Word of the day

Ineluctable – impossible to avoid, or evade; inescapable, inevitable.

Rural round-up

Southland dairy farmers face rates hike:

Southland Regional Council is proposing to increase the rates burden on dairy farmers in its draft long-term plan.

But there will be some easing of that next year, if the plan’s confirmed.

The council considered submissions on the draft plan, last week, with many commenting on the proposal to increase the Dairy Differential Rate to $767,000, almost double the current dairy rate of about $390,000.

The council says that’s to cover the cost of increased environmental monitoring and resource planning required in the next 18 to 24 months because of the growth in dairying in Southland.

Dairy farmers complained that good farmers would be unfairly hit with the cost of enforcing compliance on a few poor performers. . .

Dairy puzzle – Offsetting Behaviour:

Dairy products are cheaper in New Zealand than in Canada, where the dairy cartel keeps prices high.

But the Dairy Farmers of Canada VP Ron Versteeg points me to an interesting puzzle: FAO stats showing NZ consumption of some dairy products is lower than that in Canada.

Here’s an FAO table showing NZ and Canadian consumption. Or, at least, I’d expect that this has to be per capita consumption rather than production given that total NZ production is higher than total Canadian given relative herd sizes. . .

 Synlait narrows loss as soaring milk prices squeeze margin – Paul McBeth:

 

Synlait Milk, the processor that turned to a Chinese investor after failing to attract local equity capital, narrowed its annual loss last year, even though surging raw milk prices eroded its gross margin.

 

The Canterbury-based company made a net loss of $3.1 million in the 12 months ended July 31 last year, smaller than the loss of $11.7 million a year earlier, according to financial statements lodged with the Companies Office.

 

The milk processor lifted revenue 28% to $298.9 million, though its gross profit shrank 11% to $21.1 million in a year when international milk prices reached record highs. . .

Federated Farmers’ Anders Crofoot to chair AHB and NAIT Stakeholder Council:

Federated Farmers National Board member, Anders Crofoot, has been appointed to chair the Stakeholder Council that will oversee the merger process between the Animal Health Board (AHB) and the National Animal Identification & Tracing (NAIT) scheme.

“I am deeply humbled to chair what will be a significant development in New Zealand agriculture,” says Anders Crofoot, Federated Farmers Board spokesperson on national identification & tracing.

“The Stakeholder Council is made up of representatives from industry as well as local and central government. The council includes Beef + Lamb NZ, the Dairy Companies Association of New Zealand, DairyNZ, Deer Industry New Zealand, Meat Industry Association, New Zealand Deer Farmers Association, NZ Stock & Station Agents’ Association, Local Government New Zealand, Ministry for Primary Industries and of course, Federated Farmers. . .

Rustlers cost farmers thousands:

Farmers say they are losing thousands of dollars of stock a year at the hands of rustlers, and not enough is being done to stop them.

Warning: Video contains footage some viewers may find disturbing.

They want police to have a greater rural presence, but police say before that can happen farmers need to start reporting the crimes.

“Eleven of them were taken, and the twelfth one had its legs crossed and tied with silver duct tape, and fell on the ground – and that’s how we found that we had had them stolen,” says farm owner Beverly Duffy, describing the latest spate of killings her farm has been hit by. Three months ago the same farm lost a dozen sheep – more than $2,000 overnight. . . . 

New Zealand grass-fed beef on the menu for chefs in Japan and Korea:

Award winning Christchurch chef Darren Wright has been in Korea and Japan promoting New Zealand grass-fed beef to a lineup of influential chefs and media.

 Beef + Lamb New Zealand Market Manager Japan/Korea, John Hundleby says Chef Wright cooked a range of beef dishes at a number of events. His offerings included beef ravioli made from short-ribs, beef tortellini and tenderloin steaks.

 “Since Korean and Japanese people are far more familiar with the cooking qualities of grain-fed beef which is more common in the two markets, a highlight at these events is always the demonstration of how to cook a good grass-fed beef steak.” . . .

8/10

8/10 in the Herald’s Question Time.

Giveway rule change working

Have you noticed chaos and confusion as a result of the change to the give way rule for vehicles turning left and right or at T-intersections?

In the couple of months since the rule change came in I’ve had to pause just once when I thought someone turning right was going to cross my bows when I was turning left and have had no problems at T intersections.

AA Insurance hasn’t noticed a spike in claims since the change.

“The low volume of claims suggests that New Zealanders understood the changes and drove more cautiously at intersections by reducing their speed and taking their time, preempting any rise in incidents,”said Suzanne Wolton, Head of Corporate Affairs, AA Insurance. “The handful of claims we received related, for the most part, to driver confusion about how to apply the catchphrase, ‘Top of the T goes before me’.”

In these cases AA Insurance customers who were turning from the top of the “T” were hit on the front driver’s side by third parties turning right from the bottom of the intersection.

The low volume of claims suggests that the new way, which is after all a return to the old way and the way traffic in most if not all other countries has to behave, is the right way.

Costs and benefits of development

Hans van der Wel looks at the pros and cons of  Meridian Energy’s plans for hydro development on the Mokihinui river then asks some very good questions in the wake of the company’s decision to withdraw from the plans.

. . . The intriguing question was if the court would accept whether this would have been enough to make up for some significant environmental loss.

Would it have found that this met the twin aims of the Resource Management Act, of enabling people to provide for their wellbeing through development, and still making sure that key environmental values are maintained?

How would it have weighed the various benefits against the undeniable drawbacks?

How important is providing for locally generated renewable energy to environmental outcomes?

Is it important enough to require some sacrifices to be made to achieve it?

How much can you compensate for the loss of one set of special values by improving others?

Must conservation always trump economic development, or can the two assist each other? . . .

These questions could and should be asked of all development.

We have only one world and looking after it is important but that should not be a moratorium on development.

Any development has consequences, the question is whether when everything is taken into account – economic, environmental and social considerations – the benefits outweigh the costs.

June 24 in history

972 Battle of Cedynia, the first documented victory of Polish forces.

1128  Battle of São Mamede, near Guimarães:Portuguese forces led by Alfonso I defeated his mother D. Teresa and D. Fernão Peres de Trava.

1314  First War of Scottish Independence: The Battle of Bannockburn concluded with a decisive victory of the Scottish forces led by Robert the Bruce, though England did not recognise Scottish independence until 1328 with the signing of the Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton.

1340  Hundred Years’ War: Battle of Sluys: The French fleet was almost destroyed by the English Fleet commanded in person by Edward III of England.

1374  A sudden outbreak of St. John’s Dance caused people in the streets of Aachen, Germany, to experience hallucinations and began to jump and twitch uncontrollably until they collapsed from exhaustion.

1441  King Henry VI founded Eton College.

1497  John Cabot landed in North America at Newfoundland; the first European exploration of the region since the Vikings.

1497  Cornish rebels Michael An Gof and Thomas Flamank were executed at Tyburn, London.

1509  Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon were crowned King and Queen of England.

1535  The Anabaptist state of Münster was conquered and disbanded.

1542  St. John of the Cross, Spanish Carmelite mystic and poet, was born (d. 1591).

1571  Miguel Lopez de Legazpi founded Manila, the capital of the Republic of the Philippines.

1597  The first Dutch voyage to the East Indies reached Bantam (on Java).

1604  Samuel de Champlain discovered the mouth of the Saint John River, site of Reversing Falls and the present day city of Saint John, New Brunswick.

1662  The Dutch attemptted but failed to capture Macau.

1664  The colony of New Jersey was founded.

1692 Kingston, Jamaica was founded.

1717  The Premier Grand Lodge of England, the first Masonic Grand Lodge in the world (now the United Grand Lodge of England), was founded in London.

1748  John Wesley and his brother Charles Wesley opened the Kingswood School in Bristol.

1793 The first republican constitution in France was adopted.

1794 Bowdoin College was founded.

1812 Napoleonic Wars: Napoleon’s Grande Armée crossed the Neman River beginning his invasion of Russia.

1813 Henry Ward Beecher, American clergyman and reformer, was born  (d. 1887).

1813  Battle of Beaver Dams : A British and Indian combined force defeat the U.S Army.

1821  The Battle of Carabobo took place – the decisive battle in the war of independence of Venezuela from Spain.

1859  Battle of Solferino: (Battle of the Three Sovereigns). Sardinia and France defeat Austria in Solferino, northern Italy.

1866  Battle of Custoza: an Austrian army defeats the Italian army during the Austro-Prussian War.

1880  First performance of O Canada, the song that became the national anthem of Canada, at the Congrès national des Canadiens-Français.

1893 Roy O. Disney, a founder of the Walt Disney Company, was born  (d. 1971).

1894  Marie Francois Sadi Carnot was assassinated by Sante Geronimo Caserio.

1901  First exhibition of Pablo Picasso‘s work opened.

1902 King Edward VII developed  appendicitis, delaying his coronation.

1905 NZ Truth was launched.

1916  Mary Pickford became the first female film star to get a million dollar contract.

1916  World War I: The Battle of the Somme began with a week long artillery bombardment on the German Line.

1918  First airmail service in Canada from Montreal to Toronto.

1922  The American Professional Football Association formally changed its name to the National Football League.

1928  With declining business, the International Railway (New York – Ontario) began using one-person crews on trolley operations in Canada.

1932  A bloodless Revolution instigated by the People’s Party ended the absolute power of King Prajadhipok of Siam (Thailand).

1938  Pieces of a meteor, estimated to have weighed 450 metric tons when it hit the Earth’s atmosphere and exploded, land near Chicora, Pennsylvania.

1939  Siam was renamed to Thailand by Plaek Pibulsonggram, the third Prime Minister.

1944 Jeff Beck, English musician (The Yardbirds).

1945  The Moscow Victory Parade took place.

1947  Mick Fleetwood, English musician (Fleetwood Mac), was born.

1947  Kenneth Arnold made the first widely reported UFO sighting near Mount Rainier, Washington.

1947 – Patrick Moraz, Swiss keyboard player (Yes) was born.

1948  Start of the Berlin Blockade. The Soviet Union makes overland travel between the West with West Berlin impossible.

1949 John Illsley, English bassist (Dire Straits) was born.

1949  The first Television Western, Hopalong Cassidy, was aired on NBC starring William Boyd.

1957  In Roth v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that obscenity was not protected by the First Amendment .

1961 Curt Smith, English musician and songwriter (Tears for Fears), was born.

1963  The United Kingdom granted Zanzibar internal self-government.

1975  An Eastern Air Lines Boeing 727 crashed at John F. Kennedy Airport, New York. 113 people died.

1981  The Humber Bridge was opened to traffic, connecting Yorkshire and Lincolnshire.

1982  British Airways Flight 9, sometimes referred to as “the Jakarta incident”, flew into a cloud of volcanic ash thrown up by the eruption of Mount Galunggung, resulting in the failure of all four engines.

1985  STS-51-G Space Shuttle Discovery completed its mission.

1993  Yale computer science professor Dr. David Gelernter lost the sight in one eye, the hearing in one ear, and part of his right hand after receiving a mailbomb from the Unabomber.

1994  A United States Air Force B-52 aircraft crashed at Fairchild Air Force Base, killing all four members of its crew.

2002  The Igandu train disaster in Tanzania killed 281, the worst train accident in African history.

2004  In New York state, capital punishment was declared unconstitutional.

2007  The Angora Fire started near South Lake Tahoe, California destroying 200+ structures in its first 48 hours.

2010 – John Isner of the United States defeated Nicolas Mahut of France at Wimbledon, in the longest match in professional tennis history.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Word of the day

Tumid – swollen, distended, protuberant, bulging; pompous, bombastic; overblown.

7/10

7/10 in the NBR’s weekly Biz Quiz.

Saturday’s smiles

Sean was the pastor of a Church of England parish on the Northern Ireland/ Southern Ireland border and Patrick was the priest in the Roman Catholic Church across the road. 

One day they were seen together, erecting a sign into the ground, which says: 

TA END IS NEAR! 
TURN YERSELF AROUNT NOW 
AFOR IT’S TOO LATE! 

As a car sped past them, the driver leaned out his window and yelled, “Leave people alone, you Oirish religious nutters! We don’t need your lectures.” 

The car sped round the next corner then came the sound of screeching tyres and a big splash.  

Shaking his head, Patrick said “Dat’s da terd one dis mornin’.”  

“Yaa,” Pastor Sean agreed, “Do ya tink maybe da sign should just say, ‘Bridge Out?'”   

 

6/10

6/10 in Stuff’s Biz Quiz.

First law of escalators

Jim Hopkins has come up with a name for a fundamental law of human nature:

. . . You’ve only got to go to a mall or an airport or anywhere with a staircase and an escalator side by side and you’ll see the proof, right in front of you, plain as the schnoz on your face.

For that reason, we’ll call this underlying principle The First Law of Escalators, which is that whenever two or more solutions exist, 90 per cent of us will choose the easiest. . .

But the first isn’t the only one:

But there’s a Second Law of Escalators too, which simply says the first law will always apply – until everything turns to custard, then we’re stuck with the stairs. . ..

Easy come, hard go. Them’s the rules, folks, The First and Second Law of Escalators. . .

For the record, if there’s stairs and an escalator I almost always choose the stairs unless I’m carrying something heavy.

If you meet enough stairs such incidental exercise can make a difference to physical fitness.

But Jim had fiscal and political fitness in mind rather than physical.

One’s choice not necessarily another’s

My understanding of feminism is that it promotes enabling  women to make choices about their lives.

One  of those choices is to take on the role of primary caregiver for children.

It does the cause, and women, no good when those who manage to combine a career with raising children criticise others who prefer not to:

Mrs Blair, a QC and mother of four, criticised women who “put all their effort into their children” instead of working. Mothers who go out to work are setting a better example for their children, she said

Addressing a gathering of “powerful” women at one of London’s most expensive hotels, Mrs Blair said she was worried that today’s young women are turning their backs on the feminism of their mothers’ generation.

Some women now regard motherhood as an acceptable alternative to a career, Mrs Blair said. Instead, women should strive for both.

One woman’s choice about her and family life  isn’t necessarily another’s.

The criticism is especially galling when it comes from one whose family income gives her and her husband choices about child care and house keeping which many others might not be able to afford.

Her point about the importance of women being self-sufficient is valid, especially in context of her explanation:

Mrs Blair said her view was informed by her own experience of her father abandoning her mother when she was a child. But she insisted that all women should make sure they can provide for themselves: “Even good men could have an accident or die and you’re left holding the baby.

But the promotion of self-sufficiency should be possible without criticising women who choose not to pursue a career while their children are young.

One criticism of feminism is that in making it possible, and acceptable, for women to take on roles  and work which were traditionally the preserve of men  it has devalued traditional female work and roles.

Mrs Blair’s comments add fuel to that fire.

June 23 in history

47 BC Pharaoh Ptolemy XV Caesarion of Egypt was born  (d. 30 BC).

79 Titus Caesar Vespasianus succeeded his father Vespasianus as tenth Roman Emperor.

1180 First Battle of Uji, starting the Genpei War in Japan.

1305 The Flemish–French peace treaty was signed at Athis-sur-Orge.

1314  First War of Scottish Independence The Battle of Bannockburn, south of Stirling, began.

1532  Henry VIII and François I signed a secret treaty against Emperor Charles V.

1565  Turgut Reis (Dragut), commander of the Ottoman navy, died during the Siege of Malta.

1611  The mutinous crew of Henry Hudson‘s fourth voyage set Henry, his son and seven loyal crew members adrift in an open boat in what is now Hudson Bay; they were never heard from again.

1661  Marriage contract between Charles II of England and Catherine of Braganza.

1683  William Penn signed friendship treaty with Lenni Lenape Indians in Pennsylvania.

1713  The French residents of Acadia were given one year to declare allegiance to Britain or leave Nova Scotia.

1757 Battle of Plassey – 3,000 British troops under Robert Clive defeated a 50,000 strong Indian army under Siraj Ud Daulah at Plassey.

1758  Seven Years’ War: Battle of Krefeld – British forces defeated French troops at Krefeld in Germany.

1760 – Seven Years’ War: Battle of Landeshut – Austria defeated Prussia.

1780 American Revolution: Battle of Springfield.

1794  Empress Catherine II of Russia granted Jews permission to settle in Kiev.

1810  John Jacob Astor formed the Pacific Fur Company.

1812  War of 1812: Great Britain revoked the restrictions on American commerce, thus eliminating one of the chief reasons for going to war.

1812 – Napoleonic Wars: Napoleon I of France invadesd Russia.

1860  The United States Congress established the Government Printing Office.

1865  American Civil War: At Fort Towson in the Oklahoma Territory, Confederate Brigadier General Stand Watie surrendered the last significant rebel army.

1868  Christopher Latham Sholes received a patent for Type-Writer.

1887 The Rocky Mountains Park Act became law in Canada, creating the nation’s first national park, Banff National Park.

1894 King Edward VIII was born (d. 1972).

1894  The International Olympic Committee was founded at the Sorbonne, at the initiative of Baron Pierre de Coubertin.

1914  Mexican Revolution: Francisco Villa took Zacatecas from Victoriano Huerta.

1917  In a game against the Washington Senators, Boston Red Sox pitcher Ernie Shore retired 26 batters in a row after replacing Babe Ruth, who had been ejected for punching the umpire.

1919  Estonian Liberation War: The decisive defeat of German Freikorps (Baltische Landeswehr) forces in the Battle of Cesis (Võnnu lahing). This day is celebrated as Victory Day in Estonia.

1926 The College Board administered the first SAT exam.

1931 Wiley Post and Harold Gatty took off from Roosevelt Field, Long Island in an attempt to circumnavigate the world in a single-engine plane.

1937  Niki Sullivan, American guitarist (The Crickets), was born  (d. 2004) .

1938 The Civil Aeronautics Act was signed into law, forming the Civil Aeronautics Authority in the United States.

1940 Adam Faith, English singer and actor was born, (d 2003).

1940 Stuart Sutcliffe, English musician (The Beatles) , was born (d. 1962).

1940 – World War II: German leader Adolf Hitler surveys newly defeated Paris in now occupied France.

1941 Roger McDonald, Australian author, was born.

1941 The Lithuanian Activist Front declared independence from the Soviet Union and formed the Provisional Government of Lithuania.

1942 World War II: The first selections for the gas chamber at Auschwitz took place on a train load of Jews from Paris.

1942  World War II: Germany’s latest fighter, a Focke-Wulf FW190 was captured intact when it mistakenly landsedat RAF Pembrey in Wales.

1943  World War II: British destroyers HMS Eclipse and HMS Laforey sank the Italian submarine Ascianghi in the Mediterranean after she torpedoed the cruiser HMS Newfoundland.

1945 World War II: The Battle of Okinawa ended when organised resistance of Imperial Japanese Army forces collapsed.

1946  The 1946 Vancouver Island earthquake struck Vancouver Island.

1947  The United States Senate followed the United States House of Representatives in overriding U.S. President Harry Truman’s veto of the Taft-Hartley Act.

1956  Gamal Abdel Nasser was elected president of Egypt.

1958  The Dutch Reformed Church accepted women ministers.

1959  Convicted Manhattan Project spy Klaus Fuchs was released after only nine years in prison and allowed to emigrate to Dresden.

1959  A fire in a resort hotel in Stalheim, Norway killed 34 people.

1961 Cold War: The Antarctic Treaty, which set aside Antarctica as a scientific preserve and banned military activity on the continent, came into force after the opening date for signature set for the December 1, 1959.

1965 Paul Arthurs, British guitarist (Oasis), was born.

Oasis, 1997. L-R: Alan White, Paul McGuigan, Noel Gallagher, Paul Arthurs, and Liam Gallagher.

1967  Cold War: U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson met with Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin in Glassboro, New Jersey for the three-day Glassboro Summit Conference.

1968  74 were killed and 150 injured in a football stampede towards a closed exit in a Buenos Aires stadium.

1969 Warren E. Burger was sworn in as chief justice of the United States Supreme Court by retiring chief justice Earl Warren.

1972  Watergate Scandal: U.S. President Richard M. Nixon and White House chief of staff H. R. Haldeman were taped talking about using the Central Intelligence Agency to obstruct the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s investigation into the Watergate break-ins.

1972 45 countries left the Sterling Area, allowing their currencies to fluctuate independently of the British Pound.

1973   The International Court of Justice condemned French nuclear tests in the Pacific.

1973 A fire at a house in Hull, England, which killed a six year old boy was passed off as an accident; it later emerged as the first of 26 deaths by fire caused over the next seven years by arsonist Peter Dinsdale.

1985  A terrorist bomb aboard Air India flight 182 brought the Boeing 747 down off the coast of Ireland, killing all 329 aboard.

1988 James E. Hansen testified to the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources that it is 99% probable that global warming had begun.

1989 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a law passed by the U.S. Congress banning all sexually oriented phone message services was unconstitutional.

1991 Moldova declared independence.

1998 – Paul Reitsma resigned his seat in the British Columbia legislature; the first elected politician in the British Commonwealth to be removed from office by legally-binding petition.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Word of the day

 

Misocapnist – someone who hates smoking or tobacco smoke in any form.

Friday’s answers – updated

Thursday’s questions were here.

Andrei gets an electronic batch  of biscuits for perseverance and  can claim the electronic fruit cake if the answers given were wrong.

Updated: whoops, I missed Paul’s and Teletext’s questions,both of which have stumped everyone  and so win an electronic fruit cake each.

Paul – my brother is sailing from there to here about now too.

Catch them being good

What’s more effective at preventing crime – punishing the bad or rewarding the good?

For years, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) detachment in Richmond, Canada ran like any other law enforcement bureaucracy and experienced similar results: recidivism or reoffending rates ran at around 60%, and they were experiencing spiraling rates of youth crime. This forward-thinking Canadian detachment, led by a young, new superintendent, Ward Clapham, challenged the core assumptions of the policing system itself. He noticed that the vast majority of police work was reactive. He asked: “Could we design a system that encouraged people to not commit crime in the first place?” Indeed, their strategic intent was a clever play on words: “Take No Prisoners.”

Their approach was to try to catch youth doing the right things and give them a Positive Ticket. The ticket granted the recipient free entry to the movies or to a local youth center. They gave out an average of 40,000 tickets per year. That is three times the number of negative tickets over the same period. As it turns out, and unbeknownst to Clapham, that ratio (2.9 positive affects to 1 negative affect, to be precise) is called the Losada Line. It is the minimum ratio of positive to negatives that has to exist for a team to flourish. On higher-performing teams (and marriages for that matter) the ratio jumps to 5:1. But does it hold true in policing?

According to Clapham, youth recidivism was reduced from 60% to 8%. Overall crime was reduced by 40%. Youth crime was cut in half. And it cost one-tenth of the traditional judicial system.

If it worked there, why not try it here?

Parents and teachers know it’s better for behaviour and relationships to catch children being good and reward them for it than to punish them for doing something bad.

The research show it works for preventing crime and if you follow the link above to the Havard Business Review you’ll find some tips for putting the principle into practice at work too.

Hat Tip: Barking Up The Wrong Tree

TAF best for Fonterra and suppliers

The biggest risk for Fonterra and its shareholders, who are also most of its suppliers, is redemption risk.

As the price rises that risk increases because the amount of money the company would have to pay to any farmers who want to redeem their shares increases.

Under the existing system, more suppliers might be tempted to sell when the share price is higher and go to other companies which don’t require suppliers to be shareholders.

Trading Among Farmers (TAF) would allow those farmers to sell shares into the pool and retain their voting rights.

Existing shareholders or anyone else can buy from the pool but those shares don’t carry voting rights.

This is best for the Fonterra and suppliers. The redemption risk would be gone and suppliers would still control the company.

Sir Dryden Spring who chaired the Dairy Board when Fonterra was formed supports TAF:

Sir Dryden, now retired from dairy farming and no longer a Fonterra shareholder, thinks farmers will face a bigger threat to their ownership and control if TAF does not go ahead.

“Fonterra was established with a flaw in its structure, and that was the fair value share, which under certain circumstances shareholders can require the company to redeem. Now that puts a huge strain on the company because effectively the share capital isn’t equity at all it’s effectively a contingent liability.”

Sir Dryden says that unless Fonterra can solve this redemption problem, and make its capital permanent, it will under invest in its core dairying activities which he says will lead to under performance and falling income.

That, he says, is a far bigger risk to farmer ownership and control than TAF.

Sir Dryden also says he thinks there will be sufficient safeguards in place under TAF to keep Fonterra in farmer ownership and control.

Fonterra is New Zealand’s only world-wide company.

It needs capital to continue growing and to keep its place in the world market. TAF enables more capital to come in without diluting supplier control.

June 22 in history

217 BC  Battle of Raphia: Ptolemy IV of Egypt defeated Antiochus III the Great of the Seleucid kingdom.

168 BC  Battle of Pydna: Romans under Lucius Aemilius Paullus defeated and captured Macedonian King Perseus, ending the Third Macedonian War.

1593 Battle of Sisak: Allied Christian troops defeated the Turks.

1633  The Holy Office in Rome forced Galileo Galilei to recant his view that the Sun, not the Earth, is the center of the Universe.

1680 Ebenezer Erskine, Scottish religious dissenter, was born  (d. 1754).

1713 Lord John Philip Sackville, English MP and cricketer, was born  (d. 1765).

1757 George Vancouver, British explorer, was born  (d. 1798).

1783  A poisonous cloud from Laki volcanic eruption in Iceland reached Le Havre in France .

1825  The British Parliament abolished feudalism and the seigneurial system in British North America.

1844  North American fraternity Delta Kappa Epsilon was founded at Yale University.

1845 Tom Dula, American folk character (Tom Dooley) was born (d. 1868).

1848  Beginning of the June Days Uprising in Paris.

1856  H. Rider Haggard, English author, was born  (d. 1925).

1887 Julian Huxley, British biologist, was born (d. 1975).

1893  The Royal Navy battleship HMS Camperdown accidentally rammed the British Mediterranean Fleet flagship HMS Victoria which sank taking 358 crew with her, including the fleet’s commander, Vice-Admiral Sir George Tryon.

1897  British colonial officers Rand and Ayerst were assassinated in Pune, Maharashtra, India by the Chapekar brothers and Ranade. They are considered the first martyrs to the cause of India’s freedom from Britain.

1898  Spanish-American War: United States Marines landed in Cuba.

1906 Anne Morrow Lindbergh, American author and pilot, was born  (d. 2001).

1906  The Flag of Sweden was adopted.

1907  The London Underground’s Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway opened.

1910  John Hunt, Leader of the 1953 British Expedition to Mount Everest, was born (d. 1998).

1911  George V and Mary of Teck were crowned King and Queen.

1918  The Hammond circus train wreck killed 86 and injured 127 near Hammond, Indiana.

1919  The Flag of the Faroe Islands was raised for the first time.

1922 Bill Blass, American fashion designer, was born (d. 2002).

1922  Herrin massacre: 19 strikebreakers and 2 union miners were killed in Herrin, Illinois.

1932 Prunella Scales, English actress, was born.

1936 Kris Kristofferson, American singer/songwriter and actor, was born.

1940 France was forced to sign the Second Compiègne armistice with Germany.

1941  Germany invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa. Russian The 22 June song is devoted to this day.

1941  The June Uprising in Lithuania began.

1941  Various Communist and Socialist French Resistance movements merged to one group.

1942  Erwin Rommel was promoted to Field Marshal after the capture of Tobruk.

1944 Peter Asher, British singer, guitarist and producer (Peter & Gordon), was born.

1944  Opening day of the Soviet Union’s Operation Bagration against Army Group Centre.

1949 Meryl Streep, American actress. was born.

1953 – Cyndi Lauper, American singer, was born.

1954  Pauline Parker, 16, and her best friend Juliet Hulme, 15,  killed Pauline’s mother, Honora, in Victoria Park, Christchurch.

1957 Garry Gary Beers, Australian bassist from group INXS, was born.

1957  The Soviet Union launched an R-12 missile for the first time (in Kapustin Yar).

1962  An Air France Boeing 707 jet crashed in bad weather in Guadeloupe, West Indies killing 113.

1964 Dan Brown, American author, was born.

1969  The Cuyahoga River caught fire, which triggered a crack-down on pollution in the river.

1976  The Canadian House of Commons abolished capital punishment.

1978 Charon, a satellite of the dwarf planet Pluto, was discovered.

1984 Virgin Atlantic Airways launched with its first flight from London Heathrow Airport.

2003  The largest hailstone ever recorded fell in Aurora, Nebraska

2009 June 22, 2009 Washington Metro train collision: Two Metro trains collided  in Washington, D.C., killing 9 and injuring over 80.

2009 – Eastman Kodak Company announced that it would discontinue sales of the Kodachrome Color Film, concluding its 74-year run as a photography icon.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Word of the day

 

Magoozlum – hooey, nonsense, tosh, tripe, twaddle.

Thursday’s quiz

1. Are you still enjoying providing the questions?

If so, they are yours for the asking with an electronic fruit cake for anyone who stumps everyone.