Superb Moon

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

For those aware that there is a thing called the sky, tonight will present those of us located on the continental United States with a “supermoon,” as newspaper headline writers love to call it.

The Moon’s orbit around the Earth is not a perfect circle; it varies from 221,000 miles away to just over 252,000 miles away. Tonight, it will be at perigee, or its closest point in its orbit, and that will coincide with the full moon. Thus, tonight’s full moon will appear enormous: 14% larger than the average full moon and many times brighter than average. And then the Earth’s shadow took it away in an eclipse, because that’s what the Earth does.
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Today in History: Nov. 13

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Youth: a Narrative, and Two Other Stories, a collection by Joseph Conrad, was published on this date in 1902 by William Blackwood & Sons. One of the “two other stories” in the title is a novella Blackwood’s Magazine had published in three parts in 1899: Heart of Darkness.

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Walt Disney’s film Fantasia opened in movie theaters on this date in 1940. One sequence, set to Claude DeBussy’s “Clair de Lune,” was finished but cut at the last moment to shorten the movie. Here it is (after the jump):
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Today in History: Nov. 12

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

American Airlines Flight 587 crashed soon after taking off from John F. Kennedy International Airport 15 years ago today. Two-hundred-fifty-one passengers, nine crew, and five people on the ground in the Belle Harbor area of Queens died.

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The Ellis Island Immigrant Station (photo at top) was closed as a processing center on this date in 1954.
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