History, Music, and Entertainment micro-summaries for June 17, 2019

New York's 1904 General Slocum Disaster; Solving the problem of "Doritos breath"; The history of the saxophone; A STEEM musician's cover of "Ain't no grave"; Some technology history from the NYC subway's MetroCard...

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Straight from my RSS feed:

Links and micro-summaries from my 1000+ daily headlines. I filter them so you don't have to.

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1. The General Slocum Disaster - This article and podcast discuss the June 15, 1904 fire on the PS Slocum a passenger ship that caught fire with 1,358 passengers aboard in New York's East River. Since most men were at work, the majority of the passengers were women and children, all dressed in their Sunday best. It is believed that most of the passengers could not swim, and although the ship had life preservers, they were not distributed effectively. The death toll from the disaster was 1,021. In terms of lives lost, it was the worst single day event until 9/11/2001. After beaching the boat, the ship's captain was hospitalized with burns and subsequently arrested, convicted, and sentenced to 10 years for criminal negligence (he was released and pardoned after 3 ¹/₂ years). Charges were also recommended against government inspectors and company officials from the Knickerbocker Steam Boat Company, but none were convicted. The trauma had a lasting effect on New York's German-American community, as 600 families were effected, and the loss of so many children reshaped the demographics of the NY neighborhoods.


2. The Reason Why 'Doritos Breath' Stopped Being a Problem - According to the article, focus group polling identified two areas for Doritos improvement in the 1990s, one was a desire for a cheesier taste, and the second was to reduce the way that garlic from the recipe lingered in the breath - a phenomenon that was informally known as Doritos breath. The company did not prioritize a solution to Doritos breath, but came across one accidentally in the course of producing a cheesier flavor, known as Nacho Cheesier Doritos.


3. The history of the saxophone - The saxophone was invented by Adolphe Sax in Paris in 1840, but it immediately ran into opposition from the incumbent manufacturers of wind instruments and from composers like Wagner. As a result, Sax was confronted with hostilities ranging from legal challenges to death threats, and the instrument was underutilized for much of the 19th century, although the French army added the instrument to its marching band in 1845. It was not until the American jazz scene adopted the instrument in the 1910s and 1920s that the instrument started to see widespread adoption.


4. STEEM AIN`T NO GRAVE (Johnny Cash cover) - @shemzee includes an embedded youtube cover of Ain't no grave, an American folk song that was attributed to Virginia's Claude Ely and covered by country legend, Johnny Cash, in 2003. I hadn't heard of Claude Ely before, but his rendition of Ain't no grave is at 11:21, here, and Johnny Cash's rendition is here.
   
   

   Here is the video from @shemzee's post:
   

(5% of the rewards from this post will go to @shemzee).

It’s Just A Swipe Away - In 1993, the future of operating systems was unclear, but IBM was a household name, so IBM's OS/2 operating system was a reasonable choice for software designers of the day. The New York subway rolled out it's MetroCard that year, and unsurprisingly (bureaucracies love each other), they went with Big Blue's much-hyped OS/2 operating system in their technology design. The surprising thing is that today, in 2019, they're still using it. h/t OS news

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In order to help make Steem the go to place for timely information on diverse topics, I invite you to discuss any of these links in the comments and/or your own response post.

For example, feel free to comment on any or all of these discussion topics:

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• The PS Slocum disaster played some part in changing American culture so that it became routine for children to learn to swim. Have you ever been involved in a situation where knowledge of swimming was important, or even life-saving?
  
  
• The Nacho Cheesier Doritos was apparently a successful recipe change. What are some food product recipe changes that you have liked or disliked?
  
  
• What are lessons that the blockchain industry can learn about technology adoption from the 19th century resistance to the new saxophone technology of the period?
  
  
• Have you used the OS/2 operating system? What technologies were you using during the 1990s?
  
  

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About this series

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