Good morning.
Sunday will be sunny with a high of twenty-seven. Sunrise is 6:53 AM and sunset is 7:11 PM. The moon’s in its last quarter tonight at 8:47 PM.
In London, Pepsi Co. decided to modify a bus shelter by adding a video screen, and then creating the illusion that fantastic, wholly unexpected things were happening on the other side of the shelter’s glass wall. Clever, funny, and sometimes startling:
On this day in 1839, O.K. makes its way into a major newspaper, advancing in our vernacular:
On this day in 1839, the initials “O.K.” are first published in The Boston Morning Post. Meant as an abbreviation for “oll correct,” a popular slang misspelling of “all correct” at the time, OK steadily made its way into the everyday speech of Americans.
During the late 1830s, it was a favorite practice among younger, educated circles to misspell words intentionally, then abbreviate them and use them as slang when talking to one another. Just as teenagers today have their own slang based on distortions of common words, such as “kewl” for “cool” or “DZ” for “these,” the “in crowd” of the 1830s had a whole host of slang terms they abbreviated. Popular abbreviations included “KY” for “No use” (“know yuse”), “KG” for “No go” (“Know go”), and “OW” for all right (“oll wright”).
Of all the abbreviations used during that time, OK was propelled into the limelight when it was printed in the Boston Morning Post as part of a joke. Its popularity exploded when it was picked up by contemporary politicians. When the incumbent president Martin Van Buren was up for reelection, his Democratic supporters organized a band of thugs to influence voters. This group was formally called the “O.K. Club,” which referred both to Van Buren’s nickname “Old Kinderhook” (based on his hometown of Kinderhook, New York), and to the term recently made popular in the papers….
On this day in 1865, Union soldiers from Wisconsin conclude successfully the North Carolin campaign:
1865 – Wis. Troops End Hostilities in N.C.
On this date, the 21st Wisconsin Infantry, made up mostly of soldiers from the Oshkosh area, finished fighting their way through the South during Sherman’s March to the Sea and reached Goldsboro, N.C., where the campaign in the Carolinas ended. Its veterans reunited 40 years later in Manitowoc. [Source: 21st Wisconsin Infantry homepage]
Well and bravely done.