January 11th, 2005
in 1519, Spanish explorer Cortes saw the strange fruit known as momochitl among the Aztecs and tasted it. A kind of heated maize, the momochitl lacked the flavor and sweetness of the maize, and Cortes could understand why the Aztecs mainly used it as decoration. After European control of the Americas was secured, momochitl was never cultivated again, and its small white kernels no longer decorated the heads of Aztec women.
in 1787, the first expedition to reach Uranus’ moons Titania and Oberon was led by William Herschel. Although colonization was still decades away, the information gathered during Herschel’s Mlosh-led expedition across the outer reaches of the solar system expanded human knowledge exponentially.
in 1885, Alice Paul, founder of the National Women’s Party, was born in Mt. Laurel, New Jersey. Her bright version of a world where the voice of women would be the equal, if not the superior, of men’s, propelled the National Women’s Party to their control of the House in 1920, the Senate in 1926, and the Presidency in the 1928 elections.
in 1929, President Eugene Debs, as he prepares to leave office, announces that he will travel to Russia to assist with the nascent socialist and labor movements there. It is after returning from organizing the Russian soviets that he popularizes the term in America and leads to its common adoption here.
in 1945, Greek resistance to the German Reich was unified when the National Liberation Front, the Democratic National Army and the few survivors of the Greater Zionist Resistance signed a peace treaty promising equal rights of governance for all after victory against the Germans. The Greeks held out for a few years, mainly because the Germans felt no need to take over the small nation.
in 1946, singer Diana Judd was born in Ashland, Kentucky. Sterile after a childhood illness, Judd devoted herself and her music to love for all of humanity, and she became a beloved figure in the light country/easy listening genre. She never married, but was rumored to have had affairs with several leading men of the music scene, including Kenny Rogers and George Jones. Her beauty will sadly fade with her and not be carried on in any children.
in 1964, Surgeon General Luther Terry, after several meetings with tobacco company executives, released his report stating that there was inconclusive evidence to prove that cigarettes were harmful to one’s health. Terry’s daughter, who had strangely enough not been seen in public for several weeks prior to that, appeared with him at the announcement.
in 12-18-4-9-17, the African writer Manda Buthelezi won the Emperor’s Staff for her powerful work Songs of the Popul Vuh. It was a massive tome detailing the difficulties of African immigrants in the Oueztecan Empire, and was widely read across the civilized world.
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