12 novembre

Two clay tablets of the Babylonian Astronomical Diaries, now in the British Museum, follow a comet across the sky in the autumn of 164 BCE. Another records the return of 87 BCE. They were identified as Halley’s only in 1985, and their positions helped pin down the orbit of that era.

The Brazilian Alberto Santos-Dumont flew his tail-first 14-bis 220 metres in 21.5 seconds before officials of the Aéro-Club de France: the first flight in Europe, and the first anywhere officially witnessed. Because it took off on its own wheels, with no rail or catapult, Brazil still calls him…

Eight months later a party from Cape Evans found the tent drifted over like a cairn, “11–12 miles south of One Ton”. They took the diaries and letters, collapsed the tent over the three bodies and built a snow cairn and cross above them. Their note put the spot at 79°50′ S.

An ordinance drafted by Alderman Sidney Story confined legal prostitution to a district behind the French Quarter, which took his name, to his dismay. Its “Blue Books” listed the women by race. Pianists such as Jelly Roll Morton played its parlours, but most bands played dance halls, parks and…

With the country at war, the Navy forbade brothels near its bases, and Mayor Martin Behrman’s city council closed the district over his protests. The story that the closing sent jazz up the river to Chicago is too simple: the musicians were already leaving, for better pay, with the hundreds of…

Russia’s first election by universal suffrage, women included, ran over several weeks. Of more than 40 million votes, the SRs won roughly 40 per cent and the Bolsheviks about a quarter, strong in the cities and the army. The Kadets took about 5 per cent. Tallies differ by a few points.

Three days after the Kaiser fell, the revolutionary government promised equal, secret, direct voting for every man and woman of 20. In January 1919 37 women were elected to the National Assembly, where Marie Juchacz opened the first speech by a woman with “Meine Herren und Damen”.

Armstrong’s studio bands for OKeh, with Lil Hardin Armstrong, Kid Ory, Johnny Dodds and Johnny St. Cyr, hardly ever played in public. In about three years of sessions they made jazz a soloist’s art: most jazz musicians of the next generation learned the solos by heart.

Controllers chose a close pass of Titan over a later trip to Pluto. The pass showed only orange haze, and it flung Voyager 1 up out of the plane of the planets for good.

Law No. 22/99, promulgated this day, gave daughters the same right as sons to inherit from their parents and let spouses choose joint ownership of their property. After the 1994 genocide many widows and orphaned girls headed households but could not inherit the land they farmed.

Six weeks after Congress had approved money to buy troubled mortgage assets, the Treasury said it would not buy them after all: capital injections were quicker.

Its harpoons failed to fire, and the lander bounced twice before settling in a shadowed spot. It ran its instruments on battery for about two and a half days, then slept. Rosetta found it wedged in a crack in September 2016.