Interesting tidbits: 1817 – The first Great Lakes steamer, the Frontenac, was launched. Built in Ernesttown, Ontario, by American contractors for Kingston businessmen during 1816 at a cost of £15,000, she entered service in spring 1817. Frontenac conducted regular runs across Lake Ontario between Kingston, York (now Toronto), and Niagara-on-the-Lake, but rarely managed to make money in eight years; the provincial population was simply too small. Frontenac was sold for £1550 to John Hamilton in 1824, who persisted two more unsuccessful years before selling her for scrap at Niagara in 1827. Before she could be scrapped, she burned to the waterline due to arson. 1833 - Ada Lovelace (first computer programmer) meets Charles Babbage. 1883 – The first regularly scheduled Orient Express departed Paris. The Orient Express was the name of a long-distance passenger train service originally operated by the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits. It ran from 1883 to 2009. The route and rolling stock of the Orient Express changed many times. Several routes in the past concurrently used the Orient Express name, or slight variants thereof. Although the original Orient Express was simply a normal international railway service, the name has become synonymous with intrigue and luxury travel. The two city names most prominently associated with the Orient Express are Paris and Istanbul, the original endpoints of the timetabled service. On 14 December 2009, the Orient Express ceased to operate and the route disappeared from European railway timetables, reportedly a victim of high-speed trains and cut-rate airlines. The Venice-Simplon Orient Express train, a private venture by Orient-Express Hotels using original carriages from the 1920s and 30s, continues to run from London to Venice and to other destinations in Europe, including the original route from Paris to Istanbul. 1937 - Henry Ford initiates 32 hour work week. Todays birthday crew: 1819 – John Couch Adams, English mathematician and astronomer whose most famous achievement was predicting the existence and position of Neptune, using only mathematics. The calculations were made to explain discrepancies with Uranuss orbit and the laws of Kepler and Newton. At the same time, but unknown to each other, the same calculations were made by Urbain Le Verrier. Le Verrier would assist Berlin Observatory astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle in locating the planet on 23 September 1846, which was found within 1° of its predicted location, a point in Aquarius. 1850 – Pat Garrett was an American Old West lawman, bartender, and customs agent who became famous for killing Billy the Kid. Garrett was grew up on a prosperous Louisiana plantation just below the Arkansas state line. He left home in 1869 and found work in texas as a cowboy, which he left to become a buffalo hunter. In 1878, Garrett shot and killed a fellow hunter who charged at him with a hatchet following a disagreement over hides. Garrett moved to New Mexico and briefly found work as a cowpuncher before quitting to open his own saloon. A tall man, he was referred to by locals as Juan Largo or Long John. On November 7, 1880, the sheriff of Lincoln County, New Mexico resigned with two months left in his term. As his successor, the county appointed Garrett, a gunman of some reputation who had promised to restore law and order. Garrett was charged with tracking down and arresting an alleged friend from his saloon keeping days, Henry McCarty, a jail escapee and Lincoln County War participant who often went by the aliases Henry Antrim and William Harrison Bonney, but is better known as Billy the Kid. McCarty was an alleged murderer who had participated in the Lincoln County War. He was said to have killed 21 men, one for every year of his life, but the actual total was probably closer to nine. New Mexico Governor Lew Wallace had personally put a $500 reward on McCartys capture. On July 14, 1881, Garrett visited Fort Sumner to question a friend of the Kids about the whereabouts of the outlaw. He learned the Kid was staying with a mutual friend. Around midnight, Garrett went to the house. The Kid was asleep in another part of the house, but woke up hungry in the middle of the night and entered the room where Garrett was standing in the shadows. The Kid did not recognize the man standing in the dark. ¿Quién es? (Who is it?), ¿Quién es?, the Kid asked repeatedly. Garrett replied by shooting at him twice. The first shot hit the Kid in the chest just above the heart, although the second one missed and struck the mantle behind him; the Kid fell to the floor and gasped for a minute before dying. There has been much dispute over the details of the Kids death that night. Some historians have questioned Garretts account of the shooting, alleging the incident happened differently. They believe Garrett went into Paulita Maxwells room and tied her up. The Kid walked into her room, and Garrett ambushed him with a single blast from his Sharps rifle. The way Garrett allegedly killed The Kid without warning eventually sullied the lawmans reputation. Garrett claimed Billy the Kid had entered the room armed with a pistol, but no gun was found on his body. Other accounts claim he entered carrying a kitchen knife, but no hard evidence supported this. Still, at the time, the shooting solidified Garretts fame as a lawman and gunman, and led to numerous appointments to law enforcement positions, as well as requests that he pursue outlaws in other parts of New Mexico. 1895 – William Boyd, American actor, best known for portraying Hopalong Cassidy. In 1935, Boyd was offered the supporting role of Red Connors in the movie Hop-Along Cassidy, but asked to be considered for the title role and won it. The original Hopalong Cassidy character, written by Clarence E. Mulford for pulp fiction, was changed from a hard-drinking, rough-living wrangler to its eventual incarnation as a cowboy hero who did not smoke, drink or swear and who always let the bad guy start the fight. Although Boyd never branded a cow or mended a fence, could not bulldog a steer, and disliked Western music, he became indelibly associated with the Hopalong character and, like rival cowboy stars Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, gained lasting fame in the Western film genre. The Hopalong Cassidy series ended in 1947 after 66 films, with Boyd producing the last 12. Anticipating televisions rise, Boyd spent $350,000 to purchase the rights to the Hopalong Cassidy character, books and films. In 1949, he released the films to television, where they became extremely popular and began the long-running genre of Westerns on television. Like Rogers and Autry, Boyd licensed much merchandise, including such products as Hopalong Cassidy watches, trash cans, cups, dishes, Topps trading cards, a comic strip, comic books, radio shows and cowboy outfits. The actor identified with his character, often dressing as a cowboy in public. Although Boyds portrayal of Hopalong made him very wealthy, he believed that it was his duty to help strengthen his friends - Americas youth. The actor refused to license his name for products he viewed as unsuitable or dangerous, and turned down personal appearances at which his friends would be charged admission. 1899 – Otis Barton, American engineer, diver, author, and designer of the deep sea bathysphere. The independently wealthy Barton designed the first bathysphere and made a dive with William Beebe off Bermuda in June 1930. They set the first record for deep-sea diving by descending 600 feet. In 1934 they set another record at 3028 feet. In 1949, he set a new world record with a 4,500 foot / 1,372 m dive in the Pacific Ocean, using his benthoscope, which was designed by Barton and Maurice Nelles. Barton wrote the book The World Beneath the Sea, published in 1953. Like Beebe, Barton was also interested in exploring tropical rain forests, and spent considerable time in places like Gabon. In 1978 Barton successfully tested a jungle spaceship (actually an airship) that was intended to film wildlife. The use of an airship to study forests continued to the present day. 1905 – Wayne Boring, American comics artist best known for his work on Superman from the late 1940s through the 1950s. In 1942, National Comics hired Boring as a staff artist, teaming him as penciler the following year with inker Stan Kaye. The two would work together for nearly 20 years. In 1948, Mort Weisinger, new editor of the Superman line, brought in Boring, who became the primary Superman comic-book penciller through the 1950s and returned for sporadic guest appearances in the 1960s. As one critic wrote of Borings 1950s Superman art, Comics legend Wayne Boring played a major role in visually defining the most well known super-hero in the world during the peak of Supermans popularity. Boring was let go from DC in 1967, along with other artists from the 1930s and 1940s Golden Age of comic books. From 1968 to 1972, Boring ghosted backgrounds for Hal Fosters Prince Valiant Sunday comic strip, and took over the art on writer Sam Leffs 1961-71 United Feature Syndicate strip Davy Jones. Afterward, Boring did a small amount of work on Marvel Comics Captain Marvel, then left the field to semi-retire as a bank security guard, though he would continue to draw commissioned work. He briefly returned to DC to pencil some stories in Superman #402 (1984), and Action Comics #561 & 572 (1984–85). In 1985, DC Comics named Boring as one of the honorees in the companys 50th anniversary publication Fifty Who Made DC Great. Boring died of a heart attack, following a brief comeback announced in one of his last published works, penciling a Golden Age Superman story written by Roy Thomas and inked by Jerry Ordway in Secret Origins #1 (April 1986).[12] His final work was All-Star Squadron #64 (December 1986) a recreation of Superman #19. 1965 – Michael E. Brown, American astronomer whose team has discovered many trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs), notably the dwarf planet Eris, the only known TNO more massive than the ex-planet Pluto. He has humorously referred to himself as the man who killed Pluto, because he furthered Pluto being downgraded to a dwarf planet in the aftermath of the discovery of Eris and several other probable trans-Neptunian dwarf planets. He is also the author of How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming, published in 2010. Happy birthday guys!
Posted on: Thu, 05 Jun 2014 10:13:48 +0000
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