On April 29, 1770, the British HM Bark Endeavor became the first European vessel to reach the east coast of Australia after it landed at Botany Bay near modern day Sydney. At the helm was James Cook, a mariner who would go on to circumnavigate the globe twice and explore everything from the Bering Strait and the islands of the South Pacific to the treacherous ice floes surrounding Antarctica. Cook’s three voyages of discovery helped fill in many of the blank spots on Europeans’ world maps, but his mistreatment of natives in Hawaii eventually led to an untimely death. Captain James Cook FRS (7 November 1728 – 14 February 1779) was a British explorer, navigator, cartographer, and captain in the Royal Navy. Cook made detailed maps of Newfoundland prior to making three voyages to the Pacific Ocean, during which he achieved the first recorded European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands, and the first recorded circumnavigation of New Zealand. Cook joined the British merchant navy as a teenager and joined the Royal Navy in 1755. He saw action in the Seven Years' War, and subsequently surveyed and mapped much of the entrance to the Saint Lawrence River during the siege of Quebec. This helped bring Cook to the attention of the Admiralty and Royal Society. This notice came at a crucial moment in both Cook's career and the direction of British overseas exploration, and led to his commission in 1766 as commander of HM Bark Endeavour for the first of three Pacific voyages. In three voyages Cook sailed thousands of miles across largely uncharted areas of the globe. He mapped lands from New Zealand to Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean in greater detail and on a scale not previously achieved. As he progressed on his voyages of discovery he surveyed and named features, and recorded islands and coastlines on European maps for the first time. He displayed a combination of seamanship, superior surveying and cartographic skills, physical courage and an ability to lead men in adverse conditions. Cook was attacked and killed while attempting to kidnap the native chief of Hawaii during his third exploratory voyage in the Pacific in 1779. He left a legacy of scientific and geographical knowledge which was to influence his successors well into the 20th century, and numerous memorials worldwide have been dedicated to him. Two hundred forty-five years after he landed in Australia, learn 10 surprising facts about the explorer who vowed to sail “as far as I think it possible for man to go.” 1.) Cook Joining The Royal Navy Relatively Late In Life: Cook worked on a Yorkshire farm in his youth before winning an apprenticeship with a merchant sailing company at age 17. He cut his teeth as a mariner on shipping voyages in the choppy waters of North and Baltic Seas, and spent the next decade rising through the ranks and mastering the art of navigation. He was being groomed to become a captain, but in 1755, he shocked his superiors by quitting his merchant sailing career and enlisting in the British Royal Navy as a common Seaman. Cook was 26 - far older than most new recruits - yet it didn’t take long for the Navy to recognize his talent. He was promoted to Ship’s Master in only two years, and later became one of the first men in British Naval history to rise through the enlisted ranks and take command of his own vessel. 2.) He Was An Expert Mapmaker: Cook first rose to prominence as a cartographer during the Seven Years’ War, when his detailed charts of the Saint Lawrence River helped the British pull off a surprise attack against French-held Quebec. In the early 1760's, he was given a ship and tasked with charting the island of Newfoundland off the coast of Canada. The map he produced was so accurate that it was still in use in the 20th century. Cook’s skill at charting the seas would later become a crucial tool in his explorer’s arsenal. He won command of his first round-the-world voyage in part because he could be trusted to navigate in uncharted territory and bring home precise maps of the lands he discovered. 3.) First Voyage Included Secret Mission From British Gov: Cook’s career as an explorer began in August 1768, when he left England on HM Bark Endeavour with nearly 100 crewmen in tow. Their journey was ostensibly a scientific expedition - they were charged with sailing to Tahiti to observe the transit of Venus across the face of the sun - but it also had a hidden military agenda. Cook carried sealed orders instructing him to seek out the “Great Southern Continent,” an undiscovered landmass that was believed to lurk somewhere near the bottom of the globe. The explorer followed orders and sailed south to the 40th parallel, but found no evidence of the fabled continent. He then turned west and circled New Zealand, proving it was a pair of islands and not connected to a larger landmass. Cook would later resume his search for the Southern Continent during his second circumnavigation of the globe in the early 1770's, and came tantalizingly close to sighting Antarctica before pack ice forced him to turn back. 4.) His Ship HM Endeavour Nearly Sank On The Great Barrier Reef: After landing in Australia during his first voyage, Cook pointed his ship north and headed for the Dutch seaport of Batavia. Because he was in un-mapped territory, he had no idea he was sailing directly into the razor-sharp coral formations of the Great Barrier Reef. On June 11, 1770, his ship Endeavour slammed into a coral reef and began taking on water, endangering both his crew and his priceless charts of his Pacific discoveries. Cook’s men frantically pumped water out of the holds and threw cannons and other equipment overboard to lighten the ship’s weight. They even used an old sail to try and plug a hole in their hull. After more than 20 desperate hours, they finally stopped the leak and limped toward the Australian coast. It would take Cook nearly two months of repairs to make his ship seaworthy again. 5.) Cook Helped Pioneer New Methods For Warding Off Scurvy: In the 18th century, the specter of scurvy - a disease caused by a lack of vitamin C - loomed over every long distance sea voyage. Cook, however, managed to keep all three of his expeditions nearly scurvy-free. This was partially because of his obsession with procuring fresh food at each of his stops, but many have also credited his good fortune to an unlikely source: sauerkraut. While Cook didn’t know the cure or cause of scurvy, he did know that the nutrient-rich pickled cabbage seemed to keep the disease at bay, so he brought several tons of it on his voyages. His only problem was getting his crew to eat it. To trick them, Cook simply had sauerkraut “dressed every day” for the officers’ table. When the enlisted men saw their superiors eating it, they assumed it was a delicacy and requested some for themselves. 6.) Even Britain’s Enemies Respected Cook: While Cook’s journeys took place during a time when Britain was variously at war with the United States, Spain and France, his reputation as a pioneering explorer allowed him to travel the seas with relative impunity. In July 1772, a squadron of Spanish vessels briefly detained his ships, only to release them after they realized Cook in command. Likewise, when Cook’s third voyage set sail during the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin wrote a memo to colonial ship captains instructing them to treat the British vessels as “common friends to mankind” if they encountered them at sea. 7.) He Searched For The Northwest Passage: In 1776, a 47-year-old Cook set sail on his third voyage of discovery—this time a search for the elusive Northwest Passage in the Arctic. After traveling halfway around the world, he led the ships HMS Resolution and Discovery on a perilous survey of the upper coasts of western Canada and Alaska. Cook came within 50 miles of the western entrance to the passage, but his attempts to locate it were ultimately thwarted by freezing weather, violent currents and heavy ice floes in the Bering Sea. When the extreme conditions drove his crew to the brink of mutiny, Cook reluctantly turned south for the summer. He would die before he had a chance to resume his search. 8.) Natives Mistook Him For A God When He Landed On The Hawaiian Islands: During Cook’s third voyage, he became the first European to set foot on Hawaii, which he called the “Sandwich Islands” after his patron the Earl of Sandwich. Hawaiians at Kealakekua Bay celebrated Cook’s January 1779 landing with joyous celebrations, and for good reason: by some strange coincidence, the explorer’s arrival coincided with an annual festival honoring the Hawaiian fertility god Lono. Since the natives had never seen white men or massive sailing ships like Cook’s, they assumed he was their deity and lavished him with feasts and gifts. The Europeans responded by greedily stripping Kealakekua of food and supplies, but when one of Cook’s sailors died from a stroke, the natives realized the strangely dressed Europeans weren’t immortals after all. From then on, Cook’s relationship with the Hawaiians became increasingly strained. 9.) He Suffered A Grisly Death: While docked for repairs in Hawaii in February 1779, Cook became enraged after a group of natives stole a cutter ship from one of his boats. He went ashore and tried to take King Kalani‘ōpu‘u hostage, but the Hawaiians feared their leader would be killed and swarmed to his aid. When Cook’s ship Discovery fired its cannons at another group of Hawaiians, the explorer panicked and discharged a rifle before fleeing to a waiting boat. He didn’t get far before he was pelted by stones and struck by a club. A Hawaiian warrior then brandished a knife - a gift from Cook - and plunged it into his back. Cook fell into the surf and was repeatedly stabbed and bashed with rocks. After he perished, the Hawaiians ritualistically prepared his corpse as they would that of a king. They preserved his hands in sea salt, then roasted the rest of his body in a pit before cleaning his bones. 10.) NASA Named Spacecraft After His Ships: Cook explored and mapped more territory than any navigator of his era, and his achievements later saw him honored by NASA. Cook’s HMS Discovery was one of several historical vessels that inspired the name of the third space shuttle, and NASA later named their final shuttle “Endeavour” after the ship he commanded on his first circumnavigation of the globe. When the shuttle Discovery made its final space flight in 2011, its crew carried a special medallion made by the Royal Society in honor of Cook.
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The Los Angeles Hollywood sign is very popular and familiar to most Americans. This sign was built in 1929 with wood and was previously named “HOLLYWOODLAND.” It was changed to “HOLLYWOOD” in 1949. The sign is the worldwide symbol of the entertainment industry, with the famous message that this place is full of magic and imagination. Now, the Hollywood sign is famous all around the world and can be viewed from everywhere as it represents the industry. The history of this sign is also interesting. The sign was made in 1923 to promote real estate in the Santa Monica Mountains. These letters were 45 feet high and were outlined by 4000 light bulbs. The sign HOLLYWOODLAND glowed in night and look amazing. The land was then given to the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce in 1949. Over the course of more than half a century, the sign, designed to stand for only 18 months, sustained extensive damage and deterioration. During the early 1940s, Albert Kothe (the sign's official caretaker) caused an accident that destroyed the letter H, as seen in many historical pictures. Kothe, driving while inebriated, was nearing the top of Mount Lee when he lost control of his vehicle and drove off the cliff behind the H. While Kothe was not injured, the 1928 Ford Model A was destroyed, as was the letter. In 1949 the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce began a contract with the City of Los Angeles Parks Department to repair and rebuild the sign. The contract stipulated that "LAND" be removed to spell "Hollywood" and reflect the district, not the "Hollywoodland" housing development. The Parks Department dictated that all subsequent illumination would be at the Chamber's expense, so the Chamber opted not to replace the light bulbs. The 1949 effort gave it new life, but the sign's unprotected wood and sheet metal structure continued to deteriorate. By the 1970s, the first O had splintered and broken, resembling a lowercase u, and the third O had fallen down completely, leaving the severely dilapidated sign reading "HuLLYWO D". Following the 1978 public campaign to restore the sign, the following nine donors gave $27,777 each (which totaled $250,000): ⭐ H: Terrence Donnelly (publisher of the Hollywood Independent Newspaper) ⭐ O: Giovanni Mazza (Italian movie producer) ⭐ L: Les Kelley (originator of the Kelley Blue Book) ⭐ L: Gene Autry (actor) ⭐ Y: Hugh Hefner (founder of Playboy magazine) ⭐ W: Andy Williams (singer) ⭐ O: Warner Bros. Records ⭐ O: Alice Cooper (singer), who donated in memory of close friend and comedian Groucho Marx, and who joked that he would also donate an "O" from his last name ⭐ D: Thomas Pooley (donated in the name of Matthew Williams) Though there have been many phrases similar to what we know now today as Murphy's Law, the most common connection between the phrase and a person has always remained the same and most widely accepted as you will read below. Murphy's law is an adage or epigram that is typically stated as: Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Famed writer, Arthur Bloch, in the first volume (1977) of his Murphy's Law, and Other Reasons Why Things Go WRONG series, prints a letter that he received from George E. Nichols, a quality assurance manager with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at NASA. Nichols recalled an event that occurred in 1949 at Edwards Air Force Base, Muroc, California that, according to him, is the origination of Murphy's law, and first publicly recounted by USAF Col. John Paul Stapp. An excerpt from the letter reads: The law's namesake was Capt. Ed Murphy, a development engineer from Wright Field Aircraft Lab. Frustration with a strap transducer which was malfunctioning due to an error in wiring the strain gage bridges caused him to remark – "If there is any way to do it wrong, he will" – referring to the technician who had wired the bridges at the Lab. I assigned Murphy's law to the statement and the associated variations. A similar bit was found in the following article, which was excerpted from The Desert Wings (March 3, 1978); Murphy's Law ("If anything can go wrong, it will") was born at Edwards Air Force Base in 1949 at North Base. It was named after Capt. Edward A. Murphy, an engineer working on Air Force Project MX981, (a project) designed to see how much sudden deceleration a person can stand in a crash. One day, after finding that a transducer was wired wrong, he cursed the technician responsible and said, "If there is any way to do it wrong, he'll find it." The contractor's project manager kept a list of "laws" and added this one, which he called Murphy's Law. Actually, what he did was take an old law that had been around for years in a more basic form and give it a name. Shortly afterwards, the Air Force doctor (Dr. John Paul Stapp) gave a press conference. He said that their good safety record on the project was due to a firm belief in Murphy's Law and in the necessity to try and circumvent it. Aerospace manufacturers picked it up and used it widely in their ads during the next few months, and soon it was being quoted in many news and magazine articles. Murphy's Law as we know it today, was born. More on Capt. Murphy below: ★ Birth Name: Edward Aloysius Murphy Jr. ★ Nickname(s): Ed ★ Born: January 11, 1918; Panama Canal Zone ★ Died: July 17, 1990 (aged 72) ★ Allegiance: United States of America ★ Service/Branch: United States Army, United States Air Force ★ Years Of Service: 1940 – 1947 (USA), 1947 – 1952 (USAF) ★ Rank: Major ★ Battles/Wars: Pacific Theatre of World War II, Korean War ★ Other Work: Research in aerospace engineering and reliability engineering Edward Aloysius Murphy Jr. (January 11, 1918 – July 17, 1990) was an American aerospace engineer who worked on safety-critical systems. Born in the Panama Canal Zone in 1918, Murphy was the eldest of five children. After attending high school in New Jersey, he went to the United States Military Academy at West Point, graduating in 1940. The same year he accepted a commission into the United States Army, and undertook pilot training with the United States Army Air Corps in 1941. During World War II he served in the Pacific Theater in India, China and Burma (now known as Myanmar), achieving the rank of major. Following the end of hostilities, in 1947 Murphy attended the United States Air Force Institute of Technology, becoming R&D Officer at the Wright Air Development Center of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. It was while here that he became involved in the high-speed rocket sled experiments (USAF project MX981, 1949) which led to the coining of Murphy's law. Murphy himself was reportedly unhappy with the commonplace interpretation of his law, which is seen as capturing the essential "cussedness" of inanimate objects. Murphy regarded the law as crystallizing a key principle of defensive design, in which one should always assume worst-case scenarios. Murphy was said by his son to have regarded the many jocular versions of the law as "ridiculous, trivial and erroneous." His attempts to have the law taken more seriously were unsuccessful. In 1952, having resigned from the United States Air Force, Murphy carried out a series of rocket acceleration tests at Holloman Air Force Base, then returned to California to pursue a career in aircraft cockpit design for a series of private contractors. He worked on crew escape systems for some of the most famous experimental aircraft of the 20th century, including the F-4 Phantom II, the XB-70 Valkyrie, the SR-71 Blackbird, the B-1 Lancer, and the X-15 rocket plane. During the 1960s, he worked on safety and life support systems for Project Apollo, and ended his career with work on pilot safety and computerized operation systems on the Apache helicopter. The Habsburg Dynasty was a dominant royal house across all of Europe for many centuries. In addition to ruling Austria for more than six centuries, royal marriages extended their power to Bohemia, Hungary, and even Spain. The enormous family branched off in many directions. Eventually, it got to a point where their strategic marriages would not increase their power, considering they already ruled most of the major courts in Europe. It finally came to a point in the late 16th century where the only monarchs left to marry were other Habsburgs. Thus, records indicate rampant incest through most of the Habsburgs’ 200-year reign of Spain in the 16th and 17th centuries. The powerful Habsburg dynasty finally crumbled in 1700 when King Charles II died with no heirs to take the throne. After generations of inbreeding, historians suggest Charles II was infertile due to congenital deformations, leading to the extinction of the Habsburg bloodline. The house also produced emperors and kings of the Kingdom of Bohemia, Kingdom of England (Jure uxoris King), Kingdom of Germany, Kingdom of Hungary, Kingdom of Croatia, Second Mexican Empire, Kingdom of Ireland (Jure uxoris King), Kingdom of Portugal, and Habsburg Spain, as well as rulers of several Dutch and Italian principalities. From the 16th century, following the reign of Charles V, the dynasty was split between its Austrian and Spanish branches. The House takes its name from Habsburg Castle, a fortress built in the 1020s in present-day Switzerland, in the canton of Aargau, by Count Radbotof Klettgau, who chose to name his fortress Habsburg. His grandson Otto II was the first to take the fortress name as his own, adding "Count of Habsburg" to his title. The House of Habsburg gathered dynastic momentum through the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries. By 1276, Count Radbot's seventh generation descendant Rudolph of Habsburg had moved the family's power base from Habsburg Castle to the Duchy of Austria. Rudolph had become King of Germany in 1273, and the dynasty of the House of Habsburg was truly entrenched in 1276 when Rudolph became ruler of Austria, which the Habsburgs ruled until 1918. The senior Spanish branch ended upon the death of Charles II of Spain in 1700 and was replaced by the House of Bourbon. The remaining Austrian branch became extinct in the male line in 1740 with the death of Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI, and completely in 1780 with the death of his eldest daughter Maria Theresa of Austria. It was succeeded by the Vaudemont branch of the House of Lorraine. The new successor house styled itself formally as the House of Habsburg-Lorraine (German: Habsburg-Lothringen), and because it was often confusingly still referred to as the House of Habsburg, historians use the unofficial appellation of the Habsburg Monarchy for the countries and provinces that were ruled by the junior Austrian branch of the House of Habsburg between 1521 and 1780 and then by the successor branch of Habsburg-Lorraine until 1918. Audie Leon Murphy (20 June 1925 – 28 May 1971) was one of the most decorated American combat soldiers of World War II, receiving every military combat award for valor available from the U.S. Army, as well as French and Belgian awards for heroism. Murphy received the Medal of Honor for valor demonstrated at the age of 19 for single-handedly holding off an entire company of German soldiers for an hour at the Colmar Pocket in France in January 1945, then leading a successful counterattack while wounded and out of ammunition. Murphy was born into a large sharecropper family in Hunt County, Texas. His father abandoned them, and his mother died when he was a teenager. Murphy left school in fifth grade to pick cotton and find other work to help support his family; his skill with a hunting rifle was a necessity for putting food on the table. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Murphy's older sister helped him to falsify documentation about his birthdate to meet the minimum-age requirement for enlisting in the military. Turned down by the Navy and the Marine Corps, he enlisted in the Army. He first saw action in the Allied invasion of Sicily and the Battle of Anzio, and in 1944 participated in the liberation of Rome and invasion of southern France. Murphy fought at Montélimar, and led his men on a successful assault at the L'Omet quarry near Cleurie in northeastern France in October. After the war, Murphy enjoyed a 21-year acting career. He played himself in the 1955 autobiographical film To Hell and Back, based on his 1949 memoirs of the same name, but most of his roles were in westerns. He made guest appearances on celebrity television shows and starred in the series Whispering Smith. Murphy was a fairly accomplished songwriter, and bred quarter horses in California and Arizona, becoming a regular participant in horse racing. Suffering from what would today be termed posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), he slept with a loaded handgun under his pillow and looked for solace in addictive sleeping pills. In his last few years, he was plagued by money problems, but refused offers to appear in alcohol and cigarette commercials because he did not want to set a bad example. Murphy died in a plane crash in Virginia in 1971 shortly before his 46th birthday, and was interred with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. The military career of Murphy encompassed two separate careers. His U. S. Army service covered nine World War II campaigns fought by the 3rd Infantry Division: Tunisia, Sicily, Naples-Foggia, Anzio, Rome-Arno, Southern France, Ardennes-Alsace, Rhineland and Central Europe. He lied about his age to enlist in the United States Army in 1942. Before his 20th birthday he had earned every Army combat award for valor available during his period of service and had risen to the rank of first lieutenant. On the day he was awarded the Medal of Honor for his January 1945 actions at the Colmar Pocket in France, he was considered to be America's most decorated World War II soldier and received national recognition as such when Life magazine made him their cover story. His superior officers, as well as the Speaker of the U. S. House of Representatives, encouraged him to apply for enrollment at West Point and offered to provide any assistance and influence needed to help him be accepted as a cadet. Murphy eventually passed on the opportunity of enrollment at West Point, in part because of limitations resulting from his war injuries. At the end of his active Army service, he was given 50 percent disability classification and transferred to the Officers' Reserve Corps. The psychological effects of the war remained with him for the rest of his life in the form of combat stress. Although the military did little for Murphy's post-war stress, he was publicly forthcoming about it in hopes of prodding the government into providing better treatment and medical benefits for other veterans suffering the same issues. At the 1950 onset of the Korean War, Murphy was commissioned with the rank of captain in the 36th Infantry Division of the Texas National Guard. He was charged with training new recruits and fully believed that he and the 36th would be sent to the Korean front for combat duty. His film career began to take off in 1951, limiting Murphy's Guard involvement. The Korean Armistice Agreement of 1953 ended hostilities without the 36th ever being sent to Korea. Murphy, however, remained with the Guard actively participating in recruitment drives and allowing his name and image to be used for that purpose. He retired with the rank of major in 1966 and was transferred to the United States Army Reserve. In 1969 the Army transferred him to Retired Reserve. For his combined service in the Army and the Guard, his home state posthumously awarded Murphy the Texas Legislative Medal of Honor. For the list of awards and honors received please check: wikipedia.org/wiki/Audie_Murphy_honors_and_awards |
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