7 April is the traditional birthday of the internet. On 7 April 1969, RFC 1 was published. The first RFCs, or Requests For Comments, were records of unofficial notes. They are now official records, the internet being as prone to the Janus of transparency and bureaucracy as the rest of us. For teachers who have… Continue reading #OTD 7 April
Category: The Calendar
#OTD 6 April
The fiscal or financial or budget year is different for everyone. Most public companies use the calendar year. The various local, state and federal governments of Australia, being the Antipodes, do the opposite, starting on 1 July. In the UK, the fiscal year starts in between, on 1 April. For the government, at least. English… Continue reading #OTD 6 April
#OTD 18 February
On February 18, 1911, French pilot Henri Pequet carried the first official mail flown by aeroplane. The flight occurred in what is now India, with over 6,000 cards and letter going from Allahabad to Naini, a 10km trip. Ninety nine years to the day later, a modern mail starts flowing with the first release by… Continue reading #OTD 18 February
#OTD 17 February
Early in 1977, Archbishop Janani Luwum delivered a note of protest to dictator Idi Amin against the policies of arbitrary killings and unexplained disappearances. Luwum’s immediate disappearance was not unexplained, as he was arrested for treason. His killing was not arbitrary, as Radio Uganda reported that he had been killed in a car collision while… Continue reading #OTD 17 February
#OTD 16 February
On 16 February 1945, the then-territory of Alaska passed the US’s first state or territory anti-discrimination law. It took a couple of non-white women, or more correctly a girl and a woman, to get there. The year before, 15-year-old high schooler Alberta Schenck was sacked from her ushering job at the Alaska Dream Theatre in… Continue reading #OTD 16 February
#OTD 15 February
The heliocentrist and Copernicist Galileo Galilei was born on 15 February 1564. In one of history’s layered ironies, the two names given to the most famous person to suffer the Roman Inquisition came from the pejorative given to the Roman Church by many Romans including the decidedly non-Christian Emperor Julian. Julian wrote the polemic “Against… Continue reading #OTD 15 February
#OTD 14 February
One day, new ways wake up as traditions. In the 1950s, CS Lewis wrote The Chronicles of Narnia; in it, the affairs of Narnia were discussed by a parliament of owls; the books sold well; and somewhere along the way “parliament” became the “correct” collective for owls. Lewis took his legislature from Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Parlement… Continue reading #OTD 14 February
#OTD 13 February
The Greek word “episkopos” has shaped the English-speaking world. It means “overseer”; via Latin we get “Episcopal” and via old English we get “bishop”. The creation of the Church of England in the middle of the 16th century was not the abolition of bishops but the creation of a new episcopacy. Unsurprisingly, Protestants continued to… Continue reading #OTD 13 February
#OTD 12 February
Amazon was almost called Cadabra. The name was dropped because too many people on the phone heard “Cadaver”. On 12 February 1809, two births. One, at The Mount in Shrewsbury on the River Severn, Charles Darwin. The other, on Sinking Spring Farm in Kentucky, Abraham Lincoln. One writer has called them “the men behind the… Continue reading #OTD 12 February
#OTD 11 February
On 11 February 1812, Governor Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts signed himself into history by authorising a radical redrawing of electoral districts designed to win his party the next election. By March the Weekly Messenger observed that the county of Essex had become two districts, one concave and the other convex, “as one of them fits… Continue reading #OTD 11 February