Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

June 1, 1494: the Exchequer Rolls of James IV of Scotland record the granting of malt to Friar John Cor in order to make "aqua vitae" in what is considered the first recorded mention of whisky – or at least distilling – in Scottish history in Lindores Abbey, Fife, Scotland.



The Lindores Abbey distillery re-opened in 2017 and began distilling scotch whisky by December of that year. It is owned & operated by the McKenzie Smith family.

Drew McKenzie Smith spent most of his life cooking for the rich and famous, unaware of his ancestral home’s connections to early Scottish distillers. He tells Gavin Smith about the day he decided to leave the kitchen and build a distillery at Lindores Abbey.

‘My great-grandfather had bought the Lindores Abbey farm in 1913 and my grandfather gifted it to my mum when she got married. It’s a huge thing for me to think that through the distillery we can keep the abbey in the family for another 100 years and, perhaps more importantly, preserve the abbey ruins for future generations of whisky lovers, enabling them to make their own pilgrimage to the spiritual home of Scotch whisky.

‘I first got the idea for the distillery around 20 years ago, when Helen and I were running Myres Castle, an exclusive-use property in Fife. After finishing a busy evening service, I sat down at the computer (I don’t think laptops even existed then) and I was looking at a website called Connoisseur Scotland, which was dedicated to the finer things in Scottish life, one of them naturally being whisky. I was just scrolling through when the words ‘Lindores Abbey’ sprang out at me, it was the first I had heard of Friar John Cor and the Exchequer Rolls of 1494.

June 1, 1914: Dry times begin. General Order 99 was issued. It stated that all alcohol on U.S. Navy vessels and bases would be prohibited after July 1. The fleet rushed to consume the stores of booze before the deadline. The Navy has since remained dry - with exceptions.




June 1, 1939: The Royal Navy submarine, HMS Thetis, built in Birkenhead, sank during sea trials in Liverpool Bay, after a carbon monoxide leak. It was carrying 103 men, twice the number it was designed to hold. A total of 99 crew were killed.



She was salvaged, repaired and recommissioned as HMS Thunderbolt serving in the Atlantic and Mediterranean theatres until she was lost with all hands on 14 March 1943. This makes Thetis one of the few military vessels that have been lost twice with her crew in their service history, like the H. L. Hunley.

HMS Thetis sinks... British submarine


June 1, 1944: supercomputer Colossus Mark II goes online at Bletchley Park, just in time for the Normandy landings on D-Day.



A Colossus Mark 2 computer being operated by Women's Royal Naval Service (Wrens). The slanted control panel on the left was used to set the "pin" (or "cam") patterns of the Lorenz cipher. The "bedstead" paper tape transport is on the right.

Ten Colossi were in use by the end of the war and an eleventh was being commissioned. Bletchley Park's use of these machines allowed the Allies to obtain a vast amount of high-level military intelligence from intercepted radiotelegraphy messages between the German High Command and their army commands throughout occupied Europe. The existence of the Colossus machines was kept secret until the mid-1970s.

In January 2024, new photos were released by GCHQ that showed re-engineered Colossus in a very different environment from the Bletchley Park buildings, presumably at GCHQ Cheltenham.

There was a fictional computer named Colossus in the 1970 film Colossus: The Forbin Project which was based on the 1966 novel Colossus by D. F. Jones. We are told this was just a coincidence as it pre-dates the public release of information about Colossus, or even its name.



Neal Stephenson's novel Cryptonomicon (1999) also contains a fictional treatment of the historical role played by Turing and Bletchley Park.

BONUS: the word "metaverse" was coined in 1992 by Neal Stephenson in his dystopian novel "Snow Crash", that referred to a persistent virtual world, accessible via special goggles, where people could meet, flirt, play games, buy and sell things, and much more besides.



Book Review: The Girl from Station X: My Mother’s Unknown Life


The Secret Mulberries of D-Day




This factory worker called Norma Jean Baker would soon change her name to...


Happy Birthday Marilyn Monroe, born Norma Jeane Mortenson on June 1, 1926.
Her films grossed ~$200 million (equivalent to $2 billion) by the time of her death in 1962.


June 1, 1949: NY TV debut on WPIX, The Ghost Camera (1933). 15 year old Ida Lupino's last film before her Hollywood debut, released in the UK in 1933, had its first US theatrical exposure concurrent with its arrival on television.




"I do not want to see the Republican party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny — Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry and Smear."

— Sen. Margaret Chase Smith's "Declaration of Conscience" June 1, 1950.



A Republican, she was among the first to criticize the tactics of Joseph McCarthy in her 1950 speech, "Declaration of Conscience". Smith was a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in the 1964 election; she was the first woman to be placed in nomination for the presidency at a major party's convention. Upon leaving office, she was the longest-serving female senator in history, a distinction that was not surpassed until January 4, 2011, when Senator Barbara Mikulski from Maryland exceeded her record. Smith was ranked as the longest-serving Republican woman in the Senate, a distinction that was not surpassed until January 3, 2021, when Susan Collins, who holds the same Senate seat she previously held, was sworn in for a fifth term.

The Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application or NERVA was a nuclear thermal rocket engine development program that ran for roughly two decades. Its principal objective was to "establish a technology base for nuclear rocket engine systems to be utilized in the design and development of propulsion systems for space mission application."

NERVA was on the edge of being ready to fly when it was cancelled. The most capable rocket engines ever built and one of the biggest ironies in space tech history. They cancelled it because they were anti space and anti NASA not anti-nuclear. Congress defunded the program in 1968 and LBJ needed more $$$ for the Vietnam War.

The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and was managed by the Space Nuclear Propulsion Office (SNPO) considered NERVA a highly successful program in that it met or exceeded its program goals. Where would we be if this engine program had continued through the 70s.

In late 1968 SNPO deemed that the latest NERVA engine, the XE, met the requirements for a human mission to Mars. The program had strong political support from Senators Clinton P. Anderson and Margaret Chase Smith but was cancelled by President Richard Nixon in 1973.

At the time of the NERVA NRX/EST test, NASA's plans for NERVA included a visit to Mars by 1978, a permanent lunar base by 1981, and deep space probes to Jupiter, Saturn, and the outer planets. NERVA rockets would be used for nuclear "tugs" designed to take payloads from low Earth orbit (LEO) to higher orbits as a component of the later-named Space Transportation System, resupply several space stations in orbit around the Earth and Moon, and support a permanent lunar base.

An Historical Perspective of the NERVA Nuclear Rocket Engine Technology Program (1991)


June 1, 1999: Jason Bourne was successfully inducted into Treadstone.




On the brighter side of news...