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Continental Congress Approves Final Wording of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776

Continental Congress Approves Final Wording of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776

Continental Congress Approves Final Wording of the Declaration of Independence: We think of July 4, 1776, as a day that represents the Declaration of Independence and the birth of the United States of America as an independent nation.

But July 4, 1776 wasn't the day that the Continental Congress decided to declare independence (they did that on July 2, 1776).

It wasn’t the day we started the American Revolution either (that had happened back in April 1775).

And it wasn't the day Thomas Jefferson wrote the first draft of the Declaration of Independence (that was in June 1776).

Or the date on which the Declaration was delivered to Great Britain (that didn't happen until November 1776). Or the date it was signed (that was August 2, 1776).

So what did happen on July 4, 1776?

The Continental Congress approved the final wording of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. They'd been working on it for a couple of days after the draft was submitted on July 2nd and finally agreed on all of the edits and changes.

July 4, 1776, became the date that was included on the Declaration of Independence, and the fancy handwritten copy that was signed in August (the copy now displayed at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.) It’s also the date that was printed on the Dunlap Broadsides, the original printed copies of the Declaration that were circulated throughout the new nation. So when people thought of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776 was the date they remembered.

In contrast, we celebrate Constitution Day on September 17th of each year, the anniversary of the date the Constitution was signed, not the anniversary of the date it was approved. If we’d followed this same approach for the Declaration of Independence we’d being celebrating Independence Day on August 2nd of each year, the day the Declaration of Independence was signed!

How did the Fourth of July become a national holiday?

For the first 15 or 20 years after the Declaration was written, people didn’t celebrate it much on any date. It was too new and too much else was happening in the young nation.

By the 1790s, a time of bitter partisan conflicts, the Declaration had become controversial. One party, the Democratic-Republicans, admired Jefferson and the Declaration.

But the other party, the Federalists, thought the Declaration was too French and too anti-British, which went against their current policies.

By 1817, John Adams complained in a letter that America seemed uninterested in its past. But that would soon change.

After the War of 1812, the Federalist party began to come apart and the new parties of the 1820s and 1830s all considered themselves inheritors of Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans.

Printed copies of the Declaration began to circulate again, all with the date July 4, 1776, listed at the top.

The deaths of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams on July 4, 1826, may even have helped to promote the idea of July 4 as an important date to be celebrated.

Celebrations of the Fourth of July became more common as the years went on and in 1870, almost a hundred years after the Declaration was written, Congress first declared July 4 to be a national holiday as part of a bill to officially recognize several holidays, including Christmas. Further legislation about national holidays, including July 4, was passed in 1939 and 1941.

The bombardment of Morro Castle on Havana, 1763

SEVEN Events That Enraged Colonists and Led to the American Revolution

Colonists didn't just take up arms against the British out of the blue. A series of events escalated tensions that culminated in America's war for independence.

The American colonists’ breakup with the British Empire in 1776 wasn’t a sudden, impetuous act. Instead, the banding together of the 13 colonies to fight and win a war of independence against the Crown was the culmination of a series of events, which had begun more than a decade earlier.

Escalations began shortly after the end of the “French and Indian War” known elsewhere as the “Seven Years War” in 1763. Here are a few of the pivotal moments that led to the American Revolution.

The Stamp Act (March 1765)

1. The Stamp Act (March 1765)

To recoup some of the massive debt left over from the war with France, Parliament passed laws such as the Stamp Act, which for the first time taxed a wide range of transactions in the colonies.

“Up until then, each colony had its own government which decided which taxes they would have, and collected them”, explains Willard Sterne Randall, a professor emeritus of history at Champlain College and author of numerous works on early American history, including “Unshackling America”: How the War of 1812 Truly Ended the American Revolution. “They felt that they’d spent a lot of blood and treasure to protect the colonists from the Indians, and so they should pay their share.”

The colonists didn’t see it that way. They resented not only having to buy goods from the British but pay tax on them as well. “The tax never got collected, because there were riots all over the pace”, Randall says. Ultimately, Benjamin Franklin convinced the British to rescind it, but that only made things worse. “That made the Americans think they could push back against anything the British wanted”, Randall says.

The Townshend Acts (June-July 1767)

2. The Townshend Acts (June-July 1767)

Parliament again tried to assert its authority by passing legislation to tax goods that the Americans imported from Great Britain. The Crown established a board of customs commissioners to stop smuggling and corruption among local officials in the colonies, who were often in on the illicit trade.

Americans struck back by organizing a boycott of the British goods that were subject to taxation, and began harassing the British customs commissioners. In an effort to quell the resistance, the British sent troops to occupy Boston, which only deepened the ill feeling.

Boston Massacre, March 5th, 1770 (1855), original painting by illustrator William L. Champney (fl. 1850–1857), reproduced as a chromolithograph and published by Henry Q. Smith, Boston. Courtesy of the Boston Athenaeum.

3. The Boston Massacre (March 1770)

Simmering tensions between the British occupiers and Boston residents boiled over one late afternoon, when a disagreement between an apprentice wigmaker and a British soldier led to a crowd of 200 colonists surrounding seven British troops. When the Americans began taunting the British and throwing things at them, the soldiers apparently lost their cool and began firing into the crowd.

As the smoke cleared, three men—including an African American sailor named Crispus Attucks - were dead, and two others were mortally wounded. The massacre became a useful propaganda tool for the colonists, especially after Paul Revere distributed an engraving that misleadingly depicted the British as the aggressors.

READ MORE: Did a Snowball Fight Start the American Revolution?

The Boston Tea Party (December 1773)

4. The Boston Tea Party (December 1773)

The British eventually withdrew their forces from Boston and repealed much of the onerous Townshend legislation. But they left in place the tax on tea, and in 1773 enacted a new law, the Tea Act, to prop up the financially struggling British East India Company. The act gave the company extended favorable treatment under tax regulations, so that it could sell tea at a price that undercut the American merchants who imported from Dutch traders.

That didn’t sit well with Americans. “They didn’t want the British telling them that they had to buy their tea, but it wasn’t just about that,” Randall explains. “The Americans wanted to be able to trade with any country they wanted.”

The Sons of Liberty, a radical group, decided to confront the British head-on. Thinly disguised as Mohawks, they boarded three ships in Boston harbor and destroyed more than 92,000 pounds of British tea by dumping it into the harbor. To make the point that they were rebels rather than vandals, they avoided harming any of the crew or damaging the ships themselves, and the next day even replaced a padlock that had been broken.

Nevertheless, the act of defiance “really ticked off the British government”, Randall explains. “Many of the East India Company’s shareholders were members of Parliament. They each had paid 1,000 pounds sterling - that would probably be about a million dollars now - for a share of the company, to get a piece of the action from all this tea that they were going to force down the colonists’ throats. So when these bottom-of-the-rung people in Boston destroyed their tea, that was a serious thing to them.”

The Boston Tea Party (December 1773)

5. The Coercive Acts (March-June 1774)

In response to the Boston Tea Party, the British government decided that it had to tame the rebellious colonists in Massachusetts. In the spring of 1774, Parliament passed a series of laws, the Coercive Acts, which closed Boston Harbor until restitution was paid for the destroyed tea, replaced the colony’s elected council with one appointed by the British, gave sweeping powers to the British military governor General Thomas Gage, and forbade town meetings without approval.

Yet another provision protected British colonial officials who were charged with capital offenses from being tried in Massachusetts, instead requiring that they be sent to another colony or back to Great Britain for trial.

But perhaps the most provocative provision was the Quartering Act, which allowed British military officials to demand accommodations for their troops in unoccupied houses and buildings in towns, rather than having to stay out in the countryside. While it didn’t force the colonists to board troops in their own homes, they had to pay for the expense of housing and feeding the soldiers. The quartering of troops eventually became one of the grievances cited in the Declaration of Independence.

Lexington and Concord (April 1775)

6. Lexington and Concord (April 1775)

British General Thomas Gage led a force of British soldiers from Boston to Lexington, where he planned to capture colonial radical leaders Sam Adams and John Hancock, and then head to Concord and seize their gunpowder. But American spies got wind of the plan, and with the help of riders such as Paul Revere, word spread to be ready for the British.

On the Lexington Common, the British force was confronted by 77 American militiamen, and they began shooting at each other. Seven Americans died, but other militiamen managed to stop the British at Concord, and continued to harass them on their retreat back to Boston.

The British lost 73 dead, with another 174 wounded and 26 missing in action. The bloody encounter proved to the British that the colonists were fearsome foes who had to be taken seriously. It was the start of America’s war of independence.

Lexington and Concord (April 1775)

7. British attacks on coastal towns (October 1775-January 1776)

Though the Revolutionary War’s hostilities started with Lexington and Concord, Randall says that at the start, it was unclear whether the southern colonies, whose interests didn’t necessarily align with the northern colonies, would be all in for a war of independence.

“The southerners were totally dependent upon the English to buy their crops, and they didn’t trust the Yankees”, he explains. “And in New England, the Puritans thought the southerners were lazy.”

But that was before the brutal British naval bombardments and burning of the coastal towns of Falmouth, Massachusetts and Norfolk, Virginia helped to unify the colonies. In Falmouth, where townspeople had to grab their possessions and flee for their lives, northerners had to face up to “the fear that the British would do whatever they wanted to them”, Randall says.

As historian Holger Hoock has written, the burning of Falmouth shocked General George Washington, who denounced it as “exceeding in barbarity & cruelty every hostile act practiced among civilized nations”.

Similarly, in Norfolk, the horror of the town’s wooden buildings going up in flames after a seven-hour naval bombardment shocked the southerners, who also knew that the British were offering African Americans their freedom if they took up arms on the loyalist side. “Norfolk stirred up fears of a slave insurrection in the South”, Randall says.

Leaders of the rebellion seized the burnings of the two ports to make the argument that the colonists needed to band together for survival against a ruthless enemy and embrace the need for independence - a spirit that ultimately would lead to their victory.

History Channel / Wikipedia / Encyclopedia Britannica / History Channel / Constitution Center.org / National Archives.gov / Library Of Congress.gov / Gilder Lehrman Institute Of American History.org / Continental Congress Approves Final Wording of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 (YouTube) video


Understanding Military Terminology: At the Marine Corps Museum: Norman Rockwell's “The War Hero”

Understanding Military Terminology

Public

(DOD) In public affairs, a segment of the population with common attributes to which a military force can tailor its communication.

See also External Audience; Internal Audience.

Joint Publications (JP 3-61) Civil-Military Operations

Public Affairs

(DOD) Communication activities with external and internal audiences.

Also called PA.

Joint Publications (JP 3-61) Civil-Military Operations

Public Affairs Assessment

(DOD) An analysis of the news media and public environments to evaluate the degree of understanding about strategic and operational objectives and military activities and to identify levels of public support.

See also External Audience; Internal Audience.

Joint Publications (JP 3-61) Civil-Military Operations

Public Affairs Guidance

(DOD) Constraints and restraints established by proper authority regarding public communication activities.

Also calledPAG.

Joint Publications (JP 3-61) Civil-Military Operations

Public Diplomacy

1. Those overt international public information activities of the United States Government designed to promote United States foreign policy objectives by seeking to understand, inform, and influence foreign audiences and opinion makers, and by broadening the dialogue between American citizens and institutions and their counterparts abroad.

2. In peace building, civilian agency efforts to promote an understanding of the reconstruction efforts, rule of law, and civic responsibility through public affairs and international public diplomacy operations.

Joint Publications (JP 3-07.3) Peace Operations

Public Information

Within public affairs, information of a military nature, the dissemination of which is consistent with security and approved for public release.

Also calledPAG.

Joint Publications (JP 3-61) Public Affairs - Joint Chiefs of Staff

Public Diplomacy

An enterprise-wide service that supports digital signatures and other public key-based security mechanisms for Department of Defense functional enterprise programs, including generation, production, distribution, control, and accounting of public key certificates.

Also calledPKI.

Joint Publications (JP 2-03) Geospatial Intelligence in Joint Operations

Joint Publication - Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms


Norman Rockwell: Sailor Dreaming of Girlfriend

The Old Salt’s Corner

Going Ashore

During your period of training, it is possible that the ship will visit a port (foreign or domestic). Tradition requires that you obtain permission from the OOD to leave the ship (in the same fashion that you obtained permission to board originally). When requesting permission to leave, present your ID card and have a copy of your orders with you. Before making your way to the Quarterdeck, obtain permission to leave from your supervisor. Formal permission to leave the ship is requested in the following manner:

Salute the OOD and say, “I request permission to go ashore, sir.” (In the same manner as boarding, always address the OOD as “sir”, as he or she represents the authority of the ship’s commanding officer.). The OOD will reply, “Very well”, and return the salute. If the ship is tied up in port, proceed down the gangplank. Remember to pause halfway and face to salute the national ensign aft during daylight hours. If at anchorage, make your way to the launch boarding area. When returning to the ship, follow the same boarding procedure outlined earlier in this section.

When going ashore by launch, junior officers always board first and take the forward seats. Senior officers and VIPs take the rear seats of the launch. Disembarking the launch is done in the reverse order; namely, seniors leave first followed by juniors.

Order of Debarkation

Maritime tradition dictates an order of debarkation at the conclusion of each at-sea period that is never deviated from.

Debarkation at the end of cruise is in the following order:

● Bodies of any casualties.

● Wounded.

● Ship’s commanding officer and/or his personal aide

● Mail.

● All ship’s personnel who have permission to go ashore

Continued ...


“I’m Just Sayin’”

“I’m Just Sayin”

“The joy that isn't shared dies young.”

“Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard.”

“Madness is a waste of time. It creates nothing.”

“Live or die, but don't poison everything.”

“Even without wars, life is dangerous.”

“Death's in the good-bye.”

“It doesn't matter who my father was,

it matters who I remember he was.”

~ Anne Sexton


“Thought for the Day”

“Thought for the Day”

“We won't have a society if we destroy the environment.”

“I learned the value of hard work by working hard.”

“Always remember that you are absolutely unique.

Just like everyone else.”

“What people say,

what people do,

and what they say they do are entirely different things.”

“Never believe that a few caring people can't change the world.

For, indeed,

that's all who ever have.”

~ Margaret Mead


“What I Have Learned”

“What I Learned”

“Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.”

“One never notices what has been done;

one can only see what remains to be done.”

“Nothing in life is to be feared,

it is only to be understood.

Now is the time to understand more,

so that we may fear less.”

~ Marie Curie


If Beer and Bread Use Almost the Exact Same Ingredients, Why Isn't Bread Alcoholic? Mr. Answer Man Please Tell Us: If Beer and Bread Use Almost the Exact Same Ingredients, Why Isn't Bread Alcoholic?

If Beer and Bread Use Almost the Exact Same Ingredients, Why Isn't Bread Alcoholic?

All yeast breads contain some amount of alcohol. Have you ever smelled a rising loaf of bread or, better yet, smelled the air underneath dough that has been covered while rising? It smells really boozy. And that sweet smell that fresh-baked bread has under the yeast and nutty Maillard reaction notes? Alcohol.

If Beer and Bread Use Almost the Exact Same Ingredients, Why Isn't Bread Alcoholic?

However, during the baking process, most of the alcohol in the dough evaporates into the atmosphere. This is basically the same thing that happens to much of the water in the dough as well. And it’s long been known that bread contains residual alcohol—up to 1.9 percent of it. In the 1920s, the American Chemical Society even had a set of experimenters report on it.

Anecdotally, I’ve also accidentally made really boozy bread by letting a white bread dough rise for too long. The end result was that not enough of the alcohol boiled off, and the darned thing tasted like alcohol. You can also taste alcohol in the doughy bits of underbaked white bread, which I categorically do not recommend you try making.

Putting on my industrial biochemistry hat here, many [people] claim that alcohol is only the product of a “starvation process” on yeast once they run out of oxygen. That’s wrong.

If Beer and Bread Use Almost the Exact Same Ingredients, Why Isn't Bread Alcoholic?

The most common brewers and bread yeasts, of the Saccharomyces genus (and some of the Brettanomyces genus, also used to produce beer), will produce alcohol in both a beer wort and in bread dough immediately, regardless of aeration. This is actually a surprising result, as it runs counter to what is most efficient for the cell (and, incidentally, the simplistic version of yeast biology that is often taught to home brewers). The expectation would be that the cell would perform aerobic respiration (full conversion of sugar and oxygen to carbon dioxide and water) until oxygen runs out, and only then revert to alcoholic fermentation, which runs without oxygen but produces less energy.

Instead, if a Saccharomyces yeast finds itself in a high-sugar environment, regardless of the presence of air it will start producing ethanol, shunting sugar into the anaerobic respiration pathway while still running the aerobic process in parallel. This phenomenon is known as the Crabtree effect, and is speculated to be an adaptation to suppress competing organisms in the high-sugar environment because ethanol has antiseptic properties that yeasts are tolerant to but competitors are not. It’s a quirk of Saccharomyces biology that you basically only learn about if you spent a long time doing way too much yeast cell culture.

Brew Enthusiast / Wikipedia / Encyclopedia Britannica / Medical News Today / Food Babe / Mental Floss - Quora / If Beer and Bread Use Almost the Exact Same Ingredients, Why Isn't Bread Alcoholic? (YouTube) video


NAVSPEAK aka U.S. Navy Slang - U.S. Navy

NAVSPEAK aka U.S. Navy Slang

Star Tight: See “Gronk”.

Starboard: Right side of the boat or ship (when facing the bow). Right side of an aircraft when facing the nose.

Steel Beach Picnic: Celebration on the weather decks of a ship. Usually involving near beer and barbecue.

Stepping Out: When a junior sailor often gets into a shouting match with a more senior enlisted man: I.e. a Seaman/Airman/Fireman, getting out of line with a Chief Petty Officer. Usually results in one of two things, either NJP, or a fist fight.

Stepping In The Shit: Refers to a sailor that has made a mistake so large, that it comes to the attention of the Commanding Officer, who instantly begins chewing him out on the spot, Usually remarked on before the Commanding Officer appears, e.g. “Oh, man, did you just step in the shit”.

Storecritter: An old fashioned term for the storekeepler rating, now called logies.

Striker: Sailor receiving on-the-job training for a designated field (or rate).

Wiktionary.org


Just for MARINES - The Few. The Proud.

Just for you MARINE

Stage: Command to wait.

Starboard: Naval term for “right side of ship” when on board a ship and facing forward; opposite of port. “Starboard” is the same with respect to a ship regardless of where a person is located or which way a person is facing, whereas “right” might be ambiguous.

Stacking Swivel: Oblong-shaped link with an opening screwed to the rifle that allowed other rifles to be hooked and stacked (the M1 Garand was the last service rifle to have a stacking swivel, this function is now held by the weapon's sling);

“Grab him by the stacking swivel” infers grabbing a person's throat.

STEAL: Stealthily Transport Equipment to Another Location.

Steel Pot: The M1 combat helmet in service from 1941 to 1987.

Stick: Squad of servicemembers being transported either via aircraft or ground vehicle. (Term “Chalk” is used by Army to reference platoon plus size unit.)

Stocking Feet: Socks or a Marine with no boots or shoes on, in his stocking feet.

Wikipedia.org


Naval Aviation Squadron Nicknames

Naval Aviation Squadron Nicknames

HSM-73 Helicopter Maritime Strike (HSM) Squadron SEVEN THREE - nicknamed the “Battle Cats”

United States Navy - Marine Corps Commander, Helicopter Maritime Strike Wing Pacific - Naval Air Station North Island, Naval Base Coronado, San Diego County, California. / HSL-43: October 05, 1984 - February 2012 / HSM-73: February 2012 - present


Where Did That Saying Come From

Where Did That Saying Come From?

Where Did That Saying Come From? “A fish rots from the head down”

A fish rots from the head down:

Meaning: When an organization or state fails, it is the leadership that is the root cause.

History: This proverb is of ancient origin but precisely which of the ancients coined it is probably beyond our ken at this distant remove.

Many countries lay claim to it. I've seen sources that place it in China, Russia, Poland, England, Greece and so on, but usually with no evidence to substantiate those claims. Some assert it was written in a Greek text by Erasmus, who died in 1546, but has also not been substantiated.

All of the early examples of the phrase in print in English prefer the variant ‘a fish stinks from the head down’ to ‘a fish rots from the head down’, which is more popular nowadays. Those early examples all ignore the nations mentioned above and credit the term to the Turks. Sir James Porter's Observations on the religion, law, government, and manners of the Turks, 1768, includes this:

The Turks have a homely proverb applied on such occasions: “the fish stinks first at the head”, meaning, that if the servant is disorderly, it is because the master is so.

The early date of this citation and the fact that Porter was in a position to be authoritative on Turkish custom, being British ambassador to the Sublime Porte of the Ottoman Empire for 15 years in the second half of the 18th century, gives Turkey a strong claim to be the birthplace of this proverb.

The poet Rumi, who died in Turkey in 1273, included this line in the Third Book of Masnavi, which was one of six books of poetry written in the 13th century:

“Fish begins to stink at the head, not the tail.”

Of course, the above is a translation of the original Persian text which was published centuries later but, if the translation is accurate and literal, then Rumi has a strong claim to have originated the expression.

The proverb isn't a lesson in piscine biology. The phrase appears to have been used in Turkey in a metaphorical rather than literal sense from the outset. That's just as well as, in reality, it is the guts of fish that rot and stink before the head.

Phrases.org.uk


Science & Technology

Science & Technology

Science & Technology

FEATURED: Female elephant seals hunt nonstop, sleeping just 1 hour a nightBees and hoverflies gobble fake pollen, benefiting both insect and plant

Landmark study casts doubt on controversial theory linking melting Arctic to severe winter weatherPiles of ancient poop reveal ‘extinction event’ in human gut bacteria

“A toxic cocktail:” Panel delivers harsh verdict on the world’s failure to prepare for pandemicNext stop, space: NASA Webb telescope undergoes final tests

NASA’s new fleet of satellites will offer insights into the wild cards of climate change“It’s like the embers in a barbecue pit.” Nuclear reactions are smoldering again at Chernobyl Science AAAS

FEATURED: Astronomers detect substellar companion of HD 47127Clingy copper ions contribute to catalyst slowdown

Southern African dinosaur had irregular growthContamination risk of groundwater in karst regions is higher than previously believedGold leaf could help diagnose viral infections in low-resource settings

Why COVID patients become critically illNovel structure found in tumor cells may open door to new kinds of cancer therapiesNew findings link brain's immune system to psychosis

Computer designs magnonic devicesResearchers' new best friend? Robot dog gets to workWhy perovskite solar cells tend to segregate under the influence of light Phys.org / MedicalXpress / TechXplore


Bizarre News (we couldn’t make up stuff this good – real news story)

Bizarre News (we couldn’t make up stuff this good - real news story)

Alcohol made from radioactive Chernobyl apples seized by Ukraine government

Alcohol made from radioactive Chernobyl apples seized by Ukraine government

The makers of “Atomik” say that Ukrainian Secret Services took 1,500 bottles in violation of the law.

In 2019, a group of scientists and distillers decided to create a bold new type of booze: Atomik, an artisanal alcoholic spirit made from ingredients grown in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant's still-radioactive exclusion zone. (The booze itself was not radioactive after the distilling process, Live Science previously reported).

Now, the first batch of Atomik is finally complete - and all 1,500 bottles of it have been seized by Ukrainian Secret Services agents for unknown reasons, according to a statement from Atomik's manufacturer, The Chernobyl Spirit Company.

“It seems that they are accusing us of using forged Ukrainian excise stamps, but this doesn't make sense since the bottles are for the U.K. market and are clearly labelled with valid U.K. excise stamps”, Jim Smith, founder of the company and a professor at the University of Portsmouth in the U.K., said in the statement.

Elina Smirnova, a lawyer representing the company, added that the seizure was a “clear violation” of Ukrainian law. If Atomik does make its way onto shelves, it will be the first consumer product from the Chernobyl region since the infamous 1986 meltdown, the company said.

Alcohol made from radioactive Chernobyl apples seized by Ukraine government

Soon after the nuclear disaster, officials deemed the Chernobyl exclusion zone - the 1,000-square-mile (2,600 square kilometers) area surrounding the damaged power plant - uninhabitable by humans for 24,000 years. However, plants and animals are now thriving in the region — and so is tourism. According to local tourism officials, Chernobyl sees upwards of 60,000 visitors a year, with visits spiking after the May 2019 debut of HBO's “Chernobyl” miniseries.

Atomik is made from apples grown in Ukraine's Narodychi District, which sits on the edge of the exclusion zone and was heavily polluted by fallout from the meltdown. This region still has a population of nearly 10,000 people, according to Ukraine's State Statistics Service, and must abide by stringent agricultural restrictions.

With Atomik, Smith and his colleagues hope to prove that some products made near the exclusion zone can be safe for consumption, according to the company's website. Several years ago, the Atomik team tested rye crops from the exclusion zone for radiation, and found that the grains were indeed contaminated. However, Smith said, all traces of radiation were removed during the distillation process, making Atomik no more dangerous than other commercially available spirits.

Since then, the founders have changed their recipe from a rye-based booze to an apple-based one - but, according to Smith, the distillation process still renders the final product completely radiation-free. If Atomik makes it to liquor shops, 75% of the company's profits will be used “to help bring jobs and investment to the Chernobyl affected areas of Ukraine and to further support the community”, according to the company's statement.

In the meantime, would you care to try a bottle of wine exposed to cosmic radiation aboard a space station for 14 months? It'll only cost you $1 million.

Related: FIVE weird things you didn't know about Chernobyl

Science Daily (05/11/2021) video


© CEASAR CHOPPY by cartoonist Marty Gavin - archives Ceasar Choppy's Navy! “© CEASAR CHOPPY” by Marty Gavin

SONG FACTS

“Please Please Me” - The Beatles 1963

“Please Please Me” video - The Beatles
Album: Please Please Me
Released 1963 video

On “Please Please Mevideo John Lennon asks a girl to please please him, just like he does for her. Many assumed he was referring to oral sex, but of course The Beatles denied this, since they had a very clean image to maintain at the time. Lennon said of the song:

“I was always intrigued by the double use of the word ‘please’.”

John Lennon, a big Roy Orbison fan, wrote this in the style of Orbison's overly dramatic singing, and on September 11, 1962, they recorded the song that way. Beatles producer George Martin suggested it would sound better sped up, with more pop appeal, so on November 26, they went back in the studio and cut the version that was released.

In 2006, Martin told The Observer Music Monthly,

“The songs The Beatles first gave me were crap. This was 1962 and they played a dreadful version of ‘Please Please Me’ as a Roy Orbison-style ballad. But I signed them because they made me feel good to be with them, and if they could convey that on a stage then everyone in the audience would feel good, too.;”

“So I took 'Love Me Do' and added some harmonica, but it wasn't financially rewarding even though Brian Epstein bought about 2,000 copies. Then we worked for ages on their new version of ‘Please Please Me’, and I said: ‘Gentlemen, you're going to have your first #1’.”

Although in the UK, “Please Please Mevideo was officially a #2 record, three of the four charts used at the time - Melody Maker, NME and Disc - listed it #1. Only the Record Retailer chart had it at #2. Their next single, “From Me to Youvideo, became their first official #1.

Please Please Mevideo was the second Beatles single released in the UK (following “Love Me Dovideo) and the first Bealtes single released in America; getting it issued there was a struggle. In the UK, it was released on the EMI-owned Parlophone label on January 11, 1963. After EMI's US affiliate, Capitol Records, rejected the song (and a lot of other early Beatles material), the small, Chicago-based Vee Jay label stepped in and released “Please Please Me” stateside on February 25, 1963. The Chicago radio station WLS made history by becoming the first American radio station to play a Beatles song when they put it on the air, but it had little impact - the song reached #35 on their “Silver Dollar Survey” the week of March 15, but then dropped out.

Over the next few months, the group caught on in the UK, and by 1964 were ready to conquer America. On January 30, 1964, “Please Please Mevideo was again released in America as “I Want To Hold Your Handvideo was on its way to becoming the group's first American chart-topper. "Please Please Me" made it to #3 on March 14, 1964.

The group's name was misspelled "Beattles" on the record label on the first American release of the single.

Typical for the verse in “Please Please Mevideo, and for many of Lennon's songs are the long notes (legato) that are also used in hymns - even sounding a bit like Mendelssohn's Wedding March in A “Midsummer Night's Dreamvideo. When Lennon was a little boy he used to go to church on Sunday. Afterwards he improvised his own counterpoints to the hymns.

The climbing in the melody “Come on, come on...” is similar to parts of two traditional folk songs: “New's Evens Song” and “Come Fair Onevideo.

The Beatles performed “Please Please Mevideo on their second Ed Sullivan Show appearance in 1964. Sullivan was not a fan of many rock groups, but loved The Beatles and had them on his show whenever he could.

An early version of this song with session drummer Andy White playing drums instead of Ringo can be found on Anthology 1.

The “Please Please Me” album was The Beatles debut long player. When they recorded it at Abbey Studios in London, John Lennon was struggling with a streaming cold and all were tired after a tour supporting Helen Shapiro. However with the help and encouragement of producer George Martin within nine hours and 45 minutes they had recorded their groundbreaking LP.

The album was released to cash in on the success of this single in the UK. It took them about 12 hours to record, and was basically a re-creation of their live show, which was mostly cover songs. The album was released with the text “Please Please Me with Love Me Do and 12 other songs”.

The Beatles performed this on Thank Your Lucky Stars on January 19, 1963. It was their first ever UK television appearance.

The British Prime Minister Gordon Brown revealed in an interview on the British TV program GMTV that this was the first record that he ever bought.

George Martin told Music Week magazine that the first time The Beatles played this to him, he wasn't very impressed. He recalled:

“I listened to it and I said: “Do you know that's too bloody boring for words? It's a dirge. At twice the speed it might sound reasonable.’ They took me at my word. I was joking and they came back and played it to me sped up and put a harmonica on it, and it became their first big hit.”

John Lennon was partly inspired by a line from a Bing Crosby song that read, “Please lend a little ear to my pleasvideo. He recalled:

“I remember the day I wrote it, I heard Roy Orbison doing “Only The Lonelyvideo or something. And I was also always intrigued by the words to a Bing Crosby song that went, “Please lend a little ear to my pleas’. The double use of the word “please’. So it was a combination of Roy Orbison and Bing Crosby.”

John Lennon was a big fan of Bing Crosby. In 1978, when Yoko gave him a vintage '50s Wurlitzer jukebox for his birthday, he loaded the machine with as many 78-rpm records by Crosby as he could find.

This is Keith Richards' favorite Beatles song. He said:

“I've always told McCartney, ‘Please Please Me’. I just love the chimes, and I was there at the time and it was beautiful. Mind you, there's plenty of others, but if I've got to pick one, ‘Please Please Me’… oh, yeah!”

Lennon - McCartney was the standard alphabetical credit for their Beatles songwriters compositions except on “Please Please Me”, where for reasons unknown, the names were reversed.

MORE SONGS

“Please Please Me” - The Beatles 1963

“The Beatles Live At The Cavern Club, Liverpool”, UK - AI Colorized (Wednesday August, 22 1962) video

“All I've Got To Do” (1963) video

“All My Loving” (1963) video

“I Want To Hold Your Hand” (1963) video

“I Saw Her Standing There” (1963) video

“It Won't Be Long” (1963) video

“She Loves You” (1963) video

“This Boy” (1963) video

“Twist and Shout” (1963) video

“Twist and Shout...just rattle your jewelry” (1963) video

“And I Love Her” (1964) video

“Any Time at All” (1964) video

“Can't Buy Me Love” (1964) video

“From Me to You” (1964) video

“I Feel Fine” (1964) video

“No Reply” (1964) video

“Tell Me Why / If I Fell / I Should Have Known Better” (1964) video

“A Hard Day's Night” (1965) video

“Day Tripper” (1965) video

“Girl” (1965) video

“Norwegian Wood” (1965) video

“Nowhere Man” (1965) video

“The Night Before” (1965) video

“Ticket To Ride” (1965) video

The Beatles, official site (The Official Top 50 biggest selling Beatles singles revealed) / Rock & Roll Hall of Fame / Billboard / All Music / Song Facts / Ultimate Classic Rock / Wikipedia

Image: “Please Please Me (album)” by The Beatles


Jeopardy

A Test for People Who Know Everything

From the Jeopardy Archives Category - “APPLE” ($200)

“Steve Wozniak said this co-founder came up with the name Apple after working at an orchard in Oregon.”

Answer to Jeopardy READ MORE: Apple

From the Jeopardy Archives Category - “GALA” ($400)

“This Brit took form the rich & gave to the poor & a charity named for him does the same; its annual gala can bring in $50 million plus.”

Answer to Jeopardy READ MORE: Gutenberg.org

From the Jeopardy Archives Category - “RED, DELICIOUS” ($600)

“Traditional borscht gets its vivid color from these deep red root veggies.”

Answer to Jeopardy READ MORE: HGTV

From the Jeopardy Archives Category - “GRANNY SMITH” ($800)

“This singer & poet was named Smith before marrying another Smith (musician Fred of the MC5) & becoming a mom & grandma.”

Answer to Jeopardy READ MORE: Allmusic

From the Jeopardy Archives Category - “APPLE” ($1,000)

“Ironically, the name of this iPhone video chat app means a chance to be in the same room.”

Answer to Jeopardy READ MORE: Apple


Joke of the Day

Joke of the Day

“A Judge Interviews a Woman Regarding Her Pending Divorce”

A judge interviews a woman regarding her pending divorce.

The judge asks, “What are the grounds for your divorce?”

She replies, “About four acres and a nice little home in the middle of the property with a stream running by.”

“No”, the judge says, “I mean what is the foundation of this case?”

She responds, “It is made of concrete, brick and mortar”.

“I mean”, the judge continues, “What are your relations like?”

She replies“I have an aunt and uncle living here in town, and so do my husband's parents.”

The judge says, “Do you have a real grudge?”

“No”. she replies, “We have a two-car carport and have never really needed one.”

“Please”, the judge tries again, “is there any infidelity in your marriage?”

She responds, “Yes, both my son and daughter have stereo sets. We don't necessarily like the music, but the answer to your questions is yes.”

The judge says, “Ma'am, does your husband ever beat you up?”

“Yes”, she responds, “about twice a week he gets up earlier than I do.”

Finally, in frustration, the judge asks, “Lady, why do you want a divorce?”

“Oh, I don't want a divorce”, she replies. “I've never wanted a divorce. My husband does. He said he can't communicate with me!”