September 12

Henry Hudson[i] must really have been something else. He has had a river, a bay, a car named after him, and there are probably other things that I am unaware of. I do know that he had to have been a halfway decent sailor and explorer because he was able to get large, influential companies from two countries to give him more than adequate funding for his epic voyages. He managed to secure this funding in spite of the fact that he never really did what he had been hired to do. He was repeatedly given the task of finding the elusive northern passage from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. It seems obvious that his performance evaluations tap-danced around the bit about “Have you done what we hired you to do?” On the 12th in 1609, Hudson was doing what most explorers do: exploring. He had entered what is now called the Hudson River and decided that he needed a break from all that not finding stuff that he was doing. He pulled his ship, the Half Moon, over to the side of the river and landed on what we now call Manhattan Island. I am sure that it is merely a coincidence that the 12th is also his birthday. Heck, you can’t blame a guy for calling work and taking the day off on his birthday can you?
[i] In June of 1611, Hudson, his son and several crew members were set adrift by mutineers. He was never seen again.