An inter-related potpouri.
Sometimes one particular item stands out on one particular day, making my choice for a date tie-in obvious, perhaps even unavoidable. At other times, working overtime (or at least too late into the night) in order to find a passable subject for a tie-in causes me to wonder whether there's really any point in continuing this tradition. And it's more or less around times of this sort that I stumble across a couple of items that light up that proverbial light bulb and allow me to continue, with a bit of a squint and by connecting a few loose ends.
Thus it happens that it was on this day that at least three events took place that perhaps individually don't merit their own asterix, but taken together have a sort of "well, that makes sense" sort of logic. It was on this day that:
in 1924 - astronomer Edwin Hubble announced the existence of other galactic systems
in 1940 - the Arroyo Seco Parkway, California’s first freeway, was officially opened
in 1969 - television critic Clive Barnes wrote in the New York Times:
Television is the first truly democratic culture
— the first culture available to everyone and governed entirely by what the
people want. The most terrifying thing is what the people do want.
So what's the connection? Perhaps anywhere else other than the Boidem nobody would be expected to find a connection between these three events. But here things are different. Here I make it my business to find connections between even seemingly unrelated items. Connecting these three is (without a wink to Groucho Marx), child's play.
Go to: Seek and Ye Shall Buy.