Month: November 2015

Holland Tunnel Opens to Traffic (1927)

The Holland Tunnel, which connects Manhattan to Jersey City, was designed specifically for automobile traffic and included ventilator systems to reduce carbon monoxide exposure. One of first examples of ventilated design, the tunnel was an engineering marvel of the time. Construction required workers to spend large amounts of time under high pressure. Upon exiting the tunnel, they underwent a depressurization process that prevented them from developing what painful physiological condition? Discuss

Source: The Free Dictionary

Feast of St. Frances Cabrini

The first American citizen to be proclaimed a saint of the Roman Catholic Church, Francesca Xavier Cabrini (1850-1917) was born in Italy. She founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart in 1880, and went on to establish orphanages, schools and hospitals in many American cities, as well as in Europe and South America. She was canonized on July 7, 1946. Her feast day is commemorated in many places, but particularly at Mother Cabrini High School in New York City, in whose chapel she is buried, and at every establishment of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart. Discuss

Source: The Free Dictionary

Esaias Tegnér (1782)

Tegnér was the most popular of the Swedish romantic poets. An optimistic nationalist in his youth, he wrote the militant anti-Russian Svea and Axel, followed by Frithjof’s Saga, which is based on collections of Scandinavian sagas and is considered the masterpiece of the Swedish Gothic tradition. The son of a pastor and a bishop himself, his sermons and speeches are classics of the Swedish language. Subject to periods of madness, he composed what epic poem in an asylum? Discuss

Source: The Free Dictionary

The Hieratic Writing System

Hieratic, first used around 3,000 BCE, was the basic writing system of the ancient Egyptian pharaonic period and provided a simpler alternative to the contemporaneous hieroglyphic system. It was generally written with ink on papyrus and was often used to compose administrative documents and letters, as well as legal, literary, and religious texts. Much of what is now known about the lives of common Egyptians has been deciphered from such texts. What writing system is descended from hieratic? Discuss

Source: The Free Dictionary

The Exploding Whale Incident (1970)

In 1970, a 45-ft (14-m), 8-ton sperm whale died after beaching itself near Florence, Oregon. Charged with disposing of the carcass, the Oregon Highway Division decided that half a ton of dynamite would effectively break the whale into pieces small enough for scavengers to clear. The explosion, which launched large chunks of blubber so far that at least one car was damaged, was filmed by a TV crew and became the stuff of legend. Why did a 50-ton whale spontaneously explode in Taiwan in 2004? Discuss

Source: The Free Dictionary

Birth of Baha’u’llah

The anniversary of the birth in 1817 of Baha’u’llah, the founder of the Baha’i religion , is a holy day on which work is suspended. Mirza Husayn Ali, later known as Baha’u’llah (“Glory of God”), was born in Tehran, Persia (now Iran). He was an adherent of Islam, and later a follower of the Bab, who founded the Babi faith, an independent messianic religion. Thirteen years after the Bab’s execution in 1850, Husayn Ali declared himself the messenger of God, foretold by the Bab. Discuss

Source: The Free Dictionary

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815)

Stanton was an American reformer and a leader of the women’s suffrage movement. In 1840, she married abolitionist Henry Brewster Stanton, and they attended the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in London, where she joined Lucretia Mott in objecting to their exclusion from the assembly. A proponent of legal, political, and industrial equality for women, she later joined forces with Susan B. Anthony in the women’s suffrage movement. What one word did Stanton famously omit from her marriage vows? Discuss

Source: The Free Dictionary