I have performed a little site "remodelling" and replaced the Timelines of History logo. More changes will soon follow and your feedback is appreciated. I would like to thank Dalia Ratnikas and Michael McCartney for their ongoing design efforts.
----------------------------------
I have submitted timelines.ws to Cool site of the Day (http://coolsiteoftheday.com). Their recognition has given a strong boost many sites in the past and I hope for similar results.
----------------------------------
Many thanks to the numerous people who have submitted corrections. The updated files listed below includes all the corrections for the month. The individual items would be too numerous to delineate here.
----------------------------------
The local Daly City library system requested permission to use the Daly City timeline for its own web site and I was happy to oblige.
----------------------------------
By recommendation of Anthony D'Abreu I have also submitted TofH to the Best of History Web Sites: (http://besthistorysites.net/index.shtml)
 Cross-linkage between web sites is a very powerful promotional tool. If anybody knows of a web site that might be interested in cross-linking with the timelines, I would be very happy to pursue the contact. I only request that suggested sites be somewhat related to the idea of history.
----------------------------------
I have updated a link to a site on the History of Finland by Pauli Kruhse. It is a very good site available in multiple languages with extensive html links:
 (http://www.histdoc.net/history/history.html)
----------------------------------
Hello!
Through a search on the Internet for my last name I have found a link to your website.  Under the chapter Timeline of Norway you have mentioned my brother.  On the 6th of July 1999 he died after base-jumping from a mountain here in Norway.  It was really special for me to find his accident mentioned as a "timeline of Norway".  But, if possible, I would like his name to be
spelled correctly.  His name was actually Thor Alex Kappfjell.  I know that he sometimes, especially in newspapers abroad, was called Alex Kappfjell, and some newspapers probably misspelled this and he ended up with the name Axel Kappfjell - which is quite another name.  Could this possibly be corrected?
Yes, It has been corrected.
------------------------------------
Update files due to corrections:
Countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Canada, Chile, Finland, Great Britain (1551-1710), S. Korea; Maya, Malaysia, Mexico, Moldova, Netherlands, Norway, Russia (1914-1944)(1999-2003), Spain (to 1889), Switzerland, Venezuela
Subjects: Earthquakes, Olympics (new), Pop & Rock (new), Writers
Years: 1-999, 1525-1549, 1661-1699, 1875-1876, 1914-1915; 1916-1917, 1922-1923, 1924-1925, 1939, 1952, 1953, 1956, 1961, 1973, 1980, 1994, 1998 (Dec), 2002 (Dec), 2003 (Nov)
-------------------------------------
And now, back by popular demand, straight from her salon in Delmarva -  Here's Starla!!

Hair Today - Gone Tomorrow!

Up to now, I've written mostly about what to do (or not do) with the hair on your head. Now it has been gently brought to my attention that "hey Starla, I've got hair in other places, and I DON'T WANT IT ON ME!!!" So as a service to those of you who just want that hair gone, I've decided to do a quick rundown of various methods of hair removal, most of which have been used for centuries. At least as far back as the Roman poet Ovid wrote "Should I warn you to keep the rank goat out of your armpits? Warn you to keep your legs free of coarse bristling hair?" Very poetic guy was our Ovid.

Shaving: Using a razor to scrape off the hair at the surface of the skin.
 Pros: quick, cheap, works well and is very safe if you exercise a minimal degree of caution. cons: some people's skin doesn't like the process and becomes red and bumpy; have to keep it doing it fairly often for best results; leaves stubble, so it shouldn't ever be used to tame eyebrows or other outlaw facial hair.

Depilatory: A cream or lotion containing chemicals that dissolve the hair so it can be washed away. pros: easy to do, no nicks, lasts longer than shaving
 cons: takes some time, since the stuff must be left on for anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes; can be irritating to the skin, so a patch test beforehand is recommended; doesn't usually smell very nice, though some products are less obnoxious than other.

Waxing: Hot wax is placed on the area to be de-haired, allowed to harden and then pulled off, taking the hair with it.
 Pros: The more often you wax, the less hair grows back, so that eventually you don't have to wax much; quick, it only takes one yank.
 Cons: It hurts. I won't lie to you about that. It does get somewhat better as you get used to it, but it will never be entirely painless. Also, it takes a certain knack to wax eyebrows correctly so you may have to shop around till you find a stylist, beautician who has the knack. I don't recommend waxing your own eyebrows.

Plucking: pulling the hair out with tweezers. Pros: All you need is tweezers and a steady hand so it's very cheap; No stubble and lasts a while. cons: hurts, though not as much as waxing. Time-consuming so it's only good for small areas.

Sugaring: This is an ancient Egyptian hybrid of waxing and the depilatory, in which sugar and lemon juice are mixed with other ingredients and applied to the hair, then removed. Pros: said to be painless; the ingredients are all very gentle so sugaring can be done on the face and pubic regions. cons: I've never seen any ready-made sugaring products in the stores, so you'd have to hunt up a recipe on your own; probably a nuisance to have to mix it up each time.

Electrolysis: A very fine needle is inserted into the hair follicle and a small electric current is passed through it, destroying the hair at the roots so it can be picked off easily. pros: The only permanent hair removal method available. cons: very expensive so it's usually only done on small areas; can be painful; some people have scars later on. I'm going to pretend do-it-yourself or amateur electrolysis doesn't exist, it's that bad. Suffice it to say, only go to a reputable, licensed professional electrologist. And before you ask: No, my next column will NOT be all about how to make hair grow. There ain't no such animal.

xo *

A Happy New Year and Best Regards to all,
Algis Ratnikas
[email protected]

Timelines of History
http://timelines.ws
Newsletter #57
Feb 1, 2004
 

Welcome to my birthday party!

Please, grab yourself a glass a wine, and join me in a toast, for I toast to you. This project is validated solely by its users, and you, as a subscriber to this little newsletter, are among the elite of the users. In a few months I am going to begin an early retirement in order to devote my full efforts to this project. Though far from any position of financial independence, I am making the gamble that my efforts here are more important than the time I spend in my current day job. It is possible that as the next new year rolls around, I will wonder what in heaven's name I was thinking, but perhaps with a little of your support the thought will instead be: "Why didn't I do this earlier?"
As things stand now this project is completely dependent on my continued health and efforts. Should anything go amiss with me, the site would quickly go into cyber oblivion. Some plagiarized copies would no doubt continue to float around the Internet, but there would be no updates, no corrections, no newsletter. It is my desire to breathe into this project an independent life, so that it might continue regardless of my circumstances. It is with all this in mind that I raise my glass and toast to you: May good health always be with you! And may you often return to peruse the Timelines of History!
-----------------------------
e-mail request:

I host a chat room on AOL and came across your webpage. I am asking for permission to use the time line material you have compiled on a piecemeal basis for my topic in the chat room. I type in headlines and then have the members in the chat room guess the year it happened . Then I give out fictitious "prizes" in the chat room relating to the headline. It is for fun only and not for profit by me or AOL directly.

Permission  granted.
------------------------------
e-mail from Zambia:

Would you consider adding a link to http://www.thezambian.com/ on your webpage about Zambia at http://timelines.ws/countries/ZAMBIA.HTML

Link added
------------------------------
Among the more interesting recent additions:
 
1960  Nov 12, Discoverer XVII was launched into orbit from California’s Vandenberg AFB.  The Discoverer Program (1959-1962) was a ruse to conceal the Corona Program, a series of photoreconnaissance spy satellites. Corona was the first photoreconnaissance program, and a precursor of the military and civilian space imaging programs of today.
 (HN, 11/12/98)(http://spacecovers.com/pricelists/categories/category_satellites.htm)

1996  Eliezer Yudkowsky (16) set up the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (SIAI). He and a group of followers, dubbed transhumanists, believed that a kind of artificial intelligence, a super intelligence, will emerge over the next 25 years. "The Singularity is the technological creation of smarter than human intelligence."
 (SSFC, 1/11/04, p.A1)
--------------------------------
Special thanks to Larry, a rock shop owner in Missouri, for his ongoing corrections to numerous items in the Timelines.

Updated files include:
Countries: Arctic, Armenia, Benin, Britain (1860-1910)(1911-1941)(1942-1971), Chad, China (1995-1999, 2000-2004), Egypt, Finland, France (1921-1967), Germany (to 1820)(1821-1916), Ghana, Guyana, Hungary, India (to 1990), Ivory Coast, Libya, Mauritania, Mexico (to 1970), Niger, Nigeria, Portugal, Russia (to 1910)(1911-1944)(1945-1987), Somalia, Spain to 1899, Togo, Turkey to 1960.
Subjects: Airstuff, Artists, Baseball, Black History, Fashion, NASA, Poets, Women.
US States: Alaska, New Jersey, Maine, New Hampshire, Ohio
Cities: NYC (1900-1949)
Years: BB-420Mil, 3300-1300BCE, 1300-1399, 1450-1475, 1600-1625, 1626-1660, 1771-1779, 1780-1789, 1811-1820, 1831-1840, 1860-1861, 1864-1866, 1871-1874, 1877-1878, 1879-1882, 1883-1884, 1895-1897, 1902-1904, 1906-1907, 1914-1915, 1916-1917, 1918-1919, 1924-1925, 1928, 1929, 1941, 1948, 1960, 1966, 1969, 1979, 1996 (Jan-Apr), 1997 (Jul-Aug), 2002 (Sep), 2003 (Dec).
----------------------------------
This month's Hair Today assignment for Starla was to research out how our Cro-Magnon ancestors dealt with their hair in the winter time. Due to lack of printed material on the subject *la quipped as follows: "Cro-Magnon and his Neanderthal pals didn't do a thing to their hair even in ice weather. Maybe they slicked it back with mastodon grease on really big date nights." And so she adapted the subject to the present.

It's January, the proverbial dead of winter, and at least on the eastern seaboard, the winds cut like knives, the snow flies and the nights are dark and bitterly cold. All we need is some wolves howling in the background and a full moon riding the storm-tossed clouds... Well maybe it isn't so bad. My "Handy Science Answer Book" informs me that the coldest temperature ever recorded on Earth is 128.6° Fahrenheit below zero, which occurred at the Vostok Station in Antarctica July 21 1983. I don't think any of us can truly imagine what that kind of cold must be like.

Want more? All right: the record cold temp for an inhabited area is minus deg. 90.4F at Oymyakon, Siberia (pop. 4000) on Feb. 6, 1933. And here in the US? The dubious honor goes to Prospect Creek, Alaska, with the reading of minus deg. 79.8F on Jan. 23, 1971, and to Rogers Pass, Montana, which boasted a reading of minus deg. 69.6F on Jan. 20, 1954. Few of us will have to have to deal with such extreme cold temperatures, but as a hairdresser I am here to say, it doesn't have to be that cold to wreak havoc on skin and hair. So what can I do to protect myself from the ravages of cold wind, you may ask. First: NEVER go outside in the cold with wet hair. Your mother told you this all your life, and now I'm telling you. It may not cause pneumonia, but do you really want to chance it? The cold air will weaken the wet hair, which is already fragile, and cause split ends. And of course wet hair will make you lose body heat much more rapidly, which brings us to our second bit of advice: wear a hat or hood. It keeps your head warm. You lose 80 percent of your body heat through your head! And it will protect your hair from being blown about by the wind, which again will weaken it.

"But Starla!" I hear from the balcony "My hair is so full of static you could plug me into a wall and light up half the town! What do I do about that?" First: condition. Use a good-quality conditioner that is formulated for your hair type after every shampoo. Don't use too much, it doesn't take a large
amount to cut down on the static electricity. You can also use a hot oil treatment if your hair is really dry, though if it's anything less than bone dry and brittle you run the risk of having greasy hair. Second: rub a fabric softener sheet over your hair as often as needed to make it behave and calm down. This works very well. It won't make your hair oily and will make it smell nice. You can also use the sheet or an antistatic spray on your hairbrush and on the inside of your hat or your scarf.

And how about your poor dry chapped skin? One word: moisturize. With anything. While skin is still damp from your shower (during which you have used only a small  amount of mild soap of course! apply plenty of rich moisturizer. Even plain old Vaseline works well. It looks greasy when first applied but it soaks in quickly. Also apply lip balm many times throughout the day. Lips have no oil glands of their own, so they dry out very fast. And keep smiling. Before you know it, you'll be asking me what to do for your hair when it's deg. 100 and the humidity has taken all the life out of your hair. That's the nice thing about harsh weather: it never lasts.

 xo *

Best Regards to all,
Algis Ratnikas
[email protected]

Timelines of History
http://timelines.ws
Newsletter #58
Mar 1, 2004
 

You will notice a few changes to the front face of the timelines web site. I have moved all secondary info and links to a second page accessible via the Subjects link. These changes were made to speed up the site load time, which had slowed with the new logo and general expansion over time.
I have also made a new batch of business cards and would like again to offer you a free packet of 10 or so on demand. I also had some magnetic cards made, which will look very nice on your refrigerator, next to all the other magnetic cards. Send me an e-mail if you would like a few cards to pass around.
I am very much indebted to the small team of regular timeline.ws supporters and fact checkers, who have helped to validate a good portion of the timelines data. Much work still needs to be done here and I urge anybody who would like to help, to let me know. Special thanks again to Larry, a rock shop owner in Missouri, for his ongoing corrections to numerous items in the Timelines. Special thanks also to Dennis Myers for his ongoing corrections to numerous items in the Timelines.
I am in continuing consultation with Anthony D'Abreu, an English media specialist, on future directions for the timelines site and ongoing adjustments to make it better. The short message below is a small hint that our efforts bear at least a little fruit:

Hello,
I just wanted to let you know that you have a wonderful website! (http://www.timelines.ws/)  I attend high school and it is really helping in World History class!  Thanks so much... and nice work!
Admirer
----------------------------------------
The following is a link to a web site by Dai Sijie director of "The Little Chinese Seamstress", a film based on his international bestselling book, "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress." Dai Sijie has kindly acknowledged the Timelines of History as a resource for his work.
http://www.smpl.org/cwr/readtool2.htm
-----------------------------------------
Among the more interesting recent additions:

1852  Jun 26, Tzu Hsi, aka Orchid, married Ch'ing Emperor Hsien Feng. She had competed to become one of his 7 official wives or 3,000 concubines.
 (SSFC, 2/1/04, p.M6)

1982  Jun, A blast, estimated at three kilotons, took place in the Siberian wilderness, with no casualties known, due to "Farewell," a C.I.A. campaign of computer sabotage. "The pipeline software that was to run the pumps, turbines and valves was programmed to go haywire," writes Reed, "to reset pump speeds and valve settings to produce pressures far beyond those acceptable to the pipeline joints and welds. The result was the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space." "At the Abyss," by Thomas C. Reed, was published by Random House in 2004.
 (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/02/opinion/02SAFI.html)
------------------------------------
Recommended Web site: http://www.countrywatch.com
-----------------------------------
Corrections: an example of one of many:
1971  Fred Smith founded Federal Express Corp. (FedEx), an overnight package delivery service, based on a hub and spoke concept. Operations began in 1973. (the former incorrect citation said 1965)
 (Hem., 12/96, p.33)
----------------------------------
New subject file: Oil
---------------------------------
Updated files include:
Years: 600-999, 1450-1475, 1700-1724, 1750-1770, 1800-1810, 1811-1820, 1831-1840, 1841-1849, 1855-1859, 1862-1863, 1867-1870, 1871-1874, 1885-1886, 1887-1890, 1895-1897, 1906, 1921, 1931, 1936, 1938, 1943, 1944, 1953, 1954, 1956, 1959, 1960, 1963, 1965, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1973, 1975, 1979, 1980, 1984, 1986, 1987A, 1990B, 1991(Feb), 1994(May), 1995(Apr), 1996(Jan-Apr 15, Aug), 1997(Apr, Jul), 1998 (Feb), 2001 (Jan-Feb), 2002 (Jul, Oct), 2003 (Nov)
Countries: Littles (assorted short country files), Armenia, Canada, France (to 1649), (Germany (to 1820)(1821-1916), Haiti, Italy (to 1929), Japan (1980-2004), Marshall Islands, Mexico (to 1970), Russia (1945-1987), Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Sweden, Vietnam.
US States: California (1860-1922), Florida, Illinois, Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio
Subjects: Animals, Disasters, Earthquakes (nuclear bombs), Food, Jazz, Nobel Prizes, Oil, Pop & Rock, US Presidents, Writers
---------------------------------
Hair Today:

For this month I requested my star reporter, Starla, to do a historical dissertation on the 1st human haircut, but apparently there is a paucity of information on the subject. She ran with part of the idea and below presents how grownups should deal with a child's first haircut.

That First Haircut

Young people's hair has always been a topic of great concern among members of the older generations, as any man old enough to remember having his long sixties mane mocked and ridiculed by his parents will attest. Too long, too short, when to cut, how to cut, those are all things parents ask me about, so I thought I'd try and shed some light on the matter.
That first haircut: Gone are the days when little boys' hair wasn't cut till they were almost school age. But that first haircut is still as big a deal now as it was then, but in my humble opinion, it shouldn't be. There isn't really any "right" time to cut a child's hair for the first time. Whenever it looks like it needs a trim is fine. This might be as early as a year old, or as late as two or three. But when it is time for a cut, there are a few tips I wish parents would follow to make the whole process easier on everybody:

1. Never say anything about "cutting" the hair where the child can hear it. At that young age, the only "cut" they know about is the kind that hurts. Instead say "trim" or "hairdo" or even "coif" if you're feeling cosmopolitan.
2. If at all possible, have an older sibling or playmate have his hair cut first, so the little one can watch and see that nothing horrible happened.
3. I prefer to cut children's hair away from the mirror the first time, so they don't have to see the scissors. Sometimes it helps if the child sits on his parent's lap, but only if the parent is relaxed and not making a big production out of the whole business. One little boy I know does best if he has a bag of chips to munch on while I work. He is kept distracted, but also stays still so I can make a good job of it.
4. Try very hard not to bring a child in for a haircut who is already cranky or tired. Making the salon the last stop on a long shopping trip. Swinging by right after a visit to the doctor's office is almost guaranteed to produce a lot of tears and trauma. Better to bring him by early in the day or after a nap.
5. As I said before, it's important that the adult with the child not make a big deal out of it. It's only a haircut. There is no need to get nervous or weepy. It is only hair and it will grow back. If a child is comfortable with the idea, sometimes I will ask the parents to just wait out in front while I do the cutting,  to avoid them communicating their anxiety to their offspring. Kids get to feel a little grown-up when they get their hair done without Mama or Daddy hovering nearby. The children I've worked on who cried and carried on the most were the ones whose mother hung close "comforting" them and assuring them it wouldn't hurt. This does not help anyone. The minute somebody tells you "it won't hurt" you can be sure it does hurt a little bit. The child in question probably never even thought of pain till Mommy brought it up. After the haircut is finished, make a little bit of a fuss (not a big fuss!) over how nice the hair now looks, and make a dignified exit. You will have done your child, yourself and your stylist (and probably everybody else in the salon) a big favor.

xoxo *

Best Regards to all,
Algis Ratnikas
[email protected]