Wednesday, October 24, 2007—Page Sixteen of The New Hampshire Gazette is devoted to Admiral Fowle’s Piscataqua River Tidal Guide (Not for Navigational Purposes). This semi-popular feature graphically illustrates the state of our mighty river’s extraordinary tides over the course of the coming fortnight. We get our tidal data and its cunning graphic representation (see the wavy gray lines at the center and bottom of the page at right) from the WWW Tide and Current Predictor, which we love unconditionally.
The Tidal Guide is supplemented with notable historic events of each day. It has occurred to us that we might just as well post those items here regularly. We’ll try it and see how it goes.
We can’t begin this without acknowledging our debt to The Daily Bleed, which we rifled mercilessly during the compilation our own files. Perhaps a third of our items were originally lifted from that admirable source.
The tubes of the Internet are of course eminently flexible, Senator Stevens’ assessment notwithstanding. Bleedmeister David Brown makes the most of this. The dimensions of our Page Sixteen, however, are quite rigid, hence our terse style.
2001—After carefully not reading it, the House passes the USA PATRIOT Act. The “yeas” include 145 Democrats.
1989—Ostentatiously devout pastor Jim Bakker is sentenced to 45 years for swindling his flock. No jail time for diddling his secretary, though.
1964—A wrongly-positioned switch at the Baikonur Cosmodrome prematurely ignites the second stage of a Soviet R-16 ICBM. The resultant explosion and fire kills more than 100 scientists and technicians.
1962—Soviet ships reach the Cuban quarantine line, but do not cross.
1947—Walt Disney tells Congress which of his employees he thinks are commies.
1944—U.S.S. Tang is accidentally sunk by one of her own torpedos; 78 men perish.
1929—The irrational exuberance of the 1920’s stock market undergoes a correction on “Black Thursday.”
1901—U.S. Marines landing in the Philippines are exhorted by “Hell-Roaring Jake” Smith; “I wish you to burn and kill; the more you burn and kill, the better it will please me.”
1754—Daniel Fowle is jailed for publishing a pamphlet entitled The Monster of Monsters.