Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

April 10, 837: It’s been established that Halley’s Comet made its closest approach to Earth on this day at a distance of 3.07 million miles. This cosmic event stands out as the nearest known passage of the comet to our planet, with historical records from astronomers in China, Japan, Germany, the Byzantine Empire, and the Middle East noting its striking appearance, including a tail that may have spanned 60 degrees across the sky. For comparison, during its most recent visit in 1986, the closest approach occurred on April 11, at a much greater distance of 39 million miles, making the 837 AD encounter significantly more dramatic. It will return in 2061 on its regular 76-year journey around the Sun.




April 10, 1790: The Patent Act of 1790 was signed into law by Pres George Washington. A Patent Board was created, headed by the Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of War Henry Knox, and Attorney General Edmund Randolph. Their decision on patents could not be appealed. The first U.S. patent X000001 is issued to inventor Samuel Hopkins for an improved potash process.


Unlike today, patents were not given a unique number. Instead, they were filed based on the date granted. Under the Patent Act of 1836 new patents were numbered, starting with one. All of the patents granted before 1836 were assigned an "X" and a number based on the order they had been granted. The second patent was for a method to manufacture candles issued to Joseph Stacey Sampson on August 6, 1790. Little else is known about it because a fire destroyed the record. The Patent Act of 1790 required each patent “to bear teste by the President of the United States.” Congress expected Washington to sign every patent for it to become official. There were more than 150 patents granted throughout Washington's presidency.

10 Facts about 18th-Century Patents


April 10, 1925: August Marhold, 67, kills himself by gas in Brooklyn, leaving behind a note: "I am tired of living, sick and can't get a decent drink. I am unable to get good beer—only poison." Prohibition times were rough. RIP old sport.




April 10, 1925: The Great Gatsby by American author, F. Scott Fitzgerald was first published in New York City. It’s set in the Jazz Age of the 1920s and follows the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his obsessive love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan (Ginevra King). Narrated by Nick Carraway, Gatsby's neighbor, the story unfolds on Long Island, where wealth, glamour, and excess mask deeper themes of longing, disillusionment, and the American Dream. Gatsby's lavish parties and relentless pursuit of Daisy, who is married to the brutish Tom Buchanan, lead to a tragic unraveling of secrets, infidelity, and betrayal. A 20th century classic—even if it wasn’t recognized as one in its own time.


Celestial Eyes, Cugat's most famous work depicts a female face of a flapper with poorly delineated contours, of which are seen only the eyes and mouth, suspended above the night sky of a city, evoking the Coney Island amusement park in New York. Inside the irises there are female nude figures and a green tint in correspondence of the right eye resembling a tear. The iconic motif of the cover is given by its abstractness, which gives it a mysterious charm, and that is why it has met with many strongly conflicting opinions.

Alfred Cheney Johnston (April 8, 1885 – April 17, 1971) was a New York City-based photographer known for his portraits of Ziegfeld Follies showgirls as well as of actors and actresses from the worlds of stage and film.


20 year old American socialite and heiress Ginevra King (Nov 30, 1898 – Dec 13, 1980) pictured on the July 1918 cover of Town & Country magazine. In January 1915, a 16-year-old King met future novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald. Love-struck at first sight, Fitzgerald courted King for several years. He visited her father's estate several times, and Ginevra wrote in her diary that she was "madly in love with him." However, Ginevra's upper-class family openly discouraged Fitzgerald's courtship of their daughter because of his lower-class status, and her father purportedly told him that "poor boys shouldn't think of marrying rich girls". Rejected by Ginevra's family as a suitor because of his lack of financial prospects, a suicidal Fitzgerald enlisted in the United States Army amid World War I. 

Ginevra King later served as the inspiration for the character of Daisy Buchanan in Fitzgerald's literary masterwork The Great Gatsby.The original caption for this photo in Town & Country reads: MISS GINEVRA KING. Daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Garfield King, of Chicago and Lake Forest. She is a Westover girl and would have been a debutante last winter, but the war took her father abroad and she decided to devote all her time to war work. She is a Junior League player and drives in the motor corps. The Kings will spend two months at Rye Beach.

A Daisy of a House - Ginevra King, the model for The Great Gatsby’s Daisy Buchanan, spent her youth in this Lake Forest house that is now for sale. (2007)

Thanks to the sale of film rights, Fitzgerald does at least realize financial gain—although he hates the 1926 movie version. (It’s now a lost film; subsequent versions were made in 1974 and 2013.) He dies in 1940 believing that his favorite book was unappreciated.


Only in the '40s do critics begin to recognize the genius of "Gatsby." It has since beome part of the American canon, with its many striking passages: "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy"... "That's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool" ... "The eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg" ... "Her voice is full of money"... "They can't get him, old sport. He's a smart man" ... "the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock" ... and, at the end: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."



Happy National Siblings Day! This 1954 family portrait is from a rare occasion when all four sister Iowa-class battleships were together. From front to back: USS Iowa (BB-61), USS Wisconsin (BB-64), USS Missouri (BB-63) and USS New Jersey (BB-62). All four battleships are now museums.




April 10, 1971: Forrest Gump traveled to China to play Table Tennis as part of US/China ping-pong diplomacy.



Forrest was right. American team visits China:


Ping-Pong Diplomacy: Artifacts from the Historic 1971 U.S. Table Tennis Trip to China

When 15 Americans returned from a table-tennis exhibition tour of China in 1971, during which they competed against the powerhouse Chinese team before massive crowds, the Los Angeles Times wrote that the group did “what the Paris peace talks . . . and the State Department couldn’t do in decades — unthaw one-quarter of the world.”



April 10, 2000: TIME magazine special... IN THE FUTURE, Will We...Live on Mars? In 1989 NASA estimated it would cost $450 billion to put men on Mars.