msmoon: (MM's Jellies!)
msmoon ([personal profile] msmoon) wrote2006-06-11 07:04 am
  • Add Memory
  • Share This Entry
Entry tags:

All Hail the Duke

Beware, for I am: Awake Awake

 

 

On This Day: Sunday June 11, 2006


This is the 162nd day of the year, with 203 days remaining in 2006.

 

Fact of the Day: Pens


Reed was the first real "pen" (c 3000 BC) and the first inks contained a gelatin derived from boiled donkey skin, which gave the ink its viscosity - but also a very unpleasant odor that had to be perfumed with musk oil. Around the 6th century BC and for more than a thousand years thereon, the quill reigned as the standard writing instrument for people of many civilizations. Swans, turkeys, and geese's large wing feather made the best quill pens. Archaeologists discovered bronze pen points embedded in the ruins of Pompeii but not until the late 1700s were stell-point pens used. A century later, fountain pens were developed - the name chosen because the ink of these pens flowed continuously, like water in a fountain. L.E. Waterman, a New York stationer, devised the practical ink reservoir system. Lazlo Biro relied on improved methods for grinding ball bearings for machines and weapons and produced the first ball-point pens suitable for writing on paper around 1944. The Pentel, introduced by Tokyo's Stationery Company, was the world's first felt-tip pen, c 1960.

 

Holidays


  • Feast day of St. Barnabas, Saints Felix and Fortunatus, and St. Parisio.
  • Hawaii: King Kamehameha I Day.
  • Libya: American Bases Evacuation Day (1970).

     

    Events


  • 1509 - England's King Henry VIII married Catherine of Aragon, the first of his six wives.
  • 1770 - Captain James Cook, commander of the British ship Endeavour, discovered the Great Barrier Reef off Australia.
  • 1793 - The first patent for a stove was issued, to Robert Haeterick.
  • 1895 - Charles E. Duryea received the first U.S. patent granted to an American inventor for a gasoline-driven automobile.
  • 1927 - Charles Lindbergh received the first Distinguished Flying Cross ever awarded.
  • 1937 - Josef Stalin's great Soviet "Purge" ended.
  • 1942 - The United States and the Soviet Union signed a lend-lease agreement to aid the Soviet war effort in World War II.
  • 1982 - The movie "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial" opened.
  • 1987 - Margaret Thatcher won her third consecutive term as Prime Minister.
  • 1991 - Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines.
  • 2001 - Timothy McVeigh was executed by injection for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people.

     

    Births


  • 1572 - Ben Jonson, English poet, playwright.
  • 1864 - Richard Strauss, German composer.
  • 1880 - Jeannette Pickering Rankin, first woman elected to Congress.
  • 1910 - Jacques Yves Cousteau, French marine explorer, oceanographer.
  • 1913 - Vince Lombardi, American football coach.
  • 1932 - Athol Fugard, South African dramatist and director.

     

    Deaths


  • 1979 - John Wayne, American film actor.

     

     

    MM