We have two completely different approaches to the weather today. James Espy was among the first to study storms in an analytic manner, combining observation and laboratory measurements. He also was first to organize weather reporting stations with telegraphs so that the weather in different parts of a storm could be correlated and storm travel could be monitored. With no science at all, but with pomp and splendor, the King of Thailand sponsors Ploughing Day. Which colorful wrap the leader of the ceremony chooses is said to predict the rain, which food the oxen choose after their ceremonial furrows predicts which crops will thrive this year.
Howard Carter's family painted portraits for wealthy Londoners, both of the family and of their pets. Young Howard wasn't taken with this craft, and went to Egypt to copy the drawings on tomb walls. With his trained eye he performed well, and advanced to supervising most of the collecting of artifacts in Egypt for several years. He moved on to digging himself, and found the most significant tomb of all, that of young Tutankhamen, a rare tomb that had not been looted. The 3500 artifacts removed are visually stunning and provide some of the best information on the pharaohs and life in early Egypt.
Speaking of eyes, the first organ transplant center was opened in New York City in 1944, dedicated to storing corneas. For 40 years the surgery had been possible, but with no organized reserve of healthy tissue it was only rarely performed. Other eye banks, and similar repositories for other organs, followed.
1785 - Joseph Bramah receives a British patent for a beer pump that allows for the mixing of two of the four beers to be dispensed. "Stale porter" was aged over a year and picked up a bite from acetic acid. It was more costly because of the age, and patrons could now choose how much of the extra bite they wanted to pay for.
1944 - The Eye-Bank for Sight Restoration, the world's first transplant agency, is founded in New York City in by ophthalmologist R. Townley Paton. Cornea transplants had been known since 1905 but were rare because no corneas were available. Dr Paton created a process to collect, process, and distribute them, including the ability of a living person to specify that their corneas were to be donated.
1983 - John Paul II announced the reversal of the Catholic Church's 1633 condemnation of Galileo Galilei, the scientist who first espoused the Copernican (i.e., heliocentric) view of our solar system.
Royal Ploughing Ceremony, Bangkok, Thailand - Marks the beginning of rice-planting season, celebrated for some 2500 years. The presider is presented with three cloth wraps of different sizes, the one he chooses predicts the rainfall of the year. Bulls garlanded with flowers pull a gold and silver decorated plow through the field, then are offered bowls of different crops - the choice of the bulls predict what crops will thrive. Rice is scattered over the field, on signal the farmers race to find even one grain from the ceremony to include with their own planting.
1785 - James Pollard Espy, US meteorologist - Developed a convection theory of storms in 1835, published "Philosophy of Storms" in 1841. Meteorologist to the War (1842) and Navy (1848) departments, developed the use of the telegraph in assembling weather observation data by which he studied the progress of storms and laid the basis for scientific weather forecasting. "The Storm King" died 24 January 1860.
1874 - Howard Carter, British archaeologist - Born in Kensington, London, UK to an artist who trained his son to draw and paint. Didn't enjoy portraits, went to Egypt 1891 to copy drawings and inscriptions for archaeologists, became Inspector of Antiquities for Egyptian government in 1899. Met Lord Carnarvon 1907, worked for him in excavating several tombs, moved on to Western Thebes in search of one special tomb in 1917, that of little-known boy king Tutankhamen, found it intact 4 November 1922. Died of Hodgkin's Disease at home in London on 2 March 1939.
For the man sound in body and serene in mind there is no such thing as
bad weather; every sky has its beauty, and storms which whip the blood
do but make it pulse more vigorously.
- Jerome K. Jerome
Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a
good article on it.
- Mark Twain
Obstacles are things a person sees when he takes his eyes off his goal.
- E. Joseph Cossman
There are some people in this world who would never plant a seed because
it doesn't produce fruit the first season.
- Ralph Nader
Would that we could at once paint with the eyes! In the long way from
the eye through the arm to the pencil, how much is lost!
- Gotthold Lessing
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