Calendar: February 6

A Year: Day to Day Men: 6th of February

The Gray Sweatshirt

Ninety five years ago, on February 6, 1921, Charlie Chaplin’s silent film “The Kid” was released around the country.

“The Kid” is an American silent film written, directed, produced by and starring Charlie Chaplin in 1921. Since this film was written and shot during the economic depression of 1920-1921, one can see a very strong influence of the classic lifestyle of a lower class citizen with economic struggles throughout the film. This was Chaplin’s first feature film and was a huge success when it was released, making it the second highest grossing film in 1921.

“The Kid” is a highly meaningful, perhaps philosophical film about fatherhood and childhood. It is almost pure drama and Chaplin shows himself more of a dramatic actor and less of a clown than in any previous film. Laughter springs most often to the situation or pantomime, not rude or playful harlequinades. The scenario is studied and the dramatic situations are dealt with in a realistic style that foreshadowed his previous films. The film lets see how this misery can give a powerful sensitivity to those who suffer. Among these beings hunted and constantly on the defensive, the least little dramas soon take a look, a tone of tragedy.

The film made Jackie Coogan, then a five year old vaudeville performer, into the first major child star of the movies. Many of the Chaplin biographers have attributed the relationship portrayed in the film to have resulted from the death of Chaplin’s firstborn infant son just ten days before the production began.

In December 2011, “The Kid” was chosen to be preserved in the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry. The Registry said that the film is “an artful melding of touching drama, social commentary and inventive comedy” and praised Chaplin’s ability to “sustain his artistry beyond the length of his usual short subjects and could deftly elicit a variety of emotions from his audiences by skillfully blending slapstick and pathos.”

Calendar: February 5

Year: Day to Day Men: February 5

Hidden Face

The fifth day of February in 1924 marks the Royal Greenwich Observatory’s first broadcast of the hourly time signal known as the Greenwich Time Signal. Originally the idea of the Astronomer Royal Sir Frank Watson Dyson and the head of the BBC John Reith, the signal was originally controlled by two mechanical clocks with electrical contacts attached to their swinging pendulums. These sent a signal to the BBC which converted them to the oscillatory tone broadcast.

Situated on a hill in southeast London, the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, played a major role in the history of navigation and astronomy.The site of the observatory was established in 1851 by Sir George Airy as the Prime Meridian, the historic geographical reference line. By 1884, over two-thirds of all ships and tonnage were using it as the reference meridian on their charts and maps. Long symbolized by a brass strip in the observatory’s courtyard and later one of stainless steel, the Prime Meridian is now marked by a powerful green laser. As the Prime Meridian passes through its site, the Royal Observatory gave its name to what became Greenwich Mean Time, today known as Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).

The Greenwich Time Signal (GTS) is a series os six short tones, or beeps, broadcast at one-second intervals by many BBC radio stations. Introduced in 1924, these tones have been generated by the BBC since 1990 to mark the precise start of each hour. The six short beeps occur on each of the five seconds leading to the hour and on the hour itself. Each beep is a one kilohertz tone, approximately a fifth of a semitone above musical B5. The first five beeps last a tenth of a second each; the final beep last half a second. The change of hour occurs at the beginning of the last beep.

The beeps for national radio stations are timed relative to the UTC, the primary time standard by which the world regulates its time. The UTC is based on International Atomic Time (TAI) which is maintained by an ensemble of atomic clocks around the world that measure time by monitoring the resonant frequency of atoms. Electron states in an atom are associated with different energy levels; in transitions between these states, they interact with a specific frequency of electromagnetic radiation. This phenomenon serves as the basis for the International System of Unit’s definition of a second, the basis for International Atomic Time.

Note: The Royal Observatory, Greenwich, has the International Astronomical Union’s code number ooo, the first on the list.

Calendar: February 4

A Year: Day to Day Men: 4th of February

Breath of Fresh Air

February 4, 1895 was the birth date of William Nigel Ernie Bruce, a British character actor on stage and screen.

Nigel Bruce made his first appearance on stage on May 12, 1920 at the Comedy Theater, a theater in the West End of London, as a footman in the play “Why Marry?”. In October of that year, he went to Canada as stage manager to Henry Esmond and Eva Moore, also playing “Montague Jordan” in “Eliza Comes to Stay”. Upon returning to England, he toured acting the same part. He appeared constantly onstage thereafter, and eight years later started also working in silent films.

Nigel Bruce typically played buffoonish, fuzzy-minded gentlemen. During his film career, he worked on seventy-eight films, including “Treasure Island”, “The Charge of the Light Brigade”, ”Rebecca”, and “Suspicion”. He took a role out of character when he played a detestable figure in “The Rains Came”.

Bruce’s signature role was that of Doctor Watson in the 1939-1946 Universal Studios’ Sherlock Holmes film series with close friend Basil Rathbone as Holmes. Bruce starred as Watson in all 14 films of the series and over 200 radio programs of “The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes”. Though for most viewers Nigel Bruce formed their vision of Dr. Watson, Holmes purists have long objected that the Watson of the books was intelligent and capable (although not an outstanding detective), and that Bruce’s portrayal made Watson far dimmer and more bumbling than his literary original.

Basil Rathbone, however, spoke highly of Bruce’s portrayal, saying that Watson was one of the screen’s most lovable characters. The historian David Parkinson wrote that Bruce’s “avuncular presence provided the perfect counterbalance to Rathbone’s briskly omniscient sleuth”. Cinema historian Alan Barnes notes that, despite the criticisms against him, Bruce rehabilitated Watson, who had been a marginal figure in the cinematic Holmes canon to that point: “after Bruce, it would be a near-unthinkable heresy to show Holmes without him”.

“Cheer up old fellow, cheer up. As Dr Samuel Johnson once said, “There’s no problem the mind of man can set, that the mind of man can not solve.” — Nigel Bruce as Watson in “Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Code”, 1945 BBC Serial Series

Calendar: February 3

Year: Day to Day Men: February 3

Thick Branches

The third day of February in 1923 marks the birth date of American zoologist, entomologist, educator and comparative psychologist Charles Henry Turner. He was one of the first scientists to examine whether animals display complex cognition through his studies of arthropods, specifically spiders and bees.

Born in Cincinnati to Thomas Turner and Addie Campbell, Charles Henry Turner entered the University of Cincinnati in 1896 and studied under comparative neurologist and geologist Clarence Luther Herrick, who had worked on the Natural History Survey of Minnesota. Graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Biology in 1891, Turner became the first African American to receive a graduate degree at the college. A summary of his undergraduate thesis was published in the journal “Science”, considered one of the world’s most prestigious academic journals.

Turner received his Master of Science from the University of Cincinnati in 1892. He remained at the university as an assistant instructor in its biological laboratory until 1893. Originally Tuner studied for his Doctorate at Ohio’s Denison University but the program was discontinued. He attained his Doctorate in Science at Atlanta’s Clark University where he served as Chair of the Science Department until 1905. Clark University’s Turner-Tanner Hall is named in his honor.

While teaching for a year as principal of Cleveland’s College Hill High School, Charles Turner continued his studies on insect behavior and pursued a doctorate degree at the University of Chicago which he achieved, magna cum laude, in 1907. Turner was among the first African Americans to receive a doctorate from that university. In 1907, he was a delegate for the Seventh International Zoological Congress held in Boston. There he met such eminent zoologists as Charles Whitman, Frank Lillie and Charles Child.

Turner published forty-nine papers on invertebrates, including “Psychological Notes on the Gallery Spider” and “Experiments on the Color Vision of Honeybees”, with three papers published in the journal “Science”. Turner was the first person to prove that insects can hear and distinguish pitch; he also discovered honeybees’ awareness of visual patterns and cockroaches’ trial and error learning. In doing his experiments, Turner advanced the studies of associative learning such as seen in stimulus substitution. He showed that a conditioning stimulus became a reliable predictor of reaction from an unconditioned stimulus.

Charles Turner’s studies were different from the majority of his contemporaries as he clearly adopted a cognitive perspective to analyze animal behavior. While most scientists believed that animals, such as insects, were driven by innate reactions to external stimuli, Turner used such concepts as memory, learning and expectation in his research. This view of animal cognition would be confirmed through later systematic observations by Edward Thorndike in the early 1900s.

Between 1898 and 1908, Turner applied for a position at the Tuskegee Institute but the Institute could not afford his salary. Unsuccessful at getting an appointment to the University of Chicago, he accepted a teaching position in 1908 at Summer High School in St. Louis, Missouri where he remained until his retirement in 1922 due to ill health. Charles Henry Turner died at the age of fifty-six in February of 1923 in Chicago, Illinois. He was interred at Lincoln Cemetery, a historically African American cemetery in Blue Island, Illinois.

Calendar: February 2

A Year: Day to Day Men: 2nd of February

Suit of Gray

February 2nd is Groundhog Day in the United States and Canada.

Groundhog Day is a popular tradition derived from a Pennsylvania Dutch superstition. If a groundhog, emerging from its burrow on this day sees a shadow due to clear weather, It will retreat to its den and winer will persist for six more weeks. If he does not see his shadow, due to cloudiness, spring season will arrive early.

The earliest mention of Groundhog Day is a February 2, 1840 entry in the diary of James Morris of Morgantown, Pennsylvania. Morris was commenting on his neighbors who were of German stock and living in the Pennsylvania Dutch area. The first reported news was made by the ‘Punxsutawney Spirit’ newspaper in 1886: “up to the time of going to press, the beast has not seen its shadow”. The following year a group went to the Gobbler’s Knob part of town to consult the groundhog, making Groundhog Day an official event.

The consulted groundhog these days is Punxsutawney Phil. Phil has predicted 103 forecasts for winter and just 17 for an early spring. As it turns out, Phil’s predictions have been recorded as only 39% accurate according to Stormfax Almanac’s data. It seems as though referring to the city’s official weather services to determine the seasonal changes may be more reliable.

Poor results from analysis are also reported by the Farmers Almanac as “exactly 50 percent” accuracy,: and National Geographic Society reported only 28% success. However, a Middlebury College team found that a long-term analysis of temperature high/low predictions were 70% accurate, although when the groundhog predicted early spring it was usually wrong.

Calendar: February 1

Year: Day to Day Men: February 1

A Pose for Spring

February 1st of 1884 marks the publishing of volume one of “The Oxford English Dictionary”, designed to provide an inventory of English words in use since the mid-twelfth century. The ten-volume set was not completely published until April of 1928. The definitions in the Oxford English Dictionary, mostly in order of historical occurrence, are illustrated with approximately two-million four-hundred thousand quotations from English-language literature and records.

In 1857, London’s Philological Society suggested the publication of the dictionary and the collection of materials quickly followed. With the appointment of Scottish lexicographer Sir James Murray as editor in chief, editorial work began in 1879. Murray, during his time as editor, was responsible for approximately half of the dictionary. This included all entries from the letter a through d, h through k, and all entries in the letters k,o,p and t. Three more editors succeeded Murray during the course of the printing: British philologist and lexicographer Henry Bradley, Scottish language and literature professor William Alexander Craigie, and Charles Talbut Onions who became an Oxford lecturer and held the post of Fellow Librarian.

The original inventory of English words was entitled “A New English Dictionary on Historical Principals”, a twelve volume set with a one volume supplement. The 1884-1928 ten-volume edition “The Oxford English Dictionary”, initially edited by Murray and others, was the corrected and updated revision of the original set. In 1933, “The Oxford English Dictionary” was reissued again as a twelve volume set accompanied by a one volume supplement. A four-volume “Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary” that treated new words in English use, was printed between 1972 and 1986.

The second full edition of “The Oxford English Dictionary”, known as OED2, was published in 1989 by the Oxford University Press. Two more volumes of additions were added in 1993 and 1997, and work was begun on a complete revision of the entire body of work for a projected third edition.

Calendar: January 31

Year: Day to Day Men: January 31

Stereoscopic Viewing

On January 31st in 1800, one of the earliest Native American literary writers, Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, was born in Sault Ste. Marie located in the upper peninsula of the present state of Michigan. She was of Scottish-Irish and Ojibwe ancestry, born to John Johnston, a fur trader, and Ozhaguscodaywayquay, the daughter of Waubojeeg, a prominent Ojibwe war chief. Her parents were historically famous leaders in both the Ojibwe and Euro-American communities.

Jane Johnson Schoolcraft was fluent in the language and learned of both the English and Ojibwe cultures, which offered her a unique perspective for her creative work. She wrote poetry and traditional Ojibwe stores and translated many Ojibwe songs into English. Schoolcraft mostly wrote in English but published some poems in the Ojibwe language.

In her early twenties, Jane Johnston met Henry Schoolcraft, an American ethnologist and geographer who was conducting an expedition in the territory of present-day Michigan. They married in 1822 and began a relationship that proved significant for both of them. The marriage offered Jane a means to express her own literary talents; she also provided Henry insights on Ojibwe culture and language that aided his ethnological work.

Jane Schoolcraft’s poetry and translated Obijwe stories made noteworthy contributions to American literature. Her work is one of the earliest examples of Native American literature published in the United States. Schoolcraft’s influence is evident in many of the stories that Henry Schoolcraft collected; her translations and insights aided him in his later role as a government agent for Native Americans.

In 1826 and 1827, Schoolcraft’s writings were published in a handwritten magazine entitled “The Literary Voyager”, produced by Henry Schoolcraft. These issues were distributed widely to residents of Sault Ste. Marie as well as people in New York, Detroit and other cities. Her work also appeared in a six-volume study known as “Indian Tribes of the United States” that was commissioned in 1846 by the United States Congress.

In 1841, Henry and Jane Schoolcraft moved to New York City where Henry was employed by the state of New York to research Native American culture. After having suffered several illnesses, Jane Johnston Schoolcraft died at the age of forty-two in May of 1842 while visiting her married sister in Canada. She was buried at St. John’s Anglican Church in present-day Ancaster, Ontario. Schoolcraft is recognized as the first Native American literary writer, both as a woman and a poet, as well as the first to write out traditional Native American stories.

Notes: Jane Johnston Schoolcraft’s Ojibwe name was Bamewawagezhikaquay, the literary translation means “Woman of the Sound (that the stars make) Rushing Through the Sky”. Her writings began to attract interest in the 1990s as work by minority communities began to be more widely studied. In 2008, Jane Johnston Schoolcraft was inducted into the Michigan’s Women’s Hall of Fame.

Calendar: January 30

Year: Day to Day Men: January 30

Ginger on White

January 30th of 1910 marks the death of African-American inventor Granville Tailer Woods who registered nearly sixty patents in his lifetime and made vital contributions to the railroad industry. He also made improvements to technological devices such as the telephone, telegraph and phonograph.

Born in Columbus, Ohio in April of 1856, Granville Woods received little education as a young man. As a teenager, he was employed in a variety of work including as a steel mill worker and an engineer in both a railroad machine shop and onboard the British steamer, Ironsides. Between 1876 and 1878, Woods resided in New York City and took courses in engineering and electricity, subjects he knew were necessary for industry’s future.

Returning to Ohio in 1878, Woods was employed by the Springfield, Jackson and Pomeroy Railroad Company for eight months and later by the Dayton and Southeastern Railroad Company as an locomotive engineer for thirteen months. It was during this time that he began to form ideas for his later invention, the inductor telegraph. In the spring of 1880, Woods moved to Cincinnati where he founded the Woods Electric Company to develop, manufacture and sell electrical apparatus. In 1884, he filed his first patent for an improved steam boiler furnace; his later patents were predominantly for electrical devises.

Granville Wood’s 1885 patent for an improved telephone transmitter, which allowed a station to send voice as well as Morse code over a single wire, was purchased by the American Bell Telephone Company owned by Alexander Graham Bell. In 1887, he secured his patent for the creation of a magnetic coiled-wire field, that placed under a train, enabled communication between stations and moving trains by using the ambient static electricity of the existing telegraph lines. Challenged twice in court by Thomas Edison over the rights to this patent, Woods defeated Edison by proving there were no existing devices by which he could have relied on to make his device.

Woods manufactured a system of overhead electric conducting lines for railroads, an idea he modeled after a system developed by Charles van Depoele. Wood’s 1888 patent relied on wire brushes to make connections with metallic terminal heads, without exposing wires, through electrical contact rails. Once the train car had passed, the wires were no longer live and risk of injury was diminished. The invention was successfully tested in 1892 on the Figure Eight Roller Coaster in Coney Island. Patented in 1893, Woods sold the patent to General Electric in 1901.

In 1896, Granville Woods patented a system for controlling electrical lights in theaters, which became known as the safety dimmer. This device was safe and efficient and saved theaters forty per cent of electricity use. Between 1902 and 1907, Woods patented twelve devices that made improvements on the country’s railway system. Among these were devices that improved motor and vehicle control, automatic air brakes, and safety apparatus.

The first African American mechanical and electrical engineer after the Civil War, Granville Tailer Woods died of a cerebral hemorrhage at New York City’s Harlem Hospital on the 30th of January in 1910. His burial at St. Michael’s Cemetery in East Elmhurst, New York was without headstone or ceremony. In 1975 with donations from cooperations that used Woods’s patents, a headstone was erected at his grave site. In 2006, Granville T. Woods was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Alexandria, Virginia.

Calendar: January 29

A Year: Day to Day Men: 29th of January

When in Rome… Live as the Romans Do.

January 29, 1845 marked the first publication date of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”.

The Raven is a narrative poem by the American writer Edgar Allan Poe. The poem is often noted for its musicality, stylized language, and supernatural atmosphere. It tells of a talking raven’s’s mysterious visit to a distraught lover, tracing the man’s slow fall into madness. The lover, often identified as being a student, is lamenting the loss of his love, Lenore. Sitting on a bust of Pallas, the Greek Goddess of Wisdom, the raven seems to further instigate his distress with its constant repetition of the word “Nevermore”. The poem makes use of a number of folk, mythological, religious, and classical references.

Poe emphasized the occult undertones by setting the poem in December, a month which is traditionally associated with the forces of darkness. The use of the raven—the “devil bird”—also suggests this. This devil image is emphasized by the narrator’s belief that the raven is “from the Night’s Plutonian shore”, or a messenger from the afterlife, referring to Pluto, the Roman god of the underworld. Poe also said that the raven is meant to symbolize “mournful and never-ending remembrance’.

Poe claimed to have written the poem very logically and methodically, intending to create a poem that would appeal to both critical and popular tastes, as he explained in his 1846 follow-up essay, “The philosophy of Composition”. Poe borrowed the complex rhythm and meter of Elizabeth Barrett’s poem “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship”.

“The Raven” was first attributed to Poe in print in the New York Evening Mirror on January 29, 1845. Its publication made Poe widely popular in his lifetime, although it did not bring him much financial success. Critical opinion is divided as to the poem’s literary status, but it nevertheless remains one of the most famous poems ever written.

Calendar: January 28

Year: Day to Day Men: January 28

Skin and Fur

January 28th in 1896 was the day upon which the first person was charged with a speeding offense in the United Kingdom.

On the twenty-eighth of January in 1896, Walter Arnold drove his horseless carriage, a German-made Benz that he had imported to Britain the previous year, through the village of Paddock Wood, Kent, at more than four times the legal speed limit, a reckless thirteen kilometers per hour (eight miles per hour). A local constable on his regulation issue bicycle succeeded in catching him after a five kilometers pursuit (three miles).

The officer charged Arnold with four counts of breaking the law: using a locomotive without a horse on a public road, allowing said locomotive to be operated by fewer than three persons, traveling at a greater rate than three kilometers per hour (2 mph), and failing to display his name and address on the locomotive.

Walter Arnold appeared before a local magistrate on the thirtieth of January in 1896. In his defense, Arnold’s barrister Mr. Cripps stated that existing locomotive laws had not foreseen the type of vehicle Arnold was driving and mentioned several users of that type of vehicle including Sir David Salmons and the Honorable Evelyn Ellis, who were never charged when driving their vehicles. Cripps added that if the Bench considered the vehicle a locomotive within the existing acts, consideration should be given for a nominal fine.

Walter Arnold was found guilty on all four counts. He was fined 5 shillings for the first count, using a carriage without a locomotive horse, plus £2.0s.11d costs. On each of the other counts, Arnold was to pay 1 shilling fine and 9 shillings costs.

It should be noted that Arnold’s daredevil ride down Paddock Wood’s High Street could have been a publicity stunt. He was one of the earliest car dealers in the country and the local supplier for Benz vehicles. Arnold had set his own car company to begin providing a locally built variant of the Benz design. Marketing of the Arnold Motor Carriage began a few months after the incident.

Calendar: January 27

Year: Day to Day Men: January 27

Magic Mirror

On the twenty-seventh of January in 2003, the first fifty sound recordings for preservation in the National Recording Registry were announced by James Billington, the Librarian of Congress. This registry was established by the National Recording Preservation Act of 2000, which created the National Recording Preservation Board with membership appointed by the Librarian of Congress. Its members select the recordings for preservation on a yearly basis from a list of nominations.

The National Recording Preservation Act established a national program to guard and preserve America’s sound recording heritage. Recordings and collections of recordings to be preserved and maintained must meet the criteria for selection:

Recordings must be culturally, historically or aesthetically significant and/or inform or reflect culture in the United State.

Recordings will not be considered for inclusion in the Registry if no copy of the recording exists.

No recording is eligible for inclusion until ten years after the recording’s creation.

For the years 2003 to 2006, the National Recording Preservation Board selected fifty recordings for the Registry; in the following years, twenty-five have been selected each year. Public nominations are accepted for inclusion in each calendar year and are announced the following spring. Registry title works, either original or copies, are housed at the Library of Congress’ Packard Campus for Audio Video Conservation in Culpeper, Virginia. Among each year’s selections are a few recordings of significance that are housed in the National Archive’s audiovisual collection.

Among the six hundred and twenty-five recordings preserved in the Registry are:

—Jesse Walker Fewkes’s 1890 Pasamaquoddy Indians Field Recordings

—Scott Joplin’s 1916 Ragtime Compositions (Piano Rolls)

—George Gershwin’s 1924 Rhapsody in Blue

—Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1933-1944 Fireside Chats Radio Broadcasts

—Abbott and Costello October 6, 1938 “Who’s on First” Radio Broadcast

—James Brown and The Famous Flames 1963 Live at the Apollo

—Russ Hodges’s Coverage of the October 3rd, 1951 National League Tiebreaker; New York Giants vs Brooklyn Dodgers

Calendar: January 26

Year: Day to Day Men: January 26

Clear Water

On the twenty-sixth of January in 1905, the Cullinan Diamond, the largest gem-quality rough diamond ever found, was discovered at the Premier Number Two mine in Cullinan, South Africa. The diamond was named after Thomas Cullinan, a South African diamond magnate and owner of the Premier mine.

The Cullinan diamond, weighing 3,106 carats or 621.2 grams, was put on sale in London in April of 1905. Although there was considerable interest in the sale, it remained unsold until 1907 when the British-ruled Transvaal Colony purchased the diamond. The colony’s Prime Minister Louis Botha presented it to King Edward VII, who reigned over the territory. The Cullinan diamond was sent to Amsterdam where Joseph Asscher & Company were commissioned to cut it.

The Cullinan diamond produced stones of various sizes and cuts. The largest, Cullinan 1, was 530.4 carats, or 106 grams, was named the Great Star of Africa by Edward VII. This stone was mounted in the head of the Sovereign’s Scepter with Cross, a token of the King or Queen’s temporal power as head of state. The Scepter was redesigned in 1910 specifically to incorporate the Great Star of Africa, the largest clear cut diamond in the world. The gold clasps that hold the diamond can be opened, thus allowing the diamond to be worn as a pendant.

The second largest cut stone from the Cullinan diamond was named the Second Star of Africa. It weighs 317.4 carats or 41.7 grams, and is mounted in the Imperial State Crown which symbolizes the sovereignty of the British monarch. As with the Scepter, the Imperial State Crown was altered to accommodate the Second Star of Africa in 1909. The Imperial State Crown, at 31.5 cm tall, weighs 1.06 kilograms and has four fleurs-de-lis in the shape of lilies alternating with four crosses pattée, crosses with arms narrower at the center point. The purple velvet cap is trimmed with ermine. The gold, silver and platinum framework is decorated with diamonds, pearls, sapphires, emeralds and five rubies.

Seven other major diamonds cut from the Cullinan, weighing a total of 209.3 carats or 41.7 grams, were privately owned by Elizabeth II who inherited them from her grandmother, Queen Mary, in 1953. These were used in brooches and as part of the Coronation Necklace; the smallest at 4.39 carats was set in a platinum ring known as the Cullinan IX Ring.

The Cullinan was estimated to have been formed in the Earth’s mantle and reached the surface 1.18 billion years ago. It was found 5.5 meters below the surface at Premier Mine by Frederick Wells, the mine’s surface manager. It was three times the size of the 1898 Excelsior Diamond, the previous largest gem-quality rough diamond. As four of its eight surfaces were smooth, the blue-white hued Cullinan was once a part of a much larger stone that was broken up by natural forces. For a short period after its discovery, the diamond was on display at Johannesburg’s Standard Bank where it was seen by over eight thousand visitors.

After the period of display, London’s sale agent S. Neumann & Company created a diversionary tactic for the transport of the Cullinan diamond to London. Detectives were assigned to a steamboat that was rumored to be carrying the stone; the parcel, containing a fake diamond, was locked under great circumstance in the captain’s safe and guarded the entire voyage. The Cullinan Diamond was actually sent to London in a plain box by registered mail. When it arrived in London, the package was sent to Buckingham Palace for King Edward VII’s inspection.

Calendar: January 25

A Year: Day to Day Men: January 25

Honor Among Men

January 25, 1924 marks the opening date of the first Winter Olympics held at Chamonix, in the French Alps.

In 1911, the IOC (International Olympic Committee) proposed the staging of a separate winter competition for the 1912 Stockholm Games, but Sweden, wanting to protect the popularity of the Nordic Games, declined. Germany planned a Winter Olympics to precede the 1916 Berlin Summer Games, but World War I forced the cancellation of both. Soon after the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium, an agreement was reached with Scandinavians to stage the IOC-sanctioned International Winter Sports Week.

On January 25, 1924, the ‘first Winter Olympics’ took off in style at Chamonix in the French Alps. Spectators were thrilled by the ski jump and bobsled as well as 12 other events involving a total of six sports. The “International Winter Sports Week,” as it was known, was a great success. It was so popular among the 16 participating nations that, in 1925, the IOC formally created the Winter Olympics, retroactively making Chamonix the first. In 1928 the International Olympic Committee (IOC) officially designated the Winter Games, staged in St. Moritz, Switzerland, as the second Winter Olympics.

At the Chamonix games, Scandinavians dominated the speed rinks and slopes, and Norway won the unofficial team competition with 17 medals. The United States came in third, winning its only gold medal with Charles Jewtraw’s victory in the 500-meter speed-skating event. Canada won another hockey gold, scoring 110 goals and allowing just three goals in five games. Of the nearly 300 athletes, only 13 were women, and they only competed in the figure-skating events.

Calendar: January 24

Year: Day to Day Men: January 24

Ginger and Blue Tiles

On the twenty-fourth day of January in 1848, carpenter James Wilson Marshall found nuggets of gold in California’s American River near the site of the sawmill he was constructing for John Sutter. The news of this discovery brought three-hundred thousand people to California in the hope of a new life. This sudden influx of population allowed California to quickly achieve statehood through the Compromise of 1850. The Compromise was a packet of five separate Congressional bills, one of which approved California’s request for statehood, that temporarily defused tensions between the free and slave states in the United States.

A New Jersey native who came to California in 1944, James Marshall had found the gold nuggets in the tailrace, essentially a water wheel for producing energy, attached to the lumber mill he was building for Swiss immigrant John Sutter. He brought the gold to Sutter and the men privately tested the nuggets. Assured it was gold, Sutter wanted to keep the news of the discovery private as he had plans for an agricultural empire on the site.

Having sworn all the workers at the mill to secrecy, Sutter sent one of the carpenters, former Dragoon soldier Charles Bennet. to Monterey which was acting as the functional capital of the territory. Bennet was to meet with Colonel Mason, the chief United States official, to secure mineral rights of the land upon which the mill was being built. However after stopping in the Bay Area city of Benicia, Bennet excitedly made remarks about Sutter’s gold discovery after hearing about a recent discovery of coal. In San Francisco, he made a second remark about the gold and, after Colonel Mason declined to make judgment on the mineral rights, revealed the secret a third time.

By March of 1848, the discovery of gold at the Sutter site was confirmed by newspaper publisher and merchant Samuel Brannan, who had hastily stocked his store with gold prospecting supplies and advertised the discovery throughout San Francisco. The New York Herald, a major news source on the eastern coast of the United States, reported the California gold discovery in its August 19th edition of 1848. On December 5th of the same year. President James Polk confirmed the discovery in an address to Congress and, with that, the gold rush began. As John Sutter had feared, his business plans were ruined, his workers left to pan for gold, and squatters took over his land and stole both his crops and his cattle.

While the sudden influx of gold into the money supply reinvigorated the American economy, it had severe effects on Native Californians and sped the Native American population’s decline from disease, starvation and genocide. Whole indigenous societies were attacked and pushed off their lands by the gold seekers. Dependent on traditional hunting, gathering and agriculture, Native Americans became victims as gravel, silt and toxic chemicals from prospecting operations killed fish and destroyed habitats. Game disappeared as settlements and mining camps were built amidst game and food gathering locations. Newly plowed farms to feed the miners took away more of land.

Systematic attacks against tribespeople living near mining districts occurred. The numbers of killings of California Native Americans by non-natives between 1846 and 1873 was estimated at between ninety-four hundred and sixteen thousand, most of which occurred in more than three hundred-seventy massacres. If Native people responded in retribution, large scale attacks would be made against entire Native villages. One such attack was the 1852 Bridge Gulch Massacre where a group of setters attacked a band of Wintu Indians; only three children survived the massacre.

California’s first governor, Peter Burnett, declared there were only two options towards the California Native population, removal or extermination. On the twenty-second of April in 1850, the California legislature passed the Act for the Government and Protection of Indians which allowed settlers to capture and use Native people as bonded workers, prohibited Native peoples’ testimony against settlers, and allowed the adoption of Native children by settlers, often for labor purposes. After the initial rapid economic growth had ended, laws and confiscatory taxes were imposed to drive out the remaining Native Americans, immigrants from China, Mexico, Chile and Latin America.

Calendar: January 23

Year: Day to Day Men: January 23

In a White Room

The twenty-third of January in 1570 marks the assassination of James Stewart, 1st Earl of Moray. He was the regent of Scotland under his half-nephew, the infant King James VI. This was the first assassination of a head of government by the use of a firearm.

Born in 1531, James Stewart was the illegitimate child of King James V of Scotland and his mistress Lady Margaret Erskine, daughter of John Erskine, 5th Lord Erskine, and the wife of Sir Robert Douglas of Lochleven. On August 31st of 1536, Stewart received a royal charter that granted him the lands of Tantallon and its surrounding district. He later received an appointment in 1538 as Prior of St. Andrews, Fife, which supplied him with an annual income.

In 1558, Stewart attended the Paris wedding of his half-sister Mary, Queen of Scots, to the Dauphin of France, who became King Francis II of France. Stewart was a supporter of the Scottish Reformation, in which Scotland broke with the Papacy and became a predominantly Calvanist church; he was also a leader of the Protestant Lords of the Congregation, a group strongly in favor of a Scottish-English alliance. Despite differences in both politics and religion, Stewart became one of the chief advisors to his half-sister Mary after her return from France in 1561.

In 1562, Mary, Queen of Scots, made Stewart Earl of Moray, a new earldom for the kingdom. Included in the wealthy Earl of Moray title was Darnaway Castle with a large medieval hall; a smaller house often used by his father near Leuchars in Fife was also in Stewart’s possession. Now the Earl of Moray, he led Mary’s army and defeated a rebellion by George Gordon, 4th Earl of Huntly, at the Battle of Corrichie.

In July of 1565, Mary, Queen of Scots, married by Roman Catholic rites Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, who became king consort of Scotland. Lord Darnley was the second but eldest surviving son of Matthew Stewart, 4th Earl of Lennox, and his wife Lady Margaret Douglas. Mary and Darnley’s son James, the future King James VI of Scotland and King James I of England, was born on the nineteenth day of June in 1566 at Edinburgh Castle. In August, Moray was appointed Regent of Scotland for the infant King James; this was confirmed by Parliament in December.

By 1658, Scotland was in a state of civil war. Mary, Queen of Scots, had been forced by Parliamental decree to abdicate the throne and Moray, as Regent of Scotland. was leading his army against supporters of Mary. From 1668 to the end of 1659, Moray challenged and defeated almost all the northern Lords who were supporting Mary. On the 21st of January in 1570 while at Stirling Castle, he sent letters to summon Alexander Home, 5th Lord Home, and James Douglas, 4th Earl of Morton, to a meeting in Edinburgh.

In the midst of his travel to Edinburgh, James Stewart, Earl of Moray, was assassinated at the town of Linlithgow on the 23rd of January in 1570. James Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh, a supporter of the abdicated Mary, fatally wounded him with a carbine shot from the window of his uncle Archbishop Hamilton’s house as Moray was passing in the main street below. Moray’s body was shipped to Leith and then taken to Holyrood Abbey. He was buried in St. Anthony’s aisle at St. Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh. Moray was succeeded by his oldest daughter and heir, Elizabeth Stewart, 2nd Countess of Moray.