Today is September 4 2014

National Macadamia Nut Day: More

• National Wildlife Day: More
  
• National Newspaper Carrier Day: More
• Eat an Extra Dessert Day: More

• In 1807, Robert Fulton begins scheduled steamboat passenger service on the Hudson River between New York and Albany.
  From Wikipedia: Livingston had obtained from the New York legislature the exclusive right to steam navigation on the Hudson River. In 1803, while Livingston was Minister to France, Fulton built a small steamboat and tested it on the Seine. With this success, Livingston then contracted with Fulton to take advantage of his Hudson River monopoly and build a larger version for commercial service.
  
  Their larger steamer was built at the Charles Browne shipyard in New York and was fitted with Fulton's innovative steam engine design, manufactured for Livingston and Fulton by Boulton and Watt in Birmingham, England. Before she was later widened, the vessel's original dimensions were 150 feet (46 m) long × 12 feet (3.7 m) wide × 7 feet (2.1 m) deep; she drew a little more than 2 feet (60 cm) of water when launched. The steamer was equipped with two paddle wheels, one each to a side, each paddle wheel assembly was equipped with two sets of eight spokes. She also carried two masts with spars, rigging, and sails, likely a foremast with square sail and a mizzen mast with fore-and-aft sail (spanker), with the steam engine placed amidships, directly behind the paddle wheel's drive gear machinery.
  
  'The steamer's inaugural run was helmed by Captain Andrew Brink, and left New York on August 17, 1807, with a complement of invited guests aboard. They arrived in Albany two days later, after 32 hours of travel time and a 20-hour stop at Livingston's estate, Clermont Manor. The return trip was completed in 30 hours with only a one-hour stop at Clermont; the average speed of the steamer was 5 mph (8 km/h).
  
  Scheduled passenger service began on September 4, 1807. Steamboat left New York on Saturdays at 6:00 pm, and returned from Albany on Wednesdays at 8:00 am, taking about 36 hours for each journey. Stops were made at West Point, Newburgh, Poughkeepsie, Esopus, and Hudson; other stops were sometimes made, such as Red Hook and Catskill. In the company's publicity the ship was called North River Steamboat or just Steamboat (there being no other in operation at the time)'.
  - At Wikipedia: More
  - On YouTube: More
• In 1882, Thomas Edison begins the first commercial electrical power plant in history. The Pearl Street Station, was a DC generating plant, lighting one square mile of lower Manhattan. This is considered by many as the day that the electrical age began.
  From Wikipedia: 'Pearl Street Station was the first central power plant in the United States. It was located at 255-257 Pearl Street in Manhattan on a site measuring 50 by 100 feet (15 by 30 m), just south of Fulton Street and fired by coal. It began with one direct current generator, and it started generating electricity on September 4, 1882, serving an initial load of 400 lamps at 82 customers. By 1884, Pearl Street Station was serving 508 customers with 10,164 lamps. The station was built by the Edison Illuminating Company, which was headed by Thomas Edison. The station was originally powered by custom-made Porter-Allen high-speed steam engines designed to provide 175 horsepower at 700 rpm, but these proved to be unreliable with their sensitive governors. They were removed and replaced with new engines from Armington and Sims that proved to be much more suitable for Edison's dynamos.
  
  Pearl Street Station not only holds the distinction of being the world's first central power plant, but it was also the world's first cogeneration plant. While the steam engines provided grid electricity, Edison made use of the thermal byproduct by distributing steam to local manufacturers, and warming nearby buildings on the same Manhattan block.
  
  The station burned down in 1890, destroying all but one dynamo that is now kept in the Greenfield Village Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.
  
  In 1929 the Edison Company constructed three scale working models of the station. When a button was pushed, a motor turned the engines, generators, and other equipment in the model. A set of lamps connected to labelled buttons identified the various areas of the building. Cut-outs in the side of the model building allowed examination of the boilers on the first level, reciprocating steam engines and dynamos on the reinforced second level, and the control and test gear on the third and fourth levels. The models were constructed to a scale of one-half inch to the foot and were 62 inches long, 34 inches high and 13 inches wide. The models still exist and are on display at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of American History in Washington, at the Consolidated Edison Learning Center in Long Island City, New York and at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. Up to 31 people worked on constructing the models which took about 6 months to complete'.
  - At Wikipedia: More
  - On YouTube: More
• In 1885, The Exchange Buffet in NY, is the first cafeteria. The cafeteria (Spanish for Coffee Shop) was for men only and the customers had to stand while eating.
  From Wikipedia: 'Perhaps the first self-service restaurant (not necessarily considered a cafeteria) in the United States was the Exchange Buffet in New York City, opened September 4, 1885, which catered to an exclusively male clientele. Food was purchased at a counter, and patrons ate standing up. This represents the predecessor of two formats: the cafeteria, described below, and the automat.
  
  During the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, an entrepreneur named John Kruger built an American version of the smörgåsbords he had seen while traveling in Sweden. Emphasizing the simplicity and light fare, he called it the "Cafeteria" - Spanish for "coffee shop". The exposition attracted over 27 million visitors (half the US population at the time) in six months, and it was initially through Kruger's operation that America first heard the term and experienced the self-service dining format. Food court style cafeteria in a Port Charlotte, Florida high school
  
  Meanwhile, in everyday, hometown America, the chain of Childs Restaurants was quickly growing from about 10 locations in New York City in 1890 to hundreds across the United States and Canada by 1920. Childs is credited with the critical innovation of adding trays and a "tray line" to the self-service format, which they introduced in 1898 at their 130 Broadway location. Childs did not change its format of sit-down dining, however. This was soon the standard design for most Childs Restaurants - and many imitators - from coast-to-coast, and ultimately the dominant design for cafeterias.
  
  It has also been said that the "cafeteria craze" started in May 1905, when a woman named Helen Mosher opened a humble downtown L.A. restaurant where people chose their food at a long counter and carried their own trays to their tables." California does have a long and rich history in the cafeteria format - most notably the many Boos Brothers Cafeterias, and also Clifton's, and Schaber's. However, the facts do not warrant the "wellspring" characterization that some have ascribed to the region. The earliest cafeterias in California were opened at least 12 years after Kruger's Cafeteria, and Childs already had several dozen locations scattered around the country. Finally, Horn and Hardart, an automat format chain (slightly different from the cafeteria), was also well established in the mid-Atlantic region before 1900.
  
  Between 1960 and 1981, the popularity of cafeteria format restaurants was gradually overcome by the emergence of the fast food restaurant and fast casual restaurant formats'.
  - At Wikipedia: More
  - On YouTube: More
• In 1888, George Eastman patented his camera and the brand name 'Kodak' is registered as a trademark. The name Kodak has no special meaning. It was the first camera to use celluloid roll film, which he invented.
  From Wikipedia: 'The Eastman Kodak Company, commonly known as Kodak, is an American technology company that concentrates on imaging products, with its historic basis on photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, United States and incorporated in New Jersey. It was founded by George Eastman in 1888.
  
  Kodak provides packaging, functional printing, graphic communications and professional services for businesses around the world. Its main business segments are Digital Printing and Enterprise and Graphics, Entertainment and Commercial Films. It is best known for photographic film products. During most of the 20th century Kodak held a dominant position in photographic film. The company's ubiquity was such that its tagline "Kodak moment" entered the common lexicon to describe a personal event that demanded to be recorded for posterity.
  
  Kodak began to struggle financially in the late 1990s as a result of the decline in sales of photographic film and its slowness in transitioning to digital photography. As part of a turnaround strategy, Kodak focused on digital photography and digital printing and attempted to generate revenues through aggressive patent litigation. In January 2012, Kodak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. In February 2012, Kodak announced that it would cease making digital cameras, pocket video cameras and digital picture frames and focus on the corporate digital imaging market. In August 2012, Kodak announced the intention to sell its photographic film (excluding motion picture film), commercial scanners and kiosk operations as a measure to emerge from bankruptcy.
  
  The letter k was a favorite of Eastman's; he is quoted as saying, "it seems a strong, incisive sort of letter."
  
  He and his mother devised the name Kodak with an anagrams set. Eastman said that there were three principal concepts he used in creating the name: it should be short, easy to pronounce, and not resemble any other name or be associated with anything else.
  
  From the company's founding by George Eastman in 1888, Kodak followed the razor and blades strategy of selling inexpensive cameras and making large margins from consumables – film, chemicals and paper. As late as 1976, Kodak commanded 90% of film sales and 85% of camera sales in the U.S'.
  - At FamousDaily: More
  - At Wikipedia: More
  - On YouTube: More
• In 1923, The maiden flight of the first U.S. airship, the USS Shenandoah. It was a dirigible not a blimp (rigid frame, lighter-than-air airship. It crashed during a storm near Caldwell, Ohio, 3 September 1925.
  From Wikipedia: 'USS Shenandoah was the first of four United States Navy rigid airships. It was constructed during 1922–23 at Lakehurst Naval Air Station, and first flew in September 1923. It developed the U.S. Navy's experience with rigid airships, and made the first crossing of North America by airship. On the 57th flight, Shenandoah was torn apart in a squall line over Ohio in September of 1925.
  
  'Shenandoah was originally designated FA-1, for "Fleet Airship Number One" but this was changed to ZR-1. The airship was 680 ft (207.26 m) long and weighed 36 tons (32658 kg). It had a range of 5,000 mi (4,300 nmi; 8,000 km), and could reach speeds of 70 mph (61 kn; 110 km/h). Shenandoah was assembled at Naval Air Station Lakehurst, New Jersey in 1922–1923, in Hangar No. 1, the only hangar large enough to accommodate the ship; its parts were fabricated at the Naval Aircraft Factory in Philadelphia. NAS Lakehurst had served as a base for Navy blimps for some time, but Shenandoah was the first rigid airship to join the fleet.
  
  The design was based on Zeppelin bomber L-49 (LZ-96), built in 1917. L-49 was a lightened "height climber", designed for altitude at the expense of other qualities. The design was found insufficient and a number of the features of newer Zeppelins were used, as well as some structural improvements. The structure was built from a new alloy of aluminum and copper known as duralumin. Girders were fabricated at the Naval Aircraft Factory. Whether the changes introduced into the original design of L-49 played a part in Shenandoah's later breakup is a matter of debate. An outer cover of high-quality cotton cloth was sewn, laced or taped to the duralumin frame and painted with aluminum dope.
  
  As the first rigid airship to use helium rather than hydrogen, Shenandoah had a significant edge in safety over previous airships. Helium was relatively scarce at the time, and the Shenandoah used much of the world's reserves just to fill its 2,100,000 cubic feet (59,000 m3) volume. Los Angeles — the next rigid airship to enter Navy service, originally built by Luftschiffbau Zeppelin in Germany as LZ 126 — was at first filled with the helium from Shenandoah until more could be procured.
  
  Shenandoah was powered by 300 hp (220 kW), eight-cylinder Packard gasoline engines. Six engines were originally installed, but in 1924 one engine (aft of the control car) was removed. The first frame of Shenandoah was erected by 24 June 1922; on 20 August 1923, the completed airship was floated free of the ground. Helium cost $55 per thousand cubic feet at the time, and was considered too expensive to simply vent to the atmosphere to compensate for the weight of fuel consumed by the gasoline engines. Neutral buoyancy was preserved by installing condensers to capture the water vapor in the engine exhaust'.
  - At Wikipedia: More
  - On YouTube: More
  - On YouTube: More
• In 1950, Darlington Raceway is the site of the inaugural Southern 500, the first 500-mile NASCAR race.
  From Wikipedia: 'The Bojangles' Southern 500 is a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series stock car race at Darlington Raceway in Darlington, South Carolina, United States. The race distance is 501 miles (806 km) long, and consists of 367 laps. From 1950 to 2003, and again since 2015, the race has been held on Labor Day weekend. The Southern 500 was largely considered one of the Crown Jewels of the NASCAR calendar, and has been nicknamed NASCAR's "oldest superspeedway race." For decades, the race has been considered by competitors and media as one of the more difficult and challenging races on the NASCAR schedule, owing much to the track's unusual egg-shape, rough pavement, and overall unforgiving nature. Darlington Raceway, where the race is held, has a long and storied reputation as the "Track Too Tough to Tame."
  
  Through 2003, Darlington held two Cup series races annually, the Southern 500 in the fall, and a 400-mile event in the spring. In 2004, the Southern 500 was moved to November and was run as the second-to-last race in the inaugural Chase for the Cup. The following year, as the result of a settlement in the Ferko lawsuit, Darlington lost one of its two dates. The 500-mile race was moved to the Saturday of Mother's Day weekend in May, and renamed for the sponsorship of Dodge. The race was held as a night race under-the-lights during this period.
  
  The event re-assumed the Southern 500 name in 2009. In 2014, the race moved to April after swapping dates with Kansas. NASCAR announced that the Southern 500 would be returning to its traditional Labor Day weekend date for 2015, replacing Atlanta as the host of the Labor Day weekend event (Atlanta's race, meanwhile, was moved into the early portion of the season).
  
  Carl Edwards is the defending winner of the race, after winning it in 2015'.
  - At Wikipedia: More
  - On YouTube: More
• In 1956, The IBM 305 RAMAC (Random Access Memory Accounting System) is the first magnetic disk storage commercial computer. It had a storage capacity of only 5 million characters.
  From Wikipedia: 'The IBM 305 RAMAC was the first commercial computer that used a moving-head hard disk drive (magnetic disk storage) for secondary storage. The system was publicly announced on September 14, 1956, with test units already installed at the U.S. Navy and at private corporations. RAMAC stood for "Random Access Method of Accounting and Control", as its design was motivated by the need for real-time accounting in business.
  
  The first RAMAC to be used in the U.S. auto industry was installed at Chrysler's MOPAR Division in 1957. It replaced a huge tub file which was part of MOPAR's parts inventory control and order processing system. The 305 was one of the last vacuum tube computers that IBM built. It weighed over a ton. The IBM 350 disk system stored 5 million alphanumeric characters recorded as 6 data bits, 1 parity bit and one space bit for 8 bits recorded per character. It had fifty 24-inch-diameter (610 mm) disks. Two independent access arms moved up and down to select a disk, and in and out to select a recording track, all under servo control. Average time to locate a single record was 600 milliseconds. Several improved models were added in the 1950s. The IBM RAMAC 305 system with 350 disk storage leased for US$3,200 (equivalent to $26,961 in 2015) per month. More than 1,000 systems were built. Production ended in 1961; the RAMAC computer became obsolete in 1962 when the IBM 1405 Disk Storage Unit for the IBM 1401 was introduced, and the 305 was withdrawn in 1969.
  
  The original 305 RAMAC computer system could be housed in a room of about 9 m (30 ft) by 15 m (50 ft); the 350 disk storage unit measured around 1.5 square metres (16 sq ft). The first hard disk unit was shipped September 13, 1956. The additional components of the computer were a card punch, a central processing unit, a power supply unit, an operator's console/card reader unit, and a printer. There was also a manual inquiry station that allowed direct access to stored records. IBM touted the system as being able to store the equivalent of 64,000 punched cards.
  
  Programming the 305 involved not only writing machine language instructions to be stored on the drum memory, but also almost every unit in the system (including the computer itself) could be programmed by inserting wire jumpers into a plugboard control panel.
  
  During the 1960 Olympic Winter Games in Squaw Valley (USA), IBM provided the first electronic data processing systems for the Games. The system featured an IBM RAMAC 305 computer, punched card data collection, and a central printing facility'.
  - At FamousDaily: More
  - At Wikipedia: More
  - On YouTube: More
• In 1998, Larry Page and Sergey Brin found Google.
  From Wikipedia: 'Google is an American multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products that include online advertising technologies, search, cloud computing, and software. Most of its profits are derived from AdWords, an online advertising service that places advertising near the list of search results.
  
  Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were Ph.D. students at Stanford University, California. Together, they own about 14 percent of its shares and control 56 percent of the stockholder voting power through supervoting stock. They incorporated Google as a privately held company on September 4, 1998. An initial public offering (IPO) took place on August 19, 2004, and Google moved to its new headquarters in Mountain View, California, nicknamed the Googleplex.
  
  In August 2015, Google announced plans to reorganize its interests as a holding company called Alphabet Inc. When this restructuring took place on October 2, 2015, Google became Alphabet's leading subsidiary, as well as the parent for Google's Internet interests.
  
  Google began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were both PhD students at Stanford University in Stanford, California.
  
  While conventional search engines ranked results by counting how many times the search terms appeared on the page, the two theorized about a better system that analyzed the relationships between websites. They called this new technology PageRank; it determined a website's relevance by the number of pages, and the importance of those pages, that linked back to the original site.
  
  Page and Brin originally nicknamed their new search engine "BackRub", because the system checked backlinks to estimate the importance of a site. Eventually, they changed the name to Google, originating from a misspelling of the word "googol", the number one followed by one hundred zeros, which was picked to signify that the search engine was intended to provide large quantities of information. Originally, Google ran under Stanford University's website, with the domains google.stanford.edu and z.stanford.edu.
  
  The domain name for Google was registered on September 15, 1997, and the company was incorporated on September 4, 1998. It was based in the garage of a friend (Susan Wojcicki) in Menlo Park, California. Craig Silverstein, a fellow PhD student at Stanford, was hired as the first employee.
  
  In May 2011, the number of monthly unique visitors to Google surpassed one billion for the first time, an 8.4 percent increase from May 2010 (931 million). In January 2013, Google announced it had earned US$50 billion in annual revenue for the year of 2012. This marked the first time the company had reached this feat, topping their 2011 total of $38 billion.
  
  The company has reported fourth quarter (Dec 2014) Earnings Per Share (EPS) of $6.88 – $0.20 under projections. Revenue came in at $14.5 billion (16.9% growth year over year), also under expectations by $110 million'.
  - At FamousDaily: More
  - At Wikipedia: More
  - On YouTube: More

Sometimes I feel like a nut, sometimes like a jar of 'um. Tomorrow will be 'National Macadamia Nut Day'. They came from Australia, not Hawaii.

Let's get this one straight from the get-go. Put down your party hats and reroute that enthusiasm. Tomorrow is 'National Wildlife Day', but this is the outdoors type, not the after work type.

While you are up on the roof, under the porch or parting the bushes looking for that newspaper, count 10 and let us not forget that tomorrow is 'National Newspaper Carrier Day'. It celebrates the first 10 year old kid that was hired by The New York Sun to deliver news papers back in 1833, Barney Flaherty by name. He has the distinction of being the first newspaper carrier. I never delivered papers when a boy, I pinned my entrepreneurial endeavors on lawn mowing. With the Internet, we may loos newspapers, bu t the grass will always grow. At least, that was my thoughts back in '56.

After a hard day of delivering papers or mowing lawns tomorrow you can celebrate by going to extremes. It will be 'Eat an Extra Dessert Day'.

The newspapers of the past may have headlined the following on September 4.

In 1807, Robert Fulton begins operating his steamboat. You may remember a few days ago we made the distinction between the first man to patent the steamboat and the first successful commercial steamboat service by Fulton.

In 1882, Thomas Edison begins the first commercial electrical power plant in history. The Pearl Street Station, was a DC generating plant, lighting one square mile of lower Manhattan. This is considered by many as the day that the electrical age began.

In 1885, The Exchange Buffet in NY, was the first cafeteria. The cafeteria (Spanish for Coffee Shop) was for men only and the customers had to stand while eating.

In 1888, Kodak is registered as a trademark by George Eastman and his camera was patented. It was the first camera to use celluloid roll film, which he invented.

In 1923, was the maiden flight of the first U.S. rigid construction lighter-than-air, airship, the USS Shenandoah. It was latered destroyed over Ohio in a storm.

In 1956 - The IBM 305 RAMAC is the first magnetic disk storage commercial computer.

In 1998, Larry Page and Sergey Brin found Google. Something to do with the Internet,

No. 1 song

• Where Did Our Love Go - The Supremes: More
  'Everybody Loves Somebody' has been displaced by 'Where Did Our Love Go', which will hold the no. 1 spot until Sept. 5 2014, when 'The House of the Rising Sun', takes over.

Top movie

• Mary Poppins More
  Having displaced 'A Hard Day's Night', it will be there until the weekend box office of October 4 1964 when, 'Cheyenne Autumn', takes over.

• FamousBirthdays.com: September 4 Birthdays More
• FamousDaily.com: September 4 History More
• History.com: Historical Events on 4th September More
• HistoryOrb.com: Famous Deaths on 4th September More
• On-This-day.com history 4th September More
• On-This-day.com music history 4th September More
• Wikipedia.com: History September 4 More

Baby Safety Month, Better Breakfast Month, Classical Music Month, Fall Hat Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, International Square Dancing Monthk Little League Month, National Biscuit Month, National Blueberry Popsicle Month, National Chicken Month, National Cholesterol Education Month, National Courtesy Month, National Honey Month, National Mushroom Month, National Organic Harvest Month, National Papaya Month, National Piano Month, National Potato Month, National Rice Month, Self Improvement Month

September is:

September origin (from Wikipedia): Originally September (Latin septem, "seven") was the seventh of ten months on the oldest known Roman calendar.
September in the Northern Hemisphere is the seasonal equivalent of March in the Southern Hemisphere.
After the calendar reform that added January and February to the beginning of the year, September became the ninth month, but retained its name. It had 29 days until the Julian reform, which added a day.

September at Wikipedia: More

If you couldn't afford 90 cents for a movie ticket, 50 years ago, or your 45 RPM record player was broke, you might watch one of these shows on TV.
From this Wikipedia article: More

Best selling books of 1964 More

• Astronomy Picture of the Day: More
• NOAA: - National Hurricane Center - Atlantic Graphical Tropical Weather Outlook: More
• Listen to Old Radio Shows: (streaming mp3 with schedule) More
• NASA TV: (video feed) More
  NASA TV schedule: More
• Public Domain eBook Links

  Sites for downloading or reading free Public Domain eBooks. Available in various formats. More

• Podcast: A Moment of Science. Approximately 1 minute general science facts.
  Home page: More
  RSS: More
• Podcast: The Naked Scientists. Current science, medicine, space and other science
  Home page: More
  RSS: More
• Podcast: Quirks & Quarks. Current science news.
  Home page: More
  RSS: More
• Articles and videos: Universe Today. Current space and astronomy news.
  Home page: More
  RSS: More
• Old Picture of the Day - "Each day we bring you one stunning little glimpse of history in the form of a historical photograph."
  Home page: More
  RSS: More

Below, are listed several holiday sites that I reference in addition to other holiday researches.

US Government Holidays

• 2014 Postal Holidays More
• 2014 Official Federal Holidays More

Holidays Worldwide

• List of holidays by country More
• Holidays and Observances around the World More