Frances Crick, part of the team with James Watson that identified the structure of DNA, acknowledged the work of Wendell Stanley, whose analysis of the shape of one virus triggered the development of X-ray diffraction analysis of molecular structure. He was first to isolate an influenza virus and develop a vaccine for it. He was the first to isolate the polio virus, although a vaccine based on that work was never brought to market. He was probably not the first academic scientist to have personal rivalries dismantle his department, but he regrouped.
It appears to be a day for dichotomy: Two battles during the American Revolution, one in which the colonials stood fast to the great surprise of the British forces, three years later the the regimented Redcoats advanced and the Continental Army collapsed and fled the field. Two large gatherings in the nineteenth century, the protestors in Manchester that were met by excess force in the Peterloo Massacre, and the first of thousands of ambitions gold miners swing their picks in the Klondike gold fields. (Okay, that one's a stretch.) And two dramatic records for altitude change, the first time a human went more than a half mile below the surface of the ocean, and a parachute descent from nearly twenty miles above New Mexico.
For your obedient servant it's time to get away from the phone and the flood of e-mail. I'm off to the Grünewald Guild, a liturgical art center high in the Cascades, where the community is caring, I'll shoot some pictures, fire some pottery, and when the phone rings it won't be for me. I was all set to take the laptop and get the mail out from the mountains, but I wasn't all that unhappy when I found that it wouldn't come on. So, no Twisted History until Monday.
1777 - British General John Burgoyne, short on supplies while marching on Albany, New York, learns of supplies in warehouses at Bennington, Vermont and launches a three-pronged attack to capture them. Expecting a poor defense, he was met by over 1500 New Hampshire and Vermont militiamen. Burgoyne's forces suffered 200 killed and 700 captured, while the colonials had 40 killed and 30 wounded. Burgoyne's army was seriously weakened by this and surrendered two months later.
1780 - British forces under General Cornwalis numbering 3,000 routed a Continental Army force of 1,400 plus additional troops from Virginia and North Carolina.
1819 - A crowd of some 60,000 men, women, and children were peaceably gathered in Peter's Field in Manchester, England to petition Parliament for the repeal of the corn laws, a system supporting the price of grain for large landowners but raising the price of bread for workers in the cities. The magistrates ordered the meeting to disband, reading The Riot Act from a window of an adjacent building, and dispatched the police to arrest the speakers on the platform. A cavalry charge to aid the untrained Manchester police resulted in 11 deaths and injuries estimated at over 400.
1896 - George Washington Carmack filed a claim on Bonanza Creek near Dawson in the Yukon, in the next two years some 30,000 miners would join in the Klondike stampede.
1934 - The American explorers William Beebe and Otis Barton descended 3,028 feet in the "bathysphere" Barton had designed. The dive took place ten miles off Nonsuch Island, Bermuda, their depth record stood for fifteen years.
1960 - US Air Force test pilot Joe Kittinger flew his Excelsior III balloon over New Mexico to an altitude of 102,800 feet (a record), stepped out for the highest parachute jump (a record), fell free for 4 minutes and 36 seconds (a record), attaining a velocity of 614 mph (a record), but didn't break the sound barrier as widely reported.
Independence Day, India - Celebrates the 1947 independence from Great Britain. The Indian Independence Act of 1947, passed on 18 July, created India and Pakistan effective on this day. Frequent occasion for violent demonstrations related to Kashmir and Sikh independence.
1912 - Julia Child, US chef - Born Julia McWilliams at Pasadena, California, mischievous youth included smoking father's cigars - he offered her a $1,000 bond to quit smoking until she was 21. Played on the basketball team, partied, and studied just enough to graduate from Smith College 1934, collected on the bond and started smoking two packs a day for thirty years. Served as a clerk with the Office of Strategic Services in Washington City, researcher and then administrator of OSS office in Ceylon, fell in with an OSS field agent and gourmand named Paul Child, both were assigned to Kunming, China, they married on return to the US. After World War II Julia left the OSS, Paul was assigned to the US Information Service at Paris late in 1948. Julia trained at Cordon Bleu, started her own cooking school "L'Ecole des Trois Gourmandes" with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle to teach French cooking to American wives in Paris, with them wrote Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 1961. Returningto US, televised interview on WGBH Boston led to TV cooking show "The French Chef," followed (after 200 programs) with several other series ending with "Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home" with Jacques Pepin, first of a wide array of TV chefs. Popularized the "master recipe" in cookbooks, a base recipe with multiple uses. Co-founder of the American Institute of Wine and Food, published nine cookbooks, has a multimedia CD-ROM out.
Why does man kill? He kills for food. And not only food: frequently there
must be a beverage.
- Woody Allen
Food is an important part of a balanced diet.
- Fran Lebowitz
Anyone who eats three meals a day should understand why cookbooks outsell
sex books three to one.
- L. M. Boyd
In heaven, the cooks are French, the lovers are Italian, the police are
English, and the whole thing is organized by the Germans. In hell the
cooks are English, the lovers are German, the police are French, and the
whole thing is organized by the Italians.
- Anonymous
I am not a glutton - I am an explorer of food.
- Erma Louise Bombeck
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