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“Thirty days hath September, / April, June, and November; / All the rest have thirty-one, / Excepting February alone, / And that has twenty-eight days clear / And twenty-nine in each leap-year.” – 15^th Century English Poem

The February sunshine steeps your boughs And tints the buds and swells the leaves within.  -Willam Cullen Bryant

1.       1327 – Fifteen year old  Edward III was  crowned King of England, but the country  would continue to be  ruled by his mother Queen Isabella and her inamorata Roger Mortimer. Edward was the grandson of King Edward I and son of the testosteronically challenged Edward II – who preferred men to women.  Edward II is believed to have met his end after being overthrown and imprisoned by Isabella and Mortimer by having a red hot poker shoved into his rectum. This left no marks to indicate a murder  and was also a comment on the King’s homosexual tendencies.  In 1330 Edward III would have Mortimer executed and his mother exiled.  He would rule for almost fifty years.

            1788- The steamboat – who invented it?…..not Robert Fulton….who got the patents? Who gets the credit?.........another of the fuzzy “who did what and when” in the history of inventions.  On this day, the very first United States patent for a steamboat patent was issued to Isaac Briggs & William Longstreet of Georgia. But it had all started in 1769 with Scotsman James Watt’s development of the steam engine.  In 1787 John Fitch made the first successful trial of a forty-five-foot steamboat on the Delaware River on August 22,  in the presence of members of the Constitutional Convention. Fitch later built a larger vessel that carried passengers and freight between Philadelphia and Burlington, New Jersey. However,  Fitch was not granted his first United States patent for a steamboat until August 26, 1791. So, even though he built his steamboat a year before Briggs and Longstreet, he didn’t obtain his patent until three years after them.

            1790-First session of the U.S. Supreme Court took place in the Royal Exchange Building on New York City's Broad Street, the Supreme Court of the United States meets for the first time, with Chief Justice John Jay of New York presiding. Other members of the court included, John Rutledge, from South CarolinaWilliam Cushing, from Massachusetts, James Wilson, from Pennsylvania, John Blair, from Virginia, James Iredell, from North Carolina. The Court didn’t actually begin hearing cases until 1792.

            1793 -Ralph Hodgson of Lansingburg, NY, (not to be confused with Ralph Hodgson the English poet) patented oiled silk. For the non-cognoscenti out there, oiled silk is waterproof silk.  Boiling it in linseed oil makes it waterproof. It is used to make raincoats.  Note, do not wear the silk when you are boiling it in linseed oil.

            1838- The patent was issued for the screw propeller to John Ericsson. Ericsson later designed and built the ironclad ship Monitor for the Union Navy where it engaged in the famous battle with the Confederate ironclad, Merrimac (aka Virginia) at Hampton Roads, Va. Yes, both propellers and  people got  “screwed” during the Civil War.

            1844- Happy Birthday,  G. Stanley Hal, American psychologist who coined the phrase Sturm und Drang ("Storm and Stress") relative to adolescence, with the three key aspects of conflict with parents, mood disruptions, and risky behavior which basically is why all adolescents are crazy.

            1851 – Either Feb. 1 or Jan. 31 (maybe late at night?). Evaporated milk was invented by Gail Bordon.  Evaporated milk is fresh, (unsweetened) homogenized milk from which 60 percent of the water has been removed.  Evaporated milk is milk concentrated to one-half or less its original bulk by evaporation under high pressures and temperatures, without the addition of sugar, and usually contains a specified amount of milk fat and solids. This gives regular evaporated milk a shelf life of up to 15 months.  Thanks Gail.

            1851 – On the same day as evaporated milk was invented, the submarine, Le Plongeur-Marin ("The Marine Diver") was tested in Kiel Harbor (Germany). It did very well with the sinking part. That was because it had leaks in the hull and sank 50 feet. Unfortunately, the coming back up to the surface part failed. Its builder, Sebastian Wilhelm Valentin Bauer, a German pioneer inventor of submarines, was on board. He survived by waiting for the inside air pressure, compressed as more water leaked in, to match the water pressure outside. Imagine his surprise when seven hours later, he and his crew opened the hatch and rose to the surface to find funeral services in progress.

            1861- Over the objections of 3^rd term governor Sam Houston, Texas became the seventh state to secede from the Union.  Texas had just joined the Union 16 years earlier in 1845. Texas rejoined the Union in 1870.  The state seems to have not changed its mind any more since then.

            1862 - "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" was first published in "Atlantic Monthly". The lyric was the work of Julia Ward Howe. The music was from the song John Brown’s Body (John Brown being the abolitionist who attempted to start a slave rebellion by capturing the arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Va. in 1859) originally written as a camp song by William Steffe around 1856. Howe was visiting a Union hospital and heard the wounded soldiers singing John Brown’s Body. As music critics we note that Howe’s lyrics, “Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory of the Coming of the Lord”, resonates a bit better than “John Brown’s Body Lies A Moulderin’ in the Grave”.

          1884 – In the words of one time New York Mets (and Yankees) manager, Casey Stengel, “You could look it up”. The the first portion, or fascicle (thanks to the dictionary, you “could look it up” – a fascile. Is one of the parts of a book published in separate sections. Also called fascicule), of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), considered the most comprehensive and accurate dictionary of the English language, was published. Today, the OED is the definitive authority on the meaning, pronunciation and history of over half a million words, past and present and is constantly updated.  Of course other languages have their dictionaries. In Spanish you would look for Diccionario Larousse Del Espanol, in French one might look for Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française, in Chinese,  A Syllabic Dictionary of the Chinese Language; Arranged According to the Wu-fang yuen yin, with the Pronunciation as Heard in Peking, Canton, Amoy, and ... Linguists and The Languages of China.

             1893- Thomas A. Edison completed the world’s first motion picture studio in West Orange NJ.  The studio was named the Black Maria, (named so, because it reminded Edison employees of a police paddy wagon-commonly called a “black maria”. Pronunciation is ma rye a ) The total cost was $638.  The first movie to be shown was Star Wars, the Prequel to the Prequel to the Postscript of the Prequel of Chapter 1 Prequel to........ Revenge of the Prequels.

           1898- The first auto insurance for an individual owner was sold by to a Dr. Truman J. Martin of Buffalo, New York. The doctor paid a premium of $11.25 for the policy that covered $5,000 to $10,000 of liability. We presume he had a car. We note that frequently today, the pen that you sign your name with may cost more than that original policy. The policy was issued by the Travelers Insurance Company of Hartford, Connecticut.  It wasn’t until 1925, that Massachusetts became the first state to mandate automobile insurance.

                1901 -  Happy Birthday,  William Clark Gable, better known as just Clark Gable, American actor  born in Cadiz, Ohio.  Gable, known as the “King” of Hollywood, starred in such classic movies as Gone With the Wind, Mogambo, It Happened One Night, Mutiny on the Bounty, and lastly, The Misfits with the ill fated Marilyn Monroe.

             1905- Happy Birthday, Emilio Segrè, Italian-born American physicist who was co-winner, with Owen Chamberlain of the United States, of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1959 for the discovery of the antiproton (Auntie Proton was married to Uncle Proton and they had little neutrons who never had to pay for anything because for them it was “no charge”). Actually an antiproton is an antiparticle that has t the same mass as a proton but is opposite in electrical charge.

            1908- King Carlos I kaput.  King Carlos I of Portugal and his eldest son, Luis Filipe, were assassinated by revolutionaries while riding in an open carriage through the streets of Lisbon, Portugal. Carlos’ second son, Manoel, succeeded him to the throne, but only lasted until October 1910 when a republican revolution forced him to abdicate and flee to England with the rest of the royal family. In the same year, Teofilo Braga, a well-known writer, was chosen the first president of the newly democratic republic of Portugal.

             1911- In the first use of fingerprint evidence in a U.S court, Thomas Jennings was found guilty of murder. He was convicted at the Criminal Court of Cook County for killing Clarence B. Hiller. An appeal Dec 21, 1911, resulted in the Illinois Supreme Court ruling that fingerprint evidence was admissible. Two months later, Jennings was executed. Which reminds us of – this guy is in jail and his lawyer comes in and says I have good news and bad news for you.  The convict says “what’s the bad news?”  The lawyer says “your blood test came back and your blood matches the blood found on the victim and on your cloths.” The convict says “and what’s the good news?” The lawyer says, “your cholesterol is down 50 points”.

            1911- On the same day as fingerprint evidence was first used in court (see above). The first old-age home for pioneers opened in Prescott, Arizona. The home was notable for having them circle the wagons before meals, shooting buffalo, having all residents wear coon skin caps, having “Indian Attack” drills, and the annual “Donner Party Day” when they would eat……oh, never mind.

          1923- One of the worst inventions of the 20^th Century, Thomas Midgely’s leaded gasoline, first went on sale at tt Willard Talbott's service station on S. Main Street in Dayton, Ohio. The fuel was called Ethyl after its new additive, tetraethyl lead, developed to stop engine knock, a common problem as engine designs.  The damage done to the atmosphere has been incalculable.

             1951- TV station KTLA broadcast of an atomic explosion. It was the first to be seen publicly on television. An NBC camera on Mount Wilson, 300 miles away from the test blast at Frenchman Flats, Nevada took the picture.  The camera was immediately swallowed by an atomic mutant giant 200 ft. gila monster which then attacked Tokyo

            1964 – The Governor of  Indiana declared Louie Louie to be pornographic. Louie Louie was written by an R&B singer named Richard Berry in 1956. With his group The Pharaohs, he was also the first to record it, and it got some airplay in some cities in the Western US. When bands heard it, many of them started covering it.  The Kingsmen’s version is one of the great “party” songs of all time.  The fact that the singing makes the lyrics impossible to understand rarely prevents people from singing along. This didn’t stop the afore mentioned   Governor Matthew Welsh  from declareing Louie Louie as recorded by the Kingsmen as a pornographic song and asking the Indiana Broadcasters Association to ban the record. Following a complaint by a constituent, he claimed he listed to hit with head phones and deciphered the lyrics.  Naturally the publisher of Louie Louie denied the claim, and offered a reward of $1000 to anyone who could find anything the least bit suggestive about it. And on this day in 1964 – providing a bridge in Rock and Roll history between pre and post Beatles….the Beatles had the #1 single in the country . . . a classic: I Want To Hold Your Hand.       

            1972- The first scientific hand-held calculator (HP-35) was introduced at the bargain price of $395. It was called the HP -35 because it was manufactured by Hewlett Packard and it had 35 keys. Pretty clever, n’est pas?  The HP-35 was first ever to perform logarithmic and trigonometric functions with one keystroke. As opposed to later HP calculators, it had an x^y function, not y^x, and the trigonometric functions work in degrees only, which we all know is tremendously helpful when adding up your purchases at the check-out counter.

            1983 Tansil and Fannin Matthews obtained a patent for a digital voice mail system. When the patent office call to inform them, they heard “all of our customer service experts are currently busy, please push the first three letters of the party’s last name, if you are calling to ask about our new voice mail system, please hang up and write us a letter…….

            2003- STS-107 Flight: January 16-February 1, 2003 -  the space shuttle Columbia broke  up while entering the atmosphere over Texas, killing all seven crew members on board. The 16-day mission was dedicated to research in physical, life, and space sciences, conducted in approximately 80 separate experiments, comprised of hundreds of samples and test points. The seven astronauts worked 24 hours a day, in two alternating shifts. Killed were: Commander Rick D. Husband (second flight), Pilot William C. McCool (first flight), Payload Specialist Michael P. Anderson (second flight), Mission Specialist Kalpana Chawla (second flight), Mission Specialist David M. Brown (first flight), Mission Specialist Laurel B. Clark (first flight), Payload Specialist Ilan Ramon, Israel (first flight).  Eighty seconds into the launch, a piece of foam insulation broke off from the shuttle’s propellant tank and hit the edge of the shuttle’s left wing. During re-entry, as Columbia was 231,000 feet above the California coastline traveling at 23 times the speed of sound,  the first indications of trouble began. Because the heat-resistant tiles covering the left wing’s leading edge had been damaged or were missing, wind and heat entered the wing and blew it apart.

             2004 –  The nameless and quite possibly the “elementless element”…….Scientists in Russia created the element Ununpentium (Element 115 – a metal, symbol Uup). The unupentium persisted for less than one-tenth of a second before decaying into element 113 (ununtrium), which then persisted for over a second. No name has yet been adopted for element 115, which is therefore called ununpentium, from the Latin roots un for one and pent for five, under a convention for neutral temporary names proposed by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) in 1980. Some of these “post number 110” elements are so iffy that they are not even listed on some periodic tables.

Next scheduled discovery will be Stupidium Namsium.

            2008- It was reported in the Journal of Zoology, that naturalist Francesco Rovero discovered a new species of giant elephant shrew in a Tanzanian forest.  The shrew is the size of a small dog, covered in orange and gray fur.  It has a long snout like an elephant.  When Rovero first saw it, he said, “that’s funny, it doesn’t look shrewish”.

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2.                  Groundhog Day-       The first Groundhog Day was celebrated in 1887 in Punxsutawney, PA.  The tradition is derived from the Christian ceremony of Candlemas Day in which priests would distribute candles needed for winter.  The candles would become indicators of how long and cold the winter would be (see item below – “Little Ice Age”.  The Germans expanded the tradition by including a small mammal, a hedgehog, into the mix, although we think they started looking for shadows of the hibernating creature, not burning it.  When they moved to Pennsylvania they brought the tradition, but not the hedgehog, with them.  The groundhog would have to suffice. Of course, the groundhog, on the other 364 days of the year  is called a woodchuck, but basically it’s a rodent.

            1046- The beginning of what is known as the "Little Ice Age." The weather turned especially cold throughout Europe. It remained cold for 200 years as Monks noted in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that "no man alive...could remember so severe a winter."  It was the first known record of the beginning of a long term weather pattern.

            1509 – Portugal and Turkey fought The Battle of Diu  near Diu, India. We mention that because you might be wondering what Portugal and Turkey were doing in India. It was in  this battle that the Portuguese established their predominance over the spice trade by defeating a Muslim fleet.

            1522- Happy Birthday, Ludovico Ferrari,  Italian mathematician, who started as a servant for, and then secretary and then successor to the mathematician Girolalmo Cardano. Ferrari was the first to find an algebraic solution to the biquadratic, or quartic, equation  which, in case you didn’t know it already, is an algebraic equation that contains the fourth power of the unknown quantity but no higher power. So basically, it’s what confuses Professor Sy Yentz when he  tries to figure out if he should or shouldn’t provide the extra penny when he pays for an item.

            1536 - The city of Buenos Aires (the capitol of Argentina)  was founded by Pedro de Mendoza of Spain who wanted a nice warm vacation home for the winter.  He placed his settlement  on the shores of the small river called Riachuelo de los navíos a and called his  fortified outpost Puerto de Nuestra Señora Santa María de los Buenos Aires (Port of Our Lady, Holy Mary of the Good Winds). The settlement was s abandoned after attacks by American Indians (Querandi), and re-founded in 1580. It became the capital of the viceroyalty of Rió de la Plata in 1776, and federal capital of Argentina in 1880.

            1653 – The Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, now better known as New York, was incorporated as a city.  The governor, Peter Stuyvesant, built a wooden palisade (Stuyvesant had a wooden peg leg but that had nothing to do with the palisade) where Wall Street is located today, to mark the northern city limit. Nine years later, the British took control and it was renamed New York.

            1709 - Alexander Selkirk was rescued from  a desert island, inspiring the book Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. Selkirk was the “Sailing Master” on the Cinque Ports, a ninety ton privateer. The expedition was a disaster and after a few sea battles with the Spanish, Selkirk feared the ship would sink. So, in an attempt to save his own life he demanded to be put ashore on the next island they encountered. In September 1704, Selkirk was castaway on the uninhabited island of Más a Tierra (today known as Robinson Crusoe Island), over 400 miles off the West Coast of Chile. He took with him a little clothing, bedding, a musket and powder, some tools, a Bible, several issues of Playboy, his Ipod,  and tobacco. Selkirk’s decision to be put ashore saved his life.  After being rescued, he learned that the Cinque Ports had been sunk.  Selkirk wrote an account of his adventures and they were fictionalized in 1719 by Daniel Defoe in his famous novel. Selkirk, however, could never really readjust to life on the land, and, in 1720, a year after he was made famous by Defoe, he joined the Royal Navy only to die of fever off the coast of Africa.

            1795- The French government offered a prize of 12,000 francs for a method of preserving food and transporting it to its armies. The winner was Nicholas Appert, a French chef currently seen on the Food Channel on the show Iron Chef trying to make gourmet meals out of alfalfa …..no, no no….Professor Sy Yentz has his culinary sense of humor.  He actually developed the method of heating food in airtight glass jars, very similar to the home-bottling method now used in Mason jars. Starting in 1801, he published The Art of Preserving Animal and Vegetable Substances for several years.. His other claim to fame is being the inventor of the bouillon cube.  Of course, (and you knew this was coming) he tried the boullion cone, the bullion, sphere,  the boullion pyramid, the boullion cone, and the boullion rectangular prism.  Bouillon is a clear soup stock made from poultry, meat, fish, or vegetables

            1841 – Do you want to be a limnologist when you grow up?  Do you know what limnology is? Well, Happy Birthday, François-Alphonse Forel, Swiss physician, scientist, and founder of limnology, the study of lakes.

            1847 – Ah, oh! The first woman of a group of pioneers now  known as the Donner Party died during the group’s journey through a Sierra Nevada mountain pass. The disastrous trip west ended up killing 42 people and turned many of the survivors into cannibals.  The Donner party was the name given to a group of emigrants, including the families of George Donner and his brother Jacob, who became trapped in the Sierra Nevada mountains during the winter of 1846-47.  Culinary delights included baked fingers, pancreas a la mode, thyroid soup and pituitary gland sandwiches. The experience has become legendary as the most spectacular episode in the record of Western migration. 

            1848- The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed.  This officially ended the Mexican War. The treaty added an additional 525,000 square miles to United States territory, including the area that would become the states of Texas, California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona, as well as parts of Colorado and Wyoming.

                1863 –On this day, Samuel Langhorne Clemens decided to use a pseudonym for the first time.. Since the name of Alfred Lord Tenneyson was taken, he is better remembered by the name, Mark Twain (and his brothers Lionel Twain, Passenger Twain and Freight Twain).

            1869- Scottish born inventor, James Oliver – living in Indiana - invented the removable tempered steel plow blade.  And no, it wasn’t for snow…it was for farming.

            1870- The Cardiff Giant hoax was revealed. Supposedly the petrified remains of a human discovered in Cardiff, N.Y., it was nothing more than carved gypsum. Anyone who paid to see it had been gypped through gypsum.  The hoax was perpetrated by George Hall (or Hull) of Binghamton, New York. A block of gypsum was quarried near Fort Dodge, Iowa, and shipped to Chicago, Illinois. There, in 1868, it was carved (in the shape of a human figure and then buried on a farm near Cardiff, New York. It was “discovered” in 1869 by well diggers and the statue was alleged to be a 10-foot (3-metre) petrified prehistoric man. Of course today, we would have immediately recognized it as Larry King. The media, as ever, played a huge role in the hoax as they reported that some “experts” speculated that the find was a “petrified human,” perhaps from Biblical days when giants roamed the earth. Meanwhile, farm owner William C. Newell began charging admission to see the colossus and soon sold ¾ of his interest in the fossil to a syndicate in Syracuse, New York for $30,000.

            1876- The National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, which came to be more commonly known as the National League (NL), was formed. The league’s first rival came with the formation of the  American Association began play in 1882. The American Association went kaput after the 1891 season. The American League (AL) was established in 1901 and in 1903, the first World Series was held.  The eight original members of the NL were: the Boston Red Stockings (now the Atlanta Braves), Chicago White Stockings (now the Chicago Cubs), Cincinnati Red Stockings, Hartford Dark Blues, Louisville Grays, Mutual of New York (kicked out of the league in 1878), Philadelphia Athletics and the St. Louis Brown Stockings.

             1880- The first electric streetlight was installed in Wabash, Indiana. The city paid the Brush Electric Light Company of Cleveland, Ohio, the grand sum of $100, which is less than the current monthly electric bill for many homes,  to install a light on the top of the courthouse.

                1882 -Happy Birthday, James Joyce, Irish poet, author: Ulysses, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Finnegan’s Wake). Note: Ulysses was published on his birthday (Feb. 2) 1922.

            1892-The bottle cap with cork seal was patented by William Painter of Baltimore.  This replaced the time-consuming cork and wire bale (still used with champagne) way of sealing bottles, and represented a major saving for the bottlers. It does not take into account the “break the bottle on the side of the bar” method that we used to see in western movies. This cap was used until the 1970s, when cork in pop and beer bottle caps came to be considered unhealthy, so, manufacturers switched to cans and plastic, instead. Currently, caps used on bottles use plastic cap "liners", instead of cork. This is where the companies conduct the contests where you can win fabulous prizes if you have the winning “thing” that is on the plastic liner.

            1897- Here’s a scoop. A patent was issued for an ice-cream scoop invented by black American inventor, Alfred L. Cralle of Pittsburgh- the first African American inventor from Pittsburgh to receive a patent -Pennsylvania.  The original looked almost the same as the scoops used today.

            1923 – One of many low points in science for the 20^th century, Thomas Midgely’s invention, leaded gasoline – developed to combat “engine knock” had it first sales at Willard Talbott's service station on South Main Street in Dayton, Ohio.  The damage to the atmosphere, environment and people would be incalculable.

            1931- The first documented paid-dispatch rocket mail was flown when an Austrian named Friedrich Schmiedl flew 102 letters between villages in rural Austria. No record of the reaction of rural villagers to being bombarded by rockets filled with letters from an unseen location.

        1935-The first lie detector was used by detective Leonard Keeler in Portage Wisconsin. His invention, the Keeler polygraph, or lie detector machine was used on two criminals Cecil Loniello and Tony Grignano, who were convicted of assault at their trial where the results were introduced as evidence.  Further proof of the machines success came as observers noticed that the two criminals had their fingers crossed behind their backs as they answered questions. Although there were minor changes to Keeler's machine since its advent, the basic composition and functions of the machine remained the same until the creation of the computerized polygraph in 1994. Also note that these lie detectors replaced the more genteel Fib Detector tests.

            1947 -Edwin H. Land gave the first demonstration his invention of the instant camera at a meeting of the Optical Society of America. A year later, in November 1948, his Polaroid Land Camera first went on sale, at a Boston department store. Cost was $ 89.75.  But then you had to buy the film. Polarized  light is oriented in a plane with respect to the source. Land had  developed a new kind of polarizer, which he called Polaroid, by aligning and embedding crystals in a plastic sheet.

            1962- The Sun, the Moon, and all the planets from Mercury to Neptune were clustered within a 17-degree area of the sky. To top it off there was a total eclipse of the Sun! According to many astrologers and followers of Nostradamus we were doomed and maybe he was right as Tom Cruise, Paula Abdul, Demi Moore, and Wesley Snipes were born that year so………………..   

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3.             The Festival of  Setubun, marking the end of winter is celebrated  in Japan – We believe that the Groundhog eats a sushi meteorologist.

            1690- Massachusetts took what would later prove to be a crucial step in the establishment of a stable American economy and authorized the first official paper currency to be ever used in the Western Hemisphere.   Prior to this, Colonists had used silver, gold, or privately minted copper coins.  Sometimes they would promise “to be your best friend”, “trade you a baseball card”, or “baby sit your dog”  if you gave them something.

                1790- Happy Birthday, Algernon Mantell,  British physician, geologist, and paleontologist, who discovered 4 of the 5 genera of dinosaurs known during his time….and then had the credit stolen by others – notably Richard Owen, an odious human being, yet coiner of the word dinosaur. Mantell’s first identification was of the fossil teeth he found while walking with his wife in 1822.  She  later divorced him when his passion for collecting bones became all consuming and he gave up his medical practive. When he saw the connection with teeth of the present lizard, the iguana, in 1825, he named the animal the iguanadon ("fossil teeth").

            1809 - Happy Birthday, Felix Mendelssohn (composer of “The Wedding March”).  A friend of Professor Sy Yentz has recommended that the “Wedding March” be replaced by the Beatles’ “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road”.

            1811 – Happy Birthday, Horace Greeley, American journalist, editor, and publisher famous for  saying "Go West, young man, and grow up with the country."….which he didn’t really say.  The famous quote was actually made by John B. L. Soule. The quote first appeared as the title to the 1851, Terre Haute Express editorial written by John L.B. Soule. Greeley ran for President in 1872 against war hero Ulysses S. Grant. Greeley, won 40% of the popular vote but died soon afterwards on 29th November, 1872.         

            1821- Happy Birthday, Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman in the U.S.A.         to receive a medical degree, was born in Bristol, England. Many 19th century physicians, including a few women, practiced without a degree, but Blackwell wished desired professional status. She received her degree from Geneva Medical School in NY State.  She worked in clinics in London and Paris for two years, and studied midwifery at La Maternité where she contracted "purulent opthalmia" from a young patient and  lost sight in one eye. She returned to New York City in 1851, giving up her dream of becoming a surgeon.  In 1857, Dr. Blackwell and colleagues founded the New York Infirmary for Women and Children.  She also published several important books on the issue of women in medicine, including Medicine as a Profession For Women in 1860 and Address on the Medical Education of Women in 1864.

            1823- Sometimes being  second is better for posterity.  Happy Birthday, Spencer F. Baird, American naturalist, vertebrate zoologist, and in his time the leading authority on North American birds and mammals. He was named the Smithsonian Institution's second Secretary upon the death of the first Secretary, Joseph Henry.  Where Henry had envisioned the Smithsonian primarily as a research institute, Baird saw this as the opportunity to develop a national museum. He was primarily responsible for the museum becoming the great public institution it is today.

            1857 – Happy Birthday, Wilhelm L. Johannsen Danish botanist and geneticist who suggested that each portion of a chromosome that controls a phenotype be called a "gene" –from the Greek: "to give birth to". Thus he enabled chromosomes to “put on their genes”.

             1862- Fifteen year old, Thomas Edison became the first publisher of a newspaper produced and sold on a moving train. He had set up a small press in the baggage car of the Grand Trunk Railroad train from Port Huron to Detroit, Mich. The weekly Grand Trunk Herald, a single sheet measuring 7-in. x 8-in., included local news and advertisements for his father’s store. At its peak, he sold about 200 copies a day to train riders.  In the baggage car, he set up a laboratory for his chemistry experiments as well as his printing press until  an accidental fire forced him to stop his experiments on board

            1870 - The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, granting voting rights to citizens regardless of race. The amendment was initially proposed on February 26, 1869 and ratified on this day when Iowa became the 28^th state to ratify it. See Sixteenth  Amendment, 1913 below.  

            1874- Happy Birthday, Gertrude Stein , American author of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

            1879- Speaking of Thomas Edison,  the first practically usable incandescent filament electric light bulb was demonstrated to an audience of 700 by its inventor……… Joseph Wilson Swan…………. at the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne, England.

            1889 – Belle Starr kaput. The outlaw Belle Starr was killed when an unknown assailant shot her twice in the back with shotgun blasts. “The Bandit Queens” career of  train robbery, bank robbery, cattle theft and horse theft had begun in 1866 with an affair with Cole Younger of the Jesse James Gang. She later had a common law marriage with Sam Starr and after Sam went kaput during a gunfight, she began an affair with one Jim July.  She was on her way home after escorting July to be arrested when someone shot her from behind.  The murder was never solved. 

            1894- Happy Birthday, Norman Rockwell, American artist and illustrator, famous for his covers for the Saturday Evening Post.

            1904 – Happy Birthday, Charles Arthur “Pretty Boy” Floyd, American gangster. Floyd was one of a number of bank robbers and killers to achieve notoriety in early 1930’s of  the Depression Era U.S. Others included John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, Babyface Nelson, the Barkers and Machine Gun Kelly. Floyd did most of his damage in and around Oklahoma and like Dillinger, was seen as a “Robin Hood” type who robbed the hated banks. In October of 1934, Floyd robbed an Ohio bank. He was tracked down by FBI agents and local sheriff’s deputies each of whom claimed to have shot him to death in either a gunfight or attempted escape.  The bottom line was Pretty Boy was kaput.

            1913 – One of the worst amendments – if you’re a tax payer - The Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, authorizing the Federal government to impose and collect an income tax. New Mexico became 36^th state to vote for ratification. This amendment was specifically rejected by New Hampshire on Mar 2, 1911. It was also rejected by Arkansas prior to its subsequent ratification, and by Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Utah. No one is quite sure how many words are in the Federal Tax Code but estimates go as high as 9,000,000. The Constitution, on the other hand, contains 4,400 words. The King James Bible contains 12,143 words.

            1920 – Quick, wrap your arms around someone from behind, hold you hands together just below the chest and ….say Happy Birthday, Henry Heimlich, American physician born in Wilmington, Delaware.  In 1974, Dr Henry Heimlich announced the maneuver which now carries his name. Prior to the Heimlich maneuver, when a person choked on food, it was generally thought that forcefully slapping the victim's back was helpful, but in reality slapping often causes the blockage to drop deeper into the throat, making the situation even worse. In an 1974 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Heimlich wrote that applying upward pressure to the diaphragm, under the choke point, might force the blockage to pop out, like a cork from a champagne bottle.

            1947 - The lowest temperature in North America was recorded in Snag, Yukon, Alaska. The temperature dropped to 81 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. This put a damper on the “Fun in the Sun Picnic” scheduled for the 60 or so minutes of daylight that they would enjoy (?????) that day .

            1950 – Showing his gratitude to Great Britain for giving his family asylum from the Nazis, Klaus Fuchs, scientist who helped developed the atomic bomb,was  arrested for passing top-secret information about the bomb to the Communist Soviet Union. The arrest of Fuchs led authorities to several other individuals involved in a spy ring, culminating with the arrest of  American traitors Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and their subsequent execution at Sing Sing Prison in 1953.

            1953-  French oceanographer Jacques-Yves Cousteau published his most famous work, The Silent World. No, it was not the story of the U.S Congress, it was Cousteau’s story of how during World War II, Cousteau and Emile Gagnan, a Parisian engineer, invented and successfully tested the first aqualung or SCUBA (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus), which became the key to the modern age of underwater exploration. The book was an immense success, Silent World   sold more than 5 million copies in 22 languages.           

            1959- In his song “American Pie”, Don MacLean called it “the day the music died”.  Rock stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson were killed when their chartered plane crashed in Iowa a few minutes after takeoff on a flight from Mason City to Moorehead, Minnesota. Holly had chartered the plane for his band to fly between tour dates during the Winter Dance Party Tour. However, Richardson, who had a cold, talked Holly's band member Waylon Jennings out of his seat, and Ritchie Valens won a coin toss for another seat on the plane. Holly was 22 years old, Valens, 17. “The Big Bopper’s” hit Chantilly Lace could legitimately be called the first rap record with its talking voice over background music.

            1966- The unmanned Soviet Luna 9 spacecraft landed safely on the moon in the Ocean of Storms. It was the first ever soft landing on another celestial body, and opened the way for manned trips to the moon, by removing doubts that the surface might be an unsafe dusty quicksand.  The Lunar Welcome Wagon set up by lunar mutant life forces also contributed to the congenial atmosphere ……no, no, no….everyone knows that the moon has no atmosphere.

            1966- On the same day as the Luna 9  moon landing (see 1966 above), the U.S. launched its first operational weather satellite, ESSA-1 to provide cloud-cover photography to the U.S. National Meteorological Center for preparation of operational weather analyses and forecasts. The spacecraft was an 18-sided polygon, 42-in. diameter, 22-in. high and weight 305-lb……..and they STILL get the forecast wrong!

             1984- A Long Beach, Calif., hospital announced the birth of the world's first baby conceived by embryo transplant. The baby, a boy born about two weeks previously was the product of  a procedure in which an embryo that was just beginning to develop was transferred from one woman in whom it had been conceived by artificial insemination to another woman who gave birth to the infant 38 weeks later. The sperm used in the artificial insemination came from the husband of the woman who bore the baby.

            1984 – On the same day as they were cutting the umbilical cord for the embryo transplant baby,