DECEMBER 17 — 1969 Operation: Blubook regarding UFOs shuts down; 1903 Wright brothers make 1st successful flight; 1997 World’s largest picnic basket opens in Newark, OH
DECEMBER 16
2903 – Wright brothers make their first successful flight.
…Orville flew the first gasoline-powered, propeller driven biplane, which stayed in the air for 12 seconds and flew 120 feet. Orville and Wilbur Wright began their work since they sold and repaired bicycles for a living. They needed an automobile engine that was light and powerful enough and couldn’t find one so they made their own, with the help of machinist Charles Taylor, who built a 12-horsepower internal combustion engine.
At this point they were ready to stage their experiment area, and with the help of the US Weather Bureau they settled on a remote area of North Carolina called Kitty Hawk which offered steady winds and sand dunes from where the Wright brothers successfully flew over 700 gliders. A wind tunnel was built to test nearly 200 wings and airframes of different shapes and sizes. Orville quotes in his 1953 diary, which by the way is available and titled How We Invented the Airplane, I found the control of the front rudder quite difficult. Finally, at 10:35 a.m. on December 17, 1903, with several witnesses present, the airplane ran down a monorail track and up in the air, giving birth to the modern aviation age.
As the brothers would continue to improve on the airplane, they kept their invention under wraps so they could secure patents and contracts later on. In 1909 the US army’s signal corps purchased a specially constructed plane, and the brothers founded the Wright Company to build and market their aircraft. Wilbur would die of typhoid fever in 1912, and Orville lived until 1948.
1969 — Operation BlueBook shuts down.
Ramemer: just because we’re talking about a UFO doesn’t mean it’s from outer space. It’s just unidentified, that’s all. So when the US Air Force went through the Truman and Eisenhower libraries looking for MJ12 or Majestic 12 references and other documentation about UFOs, they found thousands of UFO reports. The Condon Report would be the name of this collection, where it was analyzed and filed.
The results: Sorry nears. No little green men.
Specifically, it found, no UFOs reported here have ever been a threat to national security, these UFOs never taught us anything scientifically or technologically that we didn’t already know, and no extraterrestrial vehicles. Are we alone in the universe or not? As Sir Arthur Clarke put it, both are equally terrifying.
See, I can be a nerd, too!
2010 Kucinich proposes the NEED Act.
One of the main features of the National Emergency Employment Defense Act of 2010 would give Congressional sovereignty and place the monetary policy out of the hands of private banks.
Finally!
Most of us remember what things were like in 2010, right? Unemployment was high, credit was tight and banks were holding their cash close. Democratic Senator of Ohio Dennis Kucinich offered a solution that would stop the practice of fractional reserve banking and giving the monetary authority to Congress. According to monetary.org, Kucinich introduced his bill: The staggeringly bad employment and economic numbers represent a massive problem which cries out for bold action. Rather than crossing our fingers and hoping that banks will finally lend some of the billions of public dollars they haven’t thus far seen fit to lend, we can take action. My bill would replace the Federal Reserve System’s dependence on private banks to create credit. In its place, a Monetary Authority under the Treasury Department would directly inject liquidity into the economy by purchasing much needed public infrastructure repair. Today, we have idle capital, millions of able-bodied but unemployed workers, unused equipment, and record low interest rates. These conditions are the best possible time to make a long-term investment in our nation’s infrastructure. My bill would do exactly that.”
However, the bill stops short of giving complete authority independence from any government department that’s not the U.S. Treasury; and it gives the authority of choosing the chairperson to the President, again taking away its dependence. Remember the U.S. Constitution, Article 1 Section 8: Congress has the power to coin money AND regulate the value thereof. In 1913, the Federal Reserve changed our entire economic system to do the opposite.
While the bill would be endorsed by the Green Party, critics such as post-Keynesian economic L. Randall Wray called the bill foolishness; only a bank, a foreign central bank, or some other special entity, can hold these. In theory, the government should accept its central-bank notes in tax payment. In practice, US taxpayers make tax payments using their banks—either with checks or direct withdrawal. The Fed then debits the private bank’s reserve deposits.
In either case, the Fed’s liabilities to the US private sector are reduced.
1797 – HB Joseph Henry, from Albany NY, inventor of electromagnetism. This also paved the way for Michael Faraday’s later discovery of mutual inductance. If you’ve ever seen the TVC show Lost and still want to know how Ben moved the island, that’s how. It’s actually not that complicated. Henry’s invention also led to the electromagnetic relay, which paved the way for the doorbell, and was the basis of Thomas’s Morse’s telegraph later on.
1895 – George Brownell patents a machine that makes paper twine, and used to manufacturing…wait for it…paper.
1862 – Grant expels Jews from his department. The cotton industry was one of the top commodities in both the north and the south, and even though the trade was regulated by the US Treasury Department, General Ulysses S. Grant believed that a huge black market of cotton was emerging, thanks to the Jews. Grant forced the Israelites out, much like King Edward I did in England in 1290. Luckily President Abraham Lincoln was thinking with a much more civilized brain and instructed Grant to rescind the order.
NFL news now…
2000 – T.O. makes record-braking 20h catch. Terrell Owens ranks 2nd in the NFL for yards received and 3rd with receiving touchdowns. Despite that, he still wasn’t worth the headache. He was released from the 49ers, Eagles, and Cowboys. He’s had way more controversies than I have time to name, but I’ll try. Desperate Housewives skit, 2006 Hydrocodone overdose, Atlanta spitting incident, and the touchdown celebrations involving a sharpie, Atlanta dirty bird, Green Bay pompom incident, the San Francisco Answer wristband, and on and on it goes.
1997 – The world’s largest picnic basket opens up in Newark, OH.
That’s right. Lake Eerie may have the world’s largest Easter Basket, but Newark is the home of basket making legend Dave Longaberger and his Longaberger Basket Company enterprise. I don’t know how else to explain this, other than it’s a giant 7 story, 180,000 square foot basket.
With giant handles.
I almost want to stay in the car in case giant ants start coming looking for a giant crumb. Yogi Bear heard about this and moved him and BooBoo out of Yellowstone to Newark OH. True story. It was on this day in 1997 that Longaberger wanted to prove to his employees, and the rest of the lunch eating world, that he would show off their basket making greatness everywhere, and did not disappoint with the look of his new headquarters, scoffing at Tupperware users everywhere. These days, the basket craze just isn’t what it used to be, and the company has had its share of financial problems. By 2012 sales had dropped significantly and Longaberger had to move his employees to a facility in Dallas. The basket went on the market for $28 a square foot, and listing agent Michael Guagenti of Cushman & Wakefield, said it was the most unusual property he’d ever sold.
I would certainly hope so. Luckily, the citizens of Newark can still enjoy a 29 foot apple basket in Longaberger’s front yard, complete with giant fake apples.