Today, October 21, 2025, we are officially 10 years in the future from the future that Marty McFly, Jennifer, and Doc Brown travelled to in "Back to the Future Part II".
Somehow *still* needing roads.
#OTD #BackToTheFuture #Movies #CineMastodon #FilmMastodon #80s #OnThisDay #BTTF #Entertainment #PopCulture
Happy 25th anniversary to this Daily Mail article from the year 2000, proclaiming that internet "may be just a passing fad as millions give up on it".
American writer and editor Lucretia Peabody Hale died #OTD in 1900.
Lucretia's most famous work is the series of humorous stories about the Peterkin family, which were originally published in magazines and later collected into books. As part of the broader movement for women's rights in the 19th century, Hale's writings and public activities contributed to the dialogue on women's education and social roles.
Books by Lucretia Peabody Hale at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/1092
#OnThisDay, 23 Oct 1915, 20,000+ women march in a 5 mile long parade through New York City, USA, demanding the right to vote.
There is no record of African-American women being invited to join the march.
#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #VotesForWomen #AmericanHistory #Histodons
1/2
French film director, producer, and screenwriter Louis Jean Lumière died #OTD in 1948.
Alongside his brother Auguste, Louis is best known for inventing the Cinématographe, a motion picture camera, projector, and printer all in one. The Lumière brothers' work laid the foundation for the film industry and revolutionized visual storytelling.
German astronomer Johann Georg Palitzsch was born #OTD in 1723.
On December 25, 1758, Palitzsch became the first person to observe the return of Halley's Comet, confirming Halley's prediction, which was based on his calculations of the comet's orbit and its previous appearances. This was a significant milestone in the field of astronomy, providing strong evidence for the accuracy of Newtonian mechanics and the predictability of cometary orbits.
American zoologist Mary Jane Rathbun was born #OTD in 1860.
Rathbun's primary work involved the classification and description of crustaceans, particularly crabs. Over her career, she described over 1,000 new species and genera of crustaceans. She developed new methods and techniques for identifying and classifying crustaceans, including detailed morphological descriptions and illustrations that facilitated the work of other researchers.
"Each time the discovery of new facts, the overthrow or extension of accepted theories, reminded us that science is never finished."
French physicist Charles Fabry was born #OTD in 1867.
Together with Henri Buisson, they made a groundbreaking discovery by identifying the presence of ozone in the Earth's atmosphere (1913). They used spectroscopic techniques to measure the absorption of ultraviolet light by atmospheric ozone, providing the first definitive evidence of the ozone layer.
American illustrator, author, youth leader Daniel Carter Beard died #OTD in 1941.
In 1905, Beard founded an organization called "The Sons of Daniel Boone," which aimed to teach boys outdoor skills, woodcraft, and self-reliance. This organization was one of the first to emphasize the importance of outdoor education and adventure for youth. The Sons of Daniel Boone was later merged with the Boy Scouts of America.
Books by Daniel Carter Beard at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/8612
Mind the gap!
#OnThisDay, 6 June 1915, Maida Vale Tube station opens in London. It is staffed by women until the end of World War 1.
#LondonHistory #TubeHistory #GoingUnderground #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #Histodons
Love is like an itchin' in my heart...
#OnThisDay, 22 Oct 1966, The Supremes become the first all-woman group to get to no 1 in the US Billboard album charts with The Supremes A' Go-Go.
Listen to their version of Get Ready: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VD_7_MhgHhc
#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #AmericanHistory #PopHistory #Histodons
Michel Byrne on poet & translator George Campbell Hay | Deòrsa Mac Iain Dheòrsa (1915–1984) – born #OTD, 8 Dec
Gaelic & Scots: Cultural Connections & Inspirations in the 20th Century (Forum for Research on the Languages of Scotland & Ulster webinar, 6 May 2025)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIesmENZ0Iw
#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #poetry #Gaelic #Gaidhlig #Scots #Scotslanguage
#OtD 15 Jun 1911 shipping workers in the UK launched a national strike across the industry for better pay and conditions. The employers caved in within two weeks https://t.co/0Stj6xrflu https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8689/uk-shipping-strike?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon
#OnThisDay, 24 Oct 1901, American Annie Edson Taylor becomes the first *person* to survive a trip over Niagara Falls in a barrel.
The cat did *not* do the stunt with her.
#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #Histodons #AmericanHistory
26 years ago, on October 24, 1999 the iconic Peanuts football gag concluded with the twist of having Rerun, Lucy's younger brother, holding the ball for Charlie Brown to kick as Lucy is called inside. Whether or not he actually *did* kick it, we'll never know.
#OTD #Peanuts #CharlieBrown #OnThisDay #Comic #Comics #ComicStrip #Snoopy
"Colour! What a deep and mysterious language, the language of dreams.... Color which, like music, is a matter of vibrations, reaches what is most general and therefore most indefinable in nature: its inner power."
The writings of a savage
French painter and sculptor Paul Gauguin was born #OTD in 1848.
Paul Gauguin at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=gauguin
James Macpherson (1736–1796), of “Ossian” fame, was born #OTD, 27 Oct. The “Ossian” poems were the literary sensation of the 18th century; they inspired the Brothers Grimm to collect German folktales, & Elias Lönnrot to compile Finnish poems into the Kalevala. They are the founding texts of European Romanticism & of modern fantasy literature
A 🎂🧵
@litstudies
1/9
🖼️: Ingres, Le Songe d’Ossian
#Scottish #literature #18thcentury #romanticism #fantasy #Ossian #JamesMacpherson #Gaelic #Gaidhlig
English mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing died #OTD in 1954.
During World War II, he played a crucial role in deciphering the Enigma code used by the German military, significantly contributing to the Allied war effort. In his paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence," he proposed the famous Turing Test as a criterion for determining whether a machine can exhibit intelligent behavior indistinguishable from that of a human.
The very first website is 35 years old today, and you can still visit it at http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html!
"On August 6, 1991, the first website was introduced to the world. [It] contained information about the World Wide Web Project. It launched at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, CERN, where it was created by British computer scientist @timbl."
Happy birthday, web!
“[Milne’s] cryogenics story, ‘Ten Thousand Years in Ice’, in which a survivor from an ancient advanced civilisation is revived in the present, unintentionally became one of science fiction’s great literary hoaxes”
Robert Duncan Milne (1844–1899) was born #OTD, 7 June, in Cupar, Fife. He emigrated to the USA & became America’s first full-time writer of #sciencefiction
Italian philosopher, poet, essayist, and philologist Giacomo Leopardi died #OTD in 1837.
Around 1816, Leopardi experienced what he called his "literary conversion," shifting his focus from philological studies to poetry and philosophical reflection. His early lyrical poems, or "canti," began to reflect his developing philosophical ideas. In 1816 the idylls Le rimembranze and Inno a Nettuno were published.
Books by Giacomo Leopardi at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/8593
#OTD in 1822.
Charles Babbage proposes a difference engine in a paper to the Royal Astronomical Society.
The difference engine is based on the method of divided differences, a way to interpolate or tabulate functions by using a small set of polynomial co-efficients. Some of the most common mathematical functions are built from logarithmic & trigonometric functions, which can be approximated by polynomials, so a difference engine can compute many useful tables.
British biochemist Ida Maclean was born #OTD in 1877.
She was the first woman admitted to the London Chemical Society. She conducted significant research on fatty acids and sterols, contributing to the understanding of biochemistry's foundational elements. She came to be regarded as an authority on biochemistry, and her 1943 monograph The Metabolism of Fat was the first published of Methuen's series Monographs on Biochemical Subjects.
#OTD in 1893.
The Shelley Memorial is inaugurated at University College, Oxford, from which the poet was expelled in 1811. It is designed by Basil Champneys, with a reclining nude marble statue of Percy Bysshe Shelley by Edward Onslow Ford. Although Shelley was expelled from the college, he remains one of its most famous alumni and is now held in high honour there.
Shelley Memorial all washed up?
By Josh Pull via @Cherwell
https://www.cherwell.org/2005/04/22/shelley-memorial-all-washed-up/
![Beard's frontispiece for Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
Daniel Carter Beard - Library of Congress[1]
"Knight in armor tilting at man in modern dress in tree onto which a man in modern dress has climbed for refuge", "Published as frontispiece in: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court / Samuel Clemens. New York : Charles L. Webster & Co., 1889. ", "1 drawing : pen and ink over graphite underdrawing ; sheet 36 x 57.1 cm."](/proxy/post_attachment/250779/0a6872f0d1.jpg "Beard's frontispiece for Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
Daniel Carter Beard - Library of Congress[1]
\"Knight in armor tilting at man in modern dress in tree onto which a man in modern dress has climbed for refuge\", \"Published as frontispiece in: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court / Samuel Clemens. New York : Charles L. Webster & Co., 1889. \", \"1 drawing : pen and ink over graphite underdrawing ; sheet 36 x 57.1 cm.\"")
