1: The Hindenburg Disaster
“Oh the humanity.” Words now immortalised into the canon of history. Spoken by reporter Herb Morrison during one of the most famous broadcasts in radio journalism history, he was referring to the 62 survivors of the 1937 German passenger airship crash, resulting in 35 fatalities. Then billed as the largest and safest airship to ever be constructed, it was never confirmed why the Zeppelin failed its landing on the banks of Lakehurst, New Jersey. Experts point to hydrogen leakage.
2: Tunnel opened linking England and France
The tunnel underneath the English Channel, aka the chunnel, was completed in 1994 after six years of construction. Composed of three separate tunnels, it is the longest underwater tunnel in the world, stretching 38km and connects Folkestone, Kent to Coquelles, Pas-de-Calais. The tunnel’s opening laid the proverbial groundwork for the Euro Star tunnel. The fastest connection to mainland Europe from the UK, it plays an enormous role in carbon footprint reduction from pendulum travellers and facilitates international trade.
It is estimated that 3,400 lorries traverse the channel everyday via the tunnel. In summer 2022, the tunnel experienced severe blockage that lasted for multiple hours due to Operation Brock, a post-Brexit traffic-management system instituted on the Kent side. Operation Brock has since been scaled back.
3. Elon Musk founded SpaceX
In 2002, Elon Musk founded the Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX). Musk’s purported goal is to increase space travel and reduce transportation costs, with eventual plans to colonise Mars. Commercial businesses and wealthy individuals pay a base fee of $62 million for satellite launches. Having launched 60 missions in 2022 alone, the company has aspirations to increase operations in 2023. The ramifications of privatisation of space travel have yet to be seen, but are unnerving to say the least.
4. WalMart became largest company by revenue on Fortune 500 list
With $5.1 trillion cumulative revenue, Walmart has now retained top spot for the tenth consecutive year since 2013. The epidemic growth of WalMart has resulted in the WalMart effect, a term that describes the buying power of WalMart stores monopolising the neighbourhoods they infiltrate and the subsequent closure of mom and pop shops and small businesses. Low wages and poor benefits are also characteristic of this phenomenon. Founded in the 1960s, WalMart began to globalise in the 1990s, starting in Mexico. WalMart stores can now be found in Cananda, Argentina, Brazil, China, Germany, South Korea, Japan, and the UK.
5. Nuclear News
West Germany joined NATO on May 6, 1955. Seven years later on the same day, though also a NATO member, the United States fired the first ever nuclear warhead from the Polaris submarine Ethan Allen as well as performed nuclear tests in the Pacific Ocean. Also on this day, France performed nuclear tests in the Mururoa atoll in 1986, and one year later the USSR performed tests at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk. Long term consequences of nuclear testing on soil, water, and surfaces are to some extent unknown, but include radioactive residue and radionuclide sediment in seabeds. NATO has stated that it is committed to arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation, and that as long as nuclear weapons exist, it will remain an alliance. Meanwhile, the connection between nuclear testing and nuclear weapons remains paradoxically nebulous.
6. World’s first postage stamp
The Penny Black, the first ever adhesive postage stamp, was released in Great Britain in 1840. Schoolmaster Rowland Hill lobbyed to democratise the post by creating a readily accessible, pre-paid option to send lettres. Before creation of the stamp, postage was paid by the receiver at a substantial cost.
Though its namesake indicates its price, one penny, the stamp is now a collectors’ item valued anywhere from £350 to £1,500.
Pictured on the stamp is a profile of Queen Victoria. To this day, all British stamps bear a portrait or silhouette of a monarch somewhere on the design. Old habits die hard, but if you’re going to celebrate a monarch you may as well send a lettre.
7. Diversity and inclusion milestones
United States President Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act of 1960, securing the right to vote for people of colour, particularly African Americans. The act also helped to accelerate the termination of Jim Crow Laws, which had limited access for all people of colour to public facilities like transportation, education, and recreation.
Over thirty years later in South Africa, Nelson Mandela and ANC won the first post apartheid election in 1994. The end of apartheid represented a critical turning point for globalised geographies of hegemony, an issue which continues to remain unresolved the world over.
8: International No-Diet Day
This is an annual international holiday that celebrates body positivity and addresses the dangerous social and public health repercussions of contemporary diet culture. Instead of promoting the toxic yo-yo diet lifestyle, No-Diet Day encourages sustainable eating practices through destigmatisation of foods. A welcome departure from “cheat days” and junk food guilt, today is a day to just eat and get on with it. It is also the day that France banned too-thin models in 2017 and made the labelling of digitally enhanced photos mandatory in media advertising.
9: Happy Birthday to…
James Turrell, American architectural artist and one of the founders of the 1960s California Light and Space Movement.
Sigmund Freud, Austrian neurologist and the literal father of psychoanalysis. Freud conceived most notably of the id, the ego, and the super-ego as the three aspects of the mind responsible for conscious and unconscious decisions.
Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, son of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Born in England and raised in the United States, the question as to whether this baby would be regarded as a royal or not occupied an all too considerable portion of the news.
10. The Putlizter Prize was awarded to
John Steinbeck in 1940, one year after publishing The Grapes of Wrath. The book confronts issues of labour and addresses injustice in its various forms manifested by capitalist systems. Controversial at the time, and viewed by some as communist propaganda, the book also has an undercurrent of hope in humans’ ability to endure.
John F Kennedy in 1957 for Profiles in Courage. Dedicated to his wife, Jaqueline, Kennedy was inspired to write this book from overcoming his own battles with physical bodily pain from injuries sustained during World War II as a PT boat commander. The book focussed on the careers of eight United States Senators whom Kennedy regarded as showing great courage under pressure from their respective parties and constituents.
Barbara Tuchman in 1963 for The Guns of August. The book takes place in Britain during the first month of WWI, addressing the forceful and swift precipitations of war within society and day to day life.
After winning the award, Tuchman revisited the subject of the social attitude to war in a collection of eight essays published in 1966 titled The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War.
Tuchman was the first woman in history to win the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction.
