Tell me where exactly did Summer go?
Shakespeare said “And Summer’s lease hath all too short a date.” Well, we will have to wait and survive another Chicago Winter before the sun-filled days return, won’t we? Here are some thoughts for an October day.
Bits: In the late 1970s the U.S. Mint came up with an idea it predicted would save $50 million a year. It would mint a dollar coin. It would last much longer than paper, minimizing the need to make new dollars. In 1979 the Mint struck 857 million Susan B. Anthony dollars. Eighteen months later, the government still had 500 million of them in storage. They stopped production.
Pieces: July 16,1938 an airplane mechanic named Douglas Corrigan decided to carry on the tradition of Charles Lindbergh. He took off from New York, bound on a solo nonstop flight due west to California. He had some compass trouble, though. There was a bit of fog as well. Twenty-seven house later, he landed in Ireland.
Bits: A chariot, with iron elements, bronze decorations and mineralized wooden remains, was found in Civita, Giuliana, Italy, north of Pompeii. It was the first discovery of an intact chariot, one of several discoveries there.
Pieces: Inventor Alexander Graham Bell made an appointment with Western Union to sell them an idea of something called a telephone. Western Union’s president gave his answer: “What use,” he asked, “could this company make of an electrical toy?” And now we see the ultimate in an adult toy, an adult baby bottle, that has to be in hand constantly, aka the cell phone.
Bits: Although Britain is one of the least forested countries in northern Europe, it has the highest number of ancient trees. One of them is an ivy-clad stump and is called the Queen Elizabeth’s Oak in Northiam in East Sussex. Here, on the 11th of August 1573, while traveling to Rye, the Queen enjoyed a banquet under the shade of the giant oak. Then there is the majestic Crowhurst Yew in Surrey which is estimated to be between 2,000 to 4,000 years old.
Pieces: The Woodland Trust launched its Jubilee Woods project to encourage woodland creation and to celebrate The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. February 2012 marked the 60th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth’s accession to the throne. One million trees planted seemed to be a wonderful idea and beginning to her Jubilee year.
Bits: In January 1777 Mary Katherine Goddard, editor of the Maryland Journal, printed the first full copy of the Declaration of Independence. It had been written on parchment with a quill pen and ink. Any printed copies were incomplete, because they didn’t show the signatures of those who had penned their names at the bottom of it.
Pieces: In Revolutionary America, women did not live as equals with men. Not one man who signed the Declaration even dreamed that women should vote, sit on a jury, or serve in government. It took 144 years until women achieved suffrage in 1920 and could exercise the right to cast their ballots on Election Day.