Author: Mark Aldrich

January 17 in History

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

A King Features comic strip called Thimble Theatre was in its eleventh year when a new character was introduced in the strip on this date in 1929: Popeye. Popeye, at first a secondary character, quickly became the most popular figure in the comic and after a few years, his adventures were the focus of the strip.

Popeye’s first appearance in the strip, from 88 years ago today, is at top. He is hired as a deck hand.

* * * *
Betty White is 95 today.
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A Marathon, Not a Sprint

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

If you look at this page via a Windows browser, there should be a logo on left side of the tab at top, a little green-brown-yellow blob.

It is a photo of a duck. I first placed the picture there, seen full-size at top, as an inside joke with myself, but the story is worth sharing. (Most of this first appeared in a post from December 2013, “A Duck About Town.”)

The photo was taken in 2013 (with friends alongside: LT and HG), and it was added at the very last second on the very first post written later that same year. If you have looked at this web site once or a thousand times (thanks, mom!), the duck has been there, on whatever device you use, each time. It is this site’s mascot, a companion to each piece I write.
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January 16 in History

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Citizens from twenty-eight communities located in the “New Hampshire Grants”—land across the Connecticut River to the west of the colony of New Hampshire—declared independence 240 years ago today. The land was in a dispute between New York and New Hampshire; the citizens wrote a constitution in which the land is referred to (in different places) as the “State of Vermont” and the “Commonwealth of Vermont.” Eventually, it became the fourteenth state.

Between 1777 and statehood in 1791, Vermont was the Republic of Vermont, a sovereign entity that did not much want to be a republic (historians refer to it as the “reluctant republic”) but had a population that was only interested in joining a nation on its terms. It issued currency and had a flag, the “Green Mountain Boys Flag” seen at top.

After negotiations failed to unite Vermont with Quebec, it joined the colonies in the fight for independence from Great Britain. Most of its citizens fought on behalf of independence in the Revolutionary War.
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