June 3

On the 3rd in 1800, John Adams, the first vice-president and the second president of the United States, became the first American president to occupy the White House. Following as he did George Washington, he had an extremely tough act to follow. Nevertheless, the cream always rises to the top and as Benjamin Franklin noted of Adams, “he means well for his country, is always an honest man, often a wise man but sometimes, in some things, absolutely out of his senses.” Three out of four isn’t bad though and I just wish our contemporary presidents scored as well in the measure of a man.

June 2

H. L. Mencken observed that democracy is the theory that “the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard”. John Randolph, a senator from Virginia, who was born on the 2nd in 1773, also distilled the role of democracy into a nice little sound bite when he said, “I am an aristocrat. I love liberty. I hate equality.” He also observed that “We all know our duty better than we discharge it” which Attorney General Gonzalez may, at some point, use when testifying before Congress.

June 1

Have you ever had one of those days where it seems that absolutely nothing is ever going to go the way you want it to? You get up late and rush out of your home with mismatched socks. Then you drop your coffee and it splashes on your pants, making it look as if couldn’t quite make it to a rest room; you know, that sort of thing. Well, just shake it off and go change your clothes because in spite of the fact that your day is beginning to look quite grim it could always be worse. Consider that on the 1st in 1660, Mary Dyer was hanged in Boston, Massachusetts for the crime of being a Quaker. So much for that fabled quest for religious freedom in the New World.
Dyer had arrived in the area as part of the Puritan migration from England, via the Netherlands, and made a conscious decision to become a Quaker. Talk about a bad career move!

May 31

On the 31st in 1669, inveterate gossip Samuel Pepys reluctantly announced that he would no longer write in his diary. He cited poor eyesight as his reason for stopping but I think he simply got tired of people sending him notes saying “Sorry, not for us at this time, good luck elsewhere.”

May 30

Roy Harroun, at the wheel of a Nordyke Marmon & Company Wasp, won the first Indianapolis 500 motorcar race on the 30th in 1911. What makes Harroun’s victory interesting is that it was achieved in the first automobile to make use of a rear-view mirror. Prior to this, automobile races had to be conducted with a team: the driver and a mechanic to keep track of the other cars.

May 29

Birthdays are often an occasion for riotous celebration. I must admit however, that the older I get the less actively I seek out things of a riotous nature. On the 29th in 1953, Sir Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay became the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest. So thrilled was Norgay to stand on the top of the world that from then on he would celebrate his birthday on May 29th. He also managed to get over his disappointment at seeing a clearly posted sign on the summit that said “$20 cover charge and a 2 drink minimum.”

May 28

In Brooklyn, Ohio, on the 28th in 1952, the Memphis Kiddie Park opened. The centerpiece of this apparently schizophrenic amusement emporium was The Little Dipper, an all-steel roller coaster. It is still in operation today making it the oldest steel roller coaster in existence. It should be noted that in Brooklyn, New York the Cyclone, the oldest all wood roller coaster is still in operation.