Today in History – Page 2 – Mark Bere Peterson’s Hauntings, Urban Legends, Paganism & Witchcraft

First Person Cryonically Preserved

Today in History —> 1967 – Dr. James Bedford becomes the first person to be cryonically preserved with intent of future resuscitation.

His body is still frozen until the day when he can supposedly be revived and cured of his metastasizing kidney cancer. The Facebook page that details his preservation says this: Compared to those employed by modern cryonics organizations, the use of cryoprotectants in Bedford’s case was primitive.

He was injected with dimethyl sulfoxide, a compound once thought to be useful for long-term cryogenics, so it is unlikely that his brain was protected.Vitrification was not yet possible, further limiting the possibility of Bedford’s eventual recovery.

Here are some photos from that site.

Miep Gies

Today in History –> On this day in 2010, Miep Gies, the last survivor of a small group of people who helped hide a Jewish girl, Anne Frank, and her family from the Nazis during World War II, dies at age 100 in the Netherlands. After the Franks were discovered in 1944 and sent to concentration camps, Gies rescued the notebooks that Anne Frank left behind describing her two years in hiding. These writings were later published as “Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl,” which became one of the most widely read accounts of the Holocaust.

Common Sense

History, Literature, Today in History, U.S. History

Today in 1776 – Thomas Paine publishes his pamphlet Common Sense:

It’s hard to find first editions of this famous 47-page pamphlet urging independence of the colonies (only three in decent condition have been auctioned since 1945), but this one sold in 2013 for $545,000.

Today in History —> Simone de Beauvoir Born

Feminism, History, Today in History

Today in History –> On this day in 1908 the great feminist theorist Simone de Beauvoir was born. Though she did not recognise herself as a philosopher, she contributed to fields in philosophy such as ethics, phenomenology, politics and existentialism. Known for her treatise ‘The Second Sex’ she provided a detailed challenge to the social, political and religious categories used to justify women’s inferior status.

“On the day when it will be possible for woman to love not in her weakness but in strength, not to escape herself but to find herself, not to abase herself but to assert herself – on that day love will become for her, as for man, a source of life and not of mortal danger”.

~ Simone de Beauvoir, “The Second Sex” (1949)

#SimoneDeBeauvoir #FavoriteQuotes