June 30 - A Tightrope! Over Niagara Falls!

 Posted on June 30, 2021

This is an update of my post published on June 21, 2010:



On this date in 1859, a French man named Jean Francois Gravelet crossed the swift-flowing, rock-pounding Niagara Falls on a tightrope! 

(Don't try this at home, kids; not only is this almost certainly suicidal, it's also illegal! If you try something like this nowadays, without permission, you will probably be stopped and arrested!)

Gravelet on the tightrope

 





UPDATE:  These amazing colored photos are of Nik Wallenda, who did ask permission to do the same crazy stunt. (A more dangerous version, actually, because of exactly where he was crossing.) 

In June of 2012, he crossed the falls on a tightrope in front of hundreds of thousands of people.

Oh, and a few TV cameras and some 13 million people worldwide!

He used a safety harness because ABC TV insisted that he do so!

Can you imagine walking 1,800 feet on a two-inch wire 180 feet in the air--with swirling winds and mist making the wire slippery!?! Wallenda could barely see through the mist!


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June 29 - Happy Birthday, William Mayo

 Posted on June 29, 2021

This is an update of my post published on June 29, 2010:




Along with his father and brother, Dr. Mayo started and ran the famous Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. 

All three doctors were surgeons, and they invented new operations, pushed forward medical science, and attracted many other specialists to their clinic. 

The Mayo Clinic grew up out of a private practice, but it is now a nonprofit organization rated #1 for all hospitals in the United States. It is also ranked as a great company to work for - which is a good thing, because it employs more than 4,500 doctors and scientists plus a support staff of 58,400 administrative and allied health staff. It has grown to three different locations (the two newer locations are in Florida and Arizona).

A whole lot of research is carried on at the Mayo Clinic. Patients from all around the globe come to take advantage of cutting-edge technologies and techniques. The Clinic performs the highest number of transplants in the U.S.!

Amazing stuff!


I like this attitude!






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June 28 - Happy Birthday, Alexis Carrel

 Posted on June 28, 2021

This is an update of my post published June 28, 2010:


Alexis Carrel was a French scientist who was born on this day in 1873. He moved to the U.S. in 1905, and in 1912 he won a Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for developing a way to suture blood vessels. (Suture means to reconnect, join, sew back together.)


Carrel worked for a decade on experimental animals and managed to develop every technique used in vascular (blood vessel) surgery today.

He also worked on keeping tissue alive after it is removed from a living organism—this technology really helps with transplants—and even succeeded in keeping alive tissue from the heart of a chicken embryo for 35 years!


The yucky part of Carrel's life was during World War II. Carrel may have liked and supported the Nazis. You might remember that, under Hitler, Germany attacked and took over France; during the time when the Nazis occupied France, it was called "Vichy France." Of course, many French people worked for the resistance and tried to hinder or even stop the Nazis in little and big ways. However, some French people went along with the Nazis and willingly implemented their awful-terrible-no-good-very-bad ideas. These Nazi enablers were later called collaborators, and some were shamed or exiled or executed, while others were tried in court and, if found guilty of collaboration, served time in prison.

Carrel was accused of collaboration but died (at age 71) before his trial.



Also on this date:





Carolina Day 







Painter Peter Paul Rubens's birthday








Anniversary of the proof that tomatoes are not poisonous






Constitution Day in Ukraine




Anniversary of the Premiere of Giselle

















Vidovdan in Serbia








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June 27 - Happy Birthday, Helen Keller

Posted on June 27, 2021

This is an update of my post published on June 27, 2010:




Born in Alabama on this day in 1880, Helen Keller became blind and deaf while she was just a baby, due to an illness. Since she was unable to see or hear, she didn't learn to talk. Thanks to her remarkable teacher, Anne Sullivan, Keller learned to communicate by touch in sign language. She learned to read and write in Braille, and later she learned to speak. Eventually she learned five languages!



From those difficult childhood beginnings, would you have guessed that Keller's Wikipedia bio would list her as a college grad (Radcliffe College, which is part of Harvard University), the author of 14 books, an activist (working on causes as varied as rights for those with disabilities, women's suffrage, labor rights, and world peace), and a lecturer who traveled to 35 nations in the world? Wow! 



Keller was a supporter of the NAACP and one of the original members of the ACLU; she wrote an autobiography and has been the subject of movies and plays. Her birthplace in Alabama is a museum, her birthday is celebrated in Pennsylvania, she is a member of both the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame and the Alabama Writers' Hall of Fame, and she appears on the Alabama state quarter!




When I was checking to see if Helen Keller really said the quotes attributed to her, I noticed some huge raves from some really important peeps:

U.K. Prime Minister Winston Churchill called Keller "the greatest woman of our age." Albert Einstein told her "I have been a great admirer of you always." 

Ultra-famous author Mark Twain said TO Keller, "I am charmed with your book - enchanted!" And Twain said ABOUT Keller that she was on of the two greatest characters in the 19th Century - alongside Napoleon Bonaparte! He went on, "Napoleon tried to conquer the world by physical force and failed. Helen tried to conquer the world by power of mind — and succeeded!"




Also on this date:











(Last Sunday in June)



(Last Sunday in June)





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