February 16

Governments have a responsibility to the people that they serve, responsibilities that they ignore at their peril. A government should have a close and abiding relationship with its people and ought to pass and enforce laws that will benefit the nation as a whole. Ideally, they should pay little or no heed to special, partisan interests. In times of peril, a government should take the lead in insuring the happiness of the masses it is serving. That is the only explanation of why, on the 16th in 1859, the French government passed a law setting the A-note above middle C to a frequency of 435 Hz to standardize the pitch. I was unaware of the French interest in baseball.