Today in History: March 12

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster took place five years ago today. A tsunami that formed after the Tōhoku earthquake flooded the six-reactor complex, which caused electrical failures and ultimately, three nuclear meltdowns.

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President Franklin Roosevelt delivered his first “Fireside chat” with the American people over the national radio networks on this date in 1933, one week after he took office. Most of his radio talks were on Sundays, as this first one was; he gave a total of 30 such explanatory speeches between 1933 and 1944. “On the Banking Crisis” was the first. The term “fireside chat” was not employed immediately, but by the second chat, delivered on May 7, the speeches were known by that name. It is estimated that up to 60 million Americans listened. Audio (below the fold):
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Stumble and Flow

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

There are the Facebook games that must be visited every 23 hours or else and the world headlines to catch up on and oh! Twitter, of course …

My day does not unfold like Ben Franklin’s typical day, depicted in the image at the top. It is more of a stumble and flow. Rinse and repeat.

A writer and editor named Mason Currey started a blog almost a decade ago with the intent of compiling the habits and day-to-day minutiae of famous and successful individuals. The web site was titled Daily Routines and several years later he had compiled so many entries that a book was published, called “Daily Rituals.” It is a fun website and an interesting book, and they are both great to get lost in and waste time reading, which may not have been Currey’s intention.

That was probably a fun meeting, the one in which they decided to change the name from “routines” to “rituals.” Being that I have named approximately zero things that have become successful, I am not going to second-guess the decision. “Rituals” certainly does sound more interesting—and purchasable—than “routines,” because routines are something we are told we must get out of.
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Today in History: March 11

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

“Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.”—Douglas Adams, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”

Douglas Adams was born on this date in 1952.

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The costliest natural disaster in world history took place five years ago today. The 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami started with a magnitude 9.0 megathrust earthquake—the most powerful to ever hit Japan and the fourth most powerful in recorded history and one that shifted the entire planet on its axis by half a foot—followed by a tsunami that struck the Sendai area particularly hard (100 foot waves reached several miles inland) and flooded the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant complex, which led to several nuclear meltdowns at that facility. The World Bank has estimated that the combined cost of these several events topped $235 billion. More than 15,000 individuals lost their lives in the quake-tsunami event.
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