BOOK REVIEW  How to Tell Toledo from the Night Sky by Lydia Netzer  St. Martin's Press, 2014   

Like a jewel shimmering in a Midwest skyline, the Toledo Institute of Astronomy is the nation’s premier center of astronomical discovery and a beacon of scientific learning for astronomers far and wide.  Here, dreamy cosmologist George Dermont mines the stars to prove the existence of God.  Here, Irene Sparks, an unsentimental scientist, creates black holes in captivity.  George and Irene are on a collision course with love, destiny and fate.  They have everything in common:  both are ambitious, both passionate about science, both lonely and yearning for connection.  The air seems to hum when they’re together.  I picked up How to Tell Toledo from the Night Sky because, well, Toledo.  I’m not just from Ohio, but Toledo is a place I visited fairly often in my teens.  Which were also the years when John Denver’s song, “Saturday Night in Toledo Ohio (is like being nowhere at all)” was pretty popular (at least in Ohio).  So while I recognized the real places and landmarks in the story, the idea that Toledo would become a mecca for any kind of science, or have anything like the Toledo Institute of Astronomy as portrayed in the story, both hit my funny bone and twigged my ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ meter a bit more than was perhaps intended.  About the book . . . the story is about how love can go totally and completely wrong, and also be utterly right, both at the same time.  Just not involving the same people.  Marlene Harris  http://thebookpushers.com/2014/07/07/review-how-to-tell-toledo-from-the-night-sky-by-lydia-netzer/

1914  Events  Velvet Ice Cream in Utica, Ohio was founded.  Charlie Chaplin made his film debut.  Congress established Mother's Day.  World War I broke out in Europe.  The last passenger pigeon died.  Echoes  July/August 2014   See also http://www.historyorb.com/events/date/1914

“Martha,” a passenger pigeon named after George Washington’s wife, was the last of her kind.  Immediately following her death in 1914 at the Cincinnati Zoological Gardens, she was packed in an enormous 300-pound block of ice and shipped to the Smithsonian.  The passenger pigeon, Ectopistes migratorius, was once the most common bird in the United States, numbering in the billions.  Passenger pigeons lived in enormous colonies, with sometimes up to 100 nests in a single tree.  Migrating flocks stretched a mile wide, turning the skies black.  With such abundance, it seemed unimaginable that the passenger pigeon could ever become extinct.  But due to overhunting, habitat loss, and possibly infectious diseases that spread through the colonies, they became increasingly rare by the late nineteenth century.  The last confirmed sighting of a wild passenger pigeon was in 1900.  After that, only a few survived in captivity. “Martha,” who lived her whole 29-year life in the Cincinnati Zoo, was the last.  Her skin was mounted for display by the Smithsonian taxidermist Nelson Wood.  Her internal parts were preserved as part of the fluid or “wet” collections of the National Museum of Natural History.  Today the Smithsonian’s Bird Collection is one of the largest in the world, numbering some 625,000 specimens.  See pictures at http://www.mnh.si.edu/onehundredyears/featured_objects/martha2.html

A checker shadow illusion deals with light perception.  See graphic by Edward H. Adelson at  http://web.mit.edu/persci/people/adelson/checkershadow_illusion.html

Formica was created back in 1913 as a replacement "for mica" electrical insulation.  Early operations of the Formica Corporation revolved around electric motor v-rings.  In 1927, the Formica Corporation patented a barrier sheet; it was the first piece of what would soon become the Formica kitchen and bathroom countertop revolution.  By 1937, the Formica Corporation was creating many types of products, including the Formica tabletops and countertops that it became famous for.  The laminates were even used on the walls of the Queen Mary ocean liner.  Formica started as insulation and evolved into one of the most widely used materials in the world.  Simon Shadow  http://home.howstuffworks.com/home-improvement/construction/materials/formica.htm

QUOTE by American psychologist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross (1926-2004)   People are like stained-glass windows.  They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.  http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/e/elisabeth_kublerross.html

An IP address from a staff member in the U.S. House of Representatives has been temporarily blocked from making edits to Wikipedia articles after some of its changes were deemed disruptive.  The Twitter bot @congressedits was created in July, 2014 to track what changes were coming out of congress and, well, it found some pretty interesting edits coming from an IP address for House staff.  An anonymous user from the House edited the page for "moon landing conspiracy theories" to say the Cuban government was behind spreading rumors that 1969's moon landing was a hoax.  (Via NASA)  For Wikipedia's article on the Nevada Test and Training Range, a House staff computer included that, "In spite of allegations to the contrary, the claims that extraterrestials are housed in this facility are completely unsubstantiated."  (Via U.S. Air Force / CC BY-NC 2.0)  And they added this note to the bio on controversial radio host Alex Jones:  "Following his appearances on Russia Today, there were allegations that he was a disinformation agent with ties to the Kremlin." (The Alex Jones Show)  But the unknown user from within Congressional offices isn't just trying to stir up controversy or disprove the existence of aliens.  He or she also made grammatical and organizational corrections on dozens of articles and added other more trivial information as well.  It should be pointed out that the user could be anyone working within the House of Representatives — staff member or elected official.  Ben Lawson  http://www.ajc.com/news/technology/wikipedia-puts-congress-time-out-blocks-editing/ngpH5/

Karl Albrecht, who with his brother Theo returned from Allied prisoner-of-war camps after World War II to find their mother’s corner shop still standing in bombed-out Essen, Germany, then proceeded to build it into the international grocery empire Aldi, died on July 16, 2014 in Essen. He was 94.  The Aldi chain formerly managed by Mr. Albrecht (the name is short for Albrecht Discount) now has nearly 5,000 stores worldwide, including 1,300 in the United States, all of them known for spartan décor and low prices.  A separate organization formerly run by Theo Albrecht, which also uses the Aldi name, has 4,800 outlets in Europe.  Dennis Hevesi and Jack Ewing 

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/22/business/karl-albrecht-a-reclusive-founder-of-aldi-dies-at-94.html?ref=obituaries

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue  1176  July 28, 2014  On this date in 1866, at the age of 18, Vinnie Ream became the first and youngest female artist to receive a commission from the United States government for a statue (of Abraham Lincoln).  On this date in 1896, the city of Miami, Florida was incorporated.