Author: NewMexiKen

The six children who survived the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing were toddlers when the yellow rental truck exploded just beneath the windows of their second-floor day-care center. Some spent weeks in intensive care. Others required years of therapy. All will forever be scarred. But they are alive.

Photo from AP via The Seattle Times.

At Lexington Green, the British were met by 77 American Minute Men led by John Parker. At the North Bridge in Concord, the British were confronted again, this time by 300 to 400 armed colonists, and were forced to march back to Boston with the Americans firing on them all the way. By the end of the day, the colonists were singing “Yankee Doodle” and the American Revolution had begun.

The Library of Congress

Indeed, if actions spoke louder than words, today would be Independence Day.

10 years ago that a bomb was exploded outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City killing 168 people, and injuring 500.

Stylized chairs representing some of the public servants who lost their life that day (Oklahoma City National Memorial).

For more than a century, it has caused excitement and frustration in equal measure – a collection of Greek and Roman writings so vast it could redraw the map of classical civilisation. If only it was legible.

Now, in a breakthrough described as the classical equivalent of finding the holy grail, Oxford University scientists have employed infra-red technology to open up the hoard, known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, and with it the prospect that hundreds of lost Greek comedies, tragedies and epic poems will soon be revealed.

In the past four days alone, Oxford’s classicists have used it to make a series of astonishing discoveries, including writing by Sophocles, Euripides, Hesiod and other literary giants of the ancient world, lost for millennia. They even believe they are likely to find lost Christian gospels, the originals of which were written around the time of the earliest books of the New Testament.

The Independent

Albert Einstein died. He was 76.

Albert Einstein’s work laid the groundwork for many modern technologies including nuclear weapons and cosmic science.

After his death, Einstein’s brain was removed and preserved for scientific research by Canadian scientists.

It was found that the part of Einstein’s brain responsible for mathematical thought and the ability to think in terms of space and movement was 15% wider than average.

It also lacked a groove which normally runs through this region suggesting that the neurons were able to communicate.

In 1999 Albert Einstein was named “person of the century” by Time magazine.

BBC On This Day

At 5:12 A.M. on April 18, 1906, an 8.3 magnitude earthquake struck San Francisco. With thousands of un-reinforced brick buildings and closely-spaced wooden Victorian dwellings, the city was poorly prepared for the quake. Collapsed buildings, broken chimneys, and a shortage of water due to broken mains led to several large fires that soon coalesced into a city-wide holocaust. The fire raged for three days, sweeping over nearly a quarter of the city, including the entire downtown area.

Over 3,000 people are estimated to have died as a result of the disaster. For those who survived, the first few weeks were hard; as aid poured in from around the country, thousands slept in tents in city parks, and citizens were asked to do their cooking in the street. A severe shortage of public transportation made a taxicab out of anything on wheels. Numerous businesses relocated temporarily to Oakland, and many refugees found lodgings outside the city. Most of the cities of central California were badly damaged. However, reconstruction proceeded at a furious pace, and by 1908, San Francisco was well on the way to recovery.

The Library of Congress

Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

Continue reading Paul Revere’s Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.