April 4: Combs and Cowlicks

Today's tidbit is about something in mathematics called the "Hairy  Ball Theorem."  No, it's not what you are thinking about, but yes, it  does apply to what you are thinking about.

April 4 is the birthday of the mathematician Hopf, who is known for a  result called the Poincare-Hopf Theorem, an example of which is the  hairy ball theorem.  It says that if you have a hairy ball (like a  really fuzzy tennis ball) and you try to comb it flat, you will always  leave a cowlick or tuft of hair at one end; you cannot have all the  hairs lay flat.

April 11: Boring?

On April 11, 1905, Albert Einstein published his special
theory of relativity.  In 1814, Napolean was exiled to Elba.  In 1888,
one of the great orchestras of the world, the Concertgebouw in
Amsterdam, was established.

Now here is the interesting bit: by searching for news events, it was
claimed that April 11, 1954 was the most boring day of the 20th
century.  A team of scientists at Cambridge University scoured through
300 million news stories to find the day with the least number of
newsworthy events.

May 6: Soaring above the wing

May 6 is an interesting date in history, lots of stuff happened:
--It was the last day  of the second world war (the documents ending the war were signed on May 7)
--The Hindenberg exploded in 1937
--Roger Bannister ran a mile under 4 minutes
--The Eiffel Tower was first opened to the public.  Gustave Eiffel's company designed and built the tower.  Eiffel was also involved in building the Statue of Liberty.  He built many bridges all over the world, and was involved in an early attempt to build the Panama Canal.  That effort failed, and after that, he "quit engineering" and devoted himself to aerodynamics. Now comes the cool part: he built a wind tunnel in 1909 and made a big discovery: that lift (produced by an airfoil/airplane wing) was not caused by an increase of pressure under the wing but instead was due to a reduction of pressure above the wing.  For this, he was awarded the James Langley medal by the Smithsonian in 1913.

March 3: A Monumental Novella

Today is the anniversary of the first performance (Paris, 1875) of the opera Carmen, by George Bizet.  Though it is easily one of the most popular opera’s performed today, it was not successful at its launch.  Bizet died in June that year at age 36.  Just before he died, he had agreed to have it performed in Vienna, and the performance there, also in 1875, was a huge success.  This led to continuing performances and its eventual fame. 

 

The opera was based on a short novel by Prosper Merimee.  The story is about a young woman who seduces a soldier; the soldier deserts the military, but she scorns him in favor of a bullfighter, after which he kills her.  It was written as an opera comique (where dialog is spoken) but is now played as a grand opera (dialog is sung).   You can read an English translation of the novel at

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2465/2465-h/2465-h.htm#link2HCH0001 

 

Prosper was an archaeologist and short story writer.  Prosper apparently learned of the story of Carmen from the Countess of Montijo (Spain), whose daughter married Napolean III and became Empress Eugenie. He also discovered the amazing tapestries of The Lady and the Unicorn; these are shown hanging in the Gryffindor Common Room in the Harry Potter movies. You can see pictures of the tapestries at http://www.musee-moyenage.fr/ang/pages/page_id18368_u1l2.htm.  

 

He wrote several other novels. One is called Mateo Falcone, which was also made into an opera. It is short story set in Corsica, a translation is available at http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/mfalcone.html The movie The Golden Coach, starring Anna Magnani (Academy Award winner in The Rose Tattoo) is also based on one of his stores; the film was directed by Jean Renoir, son of the famous painter. Another enjoyable story is Colomba, also set in Corsica, available at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2708/2708-h/2708-h.htm

 

Merimee was the person appointed as France’s inspector general of historical monuments, and the French list of national monuments is named after him.

January 18: Give me a word, another word

January 18 is the birthday of Peter Roget, the creator of Roget’s Thesaurus.   The word thesaurus comes from Latin and Greek words for treasure.  A thesaurus is not a dictionary since it does not give the meaning of a word, just synonyms or words with a similar meaning.  The Historical Thesaurus of the English Dictionary is the largest thesaurus, and has over 900,000 words, about twice the size of Roget's.  His original version had about 15000 words, and it was expanded by his son and grandson, and continues to have words added.   The Karpeles Manuscript Library has the original manuscript; you can see an excerpt and find out more about the history of Roget's Thesaurus at http://www.rain.org/~karpeles/rogfrm.html  If you click on the link, you will find an interesting quote from Peter Pan. 

 

One of the earliest thesaurus’ was compiled by Philo of Byblos.  The word “philo” derives from the Greek word for love.  Byblos was a Phoenician town.  It became the Greek word for papyrus because it was exported through Byblos.  The word Bible derives from this.  Philo derives from the Greek word for love, hence the meaning of bibliophile.  Phyllo, as in dough, is not related to philo but comes from the Greek word for leaf.

 

Other's named Philo: the person who created the first fully functional electronic TV set was named Philo Farnsworth. In the movie “Every Which Way But Loose,” Clint Eastwood 's character is named Philo Beddoe. 

December 28: Give us the nice bright colors

On December 28, 1895 the Lumiere Brothers held the first public movie screening in the basement of a café in Paris. It was the birth of the cinema. Their father ran a photography shop in Lyon. The story goes that their father saw Edison’s Kinestoscope in Paris (where you had to look into a peephole to see the picture) and suggested to his sons that they could improve this by moving the “image out of the box.” They did, and in 1895, the first movie show was held.

The first showing was of 10 movies, each about 40 seconds in length. You can see all of them at the Lumiere Institute’s web site: http://www.institut-lumiere.org/english/frames_lum.html The first was Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory; look at the guy with the handkerchief about 33 seconds in: what is he doing?. The second is really funny, named the “The Vaulting.” These films are in black and white.

 

The Lumiere brothers also invented the Autochrome, a new process for creating color photographs. This was a huge improvement over previous methods, and was the primary method used between 1907 and the 1930’s. The Albert Kahn Museum in Paris has a collection of 72,000 Autochrome photographs, the largest in the world.

The history of the invention and some pictures can be seen at http://www.institut-lumiere.org/english/frames_lum.html

 

Anyway, the café where the first movie screening took place was called the Salon Indien du Grand Café, located at 14 Boulevard Des Capucines in Paris.

On this same date, December 28, 1895, Wilhelm Rontgen published a paper on a new form of radiation (x-rays). It turns out he conducted experiments at the very same café.

 

Today, the site of the café is occupied by the Hotel Scribe, a 5* Sofitel property. One of its restaurants is called Le Lumiere:

http://www.sofitel.com/gb/hotel-0663-hotel-scribe-paris-managed-by-sofitel/index.shtml#./restaurant.shtml and you can see a picture of the Lumiere brothers over the fireplace.

 

Sort of related tidbits:

-- at 35 Boulevard des Capucines, in 1874, was the first impressionist exhibition, including work by Renoir, Manet, Pissarro, Degas, and Monet.

--- Monet painted two pictures called Boulevard Des Capucines; one is in Moscow, the other in Kansas City.

---Capucine is also the name of an actress; you will recognize her from The Pick Panther and What’s New Pussycat:

Capucine_The_Pink_Panther.jpg

December 23: Dirty Rotten ...Row?

Today is the birthday of Heneage Finch, 1st Earl of Nottingham (1621).  He was Lord Chancellor and a member of Parliament. He became Baron Finch in 1673 and Earl of Nottingham in May 1681.

He built a house in (the village of) Kensington called the Nottingham House  It was acquired by King William III in 1689 because he wanted a residence near London but far away enough away from the smoke that covered London; the king was an asthmatic.  The king's official residence was St. James Palace in London.  Interestingly, it remains the official residence of the king/queen today even though no monarch has lived there for over 200 years.  In 1941, representatives of several countries met at the palace to sign the Declaration of St. James's Palace, which then became the charter of the United Nations.

Anyway, the house Finch built became Kensington Palace.  Christopher Wren made many enhancements to the house; he is responsible, among other things, for the architecture of St. Paul's Cathedral in London.  

A road was built from St. James Palace to Kensington Palace, and was called the "Route de Roi" or the road of kings.  Over time, the name evolved to "Rotten Row." I don't know how the name changed, but one hypothesis is that it comes from the Gaelic phrase Rat-an-righ, which translates as "Road Of The Kings" 

The road runs just south of Hyde Park, and still exists.  You can see a picture of it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rotten_Row_-_Hyde_Park.jpg  The Household Cavalry exercises its horses on Rotten Row.