Big Bird is still helping folks with new words.
On November 10, 1969, “Sesame Street,” a pioneering TV show that would teach generations of young children the alphabet and how to count, makes its broadcast debut. “Sesame Street,” with its memorable theme song (“Can you tell me how to get/How to get to Sesame Street”), went on to become the most widely viewed children’s program in the world. It has aired in more than 120 countries.
The show was the brainchild of Joan Ganz Cooney, a former documentary producer for public television. Cooney’s goal was to create programming for preschoolers that was both entertaining and educational. She also wanted to use TV as a way to help underprivileged 3- to 5- year-olds prepare for kindergarten. “Sesame Street” was set in a fictional New York neighborhood and included ethnically diverse characters and positive social messages.
Taking a cue from “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In,” a popular 1960's variety show, “Sesame Street” was built around short, often funny segments featuring puppets, animation and live actors. This format was hugely successful, although over the years some critics have blamed the show and its use of brief segments for shrinking children’s attention spans.
From the show’s inception, one of its most-loved aspects has been a family of puppets known as Muppets. Joan Ganz Cooney hired puppeteer Jim Henson (1936-1990) to create a cast of characters that became Sesame Street institutions, including Bert and Ernie, Cookie Monster, Oscar the Grouch, Grover and Big Bird.
The subjects tackled by “Sesame Street” have evolved with the times. In 2002, the South African version of the program, “Takalani Sesame,” introduced a 5-year-old Muppet character named Kami who is HIV-positive, in order to help children living with the stigma of a disease that has reached epidemic proportions. In 2006, a new Muppet, Abby Cadabby, made her debut and was positioned as the show’s first female star character, in an effort to encourage diversity and provide a strong role model for girls. In May 2019, a muppet character whose mother is battling addiction was introduced, acquainting kids with the opioid crisis.
Since its inception, over 80 million Americans have watched “Sesame Street.”
A happy Veterans Day to all this morning. Even the river reading was getting into the act.
At the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the Great War ends. At 5 a.m. that morning, Germany, bereft of manpower and supplies and faced with imminent invasion, signed an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car outside Compiégne, France. The First World War left nine million soldiers dead and 21 million wounded, with Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary, France and Great Britain each losing nearly a million or more lives. In addition, at least five million civilians died from disease, starvation, or exposure.
On June 28, 1914, in an event that is widely regarded as sparking the outbreak of World War I, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire, was shot to death with his wife by Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Ferdinand had been inspecting his uncle’s imperial armed forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina, despite the threat of Serbian nationalists who wanted these Austro-Hungarian possessions to join newly independent Serbia. Austria-Hungary blamed the Serbian government for the attack and hoped to use the incident as justification for settling the problem of Slavic nationalism once and for all. However, as Russia supported Serbia, an Austro-Hungarian declaration of war was delayed until its leaders received assurances from German leader Kaiser Wilhelm II that Germany would support their cause in the event of a Russian intervention.
On July 28, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and the tenuous peace between Europe’s great powers collapsed. On July 29, Austro-Hungarian forces began to shell the Serbian capital, Belgrade, and Russia, Serbia’s ally, ordered a troop mobilization against Austria-Hungary. France, allied with Russia, began to mobilize on August 1. France and Germany declared war against each other on August 3. After crossing through neutral Luxembourg, the German army invaded Belgium on the night of August 3-4, prompting Great Britain, Belgium’s ally, to declare war against Germany.
For the most part, the people of Europe greeted the outbreak of war with jubilation. Most patriotically assumed that their country would be victorious within months. Of the initial belligerents, Germany was most prepared for the outbreak of hostilities, and its military leaders had formatted a sophisticated military strategy known as the “Schlieffen Plan,” which envisioned the conquest of France through a great arcing offensive through Belgium and into northern France. Russia, slow to mobilize, was to be kept occupied by Austro-Hungarian forces while Germany attacked France.
The Schlieffen Plan was nearly successful, but in early September the French rallied and halted the German advance at the bloody Battle of the Marne near Paris. By the end of 1914, well over a million soldiers of various nationalities had been killed on the battlefields of Europe, and neither for the Allies nor the Central Powers was a final victory in sight. On the western front—the battle line that stretched across northern France and Belgium—the combatants settled down in the trenches for a terrible war of attrition.
In 1915, the Allies attempted to break the stalemate with an amphibious invasion of Turkey, which had joined the Central Powers in October 1914, but after heavy bloodshed the Allies were forced to retreat in early 1916. The year 1916 saw great offensives by Germany and Britain along the western front, but neither side accomplished a decisive victory. In the east, Germany was more successful, and the disorganized Russian army suffered terrible losses, spurring the outbreak of the Russian Revolution in 1917. By the end of 1917, the Bolsheviks had seized power in Russia and immediately set about negotiating peace with Germany. In 1918, the infusion of American troops and resources into the western front finally tipped the scale in the Allies’ favor. Germany signed an armistice agreement with the Allies on November 11, 1918.
World War I was known as the “war to end all wars” because of the great slaughter and destruction it caused. Unfortunately, the peace treaty that officially ended the conflict—the Treaty of Versailles of 1919—forced punitive terms on Germany that destabilized Europe and laid the groundwork for World War II.
In legislation that was passed in 1938, November 11 was "dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be hereafter celebrated and known as Armistice Day.'" As such, this new legal holiday honored World War I veterans.
I would have paid money to be on the retaliatory team.
On November 13, 2015, a cell of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant commits a string of terrorist attacks across Paris, killing 131 and injuring over 400. It was the deadliest day in France since World War II, as well as the deadliest operation ISIL has carried out in Europe to date.
2015 had already seen a number of major terrorist attacks, in France and elsewhere. In January, a group known as Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula carried out five separate attacks across the city, the deadliest of which occurred at the offices of satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. The following months, terrorists attacked a Jewish community center in Nice. In August, passengers prevented a self-identified “jihadist” from carrying out a shooting a train from Amsterdam to Paris, and on October 31 ISIL claimed responsibility for the bombing of Metrojet Flight 9268 en route to St. Petersburg, which killed 224.
The attacks on this day began with a series of suicide bombings outside the Stade de France, where the French national soccer team was playing Germany with President François Hollande in attendance. One person was killed, but further bloodshed was averted because the bombers failed to enter the stadium. The stadium attack was immediately followed by a string of shootings and another bombing at restaurants closer to the city center, culminating in a massacre and hostage-taking at the Bataclan theater in the middle of a sold-out rock concert. After more than two hours, the French police stormed the theater, resulting in the deaths of the three assailants.
As France mourned, its government declared a state of emergency and stepped up its bombing campaign against ISIL. On November 18, one of a series of police raids across the region resulted in the death of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the alleged mastermind of the attack. Abaaoud held dual Belgian and Moroccan citizenship, while seven of the nine Paris attackers were either Belgian or French. The perpetrators had ties to ISIL’s Brussels cell, which coordinated a number of attacks in Europe including a string of suicide bombings in the Belgian capital the following March. Though a number of ISIL-inspired stabbings and attacks, usually by one or two isolated perpetrators, occurred across France throughout 2016 and 2017, the Paris attacks represent the high-water mark for ISIL’s activities in Europe.
What happened at the Bataclan?
Three heavily armed gunmen launched an attack at the Bataclan concert hall that killed 90 people and critically injured many others. What happened?www.bbc.com
He is my hero. I have been working for the last five or six years on Darwin Dope. Looking for that strain that will thrive on neglect. My veg buddy did go a long way in that direction this year. I had lost all my spring crop plants to frost, so I gave him 5 young plants. Three Ass Cheese f2 and two Blueberry My Ass. Anyway the frost did a number on them too, and he thought they had died so he didn't check on them again until they started to smell. Turned out at least three females and a male lived. So we had AC f3 seeds and BBMA X AC f2 in the spring. He cut the buds off and let them reveg. But in the mean time, there were eight volunteers with one being a male. From their location (and looks) they are most likely AC f3's. But since there is no way to really know, I'm calling the seeds from the two I ended up with V1 X V8 and V2 X V8.on this day....Darwins....On the Origin of Species was published.....
On the Origin of Species - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
nice....and ready for round 2, i'm guessing.....He is my hero. I have been working for the last five or six years on Darwin Dope. Looking for that strain that will thrive on neglect. My veg buddy did go a long way in that direction this year. I had lost all my spring crop plants to frost, so I gave him 5 young plants. Three Ass Cheese f2 and two Blueberry My Ass. Anyway the frost did a number on them too, and he thought they had died so he didn't check on them again until they started to smell. Turned out at least three females and a male lived. So we had AC f3 seeds and BBMA X AC f2 in the spring. He cut the buds off and let them reveg. But in the mean time, there were eight volunteers with one being a male. From their location (and looks) they are most likely AC f3's. But since there is no way to really know, I'm calling the seeds from the two I ended up with V1 X V8 and V2 X V8.
The re-veg plants did get really big and now we have a good supply of AC f4 (most likely) and BBMA X AC f3 (most likely) seeds too.