing the cotton gin. This was one of the key inventions of the Industrial Revolution and shaped the economy of the Antebellum South. Whitney's invention made upland short cotton into a profitable crop, which strengthened the economic foundation of slavery in the United States (regardless of whether Whitney intended that or not). Despite the social and economic impact of his invention, Whitney lost many profits in legal battles over patent infringement for the cotton gin. Thereafter, he turned his attention into securing contracts with the government in the manufacture of muskets for the newly formed continental army. He continued making arms and inventing until his death in 1825.
Read a letter from Thomas Jefferson (as Secretary of State) to Eli Whitney, Jr. regarding his patent application for the cotton gin, free from teachingushistory.org.
Posted by courier at 12:57 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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Willa Sibert Cather (December 7, 1873 – April 24, 1947) is among the most eminent American authors. She is known for her depictions of US life in novels like
O Pioneers!,
My Ántonia, and
Death Comes for the Archbishop.
Cather was born in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, but her family relocated to Nebraska in 1883 and she spent the rest of her childhood in Red Cloud, Nebraska. She insisted on attending college, so her family borrowed money so she could enroll at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. While there, she became a regular contributor to the
Nebraska State Journal.
Read One of Ours, Cather's Nobel Prize-winning book, free from Project Gutenberg.
Posted by courier at 12:53 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From wikipedia:
John Singleton Mosby (December 6, 1833 – May 30, 1916), nicknamed the "Gray Ghost", was a Confederate cavalry battalion commander in the American Civil War. His command, the 43rd Battalion, 1st Virginia Cavalry, known as Mosby's Rangers or Mosby's Raiders, was a partisan ranger unit noted for its lightning quick raids and its ability to elude Union Army pursuers and disappear, blending in with local farmers and townsmen. The area of northern central Virginia in which Mosby operated with impunity was known during the war and ever since as Mosby's Confederacy. After the war, Mosby worked as an attorney and supported his former enemy's commander, President Ulysses S. Grant, serving as the U.S. consul to Hong Kong and in the Department of Justice.
Mosby was born in Powhatan County, Virginia, to Virginia McLaurine Mosby and Alfred Daniel Mosby, a graduate of Hampden-Sydney College. His father was a member of an old Virginia family of English origin whose ancestor, Richard Mosby, was born in England in 1600 and settled in Charles City, Virginia in the early 17th century. Mosby was named after his paternal grandfather, John Singleton.
Read "Col. John Mosby and the Southern code of honor," free from the University of Virginia.
Posted by courier at 07:49 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From wikipedia:
Elizabeth Cabot Agassiz (née
Cary) (December 5, 1822 – June 27, 1907) was an American educator, and the co-founder and first president of Radcliffe College.
Elizabeth Cary was born in 1822 into a Boston Brahmin family. Because of her fragile health, she received homeschooling. Following the marriage of her older sister with a professor, she began socializing with a group of intellectuals in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1849 she met scientist Louis Agassiz, a widower, who had recently emigrated with his three children (Pauline, Ida and Alexander) from Switzerland to the United States. They married in 1850. She organized the household, took care of the finances and the children. She worked closely with her husband at his scientific research.
Read Elizabeth Cary Agassiz: a biography, by Lucy Allen Paton, free from Google Books.
Posted by courier at 08:06 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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Gregory "Pappy" Boyington (December 4, 1912 - January 11, 1988) was a United States Marine Corps officer who was an American fighter ace during World War II. For his heroic actions, he was awarded both the Medal of Honor and the Navy Cross. Boyington flew initially with the American Volunteer Group in the Republic of China Air Force during the Second Sino-Japanese War. He later commanded the U.S. Marine Corps squadron, VMF-214 ("The Black Sheep Squadron") during World War II. Boyington became a prisoner of war later in the war.
Read an interview with Paddy Boyington, in pdf format from EAF51.org.
Posted by courier at 12:44 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From wikipedia:
Ellen Henrietta (Swallow) Richards (December 3, 1842 – March 30, 1911) was the foremost female industrial and environmental chemist in the United States in the 1800s, pioneering the field of home economics. Richards was the first woman admitted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and its first female instructor, the first woman in America accepted to any school of science and technology, and the first American woman to earn a degree in chemistry.
Ellen was a "pragmatic" feminist, as well as a founding "ecofeminist" who believed that women's work within the home was a vital aspect of the economy.
Read Good luncheons for rural schools without a kitchen, by Ellen Swallow Richards, free from the Internet Archive.
Posted by courier at 06:46 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From wikipedia:
Charles Edward Ringling (December 2, 1863 – December 3, 1926) was one of the Ringling brothers, who owned the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. He was in charge of production and greatly admired by the employees, who called him "Mr. Charlie" and sought his advice and help even for personal problems.
Sarasota, Florida development
Charles Ringling bought large tracts of land in the Sarasota, Florida area, including the Gillespie Golf Course. He developed the Courthouse Subdivision, which extended the business center of Sarasota beyond the bay front. He donated land for a courthouse to serve as the county seat for the newly created, Sarasota County. He built the high-rise Sarasota Terrace Hotel near the railroad terminus and a bank through which he encouraged development in the community. Ringling Boulevard, which winds eastward from Tamiami Trail was named in honor of Charles Ringling because of his many civic activities in the community.
Learn more about Charles Ringling from the New College of Florida.
Posted by courier at 07:26 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From wikipedia:
Minoru Yamasaki (December 1, 1912 – February 7, 1986) was a Japanese-American architect, best known for his design of the twin towers of the World Trade Center, buildings 1 and 2. Yamasaki was one of the most prominent architects of the 20th century. He and fellow architect Edward Durell Stone are generally considered to be the two master practitioners of "New Formalism."
Yamasaki was born in Seattle, Washington, a second-generation Japanese American, son of John Tsunejiro Yamasaki and Hana Yamasaki. He grew up in Auburn, Washington and attended Auburn Senior High School. He enrolled in the University of Washington program in architecture in 1929, and graduated with a Bachelor of Architecture (B.Arch.) in 1934. During his college years, he was strongly encouraged by faculty member Lionel Pries. He earned money to pay for his tuition by working at an Alaskan salmon cannery.
Learn more about Minoru Yamasaki, free from Great Buildings Online.
Posted by courier at 07:42 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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