In 1889, Paris hosted an Exposition Universelle (World’s Fair)
to mark the 100-year anniversary of the French Revolution. More than 100 artists submitted competing
plans for a monument to be built on the Champ-de-Mars, located in central
Paris, and serve as the exposition’s entrance.
The commission was granted to Eiffel et Compagnie, a consulting and
construction firm owned by the acclaimed bridge builder, architect and metals
expert Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel. While
Eiffel himself often receives full credit for the monument that bears his name,
it was one of his employees—a structural engineer named Maurice Koechlin—who
came up with and fine-tuned the concept. Several years earlier, the pair had
collaborated on the Statue of Liberty’s metal armature. Did You Know? The base pillars of the Eiffel Tower are
oriented with the four points of the compass.
Eiffel reportedly rejected Koechlin’s original plan for the tower,
instructing him to add more ornate flourishes. The final design called for more than 18,000
pieces of puddle iron, a type of wrought iron used in construction, and 2.5
million rivets. Several hundred workers
spent two years assembling the framework of the lattice tower, which at its
inauguration in March 1889 stood nearly 1,000 feet high and was the tallest
structure in the world—a distinction it held until the completion of New York City’s Chrysler Building in 1930. Originally intended as a temporary exhibit,
the Eiffel Tower was almost torn down and scrapped in 1909. City officials opted to save it after
recognizing its value as a radiotelegraph station. Several years later, during World War I, the Eiffel
Tower intercepted enemy radio communications, relayed zeppelin alerts and was
used to dispatch emergency troop reinforcements. It escaped destruction a second time during World War II: Hitler initially ordered the demolition of the
city’s most cherished symbol, but the command was never carried out. Also during the German occupation of Paris,
French resistance fighters famously cut the Eiffel Tower’s elevator cables so
that the Nazis had to climb the stairs. The
Eiffel Tower has also inspired more than 30 replicas and similar structures in
various cities around the world. Now one
of the most recognizable structures on the planet, the Eiffel Tower underwent a
major facelift in 1986 and is repainted every seven years. It welcomes more visitors than any other paid
monument in the world—an estimated 7 million people per year.
When it opened in 1889, the Eiffel Tower sported a reddish-brown
color. A decade later, it was coated in
yellow paint. The tower was also
yellow-brown and chestnut brown before the adoption of the current, specially
mixed “Eiffel Tower Brown” in 1968.
Every seven years, painters apply 60 tons of paint to the tower to keep
her looking young. The tower is painted
in three shades, progressively lighter with elevation, in order to augment the
structure’s silhouette against the canvas of the Parisian sky. When dusk fell across Paris between
1925 and 1936, a quarter-million colored bulbs attached to three sides of the
tower’s steeple illuminated to spell the 100-foot vertical letters of the
French automobile company Citroën. The
advertisement blazed so brightly that it was visible from nearly 20 miles away,
and Charles Lindbergh used it as a beacon when he landed in Paris on his 1927
solo trans-Atlantic flight. Eiffel engraved the names of 72 of
the country’s scientists in the tower’s first-level gallery, and atop the
structure he installed a laboratory that was used by himself and French
scientists to study astronomy, meteorology, aerodynamics and physiology and
test experiments such as Foucault’s Pendulum.
In 1909 Eiffel installed an aerodynamic wind tunnel at the base of the
tower that carried out thousands of tests, including those on Wright Brothers
airplanes and Porsche automobiles. http://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-eiffel-tower
The Eiffel Tower has been re-painted
18 times since its
initial construction, an average of once every seven years. The
Tower is built using puddle iron, a material with a practically eternal
lifespan if it is just regularly repainted.
There are various factors that can threaten this metal such as rust, the
unavoidable pollution in a city, and bird droppings. 25 painters strip, clean, apply rust-proofing
and the final coat of paint to the whole 300 metres. Even today the painters still work using
traditional methods dating back to Gustave Eiffel’s day--the painting of the Eiffel
Tower is done only by hand. Each
painting campaign is an opportunity to check the state of the structure in
detail, and if need be to replace any small corroded metallic parts. The paint applied in 2002 and 2009 is a
formula with no lead pigments, having been replaced by a zinc phosphate
anticorrosion agent, which is also more resistant to atmospheric pollution. Additionally, tests on paint containing
volatile organic compounds almost completely devoid of solvents were carried
out during the 2009 campaign in preparation for the world environment norms, coming into effect after 2012. See a picture of the Tower's colors at http://www.toureiffel.paris/en/everything-about-the-tower/themed-files/97.html
How To Perfectly Poach an Egg by Alison Ashton In a
straight-sided skillet, bring about 2 inches of water to just above a simmer,
but not a rolling boil. A pan with
straight sides makes it easier to neatly slide eggs into the water. Add 1 Tbsp white wine vinegar per
egg to keep the whites from getting stringy.
Crack egg into a small cup.
Holding the cup as close to the surface of the water as possible, gently
slip it into the simmering water. Cook
for about 2 minutes. When the whites are
opaque and firm, remove using a slotted spoon.
If not serving immediately, cover the eggs with cold water and
refrigerate. When you’re ready to serve,
use a slotted spoon to transfer them to a bowl of very hot water for 15 minutes
to warm them up. http://parade.com/458092/alison-ashton/how-to-perfectly-poach-an-egg/
Victoria Claflin Woodhull (1838-1927)
Born in 1838 in Homer, Ohio, like many women of her era, Woodhull
married very young. Her marriage took place when she was 14 years old and
lasted 11 years after which time she divorced and then remarried two years
later. She helped support her family by working as a spiritual medium and
fortuneteller. In 1868, she and her family moved to New York City where
Woodhull and one of her sisters became spiritual advisors for railroad tycoon
Cornelius Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt in turn helped the sisters become the
first women stockbrokers in history when they opened their own brokerage house
in 1870 called Woodhull, Claflin & Company in 1870. That same year
the sisters started their own paper called Woodhull
and Claflin’s Weekly in which they promoted woman suffrage
and labor reforms. The following year, Woodhull became a trailblazer in
another area as the first woman to run for president representing the Equal
Rights Party. Woodhull’s presidential platform showed her foresight as
she supported issues like an eight-hour workday, graduated income tax, new
divorce laws, and social welfare programs that we enjoy today. While many
trade unionists, women’s suffragists, and socialists supported Woodhull, she was
unable to gain the funds for an effective campaign and could not receive votes
from her female supporters as women did not yet have the right to vote. https://www.nwhm.org/education-resources/biography/biographies/victoria-claflin-woodhull/
Euphemia Allen is said to be a girl who, when about
16 years old, registered the musical composition we know as “Chopsticks” under
the male name Arthur de Lulli in 1877 as “”The Celebrated Chop Waltz”. It
is pretty well known that women often published their works under male names in
past centuries. In 1859, Mary Anne Evans published her first novel, Adam Bede, under
the pen name George Eliot and continued to use the pen name even after her true
identity was revealed. Charlotte Bronte
and her sisters, Anne and Emily, used male pseudonyms, each picking one with
the first letter of their given names.
In 1832, Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin published her first novel, Indiana. under the pseudonym George Sand. In 1937, Danish author Karen von
Blixen-Finecke published “Out of Africa” using the pen name Isak Dineson. When Joanne
Rowling was advised by her publisher that a male pseudonym would make her Harry
Potter books more appealing to boys, she had to select a middle initial since
she has no middle name, and published as J.K. Rowling. Apparently, she doesn’t have an aversion to
just outright using a male name—she has also published under the name Robert
Galbraith. http://forum.bestnicknametees.com/forum/chopsticks-by-arthur-de-lulli-the-pseudonym-of-euphemia-allen/
10 Beatles Songs That Wouldn't Be the Same Without
George Martin by Joe
Lynch March 9, 2016 As the
producer behind the vast majority of the Beatles' massively popular and groundbreaking
catalog, George Martin--who passed away at age 90--will go down in music history as
one of the greats. Working with the
Beatles, solo Paul McCartney and others, he notched 23 No. 1 singles on the Billboard Hot 100--more
than any other producer. While
Martin's orchestration on "Yesterday" was an exercise in beautiful
restraint, his Bernard Herrmann-esque string octet orchestration for
"Eleanor Rigby" is almost as essential to the song as its enigmatic
lyrics. Martin's staccato string section
in the chorus is one of the most recognizable orchestral segments in all pop
music. McCartney and Martin co-conducted
the cataclysmic orchestral climax that brings "A Day In the Life" and
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band to an end. The orchestra was Paul's idea,
but this mind-blowing moment of '60s psychedelica wouldn't have
been the same without Martin's formal music education. McCartney's concept for an orchestral
improvised section proved confusing for many of the classical musicians working
on the track, so Martin helped give them a vague framework for the orchestral
glissandos. Instructing them to go from
their lowest possible note to their highest note in 24 bars, he told them
"roughly what note they should have reached during each bar,"
according to his autobiography All You Need Is Ears. "Of course, they all looked at me as
though I were completely mad." Read
more and see graphics at http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/6957260/10-beatles-songs-george-martin
Tickets to the Broadway super-hit, Hamilton, are sold out until practically next year, but
some lucky students will get to see bits of the history-making
show-about-American-history in person at the White House on March 14,
2016. Members of the cast, including
creator, writer and star Lin-Manuel Miranda, are using their day off to pop
down to Washington for one of first lady Michelle Obama's student workshops, to
answer questions, talk about careers in theater, and to perform a selection of
songs from the much-praised show about one of America's founding
fathers, Alexander Hamilton. All of
the Obamas are huge fans of the show: President Obama took daughters Sasha and Malia to see it last year after the first
lady saw it last spring. They are
not alone: The clamor for tickets to Hamilton has been tremendous; special
performances by the cast, as at the Grammy
Awards last month, only ratchet
up the demand. In December, Twitter
announced there have been more than 1 million tweets about the show. Last month, Columbia
University announced the
show won The Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American
History, which honors a new play or musical that explores America's past. The Obamas
can say they were there at the beginning. In May 2009, the first couple
hosted an event at the White House celebrating poetry, music and the spoken word. Miranda was there
and performed The Hamilton Mixtape, which was later renamed Alexander Hamilton and
became the opening song of the show.
Read more and see pictures at http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/theater/2016/03/09/hamilton-cast-sing-lucky-students-white-house/81553672/
There are 376 candidates for the Nobel Peace
Prize for 2016 out of which 228 are individuals and 148 are organizations.
The Committee does not itself announce
the names of nominees, neither to the media nor to the candidates themselves. In so far as certain names crop up in the
advance speculations as to who will be awarded any given year's Prize, this is
either sheer guesswork or information put out by the person or persons behind
the nomination. Information in the Nobel
Committee's nomination database is not made public until after fifty years. http://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/peace/
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 1439
March 11, 2016 On this date in
1897, Henry Cowell,
American pianist and composer, was born.
On this date in 1933, the musical film 42nd Street was released. Quote of the
Day: I refuse to answer that
question on the grounds that I don't know the answer. - Douglas Adams, author
(11 Mar 1952-2001)
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