HISTORY, SCIENCE AND LITERATURE

71 years ago, yesterday, on the 10^th July 1940 the l’État Français, the French State, was established. This was the end of the Third Republic. Marshal Philippe Pétain, proclaimed the government following the military defeat of France by Germany during World War II and the vote of the National Assembly, l’Assemblée Nationale, on 10^th July 1940. The vote granted extraordinary powers to Pétain, the last Président du Conseil (Prime Minister) of the Third Republic, who then took the additional title Chef de l'État Français ("Chief of the French State"). Pétain headed the reactionary program of the so-called “Révolution nationale", aimed at "regenerating the nation." Effectively France allied with the Axis powers for what was called ‘industrial purposes’. In the aftermath of the 1940 defeat, Pétain collaborated actively with the German occupying forces.

"Maréchal, nous voilà!" is a French song dedicated to Marshal Philippe Pétain. The song was performed on many official occasions in France and Algeria during Vichy France. Not a great memory for the French.

However, moving on, in scientific matters, today on 11^th July, 2011, Neptune completed its first full Barycentric orbit since its discovery in 1846, although it did not appear at its exact discovery position in our sky because the Earth was in a different location in its 365.25-day orbit. Because of the motion of the Sun in relation to the barycentre of the Solar System, on 11 July Neptune was also not be at its exact discovery position in relation to the Sun; if the more common heliocentric coordinate system is used, the discovery longitude was reached on July 12, 2011.

In astronomy, barycentric coordinates are non-rotating coordinates with origin at the centre of mass of two or more bodies.

Within classical mechanics, this definition simplifies calculations and introduces no known problems. In the General Theory of Relativity, problems arise because, while it is possible, within reasonable approximations, to define the barycentre, the associated coordinate system does not fully reflect the inequality of clock rates at different locations. Brumberg explains how to set up barycentric coordinates in General Theory of Relativity.

The coordinate systems involve a world-time, i.e., a global time coordinate that could be set up by telemetry. Individual clocks of similar construction will not agree with this standard, because they are subject to differing gravitational potentials or move at various velocities, so the world-time must be slaved to some ideal clock; that one is assumed to be very far from the whole self-gravitating system. This time standard is called Bartycentric Coordinate Time, abbreviated "TCB."

This following video is probably more than you wanted to know about Neptune, but it’s a pleasant  8 and a bit minutes.

As to literature, two events in American literature occurred on the 11th July, 54 years part. In 1906, on the morning of 11th July , a young man, Chester Gillette, just a month short of his 23^rd birthday, took a young girl, Grace Brown, aged 20, out in a rowboat on Big Moose Lake, New York, where he clubbed her with his tennis racquet and left her to drown. He returned alone and laid low at his hotel. Later, witnesses would say that Gillette seemed calm, collected and perfectly at ease; nothing was amiss. Brown's bruised and beaten body was found at the bottom of the lake the next day. Gillette was arrested shortly thereafter which led to a highly publicised trial. The story and subsequent trial became the basis for the fictional characters Clyde Griffiths and Roberta Alden in the Theodore Dreiser novel An American Tragedy, which in turn was the basis of the 1951 Academy Award - winning film A Place In the Sun.

Chester Gillette

Theodore Dreiser

On the 11th July 1960, Harper Lees's Pulitzer Prize-winning only novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, was first published. It also was made into an Academy award-winning film in 1962.