365 –- A tsunami caused by an earthquake on the Mediterranean island of Crete more than 400 miles away devastates the northern Egyptian metropolis of Alexandria. It later will be estimated to have been magnitude 8.5 or higher. More than 50,000 people in the city and immediate environs will die.
1861 — The first major battle of the Civil War begins, the Battle of Bull Run at Manassas Junction, VA. The Confederate forces will emerge victorious.
1865 –- In the market square of Springfield, MO, James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok shoots and kills Davis Tutt, a gambler and former Confederate soldier, in what is regarded by many historians as the first western “showdown” gunfight.
1931 — CBS broadcasts the first regularly-scheduled program to be simulcast on radio and television. The show features singer Kate Smith, composer George Gershwin, and New York City Mayor Jimmy Walker.
1983 –- The world’s lowest temperature in an inhabited location is recorded at Vostok Station, Antarctica, of −128.6° Farenheit.
OUR VENUES (top to bottom) — Boathouse Grille, Goold Orchards, Bruno Stadium, Mac-Haydn Theatre.
All four of our club’s August events are in the planning stages, and there is quite a variety. One thing they have in common, however, is that earlier-than-usual reservation deadlines are a “must.”
In each instance, we’re dealing with companies that need to know seating and service arrangements, so we don’t have the luxury of Tuesday night deadlines we have for most of our dinner events.
The RSVP deadlines are shown below. In every instance, please send reservations or regrets only via the club’s email rather than using any verbal, third-person, or other methods. That will lessen the potential for confusion or someone’s reservation being overlooked.
Here’s the current rundown:
Dinner at Donovan’s Shady Harbor Marina (August 4)
We’ll be ordering drinks and food off the menu, so your prices will vary, but the folks at the marina’s Boathouse Grille need to know how many of us will be descending on the New Baltimore venue for dinner. Click here to get a look at the menu.
RSVP DEADLINE: JULY 29
Wine Tasting Dinner at Goold Orchards (August 11)
This will be our second annual visit to the Castleton facility, where we’ll begin with a tasting of wines from Goold’s own Brookview Station Winery before a wine-inspired dinner. Price: just $20 per person.
RSVP DEADLINE: AUGUST 6
Baseball & Picnic at Bruno Stadium (August 18)
This is one of our biggest family outings each summer. It begins with a picnic dinner in the covered pavilion on the stadium’s first-base side, followed by reserved seats for a New York-Penn League pro baseball game between the homestanding Tri-City ValleyCats and the visiting Aberdeen (MD) Ironbirds. Tickets are $25 each, and cover the meal and the game.
RSVP DEADLINE: AUGUST 4
“The Addams Family” at the Mac-Haydn Theatre (August 25)
It’s opening night for this professional presentation of the iconic family of oddballs that will be “visiting” this Chatham summer theater-in-the-round. Tickets are $30 each, which is cheaper than even the senior discount price.
RSVP DEADLINE: August 9
Please begin emailing your reservations (including guests) or regrets today to SRCrotary so you don’t miss out on the fun.
NOTE: This post was made on July 20, but since we’re getting close to the event we’re repeating it for the benefit of all who like to participate.
Save the date: The annual Gift of Life Golf & Bocce Tournament has been scheduled for Wednesday, September 21. And, this year it’s closer to Southern Rensselaer County than ever.
The venue for the 17th annual fundraiser is the Mohawk River Country Club in Halfmoon, Saratoga County, as opposed to its usual venue in Montgomery County.
Our club always has a foursome in the event — and two years ago won top honors — but with the increased size of our membership perhaps we’ll be able to add a golfing foursome as well as a bocce entry.
Not sure how to play bocce? Click here for a perfect “how-to” presentation.
The tournament is the year’s top fundraiser to help District 7190 Gift of Life in its ongoing efforts to provide lifesaving cardiac surgery for children from countries where such help is not available. So far, GOL has saved 200 such lives.
Jennifer Degenhart, tournament chairperson, has several suggestions on how to help the effort even if you’re not golfing or playing bocce. Among them:
• Acting as our host club or dinner sponsor (an awards dinner follows the events)
• Providing raffle items, gift certificates, items for our goody bags (Have any wine or liquor you’re not planning to consume, golf balls/tees/accessories you’ll never use? Pass it on and we can use it in a gift basket.)
• We’ve found that many places you frequent will provide gift certificates to charity organizations if you just ask.
Here are all the details. You can print out the entry form for your convenience of registering.
1799 — Tekle Guyorgis I begins the first of his six separate reigns as emperor of Ethiopia.
1807 — Nicephone Nuepce is awarded a patent by Napolean for what he calls the “Pyreolophore.” It is the first internal combustion engine and was used to power a boat upstream on the river Saone in France.
1903 — The Ford Motor Company ships its first car.
1917 — The modern Kingdom of Yugoslavia is created by the Corfu Declaration, a document codifying an agreement between the Yugoslav Committee and the Kingdom of Serbia.
1968 — The first International Special Olympics Summer Games begin at Soldier Field in Chicago, with about 1,000 athletes participating.
Members of the Southern Rensselaer County Rotary Club got to meet incoming District Governor John Mucha (pronounced moo-haw) several months ago when he and his wife visited during one of our blanket-making evenings for Blue Star Mothers.
Now, John has returned from the Rotary International Convention in South Korea and taken office. Here’s the news release sent out this week by the District Public Relations Committee (Bill Dowd is a member) to media throughout the district’s nine-county area introducing John and explaining Rotary to those unfamiliar with it.
John Mucha visits a local club in South Korea.
ROTARY INTERNATIONAL, DISTRICT 7190 Covering the New York State counties of Albany, Saratoga, Warren, Rensselaer, Washington, Schenectady, Montgomery, Fulton, and Schoharie
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Additional information: Melissa Ward, 518-369-0407)
John Mucha, a Queensbury resident who has been a Rotarian for 29 years, has become the district governor of the service organization’s District 7190. That area covers 41 local clubs, comprised of more than 1,200 men and women. He will serve through June 2017.
Rotary, founded in 1905 by Chicago businessman Paul Harris, has grown to become a global organization of 1.23 million members in more than 34,500 clubs in 213 countries that takes on the needs of communities and nations large and small.
Among its international efforts are a program to eradicate polio, a disease once endemic worldwide but now limited to just two nations, Afghanistan and Pakistan; ShelterBox, a disaster relief program that provides first-response shelter and survival equipment for victims of earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, and other natural disasters; and, programs providing many other things such as clean water, basic education, conflict resolution, health care, and leadership training.
In District 7190, individual clubs support those global efforts but also create local initiatives such as academic scholarships, food pantry drives, clothing and cleanup assistance for disaster victims, family services, literacy, youth leadership training, CPR, school supplies drives, adopting families and children for holidays, and literally dozens of other efforts, each decided at the club level.
As district governor, Mucha will oversee coordination and support of such efforts in a region covering Albany, Rensselaer, Schenectady, Saratoga, Warren, Washington, Montgomery, Fulton, and Schoharie counties, as well as an e-club.
Mucha began his Rotary service in 1987 with the Binghamton Rotary Club, transferred to the Glens Falls club in 1994, and became president of that club in the 2007-08 Rotary Year. He went on to serve in various district-wide roles such as treasurer and assistant governor.
Mucha, speaking about his new role, said, “It is a great honor and privilege to be selected as District Governor for our nine-county region. In 2017, we will mark the 100th anniversary of the Rotary Foundation that funds many of our efforts, and it may well be the year the scourge of polio is eradicated from the planet, an effort Rotary has been making since 1985. The 2016-17 Rotary Year will be a very special one, and I thank my fellow Rotarians for selecting me for this critical leadership role.”
Winner, winner, chicken dinner. Or ribs dinner. Your choice during the Lansingburgh Rotary Club’s 60th annual Brooks’ House of Bar-B-Q takeout-only event.
The fundraiser in support of the club’s local youth programs is set for 3 to 5 p.m. Sunday, August 14, at the Lansingburgh Boys & Girls Club, 501 4th Avenue.
Chicken dinners are $13, ribs dinners $14. If you pre-pay, you’re guaranteed the dinner choice you enter in the check memo line. Checks should be made payable to Rotary Club of Lansingburgh/Troy, and mailed to the Boys & Girls Club.
Need any more details? Call the club at 235-6116 or the Boys & Girls Club at 235-4143.
1545 –- The Tudor warship Mary Rose sinks off Portsmouth, England. In 1982, the wreck will be salvaged in one of the most complex and expensive projects in the history of maritime archaeology.
1845 –- The last great fire to broadly affect Manhattan begins early in the morning and is subdued by late afternoon, but not before it claims the lives of four firefighters and 26 civilians, and destroys 345 buildings.
1848 — In Seneca Falls, NY, the first Women’s Rights Convention takes place. Bloomers are introduced at the event.
1943 –- Rome is heavily bombed by more than 500 Allied aircraft in a major World War II strike, inflicting thousands of casualties.
1997 -– The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) resumes a ceasefire to end “The Troubles,” its 25-year-long campaign to end British rule in Northern Ireland.
The next dropoff date for donations to our “School Supplies Drive” for needy kids is Thursday, July 28 (NOT this Thursday). The 28th is the date for a Greek dinner at the Calamaras residence, and I’ll be accepting items there.
Contributions so far have been a bit on the light side, so I’m hoping many more of you will be doing your shopping soon. For those of you with young children, this would be an ideal effort to get them involved as “kids helping kids.”
As mentioned numerous times, the shopping list of needed items is on the club website at SRCrotary.org — just scroll down and you’ll see it.
Also as mentioned, if for some odd reason you don’t plan to participate in any club events up to and including August 21, the absolute deadline for contributions, please call me to arrange a pickup of your supplies.
64 A.D. –- The Great Fire of Rome begins, and will rage for six days, causing widespread devastation that will destroy half of the city. Emperor Nero will counter widespread rumors that the fire was started at his behest to clear the way for his new projects by blaming the devastation on the Christian community in the city. That will initiate the Roman Empire’s first persecution of the Christians.
1290 –- King Edward I of England issues the “Edict of Expulsion,” banishing all of England’s 16,000 Jews from the land. This is called Tisha B’Av on the Hebrew calendar, a day that commemorates many Jewish calamities.
1925 –- Adolf Hitler publishes his personal manifesto, “Mein Kampf” (“My Struggle”).
1969 -– After a party on Chappaquiddick Island at Martha’s Vineyard, Senator Ted Kennedy, D-MA, drives his car off a bridge and his young passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, dies.
1976 –- Nadia Comăneci of Romania becomes the first person in Olympic Games history to score a perfect 10 in gymnastics during the Montreal Summer Olympics.
180 –- Twelve inhabitants of Scillium, a city in the part of North Africa that today is Tunisia, are executed for being Christians. This is the earliest record of Christianity in that part of the world.
1762 –- Catherine the Great, born Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg in Germany, becomes the absolute ruler of Russia upon the murder of her husband, Peter III. She will rule until her death, at the age of 67, in 1796.
1902 -– Willis H. Carrier, a Cornell University engineering graduate, unveils drawings for what will be recognized as the world’s first true air conditioner. It controlled temperature, humidity, air circulation, and cleansed the air.
1917 — Reacting to anti-German sentiment during World War I, England’s King George V issues a Proclamation stating that the male line descendants of the British Royal Family hereafter will bear the surname Windsor. It had been the rather unwieldy “Saxe-Coburg and Gotha,” reflecting the German paternal lineage of the royal rulers.
1955 –- The Disneyland amusement park is dedicated and opened by Walt Disney in Anaheim, CA.
NOTE: This post was made on July 20, but since we’re getting close to the event we’re repeating it for the benefit of all who like to participate.
Winner, winner, chicken dinner. Or ribs dinner. Your choice during the Lansingburgh Rotary Club’s 60th annual Brooks’ House of Bar-B-Q takeout-only event.
The next dropoff date for donations to our “School Supplies Drive” for needy kids is Thursday, July 28 (NOT this Thursday). The 28th is the date for a Greek dinner at the Calamaras residence, and I’ll be accepting items there.
Southern Rensselaer County Rotary Club 