NASA’s worm logo, retired in 1992, returned to space this year. And selfies seem so 21st century, right? Wrong. The first selfie was made before Texas was even a state.
Howdy, Pandowdy
Our recipes theme this month is Cobblers, Crisps, Buckles and Betties. Seems like a lot of names for a dish that is essentially fruit baked with batter, biscuits, dough or crumble.
Turns out those dishes, which have been around since colonists arrived in this country with their recipes from England, go by many other names, including crumbles, grunts, slumps, bird’s nest pudding, sonkers and pandowdies.
Nasa.gov
Worms in Space?
Absolutely.
NASA’s red, sleek and wavy typographical logo from the 1980s returned to the heavens May 30, adorning the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that launched two American astronauts aboard the Crew Dragon.
When the logo debuted in 1975, it became known as the worm, and the original NASA logo, which debuted in 1959 with the agency, was coined the meatball. The worm was NASA’s official logo 1975–1992, then the agency went back to the meatball.
The minimalist worm was popular in the marketing industry but scorned by NASA insiders, who favored the round blue meatball with its white type, planets, stars and orbital path enhanced with a red chevron.
Lights Out
General Electric, co-founded by Thomas Edison, inventor of the modern lightbulb, recently sold its 129-year-old lighting business.
The New York Times compared this move to Kellogg abandoning cornflakes or Ford getting out of the auto industry.
By the Numbers: $30
That’s the average weekly allowance, which about two-thirds of parents fork over to kids.
Oxford Dictionaries named “selfie” the word of the year in 2013, 174 years after the first selfie was made.
Library of Congress
Now This Is a Selfie
We know you love your selfies, our Focus on Texas theme this month.
The selfie above might be the coolest of all—because it was the first.
Robert Cornelius, an amateur chemist and photography enthusiast in Philadelphia, made a daguerreotype of himself in 1839. He removed the camera’s lens cap; ran into the frame, where he sat for several minutes; then covered the lens again.
Kickoff
The American Professional Football Association, predecessor of the NFL, began play 100 years ago.
There were two games that Sunday, October 3, 1920.
The scores:
Dayton Triangles 14, Columbus Panhandlers 0
Rock Island Independents 45, Muncie Flyers 0
75 Years Ago
Port Arthur’s Babe Didrikson Zaharias won the Texas Women’s Open golf tournament and was named The Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year in 1945 for the second time (an accolade she ultimately received six times).
Zaharias, who earned two 1932 Olympic gold medals in track and field, was also a standout basketball and baseball player. She was nicknamed Babe after Babe Ruth.
