Thursday Things: Almost Leap Day Edition
27 February 2020. Vol 2 No 9. By Dan McGirt. #29
Welcome to Thursday Things! It’s our special Almost Leap Day edition, so let’s leap right into it!
Or we could leap into this Mountain Pool, Robert S. Duncanson. Smithsonian American Art Museum
This is Thursday Things, but this week our focus is on Saturday, February 29 — the most awesome day of this year, because it is Leap Day, the day that only graces our calendars every four years because of mumble mumble astronomy science reasons.
History.com give us 5 Things You May Not Know About Leap Day. Did you know that Leap Day was introduced by Julius Caesar? (Maybe he should have leaped faster on the Ides of March, but that’s for another day...) Or that people born on February 29 are known as “leaplings”? (Also, “leapers”, which is perhaps too close to “lepers”, so we’ll go with leaplings.) Famous leaplings include “actress and singer Dinah Shore (born 1916), motivational speaker Tony Robbins (born 1960) and hip-hop artist Ja Rule (born 1976)” (You may recall JaRule from the infamous Fyre Festival debacle. And not much else.)
Oh, we have more Leap Day facts, don’t worry…
Here are 9 Quirky Leap Year Facts You Probably Didn’t Know: Including that the first arrest warrants for the Salem Witch Trials went out on February 29, 1692. Also, in France, there is a newspaper that is only published once every four years for Leap Day: La Bougie du Sapeur": the only daily newspaper that appears every four years, on February 29, releases its new issue (The article is in French, but if you don’t read French, you can use Google Translate to switch it to your language.) “With its twenty pages of puns, puns, real and false interviews, naughty tickets and more or less serious comments on the news of the last four years, the newspaper, on newsstands as of Friday, intends to defend the "politically incorrect".”
The Honor Society of Leap Year Day Babies, is a-free membership-birthday club for people born on February 29th. “We offer membership in the Society via our Facebook group. Our Facebook page also focuses on Leap Day related news and events. Therefore it's great for the whole family.”
In Scotland, it is considered unlucky to be born on February 29. In Greece it is considered unlucky to marry during a leap year, and especially on Leap Day.
Olive Garden giving 4 free desserts to people born on Feb. 29 to make up for lost birthdays. “Olive Garden wants to give people born on Leap Days four free desserts to celebrate their birthday this year and the three birthdays that never came over the last three years.”
And the Tampa Bay Times delves into a Leap Day wedding mystery
Enough Leap Day? Too much is never enough! But let’s hop over to some other topics..
The Smithsonian Institution has a massive collection of, well, massive collections of just about anything you can think of across its various museums. It also has a huge collection of images it is now releasing online in high resolution form for anyone to use: Smithsonian Releases 2.8 Million Images Into Public Domain
For the first time in its 174-year history, the Smithsonian has released 2.8 million high-resolution two- and three-dimensional images from across its collections onto an open access online platform for patrons to peruse and download free of charge. Featuring data and material from all 19 Smithsonian museums, nine research centers, libraries, archives and the National Zoo, the new digital depot encourages the public to not just view its contents, but use, reuse and transform them into just about anything they choose—be it a postcard, a beer koozie or a pair of bootie shorts.
And this gargantuan data dump is just the beginning. Throughout the rest of 2020, the Smithsonian will be rolling out another 200,000 or so images, with more to come as the Institution continues to digitize its collection of 155 million items and counting.
Here is the direct link to the Smithsonian Open Access platform, where you can browse and download images to your heart’s content. Many other museums, libraries, and universities are working digitize their collections and make them freely available to the world. It is at least one promise of the Internet’s potential that is slowly, in fits and starts, coming true. (Along, of course, with the Internet’s other promise to track everything we do and record it forever in a nightmare of permanent surveillance. But that’s a whole other topic.)
What is almost as fun as Leap Day? Hedgehogs! Do you love hedgehogs? Who doesn’t love hedgehogs? You know who else loved hedgehogs? William Shakespeare, that’s who! Here is everything you ever wanted to know about hedgehogs in William Shakespeare’s plays: “Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen”: Hedgehogs in Shakespeare’s plays and the early modern imagination … including an Elizabethan era recipe for hedgehog pudding. Mmm, hedgehog pudding. (Don’t worry! Hedgehog pudding contains no actual hedgehogs.) Although this hedgehog does look pretty worried:
Please don’t make me into a pudding! Credit: Edward Topsell. The historie of foure-footed beastes. 1607. Folger Shakespeare Library.
Aren’t hedgehogs the best?
We note the loss of Clive Cussler, best-selling author of 'Sahara' and 'Raise the Titanic!,' who passed away this week at age 88. Cussler was one of the giants of modern adventure fiction, with his page-turning tales of underwater explorer Dirk Pitt, along with several spin-off series. Cussler inspired and encouraged many of the current generation of thriller and adventure writers, along with entertaining tens of millions of readers over the decades. I’ve not read all of his books yet — I’ve been working my way through my mother’s collection of them! — but look forward to enjoying Cussler’s work for years to come.
In real life, Cussler was an accomplished underwater explorer and treasure hunter, just like his fictional hero Dirk Pitt. He also shared Pitt’s roguish charm and devil-may-care approach to problems, if this story is any indication:
Cussler finished manuscripts for Mediterranean Caper and Iceberg, but had no literary agent — so he created one. He purchased a thousand sheets of blank letter paper, got a friend in advertising to design a logo for "The Charles Winthrop Agency" and sent his first inquiry to Peter Lampack of the William Morris Agency. Lampack agreed to take on Cussler and remained with him long after the author confessed his charade.
"I told him the story of Charlie Winthrop with great trepidation," Cussler explained to the Arizona Republic. "I sat there waiting for the result, and he sat there blank for a minute, and then he laughed himself under the table. And he said, 'Oh, my God. I always thought Charlie Winthrop was some guy I met while I was drunk at a cocktail party.'"
Mediterranean Caper came out in 1973, followed by Iceberg two years later and Raise the Titanic! in 1976. He would turn out more than 20 Dirk Pitt novels and expand into children's books and such adventure series as The Oregon Files and The Numa Files.
Cussler will be missed.
Have You Heard of The Special Forces Ghost Car That Operated in Bosnia? For me the answer is no, I had not, until I read the linked article. But this is an amazing story of one man’s courage and dedication to bringing humanitarian aid to desperate people with the help of the most awesome care this side of the Batmobile:
Ghost Car: In the early 1990s, a former Danish special forces soldier felt a calling from God to go to Bosnia and provide humanitarian aid during the Bosnian War.
With the help of the US Army, he was able to fulfil that mission, driving through dangerous conditions to deliver relief to citizens of the war-torn country with only his Bible and a tricked-out Camaro – the Ghost Car.
What made it a Ghost Car? Read on:
The entire car was stripped. Armor was applied to the exterior and to the underside of the car. A mine-clearing blade was fixed on the front. Run-flat tires were mounted on the wheels.
The rear window was removed and replaced with a steel plate. The car was painted matte-black with a special paint that absorbs infra-red light.
A nitrous tank could boost the output to 440hp when Meyer really needed to get out of a jam. A ground-to-air radio kept him in contact with air support.
Click through to the article to read more and see pictures of the Ghost Car and its driver, Helge Meyer — known to some as “God’s Rambo.”
More Leap Day knowledge for you:
Thank you for reading Thursday Things! A special welcome to our newest Happy Subscribers. If you enjoyed this issue, please forward to a friend or use the share button below. And a super fourfold Happy Birthday to all the Leap Year babies celebrating your first birthday in four years on Saturday! :) See you next Thursday.
