| Friday, August 7, 2009 |
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| Philippe Petit |
SpotlightWalking a tightrope took on new heights when aerialist Philippe Petit took an illegal stroll between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center thirty-five years ago today. The French stuntman had taken six years to prepare for the moment. When he finally descended, he was immediately taken into police custody. The punishment? Petit had to give a free performance in Central Park and received a lifetime pass to the observation deck of the WTC's South Tower. After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, brought the Twin Towers down, Mordicai Gerstein wrote a Caldecott Medal-winning book about Petit's exploits, The Man Who Walked Between the Towers. A documentary about his infamous tightrope walk, Man on Wire, won 2009's Oscar for Best Documentary. Accepting the award, Petit balanced the Oscar on his chin.
Question of the DayWhy does a tightrope walker carry a long pole which is curved downwards?
The artist often carries a balancing pole that may be as long as 12 meters (39 feet) and weighs up to 14 kilograms (31 pounds). This pole increases the rotational inertia of the artist, which allows more time to move his or her center of mass back to the desired position directly over the wire. This effect can be magnified by making the pole as long as possible and by weighting its ends.
The pole also helps balance the funambulist by lowering the center of gravity. High-wire artists use drooping, rather than rigid, balance poles. It's possible, in fact, to have such heavy weights attached to the ends of a long, drooping pole that the center of gravity of the performer/pole system is below the wire. In this case, the performer would require no more sense of balance than a person hanging from the wire.
Word of the dayexonumia
Exonumia are numismatic items (such as tokens, coins, medals, or scrip) other than coins and paper money. This includes elongated coins, encased coins, souvenir medallions, tags, badges, counterstamped coins, wooden nickels and other similar items. It is related to numismatics proper (concerned with coins which have been legal tender), and many coin collectors are also exonumists.
All that glisters may not be gold, but the month of August still reminds us of Au, the chemical symbol for the precious stuff. This week we'll weigh some terms that relate to precious metals and the uses we make of them.
Today's History
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| A Purple Heart |
- Purple Heart: the military decoration was instituted by George Washington (1782)
- Ulysses: a US appeals court ruled that the James Joyce novel was not obscene and therefore should not be banned (1934)
- Kon-Tiki: the balsa wood raft made it across the Pacific, crashing at the end on a reef in the Tuomotu Islands; this demonstrated that pre-Columbian South Americans could have reached and settled Polynesia (1947)
- Gulf of Tonkin resolution: US Congress authorized President Lyndon B. Johnson to use military force in Vietnam (1964)
- US embassy bombings: simultaneous al-Qaeda attacks in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killed over 200 people and wounded thousands (1998)
Today's Birthdays
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| David Duchovny |
- Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga (1533-1594): soldier and poet, La Araucana
- Mata Hari (1876-1917): dancer/spy
- Louis Leakey (1903-1972): paleoanthropologist
- B.J. Thomas (67): country/pop singer, "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head"; also, musicians Bruce Dickinson (51) and Marcus Roberts (46)
- Garrison Keillor (67): writer/host of A Prairie Home Companion
- David Duchovny (49): actor, The X-Files, Californication; also, performers Stan Freberg (83), Wayne Knight (54), Harold Perrineau (46) and Charlize Theron (34)
- Jimmy Wales (43): founder of Wikipedia
- Sidney Crosby (22): center for Pittsburgh Penguins; runners Abebe Bikila (1932-1973) and Alberto Salazar (51) share this birth date
