Science Gnus Almanac Home

1.        Loggerhead sea turtles begin nesting in the southeastern U.S.  Yep, they check their little turtle day planners and wait till May 1, book a beach front condo in Hilton Head and then nest away.          

1881- Happy Birthday Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, visionary French Jesuit, paleontologist, biologist, and philosopher, who dedicated  his life to trying to integrate religious experience with natural science, most specifically Christian theology with theories of evolution. He took part in the discovery of Peking Man. His most famous work is The Phenomenon of Man.

1884- Fittingly, on the day that the Empire State Building would be dedicated forty seven years later, construction began in Chicago, Illinois, on the first skyscraper, the ten-story steel-skeleton Home Insurance Company of New York yes, the New York company built it in Chicago! Nine stories and one basement were completed in 1885. Two stories were added in 1891. The architect, Major William Le Baron Jenney, created the first load-carrying structural frame, the development of which led to the "Chicago skeleton" form of construction and the big skyscrapers of later years. Chicago would become the “home” of the skyscraper.

1895- An electric engine for passenger trains began regular use on the Baltimore and Ohio (B & O – buy it for $200 in Monopoly)  railroad, Maryland. This was already the first railroad in the U.S. to use an electric engine instead of a steam engine in regular service. The electric engine used galvanized storage batteries, which could not be practical for great distances. A really long plug didn’t work either.

1889-In Germany, Bayer introduced aspirin in powder form.  After registering "aspirin" as a trademark in 1899, Bayer marketed the analgesic to doctors and hospitals in powder form. Sales remained sluggish and hard to swallow until 1904, however, when a stamped, water-soluble tablet was introduced.  Aspirin had been invented (discovered?) by Felix Hoffman working for the Bayer Company. Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, who lived sometime between 460 B.C and 377 B.C. left historical records of pain relief treatments, including the use of powder made from the bark and leaves of the willow tree to help heal headaches, pains and fevers. By 1829, scientists discovered that it was the compound called salicin in willow plants which gave you the pain relief.

1915 - RMS Lusitania departed New York City, despite a published warning from the German authorities that appeared in U.S. newspapers the morning of her departure,  on her two hundred and second and final crossing of the North Atlantic. Six days later, the ship was torpedoed off the coast of Ireland with the loss of 1,198 lives, including 128 Americans, rousing American sentiment against Germany.

1920 - The longest baseball game (by innings) was played. The Boston Braves (then Milwaukee Braves and now Atlanta Braves)  and the Brooklyn Dodgers (Professor Sy Yentz, a New Yorker, refused to print the name of the city that stole the Dodgers from Brooklyn) played an incredible 26 innings -- with the same pitchers! Leon Cadore of Brooklyn and Boston’s Joe Oeschger went the distance and saw the game end in a 1-1 tie. Cadore yielded 15 hits while the Dodgers had nine before darkness halted play. The longest game by time, an 8 hr. 6 m extravaganza  between the Chicago White Sox and the Milwaukee Breweres (they were in the American league at the time) occurred on May 8,  1984 and went twenty five innings.

1923- Happy Birthday, Joseph Heller, American author born in Coney Island, Brooklyn, NY.  Author of Professor Sy Yentz all time favorite book, Catch 22.

1924-  The first iodized table salt in the U.S. went on sale  in Michigan.. The table salt contained 0.01% sodium iodide as a dietary supplement, since an adequate intake of iodine reduces the incidence of goiter (major swelling of the thyroid gland in the neck.) Diamond Crystal Salt, and four other Michigan table salt companies agreed to add the trace of iodine compound to their product at the urging of the Michigan State Medical Society. The ancient Greeks and others used iodine-rich seaweed to combat goiters, but it was not until 1821 that French nutritional chemist Jean Baptiste Boussingault discovered salt iodine-rich salts could be used to treat goiter, though he did not understand its preventive role.  At the same time, Swiss physician J.F. Coindet  successfully employed iodine therapy for goiter.  Thirty years later, another French scientist, A. Chatin hypothesized that iodine deficiency caused goiters, but an expert group of his country's Academy of Scientists rejected the claim and killed the idea for another half century. 

1925- Happy Birthday, Scott Carpenter, American astronaut. As one of the original seven Mercury astronauts, he was one of the first men in space. He was the second (after John Glenn) U.S. astronaut to make an orbital spaceflight. In Aurora 7 he made the fourth Mercury flight, circling the Earth three times on May 24, 1962. He directed part of the flight by manual control. He was also one of the first men to live under the ocean surface for an extended period of time (1965) as one of the aquanauts in Sealab II off the California coast. Eventually, after up in space and under the water, he decided to just live on Earth's surface.

1931-  The Empire State Building was dedicated and opened to the public.  We believe it was dedicated by the singing group, the Shirelles, yes   Dedicated To the One I Love.  Actually, in Washington, D.C., President Herbert Hoover pushed a button that turned on the lights of New York City's Empire State Building, officially opening the tallest building erected to that date. The Empire State Building (New York is the “Empire State”) has 102 stories, or is 1,454 feet from the top to its base at 34th Street and Fifth Avenue. It was designed by architect William Frederick Lamb and was constructed during the height of the Great Depression. Incredibly, considering how long it takes to build even a family home nowadays, it took just over a year to complete at a cost of only $40 million. The Empire State building is currently the ninth tallest (with more on the way) building in the world.  The top five are:  The Taipei Tower 101  in Taiwan,  Petronas Tower 1 in Kuala Lampur, Petronas Tower 2 in, yes, Kuala Lampur, The Sears Tower in Chicago, and the Jin Mao Tower in Shanghai.  However, The Burj Dubai tower will stand 800 meters tall - just 5 meters shy of half a mile - once completed.. That will be nearly 300 meters taller than the tallest floored building in the world today, the Taipei Tower in Taiwan.

            1935- Boulder Dam was finished after 4 years and 354 days....and it was a dam good job!  The initial planned site was at Boulder Canyon about 10 miles north upriver from where it is now located at Black Canyon. An engineering reassessment moved the location from Boulder Canyon to its present location. The Herbert Hoover administration changed the name from Boulder Dam to Hoover Dam in 1930 as a political move. In 1933, the Franklin Roosevelt administration changed it back to Boulder Dam, and under Harry Truman, the permanent name of Hoover Dam was restored.  Got it? Hoover just “vacuumed” up all opposition.

            1941 – “Rosebud”. Considered the greatest movie of all time, Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane starring Joseph Cotton, Dorothy Comigore, Agnes Moorhead, and Ruth Warrick had it’s premiere in New York.  Its director, star, and producer were all the same genius individual - Orson Welles (in his film debut at age 25!), who collaborated with Herman J. Mankiewicz on the script. The film, budgeted at $800,000, received unanimous critical praise even at the time of its release, although it was not a commercial success (partly due to its limited distribution and delayed release by RKO due to pressure exerted by famous publisher W.R. Hearst) - until it was re-released after World War II, found well-deserved (but delayed) recognition

            1949- Gerard Kuiper discovered Nereid, the second satellite of Neptune, the outermost and the third largest of Neptune's known natural satellites. Nereid's orbit is the most highly eccentric (weirdest) of any planet or satellite in the solar system since its distance from Neptune varies from as close as 1,353,600 to as far as 9,623,700 kilometers.  The name, Nereid refers to the mythical sea nymphs who dwell in the Mediterranean sea, the 50 daughters of Nereus and Doris (Doris Day?.....we knew she's been around a long time but........). Kuiper, a Dutch-American astronomer also discovered Miranda, a moon of Uranus; and found an atmosphere on Titan, a moon of Saturn and the Kuiper belt – not the one that held up his pants- the cloud of comets out beyond Pluto.  In fact, some astronomers believe that Pluto, Charon and Triton are considered to be large Kupier belt objects. And now Pluto has been officially demoted to dwarf planet and Kuiper Belt object.  And Pluto isn’t even the largest Kuiper Belt dwarf planet.  That honor goes to Eris.

            1958 – Another year, another belt (see Kuiper 1949), The discovery of the powerful Van Allen radiation belts that surround Earth was published in the Washington Evening Star. The article covered the report made by their discoverer James Van Allen using data transmitted by the U.S. Explorer satellite.  The radiation belt(s) are doughnut-shaped zones of highly energetic charged particles trapped at high altitudes in the magnetic field of the Earth. The Van Allen belts are most intense over the Equator and are effectively absent above the poles. Prior to be discovery of the belt, it was believed Earth was surrounded by radiation suspenders.

            1960- An American U-2 spy plane, piloted by Francis Gary Powers, was shot down over Russia.  This resulted in the cancellation of a summit meeting between President Dwight Eisenhower and Soviet Dictator, Nikita Khrushchev.  Powers was later exchanged for master spy Rudolf Heinrich Abel...............and a future number one draft choice plus a spy to be named later.  The U-2 is 63 feet (19.2 meters) long, 16 feet (4.8 meters) high,  the wingspan is105 feet (32 meters), and the speed is  410+ miles per hour. Criticized when he returned to the United States for not ensuring that the revolutionary plane was destroyed, or killing himself with a suicide pin or pill, Powers was cold-shouldered by his former employers at the Central Intelligence Agency. He worked for Lockheed as a test pilot for seven years, and, in 1970, he co-authored a book about his experience called Operation Overflight: A Memoir of the U-2 Incident. Powers died in 1977 at the age of 47 when a television news helicopter he was piloting crashed in Los Angeles.    The Soviet spy, Abel was born William August Fisher  in England before going to the USSR.  He came to New York City in 1948, posed as a painter-photographer, and directed the Soviet spy network in the U.S. for 10 years. Abel  unearthed valuable information on American nuclear weapons and rocketry. A "split" nickel found by a Brooklyn newspaper boy helped the FBI capture Abel--the nickel contained a tiny piece of film with a coded message. Abel was sentenced to 30 years in prison but was exchanged in 1962 for Powers. Abel's spy career spanned almost 30 years.

            1964 -Basically, first BASIC program was run on a computer at about 4:00 a.m. It was invented at Dartmouth University by professors John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz. The instructors  decided they had a group of students too lazy to learn FORTRAN. They produced a new language with only 26 variable names, so that even a lazy programmer can keep track of them. Basic is an acronym for Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. It is  designed to be an easy programming language to learn quickly how to write simple programs. Originally designed for mainframes, BASIC was adopted for use on personal computers when they came into popularity. BASIC remains popular to this day in a handful of highly modified dialects and new languages based on BASIC such as Microsoft Visual Basic.

            1967 –  A social note as Elvis Presley married Priscilla Beaulieu at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas. Later he re-married her in the trophy room (how appropriate) at Graceland for the benefit of family and friends who were unable to be present in Las Vegas.  Note, this was the thin Elvis, not the fat bloated drug addled poseur of a few years later. But……considering his wealth, she probably would have married him anyway.

            1999- The Mercury space capsule Liberty Bell 7 that Gus Grissom flew in 1961 was found in the Atlantic Ocean 300 miles southeast of Cape Canaveral, Fla.  Somehow, when Grissom landed in the ocean the hatch blew off and his rescue was a close run thing as the capsule quickly sank.  Grissom was later killed in the Apollo 1 fire.

            2003 –An amazing wave of tornadoes began in the south and southwestern U.S.  When the wave was over, more than 500 tornadoes were recorded for the month, shattering the previous record by more than 100. One actually picked up a farmhouse in Kansas and dropped it on a wicked witch (the Wicked Witch of the East).

                2005- Fishermen in northern Thailand caught a catfish the size of a grizzly bear in the Mekong River. The Mekong giant catfish, which was believed to be the largest freshwater fish ever found, was almost nine feet long and weighed more than 640 pounds. Local authorities attempted to keep the fish alive so they could release it after it had been stripped of eggs to use in a captive-breeding program, but the fish did not survive and was eaten by villagers thus making it the biggest fish filet in history.

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2.        1335 - Otto the Merry, Duke of Austria, became Duke of Carinthia. We note this because of the dozens of royal nicknames we’ve come across, Otto (a Hapsburg)  is the only “Merry”.

            1670 - The Hudson Bay Co. was chartered by England's King Charles II for his cousin, Prince Rupert. One of the first to realize the potential of trade in North America was Samuel de Champlain. In 1603, he made his first trip to North America. He returned several years later to establish a permanent settlement. He wanted to bring many more people to settle in Canada. The King of France, Henry IV,  gave him permission to do so, but in return Champlain was told to develop the fur trade.  The company started with a string of trading posts in Canada and gradually grew up along the river networks of the west laying the foundation for the modern cities that would succeed the trading posts, Winnipeg, Calgary,  and Edmonton.

            1729 – Happy Birthday Catherine II (Catherine the Great) of Russia. Catherine, who became the ruler when she deposed (actually he was murdered by her lover, Orlov) her husband, Peter III,  on June 28, 1762. One of Russia’s great rulers, her personal life was more like “The Hills”meets 18^th century Russia.  While her personal life was the stuff of soap opera, she did have many lovers, Serge Saltykov (who probably fathered her son Peter), Orlov and  Grigori Potemkin among them. Contrary to tall tales, she did not go kaput attempting relations with a horse.  She died of a heart attack in 1796. She consolidated power from the serfs and feudal lords by continuing the political reforms started by Peter the Great.  Land expansion dramatically increased during the Polish civil war in the late 1760's and again in 1768 when a Russian victory over the Ottoman Empire gave Russia its long sought port on the Black Sea . In addition to this, Catherine imported many great works in literature, art, and print from the Western European nations.  Education and law codes further developed under her reign.  At the end of her thirty-four year reign from 1762 to 1796, Catherine had catapulted Russia into the world scene as a major world empire.    

            1765- The first medical school opened in the colonies, The College of Philadelphia. It was organized by Dr. John Morgan who implemented his "Discourse upon Institution of Medical Schools in America" and was appointed Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine by the Trustees of the College on May 3, 1765. We’ve also seen the opening date as May 30, the date Morgan delivered his first public address.

            1775 -Almost lost in the amazing number of his inventions, discoveries and accomplishments –Benjamin Franklin completed the first scientific study of the Gulf Stream. His observations began in 1769 when as deputy postmaster of the British Colonies he found ships took two weeks longer to bring mail from England than it was for sailing from the Colonies to England. During Franklin's final Atlantic crossing, he was still trying to uncover the secrets of the Gulf Stream. By measuring the temperature of the ocean at various depths, Franklin rightly surmised that the Gulf Stream was like a warm river flowing over and through the Atlantic Ocean. He suggested that the Gulf Stream could be used to improve the speed of vessels sailing between America and England if those vessels stayed in the current when traveling east and avoided it while traveling west. Franklin's other contribution to the understanding of the Gulf Stream was a map he drew that showed its movement with a high degree of accuracy.

            1797- Happy Birthday, Abraham Pineo Gesner, Canadian, born in Nova Scotia,  chemist and geologist who pioneered the extraction of kerosene (which he named) by the dry distillation of asphalt rock. He invented the process for distilling kerosene from coal. This product, also called paraffin, was cheaper than whale oil, and therefore resulted in some  reduction in whale hunting.

            1800- English chemist William Nicholson was the first to produce a chemical reaction by electricity. Electrolysis of water is an electrolytic process which decomposes water into oxygen and hydrogen gas with the aid of an electric current, where a power source – Nicholson used a voltaic pile- is commonly used.  Today electrolyis is used to remove unsightly hair.

             1802-Happy Birthday, Heinrich G. Magnus, German chemist and physicist who discovered the Magnus effect - the lift force produced by a rotating cylinder. We know it, for example, in baseball when it gives the curve to a curveball. He was also the first person to prepare a platino-ammonium compound- ‘Magnum’s green salt’ and in 1837 noticed that the ratio of oxygen to carbon dioxide in blood was higher in the arteries.  Women were attracted to him because of his “magnustism.”

            1860 -Happy Birthday, D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, Scottish zoologist and classical scholar noted for his book On Growth and Form.The book is a consideration of the shapes of living things, starting from the simple premise that "everything is the way it is because it got that way.'' Thompson emphasized looking at living things by using mathematics to describe their shapes and fairly simple physics and chemistry to explain them.  He was the first biomathematician. Immanuel Kant declared that the criterion of true science is in its relation to mathematics. Added Thompson, "numerical precision is the very soul of science."   

            1860- Born on the same day as Thomson, see above, Happy Birthday, Sir William M. Bayliss, British physiologist who, in 1902 co-discovered the first hormone (with the British physiologist Ernest H. Starling). They found a certain chemical substance is secreted when food comes into contact with part of the small intestine. This secreted chemical substance, which they cleverly named secretin, upon being carried by the blood to the pancreas, stimulates the secretion of pancreatic juice, the most important of the digestive juices. They coined the word "hormone" based on a Greek word for "to set in motion."….not for the sound made by prostitutes while faking pleasure.

            1863 – Late in the day of the 2^nd day of the Battle of Chancellorsville (Virginia) and one of his most brilliant military maneuvers, the flanking of “Fighting Joe” Hookers army,   Thomas Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee’s most aggressive general, was shot by his own men - an unknown member or members of the 18th North Carolina Infantry Regiment. He died eight days later on May 10. Jackson’s loss would be keenly felt during the disaster at Gettysburg beginning July 1. However, the arm that was amputated on May 2 was buried separately by Jackson's chaplain, at the J. Horace Lacy house, "Ellwood", in the Wilderness of Spotsylvania County, near the field hospital. The rest of him is interred at Stonewall Jackson Memorial Cemetery, Lexington, Virginia.

                 1865-The first paid fire department was initiated in New York City. A state act was passed to create the Metropolitan Fire District and the Metropolitan Fire Department (MFD).  Initially the paid fire service only covered New York City (present day Manhattan), until the act of 1865 which united Brooklyn with New York to form the Metropolitan District. Brooklyn would become part of New York City in 1898. The same year the fire department consisted of 13 Chief Officers and 552 Company Officers and firemen. The officers and firemen worked a continuous tour of duty, with 3 hours a day off for meals and one day off a month, and were paid salaries according to their rank or grade. No word on the status of dalmatian dogs.

            1880 – Paving the way for the cruise liners of today, an Edison "A" type dynamo- a generator for producing direct current- was placed in operation to illuminate the passenger rooms and main salons of the S.S. Columbia. It was the first commercial order for Edison's light bulb, and the first time a U.S. steamboat successfully installed electric lights.  None of the cardboard-filament lamps blew out during the two-month voyage.  We’re not sure how people did with the Rock Wall and the ship board production of A Chorus Line but they enjoyed well lit “All you can Eat” buffets.

            1887 – Hannibal Goodwin and celluloid. The Reverend Goodwin devised a process for making celluloid film and applied for a patent in 1887, but for various reasons the patent was not granted until 1898. In the meantime, George Eastman had started production of rollfilm using his own process. It was eventually ruled that Kodak had infringed Goodwin's patent which by then had been sold to Anthony & Scovill (Ansco) after Goodwin's death. With (now) Eastman’s process, with this new flexible film, Thomas Edison and  his assistant William Kennedy Laurie Dickson invented the kinetoscope. The kinetoscope was a large cabinet which housed 50 feet (15 meters) of film which revolved on spools. A person looking through a peephole in the cabinet would be able to see the moving pictures.  John Carbutt, an English photographer who had emigrated to America, had  produced a thin celluloid film which was sufficiently transparent. He did this by slicing a thin layer from a block of celluloid - this was then pressed between heated polished plates to remove the slicing marks. Carbutt started to manufacture cut film using this material sometime before1888, but it was slow to catch on. Two key events which would make celluloid film a necessity had yet to happen - roll film cameras and motion pictures…..see Eastman and Edison.

            1890- The Oklahoma Territory was organized. Actually, the western part of the state was organized as a federal territory. The eastern part, excepting the extreme northeastern corner, remained under the ownership and governments of the Five Civilized Tribes (the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole). Seventeen years later, these regions were united under the name "Oklahoma" and admitted as the 46th State.        1892 – Happy Birthday, Manfred von Richtofen, WW I German war ace, and perhaps the greatest fighter pilot who ever lived .  He painted the fuselage of his Albatross D-III a bright red and was nicknamed the Red Baron. Richthofen was killed when he was brought down by ground fire on April 21, 1918. He was 25 years old.

            1903-Happy Birthday, Dr. Benjamin Spock, American pediatrician who was the most influential child-care authority of the 20th century. His book Baby and Child Care sold over 50million copies worldwide and was translated into 42 languages. Dr. Spock's brother, Mr. Spock, from the planet Vulcan brought the Vulcan Mind Meld to Earth.  He also wrote Baby Alien Care.

            1903 – Born on the same day as Dr. Spock, Happy Birthday Bing (Harry Lillis) Crosby, American singer and actor. He sang his signature song, ‘White Christmas ’ in the film Holiday Inn (1942). Before this he had appeared during the 1930s in several light musicals, and in the 1940s he carved out a new career as the wisecracking companion of Bob Hope in the seven ‘Road’ pictures. He also made several serious films and won an Academy Award  for his role in Going My Way in 1944.

            1933 -Stories of a beast living in Scotland's Loch Ness go back 1,500 years, the modern legend of  the Loch Ness Monster was actually born when a sighting made local news on May 2,1933. The newspaper Inverness Courier carried an account of a local couple who claimed to have seen "an enormous animal rolling and plunging on the surface." (It turned out to be Rosie O’Donnell)  The story of the "monster" (a name chosen by the Courier editor) started a media feeding frenzy, with London newspapers sending correspondents to Scotland and a circus offering a 20,000 pound  reward for capture of the beast. The tourist industry has not been the same since. Loch Ness, located in the Scottish Highlands, has the largest volume of fresh water in Great Britain. It. reaches a depth of nearly 800 feet and a length of about 23 miles. In case you didn’t know, a loch is a lake.

              1945 - Approximately 1 million German soldiers gave up as the terms of the German unconditional surrender, signed at Caserta (Italy) on April 29, came into effect. Early that same day, Russian Marshal Georgi K. Zhukov accepted the surrender of the German capital, Berlin.  The Red Army took 134,000 German soldiers prisoner.

            1950-  H.B Taussig became the first woman elected to the Association of American Physicians.  Helen Brooke Taussig classified and described many of the heart  malformations. She is known for saving the lives of "blue babies" (infants whose color at birth indicated inadequate oxygenation of their blood.), and played an important role in preventing the use of thalidomide in the USA.

            1952 -  The world's first ever commercial jet airliner, the De Havilland Comet 1 made its maiden voyage, flying from London to Johannesburg.

            1953 – Exactly a year after its maiden voyage, a Comet mysteriously crashed shortly after takeoff. Two similar crashes in early 1954 forced British authorities to ground the entire fleet pending investigation. Over the following months, extensive tests were performed on the aircraft to determine what could have caused these mysterious accidents. During a four year hiatus in Comet operations, most prospective customers went to the rival Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8 which soon claimed the bulk of the market. Only about 90 Comets ever reached commercial operators, and most were removed from service by the early 1980s.

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3.        International Tuba Day---yes, it's hard to believe that another year has passed and we can once again ask "tuba or not tuba", that is the question.  Although "tis nobler to use a tuba toothpaste........" Tuba Day is  celebrated the first Friday in May.  Joel Day founded International Tuba Day in 1979 while attending Lower Merion High School in suburban Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Being one of only two tuba players in the band and finding a lack of respect from his fellow classmates, he decided to set a day aside for our recognition as reputable musicians

            1469 – Happy Birthday, Niccolo Machiavelli Italian writer, statesman and political theorist.  A native of Florence, he is most famous for his political treatise, The Prince written in 1513, which has become a cornerstone of modern political philosophy…..especially for people who haven’t read it but think they know what it says. Machiavelli originally wrote Principe (The Prince) in hopes of securing the favor of the ruling Medici family, and he deliberately made its claims provocative. The Prince is an  practical guide to the exercise of raw political power over a Renaissance principality. Allowing for the unpredictable influence of fortune, Machiavelli argued that it is primarily the character or vitality or skill of the individual leader that determines the success of any state.  The books for which he is remembered were published only after his death. In 1527.

                1860- Happy Birthday, Vito Volterra,  Italian mathematician.  He developed a general theory of functionals – functionals is a branch of analysis which studies the properties of mappings of classes of functions from one topological vector space to another (glad we could clear that up!). Volterra strongly influenced modern calculus and analytical methods, and worked on integral equations, mathematical physics, and the mathematics of population change in biology. He was a professor at Pisa, Turin, and Rome. In 1931 he was dismissed from his chair at Rome for refusing to sign an oath of allegiance to the Fascist government, and he spent most of the rest of his life in exile.       

                1904- New York became the first state to pass a speed law for automobiles.  It mandated a maximum speed of 10 mph in populated districts, 15 mph in villages, and 20 mph in open country.

            1916-Irish nationalists Padraic Pearse , Thomas MacDonagh, James Connelly,  and Tom Clark were executed by the British for their roles in the Easter Rebellion.  They were among the seven signatories of the proclamation of Poblacht na hÉireann, or Irish Republic. They are buried together at Arbour Hill Cemetery in Dublin. The executions of  Pearse, Joseph Plunkett, a sick invalid who had married just hours before his execution, and James Connolly, who was unable to stand up in front of the firing squad due to his wounds and was shot while bound on a chair, disgusted Ireland.

            1921- The “eyes of Taxes are upon you.” West Virginia imposed the first state sales tax.  It was a gross sales tax but then most taxes are gross.  The tax went into effect on July 1 of the same year.

            1933 – Mrs. Nellie Ross assumed leadership of  The United States Mint. She was the first woman to be in command. Earlier, less successful, versions of the U.S Mint included the U.S Chewing Gum, the U.S Tootsie Roll, and the U.S Good n Plenty.

            1952 - U.S. Air Force C-47 piloted by Lieutenant Colonel Joseph O. Fletcher of Oklahoma and Lieutenant Colonel William P. Benedict of California became the first  to land an aircraft on the North Pole. Fletcher climbed out of the plane and walked to the exact geographic North Pole, probably the first person in history to do so. On April 6, 1909, Robert Perry, Mathew Henson and four Eskimos, Oatah, Egingwah, Seegloo, and Ookeah thought they reached the North Pole.  After congress settled a dispute with Frederick Cook, who claimed to have reached the Pole a year earlier, Perry and Henson were acknowledged as first to the Pole.  Unfortunately, they were a few miles off but no one quibbled and they traveled over land (ice).  Fletcher and Benedict flew and walked.

            1957 – A dark day in New York baseball history as greedy Brooklyn Dodgers’ owner Walter O’Malley, given little choice by the short sighted administration, which refused to give him a stadium site in Brooklyn (they offered Queens)  of Mayor Robert Wagner, agreed to move the team from Flatbush to smoggy Los Angeles. To add insult to injury, O’Malley convinced addled NY Giants owner Horace Stoneham to move his team to San Francisco.

            1962 – In a tragic “Keystone Cops” real life disaster, two commuter trains and a freight train collided near Tokyo, Japan. A freight train went through a red signal, causing it to jump the track and it collided with a commuter train. Most of the passengers survived this first collision. The survivors were able to get out of the train and escape down a 30-foot embankment adjacent to the rails. Minutes later, a second commuter train on the same line came down the tracks unaware of the crash ahead and crashed into the back of the first commuter train. This first commuter train was now pushed over and down the embankment right on top of the passengers who had escaped from it minutes earlier. More than 400 people were either killed or required hospitalization. The subsequent investigation into the accident resulted in the indictment of nine of the freight train’s crew members for criminal negligence.

            1968-Dr. Denton Cooley of the Texas Heart Institute performed the first successful heart transplant in the United States on Everett Thomas.  Thomas’ heart was damaged from rheumatic heart disease and the donor was a 15-year old girl. The patient lived for 204 days with the heart donated from the girl….. who had committed suicide. 

            1802 – Washington, D.C., was incorporated as a city.  The Charter granted by Congress made Washington an incorporated city and gave voters the right to elect a local legislature (called a Council) that could pass laws and levy a tax on real estate to pay for city services. The local government also included a mayor appointed by the President. Washington has gone one to claim its place in the Hall of Fame for Corrupt Local Governments…..highlighted by the video taping of a mayor making a drug deal.   Demonstrating the usual intelligence of the local Washington voter, the miscreant was re-elected after serving his jail term.  

            1982- The Weather Channel went on the air as the only 24 hr. all weather, cable network. Now we thrill to the site of people in parkas standing in snow storms and braving the winds of hurricanes as they tell us it was snowing and/or windy.

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4.        It's National Teachers Day!  Behave Yourselves!!!

            The origins of National Teacher Day are murky. Around 1944 Arkansas teacher Mattye Whyte Woodridge began corresponding with political and education leaders about the need for a national day to honor teachers. Woodbridge wrote to Eleanor Roosevelt, who in 1953 persuaded the 81st Congress to proclaim a National Teacher Day. The NEA, lobbied Congress to create a national day celebrating teachers. Congress declared March 7, 1980, as National Teacher Day for that year only.  Then in 1985 the Nationa