Historian’s Almanac: January 2, 2015

It was on this day in 1839 that Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1787-1851), a French artist and photographer, took the first picture of the moon.  Daguerre took the photo using a process he developed that became known as daguerreotypy.  The image, known as a daguerreotype, “was produced on a silver plate sensitized to iodine and developed in mercury vapor.”

Daguerre is also credited with taking the first photograph, a daguerreotype, of a person.  Two men, a bootblack polishing another man’s shoes, are seen in the lower left-hand corner of a photograph of the Boulevard du Crime in Paris taken by Daguerre in 1838. The appearance of the two men in the photo was no doubt by chance.

Today we remember  Tex Ritter (b. 1905), who went on to Cowboy Heaven on this

day in 1974.  Ritter began his career in 1928 singing cowboy songs on the radio.  He starred in a number of B-western movies during the thirties and forties, but it is perhaps as a cowboy and country singer that he is best remembered.  His recordings of “Rye Whiskey,” “Blood on the Saddle,” “Green Grow the Lilacs,” “Boll Weevil.” “Hillbilly Heaven,” and “High Noon (Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darlin)” are all classics.  The last won an Oscar in 1953 for “Best Song.”  [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzGtvnjtGtM]  Tex Ritter died of a heart attack on January 2, 1974.

Today is the birthday of Josef Stalin (1878-1953) who said, “Death is the solution to all problems.  No man – no problem.”

Until next time, be good to all God’s creation and always walk under the mercy.