After Ivan the Terrible died, he left a power vacuum, and Russia went through a number of rulers over the next few years.

The list included one notable ruler, who wasn’t Russian at all.  Known as False Dmitriy, this guy was actually Polish, and claimed to be the lost son of Ivan.

He ruled for a brief 10 months, until he was discovered to be an impostor.

Once he was discovered, he was killed, and put on display as a warning to other would be impostors.*  Then they sent him home “Russian Style”, which apparently means burning his body and stuffing the remnants into a cannon, which was shot in the direction of Poland.

*The warning didn’t work so well, as two other False Dmitriys eventually showed up.

The Russian word Tsar (also sometimes spelled Czar) is the Russian translation for Caesar.

Ivan III was the first Czar of Russia*.  He was searching for a way to unite the factious princedoms of Russia, and decided that embracing the Catholic Church was the way to do it.

So he took a bride from Rome, and also took the old Roman title for himself, Caesar.

*Technically, Ivan IV (the terrible) was the first ruler to “officially” use the title Tsar, but III used it unofficially.  Also, the point of the post is that the two words are related, so the firsties debate is really secondary.

Judge Wesley E. Brown, 103 years young, is the oldest federal judge still hearing cases.

Born June 22, 1907, he got his law degree in 1933, did private practice from 1933 to 1944, entered the US Navy in 1944, becoming a Lieutenant and serving until 1946, and then returned to private practice until 1958.  He was a Referee in Bankruptcy for the United States District Court for the District of Kansas from 1958 to 1962, and then was appointed to the Kansas court.  He served as chief judge from 1971 to 1977, and became the senior judge in 1979.  He still hears cases to this day.

That is an impressive resume!

President Obama will visit Australia next month.  The trip coincides with the 70th anniversary of US-Australian diplomatic relations.  So, if you do the math, that puts the establishment of relations at 1940.

Prior to 1901, Australia consisted of six self governing British colonies.  Through a process called Federation, the colonies joined together and became the Commonwealth of Australia.  From 1901 to 1940-ish, Australia was in a transition period.  Around the WWII era they became fully self governing, though they still consider the British Monarch to be their head of state.

Apple Valley, MN was called Lebanon Township until 1969.

Read more here, if you really want to, but the reason for the name change is not made clear.

Following the lead of Canada?

Gore wanted to privatize the air-traffic control system during the Clinton years, which would have had the US following Canada’s lead — yes, Canada — in relying on the private sector to maintain air-traffic control.  Such a system would have encouraged technological innovation as well as expansion of resources to meet demand.  Instead, Congress refused to relinquish control, backed by the air-traffic controllers union that feared privatization:

Hot Air has a video by Reason TV that explains the whole thing.  Worth a watch if you can spare 7 minutes or so on a topic so riveting.  If not, just remember the key phrases union and government corruption.

But as a bona fide IBM hater, I liked this part of the story:

Interestingly, I had a connection to the 1980s attempt to modernize the towers while working at Hughes Aircraft.  Hughes had a modern, working system that it submitted to the FAA, while its chief competitor, IBM, submitted a mock-up system that had never been built.  The story is too long and complicated to retell here (it might have made a good book at the time on government procurement abuse), but in the end, the FAA chose IBM’s vaporware.  Hughes sold its system to South Korea and Canada, while IBM eventually failed to produce its system altogether.

IBM selling someone on a system that doesn’t exist?  I find that… actually that’s about right.  Anyone who has ever had the misfortune of using Web Sphere or Lotus Notes knows the “that will be fixed in the next release” game.

Now, go replicate your domino database so you can get the email from IT notifying you of the latest delay in the new intranet rolling out.  And then thank God that the same technology isn’t powering ATC.

I can see it now – “Sir, we’re about to hit another plane!”  “Looks like ATC forgot to replicate again…”

Alas…

GeoCities, the web hosting platform started in 1994, will shut down on Monday.

Wait, what now? GeoCities was still around?

Here’s hoping the guys who started it were smart enough to save some of the…

$3.5 BILLION!

they got from Yahoo.

GeoCities was bought by Yahoo in 1999 for $3.57 billion at the height of the “dot com era.”

However, as rival web hosting sites sprang up and the cost of having a unique web address became more affordable, sites like GeoCities lost popularity and ad revenues.

Why was I born 5-7 years too late?

Please tell me FortuneCity is still there.  I think I have a place over in the Rivendell neighborhood.

Brooke Shields was originally set to play the lead role in the movie A League of Their Own.  Shields was written out (something to do with a writers strike) and was replaced by Debra Winger.  Madonna was cast a few days before filming was to begin.  Winger, complaining of “stunt casting,” backed out, and the part went to Geena Davis.

As it turns out, Winger was right to complain.  Madonna was “miserable” on the set.  She wrote to her friend, “I cannot suffer any more than I have in the past month, learning how to play baseball with a bunch of girls (yuk) in Chicago (double yuk). I have a tan, I’m dirty all day, and I hardly ever wear make up. Penny Marshall, Lavern (sic), Geena Davis is a Barbie Doll, and when God decided where the beautiful men were going to live in the world, he did not choose Chicago. I have made a few friends but they are athletes, not actresses. They have nothing on the house of extravaganza. I wish I could come to N.Y.”

Even with Madonna and without Winger, movie went on to be a success.  Funny thing, this isn’t the first time Debra Winger turned down roles and the movie was successful.  It wasn’t even the first time Winger turned down a role relating to Shields or Davis!

Per IMDB:

She [Winger] became notorious for turning down worthy roles in many popular films, such as Jodie Foster’s roles in Taxi Driver (1976), The Accused (1988) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Brooke Shields’ roles in Pretty Baby (1978) and The Blue Lagoon (1980), Daryl Hannah’s role in Splash (1984), Linda Hamilton’s role in The Terminator (1984), Kathleen Turner’s role in Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), Susan Sarandon’s role in Bull Durham (1988), Michelle Pfeiffer’s role in The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989), Jessica Lange’s role in Music Box (1989), Julia Roberts’ role in Pretty Woman (1990), Demi Moore’s role in Ghost (1990), Geena Davis’ roles in Thelma & Louise (1991) A League of Their Own (1992), Sharon Stone’s role in Basic Instinct (1992), Meg Ryan’s  role in Sleepless in Seattle (1993), Sandra Bullock’s role in Speed (1994/I) and Nicole Kidman’s role in To Die For (1995).

Lastly, there was a League of Their Own TV show.  They got a whopping 4 people to reprise their role in the film.  The show was, “quickly canceled.”

Sources:  Here, here, and here

Please forgive the post-Halloween Halloween post, but I only learned the legend of Stingy Jack last night.

Stingy Jack was a trickster who lived in Ireland.  No one was safe from Jack’s pranks, even the Devil himself…

Stingy Jack invited the Devil to have a drink with him. True to his name, Stingy Jack didn’t want to pay for his drink, so he convinced the Devil to turn himself into a coin that Jack could use to buy their drinks. Once the Devil did so, Jack decided to keep the money and put it into his pocket next to a silver cross, which prevented the Devil from changing back into his original form. Jack eventually freed the Devil, under the condition that he would not bother Jack for one year and that, should Jack die, he would not claim his soul. The next year, Jack again tricked the Devil into climbing into a tree to pick a piece of fruit. While he was up in the tree, Jack carved a sign of the cross into the tree’s bark so that the Devil could not come down until the Devil promised Jack not to bother him for ten more years.

Sadly, Jack died soon after that.  He tried to go up to Heaven, but God wasn’t interested in hosting such a notorious stingy prankster.  So he had no choice but to go to Hell.

But there was a problem.  The Devil had already agreed not to claim Jack’s soul.  Plus, Jack was too much for even the Devil to handle.  So the Devil sent Jack back from whence he came.  But there was another problem.  It was too dark for Jack to see.

So he asked the Devil for a light.  The Devil, being an obliging fellow, tossed Jack an ember from the fires of Hell.  Jack stored the ember in a hollowed out turnip, which he of course had on him.

Jack has since been doomed to wander in the darkness alone.  In an effort to ward off the evil wandering spirits, the Irish townsfolk began carving their own turnips.

When Irish immigrants made it to America in the 1800’s they discovered the pumpkin, which was much better for carving than a turnip.

And that, my friends, is how we got the Jack of the Lantern, or Jack-o-Lantern.

Happy belated Halloween.

Source: History Channel Website, here, and here.  But originally on the National Geographic Channel.

Everyone has experienced this problem:  You go to buy shoes.  But how can you be sure that those shoes will fit?  That squishing your toe thing is so barbaric.  Wouldn’t it be great if there were a high tech way to check shoes for proper fit?

Why yes, kids and kiddies, you need a Shoe Fitting Fluoroscope!

The Fluoroscope, common in shoe stores from the 1920s – 1950s, used x-rays to project an image of the foot, inside the shoe, onto a screen.

The three viewfinders were for the shoe salesman, mom, and the kid getting the shoes.  The kid put his foot into the slot below, and was basically standing on an x-ray tube.

X-Rays of feet! How high-tech!

Now, even the most casual observer of history and science can finish this story.  Yep.  Cancer in shoe salesmen, deformities, birth defects, sterilization.

But a small price to pay for a proper fit, I say!

Toward the end of the 1940’s US states started adopting laws regulating the machines and the radiation they could output.  By 1960 they were pretty much banned everywhere.

Source: History Channel, here.