Fort
Western is a
former British colonial outpost at the head of navigation on the Kennebec River at
modern Augusta, Maine, United States. It was built in 1754 during the French and Indian
War. Its main building, the only original element of the fort to survive, was
restored in 1920 and now depicts its original use as a trading post. Today it is the oldest log fort in the
United States, and its main building is a little-altered example of an
18th-century trading post. The fort and
store are maintained as a museum and are open to the public during the summer
months. The fort was listed on the National Register of Historic
Places in 1969, and was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1973. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Western See also http://www.augustamaine.gov/old_fort_western/index.php
and https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/maine/oldest-wooden-fort-me/
The history of Des Moines, Iowa can be traced to 1834, when John
Dougherty, an Indian Agent at Fort Leavenworth, Ks, recommended that a military
post be established at the point where the Des Moines and Raccoon Rivers
merge. Nine years later, May 1843,
Captain James Allen and a company of dragoons from Fort Sanford arrived on the
site. Captain Allen proposed to name the
garrison Fort Raccoon but was directed by the War Department to use the name
Fort Des Moines. The origin of the name
is uncertain, but most historians agree that the name probably initially
referred to the river. Some people feel
that 'Des Moines' is derived from the Indian word 'moingona' meaning river of
the mounds which referred to the burial mounds that were located near the banks
of the river. Others are of the opinion
that name applies to the Trappist Monks (Moines de la Trappe) who lived in huts
at the mouth of the Des Moines river. French
voyagers referred to the river as La Riviere des Moines. https://www.dmgov.org/InfoCenter/Pages/HistoricalInformation.aspx See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Des_Moines,_Iowa
Juneau is the state capital for
Alaska, the state
nicknamed The Last Frontier, and is America’s 6th-least populated
state capital city. Named after Canadian
gold prospector and miner Joseph Juneau, Juneau is the largest capital city by
land area and is also the sole American capital city that is unreachable by
road. https://www.worldscapitalcities.com/capital-facts-for-juneau-united-states/
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Once Helped
Clear an Innocent Man of Murder by Helen Thompson At 82 years old and unmarried, Marion Gilchrist lived
in the wealthy neighborhood of West Princes Street in Glasgow. On the evening of December 21, 1908, just
after 7pm, someone attacked Gilchrist and beat her to death in her own
home. When the housemaid Helen Lambie
returned from errands, she found find her employer dead on the dining room
floor, papers ransacked and a diamond broach mysteriously missing. There was no sign of forced entry, so police
assumed that she had known her attacker, who had absconded with the
broach. Within five days, the police had
a suspect: A petty crook named Oscar
Slater had recently tried to sell a pawn ticket for a diamond broach before
hopping on a ship to the United States.
Slater lived near Gilchrist, and Lambie had identified him as a man she
had seen running from Gilchrist’s house that night. Perhaps thinking their evidence was lacking,
Slater waved extradition and returned to Scotland where he stood trial. The Scottish court convicted and sentenced
him to death in 1909. Though scheduled
for execution, Slater’s lawyer gathered signatures for a petition and
successfully got his client’s sentence commuted. Slater appeared destined to spend his life in
jail instead. By then, the publicity
surrounding the case had garnered the interest of Conan Doyle, who began a
reexamination of the facts by Sherlockian methods. Despite the sentence, the prosecution had
left some glaring holes in their case.
The broach he said he had pawned actually belonged to a lady friend, and
rumors surfaced that witnesses, including Lambie, had been coached. Conan Doyle interviewed new witnesses,
searched for additional evidence and even covered some of Slater’s legal
fees. In 1912, he published his findings
in The Case of Oscar Slater. But, it wasn’t enough to induce a retrial,
and Conan Doyle lost interest in the case.
Seven years later, the widow of a Glasgow police officer contacted him. Her husband, John Thompson Trench, had kept
documents revealing that other officers withheld evidence about suspects among
Gilchrist’s family—suspects with powerful friends. Conan Doyle also received at plea from Slater
in prison around the same time, and a journalist published a piece on the case
that highlighted Conan Doyle’s work.
Suddenly, he was on the case again.
Eventually, thanks in part to Conan Doyle’s influence, Slater was
released in 1927. Once authorities
reopened and retried the case, Slater’s name was cleared. As for Marion Gilchrist’s actual
murderer, his identity remains unknown.
Microfilm Lasts Half a Millennium Millions of publications—not to mention spy documents—can be read on microfilm machines. But people still see these devices as outmoded and unappealing. An Object Lesson by I recently acquired a decommissioned microfilm reader. My university bought the reader for $16,000 in 1998, but its value has depreciated to $0 in their official bookkeeping records. Machines like it played a central role in both research and secret-agent tasks of the last century. But this one had become an embarrassment. The bureaucrats wouldn’t let me store the reader in a laboratory that also houses a multimillion-dollar information-display system. They made me promise to “make sure no VIPs ever see it there.” After lots of paperwork and negotiation, I finally had to transport the machine myself. Unlike a computer—even an old one—it was heavy and ungainly. It would not fit into a car, and it could not be carried by two people for more than a few feet. Even moving the thing was an embarrassment. No one wanted it, but no one wanted me to have it around either. The first micrographic experiments, in 1839, reduced a daguerreotype image down by a factor of 160. By 1853, the format was already being assessed for newspaper archives. The processes continued to be refined during the 19th century. Even so, microfilm was still considered a novelty when it was displayed at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia of 1876. The contemporary microfilm reader has multiple origins. Bradley A. Fiske filed a patent for a “reading machine” on March 28, 1922, a pocket-sized handheld device that could be held up to one eye to magnify columns of tiny print on a spooling paper tape. But the apparatus that gained traction was G. L. McCarthy’s 35mm scanning camera, which Eastman Kodak introduced as the Rekordak in 1935, specifically to preserve newspapers. By 1938, universities began using it to microfilm dissertations and other research papers. During World War II, microphotography became a tool for espionage, and for carrying military mail, and soon there was a recognition that massive archives of information and cross-referencing gave agencies an advantage. Libraries adopted microfilm by 1940, after realizing that they could not physically house an increasing volume of publications, including newspapers, periodicals, and government documents. As the war concluded in Europe, a coordinated effort by the U.S. Library of Congress and the U.S. State Department also put many international newspapers on microfilm as a way to better understand quickly changing geopolitical situations. The first micrographic experiments, in 1839, reduced a daguerreotype image down by a factor of 160. By 1853, the format was already being assessed for newspaper archives. The processes continued to be refined during the 19th century. Even so, microfilm was still considered a novelty when it was displayed at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia of 1876. Read much more at https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/07/microfilm-lasts-half-a-millennium/565643/ Thank you, Muse reader!
A millennium is a period of a thousand
years. Researchers typically use the
early 1980s as starting birth years and the mid-1990s to early 2000s as ending
birth years for Millennials. See also http://www.pewresearch.org/topics/millennials/
The Jeep legend began in November
1940, in the early
days of World War II, just a year before the United States entered the war. A
small, four-wheel drive prototype, the Willys "Quad", was delivered
to the US Army. It featured the Willys
"Go-Devil" engine, developed by Delmar "Barney" Roos. With 60 horsepower and 105 foot-pounds of
torque it not only exceeded the Army's requirement, but dwarfed the Bantam's 83
and Ford's 85 pound-feet of torque, it's only competitors for the military
contract. The Quad was the father of the
MB, CJ series, and Wrangler. Willys refined the Quad and built 1,500 units of
the Willys MA model, many of which were used in WWII. Read more at https://www.kaiserwillys.com/about_willys_jeep_vehicles_history_specs
FREE TO THE PUBLIC
– FAMILY-FRIENDLY – COMMUNITY FESTIVAL Join us August 10 through 12, 2018 for
the 2nd Toledo Jeep® Fest in Toledo, Ohio – home of the
Jeep.
Some of the only things thinner than N.Y.-style thin
crusts may be the thin skins of New
York-style pizza superfans unhappy that Chicago will
celebrate pizza on Friday, August 10, 2018 with the opening of
the U.S.
Pizza Museum, a love letter to the pizza-loving world with memorabilia
from pizzerias all over the country. The
museum, which grew out of a website established
in 2012, will unveil its hopefully permanent home tomorrow in the
South Loop. Earlier in the week, an AP
story began circulating with the headline “Chicago is the site
of US Pizza Museum: report,” an abridged pick-up of a Tribune story. When the story hit New York, some people in
the Big Apple unleashed their outrage. Chicago wasn’t worthy, they claimed. The
Internet once more gyrated with the typical takes about Chicago deep-dish
pizza: “It’s lasagna,” and “it’s not
even real pizza.” Today and Conde Nast Traveler picked up on
the hijinks to fuel more reaction. The
truth is that U.S. Pizza Museum founder Kendall Bruns didn’t even grow up in
Chicago. He was an Air Force brat who
spent much of his childhood in Ohio. He
doesn’t participate in the pizza politics. There are seven days in a week and that means
pizza lovers can order N.Y.-style Monday, enjoy a Detroiter on Tuesday, and a
New Haven crust on Wednesday. That
leaves more than enough days for either a Chicago deep-dish or the lesser known Chicago tavern-style
thin crust. The latter is
something those Internet commenters know nothing about. The Chicago museum isn’t the first. Pizza Brain debuted
in 2011 in Philadelphia. Bruns knew that
when he started his museum, and noted that Philadelphia’s was an extension of
an existing pizzeria. A New York museum
is opening in the fall and will be more
experiential. Bruns wishes
them luck, as he feels there’s more than one way to tell a story. Ashok
Selvam https://chicago.eater.com/2018/8/9/17672328/us-pizza-museum-chicago-new-yorkers-mad-kendall-bruns
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 1932
August 10. 2018 Word of the Day Couch potato was coined after boob tube,
slang for television. One who watches a
boob tube is a boob tuber and a tuber is a potato. According to the Bon Appétit
magazine, the term was coined by Tom Iacino. Yesterday’s couch potato is today’s mouse
potato, spending time in front of a computer screen, surfing the web. A. Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
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