Sir William Henry Perkin, FRS (1838–1907) was a British chemist and entrepreneur best known for his
serendipitous discovery of the first synthetic organic dye, mauveine, made from aniline. Though he failed
in trying to synthesise quinine for the treatment of malaria, he became successful in the field of dyes after his first discovery at the age of 18. William
Perkin continued active research in organic chemistry for the rest of his
life: he discovered and marketed
other synthetic dyes,
including Britannia Violet and Perkin's Green; he
discovered ways to make coumarin, one of the first
synthetic raw materials of perfume, and cinnamic acid.
(The reaction used to make the last became known as the Perkin reaction.) In 1869, Perkin found a method for the
commercial production from anthracene of the brilliant red dye alizarin, which had been isolated and
identified from madder root some forty years earlier in
1826 by the French chemist Pierre Robiquet, simultaneously with purpurin, another red dye of lesser industrial
interest, but the German chemical company BASF patented
the same process one day before he did.
During the next decade, the new German Empire was rapidly eclipsing
Britain as the centre of Europe's chemical industry. By the 1890s, Germany had a near-monopoly on the business and Perkin was
compelled to sell off his holdings and retire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Henry_Perkin
July 22, 2020 Cracking the Case of South India’s Missing
Vegetables--A food designer used
quarantine to track down the mystery produce in his grandmother’s cookbook by
Reina Gattuso Published in 1951, Samaithu
Par, translated to English as Cook and See, is a classic text of 20th-century vegetarian
Tamil Brahmin cooking. Authored by
Meenakshi Ammal, a widow turned chef-auteur, the book consists of 350 recipes
for beloved dishes including sambar,
rasam, payasam, and uppuma. As food designer Akash Muralidharan cooked, he spotted a
mystery in Cook and See’s
ingredients lists. Many of the recipes were nostalgic classics, made with common
ingredients. Yet Muralidharan also
encountered vegetables that even he, as a native Chennai resident and a food
professional, didn’t recognize. These included kaai valli kodi, called air potato in English; siru kizhangu, or coleus potato;
and mookuthi avarai, or
clove bean. So Muralidharan undertook a
100-day Samaithu Par cooking
challenge. Beginning March 1, 2020, he
cooked a recipe from the book each day, documenting his journey with Instagram
in posts illustrated by collaborators Priyadarshini Narayana and Shrishti
Dabolkar. Of the 80 different vegetables
called for in the recipes, the team had difficulty finding around 20
varieties. Read much more and see pictures at https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/indian-vegetables?utm_source=Gastro+Obscura+Weekly+E-mail&utm_campaign=0f6379ce15-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_07_25&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2418498528-0f6379ce15-71793902&mc_cid=0f6379ce15&mc_eid=aef0869a63
Built in 1924 for use by
the Ford Motor Company, the Benson Ford (I) was original utilized to transport
iron ore and related materials across the Great Lakes by the growing auto
company. Measuring 612’ X 62’ with a moulded depth of 32’ and a carrying
capacity of 15,000 net tons at mid-summer draft, the ship was built by Great
Lakes Engineering, Ecorse, Mich., and was launched April 26, 1924. The maiden voyage of the Benson Ford began on
August 2 with a coal load from Toledo, Ohio, being transported to Duluth,
Minn., and returning to the Ford Rouge plant in Dearborn, Mich., with iron
ore. After more than 50 years of
tireless service, the Benson Ford was decommissioned in December of 1981 and
renamed the John Dykstra II so the original name could be released to another
ship in the Ford fleet. Stripped of the
engine and other salvageable parts, the Dykstra was sold to Frank J. Sullivan
of Sullivan Marine, Cleveland, Ohio, for intended use as a barge; however, it
never sailed again. On December 21, 1984, Sullivan had the ship towed to
the Ontario Stone No. 4 dock on the Cuyahoga River where it sat for almost two
years while the new owners pondered what to do with the ship. After much consideration, Sullivan decided it
would not be cost effective to utilize the ship on the Great Lakes and opted
for a less conventional use. On July 3, 1986, the entire forward
superstructure of the Dykstra, including the forecastle deck, was removed and
transported by the barge Thor 101 to South Bass Island, also called
Put-in-Bay. The 62’ X 59’ foot section would be initially used as a 7,000
square foot, four story summer home for the Sullivans. The home would
include the walnut paneled state rooms, dining room, galley, and passenger
lounge designed by Henry Ford for his own pleasure while traversing the Great
Lakes on business. http://shiponthebay.com/history.html Thank you, Muse reader! See shiphouse photos at http://shiponthebay.com/gallery.html
and https://czarniklife.wordpress.com/2014/01/19/benson-ford/. See
also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_freighter
Leftovers are always
better the second day. Or, in the case
of Bangkok restaurant Wattana Panich, the next generation. The giant pot of neua tune, a beef stew popular in the
Thai capital, has been simmering since owner Nattapong Kaweenuntawong was a
child, more than 45 years ago. Growing up studying the exact flavor profile
of the stew from his father, Kaweenuntawong now balances the flavor himself
daily. He employs an ancient practice
called Hunter’s Stew or Perpetual Stew, using some of the previous day’s
leftover broth to start the base of the following
day’s soup. “We keep tasting. There is no recipe,” he told Channel
News Asia. A secret blend of spices
and herbs, stewed beef, raw beef slices, meatballs, tripe, and other organs
swim about the deeply bubbling vat.
A letter of marque and reprisal (French: lettre de marque; lettre de
course) was a government license in
the Age of Sail that authorized a private
person, known as a privateer or corsair, to attack and capture vessels of a
nation at war with the issuer. Once
captured, the privateer could then bring the case of that prize before their
own admiralty court for
condemnation and transfer of ownership to the privateer. A letter of marque and reprisal would include
permission to cross an international border to conduct a reprisal (take some
action against an attack or injury) and was authorized by an issuing
jurisdiction to conduct reprisal operations outside its borders. Popular among Europeans from the late Middle Ages up to the 19th century,
cruising for enemy prizes with a letter of marque was considered an honorable
calling that combined patriotism and profit.
Such privateering contrasted with attacks and captures of random ships,
which was unlicensed and known as piracy; piracy was almost universally reviled.
In reality, the differences between privateers and pirates were
often at best subtle and at worst a matter of interpretation. Marque derives
from the Old English mearc, which is from the Germanic *mark-,
which means boundary, or boundary marker, which is derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *merǵ-, meaning boundary, or
border. The French marque is
from the Provençal language marca, which is from marcar,
also Provençal, meaning, seize as a pledge.
Article 1 of the United States Constitution lists issuing letters of marque and reprisal in
Section 8 as one of the enumerated
powers of Congress, alongside the power to tax and to declare War. However, since the American Civil War, the
United States as a matter of policy has consistently followed the terms of
the 1856 Paris
Declaration forbidding the
practice. The United States has not legally commissioned any privateers since
1815, although the status of submarine-hunting Goodyear airships in the early days of World
War II created significant
confusion. Various accounts refer to
airships Resolute and Volunteer as operating
under a "privateer status", but Congress never authorized a
commission, nor did the President sign one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_of_marque
WORD OF THE DAY FOR JULY
29 (uncountable) A (usually women's) team sport derived from basketball, with seven players on each side who attempt to score goals by passing a ball and throwing it into the opponent's goal, which is a raised hoop with
a net at one end of the playing area.
Unlike basketball, a player in possession of the ball cannot move until the ball is passed to another
player. (countable) The ball used in
this sport. Swedish-born physical education instructor and women’s suffrage advocate Martina
Bergman-Österberg died on July 29, 1915. She played a pivotal role in the development
of netball as she introduced a version of basketball to her students at Hampstead
College, London, after returning from the United States in 1893 having seen that
sport being played. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/netball#English
National Chicken Wing Day
is July 29th. See full results of a
survey of over 2,500 Americans asking them about their favorite sauce or
seasoning, preference of wing type, and whether they’d rather have ranch or
blue cheese and what the favorites are by state. https://www.grillcookbake.com/outdoor-cooking/chicken-wing-survey/
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 2235
July 29, 2020
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