Friday, April 13

     Welcome to the Wannaskan Almanac for Friday.

     It's the birthday in 1732 of Frederick North, the man credited with losing America. North was born in London, just off Piccadilly. The family was not wealthy at first, but became so through inheritances.
     He received a good education, went on the grand tour of Europe, and entered Parliament unopposed at the age of 22. He worked in the Treasury during the Seven Years War, from which Britain emerged as the greatest empire in the world. He become prime minister in 1770 at a time when the American colonies were refusing to pay their taxes. North's methods of subduing the colonies led to war. The other European powers saw this as a chance to cut Britain down to size. Britain ended up fighting wars on four continents without allies.
    North was forced out of government after the fall of Yorktown. He had a short lived comeback but  his days in power were over. He died in 1792 at the age of 60.


     It's the birthday in 1892 in Angus Scotland of Robert Watson-Watt, pioneer of radar. He was a descendant of James Watt, the inventor of the steam engine. Watson was interested in chemistry at first, but his professor encouraged him to study radio waves instead.  During WWI he worked in the meteorology department and discovered the radio waves given off by lightening strikes could be used to warn pilots of the location of storms.
    As WWII approached, there were rumors that Germany was developing a death ray. Watson and his colleagues were put to work developing a death ray for Britain. They concluded a death ray was impossible, but their studies led them to a solution to a greater threat: German bombers. Bombers could reach London before British planes could intercept them. During the 1930s Watson and his colleague Alfred Wilkins proved to the government that radar stations along the coast could give the air force time to get in the air and stop most of them.
    When the Germans switched to night bombing, Watson developed radar that could be carried by the plane itself.  It wasn't very good radar, but a better system would have slowed the plane down too much. He developed the "Cult of the imperfect," which states, "Give them the third-best to go on; the second-best comes too late, and the best never comes."
      He lived in Canada for several years after the war and once was stopped by a radar gun. He told the officer who wrote his ticket, "Had I known what you were going to do with it, I never would have invented it.

     It's also the birthday of two great Irish writers: playwright and novelist Samuel Becket in 1906, and poet Seamus Heaney in 1939.

    Here's a poem by Seamus Heaney:

                                    

SLOE GIN

The clear weather of juniper
darkened into winter.
She fed gin to sloes
and sealed the glass container.

When I unscrewed it
I smelled the disturbed
tart stillness of a bush
rising through the pantry.

When I poured it
it had a cutting edge
and flamed
like Betelgeuse.

I drink to you
in smoke-mirled, blue-
black sloes, bitter
and dependable.