- Humpday
Journey to Meet to Mole People
Updated: Jun 4, 2019
Happy HumpDay!!
HumpDay Is Back!
Happy HumpDay! WE ARE BACK! Hope everyone managed to make it through the past two weeks while HumpDay was away. We are back from vacation and ready to work. Hopefully this week HumpDay helps you get over the Wednesday lull in your week and gets you starting to look toward to the long weekend ahead. If this newsletter isn't enough to get you through the week, check out the HumpDay website here and read all of the issues of the HumpDay Newsletter.
Sports
One of the most controversial topics in modern sports is the prevalence and usage of instant replay to settle disputed calls or plays. Replays are used in basketball to determine if shots count, in football to determine if a player caught the ball, and in hockey to call offsides. Some people think that using replay to make the exact correct call is the truest form of each game while others think that it strips these classic sports of their human element.
Instant replay has been used in television broadcasts since the early 1950’s but wasn’t used for officiating purposes until the NFL first allowed refs to review plays on September 7th 1986. Since then it has made fans cheer and weep by allowing officials to recall plays using more detailed views of a play. Whether you love it or hate it, instant replay is destined to be an intrical part of the future sports and will only grow in popularity as replay technology continues to improve.
The earliest form of instant replay didn’t have the benefits of dozens of camera angles or 20x zooming cameras. The most primitive form of instant replay was detailed in the original rules for the National Baseball League (today’s MLB National League). Rule 7 section 5 of the National Baseball league rules state that if the umpire is unable to see if a player has caught a ball before it touched the ground, he must ask a member of crowd to make the call for him.
Old timey umpires basically crowd sourced decisions for tough calls and left it up to the honesty of the fans to decide the outcome of the game. It probably didn’t help that fans at early professional baseball games were usually rowdy and often violently drunk.
Next time you attend a baseball game, have a few too many drinks and pay close attention. You never know when the ump may look to you for some advice.
10 Bizarre Rules In MLB History
Conan Plays Old Timey Baseball
Technology
Whether we remember them or not, we are all familiar with passwords. We use them to log into our emails, check our bank accounts, and access our phones but this incredible piece of security had much humbler beginnings.
The origins of the password can be traced back to the ancient Roman Legions and their use of “watchwords”. The roman army would often set up camps that were home to thousands of soldiers and they needed to make sure that there were no intruders entering their camp and stealing their secrets. In order to keep out their enemies, the romans created a system of “watchwords” which were passwords that would be used to determine who could enter the camp and who would be turned away.
Everyday soldiers would be selected to meet in a tent at the center of camp to receive the watchword. They would be handed a wooden block with the watchword carved into it and be sent back to their camps to inform the other soldiers. Throughout the course of the morning, the wooden block would be passed around the camp so that each soldier knew the watchword. Once all of the soldiers saw the wooden block with the watchword on it, the block was returned to the tent where it originated from. If any of the blocks weren’t returned, the soldiers would send out search parties to find it so the enemy didn’t get ahold of their password.
The primitive system of watchwords was nothing more than a massive game of telephone but it was effective in keeping the roman camps secure. The concept of passwords continued to be used for military purposes throughout history later and was adopted with the evolution of computers to help secure sensitive information.
If you are someone who gets annoyed having to change their laptop password every few months, be glad you don’t have to wait all day to get a new password everyday.
Geology
In the late 1820’s a man named John Cleves Symmes was on the verge of a revolutionary discovery that would revolutionize the field of geology forever. Symmes was a former Army general who had traveled the country to share his groundbreaking theories with anyone who would listen. By 1817 he was granted funding by the only man bold enough to embrace his geological brilliance, the sixth president of the United States, John Quincy Adams. With his new found funding, Symmes prepared to set off on an expedition to prove his theory to the world.
John Cleves Symmes had fought bravely in the war of 1812 but after the war his thoughts became distorted and irrational. In the early 1820’s, he conceived the notion that he earth was hollow and inside of the earth were smaller earths just like ours (Kind of like a Russian nesting doll of planets). He also believed that here were holes in both the North and South Pole that could be used to reach the smaller inside of the planet. If the
In 1817, Symmes took his hollow earth theory to Washington to beg congress to fund his expedition to the giant hole located at the North Pole. He promised that he would meet with the people living within the earths crust and establish a trading relationship with them. When he presented his theory and trading plan to congress he was laughed out of the building. No one along his nationwide tour believed his bold ideas and they always dismissed him as a lunatic. Until his plan crossed the desk of our 6th president, John Quincy Adams.
Adams was a president with a long history of diplomacy. He was ambassador to the Neatherlands, Prussia, Russia and France. He thought that if he could use his diplomatic expertise to establish a connection with the mole people living within the earth too. He was the only person who believes John Cleves Symmes crazy theory and decided to fund an expedition to the North Pole to find the mole people and make them or allies.
Unfortunately, Adams left office before the trip could begin and his successor, Andrew Jackson, cut the funding for expedition. The first ever diplomatic trip to connect with a subhuman species ended before it even began. It would be nearly a century before the someone would finally make it to the North Pole only to realize that there was no hole to the center of the earth. Just a toy factory, a fat old man and a number of little elves.
This Week in History
On this week in 1932, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to complete a solo flight across the Atlantic ocean. Earhart took off from Newfoundland, Canada and flew 2,000 miles across the Atlantic to land in Ireland. Her solo trip made her famous around the world and an aviation role model for generations to come. Later in 1937, Earhart set out to fly around the world with a co-pilot but her plane mysteriously disappeared somewhere in the South Pacific Ocean. The wreckage was never discovered and to this day there are people who claim that Earhart survived the crash and lived the rest of her life on a deserted island.
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