We’re All Alone

Happy birthday Rita Coolidge – 65 today.

Both Sides Now

Happy birthday Judy Collins – 71 today.

Absolutely Fabulous

Happy birthday Joanna Lumley – 64 today.

Saturday’s smiles

Apropos of duck shooting:

Three women died together in an accident and went to heaven.

When they arrived, St Peter greeted them then said, ‘We only have one rule here in  heaven: Don’t  step on the ducks.’

When they entered heaven they found there were ducks all over the place.

It was almost impossible not to step on a duck, and although they try their best to avoid them, the first woman accidentally stepped on one.

Along came St. Peter with the ugliest man she’d ever seen. St. Peter chained them together and said, ‘Your punishment for stepping on a duck is to
spend  eternity chained to this man.’

The next day, the second woman accidentally stepped on a duck. Along came St Peter. With him was another extremely ugly man. He chained them together with the same admonishment he’d given the first woman.

The third woman observed all this and, not wanting to be chained for all eternity to an ugly man, was very, very careful where she stepped.

She managed to go for months without stepping on any ducks. But one day St Peter came up to her with the most handsome man she had ever
laid eyes on.

St Peter chained them together without saying a word.

The happy woman turned to her new companion and said, ‘I wonder what I did to deserve being chained to you for all of eternity?’

The bloke replied, ‘I don’t know about you, but I stepped on a duck.

Ballad of Waitaki

There were no takers for a repeat of last year’s post a song a day throughout New Zealand Music Month but I’ll give it a go by myself.

The Waitaki has been not just a geographical boundary between Otago and Canterbury it’s also been an historical, political and emotional one.

The Scots settled in Otago and Southland on the south side of the river while English settlers moved in to Canterbury on the northern side.

On the right side of the river we’re blue and gold, on the other side they’re red and black.

My family used to have an annual trip up the Waitaki Valley to see the Benmore Dam being built.

The Waitaki power schemes not only generate electricity, the lakes formed behind dams have provided recreational opportunities for swimming, boating, water skiing and fishing.

Lake Ruataniwha is a mecca for rowers and every second year the national secondary schools’ rowing competition for the Maadi Cup brings a couple of thousand people to Twizel.

Oh, and about the song – I thought I remembered John Hore singing it, but this version is by the Plainsmen.

Do ducks remember?

When Pepper, the dog , and I walk past the dam on our morning constitutional the ducks don’t usually take any notice of us.

But for the past week or two they’ve taken fright and flown away.

Is this just conicidence or do they remember last year’s duck shooting season and know that it’s opening day today?

May 1 in history

On May 1: 

305  Diocletian and Maximian retired from the office of Roman Emperor. 

880 The Nea Ekklesia was inaugurated in Constantinople setting the model for all later cross-in-square Orthodox churches. 

1328  Wars of Scottish Independence ended: Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton – the Kingdom of England recognised the Kingdom of Scotland as an independent state. 

 

1576  Stefan Batory, the reigning Prince of Transylvania, married Anna Jagiellon and they became the co-rulers of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. 

 

1707 The Act of Union joined the Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Scotland to form the Kingdom of Great Britain. 

  

1751 The first cricket match was played in America. 

1753 Publication of Species Plantarum by Linnaeus, and the formal start date of plant taxonomy adopted by the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature. 

 

1759 Josiah Wedgwood founded the Wedgwood pottery company in Great Britain. 

  

1776 Establishment of the Illuminati in Ingolstadt (Upper Bavaria), by Jesuit-taught Adam Weishaupt. 

  

1778 American Revolution: The Battle of Crooked Billet began in Hatboro, Pennsylvania. 

 

1785  Kamehameha, the king of Hawaiʻi defeated Kalanikupule and established the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi. 

 

1786  Opening night of the opera The Marriage of Figaro by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in Vienna. 

 

1831 Emily Stowe, Canadian physician and suffragist, was born (d. 1903). 

  

1834  The British colonies abolished slavery. 

1840  The Penny Black, the first official adhesive postage stamp, was issued in the United Kingdom. 

 

1846  The few remaining Mormons left in Nauvoo, Illinois, formally dedicated the Nauvoo Temple. 

  

1848 The Fraternity of Phi Gamma Delta was founded at Jefferson College in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania. 

1851 Queen Victoria opened the Great Exhibition in London. 

  

1852 Calamity Jane, American Wild West performer, was born (d. 1903). 

  

1852 The Philippine peso was introduced into circulation. 

1863  American Civil War: The Battle of Chancellorsville began. 

 

1865 The Empire of Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay signed the Treaty of the Triple Alliance. 

 

1869 The Folies Bergère opened in Paris. 

  

1875 Alexandra Palace reopened after the 1873 fire burnt it down. 

  

1884  Proclamation of the demand for eight-hour workday in the United States. 

1884 Moses Fleetwood Walker became the first black person to play in a professional baseball game in the United States. 

 

1885 Ralph Stackpole, American sculptor, painter, was born  (d. 1973). 

 

1886 Rallies, that ended in the Haymarket affair, were held throughout the United States demanding the eight-hour work day. 

  

1893 The World’s Columbian Exposition opened in Chicago. 

  

1893 Richard Seddon became Premier of New Zealand. 

 

  1894 Coxey’s Army, the first significant American protest march, arrived in Washington, D.C. 

1898  Spanish-American War: The Battle of Manila Bay – the United States Navy destroyed the Spanish Pacific fleet in the first battle of the war. 

  

1900 The Scofield mine disaster killed more than 200 men in Scofield, Utah. 

 

1901 The Pan-American Exposition opened in Buffalo, New York. 

  

1910 Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Astronomer/Astro-physicist. Noted UFO investigator, was born  (d. 1986). 

  

1915  The RMS Lusitania departed from New York City on her two hundred and second, and final, crossing of the North Atlantic. 

 

1925 The All-China Federation of Trade Unions was officially founded. 

 

1926 New Zealand Railways magazine was launched. 

 

1927 The first cooked meals on a scheduled flight were introduced on an Imperial Airways flight from London to Paris. 

1927  The Union Labor Life Insurance Company was founded by the American Federation of Labor. 

1930 The dwarf planet Pluto was officially named.

 

1931 The Empire State Building was dedicated in New York City.

1937  Una Stubbs, English actress, was born. 

 

1939 Judy Collins, American folk singer, was born. 

 

1940 The 1940 Summer Olympics were cancelled owing to war. 

1941 – World War II: German forces launch a major attack on Tobruk. 

1945 World War II: A German newsreader officially announced that Adolf Hitler had “fallen at his command post in the Reich Chancellery fighting to the last breath against Bolshevism and for Germany”. 

1945  Yougoslav partisans freed Trieste. 

 

1945  Rita Coolidge, American singer, was born. 

 

1946  Joanna Lumley, English actress, was born. 

 

1946 Start of 3 year Pilbara strike of Indigenous Australians. 

1946 The Paris Peace Conference concluded that the islands of the Dodecanese should be returned to Greece by Italy. 

  

1947 Portella della Ginestra massacre against May Day celebrations in Sicily by the bandit and separatist leader Salvatore Giuliano; 11 people were killed and 33 wounded.

1948 The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) was established, with Kim Il-sung as president.

 

1950  Guam was organized as a United States commonwealth.

 

1956  The polio vaccine developed by Jonas Salk was made available to the public. 

1956  A doctor in Japan reported an “epidemic of an unknown disease of the central nervous system”, marking the official discovery of Minamata disease.

1960 Formation of the western Indian states of Gujarat and Maharashtra.

1960  Cold War: U-2 incident – Francis Gary Powers, in a Lockheed U-2 spyplane, iwa shot down over the Soviet Union, sparking a diplomatic crisis.

 

1961 The Prime Minister of Cuba, Fidel Castro, proclaimed Cuba a socialist nation and abolishes elections.

 

1965 Battle of Dong-Yin, a naval conflict between ROC and PRC, took place. 

1970  Protests erupted in Seattle, Washington, following the announcement by U.S. President Richard Nixon that U.S. Forces in Vietnam would pursue enemy troops into Cambodia, a neutral country. 

1971 Amtrak (the National Railroad Passenger Corporation) was formed to take over U.S. passenger rail service.

 

1977 36 people were killed in Taksim Square, Istanbul, during the Labour Day celebrations. 

1978 Japan’s Naomi Uemura, travelling by dog sled, became the first person to reach the North Pole alone.

1982 The 1982 World’s Fair opened in Knoxville, Tennessee.

 

1982 Operation Black Buck: The Royal Air Force attacked the Argentine Air Force during Falklands War. 

 

1983 Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize.

1987 Pope John Paul II beatified Edith Stein, a Jewish-born Carmelite nun who was gassed in the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz.

 

1989 Disney-MGM Studios opened at Walt Disney World near Orlando, Florida.

 

1990 The former Philippine Episcopal Church (supervised by the Episcopal Church of the United States of America) was granted full autonomy and raised to the states of an Autocephalous Anglican Province and renamed the Episcopal Church of the Philippines. 

1992 On the third day of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, African-American activist, criminal, and victim of police beating Rodney King appeared in public before television news cameras to appeal for calm and plead for peace, asking, “People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along?”. 

1994  Three-time Formula One world champion Ayrton Senna was killed in an accident during the San Marino Grand Prix at Imola.

 

1995 Croatian forces launch Operation Flash during the Croatian War of Independence. 

1997  Tasmania became the last state in Australia to decriminalize homosexuality. 

2001 Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo declared the existence of “a state of rebellion”, hours after thousands of supporters of her arrested predecessor, Joseph Estrada, stormed towards the presidential palace at the height of the EDSA III rebellion.

 

2003 2003 invasion of Iraq: In the “Mission Accomplished” speech, on board the USS Abraham Lincoln (off the coast of California), U.S. President George W. Bush declaref that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended”. 

  

2004 Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia joined the European Union, celebrated at the residence of the Irish President in Dublin.

2006  The Puerto Rican government closed the Department of Education and 42 other government agencies owing to to significant shortages in cash flow. 

2007  the Los Angeles May Day mêlée occured, in which the Los Angeles Police Department’s response to a May Day pro-immigration rally become a matter of controversy. 

2008 The London Agreement on translation of European patents, concluded in 2000, entered into force in 14 of the 34 Contracting States to the European Patent Convention. 

2009 Same-sex marriage was legalized in Sweden. 

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia