Numbers 274/84: Flowers, Proof of Posting and Coffee ...

Early trip to Morrisons. We needed fresh flowers and to restock the daffodil buds so I was away early but the Blue Badgers were already in their over-ground setts. It was breezy but not raining so there was no problem. I was also able to find some fine Italian white wines, brioche and the customary date and walnut loaf. Back by 11.30am and Avril had as planned phoned Sue and her sister Anne at their own coffee drinking at Tiffield to catch up; can't be too long before they cam resume all in one spot surely? We sat serenely in the sitting room's bay window ourselves as is now our custom. And of course at supper we had our Friday fish - a pie from Tesco. We agreed home made is better!

Letter arrived from ParcelForce @ Coventry. Anne in Edmonton had asked Rogers Chocolates of Victoria to follow up on where the original parcel got to and now UK ParcelForce is asking us on behalf of Canada Post if we ever got the first box. No. It was posted for my birthday in December 2020 …. Taking no chances I resolved to photograph the birthday card sent to Bryan as shown below. The world is now in 4 postal zones with the US alone as the most expensive and the Commonwealth and South America cheapest. So 2 x new 1st Class at 85p each is seemingly sufficient. Deadline is 26th of course.

On even date … All west coast Japanese interned in US in 1942. After Pearl Harbour Roosevelt's Presidential Executive Order 9066 ordained that Military zones were created in California, Washington and Oregon — states with a large population of Japanese Americans — and commanded the relocation of Americans of Japanese ancestry to inland concentration camps. The Order 9066 affected the lives about 117,000 people, the majority of whom were American citizens. Canada soon followed suit relocating 21,000 of its Japanese residents from its west coast; Mexico enacted its own version; and eventually 2,264 more people of Japanese descent were removed from Peru, Brazil, Chile and Argentina to the United States. By 1945 after extraordinary hardship their relocation was declared illegal by the Supreme Court and eventually $US38,000 per surviving person was paid as compensation in 1990. It echoed a path the UK had followed in 1940 at the start of WWII. Up to 30,000 Germans, Austrians, and Italians were arrested during May and June and sent to temporary holding camps and then to semi-permanent camps on the Isle of Man. One ship carrying Italians to Canada is immortalised in the Scottish Diaspora Tapestry from Barga IT04 SS Arandora Star.
On even date …. in 1600 Arequipa in Peru was destroyed as the Huaynaputina volcano exploded catastrophically in the largest volcanic explosion in South America in historic times. The eruption continued with associated earthquakes into March and devastated the socioeconomic fabric of southern Peru and neighbouring Chile and Bolivia. The explosion had effects on climate around the Northern Hemisphere where 1601 was the coldest year in six centuries. The eruption had a volcanic explosivity index of 6 and is considered to be the only major explosive eruption of the Andes in historical time. It is the largest volcanic eruption during recorded history in the Andes as well as one of the largest in the last millennium and the largest historical eruption in the Western Hemisphere. It was larger than the 1883 eruption of Krakatau in Indonesia [shown below] and the 1991 eruption of Pinatubo in the Philippines. Huaynaputina's eruption column was high enough to penetrate the tropopause and influence the climate of Earth. One of the worst famines in all of Russian history occurred from 1601/1603 when as many as 100,000 died in Moscow along with almost a third of the population of Russia. The same famine killed about half of the Estonian population bringing a total estimate of 2 million worldwide.