Gone With the Wind by Margret Mitchell

Margaret Mitchell’s Pulitzer Prize Winning epic romance Gone with the Wind, was published 30 June1936. The novel is set in Clayton County, Georgia, and Atlanta during the American Civil War (1861–1865) and the Reconstruction Era (1865–1877) that followwhere the war. Set against the backdrop of rebellion, during which seven southern states, including Georgia declare their secession from the United States (the “Union”) and form the Confederate States of America (the “Confederacy”), after Abraham Lincoln was elected president. A dispute over states’ rights has arisen involving enslaved African people.

it begins April 1861 at the “Tara” plantation, which is owned by a wealthy Irish immigrant family, the O’Haras including sixteen-year-old Scarlett O’Hara. Scarlett learns that Ashley Wilkes, is getting engaged to his cousin, Melanie Hamilton and informs Ashley she loves him. However he refuses her marriage proposal. Then Scarlett meets local rogue Rhett Butler alone in the library and learns that war has been declared. Seeking revenge for being jilted by Ashley, Scarlett accepts a proposal of marriage from Melanie’s brother, Charles Hamilton. They marry two weeks later. Charles dies from measles two months after the war begins. Widowed Scarlett is pregnant with her first child and gives birth to a boy, Wade Hampton Hamilton, named after his father’s general. As a widow, she is bound by tradition to wear black and avoid conversation with young men much to her chagrin.

Melanie, who is living in Atlanta invites Scarlett to live with them. In Atlanta, Scarlett’ begins Work at the hospital for the Confederate army & encounters Rhett Butler again at a dance for the Confederacy. The men must bid for a dance with a lady and Rhett bids for a dance with Scarlett shocking everyone, however Melanie defends Rhett because of his support for the Confederate cause. Ashley is granted some land by the army and returns to Atlanta to be with Melanie. Atlanta is under siege from the Union (September 1864), and descends into a desperate state while hundreds of wounded Confederate soldiers lie dying or dead in the city. Melanie goes into labour with only the inexperienced Scarlett to assist, as all the doctors are busy attending the soldiers. In the chaos, Scarlett, is left to fend for herself, and the Confederate States Army sets Atlanta ablaze as they abandon it.

Melanie gives birth to a boy named “Beau”, Scarlett , Melanie, Beau, and Prissy seek refuge at Tara and they follow the retreating army out of Atlanta. Rhett then enlists in the army. So Scarlett makes her way to Tara alone where she discovers that Gerald is ill, Her mother is dead andher sisters are sick with typhoid fever, the field slaves have all left after Emancipation, the Yankees have burned all the cotton and there is no food in the house. So begins a desperate journey for post-war survival. A number of Confederate soldiers returning home stop at Tara to find food and rest including Cracker, Will Benteen, and Ashley Wilkes. However Just as Life at Tara is beginning to recover there is more trouble,so Scarlett goes to Atlanta to ask Rhett Butler for help but finds him languishing in jail. Scarlett also runs into Frank Kennedyand they marry two weeks later. Frank wants Scarlett to be happy So he gives her the money to pay the taxes on Tara. In return Scarlett helps at Frank’s store and finds many People owe him money, so she recovers all the debts and runs his business while he is away.

After receiving aloan from Rhett she buys her own sawmill. However Scarlett learns she is pregnant, again & convinces Ashley to come to Atlanta and manage the mill. Scarlett gives birth to a girl named Ella Lorena’. Then Scarlett is almost robbed but she escapes with the help of Big Sam, the former foreman from Tara. Sadly Frank is shot dead in the nearby Shanty Town. And Scarlett finds herself widowed for a second time. Meanwhile Rhett, Hugh Elsing and Ashley deny any knowledge of the raid in the nearby Shanty Town using the brothel as an alibi

Rhett the asks Scarlett to marry him and she agrees. Shortly after The engagement the Butlers move into their new home, Eventually they have two children Wade and Eugenie Victoria whom Melanie nicknames “Bonnie Blue,” after the Bonnie Blue Flag of the Confederacy. Later Melanie gives a surprise birthday party for Ashley and Scarlett. unfortunately Ashley’s sister India Wilkes sees Scarlett and Ashley together at the sawmill beforehand and stirs trouble by spreading rumours of an adulterous relationship between Ashley and Scarlett. Having heard the rumours Rhett returns home drunk and violent leaving town the following morning with Bonnie and Prissy, Scarlett then learns that she is pregnant with her fourth child. Rhett eventually returns a sober, gentler more considerate man, he finds Scarlett seriously ill having lost the baby and broken her ribs. After recovering she returns to Atlanta & sells the mills to Ashley. Bonnie grows up to be a spirited and willful child, who has Rhett wrapped around her finger and giving into her every demand, even buying Bonnie a Shetland pony and teaching her to jump…sadly though this ends in tragedy.

International and National Events happening 30 June

Social Media Day
Leap Second Time Adjustment Day
National Bomb Pop Day
National Handshake Day
National Meteor Day
National Organization for Women Day

Ray Harryhausen

American-British artist, designer, visual effects creator, writer, and producer “Ray” Harryhausen was born June 29, 1920 in Los Angeles, California. He spent his early years experimenting in the production of animated short films and was greatly inspired by the stop-motion animation of pioneer model animator Willis O’Brien on the film King Kong. So a friend arranged a meeting with O’Brien for him. O’Brien critiqued Harryhausen’s early models and urged him to take classes in graphic arts and sculpture to hone his skills. Meanwhile, Harryhausen became friends with an aspiring writer, Ray Bradbury, with similar enthusiasms. Bradbury and Harryhausen joined the Los Angeles-area Science Fiction League formed by Forrest J. Ackerman in 1939, and the three became lifelong friends. Harryhausen secured his first commercial model-animation job, on George Pal’s Puppetoons shorts, based on viewing his first formal demo reel of fighting dinosaurs from a project called Evolution of the World which was never finished.

During World War II, Harryhausen served in the United States Army Special Services Division under Colonel Frank Capra, as a loader, clapper boy, gofer and later camera assistant, whilst working at home animating short films about the use and development of military equipment. During this time he also worked with composer Dimitri Tiomkin and Theodore Geisel (“Dr. Seuss”). Following the war he salvaged several rolls of discarded 16 mm surplus film from which he made a series of fairy tale-based shorts, which he called his “Teething-rings”.

One of Harryhausen’s most long-cherished dreams was to make H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. After World War II, he shot a scene of an alien emerging from a Martian cylinder showing the fearsome being from Mars fatally succumbing to an earthly illness, contracted from the air the natives breathe harmlessly. It was part of an unrealized project to adapt the story using Wells’ original “octopus” concept for the Martians. In 1947 Harryhausen was hired as an assistant animator on what turned out to be his first major film, Mighty Joe Young (1949). O’Brien ended up concentrating on solving the various technical problems of the film, leaving most of the animation to Harryhausen. Their work won O’Brien the Academy Award for Best Special Effects that year.

Ray Harryhausen first film featuring his technical effects was The Beast from 20,000 Fathom based on a story by The writer Ray Bradbury, who was a long-time friend of Harryhausen. This was about a dinosaur drawn to a lone lighthouse by its foghorn. Because the story for Harryhausen’s film featured a similar scene, the film studio bought the rights to Bradbury’s story to avoid any potential legal problems. To film Beast from 20,000 fathoms Harryhausen used a technique called “Dynamation” that split the background and foreground of pre-shot live action footage into two separate images into which he would animate a model or models so seemingly integrating the live-action with the models. The background would be used as a miniature rear-screen with his models animated in front of it, re-photographed with an animation-capable camera to combine those two elements together, the foreground element matted out to leave a black space. Then the film was rewound, and everything except the foreground element matted out so that the foreground element would now photograph in the previously blacked out area. This created the effect that the animated model was “sandwiched” in between the two live action elements, right into the final live action scene.

In most of Harryhausen’s films, model animated characters interact with, and are a part of, the live action world, with the idea that they will cease to call attention to themselves as only “animation.” Most of the effects shots in his earliest films were created via Harryhausen’s careful frame-by-frame control of the lighting of both the set and the projector. This dramatically reduced much of degradation common in the use of back-projection or the creation of dupe negatives via the use of an optical printer. Harryhausen’s use of diffused glass to soften the sharpness of light on the animated elements allowed the matching of the soft background plates far more successfully than Willis O’Brien had achieved in his early films, allowing Harryhausen to match live and miniature elements seamlessly in most of his shots. Harryhausen managed to save money, by developing and executing most of this miniature work himself, while maintaining full technical control.

Harryhausen then began working with color film to make The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, experimenting with color film stocks to overcome the color-balance-shift problems. Ray’s producer/partner Charles H. Schneer coined the word Dynamation as a “merchandising term” (modifying it to “SuperDynaMation” and then “Dynarama”. Harryhausen was always heavily involved in the pre-production conceptualizing of each film’s story, script development, art-direction, design, storyboards, and general tone of the his films, as much as any auteur director would have on any other film, which any “director” of Harryhausen’s films had to understand and agree to work under. Only the complexities of Director’s Guild rules in Hollywood prevented Harryhausen from being credited as the director of his films, resulting in the more modest credits he had in most of his films.

Harryhausen’s often worked with his family His father did the machining of the metal armatures (based on his son’s designs) that were the skeletons for the models and allowed them to keep their position, while his mother assisted with some miniature costumes. After Harryhausen’s father died in 1973, Harryhausen contracted An occasional assistant, George Lofgren, a taxidermist, assisted Harryhausen with the creation of furred creatures. Another associate, Willis Cook, built some of Harryhausen’s miniature sets. Other than that, Harryhausen worked generally alone to produce almost all of the animation for his filmsThe same year that Beast was released, 1953, fledgling film producer Irwin Allen released a live action documentary about life in the oceans titled The Sea Around Us, which won an Oscar for best documentary feature film of that year. Harryhausen then worked on Allen’s sequel. He also met producer Charles H. Schneer, Their first tandem project was It Came from Beneath the Sea (aka Monster from Beneath the Sea, 1955), about a giant octopus attacking San Francisco. followed by Earth vs. the Flying Saucers. In 1954, Irwin Allen began work on a second feature-length documentary film, about animal life on land called The Animal World Needing an opening sequence about dinosaurs, Allen hired premier model animator Willis O’Brien and Harryhausen to animate the dinosaurs, many agreed that the dinosaur sequence of Animal World was the best part of the entire movie. (Animal World is available on the DVD release of O’Brien’s 1957 film The Black Scorpion).

Harryhausen then made 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957), about an American spaceship returning from Venus. The spaceship crashes into the ocean near Italy, which releases an on-board alien egg specimen that washes up on shore. The egg soon hatches a creature that, in Earth’s atmosphere, rapidly grows to gigantic size running amok and terrifying the citizens of Rome. He refined and improved his animation techniques still further for the Venusian Ymir alien. Harryhausen then developed a technique to maintain proper color balances for his DynaMation process, resulting in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) The Three Worlds of Gulliver (1960), Mysterious Island and Jason and the Argonauts (1963). Among the film’s best sequences is an exciting fight between three actors and seven living skeletons, And the confrontation with Talos the bronze giant. Harryhausen next made First Men in the Moon (1964), his only film made in the 2.35:1 widescreen (AKA “CinemaScope”) format, based on the novel by H. G. Wells.

Harryhausen was then hired by Hammer Film Productions to animate the dinosaurs for One Million Years B.C. (1966) featuringRaquel Welch in her second film. Harryhausen next went on to make another dinosaur film, The Valley of Gwangi. This is Set in Mexico, and features cowboys who discover a forbidden valley inhabited by dinosaurs and manage to capture a living Allosaurus and bring him to the nearest Mexican city for exhibition. However the creature, escapes and wreaks havoc on the town. Harryhausen’s next film wasThe Golden Voyage of Sinbad, featuring a sword fight involving a statue of the six-armed goddess Kali this was followed by Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger. Harryhausen and Shneer’s next film was Clash of the Titans featuring stars such as Laurence Olivier Ursula Andress, Burgess Meridith and Harry Hamlin and for which he was nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Special Effects. This features Perseus and his efforts to save the beautiful princess Andromeda from being sacrificed to the fearsome Kraken by undertaking a perilous journey to the Isle of the Dead Where he confronts the equally fearsome gorgon Medusa. sadly more sophisticated computer-assisted technology developed by ILM and others began to eclipse Harryhausen’s production techniques, with MGM and other studios refusing to fund his planned sequel, Force of the Trojans, sO Harryhausen and Schneer Retired from filmmaking.

In the early 1970s, Harryhausen also published a book, Film Fantasy Scrapbook (produced in three editions as his last three films were released) and supervising the restoration and release of his films to video, laserdisc, DVD, and Blu-ray. A second book followed, An Animated Life, written with author and friend Tony Dalton which details his techniques and history. This was then followed in 2005 by The Art of Ray Harryhausen, featuring sketches and drawings for his many projects. In 2008 Harryhausen and Dalton published a history of stop-motion model animation, A Century of Model Animation and to celebrate Harryhausen’s 90th birthday The Ray & Diana Harryhausen Foundation published Ray Harryhausen – A Life in Pictures. In 2011 the last volume, called Ray Harryhausen’s Fantasy Scrapbook, was also published. Harryhausen continued his lifelong friendship with Ray Bradbury until Bradbury’s death in 2012. Another long-time close friend was “Famous Monsters of Filmland” magazine editor, book writer, and sci-fi collector Forrest J Ackerman, another friend was long-time producer, Charles H. Schneer, who lived next door to him in a suburb of London until Schneer moved full-time to the USA. Harryhausen and Terry Moore appeared in small comedic cameo roles in the 1998 remake of Mighty Joe Young, and he has also provided the voice of a polar bear cub in the Will Ferrell film Elf. He also appears as a bar patron in Beverly Hills Cop III, and as a doctor in the John Landis film Spies Like Us. In 2010, Harryhausen had a brief cameo in Burke & Hare, a British film also directed by Landis.

In 1986 Harryhausen formed The Ray & Diana Harryhausen Foundation, a registered charity in the UK and US, which preserves all of his collection and promotes the art of stop-motion animation. In 2002, young animators Seamus Walsh and Mark Caballero helped Harryhausen complete The Story of the Tortoise and the Hare. This was the sixth and final installment of the Harryhausen fairy tales. The film was started in 1952 and completed in 2002, 50 years later and went on to win the 2003 Annie award for best short film and gained worldwide attention. Ray Harryhausen was also given a special tribute at The BFI Southbank theater which was attended by all the top visual effects directors and technicians and was hosted by director John Landis. At this event he was presented by Peter Jackson with a special BAFTA award from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. In 2009, he released colorized DVD versions of three of his classic black and white Columbia films: 20 Million Miles to Earth, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, and It Came from Beneath the Sea, and of She (1935), in tribute to its producer Merian C. Cooper.In June 2010, it was announced that the Ray and Diana Harryhausen Foundation had agreed to deposit the animator’s complete collection of some 50,000 pieces with the National Media Museum in Bradford, England.

The work of Ray Harryhausen was celebrated in an exhibition at London’s Museum of the Moving Image (MOMI) in 1990. In 2010 A theater at Sony Pictures Digital Productions was named in honor of Harryhausen. The Science Fiction Hall of Fame inducted Harryhausen in 2005, He also received the annual British Fantasy Society Wagner Award in 2008 for his lifetime contribution to the genre and in 2003, Harryhausen was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

In 2013, the RH foundation and Arrow Films released a feature-length biography of Harryhausen and his films called “Ray Harryhausen – Special Effects Titan” on Blu-Ray. Featuring photos, artifacts, and film clips culled directly Harryhausen’s estate and never before seen by the public. A major exhibition of Ray Harryhausen’s models Entitled “Ray Harryhausen – Mythical Menagerie” was held at the Science Museum Oklahoma and another exhibition took place at Tate Britain in 2017 featuring work from the Harryhausen collection and short film made by John Walsh on the restoration of a painting owned by Harryhausen which influenced his work. In 1992 The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded Ray Harryhausen a Gordon E.Sawyer Award to acknowledge His “technological contributions to the industry. He also made” A long series of appearances at film festivals, colleges, and film seminars around the world Harryhausen met many of

Ray Harryhausen sadly died on May 7, 2013 however his influence on today’s film makers is enormous, with luminaries; Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Peter Jackson, George Lucas, John Landis and Nick Park citing Harryhausen as being the man whose work inspired their own creations. Peter Lord of Aardman animation also said that Harryhausen was “a one-man industry and a one-man genre”. Shaun of the Dead director Edgar Wright said “I loved every single frame of Ray Harryhausen’s work … He was the man who made me believe in monsters.” George Lucas also said, “Without Ray Harryhausen, there would likely have been no Star Wars”. Terry Gilliam said, “What we do now digitally with computers, Ray did digitally long before but without computers. Only with his digits.” James Cameron also paid tribute by saying, “I think all of us who are practitioners in the arts of science fiction and fantasy movies now all feel that we’re standing on the shoulders of a giant. If not for Ray’s contribution to the collective dreamscape, we wouldn’t be who we are.”

Ray Harryhausen left his collection, which includes all of his film related artefacts to the Ray & Diana Harryhausen Foundation, set up in 1986 to look after his extensive collection, to protect his name and to further the art of model stop-motion animation. The trustees are his daughter Vanessa Harryhausen, Simon Mackintosh, actress Caroline Munro who appeared in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad and film maker John Walsh who first met with Ray Harryhausen in 1988 as a film student of the London Film School and made a documentary entitled Ray Harryhausen: Movement Into Life narrated by Doctor Who actor Tom Baker (who also appeared in the Golden Voyage of Sinbad. The Foundation’s website charts progress on the restoration of the collection and future plans for Ray’s legacy. In 2016 the foundation launched The Ray Harryhausen Podcast. This included never before heard audio from Ray Harryhausen. Hosted by Collections Manager Connor Heaney and John Walsh.

Hal Lindes (Dire Straits)

Hal Lindes, The American-English singer-songwriter and former guitarist with Dire Straits Was Born 30 June 1953. Dire Straits were formed in 1977 by Brothers Mark (lead vocals and lead guitar)and David Knopfler (rhythm guitar and backing vocal), and friends John Illsley (bass guitar and backing vocals, and Pick Withers (drums and percussion), they recorded a five-song demo tape which included their future hit single, “Sultans of Swing”, as well as “Water of Love”, “Down to the Waterline”, “Wild West End” and David Knopfler’s “Sacred Loving”.

The group’s first album, was intitled Dire Straits the album had little promotion when initially released in the United Kingdom However, the album came to the attention of A&R representative Karin Berg, working at Warner Bros. Records in New York City. She felt that it was the kind of music audiences were hungry for, That same year, Dire Straits began a tour as opening band for the Talking Heads after the re-released “Sultans of Swing” which scaled the charts to number four in the United States and number eight in the United Kingdom. The song was one of Dire Straits’ biggest hits and became a fixture in the band’s live performances. “ Recording sessions for the group’s second album, Communiqué, took place in December 1978, Released in June 1979 Communiqué Featured the single “Lady Writer”, the second album continued in a similar vein as the first and displayed the expanding scope of Knopfler’s lyricism on the opening track, “Once Upon a Time in the West”. In 1980, Dire Straits were nominated for two Grammy Awards for Best New Artist and Best Rock Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group for “Sultans Of Swing.

In July 1980 the band started recording tracks for their third album. Making Movies which featured longer songs with more complex arrangements, a style which would continue for the rest of the band’s career. The album featured many of Mark Knopfler’s most personal compositions. The most successful chart single was “Romeo and Juliet” and was released in October 1980. Dire Straits’ fourth studio album Love Over Gold, an album of songs filled with lengthy, experimental passages, was well received when it was released in September 1982, going gold in America and spending four weeks at number one in the United Kingdom, its main chart hit, “Private Investigations”, gave Dire Straits their first top 5 hit single in the United Kingdom, where it reached the number 2 position despite its almost seven-minute length, and became another of the band’s most popular live songs. along with “Industrial Disease”, a song that looks at the decline of the British manufacturing industry in the early 1980s. In 1983, a four-song EP titled ExtendedancEPlay was released while Love Over Gold was still in the album charts. It featured the hit single “Twisting By the Pool”. Dire Straits also embarked on a world tour. wgich resulted in The double album Alchemy Live, a recording of two live concerts of the group at London’s Hammersmith Odeon in July 1983, was released in March 1984.

Dire Straits returned to the recording studios at the end of 1984 to record their biggest selling album to date, Brothers in Arms, which has so far sold over 30 million copies and contains the songs “Money for Nothing”, “Walk of Life”, “So Far Away”, “Your Latest Trick” and “Brothers in Arms”. Released in May 1985, Brothers In Arms entered the UK Albums Chart at number 1 and spent a total of 228 weeks in the charts, It went on to become the best-selling album of 1985 in the UK, “Money for Nothing” was also the first video ever to be played on MTV in Britain and featured guest vocals by Sting, who is credited with co-writing the song with Mark Knopfler, although in fact, it was just the inclusion of the melody line from “Don’t Stand So Close To Me”.Brothers in Arms was among the first albums recorded on digital equipment due to Knopfler pushing for improved sound quality The album’s title track is reported to be the world’s first CD single. The album is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the first compact disc to sell a million copies, and has been credited with helping to popularise the CD forma

Their sound drew from a variety of musical influences, including jazz, folk, blues, and came closest to beat music within the context of rock and roll. Despite the prominence of punk rock during the band’s early years, the band’s stripped-down sound contrasted with punk, demonstrating a more “rootsy” influence that emerged out of pub rock. Many of Dire Straits’ compositions were melancholic and they have gone on to became one of the world’s most commercially successful bands, with worldwide album sales of over 120 million. making them One of the world’s best selling music artists, and their fifth album, Brothers in Arms, has won many accolades. In November 2009, Dire Straits were honoured by the new PRS for Music Heritage Award. A special blue plaque was erected at Farrer House, Church Street, Deptford in south London, where the original group, Mark Knopfler, David Knopfler, John Illsley and Pick Withers once shared a council flat and performed their first ever gig in 1977. PRS for Music has set up the Heritage Award to recognise the unusual “performance birthplaces” of famous bands and artists. Dire Straits have also won numerous music awards during their career, including four Grammy Awards, three Brit Awards—winning Best British Group twice, and two MTV Video Music Awards. The band’ most popular songs include “Sultans of Swing”, “Romeo and Juliet”, “Tunnel of Love”, “Private Investigations” .Dire Straits’ career spanned 18 years. Mark Knopfler and John Illsley were the only two original bandmates who remained until Dire Straits disbanded in 1995.

International Asteroid Day

The United Nations has declared “30 June as International Asteroid Day to mark the anniversary of the Siberian Tunguska event that took place on June 30th, 1908, and is the most harmful known asteroid-related event on Earth in recent history and to raise public awareness about the asteroid impact hazard. International Asteroid Day also aims to raise awareness about asteroids and what can be done to protect the Earth, its families, communities, and future generations from a catastrophic event.

Asteroid Day was co-founded by filmmaker Grigorij Richters, B612 Foundation COO Danica Remy, Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart and Brian May, Queen guitarist and astrophysicist. Over 200 astronauts, scientists, technologists and artists, including Richard Dawkins, Bill Nye, Peter Gabriel, Jim Lovell, Apollo 11 Astronaut Michael Collins, Alexei Leonov, Bill Anders, Kip Thorne, Lord Martin Rees, Chris Hadfield, Rusty Schweickart and Brian Cox co-signed the Asteroid Day Declaration. Asteroid Day was officially launched on December 3, 2014. In February 2014, Brian May, astrophysicist and guitarist for the rock band Queen, began working with Grigorij Richters, director of the film 51 Degrees North, the story of a fictional asteroid impact on London and the human condition resulting from such an event. May composed the music for the film. After screening the film at the 2014 Starmus Festival, Richters and May co-founded Asteroid Day in October 2014 which they officially announced during a press conference with Lord Martin Rees, Rusty Schweickart, Ed Lu, Thomas Jones, Ryan Watt and Bill Nye. The event was live streamed from the Science Museum in London, the California Academy of Sciences, New York and São Paulo. On Asteroid Day 2017, minor planet 248750 (discoverer M.Dawson) was officially named Asteroidday by the International Astronomical Union.

The workgroup of Asteroid Day created a declaration called “100X Declaration”, which appeals to all scientists and technologists who are supporting the idea of saving the earth from asteroids, but not only specialists are asked to sign, everyone can sign this declaration. Today, the 100X Declaration has been signed by more than 22,000 private citizens. More than 1M asteroids have the potential to impact Earth and through all the available telescopes worldwide, we have discovered only about one percent. The 100X Declaration calls for increasing the asteroid discovery rate to 100,000 (or 100x) per year within the next 10 years. The more we learn about asteroid impacts, the clearer it became that the human race has been living on borrowed time. Asteroid Day and the 100X Declaration are ways for the public to contribute to an awareness of the Earth’s vulnerability and the realization that Asteroids hit Earth all the time. Asteroid Day is also a way garner public support to increase our knowledge of when asteroids might strike and how we can protect ourselves.” The main three goals are:

To Employ available technology to detect and track Near-Earth Asteroids that threaten human populations via governments and private and philanthropic organisations.

To accelerate the discovery and tracking of Near-Earth Asteroids to 100,000 per year within the next ten years.

to adopt Asteroid Day Globally to increase awareness of the asteroid hazard and our efforts to prevent impacts.

During Asteroid Day 2015-2016, there were over 600 events According to the AsteroidDay.org website in 78 countries participated. The general goal was to raise awareness about the threat posed by asteroid impacts. Institutions such as the Natural History Museum in Vienna, the American Natural History Museum, the California Academy of Sciences, the Science Museum in London, the SETI institute, the European Space Agency, the UK Space Agency, and others participated in educational activities. The first Asteroid Day was held on June 30, 2015. In February 2016, Romanian astronaut Dumitru Prunariu and the Association of Space Explorers submitted a proposal to the Scientific and Technical Subcommittee of the United Nations which was accepted by the subcommittee and in June 2016 the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space included the recommendation in its report. The report of the Committee was presented for approval to the United Nations General Assembly’s 71st session which it approved on December 6, 2016..”

Severn Valley Railway 1940’s Weekend (people)

The Severn Valley Railway 1940’s weekend takes place on the weekends of 29/30 June and 6/7 July. As usual there are many costumed Re-enactors present, and below is just a small selection.

Severn Valley Railway 1940’s Weekend (vehicles)

Severn Valley Railway 1940’s weekend

The Severn Valley Railway 1940’s weekend takes place on the weekends of 29/30 June and 6/7 July. This year An ambulance train will be present for the 75 Anniversary ofD-Day. Ambulance trains were A synonymous sight of the 1940s and consisted of older carriages which had their interiors removed, were fitted with beds and labelled with a Red Cross, denoting an ambulance trains. There is also a Battle of Britain Memorial Flypast on July 7th featuring the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight’s Lancaster flying over Bridgnorth Station. A Buick M18 Hellcat 807 XXU tank will be Stationed at Kidderminster station, and GWR 7325 is also on display at Kidderminster Station. There will be many vintage vehicles on display at various stations plus there are Free vintage bus rides. Visitors to the signal box will also have the opportunity to learn how to operate traditional signals.

There will be many costumed re-enactors at the stations and on trains including black market spivs and The ‘Lumberjill’s’ will be at Bewdley providing much needed timber. A mock battle will be taking place at the Engine house in Highley which will also be open for visitors. The Big Band Show will be taking place at Kidderminster plus much more Musical entertainment including the Kalamazoo Band, Brandon Shaw and The Ronnies,  will be performed up and down the line. There are many Costumed reenactors three will be dressed as Winston Churchill, General Montgomery & King George VI plus There is also A firefighting reenactment each day, and a display of firefighting vehicles, courtesy of NFS & AFS Vehicles Group. There is also a 1940’s Rest Centre, Hairdresser, vintage clothing stalls, Air Raid Shelter, ARP Post, Railway Memorabilia and a Tobacconist. There will also be closing ceremonies on both Sundays featuring World War II Veterans.

Clint Boon (Inspiral Carpets)

Famous for being the keyboards player (and sometimes vocalist) with alternative rock band Inspiral Carpets, the English musician and D.J.Clint Boon was born 28th June 1959. The Inspiral Carpets were formed by Graham Lambert and Stephen Holt in 1983. The band is named after a clothing shop on their Oldham estate. Their sound is based around psychedelic keyboards and guitars. They came to prominence, alongside bands like The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays, in the ‘Madchester’ scene of the late 1980s. After a flexi-disc featuring Garage Full Of Flowers given free with Manchester’s Debris magazine in 1987, followed by the Cow cassette, their first release proper, the 1988 Planecrash EP on the Playtime label received much airplay from Radio 1 DJ John Peel, who asked the band to record a session for his show. At the time of their initial success, the band earned some notoriety for their squiggly-eyed cow T-shirts; They reworked their single “Find Out Why” as the theme tune to the 8:15 from Manchester.

As their popularity grew, Playtime’s distributor Red Rhino Records went bust, leading the band to form their own label, Cow Records in March 1989, the labels’ first release being the Trainsurfing EP. After a handful of singles on their own label, the last of which, “Move”, came close to the UK top 40, they signed a deal with Mute Records, and immediately had their first top 40 chart success in the UK with “This Is How It Feels”, which is a song about unemployment and touches on themes of domestic violence. The single reached #14 in the singles chart, and debut album Life reached #2 in the album chart, both in 1990. In 1991 the band released The Beast Inside featuring The songs “Caravan” and “Please be Cruel”. The band gained astrong following in Portugal, Germany, and Argentina, with the band’s 1992 album Revenge of the Goldfish featured the songs She comes in the Fall and Dragging me Down. The next album, Devil Hopping (1994) reached number 10 in the album chart, with “Saturn 5″ and “I Want You” giving them top 20 hits, from that LP. (The latter’s single version featured Mark E. Smith). Next single “Uniform” and sadly in 1995, after the release of a Singles collection, the band were dropped by Mute, and split up soon after.

After the Inspiral Carpets split in 1995, Boon went on to form The Clint Boon Experience releasing two albums under this name – The Compact Guide to Pop Music and Space Travel (1999), and Life in Transition (2000). They also released the single “Do What You Do (Earworm Song)”, which featured Fran Healy, the lead singer of the band Travis. Boon made a cameo appearance on the 2002 film, 24 Hour Party People as a train conductor. He lso worked with Cosgrove Hall providing voice-overs and music for the Engie Benjy cartoon series. Boon has his own record label, ‘Booney Tunes’, signing artists such as Elaine Palmer, and has also been a regular DJ at a number of nightclubs around England, and in Wrexham, North Wales. He rejoined the Inspiral Carpets for two sell-out tours in 2002 and 2003. Boon is still a presenter on Xfm Manchester. He hosts the afternoon show from Monday to Friday between 2pm and 5pm, and often covers Xposure. In 2008 Boon had his portrait painted by Manchester based artist Adam Hayley. The portrait represents many aspects of Boon’s life and incorporates references to his Manchester roots. The portrait was unveiled at Manchester’s Mooch Art Gallery on Oldham Street, in the Northern Quarter

Charlie Clouser (Nine Inch Nails)

American singer-songwriter, composer, and record producer Charlie Clouser was born 28th June 1963. He is an American keyboardist, composer, record producer, and remixer and was a member of the industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails from 1994–2000, and is a composer for film and television. Clouser was nominated for two Grammy Awards for Best Metal Performance in 1997. Clouser plays keyboard, synthesizer, theremin, and drums. He also does music programming, engineering, and mixing. He was a member of the band Nine Inch Nails (1994–2000). Before he was in Nine Inch Nails, he was in the alternative band Burning Retna with former L.A. Guns guitarist Mick Cripps and fellow Nothing Records employee Sean Beavan. Clouser also was a member of the band 9 Ways to Sunday, which released a self-titled album in 1990.

Clouser has remixed artists such as Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson, Rammstein and Meat Beat Manifesto. In 2004, Clouser produced the Helmet album Size Matters. Consisting mainly of collaborations between Clouser and Page Hamilton, it was intended to be a Hamilton solo album. The first release from the collaboration, known as Throwing Punches, appeared on a soundtrack in 2003 for the film Underworld, and was credited as a Hamilton track. Clouser created one of FirstCom music’s master series discs, only sold for commercial use, in the late 1990s. Two songs programmed by Clouser were nominated for Grammy Awards in 1997: White Zombie’s “I’m Your Boogie Man” and Rob Zombie and Alice Cooper’s “Hands of Death (Burn Baby Burn),” the latter of which Clouser also co-wrote and mixed.

He has also worked with Trent Reznor on the soundtrack of Natural Born Killers, helping record and produce a new version of “Something I Can Never Have,” the original version of which appeared on Nine Inch Nails’ Pretty Hate Machine album. Clouser’s remix of Zombie’s “Dragula” can be found on The Matrix soundtrack. Another Zombie track remixed by Clouser, “Reload”, appears on The Matrix Reloaded soundtrack. He produced the unfinished Hamilton project Gandhi and also provided the live synth for Alec Empire’s “Intelligence And Sacrifice” tour in 2001. He appears in the Moog documentary about electronic-music pioneer Robert Moog and composed the song “I Am a Spaceman” for the original soundtrack of that movie. Clouser has also worked as a film and television composer, scoring the Saw series of films, as well as Death Sentence (2007), Resident Evil: Extinction (2007), Dead Silence (2007), and Deepwater (2005).He composed the ending theme “Hello Zepp” for Saw. On television, he was the composer for the TV series Las Vegas (NBC), Fastlane (Fox), and NUMB3RS (CBS) as well as American Horror Story.