Guglielmo Marconi was born in 1874 into a wealthy family in Bologna, Italy, and educated by private tutors.  He developed an interest in science, particularly the work of German physicist Heinrich Hertz on the transmission of electromagnetic waves through the air.  Though he failed the entrance exam at the University of Bologna, Marconi began experimenting with wireless telegraphy on his own in 1894.  He discovered that by connecting his transmitter and receiver to the earth (grounding them), and then increasing the height of the antenna, he could extend the range of the signal.  Despite this important technical breakthrough, the Italian government declined to sponsor his work.  Marconi moved to Great Britain where his work received greater support.  In 1896 he patented his first device for wireless telegraphy and in 1897 found investors for his Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company, which began manufacturing radio sets that were able to transmit and receive messages in Morse Code.  Marconi believed that radio waves would follow the earth's curvature, making communication to ships at sea feasible, and designed an experiment to prove his contention.  If successful, the experiment would also provide a "stunt" that would give the relatively new technology, and Marconi's company, world-wide publicity.  This was to be the transmission of a wireless message across the Atlantic.  Marconi constructed a transmitter at Poldhu, Cornwall, in the west of England and another at Cape Cod in Massachusetts.  When a storm damaged the Poldhu antenna, and it had to be replaced by a smaller one, Marconi decided to change the North American destination to St. John's Newfoundland.  In any event, the Cape Cod station was itself destroyed in a storm.  In December 1901 Marconi assembled his receiver at Signal Hill, St. John's, nearly the closest point to Europe in North America.  He set up his receiving apparatus in an abandoned hospital that straddled the cliff facing Europe on the top of Signal Hill.  After unsuccessful attempts to keep an antenna aloft with balloons and kites, because of the high winds, he eventually managed to raise an antenna with a kite for a short period of time for each of a few days.  Accounts vary, but Marconi's notes indicate that the transatlantic message was received via this antenna.  Marconi continued to experiment with long-wave and short-wave transmission as well as to manage his business interests until his death in 1937.  His work, and that of other scientists and inventors, had revolutionized communications at sea and on land and had created whole new industries, such as radio broadcasting.  Marconi's patents and investments made him wealthy and his scientific achievements led to his sharing the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1909.   http://www.heritage.nf.ca/society/marconi.html

Road Scholar, formerly Elderhostel, is a  not-for-profit group offering  5,500 educational tours in all 50 states and 150 countries.  Solo participants are welcome, and there are scholarships for those who need financial help.  http://www.roadscholar.org/about/pos_page.asp

The Philippine archipelago comprises 7,107 islands, of which only about 2,000 are inhabited.  They are clustered into the three major island groups of Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_islands_of_the_Philippines

Indonesia, with over 18,000 counted islands, is by far the largest and most varied archipelago on Earth. It spans almost 2 million square kilometers between Asia and Australia.  Positioned on the Equator, across a region of immense volcanic activity, Indonesia has some 400 volcanoes within its borders, with at least 90 still active in some way.  Many of the islands here are still uninhabited, with the larger islands of Java, Kalimantan (Borneo), Irian Jaya (Papua), Sumatra and Sulawesi home to most of the population base.  http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/asia/id.htm

QUOTES by  Michel de Montaigne, essayist (1533-1592)  "I am afraid that our eyes are bigger than our stomachs, and that we have more curiosity than understanding.  We grasp at everything, but catch nothing except wind.”  

“Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.” 
http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/17241.Michel_de_Montaigne 

In August 1620, a group of about 40 Saints joined a much larger group of (comparatively) secular colonists–“Strangers,” to the Saints–and set sail from England on two merchant ships:  the Mayflower and the Speedwell.  The Speedwell began to leak almost immediately, however, and the ships headed back to port.  The travelers squeezed themselves and their belongings onto the Mayflower and set sail once again.  In September 1620, the Mayflower set sail from Plymouth, a port on the southern coast of England.  Typically, the Mayflower’s cargo was wine and dry goods, but on this trip the ship carried passengers:  102 of them, all hoping to start a new life on the other side of the Atlantic.  Nearly 40 of these passengers were Protestant Separatists–they called themselves “Saints”–who hoped to establish a new church in the New World.  Today, we often refer to the colonists who crossed the Atlantic on the Mayflower as “Pilgrims.”  After two miserable months at sea, the ship finally reached the New World.  There, the Mayflower’s passengers found an abandoned Indian village and not much else.  They also found that they were in the wrong place:  Cape Cod was located at 42 degrees north latitude, well north of the Virginia Company’s territory.  Technically, the Mayflower colonists had no right to be there at all.  In order to establish themselves as a legitimate colony (“Plymouth,” named after the English port from which they had departed) under these dubious circumstances, 41 of the Saints and Strangers drafted and signed a document they called the Mayflower Compact.  This Compact promised to create a “civil Body Politick” governed by elected officials and “just and equal laws.”  It also swore allegiance to the English king.  The colonists spent the first winter, which only 53 passengers and half the crew survived, living onboard the Mayflower.  (The Mayflower sailed back to England in April 1621.)  Once they moved ashore, the colonists faced even more challenges.  During their first winter in America, more than half of the Plymouth colonists died from malnutrition, disease and exposure to the harsh New England weather.  In fact, without the help of the area’s native people, it is likely that none of the colonists would have survived.  An English-speaking Pawtuxet named Samoset helped the colonists form an alliance with the local Wampanoags, who taught them how to hunt local animals, gather shellfish and grow corn, beans and squash.  At the end of the next summer, the Plymouth colonists celebrated their first successful harvest with a three-day festival of thanksgiving.  We still commemorate this feast today.  Eventually, the Plymouth colonists were absorbed into the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony.  http://www.history.com/topics/mayflower

Link to U.S. Supreme Court opinions at http://www.supremecourt.gov/  The current term ends June 30, 2014.  See also http://live.scotusblog.com/Event/Live_blog_of_orders_and_opinions__June_23_2014?Page=0

Who said:  I've held off on writing about soccer for a decade — or about the length of the average soccer game — so as not to offend anyone.  But enough is enough.  Any growing interest in soccer can only be a sign of the nation's moral decay.  Find out who said this at http://www.clarionledger.com/story/opinion/columnists/2014/06/25/coulter-growing-interest-soccer-sign-nations-moral-decay/11372137/

June 27, 2014  What was fake on the Internet this week:  Bees, Zs, KFCs and SOS calls from sweatshop detainees.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/06/27/what-was-fake-on-the-internet-this-week-bees-zs-kfcs-and-sos-calls-from-sweatshop-detainees/?tid=hpModule_1f58c93a-8a7a-11e2-98d9-3012c1cd8d1e&hpid=z11

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1168  June 30, 2014  On this date in 1864, Abraham Lincoln granted Yosemite Valley to California for "public use, resort and recreation".  On this date in 1886, the first transcontinental train trip across Canada departed from Montreal.  It arrived in Port Moody, British Columbia on July 4.