November 11

Amber pages
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoievski, Russian author, born today in 1821


Nat Turner executed, today in 1831 - see October 2


Carlos Fuentes, Mexican novelist, born today in 1928
Daniel Ortega Saavedra, former and current Nicaraguan President, born today in 1945

Cosmic Rays named, and reported, today in 1925. In fact they had been known since 1912, ever since Victor Hess took a flight in an air balloon and noticed that the electroscope he had taken with him was discharging more rapidly as he ascended, an oddity that he attributed to a source of radiation entering the atmosphere from above. He assumed, and won the Nobel Prize for Physics for demonstrating it, that the source was electro-magnetic, which is why they were called "rays", but it has since been argued that the rays are themselves electrically charged, and the speed impacted by Earth's magnetic field.
Remembrance Sunday in Europe, also known as Armistice Day. World War I ended, today in 1918
Anoracksia Nervosa gone crazy (like, by definition, it isn't craziness anyway!); a man named John Pearson has written the unofficial and unauthorised biography of... yes, that fantasy of fiction and fiction of fantasy James Bond, giving him today as his birthday, in 1920. Now I do not wish to be accused of enjoying the same condition, but I have checked, and in "Casino Royale" he bought a car in 1933, when he would have been just thirteen; and there are several references in other books to his having been "an experienced gambler" before the Second World War. In "Moonraker", which is set in the early 1950s, he is said to be in his middle thirties, so that works for Pearson's date, but in "You Only Live Twice" he was born in the Year of the Rat, which would have been either 1912/13 (validating his car licence and his gambling) or 1924/25 (too late for "Moonraker"). Have I really just wasted six minutes and eighteen seconds of my life researching and writing this?



The portrait of James Bond (right) is by an unknown Italian artist of the 16th century - it's John Dee actually, Queen Elizabeth's European spymaster, when he wasn't being the number one mystic and number four genius mathematician of his day. His code-name, when MIsixing his mossad back to Q-for-Queenie at Richmond Palace, was 007. Pearson appears to be completely oblivious to this particular piece of data.
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