- Boeing's most iconic aircraft — the 747 — is celebrating 51 years of passenger service in January.
- Most of the world's airlines, however, are retiring their 747s in favor of new, fuel-efficient jets.
- The final models will be delivered to cargo giant Atlas Air in 2022, marking the end of the program. //
For cargo carriers, the all-important nose door was a key selling point for the aircraft as the 747 is the only Western-built, mass-produced aircraft to feature it. //
As the Queen of the Skies nears the end of its reign, its legacy will surely live on forever as the aircraft that revolutionized the aviation industry and made the world a smaller place for over 50 years.
Fly solo in 1 hour! How about flight lessons for $5? Or maybe you want $1 Million of aircraft insurance for $50. Check out these awesome ads from the golden age of aviation...
The following ads were found in vintage copies of AOPA Pilot, The Curtis Wright Review, and Aero Digest.
The cs.cmu.edu Coke machine was hooked up to a computer by John Zsarnay and/or Lawrence Butcher (now at Xerox PARC); essentially, the six little out-of-product lights on the pushbuttons were monitored. These would flash on for a couple seconds while a particular bottle was dispensed, and of course stay on when a column was empty. They were connected, I believe, to a terminal server machine that was programmed by Mike Kazar to keep track of the time of the last transition (short-term and long-term) for each column. He and Dave Nichols put together a simple Coke@+(TM) protocol by which any machine on the local University-grant Ethernet, and later the Internet as a whole, could probe the current status of the machine; Dave wrote the program that became the ``coke'' command, which printed out the length of time since each column had been totally empty. (The idea, you see, was to notice when a column, having gone empty, was refilled with (warm, room-temperature) Coke, because in principle you wanted to select the coldest Coke available, and thus avoid those colums that had recently been refilled.
The story of King Canute and the tide is an apocryphal anecdote illustrating the piety or humility of King Canute the Great, recorded in the 12th century by Henry of Huntingdon.
In the story, Canute demonstrates to his flattering courtiers that he has no control over the elements (the incoming tide), explaining that secular power is vain compared to the supreme power of God. The episode is frequently alluded to in contexts where the futility of "trying to stop the tide" of an inexorable event is pointed out, but usually misrepresenting Canute as believing he had supernatural powers, when Huntingdon's story in fact relates the opposite.
Henry of Huntingdon tells the story as one of three examples of Canute's "graceful and magnificent" behaviour (outside of his bravery in warfare),[1] the other two being his arrangement of the marriage of his daughter to the later Holy Roman Emperor, and the negotiation of a reduction in tolls on the roads across Gaul to Rome at the imperial coronation of 1027.
In Huntingdon's account, Canute set his throne by the sea shore and commanded the incoming tide to halt and not wet his feet and robes. Yet "continuing to rise as usual [the tide] dashed over his feet and legs without respect to his royal person. Then the king leapt backwards, saying: 'Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws.'" He then hung his gold crown on a crucifix, and never wore it again "to the honour of God the almighty King".[2]
Later historians repeated the story, most of them adjusting it to have Canute more clearly aware that the tides would not obey him, and staging the scene to rebuke the flattery of his courtiers.
Designed by Howard Hughes himself, and ridiculed as the “Spruce Goose” for its size and the material it was built out of, the Hughes H-4 Hercules should have had a long and storied service life. Yet it never took off as it was expected…
As the largest fixed-wing aircraft ever built (only the LZ 129 Hindenburg airship from the famed Hindenburg disaster is bigger), the H-4 was a behemoth for its time, and indeed in our own, being far larger than anything built before or after it. //
Despite being built in the 1940’s, the H-4 held the record for the longest wingspan of any aircraft for over 70 years, holding it from 1947 (when the prototype first flew) to 2019, when the Burt Rutan-designed Scaled Composites Stratolaunch first flew.
That’s 72 years!
Hillsdale College is a small institution with lofty values: “Goodness, Truth, and Beauty.” Now, the college is expanding its pursuit of the truth to grade schools with an American history curriculum for grades K-12, “offered for free to all who wish to learn.”
“This curriculum is a work of education,” Hillsdale College President Larry P. Arnn said. “It seeks to teach the truth of American history and to cultivate in students the knowledge and virtue necessary to live good lives as citizens.” //
Hillsdale College
@Hillsdale
An abiding truth. That’s what you’ll find in Hillsdale’s free and downloadable 1776 Curriculum—the ideas, words, deeds, and events that have most significantly shaped the world into which we were born and thus form the fabric of America. Download today! https://k12.hillsdale.edu/Curriculum/
//
Kathleen O’Toole, assistant provost for K-12 education of the BCSI, noted many truths that grounded the curriculum. A few are listed below:
- That truth is objective, according to the first law of logic, the law of contradiction: that something cannot both be and not be at the same time in the same way. The first object of the human mind and the first end of education is this objective truth about the world.
- That the good is that at which all actions however misguided or distorted, aim. The good shows us how we ought to act, which we call right moral conduct.
- That individuals should be judged based on their specific actions tending toward a certain character instead of their label, group identity, sex, religion, or skin color.
- That although the United States of America is by no means perfect, it is unprecedented in the annals of human history for the extraordinary degrees of freedom, peace, and prosperity available to its people and to those who immigrate to her shores.
That for these reasons, the list concludes, America is an exceptionally good country. //
“The 1619 project has nothing to do with history. It’s a construct by which people can fight current political battles,” Spalding said. “It does what I like to call history backwards — it uses history as a foil to make current arguments.”
These selected writings are provided here specifically to support the teaching materials provided elsewhere and to meet the needs of a University of Rochester course, "Lincoln, Douglass and Black Freedom." A companion page is available on the Lincoln and his Circle website examining the issues below using speeches and writings of Abraham Lincoln.
A newly found inscription has forced archaeologists to rethink their dating of a fortification wall, and high-tech analysis is building a clearer picture than ever of the site //
With the fortress’s iconic round tower jutting into the sky behind us, Re’em recounted a thrilling discovery of a dated inscription located in secondary use, meaning it had been recycled from some earlier use, in the foundations of an outer western wall.
“We all thought that this was from the time of the Crusaders, the 12th century. It appears in the books! But now, when we conducted this excavation, we have a large question mark. Because right here we uncovered an Arabic inscription in secondary use that belonged to one of the great Ayyubid rulers of Jerusalem, his name is El-Melek El-Muatem Isa,” said Re’em.
Jerusalem was conquered by the Crusaders in 1099 and retaken by a Muslim dynasty, the Ayyubids, in 1187. By 1212, the city was ruled by the nephew of Saladin, El-Melek El-Muatem Isa, also commonly known in English as Al-Mu’azzam Isa.
According to Re’em, Al-Mu’azzam Isa erected the fortifications of Jerusalem in approximately 1212, “and on every tower he put a large sign in Arabic, ‘I’m the great ruler El-Melek El-Muatem Isa.'” Alongside his name on this stone was the year, 1212.
Rarely do archaeologists hit the jackpot of a securely dated inscription. This one, explained Re’em, also sheds light on the mindset of the Muslim ruler as he faced down encroaching Crusader forces, who moved toward the city in 1217.
Re’em said that as the Crusaders made their way to the Holy Land, the sultan did not have a standing army available in Jerusalem, so he decided to tear down the city’s fortifications, thinking it would be easier to retake that way after the Crusaders presumably entered the city.
“So he demolished all his walls and those inscriptions,” said Re’em, “but the Crusaders never came to Jerusalem.”
Eventually, the walls were rebuilt, and the stone with his name and date was used in the foundation of the walls of the western fortification of the citadel. There it would sit for centuries until being found by Re’em and his team, helping rewrite what we know about the citadel.
ORATION, DELIVERED IN CORINTHIAN HALL, ROCHESTER, BY FREDERICK DOUGLASS, JULY 5TH, 1852.
Published by Request
ROCHESTER: PRINTED BY LEE, MANN & CO., AMERICAN BUILDING.
1852.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS ESQ.:
I am amazed the Levine and his ilk can so cavalierly skip over the over 4,900 words Douglass wrote which precede the paragraph that they love to use as a cudgel. Douglass spoke about the country’s founding as an arbiter and source for good. That the foundation of America is a blueprint for liberty, and this is why that foundation must be made true by ending slavery in the United States. Douglass rightly expounded that slavery is antithesis to the heart and soul of a great nation, and if America was to continue to be that, it must change its ways.
Douglass debunks the 1619 Project blather that America’s founding is rooted in systemic racism and slavery with this insightful phrasing:
Fellow-citizens! there is no matter in respect to which, the people of the North have allowed themselves to be so ruinously imposed upon, as that of the pro-slavery character of the Constitution. In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing; but, interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gateway? or is it in the temple? It is neither. While I do not intend to argue this question on the present occasion, let me ask, if it be not somewhat singular that, if the Constitution were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slave-holding instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave can anywhere be found in it.
[…]
Now, take the Constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.
Colin Kaepernick
@Kaepernick7
“What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? This Fourth of July is yours, not mine…There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.”
- Frederick Douglass
12:03 PM · Jul 4, 2019
Ted Cruz
@tedcruz
You quote a mighty and historic speech by the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass, but, without context, many modern readers will misunderstand. Two critical points:
(1) This speech was given in 1852, before the Civil War, when the abomination of slavery still existed. Thanks to Douglass and so many other heroes, we ended that grotesque evil and have made enormous strides to protecting the civil rights of everybody.
(2) Douglass was not anti-American; he was, rightly and passionately, anti-slavery. Indeed, he concluded the speech as follows:
“Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented, of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country.
“There are forces in operation, which must inevitably, work the downfall of slavery. ‘The arm of the Lord is not shortened,’ and the doom of slavery is certain.
“I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from ‘the Declaration of Independence,’ the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age.”
Let me encourage everyone, READ THE ENTIRE SPEECH; it is powerful, inspirational, and historically important in bending the arc of history towards justice: https://rbscp.lib.rochester.edu/2945
By May 1776, eight of the colonies had already decided they would support independence, but the National Archives says it wasn’t until June 7, 1776, that the clearest call for independence came when Richard Henry Lee of Virginia read what is now known as the Lee Resolution, proposing independence for the Thirteen Colonies from Britain.
Before Congress recessed for three weeks, a Committee of Five was appointed to draft a statement that would declare the colonies' case for independence to the world. The committee included John Adams, Roger Sherman, Benjamin Franklin, Robert R. Livingston and Thomas Jefferson.
The first draft, which was primarily written by Jefferson and edited by Adams and Franklin, was presented to Congress on June 28, 1776, a few days before it reconvened. On July 2, 1776, 12 of the 13 colonies — New York did not vote — adopted the Lee Resolution immediately before Congress began to consider the Declaration of Independence. After a few changes and revisions to the document, Congress officially adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.
After the adoption of the Declaration of Independence was officially approved on July 9, 1776, by the New York Convention, Congress ordered on July 19, 1776, that the declaration be “fairly engrossed on parchment with the title and stile [sic] of 'The unanimous declaration of the thirteen United States of America,' and that the same, when engrossed, be signed by every member of Congress.” The National Archives says “engrossing is the process of preparing an official document in a large, clear hand.”
A journal of Continental Congress records shows that delegates began signing the engrossed Declaration of Independence on Aug. 2, 1776, in Philadelphia.
“One of the most widely held misconceptions about the Declaration is that it was signed on July 4, 1776, by all the delegates in attendance,” the National Archives says on its website. “John Hancock, the President of the Congress, was the first to sign the sheet of parchment. In accordance with prevailing custom, the other delegates began to sign at the right below the text, their signatures arranged according to the geographic location of the states they represented. New Hampshire, the northernmost state, began the list, and Georgia, the southernmost, ended it.”
While 56 delegates eventually signed the Declaration of Independence, according to the National Archives, not all of them were present on Aug. 2, 1776, and some of them never signed the document, including Committee of Five member Robert R. Livingston, “who thought the Declaration was premature.”
Copy of US Declaration of Independence - kept by the only Catholic Founding Father Charles Carroll in 1776 - sells for £3.2m after being found in Scottish attic of his descendants //
Charles Carroll of Carollton gave document to grandson-in-law John MacTavish
It then descended into the Scottish family and ended up in their attic
It was found by a specialist from Edinburgh-based auctioneers Lyon & Turnbull
The owners of the home where it was found wished to remain anonymous //
The signer's copy, one of only six known to still be in private hands, is a representation of the original 1776 document that declared the independence of Britain's 13 American colonies. //
After extensive research we confirmed it was indeed one of the 201 copies made by William Stone, of which only 48 of them are known to still exist. Being able to identify to whom the copy belonged made it even more exciting and rare.' //
The 200 first copies were made by printer John Dunlap on the night the document was signed.
It was then distributed throughout the North American colonies the following morning to be read aloud to the colonists and their militia. //
January 10, 1776: Thomas Paine published a booklet entitled Common Sense.
It outlined his vision of a government in which the people, through their elected representatives, would have supreme power.
Paine was the first to openly suggest independence from Britain.
Common Sense was read by many, including George Washington.
The work was to have a massive influence on Thomas Jefferson in his writing of the Declaration of Independence.
May: Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, receives Richard Henry Lee's resolution urging the colonies to become free and independent states.
June 11: Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston are appointed to a committee to draft a declaration of independence.
June 12-27: Jefferson is chosen to write the first draft, of which only a fragment exists. Jefferson's clean copy - the 'original Rough draught' - is reviewed by the committee. Both documents are in the manuscript collections of the Library of Congress.
July 1-4: Congress debates and revises the declaration.
July 2: Congress declares independence. John Hancock, President of the Congress and Charles Thomson, the secretary, signed the document.
July 4, 1776: The United States is officially born.
When FDR sent thousands of Americans to internment camps because their ancestors were Japanese, that was an ugly stain on America. Japanese Americans who suffered that fate deserved every cent of reparation, and frankly more for Roosevelt’s illegal and unconstitutional order. They were direct victims. Many are still alive today. They suffered the injury. Their great-grandchildren are not demanding their own reparations. Calling for reparations for Americans who are, in many cases, four or five or six generations removed from ancestors who were held in bondage is impractical, at best. Even its proponents like Ta-Nehisi Coates have admitted as much. I am all in for reparation for anyone held as a slave. None exist. //
I’m all in for Blacks who suffered a direct injury during Jim Crow suing for damages and bankrupting those responsible. Direct injury. Direct reparations.
Blaming all living Americans (with a large percentage having no antebellum connection to America) for the sins of long-dead ancestors makes no more sense than me demanding payment for Robert Thompson’s multiple years of torture at the hands of Confederates. The confederates who ruined his body are long since dust in the wind. I never met Robert Thompson. His bones are dust as well. My only “memory” of him is preserved in a shadow box. The box contains the flag cord he carried through Andersonville, his photo later in life, and the envelope on which he penned what happened 159 years ago.
Two Viking Age warriors from the same family died hundreds of kilometers apart.
Justus Angel and Mistress L. Horry were wealthy landowners in South Carolina’s Colleton District in the 1830s, in what is now Charleston County. The couple owned 84 slaves each for a total of 168, at a time when most of their peers owned a handful. Their slaves worked their plantation and made them rich. Angel and Horry also traded slaves for profit, showing no regard for dissolving slave families. They were no kinder or crueler to their slaves than anyone else. They were considered “slave magnates” because of the number of slaves they owned. They were referred to as the “economic elite.” They were also black.
Black people owned black people in all 13 original colonies and in every state that allowed slavery. Frequently, freed black people would go on to own more slaves than their white neighbors. In 1830, nearly a fourth of the free black slave masters in South Carolina owned 10 or more slaves, and several owned more than 30, far surpassing their white slave-owning neighbors.
Yes, black people, frequently former slaves themselves, owned slaves. While it can be said that many black people owned family members to protect them and keep them close, black slave owners also bought and sold slaves for profit. Renowned African-American historian and Duke University Professor, John Hope Franklin, wrote “The majority of Negro owners of slaves had some personal interest in their property. There were instances, however, in which free Negroes had a real economic interest in the institution of slavery and held slaves in order to improve their economic status.” Franklin also wrote that roughly 3,000 free black people in New Orleans alone owned slaves. //
Why don’t history teachers include this in their curriculum? You know why! How can they demonize white people and divide us racially and if they taught the truth? What reason would they have for teaching the commie Critical Race Theory? How can black people demand reparations if you know thousands of black people owned slaves as well? How can they propagate the myth of “systemic racism” if we were all just allowed to get along?
Remember, it’s no longer about equality in our country, it’s now about equity. YOU need to pay for what other white, and black, people stopped doing over 155 years ago.
Pan American World Airways is one of the most iconic airlines in history. It was the vision and determination of entrepreneur Juan Trippe that took the operator to unprecedented heights during some of the aviation industry’s most golden years.
In The 1990s, The Third-Richest Person On The Planet (Behind Gates And Buffett) Was… A Swiss Orchestra Conductor???
Let's travel back to June 1995 and take a pop quiz. Who were the three richest people walking the planet in the middle 1995? I expect even the casual CelebrityNetWorth reader would be able to name the top person. With a net worth of $22 billion, the richest person on the planet in 1995 was Microsoft founder Bill Gates. I actually think a lot of people will correctly guess the #2 richest person in 1995. With a net worth of $16 billion, that title went to Warren Buffett.
But who was the third richest person the world in the middle of the 1990s?
Larry Ellison? Nope.
One of the Waltons? Nope.
One of the Koch brothers? Nope.
Some Saudi king or prince? Nope.
Would you believe me if I told you that the third richest person on the planet was a random Swiss orchestra conductor name Paul Sacher?
In many ways, Locke is considered the father of political liberalism, the ideas and the institutions we take for granted now in America.
For example, the principle of government by consent of the governed, the separation of powers, the idea of natural universal rights of freedom of conscience, religious liberty, property as being sacrosanct—these ideas, virtually all of them come out of Locke’s thinking.
He was certainly one of the most, if not the most, important English philosopher in the 17th century. He had a profound effect on the American founding, and I’m sure we’ll get into that as well. //
the amazing thing about the Founders, of course, Virginia, is that they really studied the past intently to learn the lessons of history, in a way that no other political generation had done.
So yeah, they studied the classical Greeks, the Romans, the Greek tragedies, Rome as a republic. But then also these philosophers, like Locke, who are making these arguments for self-rule and self-government. And there was no philosopher who was quoted more often than John Locke by the American revolutionaries. So, he had a real significant influence. //
Why was Locke so appealing? I think several reasons.
One is, he had this ability to talk about these large political questions about human rights, natural rights. The idea of self-government. The idea of freedom of conscience. He could talk about it in a grammar that everybody could understand.
He was clearly friendly to the Christian religion. He’s not a radical enlightenment guy, like a Voltaire. He knew the Scriptures thoroughly. He wrote commentaries on the Epistles of Paul. I think he believed in the inspiration, the divine inspiration of the Scriptures.
So he’s operating more or less within this Christian tradition, but he’s using a grammar, a rhetoric, a style of argument that could appeal to people across denominations, across faith traditions. So he had an incredibly persuasive power with his most important writings. //
you ask yourself, “Wow, why do these people still care about John Locke?” Because he still speaks into our contemporary issues about rights, about self-government, about tyranny, freedom. He still speaks to us. So we’ve got all these scholars gathered.
My particular contribution, I’m going to focus on Locke’s “Letter Concerning Toleration,” and that’s his great defense of religious freedom.
I think Locke’s letter on toleration, published in 1689, so a hundred years before the American founding, … I think that document, not only was it transformative in its own day, I think it stands as probably the most important defense of religious freedom ever written. //
I think not enough scholars have given enough attention to the religious influences on Locke’s thinking, particularly on his “Letter Concerning Toleration.” And what I’m going to argue in this paper is, there was an earlier reform movement called Christian humanism.
A Catholic thinker named Erasmus of Rotterdam, who was a contemporary of Martin Luther—so you’re talking 1517, 1520s. Erasmus had put a real emphasis on the inner life, the life of the heart, the life of the soul, as opposed to outward religious observances or dogmas. He said, “You got to imitate life of Jesus.”
This is basically Erasmus and this Christian humanism, and as a bringing together of the intellectual and the heart, the mind and the heart with the Christian humanists. That movement didn’t die with Erasmus.
That movement, it took root in different places in Europe—in Great Britain and also in the Netherlands. And those two places were actually very important to Locke.
He’s an English philosopher. He finds these Christian humanist followers there in Great Britain. He’s reading their sermons, he’s going to their churches, he’s befriending them. And then in the Netherlands, when he’s in political exile, he meets really the successors to Erasmus in the Netherlands with that same spirit, imitate the life of Jesus and apply the principles of the life of Jesus to civic and political life.
So what do I mean by that? Something real concrete. The golden rule, right? Treat others as you want to be treated. What Locke is saying in so many ways, especially on this issue of religious freedom, it’s the civic application of the golden rule: equal justice under the law. Treat everyone the way you want to be treated, regardless of religious belief, religious commitment.
Equal treatment under the law, it’s the political application of the golden rule. That’s one example of how [these] Erasmian Christian humanist ideas, I think, found their way into Locke’s thinking. //
Look, if you take the issue of natural rights, which Locke was a real pioneer in making the case that everybody has these universal natural rights—life, liberty, and property. Those are the big three categories for Locke—life, liberty, property.
And property meant not just your physical property, but the fruit of your labor, the fruit of your creative efforts. That’s your property, too. Your intellectual property is your property, too.
How are we doing in protecting those natural rights? Well, if you think about the 20th century, for example, which has been called by [Aleksandr] Solzhenitsyn, has been called the caveman century, the great assault on human rights, natural rights, the challenge we have now, I think, Virginia, one of them is we don’t even understand what natural rights are. We’ve so confused “human rights.” Everything is a human right. We’ve confused natural rights with social aspirations.
For example, we’d like to have a country where people have access to quality health care. … Is that a human right? Is that a natural right? Or is it a social aspiration? I would argue it’s an aspiration.
And yet the confusion of these things, the things you’d like to see happen in society with your natural God-given rights, that confusion, that blurring of things, that has just invited all kinds of government mischief. The kind of thing that Locke would have been firmly opposed to, it seems to me. //
You say that the recovery of Locke’s singular moral vision is one of the most urgent cultural tasks of our day. What was that vision that Locke had? And how do we go about achieving that? //
The obligation, the responsibility, and the freedom of every person to seek after truth, according to the dictates of conscience, without the interference of church or state, this is one dimension of his singular moral vision.
Locke really believed that this, that the quest for truth, moral truth, spiritual truth, this is the most important quest anyone could be on in their life. And government’s prime responsibility was to create the civic space necessary for people to pursue truth.
So they have to have freedom, civic freedom, religious freedom. All of that is tied up with self-government. If you don’t have a political system that respects the individual’s quest, the individual capacity to govern himself, herself, then you’ve got a society that’s in crisis, and we’re edging in that direction you could argue. //
I think the assumptions that people’s rights and freedoms are negotiable because a government official says they are, if we think about the way we’ve responded to the COVID crisis—I’m not saying that there haven’t been real challenges and real issues, and a real need for concern and measures being taken. But you could easily argue that there has been an overstepping of political power.
The will to power, I think, has resurfaced in a way that I think is shocking to many Americans. The limitations on our liberties that have no rational defense in science, in civics, in our Constitution. And yet here they are still. We’re still living with them. I think Locke would look at that and be appalled at the erosion of human freedom, human liberty.