We routinely have disasters in the Events section, and today is certainly no exception. A plague of Rocky Mountain Locusts devastating crops in Minnesota, German bombers practicing for greater things in a later war destroy a Basque town, and the worst nuclear reactor accident in history. But there may also be a miracle. After three years of increasing damage from the aggressive grasshoppers, Minnesotans stopped and prayed for relief. The weather changed, snow and sleet fell in some parts of the state as the nasty bugs hatched, and when the surviving grasshoppers matured they mostly flew away. We don't like to admit to the possibility of miracles or divine intervention in modern times, but I don't rule them out either.
In the 19th century Zanzibar had a war that lasted less than an hour, in 1964 they had a revolution that took less than nine hours. The leader of the uprising marched on a police armory with 250 men, armed with bows, spears, and sharpened leaf springs from automobiles. When the time came to cut the barbed wire and attack, most of the force turned and ran, so only 40 made the assault. Only two police were awake and armed downstairs, the rest were asleep upstairs. The insurgents killed the two, forced the armory open, and by the time the weapons were distributed the Sultan was in exile.
We also note two men who created great beauty. Frederick Law Olmsted was an early leader in landscape architecture and city planning. The list of public spaces he created in his career goes on for pages, and he didn't get serious about it until he was 43 years old. John James Audubon introduced us to extremely detailed, and mostly lifelike, paintings of the birds and mammals of North America, the prints published during his life are still widely sought after. How did he get such authentic detail? It probably embarrasses today's Audubon Society, but he went out and shot the birds, ran wires through their bodies to hold natural poses, and drew at leisure.
1877 - The residents of Minnesota observed a statewide day of prayer, asking for deliverance from a plague of grasshoppers that had been ravishing their farm crops this year. (The plague ended soon after, in the summer.)
1937 - German planes, on behalf of the Spanish Nationalists, bomb the town of Guernica, bringing no great honor to Generalissimo Franco and attracting horror from around the world. Commemorated in a painting by Pablo Picasso.
1986 - A combination of early reactor design, poor monitoring systems, and human error in response allowed the power output of Chernobyl Unit Number 4 in Belorus to surge to 100 times design level, during a reduced-power test of the safety systems. Activity was limited to the bottom of the "pile," the pressure blew the lid off which allowed air to react with the graphite structure and formed carbon monoxide, which then exploded. Eight of the 140 tons of plutonium-rich fuel, along with significant amounts of the radioactive graphite moderator, were ejected from the containment. A concrete sarcophagus was built over the smoldering remains, but up to 30,000 deaths resulted and a wide area of land has been lost.
Confederate Memorial Day, US (Georgia and Florida) - The Civil War ended for Georgia on this date in 1865, and it had been informally observed as Memorial Day for some time when the legislature made it official in 1874. Other southern states observe different dates. The national Memorial Day is an outgrowth of southern "Decoration Day" ceremonies.
Union Day, United Republic of Tanzania - Commemorates the unification of Zanzibar and Tanganyika in 1964. Of 250 men making an attack on a police barracks in Zanzibar, only 40 actually were willing to cross the barbed wire and storm the armory. The revolution was over in less than nine hours, and Zanzibar merged with mainland Tanganyika.
1785 - John James Audubon, US naturalist, artist - Born to a Creole slave at Les Cayes, Saint-Domingue, (now in Haiti), the mother soon died and the father took illegitimate Fougere Rabin back to Nantes, adopted him five years later and christened him Jean-Jacques Fougere Audubon. Went to Philadelphia to manage father's farm in 1809, failed at numerous businesses and ended up in debtors' prison. Found no publisher in the US for his bird and animal paintings, went to England. Criticized for unlikely or impossible poses in his art, understandable since he painted them after he had shot the birds. Died in New York on 27 January 1851.
1822 - Frederick Law Olmsted, US landscape architect, city planner - Born in Hartford Connecticutt, Olmsted was a seaman, journalist, editor, farmer, bureaucrat, manager of gold mine, and superintendent of New York's Central Park, which he designed with Calvert Vaux. It was several years later that he decided to stick with designing outdoor places. His work includes the US Capitol grounds, Boston's Emerald Necklace, park systems in Buffalo and Seattle, the fairgrounds of the 1893 Chicago World Fair, and many other. His sons took over the practice and managed over 5500 projects through 1980, following his death on 28 August 1903.
1900 - Charles Francis Richter, US seismologist - Born on a farm near Hamilton, Ohio, moved to Los Angeles in 1916. Enrolled at the University of Southern California, studied physics at Stanford University, Ph.D. in physics from Caltech in 1928. Professor of seismology at the Seismological Laboratory at Caltech from 1936 until his retirement in 1970, he was tracking 200 quakes a year without a reliable measure of their severity, so he invented his own. Died at Altadena, California on 30 April 1985.
There is an ambush everywhere from the army of accidents; therefore the
rider of life runs with loosened reins.
- Hafiz
Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of intelligent
efforts.
- John Ruskin
Nuclear war would mean abolition of most comforts, and disruption of
normal routines, for children and adults alike.
- Willard F. Libby
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