They huddled together on large steamboats, “eating wind and tasting waves” for nearly three weeks, before they finally saw land. They had scraped and borrowed funds to get on those boats to escape economic and political economic instability and to make a better life for their families back home. Many of them dreamed of Gam Saan, or Gold Mountain, thinking that this new land was filled with golden fields and rivers. But most would end up on a goldless, small island off the San Francisco Bay – Angel Island. Continue reading
Michel Rolle: 1652: That hair! So French™! A mathematician, which explains the adult onset acne*** (or is that supposed to be scruff?), he developed Rolle’s Theorem which states that “a differentiable function which attains equal values at two distinct points must have a point somewhere between them where the first derivative (the slope of the tangent line to the graph of the function) is zero” or f'(c)=0. He also hated calculus, which isn’t surprising since Wikipedia says he deserves to be credited with the invention of Gaussian elimination which stems from Newton’s notes and Newton invented calculus. J’accuse Rolle! J’accuse! The French™! Always at war with The English®! There is no known portrait of Rolle. Newton slashed them all****.
1774: Jean Baptiste-Biot: Watch out everyone! Rocks can fall from the sky at any moment! Not only that, they’ve been sent this way by aliens! Three run homer for the Orion Warriors! And The French™! They believed him! Meteorites are now considered scientific fact as opposed to sports history, which, really is a shame, because the Warriors went all the way that year for the first time in a lightyear*****.
LIFE!
1894: Nikita Khrushchev: Led to rapid baldness due to the stress of his jealousy over his predecessor’s magnanimous mustache, the lovable fat man of the Soviet Union caused many an inconvenience for the glorious post-war American government, not to mention his people (and several dogs), whom he shot into space on rockets made out of string and bubble gum, hurtling to the stars, hurtling to their deaths. He also banned Doctor Zhivago, regretted banning it, forced the author to decline his Nobel Prize and let his people become the most detestable group of people known to man: Tourists.
1865: Abraham Lincoln: What an inconvenient time to die, man. At the theater? With your best hag? By the hands of a failed actor? Gee, whiz. America’s First Gay President had to deal with other inconveniences though, including but not limited to: That inconvenient Civil War (right when cotton and tobacco prices were dropping!), those bleeding hearts inconveniently fighting over his suspension of habeas corpus (damned human rights), and Mary Todd’s insanity (listen lady, it aint gonna happen!)!
Folks, meet Ah Be Ignorant. We’ll call her Abby, and I will reveal nothing else about her except her own words. On a website which won’t be named and isn’t the one I fled in droves, Abby and I both read an article about an archeolgical dig that discovered a man’s remains from The Copper Age (about 5000 years ago). Our prehistoric gent was buried facing to the left, with a number of jars and pots.
1705: William Cookworthy: Cookworthy? Not according to his wife! He did, however, kill scurvy by telling those saucy seamen to make sure to eat their fruits! The seamen, naturally, misinterpreted his dietary suggestion and continued to succumb to the disease until sometime later. Always carry Trojans and a bottle of orange juice, boys!
Amati made violins, but no one can name a single luthier (that’s violin-maker) other than Antoni Stradivari, so, better luck next time Nick! Still, Nick’s violins are generally agreed to be the best in his family, at least for modern violinists and who can afford a Stradivarius anyways? Those things cost more than a one bedroom apartment in Chelsea. We’d rather have the apartment and use the savings on an Amati if we played violin. However, we don’t. We started taking lessons briefly after hearing Neon Bible but we didn’t really take it seriously and quit after a month or so.
238: The Battle of Carthage: Led by the father/son empiric duo of Gordian the First and Gordian the Second, the Romans fell to the Numidians (modern-day Libya). Gordian the Second was killed in battle, and upon hearing the news, Gordian the First, who was 80 at the time, killed himself.
