Category Archives: History

Every year brings historic achievements on Billboards charts, and 2021 was no different.

Among 2021 highlights, Olivia Rodrigo roared in with an unprecedented chart start, The Weeknds Blinding Lights became the biggest hit in the Billboard Hot 100s history and Drake matched a mark that only The Beatles had previously accomplished in 1964.

Lets look back at 21 feats that padded Billboards record books in 2021.

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Drake became the first artist to debut Nos. 1, 2 and 3 on the Hot 100 simultaneously, thanks to Whats Next, Wants and Needs (featuring Lil Baby) and Lemon Pepper Freestyle (featuring Rick Ross), respectively, on the chart dated March 20.

Justin Bieber became the first solo male to debut at No. 1 on the Hot 100 and Billboard 200 in the same week, thanks to Peaches (featuring Daniel Caesar and Giveon) and Justice (April3).

Nearly two years after winning the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest, Dutch singer-songwriter Duncan Laurences Arcade became the competitions first victorious title to hit the Hot 100 (April 17) in 45 years, since Save Your Kisses for Me by Englands Brotherhood of Man, which reached No. 27 in 1976. Arcade went on to hit No. 30. Plus, this years winning Eurovision act, Mneskin, rose to No. 13 in November with its first Hot 100 entry, Beggin.

Ariana Grande joined Paul McCartney as the only artists with three No. 1 duets ever on the Hot 100, thanks to Save Your Tears, with The Weeknd, which topped the tally (May 8) after the arrival of its remix with Grande. It followed her Rain on Me, with Lady Gaga, and Stuck With U, with Bieber, both in 2020. McCartneys dominant duets: Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey, with Linda McCartney (1971); Ebony and Ivory, with Stevie Wonder (1982); and Say Say Say, with Michael Jackson (1983-84).

Gera MX and Christian NodalsBotella Tras Botella became the first regional Mexican song to hit the Hot 100, debuting at its No. 60 best (May 8). It also reached No. 3 on the Hot Latin Songs chart.

Grande and Doja Cat became the only artists to have charted three songs each simultaneously in the Pop Airplay charts top 10. Grandes Positions, 34+35 and pov tripled up (May 15 and 22), with all tracks from her album Positions. Doja Cat repeated the feat with three Planet Her radio hits: Kiss Me More (featuring SZA); You Right (with The Weeknd); and Need to Know (Oct. 23 and 30).

Olivia Rodrigos Sourscored sweet success asthe first debut album to spin off two debuts at No. 1 on the Hot 100: Drivers License, on the Jan. 23 chart, and Good 4 U (May 29). It also marked the first album by any artist to yield two No. 1 Hot 100 debuts before even entering the Billboard 200, as Sour started atop the June 5 ranking. Rodrigo wrapped 2021 as the years top new artist.

Bo Burnhams Inside (The Songs) became the first comedy album to reach the Billboard 200s top 10, flying 116-7 after its first full tracking week (June 26), since Lil Dickys Professional Rapper debuted and peaked at No. 7 in August 2015.

Lauren Daigles crossover smash You Say, released in 2018, ran up its record reign on Hot Christian Songs to 132 weeks (Aug. 7). Its the only song to have reached triple-digit weeks at No. 1 on any of Billboards multi-metric song charts.

Kanye West scored a perfect 10, landing his 10th total and consecutive Billboard 200 No. 1 with the entrance of Donda (Aug. 28). He and Eminem are the only artists to have linked 10 leaders in a row in the charts 65-year history.

Anne Wilson became the first female soloist in a lead role to hit No. 1 with a first entry on Christian Airplay since the chart began in 2003, as My Jesus began a six-week command (Aug. 28). (On the latest list, she expands upon her history with her second No. 1 in as many tries, I Still Believe in Christmas.)

The Weeknds Blinding Lights took over top honors on Billboards Greatest of All Time Hot 100 Songs recap, reigning as the No. 1 title in the Hot 100s entire 63-year history. Along its run on the weekly Hot 100, it established the records for the most weeks spent in the top five (43), top 10 (57) and top 40 (86) and on the chart overall (90, tallied on the Sept. 4 chart).

More Drake dominance: The year-end top artist of 2021 claimed the entire top five, and a record nine spots in the Hot 100s top 10, led by Way 2 Sexy (featuring Future and Young Thug), new on the chart at No. 1 (Sept. 18). All nine songs are from Drakes LP Certified Lover Boy, which blasted in atop the Billboard 200 the same week. Previously, only The Beatles had monopolized the Hot 100s top five in a single frame, on the April 4, 1964, chart.

With the No. 8 arrival for Tony Bennett and Lady Gagas Love for Sale (Oct. 16), the legendary Bennett, 95 years young, claimed a 59-year span of top 10 albums on the Billboard 200, the longest such stretch for a living artist in the charts archives.

Dua Lipas Levitating logged its 41st week in the Hot 100s top 10 (Nov. 6), the most frames that any song by a woman has spent in the bracket. Its longevity sparked its coronation on the year-end Hot 100 Songs chart, despite peaking at No. 2 on the weekly survey in May.

Glass Animals Heat Waves completed the lengthiest ascent to the Hot 100s top 10, reaching the region in its 42nd frame (Nov. 13). It has so far hit No. 7 and crowned the Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart for 14 weeks and counting.

ABBAs reunion album Voyage rocketed in as the acts first Billboard 200 top 10, launching at No. 2 (Nov. 20). The Swedish pop icons, who first appeared on the chart in 1974, previously hit a No. 14 high with The Album in 1978.

Given the 10-minute, 13-second recording of All Too Well (Taylors Version), Taylor Swifts opus became the longest No. 1 single by run time in the Hot 100s history, soaring in at the summit (Nov. 27). Don McLeans American Pie (Parts I & II), at 8 minutes, 37 seconds, held the mark for nearly a half century, dating to its first of four weeks at No. 1 in January 1972.

Elton John and Dua Lipas Cold Heart (Pnau Remix) hit the Pop Airplay top 10 (Dec. 11), marking a record return to the tier for John. The legend ended a gap of 27 years, two months and one week between top 10s, as he had last ranked in the region in October 1994 with Can You Feel the Love Tonight.

As Adeles Easy on Me, the lead single from her album 30, added its seventh week atop the Hot 100 (Dec. 18), it followed the 10-week rule of Hello and seven-week reign of Rolling in the Deep, the respective lead singles from her albums 25, in 2015, and 21, in 2011. Adele is the only artist ever to send lead singles from three consecutive albums to No. 1 on the Hot 100 for at least seven weeks each.

In what has become a modern holiday tradition, Mariah Careys All I Want for Christmas Is You jingled to its unprecedented third run at No. 1 on the Hot 100 (aptly dated Dec. 25). It started its first two turns on top in December 2019 and December 2020.

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The History Made on Billboards Charts in 2021: The Weeknds Blinding Lights & More - Billboard

The world nearly lost Boy George to a disco ball.

In 1998, the pop singer was rehearsing for a performance in Dorset, England, when a massive mirrored ball weighing 62 pounds suddenly fell from the ceiling, with Boy George standing directly underneath it. The ball raked the side of his face and knocked him to the floor. A wire had snapped. According to observers, it came just 2 inches from landing directly on his head.

The near-death experience was the latest in a series of indignitiesnot for the Karma Chameleon singer but for the ball, which defined the 1970s nightclub scene in much the same way as bell-bottomed suits and cocaine. Reflecting light and hanging like a trophy over revelers, the ball would spin late into the night. It was stylish yet simplistic, a siren call for people who wanted to move underneath it and forget their troubles.

But the ball didnt originate with disco. To understand its history, you have to go much further back and dig into the objects true party-animal authors: electricians.

According to Vice, the first published mention of a novelty mirrored ball came in an 1897 issue of The Electrical Worker, a trade publication for union workers in Charlestown, Massachusetts. Inside the magazine was a description of the organizations annual get-together and its various decorations. A carbon arc lamp was said to have been positioned to reflect off of a mirrored ball.

It was likely a one-off creation that was custom-made for the gathering: The mirrored ball as a business enterprise didnt manifest itself until a man named Louis Bernard Woeste applied for a patent for a myriad reflector in 1917. The sphere was offered for sale by his Cincinnati-based company, Stephens and Woeste, beginning in the 1920s and promised to fill dance halls with dancing fireflies of a thousand hues.

The early globes were 27 inches in diameter and covered in over 1200 tiny mirrors, adding a glittering sheen of color to entertainment venues. The dance halls of the era had no strobe lights, fog machines, or glow sticks; the atmosphere was more conservative. The myriad reflector suited the spaces perfectly, and a number of them popped up at dances as well as jazz clubs and skating rinksand even circuses, where animals might balance themselves on reinforced reflectors. (The name itself was another issue: People took to calling it a mirror ball or glitter ball rather than Woestes slightly stuffy description.)

The globes were modestly successful but never a runaway hit, and Stephens and Woeste eventually distanced itself from their production. The baton (or ball) was picked up in the 1940s and 1950s by the Omega National Products company of Louisville, Kentucky, which had experience making flexible mirrored sheets for Art Deco furniture of the era. Some people wanted their Kleenex boxes to sparkle; others, like Liberace, wanted an entire piano covered in the reflective material.

Mirrored balls were a natural progression, and Omega made them to order for dance halls. But their status as a piece of pop culture iconography didnt come until the 1970s.

The arrival of disco in the 1970s ushered in a new wave of nightlife. All over the country, young adults were growing enamored with the sound, which was easy to dance to and carried with it a kind of sensorial overload. Clubs used lights to create atmosphere, like patrons were inside a pinball machine. It was the new escapism: Hoisted high over crowds, the ball was the perfect accessory.

Omega was positioned to dominate the market, and they did. During discos heyday in the mid-1970s, 90 percent of America's supply of disco balls was sourced from Omega. Twenty-five plant workers would make 25 balls each per day by hand, carefully affixing the reflective sheets to metal globes. A 48-inch model might sell for $4000, or roughly $20,000 today. But clubs happily paid, knowing the disco ball was the perfect complement to their dcor.

The ball practically got a co-starring credit in Saturday Night Fever, the 1977 smash hit movie starring John Travolta as Tony Manero, an ennui-ridden New Yorker who finds escape in the citys disco scene.

The movie made disco bigger than ever, with an estimated 20,000 disco clubs popping up around the country. A couple in Bloomington, Indiana, even exchanged wedding vows underneath one, while the Bee Geess How Deep Is Your Love? pulsed through the speakers. In Fort Worth, Texas, a company named Disco Delite offered mobile disco services, with a ball and sound equipment available to turn any boring area into a swinging affair. But the love affair with the disco iconography wasn't built to last.

Discos demise was due in part to a trend that had expired but was hastened in some part by a backlash. In 1979, a promotional stunt at Chicagos Comiskey Park during a baseball game went awry after invitees were told to bring disco records to destroy. Disco Demolition Night turned into a catastrophe, with the Chicago White Sox forced to forfeit after the crowdand the bonfiresgrew out of control. (The night had as much to do with racism as it did anti-disco sentiment, with attendees also burning R&B records in vast quantities.)

Whether it was hastened by such pushback or not, discos time in the spotlight was more or less at an end; fewer people were dazzled by the ceiling-hung ball, a symbol of an outdated fad. By the time Travolta made a sequel to Saturday Night Fever, 1983s Staying Alive, there was nary a disco ball in sight.

The ball hasnt been completely relegated to history. In 2016, in tribute to Omega, the city of Louisvillethe unofficial disco ball capital of the worldbuilt an 11-foot, 2300-pound ball at a cost of $50,000. Omega still makes the balls, though they need just one worker, not 25, to fill orders.

Depending on where you are, you might stumble across one at a concert for its kitsch value, or even at renovated buildings. For years, a Rite Aid in Manhattan puzzled patrons with its disco ball mounted on the ceiling. The building was once a roller rink.

As for Boy George: After being seen for a bruised ear back in 1999, he returned to the stage later that evening for his performance. I have survived and Im still here, he said, a sentiment that could also be shared by the ball.

See the rest here:

All That Glitters: A History of the Disco Ball - Mental Floss

As Republicans continue their attacks on the teaching of divisive concepts, they have trained their sights on timeworn targets: universities, professors and schools of education.

Consider Republican Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance, whose campaign website describes a vicious cycle in which people on the left take hundreds of billions of American tax dollars and send it to universities that propagate the supposed central tenet of critical race theory: that America is an evil, racist nation. According to Vance, Those universities then train teachers who bring that indoctrination into our elementary and high schools.

Since critical race theory is far more nuanced and has far less influence on the nations decentralized K12 curricula than Vance suggests, Americans could simply ignore the rights attempt to capitalize on voters anxieties about their childrens education. But to ignore the charge means missing an opportunity.

The need to cultivate teachers and students who are brave and patriotic enough to think critically about the nations past could not be more urgent. Without independent thinkers who care enough about the nations well-being to wrestle with, rather than retreat from, its complex history, the country is ill-prepared to tackle current and future challenges. A society, after all, cant solve problems whose existence it refuses to acknowledge.

Thats why Americans must reclaim patriotic education from the right. Universities have a key role to play here. Universities can train teachers who are uniquely positioned to do exactly what Republicans say they want to do: develop patriotic citizens. I know, because its how I and countless other professors teach.

Im a historian whose published work explores how school policies institutionalized white supremacy. Vance probably had people like me in mind when he recently celebrated Richard Nixons proclamation that the professors are the enemy. He and other Republicans might also shudder to learn that my colleagues and I teach a course on the History of American Education to more than 200 students each year, a significant portion of whom are future teachers. In fact, unlike many teacher certification programs, my university requires prospective teachers to take our course or another like it.

On the first day of class, I clarify that history is not simply what happened in the past; it is a debate about how and why events unfolded in the ways that they did and the consequences of those events. Specifically, I emphasize that history involves the interpretation of the past based upon factual evidence.

I discourage students from relying strictly on my lectures as the source for their evidence-based interpretations of the past. Instead, I ask them to weigh the interpretations they encounter in lectures and assigned readings alongside firsthand accounts from educators, reformers, parents and students.

Throughout the semester, students grapple with the educational visions of luminaries such as Thomas Jefferson, Horace Mann, Frederick Douglass, and John Dewey. They also encounter the educational aspirations of lesser-known figures such as Priscilla Mason, who chastised despotic man for denying equal opportunity to women in her 1793 graduation speech at the Young Ladies Academy of Philadelphia; Peter Pitchlynn, the inaugural superintendent of the public school system that the Choctaw Nation established in 1842; and Septima Clark, a Black public school teacher and activist from South Carolina who profoundly influenced the Civil Rights Movement.

This past semester, students analyzed Florida Governor Ron DeSantisRon DeSantisA truly 'patriotic education' requires critical analysis of US history The 10 Republicans most likely to run for president More appropriate nominees for 'Person of The Year' MOREs (R) executive order barring school districts from requiring masks. They also examined Black students accounts of the expanding police presence in desegregating schools.

When students consider these sources, I encourage them to pay as much attention to the questions that they raise as they do to the answers they appear to provide.

The best classes end with more questions than answers: When does governmental power over education preserve liberty, and when does it suppress liberty? Why have some emphasized the universitys responsibility to prepare students for jobs, while others, such as W.E.B. Du Bois, emphasized its capacity to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life? What is the purpose of education, and how can people in a democratic society determine the ends it should serve as well as the means for achieving those ends?

Do I put my fingers on the scale? Absolutely. I make sure students know that the Civil War was about slavery, that the land the United States seized from Indigenous people provided the financial basis for state school funds and that state-sponsored segregation and exclusion undermined educational opportunity in the South, North, and West.

I have no interest in indoctrinating students. I instead want to provide them with a factual basis for interpreting what diverse Americans wanted from education at different moments in time, who got what they wanted, who didnt and why.

Republicans such as Vance want professors and K12 teachers to provide honest, patriotic accounts of American history. In the spirit of Mason, Dewey and Clark, who valued independent thought and the critical appraisal of the relationship between the nations practices and professed values, I aim to do just that. I hope my students go on to teach a similarly honest and patriotic version of American history in their K12 classrooms.

Throughout history, totalitarian regimes have provided chilling evidence of Thomas Jeffersons contention that those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny. Their reliance on censorship and disinformation has also affirmed Jeffersons assertion that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large.

Unfortunately, Republicans who oppose the teaching of divisive concepts have little interest in illuminating minds. They want, in Vances own words, to force schools to provide uncritical exaltations of the nations past.

Such an approach is neither honest nor patriotic. It is authoritarian, and it would prepare students to follow rather than lead, to obey rather than think for themselves and to ignore all that might make America great.

Walter C. Stern is an assistant professor of educational policy studies and history at the University of WisconsinMadison. He is the author of Race and Education in New Orleans: Creating the Segregated City, 17641960.

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A truly 'patriotic education' requires critical analysis of US history | TheHill - The Hill

NDCI GOOD FRIDAY DO YOU. WELCOME -- GOOD FRIDAY TO YOU .WELCOME TO THE LAST DAY OF 2021 WE ARE RUNNING ABOVE-AVERAGE FOR THE MONTHF O DECEMBER, CAPPING OFF A WARM YEAR.

2021 expected to go down in history as Boston's warmest year on record

Updated: 11:13 AM EST Dec 31, 2021

Boston is ending 2021 with an unseasonably warm December and the city is poised to complete the year with the warmest average temperature on record."We are running about 3 degrees above average for the month, so a really mild December," said StormTeam 5 Meteorologist Cindy Fitzgibbon. Based on the mild forecast for New Year's Eve, Fitzgibbon said the year is expected to set a new record."(It's) likely to go down in the record books, 2021, as the warmest year on record," said Fitzgibbon. She also noted that three of the city's warmest years on record have occurred since 2010. 2021: 54.82012: 54.52010: 54.21949: 541953: 53.9Earlier this month, research published by the journal Climate, found that New England is warming faster than the rest of the planet and that the rapid changes will threaten elements of the regional economy. They found that temperatures in the area have increased more than 1.5-degrees-celsius from 1900 to 2020."Changes in New Englands climate are threatening the seasonality, the natural resources, and the economic underpinnings of the region," the authors wrote. "The warming of the region, the shifting of the seasons, and the changes in precipitation all threaten New Englands distinctive natural landscape."

Boston is ending 2021 with an unseasonably warm December and the city is poised to complete the year with the warmest average temperature on record.

"We are running about 3 degrees above average for the month, so a really mild December," said StormTeam 5 Meteorologist Cindy Fitzgibbon.

Based on the mild forecast for New Year's Eve, Fitzgibbon said the year is expected to set a new record.

"(It's) likely to go down in the record books, 2021, as the warmest year on record," said Fitzgibbon.

She also noted that three of the city's warmest years on record have occurred since 2010.

Earlier this month, research published by the journal Climate, found that New England is warming faster than the rest of the planet and that the rapid changes will threaten elements of the regional economy. They found that temperatures in the area have increased more than 1.5-degrees-celsius from 1900 to 2020.

"Changes in New Englands climate are threatening the seasonality, the natural resources, and the economic underpinnings of the region," the authors wrote. "The warming of the region, the shifting of the seasons, and the changes in precipitation all threaten New Englands distinctive natural landscape."

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2021 expected to go down in history as Boston's warmest year on record - WCVB Boston

When I was in college in the early 2000s, I used to fly down I-20/59 between Tuscaloosa and Birmingham screaming along with the lyrics to the song Time by Pink Floyd.

At age 19, I thought the song was a sage and ancient wisdom from the distant past, warning us how quickly time can slip away. I considered it old.

The song was released in 1973. I debuted a few years later to much less international acclaim but with a small cadre of very devoted fans. The song then was younger than I am today.

The Ancient Alabama series covered almost 500 million years of the state's history.Graphic by Ramsey Archibald

In this series, Ancient Alabama, weve covered 500 million years or so of Alabamas history. That length of time calls for a new definition to the word old.

What is old? What is ancient? Were the first Alabamians -- who roamed the state 13,000 years ago alongside woolly mammoths and sabretooth cats -- ancient? We said yes. But thats only 13,000 years, hardly the blink of an eye in geologic time.

You have to go back about 4 million years just to get to megalodon, an ancient shark species that dwarfed any currently alive today.

What about the Appalachiosaurus, an Alabama tyrannosaur that was a distant cousin of the very famous T-rex? Thats definitely ancient and old, having roamed the state about 79 million years ago, around the same time that giant sea monsters called mosasaurs ruled the seas.

When laying out this series, we lumped Appalachiosaurus in around roughly the same time period as the Wetumpka meteorite strike, which happened 84 million years ago. I mean 79 million and 84 million, thats practically the same, right?

Its 5 million years apart.

The movement of continents forces us to try to imagine time on an even larger scale.

After all, Alabama was once mostly underwater and near the South Pole, before it meandered up north of the Equator at incredibly slow speeds.

Imagine pushing a boulder one inch per year. If you start in 2021, by 2050, youd have moved it a little over two feet. In a million years, thats about 16 miles. In 500 million years, you could push that boulder 7,891 miles, more than the distance from Birmingham to Antarctica.

Thats more or less the speed at which continents move, riding on currents of magma deep beneath the Earths surface.

About 323 million years ago, a continent called Gondwana, which contains what is now Africa and South America slammed into a landmass called Laurasia, which had North America, Europe, and parts of Asia.

I tend to think of that collision as especially violent, since it created mountains in Alabama that were in all likelihood higher than Mt. Everest is today. But really, it was a slow grinding collision that went on for more than 20 million years, peaking about 299 million years ago.

By the end of that collision, Pangaea had formed and suddenly Alabama was landlocked, with no coast for millions of years. Alabamas giant mountains eroded away to nothing and then were thrust upward again by new movements of the plates.

When those mountains were being thrust up, rocks that had been created as runoff into an ancient ocean and lay buried deep below the surface were suddenly at the top and being turned into dust by wind and water.

All of these things are definitely old, undoubtedly ancient, but still impact our lives today.

Some of Alabamas spectacular scenery -- Little River Canyon and the vast labyrinth of limestone caves in north Alabama -- were created by the push of the continental plates and the pull of slightly acidic water carving out canyons and chasms in soft limestone.

Mud and bacteria from 440 million years ago are why Birmingham had that magic mixture of iron ore, limestone and coal that allowed the South to gain its largest industrial center in the early 1900s.

The ocean runoff of eroding mountains in central Alabama during the dinosaur age created the chalky bedrock of Alabamas Black Belt, which made the area ideal for 19th century cotton plantations, but causes sewage nightmares for residents today.

The White Cliffs of Epes, near the town of Epes, Ala. on the Tombigbee River.Dennis Pillion

So how do we differentiate between Pink Floyd, Appalachiosaurus and Pangaea? Its a tricky concept and it can be hard to wrap your brain around whats just old and whats really and truly ancient.

Scientists have developed a classification system to help them talk about these blocks of time in an order that makes sense. Deep time is divided into eras, periods, and epochs spanning the millions of centuries, with names like Pleistocene, Jurassic, Cretaceous, Cambrian.

These make sense if you learn the code, or watch the right science fiction movies, but for many its just an abstract jumble of big words.

In this series, weve attempted to introduce the full depth and breadth of Alabamas geological history in a form thats more accessible than most geology textbooks. Weve really just scratched the surface.

We didnt even get to the Basilosaurus, Alabamas state fossil, or how the natural gas that funds our education system was created, or why the Tennessee River flows the way it does.

AL.com reporter Dennis Pillion at the Alabama Museum of Natural History.Dennis Pillion

So maybe next year therell be more of Ancient Alabama to explore.

But for now, I hope youve enjoyed these 12 journeys through the rich history of our state, the powerful forces that shaped where and how we live today, the detective work and occasional good luck needed to uncover the relics of ancient residents and map the lost mountains and even trace a cataclysmic meteorite impact in Alabama eons ago.

If youve missed any, the links are posted below.

If you want to learn more about these topics from the scientists, check out Jim Lacefields book Lost Worlds in Alabama Rocks, or Scot Duncans Southern Wonder: Alabamas Surprising Biodiversity. Theyre both essential reads for understanding why Alabama is such a unique and special place for the plants and animals that live here now and that lived here millions of years ago.

Thank you for reading.

Ancient Alabama

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Ancient Alabama journeys through 500 million years of the states history - AL.com

History is rife with monarchs, presidents, and potentates who sent their navies off to warbut in the case of the largest, bloodiest, and most significant naval battle in the annals of medieval Northern Europe, it was the king himself who sailed forth into harms way at the head of his armed-to-the-teeth fleet.

Here was the age of knights and jousts, of chivalry and dynastic complexity: 14th-century England in the reign of King Edward III. To the north, the Scots threatened. To the south, the Frenchsimpatico with the Scotslikewise threatened. Edward, himself a scion of the French royal line, had a long-standing lineage claim to Frances throne as well, and in 1340 he opted to assert it with deadly force. Bravado? A hollow assertion? Perhapsbut an opportune one. For too long a time, French raids had been plundering and bedeviling the English coastand now came the moment to strike back.

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The King Who Became Lord of the Sea - USNI News

A 1930s couple rings in the new year with party blowers and streamers. New Year's Eve celebrations only began incorporating countdowns decades later, with the first crowd countdown in Times Square taking place in 1979. Photo by FPG / Hulton Archive / Getty Images

Few people counted down to anything until the 1960s and 1970sand yes, that included the new year. Celebrations and midnight kisses on December 31, of course. Countdowns, no. How, then, did countdowns go from almost nonexistent to ubiquitous in the latter half of the 20th century? And why are we so drawn to them now, especially to mark one years end and anothers beginning?

Countdowns as we know them today serve many purposes. The New Years Eve countdown might be characterized as a genesis countdown: After time runs out, it starts over again. The wait for the new yearwith its predictions, resolutions and partiesis typically generative, optimistic and hopeful. But there are also apocalyptic countdowns, in which after time runs out, disaster ensues. Today, we wonder how much time we have until the next Covid-19 variant, natural disaster or terrorist attack. Both of these countdown types took form during the Atomic Age.

Though disaster has always been a part of American life, the threat of nuclear annihilation introduced pervasive existential fears. Notably, in 1947, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists introduced the Doomsday Clock, which to this day provides a visual reckoning of just how close we are to apocalypse. In the years that followed, these same scientists were the ones who brought the term count down to the American lexicon. A 1953 San Francisco Examiner article reported on an atomic bomb test in the nearby Nevada desert: [A] designated official on a loudspeaker and short-wave radio hookup announces at intervals the time remaining before the explosion. At the very end he intones minus 10 seconds, minus 5 seconds and minus 4 seconds and so on down to the moment of the explosion.

A few years later, Alfred Hitchcock domesticated the atomic countdown in the 1957 made-for-television movie Four OClock, transplanting it into the basement of a suburban home wired with explosives in the minutes and seconds before the eponymous time. The televised countdowns of the 1950s, whether real or fictional, were frightening temporal experiences in which time was distended and stretched, and then extinguished.

But on May 5, 1961, the countdown got its first major positive association. Some 45 million Americans watching the national nightly news heard the countdown to the successful launch of Americas first manned space flight. The blast-off was followed by astronaut Alan Shepard saying, Roger, liftoff and the clock has started. Time did not end, as apocalyptic countdowns had threatened; instead, a new clock began.

The countdown associated with rocket launches had its origins in the Weimar Republic, where Fritz Langs 1929 film Woman in the Moon featured an extended countdown to a moon rocket launch. No one had ever heard of or seen anything like the launch beforeor the countdown. The lavish science fiction multi-reel film had an outsized impact on Germanys rocket scientists, who after World War II became central to the American space program. One of the advisors on the film was early space travel enthusiast Willy Ley, who later immigrated to the United States, where he worked for NASA, orchestrating its rocket launches.

With each televised rocket launch during the 1960s, the countdown accumulated more and more positive associations with the public, building up to the historic countdown and liftoff of Apollo 11, the spaceship that took a crew of three men to the moon. The elements of the genesis countdown as we know it today were etched in history on July 16, 1969, when at least 500 million people around the world tuned in to hear a loud and clear countdown give way to an exciting, daring and transformative objective.

During the 1970s, the countdown moved beyond atomic test sites and space missions and onto radio and television showsand away from the nihilism of a bomb blast toward the triumph of a rocket launch. The popular Australian music show Countdown, which debuted in 1974, inspired similar shows in the United States and Europe. By counting down to the latest greatest hit, these shows slowed the rush of time and demarcated the recent past. Their terrain was not time, but rather the top or the most popular, organized sequentially and leading not to zero but to number one. Other kinds of countdown programs amplified the race against time. In the long-running British game show Countdown, for example, contestants try to complete number and word problems in a set amount of time. A very large analog clock, reminiscent of the Doomsday Clock, hangs over the shows set. In this iteration, the shows triumphant contestants demonstrate that the race against time can be wonthat is, that disaster can be averted.

The apocalyptic and the genesis countdowns eventually made way for the ultimate celebratory countdown: the one to the new year. Americans celebrated New Years Eve publicly in various ways beginning in the 1890s, including with the ringing of bells (mostly at churches) at midnight. The first ball dropped on the roof of One Times Square to mark the arrival of 1908, and in the 1930s and 1940s, commercial radio broadcasts heralded the arrival of the new year to rural and urban audiences alike. But the first countdown I have identified was in the late 1950s. During the last few seconds of 1957, broadcaster Ben Grauer proclaimed to a national radio audience from a perch overlooking Times Square, 58 is on its way, 5-4-3-2-1. The ball is starting to slide down the pole, and it is the signal that 58 is here. He didnt get much traction: The extant recording features a crowd making merry but definitely not counting down.

Through the 1960s, Grauer tried to introduce New Years Eve countdowns on television, presumably as a way to extend what was, after all, an extremely short-lived event. Still, while you can hear the crowd cheering on these broadcasts, they dont join him in the countdown. Picking up on Grauers innovation, Dick Clarks New Years Rockin Eve, which debuted in time to usher in 1973, featured confected countdowns that were staged on its dance party sets and were sometimes painfully out of sync with the Times Square ball drop.

Impossible as it is to believe, my research into extant radio and television broadcasts and newspaper reports shows that it was not until seconds before the arrival of 1979 that a Times Square crowd counted down to the new year. At that moment, it was clear that countdown culture had arrived and was here to stay.

By the end of the 1980s, countdown clocks were installed in Times Square, television graphics began to show the amount of time remaining until midnight and television hosts guided enthusiastic audiences through the count. As the year 2000 approached, though, something different happened. Millennium countdown clocks proliferated across the globe (though 2000 was not the millennium), accompanied by apocalyptic fears about the end of time, or at the very least Y2K, the much-discussed epic global computer network crash.

The first two decades of the 21st century have careened between genesis and apocalyptic countdowns. Take for example, the countdown clocks to Olympic Games and the latest Climate Clock, found online (and in New York Citys Union Square) exhorting action before its too late. Countdown clocks for every conceivable event are everywhere today, from the personalized digital Countdown to Your Big Day clocks that can be embedded on social media feeds before your birthday to the bus and subway countdown clocks that tell everyone when their ride will arrive. Whether personal or public, the clocks goal is to mitigate impatience, to replace uncertainty with anticipation and to fill empty waiting time with a quantified temporality.

Today, our countdown clocks and countdowns continue to oscillate between genesis and apocalypse. As 2021 gives way to 2022, it is hard to know what we are anticipating when the clock hits midnight. And so, I suspect that some countdowns this year will be inflected with a tinge of hesitancy and doubt. Still, many of us will want to join in the hopefulness of the genesis count, as did that Times Square crowd welcoming 1979 with their triumphant Happy New Year cheersrejoicing when the clock starts again.

Alexis McCrossen is a historian on the faculty at Southern Methodist University who studies the history of timekeeping. Currently finishing a book about the history of New Years observances in the United States, she is also the author of books including Holy Day, Holiday: The American Sunday (2000) and Marking Modern Times: Clocks, Watches and Other Timekeepers in American Life (2013).

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Why Do We Count Down to the New Year? - Smithsonian

Protoplanetary disc. Credit: ESO/L. Calada

Astronomers have managed to link the properties of the inner planets of our solar system with our cosmic history: with the emergence of ring structures in the swirling disk of gas and dust in which these planets were formed. The rings are associated with basic physical properties such as the transition from an outer region where ice can form where water can only exist as water vapor. The astronomers made use of a spread of simulation to explore different possibilities of inner planet evolution. Our solar systems inner regions are a rare, but possible outcome of that evolution. The results have been published in Nature Astronomy.

The broad-stroke picture of planet formation around stars has been unchanged for decades. But many of the specifics are still unexplained and the search for explanations an important part of current research. Now, a group of astronomers led by Rice Universitys Andre Izidoro, which includes Bertram Bitsch from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, has found an explanation for why the inner planets in our solar system have the properties we observe.

This image, taken with the ALMA Observatory in 2014, was the first to reveal a ring-like structure in a protoplanetary disk in this case, the disk around the young star HL Tauri. The visible disk has a radius of a bit over 100 astronomical units, that is, over 100 times the average Earth-Sun distance. For comparison: In our solar system, the maximal distance of Pluto from the Sun amounts to about 50 astronomical units. The research described here shows the key role ring-like structures like this are likely to have played in the genesis of our Solar System. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), NSF

The broad-stroke picture in question is as follows: Around a young star, a protoplanetary disk of gas and dust forms, and inside that disk grow ever-larger small bodies, eventually reaching diameters of thousands of kilometers, that is: becoming planets. But in recent years, thanks to modern observational methods, the modern picture of planet formation has been refined and changed in very specific directions.

The most striking change was triggered by a literal picture: The first image taken by the ALMA observation after its completion in 2014. The image showed the protoplanetary disk around the young star HL Tauri in unprecedented detail, and the most stunning details amounted to a nested structure of clearly visible rings and gaps in that disk.

As the researchers involved in simulating protoplanetary disk structures took in these new observations, it became clear that such rings and gaps are commonly associated with pressure bumps,, where the local pressure is somewhat lower than in the surrounding regions. Those localized changes are typically associated with changes in disk composition, mostly in the size of dust grains.

In particular, there are pressure bumps associated with particularly important transitions in the disk that can be linked directly to fundamental physics. Very close to the star, at temperatures higher than 1400 Kelvin, silicate compounds (think sand grains) are gaseous it is simply too hot for them to exist in any other state. Of course, that means that planets cannot form in such a hot region. Below that temperature, silicate compounds sublimate, that is, any silicate gases directly transition to a solid state. This pressure bump defines an overall inner border for planet formation.

Farther out, at 170 Kelvin (100 degrees Celsius), there is a transition between water vapor on the one hand and water ice on the other hand, known as the water snowline. (The reason that temperature is so much lower than the standard 0 degrees Celsius where water freezes on Earth is the much lower pressure, compared to Earths atmosphere.) At even lower temperatures, 30 Kelvin (240 degrees Celsius), is the CO snowline; below that temperature, carbon monoxide forms a solid ice.

What does this mean for the formation of planetary systems? Numerous earlier simulations had already shown how such pressure bumps facilitate the formation of planetesimals the small objects, between 10 and 100 kilometers in diameter, that are believed to be the building blocks for planets. After all, the formation process starts much, much smaller, namely with dust grains. Those dust grains tend to collect in the low-pressure region of a pressure bump, as grains of a certain size drift inwards (that is, towards the star) until they are stopped by the higher pressure at the inner boundary of the bump.

As the grain concentration at the pressure bump increases, and in particular the ratio of solid material (which tends to aggregate) to gas (which tends to push grains apart) increases, it becomes easier for those grains to form pebbles, and for those pebbles to aggregate into larger objects. Pebbles are what astronomers call solid aggregates with sizes between a few millimeters and a few centimeters.

But what had still been an open question was the role of those sub-structures in the overall shape of planetary systems, like our own Solar system, with its characteristic distribution of rocky, terrestrial inner planets, and outer gaseous planets. This is the question that Andre Izidoro (Rice University), Bertram Bitsch of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, and their colleagues took on. In their search for answers, they combined several simulations covering different aspects and different phases of planet formation.

Specifically, the astronomers constructed a model of a gas disk, with three pressure bumps at the silicates-become-gaseous boundary and the water and CO snow lines. They then simulated the way that dust grains grow and fragment in the gas disk, the formation of planetesimals, the growth from planetesimals to planetary embryos (from 100 km in diameter to 2000 km) near the location of our Earth (1 astronomical unit distance from the Sun), the growth of planetary embryos to planets for the terrestrial planets, and the accumulation of planetesimals in a newly-formed asteroid belt.

In our own solar system, the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter is home to hundreds of smaller bodies, which are believed to be remnants or collision fragments of planetesimals in that region that never grew to form planetary embryos, let alone planets.

An interesting question for simulations is this: If the initial setup were just a little bit different, would the end result still be somewhat similar? Understanding these kinds of variations is important for understanding which of the ingredients are the key to the outcome of the simulation. That is why Bitsch and his colleagues analyzed a number of different scenarios with varying properties for the composition and for the temperature profile of the disk. In some of the simulations, they only the silicate and water ice pressure bumps, in others all three.

The results suggest a direct link between the appearance of our solar system and the ring structure of its protoplanetary disk. Bertram Bitsch of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, who was involved both in planning this research program and in developing some of the methods that were used, says: For me, it was a complete surprise how well our models were able to capture the development of a planetary system like our own right down to the slightly different masses and chemical compositions of Venus, Earth, and Mars.

As expected, in those models, planetesimals in those simulations formed naturally near the pressure bumps, as a cosmic traffic jam for pebbles drifting inwards, which would then be stopped by the higher pressure at the inner boundary of the pressure bump.

For the inner parts of the simulated systems, the researchers identified the right conditions for the formation of something like our own solar system: If the region right outside the innermost (silicate) pressure bump contains around 2.5 Earth masses worth of planetesimals, these grow to form roughly Mars-sized bodies consistent with the inner planets within the solar system.

A more massive disk, or else a higher efficiency of forming planetesimals, would instead lead to the formation of Super-Earths, that is, considerably more massive rocky planets. Those Super-Earths would be in close orbit around the host star, right up against that innermost pressure bump boundary. The existence of that boundary can also explain why there is no planet closer to the Sun than Mercury the necessary material would simply have evaporated that close to the star.

The simulations even go so far as to explain the slightly different chemical compositions of Mars on the one hand, Earth and Venus on the other: In the models, Earth and Venus indeed collect most of the material that will form their bulk from regions closer to the Sun than the Earths current orbit (one astronomical unit). The Mars-analogues in the simulations, in contrast, were built mostly from material from regions a bit farther away from the Sun.

Beyond the orbit of Mars, the simulations yielded a region that started out as sparsely populated with or, in some cases, even completely empty of planetesimals the precursor of the present-day asteroid belt of our solar systems. However, some planetesimals from the zones inside of or directly beyond would later stray into the asteroid belt region and become trapped.

As those planetesimals collided, the resulting smaller pieces would form what we today observe as asteroids. The simulations are even able to explain the different asteroid populations: What astronomers call S-types asteroids, bodies that are made mostly of silica, would be the remnants of stray objects originating in the region around Mars, while C-type asteroids, which predominantly contain Carbon, would be the remnants of stray objects from the region directly outside the asteroid belt.

In that outer region, just outside the pressure bump that marks the inner limit for the presence of water ice, the simulations show the beginning of the formations of giant planets the planetesimals near that boundary typically have a total mass of between 40 and 100 times the mass of the Earth, consistent with estimates of the total mass of the cores of the giant planets in our solar system: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

In that situation, the most massive planetesimals would quickly gather more mass. The present simulations did not follow up on the (already well-studied) later evolution of those giant planets, which involves an initially rather tight group, from which Uranus and Neptune later migrated outwards to their present positions.

Last but not least, the simulations can explain the final class of objects, and its properties: so-called Kuiper-belt objects, which formed outside the outermost pressure bump, which marks the inner boundary for the existence of carbon monoxide ice. It even can explain the slight differences in composition between known Kuiper-belt objects: again as the difference between planetesimals that formed originally outside the CO snowline pressure bump and stayed there, and planetesimals that strayed into the Kuiper belt from the adjacent inner region of the giant planets.

Overall, the spread of simulations led to two basic outcomes: Either a pressure bump at the water-ice snowline formed very early; in that case, the inner and outer regions of the planetary system went their separate ways rather early on within the first hundred thousand years. This led to the formation of low-mass terrestrial planets in the inner parts of the system, similar to what happened in our own solar system.

Alternatively, if the water-ice pressure bump forms later than that or is not as pronounced, more mass can drift into the inner region, leading instead to the formation of Super-Earths or mini-Neptunes in the inner planetary systems. Evidence from the observations of those exoplanetary systems astronomers have found so far shows that case is by far the more probable and our own Solar system a comparatively rare outcome of planet formation.

In this research, the focus of the astronomers was on the inner solar system and the terrestrial planets. Next, they want to run simulations that include details of the outer regions, with Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. The eventual aim is to arrive at a complete explanation for the properties of ours and other solar systems.

For the inner solar system, at least, we now know that key properties of Earth and its nearest neighboring planet can be traced to some rather basic physics: the boundary between frozen water and water vapor and its associated pressure bump in the swirling disk of gas and dust that surrounded the young Sun.

Reference: Planetesimal rings as the cause of the Solar Systems planetary architecture by Andre Izidoro, Rajdeep Dasgupta, Sean N. Raymond, Rogerio Deienno, Bertram Bitsch and Andrea Isella, 30 December 2021, Nature Astronomy.DOI: 10.1038/s41550-021-01557-z

The MPIA researcher involved is Bertram Bitsch, an independent research group leader in the department Planet and Star Formation, in collaboration with Andre Izidoro, Rajdeep Dasgupta, Andrea Isella (all Rice University), Sean N. Raymond (Universit de Bordeaux) and Rogerio Deienno (Southwestern Research Institute).

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Three Rings To Bind Them: Cosmic History Can Explain the Properties of Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars - SciTechDaily

3, 2, 1....Happy New Year,TV fans!

Heck, we all made a check list full of January to dos. For some, there are tasks to complete around the house and for others there are tons new recipes to try as they aim to get healthy. The one thing everyone can agree with after this tough year is that we could all use a little more laughter in our lives.

With a united resolution to simply giggle more we can turn to our favorite shows like Friends, Modern Family and The Office. It's a proven fact you burn calories when you chuckle out loud...like we needed another excuse to laugh! So, ring in 2022 with an upbeat and positive perspective, courtesy of our favorite sitcoms. There is simply no better way to do that than looking backat these funny New Year's Eve moments in television history.

Relive all the hilarious moments from past NYE-themed episodes below.

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Count Down the Best New Years Eve Sitcom Moments in TV History - E! NEWS

This December has seen some quarterbacks increase their stats for most touchdowns thrown in NFL history.

On Christmas Day, Aaron Rodgers led the Green Bay Packers to another win in the 2021 season against the Cleveland Browns 24-22, but it was also a special day for the veteran quarterback because he broke Brett Favre's franchise record as all-time touchdown pass leader.

With 443 touchdown passes, one more than Favre, Rodgers accomplished a feat, which was recorded at 445, as the quarterback threw two more touchdown passes.

However, Rodgers is only fifth on the list of quarterbacks with the most touchdowns thrown in NFL history.

Among a group of historic NFL players, the honor of topping this list goes to Tom Brady, who so far has thrown 618 touchdown passes, just considering regular season games.

Following Brady in second place is retired quarterback Drew Brees, who at the end of the 2020 season ended his 20-season career with the San Diego Chargers and New Orleans Saints.

The Top 5 is rounded out by other legendary names. In third place is Peyton Manning, followed by two Packers legends, Favre and Rodgers.

*Not including playoffs

Brady also holds other records among quarterbacks. In early December, in the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' win over Buffalo, he scored his 700th career touchdown in both the regular season and playoffs, becoming the only player in NFL history to reach that mark.

The seven-time Super Bowl winner even surpassed Brees for the most pass completions in NFL history, one of many marks owned by Brady.

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Who threw the most touchdowns in NFL History? - MARCA.com