26th March
It’s Make Up Your Own Holiday Day today.
Yup.
I swear I haven’t made that up.
⚡️
Born today was Prokop Diviš
Whose lightning conductors worked straight away
Which made Ben Franklin feel rather peevish
So instead he invented the US of A.
Pictured:
Top: Eighteenth-century Czech scientist, canon regular and theologian Prokop Diviš. In a bid to prevent thunderstorms, he inadvertently built one of the first earthed lightning rods. Portrait by Jan Vilímek, 1890 ● Public Domain. Inset: the Diviš machina metereologica, which didn’t improve the weather but did conduct lightning. Photo (cropped) by Bohemianroots ● CC BY-SA 3.0
Below: Eighteenth-century American polymath Benjamin Franklin, who thought he had the key. Benjamin Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Sky, Portrait by Benjamin West, c. 1816 ● Public Domain
Yup.
I swear I haven’t made that up.
⚡️
Born today was Prokop Diviš
Whose lightning conductors worked straight away
Which made Ben Franklin feel rather peevish
So instead he invented the US of A.
Pictured:
Top: Eighteenth-century Czech scientist, canon regular and theologian Prokop Diviš. In a bid to prevent thunderstorms, he inadvertently built one of the first earthed lightning rods. Portrait by Jan Vilímek, 1890 ● Public Domain. Inset: the Diviš machina metereologica, which didn’t improve the weather but did conduct lightning. Photo (cropped) by Bohemianroots ● CC BY-SA 3.0
Below: Eighteenth-century American polymath Benjamin Franklin, who thought he had the key. Benjamin Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Sky, Portrait by Benjamin West, c. 1816 ● Public Domain
© 2017-2024 Ian Graham (texts) and Emilie Vercruysse (drawings unless otherwise attributed).
Daily Doggerel by Ian Graham and Emilie Vercruysse. Non-commercial re-use of this material, provided that it is unaltered and is attributed, is hereby licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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