Honolulu

Power events on an island

Five months ago I published online a little Issuu book about what happened to the history of power in one place, Honolulu, and two times: the 1830s and the nineteen-teens. The first series of events displays Herman Melville plagiarizing the indignation of a German botanist about the tyrannical control of Hawaii’s New England missionaries. The second culminates in an almost successful attempt by German forces during World War I to blow up Honolulu harbor, followed by a near-lynching on a King Street trolleycar.

Force repeats itself. If you’d like a second chance to read how that worked out in Honolulu, your link is

Morphology and evolution of the gnomon

The sententious fragment: In the tropics — that is, in the latitudes between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn — there are two moments in the course of the year when the sun passes directly overhead and an object won’t cast a shadow longer or wider than itself. The first of these occurs when the sun is on its way north to the Tropic of Cancer, which it will reach on the summer solstice; the second occurs when the sun is on its way back south to the Tropic of Capricorn, which it will reach on the winter solstice. For 2021, the first moment in tropical Honolulu was on May 26 at about 12:29.

The whole: