Sunday's Quote: NASA & Islam

The story about the current White House occupant's charge for NASA to "reach out to the Muslim world... to help them feel good about their historic contributions to science" fascinates more than I can express.  So I'll have a leading Conservative voice do the talking for me:

"It might just be that Muslim self-confidence is more dangerous to us than imagined Muslim feelings of inadequacy.  But in any case, solicitude about the feelings of individuals cannot comprise a foreign policy.  Muslim nations, like other nations, are motivated by advantage and influenced by perceptions of strength and weakness."
-- from Mona Charen's "NASA's Muslim Outreach"; July 7, 2010

Iconic Shot(s): Dave, a nice sunset, & a "Million Dollar Quartet"

(click to enlarge)

Dave Matthews Band performs at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival last Sunday in Manchester, Tennessee.  Photo by Mark Humphrey

"Sunset at 10,000 feet"

© Eric Rolph

"Memphis" won four Tony awards, including one for Best Musical, last Sunday.  So here's another piece of music history from the city of Memphis.

The above picture is the only known shot of an impromptu jam session that took place at Sun Studios in downtown Memphis between Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash.  Dubbed "The Million Dollar Quartet" by Memphis Press-Scimitar entertainment editor Bob Johnson, a comprehensively detailed story about the picture, including the identity of the woman in the shot (unknown for over 50 years) can be found here.

On This Day in History: May 28

585 BC: As predicted by Thales of Miletus -- a tremendously influential Greek philosopher, scientist and mathematician -- a solar eclipse occurred while Alyattes II, King of the Lydian Empire, battled Cyaxares, King of Media at the Battles of Halys.  Later known as the Battle of the Eclipse, the factions ended their five-year war when the solar eclipse appeared, as both sides took the phenomena as an omen from the gods to end their fighting.

This is most notable because the battle is the earliest historical event of which the date is known with exact precision, eventually becoming the cardinal event by which other dates could be calculated.

1754: In the first engagement of the French and Indian War, a Virginia militia led by 22-year-old Lieutenant Colonel George Washington defeat a French reconnaissance party in the Battle of Jumonville Glen in what is now Fayette County in southwestern Pennsylvania.

1937: The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco is opened by President Franklin D. Roosevelt (via Washington, DC), who pushed a button that signaled the go-ahead for vehicle traffic over the bridge.

1987: A West German pilot named Mathias Rust evades Soviet Union air defenses and lands a private plane in Red Square in Moscow.  He was immediately arrested and remained in confinement for over 14 months.

1996: Bill Clinton's (pictured) former business partners -- James McDougal, Susan McDougal, and Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker -- are convicted of fraud in the Whitewater land deal.  That ol' boy is now 10 years out of office, and he still can't stay out of trouble.

On This Day in History: April 23

1635: The first public school in the United States, Boston Latin School, is founded in Boston, Massachusetts.  In 2007 the school was named one of the top twenty high-schools in the nation by U.S. News & World Report.

1910: Theodore Roosevelt made his "The Man in the Arena" speech at the University of Paris in France.  Later re-printed in his book Citizenship in a Republic, a notable portion was spoken by our 26th President as follows --

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

1948: In a key battle, a major port in Israel called Haifa is captured from Arab forces during this particular Arab-Israeli War (of which there have been at least six).  Israel's decisive victory 11 months later led to the 1949 Armistice Agreements that established boundaries between Israel and the West Bank.  "The Green Line," as it was called, would hold for 18 years.

1985: Coca-Cola releases the ill-fated "New Coke."  After a promising start, public response becomes acutely negative.  In fact many Southerners who consider the drink a part of their regional identity viewed Coca-Cola's decision to change the flavor as another surrender to the Yankees.  Ultimately the original formula is returned to the market in less than 3 months.

1988: Pink Floyd's album, The Dark Side of the Moon, leaves the charts for the first time after spending a record of 741 consecutive weeks (over 14 years) on the Billboard 200.

1997: Attackers armed with knives, sabers, and guns killed 42 men, women, and children in the Algerian village of Omaria.  One report told of a pregnant woman whose unborn baby was literally ripped from her body and hacked apart.  Called "Islamic terrorists" by the U.S. State Department, these like-minded aggressors were responsible for 13 declared massacres in Algeria for the year.

2009: A gamma ray burst, labeled "GRB 090423," is observed for 10 seconds near the constellation Leo by the Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Mission satellite.  To date over 500 GRBs have been detected, but the first one is still recognized as both the most distant object of any kind and the oldest known object in the universe.