9 March 2014

kyrofelonoshophobia

[keer-oh-fee-loo-noo-shoh-foh-bee-yah]

– fear of cartoon characters.

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A Bookshelf Hoop Irony
A Bolero Fishhook Pony
A Bonfire Hook Holy Ops
Ooh looks a phony fibre

Today’s aphorism

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

– Albert Einstein

On this day

9 March 1454 – birth of Amerigo Vespucci in Florence, Italy. Italian explorer, financier, navigator and cartographer. Vespucci believed that Christopher Columbus’s discovery of the ‘New World’ or ‘East Asia’ (now known as the Bahamas) and the land mass beyond it, was not part of Asia, but a separate ‘super-continent’. America is named after Vespucci. Died 22 February 1512 in Seville, Spain.

9 – 10 March 1945 – A new U.S. offensive against Japan is launched in which more than 2,000 bombs were dropped on Tokyo over a 2 day period, killing around 80,000 people and destroying 40km2. The attack was known as ‘Operation Meetinghouse’ and is considered the single worst bombing in history. It is also believed the official death toll was greatly understated by both Japan and America for their own reasons. Operation Meetinghouse was only one of a number of fire (incendiary) bombings of Japan between 17 November 1944 and 15 August 1945. The fire-bombings demolished every Japanese city, except for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which were reserved for the atomic bomb attacks of 6 and 9 August 1945. The incendiary and atomic bombings killed at least 2 million Japanese civilians.

9 March 1934 – birth of Yuri Gagarin, Soviet astronaut. On 12 April 1961, he became the first man into space and to orbit Earth while aboard the Vostok 1 spacecraft.