The Irish playright George Bernard Shaw, photographed 119 years ago, at the age of 51. I have cleaned and enhanced this very striking Autochrome portrait by Alvin Langdon Coburn, taken in colour in 1907 via the Lumiere brother's newly-patented colour glass-plate process.

A bunch of drunk Scotsmen partying in the same harbor where the founding fathers dumped tea is what the World Cup is all about

Community policing looks a bit different when the @FIFAWorldCup is in town! Our officers celebrated alongside fans, both international and local, during Day 1 of @FWC26Boston Fan Fest on City Hall Plaza!

“Fair Lonicera prints the dewy lawn, And decks with brighter blush the vermil dawn; Winds round the shadowy rocks, and pansied vales, And scents with sweeter breath the summer-gales;” - from ‘The Botanic Garden’ by Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802).

Loch Lomond, from the west of Ireland. Wishing Scotland well as they return to the World Cup after 28 years 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

On December 27, 1968, Apollo 8 needed to fire its engine to leave lunar orbit and return to Earth. If the burn was wrong, the crew would never come home. In Mission Control, a 25-year-old mathematician named Frances Northcutt, known as Poppy, had prepared the return-to-Earth calculations. She was the first woman to work in Mission Control in a technical role. When the burn data came back, something was off. The numbers didn't match the expected trajectory. She had 4 minutes to determine whether the deviation was within tolerance or whether Apollo 8 was in danger. She ran the calculations by hand. They were within tolerance. She gave the go. The crew came home. She later went to law school and became a prominent civil rights attorney. When asked about her time at NASA she said: "We were just doing our jobs. Nobody thought it was unusual except the reporters." The people who kept the astronauts alive were largely anonymous. Most of them were young women with slide rules.

"It was June, and the world smelled of roses." - Maud Hart Lovelace

Yew Tree Farm 🏡

Breaking News:- Historians have discovered the grave of what they believe to be the UK’s oldest ever living man in Yorkshire. He was 193 and his name was Miles from London.

Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning:

Raindrops on roses

“What is one to say about June, the time of perfect young summer, the fulfilment of the promise of the earlier months, and with as yet no sign to remind one that its fresh young beauty will ever fade.” — from ‘On Gardening’ by Gertrude Jekyll (1843–1932) #FlowersOnFriday

On this day 382 years ago Evangelista Torricelli described an experiment in a letter to a friend. Fill a meter-long glass tube with mercury, close it, flip it into a basin of mercury. The column falls to 76 cm. Always 76 cm. The gap above the mercury was the first vacuum ever made, something Aristotle had called impossible. Torricelli explained what holds the column up: "We live submerged at the bottom of an ocean of the element air, which by unquestioned experiments is known to have weight." The mercury is not pulled from above. It is pushed from below by the weight of the atmosphere on the basin. One page, two revolutions: vacuums exist, and air is an ocean with us at the bottom. Four years later Pascal had a barometer carried up a mountain and watched the column drop.

🇯🇵 Japanese actress Satomi Ishihara threw a ceremonial first pitch years ago at Tokyo Dome. It wasn't the best pitch... but a lot of people were impressed by her "tornado style" throw and posture.