Spark! Pro-Series - 10th June 2020

DailyLlama · 2020-06-10T05:55:31.000Z

Today in History: 1752 – Benjamin Franklin’s kite experiment

On a June afternoon in 1752, the sky began to darken over the city of Philadelphia. As rain began to fall and lightning threatened, most of the city’s citizens surely hurried inside. But not Benjamin Franklin. He decided it was the perfect time to go fly a kite.Franklin had been waiting for an opportunity like this. He wanted to demonstrate the electrical nature of lightning, and to do so, he needed a thunderstorm.
He had his materials at the ready: a simple kite made with a large silk handkerchief, a hemp string, and a silk string. He also had a house key, a Leyden jar (a device that could store an electrical charge for later use), and a sharp length of wire. His son William assisted him.
Franklin had originally planned to conduct the experiment atop a Philadelphia church spire, according to his contemporary, British scientist Joseph Priestley (who, incidentally, is credited with discovering oxygen), but he changed his plans when he realized he could achieve the same goal by using a kite.
So Franklin and his son “took the opportunity of the first approaching thunder storm to take a walk into a field,” Priestley wrote in his account. “To demonstrate, in the completest manner possible, the sameness of the electric fluid with the matter of lightning, Dr. Franklin, astonishing as it must have appeared, contrived actually to bring lightning from the heavens, by means of an electrical kite, which he raised when a storm of thunder was perceived to be coming on.”
Despite a common misconception, Benjamin Franklin did not discover electricity during this experiment—or at all, for that matter. Electrical forces had been recognized for more than a thousand years, and scientists had worked extensively with static electricity. Franklin’s experiment demonstrated the connection between lightning and electricity.
Read more here
Births On This Day
1926 Lionel Jeffries - British actor (Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Camelot)
1922 Bill Kerr - South African-born Australian actor (Hancock’s Half Hour)
1922 Judy Garland [Frances Ethel Gumm] - American actress, singer (The Wizard of Oz)
1921 Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh - Greek/English husband of Queen Elizabeth II
1910 Howlin’ Wolf [Chester Arthur Burnett] - American blues musician (Smokestack Lightnin’, Killing Floor)
Deaths On This Day
2009 Tenniel Evans - British actor and clergyman (10 Rillington Place, My Brother’s Keeper, The Navy Lark)
2004 Ray Charles - American singer-songwriter, pianist, actor
1993 Les Dawson - English Comedian and pianist
1967 Spencer Tracy - American actor (Woman of the Year, Father of the Bride)
323 BC Alexander the Great - Macedonian king

The Funnies:

On the Menu Today – Bacon Jalapeño Corn Salad

Finally, a salad recipe ! I don’t normally eat salad, but I’d definitely put a massive dent in this (as long as someone else eats the jalapenos)!

Ingredients

500 g corn
6 slices cooked bacon
1 tbsp. coriander
1 jalapeño, crushed
80 g mayonnaise
Juice of 2 limes
1 tsp. chilli powder
1 tsp. garlic powder
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Method

In a large bowl, combine all ingredients. Stir until ingredients are completely mixed and coated in dressing. Garnish with herbs, if desired, then serve.

Quote of the Day:

“A lot of the stories were highly suspicious, in her opinion. There was the one that ended when the two good children pushed the wicked witch into her own oven…Stories like this stopped people thinking properly, she was sure. She’d read that one and thought, Excuse me? No one has an oven big enough to get a whole person in, and what made the children think they could just walk around eating people’s houses in any case? And why does some boy too stupid to know a cow is worth a lot more than five beans have the right to murder a giant and steal all his gold? Not to mention commit an act of ecological vandalism? And some girl who can’t tell the difference between a wolf and her grandmother must either have been as dense as teak or come from an extremely ugly family.”

― Terry Pratchett – The Wee Free Men

Comic of the Day:

Back to the random oldies, as there was no new one last night.

xkcd.png389×894 48.1 KB

Mouseover: “The other side of the USB-C is rotationally symmetric except that the 3rd pin from the top is designated FIREWIRE TRIBUTE PIN.”

Image Credit: xkcd: Pinouts

Inspirobot Always Controversial, Occasionally Inspirational Quote of the Day:

inspirobot48.jpg650×650 102 KB

Read @liamsullivan 's net-neutral Spark! from Monday here

sniffersir · 2020-06-10T07:10:01.000Z

What a SHOCKING Spark!
Just the thing to get you all CHARGED UP…
Thanks!

Robert5205 · 2020-06-10T07:28:33.000Z

Ah, I remember it well. Check out this post and scroll to the 8th entry.

How did you guys start your IT careers? IT & Tech Careers

Hi I am currently studying for my A+ certification and I am curious about the paths that I can take afterwards. I’m ultimately unsure if there is a path that is good for everyone but I guess I’m kind of looking to see where other people went with their IT career. I currently am looking to get my associates in cyber security after I graduate high school. The local community college offers a couple of decent comptia certs within that course which I think would be solid. (I know I could just google…

Ecrawf099 · 2020-06-10T10:04:51.000Z

Love the Quote of the Day.

kosun15 · 2020-06-10T10:18:04.000Z

Well, that is a different way to view the old folk tales.

rayluedecke0472 · 2020-06-10T10:18:41.000Z

The Wee children’s stories that give nightmares to people who really understand what is being read. Yikes!

The poor kiddies…But I read these same ones to my children when they were Wee folk.

Might just explain why they are who they are today? Nah.

biscuitking · 2020-06-10T10:26:43.000Z

I know what is on the list for things to make over the weekend now.

michaeldossantos6416 · 2020-06-10T10:35:22.000Z

I just went on a whole side-quest looking at Leyden jars. I’m guessing those were as close as we came to lightning in a bottle.

Also the QOTD is hilarious and thought provoking. I’ve never had that happen to me before!

tim-smith · 2020-06-10T10:41:11.000Z

Robert5205:

Ah, I remember it well. Check out this post and scroll to the 8th entry.

How did you guys start your IT careers?

Apologies @rhummel , but the Ben Franklin experiment was my first thought when I read “Ah, I remember it well”. I’m only slightly younger than you I think so I’ll add “Yeah, my dad told me about it!”

madowlx · 2020-06-10T11:06:40.000Z

DailyLlama:

1921 Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh - Greek/English husband of Queen Elizabeth II 1910 Howlin’ Wolf [Chester Arthur Burnett] - American blues musician (Smokestack Lightnin’, Killing Floor)

The missing line break here (and my lack of coffee) had me read this as all being a description of Prince Philip before I caught on. It was quite confusing for a minute.

Good old Howlin’ Wolf Philip. Royal by day, American blues musician by night.

DailyLlama · 2020-06-10T11:20:45.000Z

MadOwlx:

DailyLlama:

1921 Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh - Greek/English husband of Queen Elizabeth II 1910 Howlin’ Wolf [Chester Arthur Burnett] - American blues musician (Smokestack Lightnin’, Killing Floor)

The missing line break here (and my lack of coffee) had me read this as all being a description of Prince Philip before I caught on. It was quite confusing for a minute.

Good old Howlin’ Wolf Philip. Royal by day, American blues musician by night.

Blinkin’ line breaks again!

liamsullivan · 2020-06-10T11:21:32.000Z

Net neutral Spark!? More like Pizza cutting Spark!

alayjha · 2020-06-10T11:28:03.000Z

Half way through the day.

mweed · 2020-06-10T11:42:37.000Z

To be fair to Jack. He wasn’t trading the cow for just any five beans, they were magic beans that would bring him a fortune. It was the mother who was an idiot to throw away beans that were worth a price of a cow. Jack actually got quite a good ROI. Even without robbing a giant, a beanstalk that size would produce enough beans to feed a village.

scottbrindley · 2020-06-10T12:02:46.000Z

Love the pin out diagrams , need some 9 and 25 pin serial ports they were always entertaining

kellywill · 2020-06-10T13:04:15.000Z

Yesterday’s SPARK?

dennis-harrison · 2020-06-10T13:30:28.000Z

The salad sounded great but I did make a few adjustments to it. I increased the slices of bacon to 12, and reduced the other ingredients to zero. perfect and delicious!

The QOTD made me laugh.

And it’s comforting to know that Insirobot is back to it’s normal drunken self. Those recently that actually made sense were a bit disconcerting…

redrumrudy · 2020-06-10T14:28:47.000Z

Inspirobot Always Controversial, Occasionally Inspirational Quote of the Day:

That Inspirobot is something else. Yep, really made me think today.

cerbere · 2020-06-10T14:41:49.000Z

Damn! Llama, while I enjoy your Sparks generally, your QOTDs (which are, in actuality, excerpts, nay passages) only serve to make me never want to bother with any of the works of Terry Pratchett.

Now here’s a QOTD:

“Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know.”

kelly-for-d-link · 2020-06-10T16:12:38.000Z

1926 Lionel Jeffries - British actor (Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Camelot)

And… now the “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” song will be stuck in my head, hehe