Do you know there is a lot of historical things going on this year.

100th anniversary of sinking of Titanic

200th anniversary of War of 1812

150th Anniversary of several Civil War battles

110th anniversary of Teddy Bear

Can anyone think of any others?

Ain't the world spozed to end, according to some doomsday ding-a-ling?

Ain't the world spozed to end, according to some doomsday ding-a-ling?

I think that's predicted every 6 months or so.  Unless I missed the news report they've all been wrong so far!

Diane

The 200th birthday of Charles Dickens is this coming Tuesday (the 7th).

Oh thats right. I knew I was missing another one. So he was born while during the War of 1812.

Yes, the Mayans and I think the Hopi have predicted the world to end this year. But then the people who interpreted the prediction claim that because the Hopi (again, i think it is them) said that one day the earth would be covered in a spider web, means they predicted the internet. To me it sounds like they aremaking things fit the predictions, but who knows. Come December, we may all be gone. So I guess we need to take advantage of life now, lol.

I recommend reading a book called 2012 and the End of the World: The Western Roots of the Mayan Apocalypse.  The Mayans did not predict any kind of apocalypse, and furthermore there were other calendars discovered at different sites.  The way the Mayan dates worked, an extra number meant an extra order of magnitude.  There are calendars showing billions and billions of years, and in fact going back before the Big Bang.  The book is compiled by a couple of Mayan Scholars, and is actually pretty dull and academic...but let's face it, saying there's not an apocalypse on the way isn't very glamorous.

my husband, the physicist, says that of course there will be an end to this little old mudball of ours whirling around in Space, when Earth's Sun "dies" . . . . in umpteen billion years , , , ,

Very true.

Today is the 100th birthday for the Girl Scouts.

and a letter found in a book belonging to Niels Bohr, the eminent Danish physicist who had a private meeting with the German physicist Werner Heisenberg during World War II, will be opened and published.  Bohr left instructions that that should not take place until 50 years after his death.  Bohr was the Nobelist in Physics in 1922, and Heisenberg in 1932, and at the time of their famous meeting in Copenhagen in World War II, they were on opposite sides of the conflict.  Michael Frayn wrote a stage play about the meeting of the two scientists, and a film version of it was made, also.

That stage play (and film) was a speculation as to what went on between the two physicists at their strange get--together during World War II, at Bohr's home in Occupied Denmark.  I visited the Niels Bohr archives website and was informed that the letter (which I had read about somewhere in a magazine) was most likely the one called Document 1, and it could be viewed at http://www.nba.nbi.dk/papers/docs/cover.html.   Unless you can read Danish, you'll need to click on Translation.   I think this letter sheds some significant light on the work on nuclear fission that was going on in Europe even before World War II began in 1939.  The application of fission toward a weapon (the atomic bomb), to me, is one of the great tragedies of science.  Because my husband, now retired, was a nuclear physicist, this particular chapter of History holds special interest for me, because of this junction between Politics and Science.  It was as significant, in modern times, as some of the changes that took place in ancient times such as those Jared Diamond wrote about in Guns, Germs, and Steel.

Don't forget it's the 100th birthday of the Oreo Cookie!

Yes, Sue, I just saw that at the store today.

Bonnie, that is interesting. When are they opening it?

Kat: See my post of 3/12/2012, updated.