October 18, 2022

Vocabulary Word of the Day (Merriam Webster) Zaftig - adjective (ZAHF-tig) Zaftig means "having a full, rounded figure"—in other words, "pleasingly plump." // Portraits of zaftig models are exhibited in the artist's collection.

Trivia: What Day is it Today? October 18, 2022 October 18th is the 291st day in the Gregorian calendar. On this day Félicette, a black and white female Parisian stray cat, became the first cat launched into space; Texas Instruments introduced the first transistor radio, and the novel Moby Dick was first published with the title, The Whale. - National KEN Day - National LOUIE Day - National MARK Day - National SUNDAY Day - National ZANE Day - Pro-Life Day of Silent Solidarity - World Menopause Day

Article 3 -https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-true-life-horror-that-inspired-moby-dick-17576/ The True-Life Horror That Inspired Moby-Dick The whaler Essex was indeed sunk by a whale—and that’s only the beginning

Article 3 Part 2 In July of 1852, a 32-year-old novelist named Herman Melville had high hopes for his new novel, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, despite the book’s mixed reviews and tepid sales. That month he took a steamer to Nantucket for his first visit to the Massachusetts island, home port of his novel’s mythic protagonist, Captain Ahab, and his ship, the Pequod. Like a tourist, Melville met local dignitaries, dined out and took in the sights of the village he had previously only imagined.

Article 3 Part 3 And on his last day on Nantucket he met the broken-down 60-year-old man who had captained the Essex, the ship that had been attacked and sunk by a sperm whale in an 1820 incident that had inspired Melville’s novel. Captain George Pollard Jr. was just 29 years old when the Essex went down, and he survived and returned to Nantucket to captain a second whaling ship, Two Brothers. But when that ship wrecked on a coral reef two years later, the captain was marked as unlucky at sea—a “Jonah”—and no owner would trust a ship to him again. Pollard lived out his remaining years on land, as the village night watchman.

Article 3 Part 4 Melville had written about Pollard briefly in Moby-Dick, and only with regard to the whale sinking his ship. During his visit, Melville later wrote, the two merely “exchanged some words.” But Melville knew Pollard’s ordeal at sea did not end with the sinking of the Essex, and he was not about to evoke the horrific memories that the captain surely carried with him. “To the islanders he was a nobody,” Melville wrote, “to me, the most impressive man, tho’ wholly unassuming, even humble—that I ever encountered.”

Article 3 Part 5 Pollard had told the full story to fellow captains over a dinner shortly after his rescue from the Essex ordeal, and to a missionary named George Bennet. To Bennet, the tale was like a confession. Certainly, it was grim: 92 days and sleepless nights at sea in a leaking boat with no food, his surviving crew going mad beneath the unforgiving sun, eventual cannibalism and the harrowing fate of two teenage boys, including Pollard’s first cousin, Owen Coffin. “But I can tell you no more—my head is on fire at the recollection,” Pollard told the missionary. “I hardly know what I say.”

Article 3 Part 6 The trouble for Essex began, as Melville knew, on August 14, 1819, just two days after it left Nantucket on a whaling voyage that was supposed to last two and a half years. The 87-foot-long ship was hit by a squall that destroyed its topgallant sail and nearly sank it. Still, Pollard continued, making it to Cape Horn five weeks later. But the 20-man crew found the waters off South America nearly fished out, so they decided to sail for distant whaling grounds in the South Pacific, far from any shores.

Article 3 Part 7 To restock, the Essex anchored at Charles Island in the Galapagos, where the crew collected sixty 100-pound tortoises. As a prank, one of the crew set a fire, which, in the dry season, quickly spread. Pollard’s men barely escaped, having to run through flames, and a day after they set sail, they could still see smoke from the burning island. Pollard was furious, and swore vengeance on whoever set the fire. Many years later Charles Island was still a blackened wasteland, and the fire was believed to have caused the extinction of both the Floreana Tortoise and the Floreana Mockingbird.

Article 3 Part 8 By November of 1820, after months of a prosperous voyage and a thousand miles from the nearest land, whaleboats from the Essex had harpooned whales that dragged them out toward the horizon in what the crew called “Nantucket sleigh rides.” Owen Chase, the 23-year-old first mate, had stayed aboard the Essex to make repairs while Pollard went whaling. It was Chase who spotted a very big whale—85 feet in length, he estimated—lying quietly in the distance, its head facing the ship. Then, after two or three spouts, the giant made straight for the Essex, “coming down for us at great celerity,” Chase would recall—at about three knots. The whale smashed head-on into the ship with “such an appalling and tremendous jar, as nearly threw us all on our faces.”

Article 3 Part 9 The whale passed underneath the ship and began thrashing in the water. “I could distinctly see him smite his jaws together, as if distracted with rage and fury,” Chase recalled. Then the whale disappeared. The crew was addressing the hole in the ship and getting the pumps working when one man cried out, “Here he is—he is making for us again.” Chase spotted the whale, his head half out of water, bearing down at great speed—this time at six knots, Chase thought. This time it hit the bow directly under the cathead and disappeared for good.

Article 3 Part 10 The water rushed into the ship so fast, the only thing the crew could do was lower the boats and try fill them with navigational instruments, bread, water and supplies before the Essex turned over on its side. Pollard saw his ship in distress from a distance, then returned to see the Essex in ruin. Dumbfounded, he asked, “My God, Mr. Chase, what is the matter?” “We have been stove by a whale,” his first mate answered.

Article 3 Part 11 Another boat returned, and the men sat in silence, their captain still pale and speechless. Some, Chase observed, “had no idea of the extent of their deplorable situation.” The men were unwilling to leave the doomed Essex as it slowly foundered, and Pollard tried to come up with a plan. In all, there were three boats and 20 men. They calculated that the closest land was the Marquesas Islands and the Society Islands, and Pollard wanted to set off for them—but in one of the most ironic decisions in nautical history, Chase and the crew convinced him that those islands were peopled with cannibals and that the crew’s best chance for survival would be to sail south. The distance to land would be far greater, but they might catch the trade winds or be spotted by another whaling ship. Only Pollard seemed to understand the implications of steering clear of the islands. (According to Nathaniel Philbrick, in his book In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, although rumors of cannibalism persisted, traders had been visiting the islands without incident.)

Article 3 Part 12 Thus they left the Essex aboard their 20-foot boats. They were challenged almost from the start. Saltwater saturated the bread, and the men began to dehydrate as they ate their daily rations. The sun was ravaging. Pollard’s boat was attacked by a killer whale. They spotted land—Henderson Island—two weeks later, but it was barren. After another week the men began to run out of supplies. Still, three of them decided they’d rather take their chances on land than climb back into a boat. No one could blame them. And besides, it would stretch the provisions for the men in the boats.

Article 12 Part 13 By mid-December, after weeks at sea, the boats began to take on water, more whales menaced the men at night, and by January, the paltry rations began to take their toll. On Chase’s boat, one man went mad, stood up and demanded a dinner napkin and water, then fell into “most horrid and frightful convulsions” before perishing the next morning. “Humanity must shudder at the dreadful recital” of what came next, Chase wrote. The crew “separated limbs from his body, and cut all the flesh from the bones; after which, we opened the body, took out the heart, and then closed it again—sewed it up as decently as we could, and committed it to the sea.” They then roasted the man’s organs on a flat stone and ate them.

Article 3 Part 14 Over the coming week, three more sailors died, and their bodies were cooked and eaten. One boat disappeared, and then Chase’s and Pollard’s boats lost sight of each other. The rations of human flesh did not last long, and the more the survivors ate, the hungrier they felt. On both boats the men became too weak to talk. The four men on Pollard’s boat reasoned that without more food, they would die. On February 6, 1821—nine weeks after they’d bidden farewell to the Essex—Charles Ramsdell, a teenager, proposed they draw lots to determine who would be eaten next. It was the custom of the sea, dating back, at least in recorded instance, to the first half of the 17th century. The men in Pollard’s boat accepted Ramsdell’s suggestion, and the lot fell to young Owen Coffin, the captain’s first cousin.

Article 3 Part 15 Pollard had promised the boy’s mother he’d look out for him. “My lad, my lad!” the captain now shouted, “if you don’t like your lot, I’ll shoot the first man that touches you.” Pollard even offered to step in for the boy, but Coffin would have none of it. “I like it as well as any other,” he said. Ramsdell drew the lot that required him to shoot his friend. He paused a long time. But then Coffin rested his head on the boat’s gunwale and Ramsdell pulled the trigger. “He was soon dispatched,” Pollard would say, “and nothing of him left.”

Article 3 Part 16 By February 18, after 89 days at sea, the last three men on Chase’s boat spotted a sail in the distance. After a frantic chase, they managed to catch the English ship Indian and were rescued. Three hundred miles away, Pollard’s boat carried only its captain and Charles Ramsdell. They had only the bones of the last crewmen to perish, which they smashed on the bottom of the boat so that they could eat the marrow. As the days passed the two men obsessed over the bones scattered on the boat’s floor. Almost a week after Chase and his men had been rescued, a crewman aboard the American ship Dauphin spotted Pollard’s boat. Wretched and confused, Pollard and Ramsdell did not rejoice at their rescue, but simply turned to the bottom of their boat and stuffed bones into their pockets. Safely aboard the Dauphin, the two delirious men were seen “sucking the bones of their dead mess mates, which they were loath to part with.”

Article 3 Part 17 The five Essex survivors were reunited in Valparaiso, where they recuperated before sailing back for Nantucket. As Philbrick writes, Pollard had recovered enough to join several captains for dinner, and he told them the entire story of the Essex wreck and his three harrowing months at sea. One of the captains present returned to his room and wrote everything down, calling Pollard’s account “the most distressing narrative that ever came to my knowledge.” Years later, the third boat was discovered on Ducie Island; three skeletons were aboard. Miraculously, the three men who chose to stay on Henderson Island survived for nearly four months, mostly on shellfish and bird eggs, until an Australian ship rescued them.

Article 3 Part 18 Once they arrived in Nantucket, the surviving crewmen of the Essex were welcomed, largely without judgment. Cannibalism in the most dire of circumstances, it was reasoned, was a custom of the sea. (In similar incidents, survivors declined to eat the flesh of the dead but used it as bait for fish. But Philbrick notes that the men of the Essex were in waters largely devoid of marine life at the surface.)

Article 3 Part 19 Captain Pollard, however, was not as easily forgiven, because he had eaten his cousin. (One scholar later referred to the act as “gastronomic incest.”) Owen Coffin’s mother could not abide being in the captain’s presence. Once his days at sea were over, Pollard spent the rest of his life in Nantucket. Once a year, on the anniversary of the wreck of the Essex, he was said to have locked himself in his room and fasted in honor of his lost crewmen.

Article 3 Part 20 By 1852, Melville and Moby-Dick had begun their own slide into obscurity. Despite the author’s hopes, his book sold but a few thousand copies in his lifetime, and Melville, after a few more failed attempts at novels, settled into a reclusive life and spent 19 years as a customs inspector in New York City. He drank and suffered the death of his two sons. Depressed, he abandoned novels for poetry. But George Pollard’s fate was never far from his mind. In his poem Clarel he writes of A night patrolman on the quay Watching the bales till morning hour Through fair and foul. Never he smiled; Call him, and he would come; not sour In spirit, but meek and reconciled: Patient he was, he none withstood; Oft on some secret thing would brood.

Article: https://onthisdayinworld.com/felicette-the-first-cat-launched-into-space-in-1963/ Félicette, the first cat launched into space in 1963 On this day during on October 18, 1963, Félicette, a black and white female Parisian stray cat, became the first cat launched into space. She was launch on this day in 1963 as part of the French space program.

Article 1 part 2 However, Félicette, the only cat to have ever survive in the space, is now being recognise for her extraterrestrial achievements in the form of a bronze statue at the International Space University in Strasbourg, France. However, she was the only cat successfully launch into space. Félicette was one of 14 female cats traine for spaceflight. The cats had electrodes implant onto their skulls so their neurological activity could be monitor throughout the flight. Electrical impulses were appliy to the brain and a leg during the flight to stimulate responses.

Article 1 part 3 The capsule was recover 13 minutes after the rocket was ignit. Most of the data from the mission was of good quality, and Félicette survived the flight. A second feline was killed in a launch mishap on October 24, 1963. Félicette had the designation of C 341 before the flight, and after the flight the media gave her the name Félix, after Félix the Cat. Centre d’Enseignement et de Recherches de Médecine Aéronautique (CERMA) modified this to the feminine Félicette and adopted it as her official name.

Article 1 part 4 She has been commemorat on postage stamps around the world and a statue with her likeness is on display at the International Space University. France’s feline biological rocket payloads were preceded by rats and followed by monkeys. During on November 3, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Laika, the first animal to orbit the Earth. Laika is a stray dog found on the streets of Moscow, into space on Sputnik 2. Unfortunatly, she died in space.

Article 1 Part 5 - First animals in space - The first dogs to return from space alive were Belka and Strelka (‘Squirrel’ and ‘Little Arrow’). It launched on 19 August 1960 by the Soviet space programme. Strelka gave birth to six puppies. One of which was gave to US President John F Kennedy by the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. - The first fish in space were South American guppies. They spent 48 days in orbit on the Russian Salyut 5 spacecraft in 1976. - In 1973, a common-cross spider named Arabella became the first to spin a web in space. However, an answer to the question of whether webs can be spun in zero gravity. - An American monkey named Albert II went into space on a V2 in 1949 and a mouse in 1950. In the 1960s, guinea pigs, frogs, cats, wasps, beetles and a chimpanzee followed. - In 2007, Russian scientists celebrated after a cockroach named Hope became the first creature to conceive in space – giving birth to 33 cockroaches aboard a Foton-M satellite.

Article 2: https://www.edn.com/ti-announces-1st-transistor-radio-october-18-1954/ TI announces 1st transistor radio, October 18, 1954 Texas Instruments announced plans for the Regency TR-1, the first transistor radio to be commercially sold, on October 18, 1954. The move was a major one in tech history that would help propel transistors into mainstream use and also give new definition to portable electronics.

Article 2 Part 2 TI was producing germanium transistors at the time, but the market had been slow to respond, comfortable with vacuum tubes. However, the use of transistors instead of vacuum tubes as the amplifier elements meant that the device was much smaller, required less power to operate, and was more shock-resistant. Transistor use also allowed “instant-on” operation because there were no filaments to heat up.

Article 2 Part 3 As for mobility, the typical portable tube radio of the 1950s was about the size and weight of a lunchbox, and was powered by several heavy, non-rechargeable batteries. A transistor radio could fit in a pocket, weighed half a pound, and was powered by a single compact 9V battery.

Article 2 Part 4 With these factors in mind, TI’s executive vice president Pat Haggerty “decided that the electronics industry needed a transistor wake-up call and that a small radio would provide it,” Haggerty decided TI would develop the transistor radio business and the company’s semiconductor products division took on the challenge of developing a method for mass-producing germanium transistors.

Article 2 Part 5 In the spring of 1954 and with a prototype in hand, TI searched out an established radio manufacturer to develop and market a radio using its transistors. TI soon partnered with the Regency Division of Industrial Development Engineering Associates (IDEA). The “transistor radio apparatus” was patented by IDEA’s Richard Koch in 1955.

Article Part 6 Prototype transistor radios built prior to the TR-1 required manually selecting and matching electrical components to make them work, which in turn created a prohibitive cost per unit for large-scale production. Koch designed a feedback circuit that accommodated the tolerance of production-run components and let them be soldered directly into the boards without manual selection.

Article 2 Part 7 The new transistor radio would be introduced in New York and Los Angeles by mid-October to take advantage of holiday sales. The 5×3×1¼-inch radio used four TI transistors and a TI subminiature output transformer.

Article 2 Part 8 When it went on sale on November 1, the Regency TR-1 cost $49.95. Although its price was high in terms of 1950s dollars, nearly 100,000 of the pocket radios were sold in a year. The transistor radio remains one of the most popular communications devices. Some estimates suggest that there are more than seven billion transistor radios in existence. It was the start of a portable audio trend that would include the boombox, the Walkman, CD players, the iPod and other MP3 players, and now smartphones.