Thursday, April 7, 2011

Combat Drug Resistance (It's World Health Day again)

World Health Day celebrates the founding of WHO (World Health Organization) in 1948. This year's theme is antimicrobial resistance.



World Health Day 2011 is dedicated to antimicrobial resistance, a major threat to patient care and disease control throughout the world. Antimicrobial resistance is a significant obstacle to success in controlling HIV, malaria and tuberculosis—three of the world's leading infectious killers. This serious problem also makes it more difficult to treat hospital-acquired infections, facilitates the emergence of "superbugs" that are resistant to major antibiotics, and creates the need for new, more expensive and more complex treatments.


April 7, 1805 -
Beethoven conducted the premiere of his Eroica symphony on this date. Beethoven uses the symphony to convey popular notions about heroism and revolution, which were prevalent throughout Europe at the time.



He was full of enthusiasm and respect for the French Revolution's ideals, and especially (at first) Napoleon Bonaparte. Beethoven, like a teenage groupie, scrawled Napoleon's name all over the dedication page of the symphony.



But then Napoleon went on a world tour and started conquering random European countries. When he became a truly evil bastard, finally declared himself Emperor of the French in 1804, Beethoven flew into a rage. He ripped through the paper as he scratched out Napoleon's name with a knife.


April 7, 1915 -
Eleanora Fagan, considered by many to be the greatest jazz vocalist of all time, was born on this day. Though her career was relatively short and often erratic, she left behind a body of work as great as any vocalist before or since.







Eleanora's (or as she was professionally known, Billie Holiday) vocal style — strongly inspired by instrumentalists — pioneered a new way of manipulating wording and tempo, and also popularized a more personal and intimate approach to singing.


April 7, 1927 -
An audience in New York saw an image of Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover in the first successful long-distance demonstration of television. Hoover’s image and voice were transmitted across telephone lines. Edna Mae Horner, an operator at the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company, assisted the transmission and became the first woman on television

Unfortunately, this was not a demonstration of a time machine and Hoover didn't get a message about the upcoming Great Depression.


April 7, 1939 -
That little old Italian wine maker, Francis Ford Coppola, (who also is a magazine publisher and hotelier) was born on this date.




Oh yeah, he is a five-time Academy Award winning American film director, producer, and screenwriter.


April 7, 1954 -
President Dwight D. Eisenhower coined one of the most famous Cold War phrases when he suggests the fall of French Indochina to the communists could create a "domino" effect in Southeast Asia on this date.
The so-called "domino theory" dominated U.S. thinking about Vietnam for the next decade. Who know that the President was so afraid of the Pizza boy.


April 7, 1970 -
John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy won the Oscar for Best Picture on this date. It remains the only X-rated film to win an Academy Award.



Dustin Hoffman kept pebbles in his shoe to ensure his limp would be consistent from shot to shot.


April 7, 1989 -
Soviet nuclear submarine K-278 Komsomolets sinks in the Norwegian sea, with two nuclear reactors and two nuclear torpedoes aboard. 41 crew members die,



and the submarine remains one mile below the surface of the ocean, with its nuclear weapons intact. Hope you've been enjoying that Norwegian smoked salmon lately.


April 7, 1990 -
A display of Robert Mapplethorpe photographs opened at Cincinnati's Contemporary Arts Center, the same day the center and its director were indicted on obscenity charges.

Both were later acquitted.


April 7, 1998 -
Pop singer George Michael is arrested by an undercover police officer after pleasuring himself in front him in a public toilet.



If only these were the problems George has now.



And so it goes.

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