primeideal

"Mr. President, the Secretary of State has just resigned, and we need someone to finish out the term. Who do we trust to best represent the United States to the wider world?"

"Get me...Mr. Eagleburger."

On this date in 1994, Sergei Krikalev, a former USSR cosmonaut, took off on NASA's space shuttle as part of shuttle mission STS-60.

Krikalev had been on the space station Mir when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. The Baikonur Cosmodrome, which is where the missions were launched from, wound up in independent Kazakhstan rather than Russia. As part of the political wrangling, independent Russia offered a Kazakhstani cosmonaut a place on an upcoming mission, but he wasn't experienced enough, and the guy who would have relieved Krikalev got bumped. Krikalev didn't want to abandon Mir, so he stayed for twice as long as originally planned, a total of 311 days.

On a 2005 mission to the ISS, he would set the record for longest total duration in space (he's since been surpassed and is now third).

Why am I just learning about this, also where is the thinly-veiled speculative fictionalization.

Usually when I post wiki wanderings it's because I'm bored at work and mindlessly browsed "This Day In History" on Wikipedia until I found something exciting. However, I'm not always slacking off! Sometimes my work friends find weird wiki links and share them in group chat!

Anyway.

On this date in 1917, Jeanette Rankin became the first woman to hold federal office in the United States, as a House member from Montana. The 19th Amendment had not yet been passed; Rankin would be on a Committee for Woman's Suffrage and, in 1918, vote for a House resolution supporting the amendment (it was defeated by the Senate, and re-passed in 1919).

( mentions of Russia-Ukraine crisis )

This is a case of "was doing research for a fic, wandered down a rabbit hole" rather than "was really bored at work, got lost on Today In History." But, I am delighted that this has an entire page.

Did a lot of sightseeing/touristy things in the DC area over the last week, spending time with my family, which was great. One of the places (I'm not exactly sure which, but I think it was probably the post office/clock tower area) mentioned the history of DC--it was a planned city, originally designed by Pierre L'Enfant (who L'Enfant Plaza, an area with a big subway station), is named after. The survey of the boundaries was conducted by Andrew Ellicott, who is from the same family that Ellicott City in Maryland is named after, along with Benjamin Banneker, an astronomer/almanac writer, who is historically noteworthy for being a black polymath in early US history. There's been a lot of rightful celebration of him in terms of "hey, black people have always been at the forefront of science." However, it's not clear if he played a direct role in the city planning process. There's a wikipedia editor or editors who clearly has/have an axe to grind about "this guy is getting credit for things he probably never actually did, here is the fact-checking." Which is kind of niche, but I can relate to "please fact-check things before you quote them" and "unclear if we're doing this for accuracy or just the revisionist history feelings" mood.

However. One of the exhibits (again, thinking this may have been the post office, but not sure) was like "after L'Enfant got fed up with the project and left in a huff, Banneker was able to recreate his work from memory. Clearly they had a connection! Were they secret lovers maybe??!" and like, where is that RPF ship.

Also, although Banneker was not the first person to do so, he noted the 17-year appearance of the Brood X cicadas (the ones that are currently making a lot of noise in DC and Maryland right now) and pointed out that since they had last appeared in 1783, they would be due in 1800. Please give me all the RPF/"Hamilton"/etc. fic about the prime number cicadas!!

Canaan Banana was born on this date 85 years ago. He was the first president of Zimbabwe (which at that time was a ceremonial role, the Prime Minister was the head of government). In 1982, a law was passed forbidding citizens from making jokes about his name.

Piet Hein, designer/mathematician/witty poet/Danish Resistance member, was born on this date in 1905. His work was often featured in Martin Gardner's columns and books.

The other day this came to my mind:

Losing one glove is certainly painful
Especially caught in the rain,
And losing your hat as you make your way back
From the van where blood goes to drain.

James Stewart was a Canadian mathematician who wrote some very popular calculus textbooks: if you've ever seen "the textbook with the violin on the cover and the hole in it that looks like a curvy-S integral sign," that's Stewart's book.

He was also a violinist himself, a gay rights activist who was involved in protests during the 70s, and built his own architecturally-significant house with walls shaped like the curvy-S integral sign!

You may know that John Tyler, the tenth president of the United States (in office 1841-1845, lived 1791-1862) has two grandsons who are alive as of this writing, making him the earliest president (by some distance) to have living grandchildren. So obviously the question comes to mind, does he have any close competition in this category, and/or what has become of other presidential grandchildren.

Well, Grover Cleveland's granddaughter Philippa Foot invented the trolley problem.