Happy Belated Columbus Day

This is the most memorable Columbus Day that I ever attended. The ILA rounded up all of us to go to the rally in 1970. The first protest rally. Or least they tried to in the second rally in '71 because the word had went out not to go there when Joe Colombo was going to get shot. Carlo Gambino had decided that he didn't want anyone to go so they backed off. Some of the rank and file didn't get the word but most of the clued in guys stayed away. Not because they knew what was going to happen but because the little man said to stay away.

Columbus Day - The Sopranos HD

Hey what can I say. I was busy on Columbus Day. The guys speak for me though.

Early Frost Bite

Columbus may have worked the wind
A new and better way to Ind
And also proved the world a ball,
But how about the wherewithal?
Not just for scientific news
Had the Queen backed him for a cruise.

Remember he had made the test
Finding the East by sailing West. 
But had he found it?
Here he was Without one trinket from Ormuz
To save the Queen from family censure
For her investment in his future.

There had been something strangely wrong
With every coast he tried along.
He could imagine nothing barrener.
The trouble was with him the mariner.
He wasn’t off a mere degree;
His reckoning was off a sea.

And to intensify the drama
Another mariner Da Gama

 ~ Robert Frost

Happy Columbus Day

Happy Columbus Day pic.twitter.com/sVpPMMpaS4

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) October 12, 2015

Goodbye, Columbium

This is a rerun from my own bog a couple years ago. It seemed timely.
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Christopher Columbus has lost prestige in the New World. First came the historical disputes regarding his claim to priority. But perhaps the most ignominious insult was being downgraded from the Periodic Table.

Finally there's an interesting naming story:

Charles Hatchett's important scientific work was done in the period 1796 to 1806. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1797, which is a measure of the esteem in which he was held by his fellow scientists. In 1801 he described in a paper his analysis of a mineral called columbite, named after the location where it had been found in North America. This mineral sample from Massachusetts had lain in the British Museum since 1753. He described the mineral as ".. a heavy black stone with golden streaks ... from Mr. Winthrop": John Winthrop was the first Governor of Connecticut, the source of the mineral. Hatchett showed that the mineral contained a new element and he called it columbium and the mineral columbite, after its place of origin. This year (2001) marks the bicentenary of his discovery. Link

We called Element 41 "columbium" (Cb) for over 150 years until the Euros took it away from us. Van der Krogt:

Element #41 was therefore long known as Niobium as well as Columbium. To end this confusion, at the 15th Conference of the Union of Chemistry in Amsterdam in 1949 the name Niobium was chosen for element #41 and a year later this name was accepted by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, despite the chronological precedence of the name Columbium. The latter name is still sometimes used in US industry.

Evidence suggests that the Europeans railroaded US out of the name Columbium just to have it for themselves :)

The green color comes from niobium oxide

Niobium is mostly used in steel alloys and for high tech applications. Niobium's use in catalysis plotted versus time looks like a hockey stick: Link  Brazil leads in its production, so in that sense at least, columbium is still New World.

Happy Columbus Day!

Here's your Monday meme: pic.twitter.com/0HFXH9Ajyl
— Ashe Schow (@AsheSchow) October 14, 2013

Happy Thanksgiving Canada. This commemorates the day the Pilgrims landed at Nova Scotia where a colony was established and where the friendly indigenous people welcomed the the pilgrims with open arms and shared with them survival secrets on how to endure and thrive during the harsh Northern winter on poutine, a savory dish of root vegetable cut into strips and fried in oil and covered cheese curd, shredded cheese or slathered with molten cheese and various sundries like beans and chili and gravy and onions and such and the pilgrims were all, "Wow, why didn't we ever think of this?" But this has to do with harvest thanksgiving not discovery.

And apart from them and the US, the whole rest of the New World learned Spanish upon discovery except for a big chunk that leaned Portuguese and celebrates something else entirely. Look, I didn't conflate these things, you did.