February 2nd is our most whimsical “holiday,” the day when the legendary groundhog’s actions are said to forecast the weather. “Six more weeks of winter” was a given in North Dakota where I grew up. Perhaps the rodent returned to his hole not because he was frightened by his shadow, but because he was freezing […]
If the steampunk community is to have any festivals, this would be one* of them. James Watt, inventor of the first efficient steam engine, was born in Scotland on this day in 1736. If not for Watt’s genius, there would have been no “age of steam” for us to celebrate. Many people mistakenly think Watt […]
On this day in 1788, Captain Arthur Phillip led a fleet of British ships carrying convicts into Botany Bay to form the penal colony of Australia. Australians still mark this date as a national holiday, which in the Southern Hemisphere is in the middle of summer. In the 18th Century, “transportation” to the colonies was […]
* Owl’s birthday message to Pooh. Today is the birthday of Alan Alexander Milne, creator of Winnie-the-Pooh, born in 1882 in London, England. He wrote his famous “Winnie the Pooh” books for his son, Christopher Robin. Pooh and the other characters were based on Christopher’s toys, and the 100-Acre Wood was based on a forest […]
My readers may have noticed that although I often write articles about historical anniversaries, I didn’t do anything topical this Monday for Martin Luther King Jr’s Birthday. That’s because I limit myself to events that happened at least a century ago, and Dr. King was born in 1929. On the following day it occurred to […]
Today is the 13th of the month, which got me thinking about numeric superstitions. In the west, we commonly think of 13 as unlucky. I’ve seen speculation that this was because of the Biblical Last Supper, with Jesus plus the disciples making 13. Somehow that made Judas unlucky number 13. As a consequence, many multi-story […]
* Cheers for Count Zeppelin This year marks the 110-year anniversary of aviation pioneer Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin founding his airship company Luftschiffbau Zeppelin. This came on the heels of the destruction of one of his early airship prototypes (LZ-4) in a storm when it was moored at Echterdingen. Despite this incident, the German public […]
