Old St Paul’s Cathedral in London, built from 1087 to 1314, was one of the longest churches in the world, had one of the tallest spires and some of the finest stained glass. By the mid 1600s its structure had deteriorated and major restoration work was needed, with some recommending complete demolition.
The Great Fire of London destroyed the cathedral in 1666, but demolition was complicated because the stonework had been bonded together by molten lead from the roof. Attempts to use gunpowder killed several workers, and finally the ruins were brought down with a battering ram.
The English rock band Led Zeppelin were originally assembled under the name “The New Yardbirds,” but were forced to select a new name after bassist Chris Dreja (who had, along with guitarist Jimmy Page, rights to the name) filed a cease-and-desist order.
The group then selected the name “Led Zeppelin” as a play on the idiom “go down like a lead balloon,” which is said to have been what Keith Moon of The Who suggested would be the group’s fate.
The first air ship to make it all the way around the planet was the famous Graf Zeppelin (LZ-127), the sister ship to the Hindenburg. The Graf Zeppelin also holds other important flight records, including being the very first aircraft of any type to clock one million miles.
The Graf Zeppelin (LZ-127) was depicted on a total of four US air-mail stamps during the 1930s.
A set of three stamps of various values – Scott catalog C13 (face value of $0.65), C14 ($1.30), and C15 ($2.60) – were issued in 1930 to commemorate the initiation of flights between Europe and America. As a gesture of good-will towards Germany, 93.5% of the revenue went to the Zeppelin company itself. Due to their high cost during the Great Depression, however, less than 10% of the stamps printed were sold (the rest were destroyed by the Post Office), making them relatively rare and prized by collectors today.
A fourth stamp (Scott catalog C18; face value of $0.50) was issued in 1933 to commemorate a flight to the Century of Progress Exhibition in Chicago. Again, an agreement was reached with the Zeppelin operators, with 87% of the income from this stamp being paid to the company to offset some of the costs of having the airship flown to the exposition.
-“BB”-
The world’s first postage stamp was the Penny Black, issued in the United Kingdom in 1840. Prior to its issuance, postage was paid by the recipient, charged by the sheet and distance travelled.
A total of 68,808,000 stamps were printed and many stamps still exist today.
When the Confederate States of America’s Post Office took over mail delivery from the United States Post Office, there were no CSA stamps printed so they went old-school taking payment for the letter in person and stamping the letter as paid.
A penny black stamp is one of the plot motifs that comes up in one of Asimov’s Black Widowers stories.
Isaac Asimov, who was born in Russia in 1920, was a writer but also a professor of biochemistry at Boston University. Along with Robert Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, he was considered one of the ‘Big Three’ of science fiction writers. During his career, he wrote or edited over 500 books, and wrote almost 400 short stories. He died in 1992 at the age of 72.
The 1977 album by the Alan Parsons Project, “I Robot,” was a concept album, which was originally intended to be based on Isaac Asimov’s “Robot” series of stories and novels. Band member Eric Woolfson spoke with Asimov about the idea (Asimov was reportedly enthusiastic about it), but because the film rights to “I, Robot” had been granted to a studio, the band decided to make the connection to Asimov’s work less direct, which included removing the comma from the album’s title.
In Canada, provincial taxing power is limited to direct taxes.
The first income tax in the United States was imposed in August of 1861, to help the government pay for the Civil War effort. The rate was 3% of all income over $800.
In 1913, the 16th amendment to the Constitution made the income tax a permanent fixture in America.
And also in August of 1861, the US Army abolished flogging as a punishment.
Canada did not abolish flogging until 1972: Abolition of Corporal Punishment
1972
Nitpick: that’s Jerome Kern, one of the all-time great songwriters. Worked with Hammerstein, Dorothy Fields, Yip Harburg, and Johnny Mercer.
Despite having prohibition from 1916 until 1927 in Ontario, Canada’s government allowed for numerous exceptions. Various breweries and distilleries remained open for the export market. In Hamilton, Ontario, Rocco Perri specialized in exporting liquor from old Canadian distilleries, such as Seagram and Gooderham and Worts, to the United States, and helped these companies obtain a large share of the American market. In London, Ontario, Harry Low and his group of rum-runners bought the Carling Brewery, while the Labatt family left the operations to the manager Edmund Burke. The fact that the “export” might be by small boat from Windsor across the river to Detroit only helped the province’s economy.
Alexander Hamilton, as Secretary of the Treasury in the Washington Administration, founded the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service, forerunner of today’s Coast Guard. Five Coast Guard cutters have been named after Hamilton over the years, including one commissioned in 2014 and now in service:
Alexander III, king of Scots, died in a fall from his horse down a steep incline. He was travelling by night in stormy weather, intent on visiting his new Queen.
King Alexander of Serbia ruled from 1889 until 1903 when he and his wife were assassinated in their palace. They were shot and their bodies mutilated and disembowelled and, according to eyewitness accounts, thrown from a second-floor window of the palace onto piles of garden manure. Alexander was only 26 years old.
On September 6, 2017, President Donald Trump was in Mandan, North Dakota to attend a rally. That same day, 42-year-old Gregory Lee Leingang was arrested after he stole a forklift. After his arrest, Leingang admitted that his intention was to steal the forklift and attempt to assassinate President Trump by flipping the limousine in which Trump was riding. Leingang was subsequently sentenced to 20 years in prison.
The Jacob Leinenkugel Brewing Company is a beermaker, based in the city of Chippewa Falls, in northwestern Wisconsin. Originally a regional brewing company, with its distribution in the Upper Midwest, Leinenkugel is now a division of Molson Coors, and its beers – including its popular “Summer Shandy” (a lemonade-flavored weiss beer) – are distributed across the U.S.