Category: +Did You Know?

Did You Know? Joseph Smith, Jr., founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, claimed to receive a revelation regarding polygamy on July 12, 1843. In the text of the revelation, Christ commands the practice of polygamy or plural marriage in a “new and an everlasting covenant” and declares that anyone who rejects the new practices will suffer damnation and will not “be permitted to enter into my glory.” The 1843 revelation also states that the first wife’s consent should be sought before a man married another wife, but also declares that Christ will “destroy” the first wife if she does not consent to the plural marriage. Joseph Smith’s own wife–er . . . FIRST wife–Emma, was not pleased. LEARN MORE.

Did You Know? There is a place in Death Valley known as the “Racetrack Playa,” where rocks mysteriously move when it rains. We can see the trails these “sailing stones” leave behind themselves in the dried mud, afterwards. But we’ve never recorded it happening. What causes it? LEARN MORE.

Did You Know? Death Valley, California hit 134 °F (~56.7 °C), the highest temperature recorded in the United States, on July 10, 1913. LEARN MORE.

Did You Know? Andy Warhol (who was a Byzantine Catholic, BTW) showed his work “Campbell’s Soup Cans” on July 9, 1962 in his first one-mangallery exhibition as a fine artist in the Ferus Gallery of Los Angeles, California. The exhibition marked the West Coast debut of pop art. The combination of the semi-mechanized process, the non-painterly style, and the commercial subject initially caused offense, as the work’s blatantly mundane commercialism represented a direct affront to the technique and philosophy of abstract expressionism. So, that’s something, right? LEARN MORE.

Did You Know? Although the crash of *whatever* came down near Roswell, NM occurred “about three weeks” earlier, on July 8, 1947 the Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) public information officer Walter Haut in Roswell, New Mexico, issued a press release stating that personnel from the field’s 509th Bomb Group had recovered a crashed “flying disk” from a ranch near Roswell, sparking intense media interest. The following day, the press reported that Commanding General of the Eighth Air Force (Roger M. Ramey) stated that, in fact, a radar-tracking balloon had been recovered by the RAAF personnel, not a “flying disc.” This was very shortly after aviator Kenneth Arnold’s June 24 sighting of objects that he said skipped in the air like “saucers” skipping on water (leading to the term “flying saucers,” though he did not describe saucer-like objects). Unlike the Arnold incident, the Roswell crash was forgotten for nearly 30 years until ufologists revived it in the 1970s. Since 1947 the U.S. government has acknowledged that *something* crashed at Roswell, but it denies that it was a flying saucer. LEARN MORE.

Did You Know? The Nauvoo Expositor published its first and only edition in Nauvoo, Illinois on July 7, 1844. The reason this was its only edition it was published by disaffected Mormons who criticized Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, in print. A few days later Smith and the Nauvoo city council ordered the destruction of the paper’s printing press. This initiated a series of events that led to the death of Joseph Smith on July 27. LEARN MORE.

Did You Know? St. Thomas More was put to death July 6, 1535 for refusing to acknowledge Henry VIII as the supreme head of the Church in England. There is too much to say about this guy, so click the link to LEARN MORE.

Did You Know? It is possible for a pope to resign his office or “abdicate.” The last pope to do this was Gregory XII, who resigned July 4, 1415 in order to end the Western Schism. LEARN MORE.

Did You Know? Sometimes katydids are pink! Behold! A pink katydid! LEARN MORE.

Did You Know? American aviatrix Amelia Earhart sent her last transmission on July 2, 1937 before vanishing during her approach to Howland Island in the Pacific. Though she almost completely certainly dead by now (she was born in 1897), her precise fate remains a mystery. My theory: She ran out of gas and crashed into the Pacific and perished that day. LEARN MORE.