December 17

On the 17th in 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright were finally successful in their quest to build a heavier-than-air flying machine. The fourth flight of the day, with Wilbur at the controls, lasted 59 seconds. On April 19, 1944, Orville went on his last airplane flight, as a guest of Howard Hughes, at the controls of a Lockheed Constellation. Orville was quick to point out that the wingspan of the Constellation was longer than the first flight.

December 16

New York is a city filled with niche museums and even a tireless visitor would be hard pressed to visit more than a handful of them during their stay. To name just a few, there is the American Folk Art Museum, the Fisher Landau Center, the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art, The Cloisters (highly recommended), the American Numismatic Society, the New York Hysterical Society (ooops… I mean Historical Society), the National Museum of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender History, and, last but definitely not least, the Brooklyn Children’s Museum. The Brooklyn Children’s Museum opened its doors, in Crown Heights, Brooklyn on the 16th in 1899. Being a resident of the finest of New York’s five boroughs, Brooklyn, whose official slogan is ‘Brooklyn, where the weak are killed and eaten’, I paid a visit to the Brooklyn Children’s Museum one afternoon recently. The museum was expanded, beginning in 1930, with the aid of hundreds of artists and artisans courtesy of the Works Progress Administration; the site is really quite impressive. There are over 27,000 items on display. Overall, however, I must admit that I was rather disappointed because in the entire place not a single child was on exhibit, not even a little one. It took a little time and a great deal of energy but I was eventually able to get the price of admission that I paid refunded.

December 15

Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, died on the 15th in 1673. What’s the story with rich, aristocratic, British writers anyway? Margaret’s writing aroused a great deal of controversy in her day. She wrote, and published, using her own name, at a time when women’s work was generally published anonymously or pseudonyms were used. That fact alone was enough to raise eyebrows as well as objections. Professional busybody Samuel Pepys referred to Cavendish as ‘mad, conceited and ridiculous.’ More than a century later, Lady Caroline Lamb describes George Gordon Byron, Lord Byron as being ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know.’ Weren’t there any members of the ruling class who wrote and were merely boring? It would seem not.

December 14

George Washington’s Birthday has long been a holiday in the United States. He was born on February 22, 1732. The occasion was generally celebrated on the 22nd of February until 1971, when President Reagan got the brilliant idea to combine Lincoln’s birthday (the12th) with Washington’s and established Presidents’ Day, to be celebrated on the third Monday of February. Why he thought a generic Presidents’ Day was a good idea is unclear, although my guess is that it had everything to do with reducing the number of Federal holidays, limiting employee benefits or some other such nonsense. In my opinion, it sort of takes the wind out of the celebrations and only succeeds in making the holiday sales events that more tiresome. Washington died on the 14th of December in 1799, so why not celebrate his death? There could be sales on cemetery plots, funeral shrouds, boxes of tissues; the list could go on and on. Washington died of pneumonia, so comfortable blankets and antibiotics could be tossed in for good measure. The dental industry, which is generally overlooked in the federal holiday department, would have a field day with Washington’s teeth. It is a common misconception that George had wooden teeth, in spite of the fact that all evidence indicate that his false teeth were made from the teeth of elk, hippopotamus, and humans. There even survives one set made from lead, which weighed a hefty 4 ounces. Yikes!

December 13

Thomas Augustus Watson was born on the 13th in 1854. As an adult, Watson would found a very successful shipbuilding company and both write and stage numerous plays, drawing chiefly from the works of Charles Dickens. However, he is perhaps best known for his role as Thomas Edison’s assistant in the development of the telephone. It is widely known that the first words spoken into a telephone and received by a person on the other end are the words spoken by Edison to Watson at Edison’s Menlo Park, New Jersey laboratory: “Mr. Watson, come here I want you.” Fewer people are aware that the first conversation continued with “I’ve always wanted you.”

December 12

Cindy Sheehan first appeared on the radar when she camped out near President Bush’s home in Texas to protest the war in Iraq. As a result, the media have had a field day with her, charting her every move. Yesterday Miss Sheehan was convicted of trespassing, a charge growing out of her attempt to deliver an antiwar petition to the United States’ mission to the United Nations. Her efforts on behalf of the peace movement have rendered her an extremely high profile figure. Sheehan’s activities have generated a lot of support for her mission; and while the antiwar movement is growing with each passing day, the movement has a lot of growing to do in the high profile department. You want high profile? I’ll give you high profile; just consider the Greenham Women. Greenham Common was a Royal Air Force base in England. Beginning in 1981 English women began establishing ‘women’s peace camps’ at the base to protest the presence of American cruise missiles, both conventional and nuclear, at the facility. On the 12th in 1982, 30,000 women joined hands and formed a circle around the entire base, a distance of roughly 9 miles. The Greenham Women remained in the peace camps until the last cruise missile was returned to the United States in 1991 and the base was returned to civilian use.

December 11

Do you ever get bored? I do. A lot! Boredom can be oppressive at times, if you let it. However, there is a bright side to boredom, though at times it can be extremely difficult to find that aspect of it. There is a small, unassuming crater on the Moon that is named the Cannon Crater. The crater was named after Annie Jump Cannon who was born on the 11th in 1863 in Dover, Delaware. While attending school at Wellesley College in Massachusetts she caught scarlet fever during one particularly harsh winter. Because of this illness, Cannon was rendered almost completely deaf. Upon graduating in 1884, with a degree in physics, she returned home to Delaware. She found herself adrift socially and personally because she was virtually without hearing and was older and better educated than other women her age in Dover. She understandably became bored and extremely restless. In 1893, Cannon wrote to one of her professors at Wellesley, to find out if there were any openings at the school. As a result of this letter, written out of sheer boredom, Sarah Frances Whiting, a professor of physics and astronomy hired Cannon to be her assistant. The position allowed her to pursue graduate courses and Whiting nudged her into studying spectroscopy and photography. As it developed these were areas for which Annie was particularly well suited. During her career, Annie would discover 300 variable stars, 5 novae and a binary star. In 1925, Oxford University in England awarded her an honorary doctorate, making her the first woman ever to be accorded such an honor.

December 10

Do you spend a great deal of time thinking about traffic lights? If you are anything like me, probably not. The lights are quite common and seem to be everywhere. I certainly don’t need to add another item to the list of boring things that I do. I had always assumed that traffic lights started appearing at roughly the same time that cars appeared on the scene – the early 20th century. That was not the case, however. The very first traffic light began operation on the 10th in 1868, when J. P. Knight installed a gas-powered, manually operated, traffic light outside the British Houses of Parliament in London, England.