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1.       1792,- Happy Birthday, Nikolay, I. Lobachevsky, Russian mathematician who, with János Bolyai of Hungary, is considered the founder of non-Euclidean geometry – as opposed to Euclid who was the founder of Euclidian geometry. . Lobachevsky constructed and studied a type of geometry in which Euclid's parallel postulate is false (the postulate states that through a point not on a certain line only one line can be drawn not meeting the first line). This was not well received at first, but his greatest vindication came with the advent of Einstein's theory of relativity when it was demonstrated experimentally that the geometry of space is not described by Euclid's geometry. Of course Einstein’s theory was developed in 1905 so the vindication was posthumous.

          1824- Since none of the presidential candidates, Andrew Jackson of Tennessee with 99 electoral votes (Just think, no stupid politician TV commercials in those days!); John Quincy Adams--the son of John Adams, the second president of the United States--with 84 electoral votes; Secretary of State William H. Crawford, who had suffered a stroke before the election, with 41 electoral votes; and Representative Henry Clay of Virginia with 37 electoral votes had received a majority of the total electoral votes in the election of 1824, Congress decided to turn over the presidential election to the House of Representatives, as dictated by the 12th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In the November 1824 election, 131 electoral votes, just over half of the 261 total, were necessary to elect a candidate president. Representative Henry Clay agreed to use his influence to have John Quincy Adams elected. Clay and Adams were both members of a loose coalition in Congress that by 1828 became known as the National Republicans, while Jackson's supporters were later organized into the Democratic Party. Thanks to Clay's backing, on February 9, 1825, the House elected Adams as president of the United States. Adams then appointed Clay to the top cabinet post of secretary of state.  Ah, the beauty of politics.

            1878- The White House had its first telephone installed by Alexander Graham Bell himself, during the President Rutherford B. Hayes (brother of Purple Hayes)administration. It is said that the first outgoing call went to Bell, thirteen miles away. Hayes first words instructed Bell to speak more slowly since Bell was a Scotsman with a heavy brogue. President Hayes did not use the phone very often, however, because there were not many other telephones in Washington. He did however, like the 900 numbers and enjoyed speaking with "Babette and her Zen Babes" in particular. He also ordered out for pizza at least once a  week.

            1890- Kipp, Montana had an amazing 34 degree (F) temperature rise in only 7 minutes.  A total rise of 80 degrees occurred in a few hours as 30" of snow was melted in a half day. This put a damper on the Kipp Chamber of Commerce “Fun in the Snow “ celebration

            1913 - The first U.S. drive-in automobile gas station opened at the intersection of Baum Boulevard and St. Clair Street in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was operated by the Gulf Oil Co.. The station featured free air, water, crankcase service, restrooms and a lighted sign for "Good Gulf Gasoline." It was open all night…..and gas was 27 cents a gallon!!!!!!!!

            1921 - The Detroit Steam Motors Corporation announced the Trask steam car. A steam car craze had started when a steam-driven automobile had reached the world-record speed of 127.66mph in 1906- The last steam-powered cars in the U.S. were made in 1926.

            1922-  Cyril Turner (brother of Ike and Tina Turner) became the first U.S skywriter. An Englishman, Turner wrote “Hello U.S.A."  Really! He did!...of course he did it with an accent.

            1955 – Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus, an act that was in direct violation of a city ordinance requiring black people to ride in the rear of the bus. Three days after the incident, she was found guilty and ordered to pay a $10 fine, plus an additional $4 in court costs.

            1959- Twelve nations, including the United States and the Soviet Union, signed the Antarctica Treaty, which banned military activity and weapons testing on that continent. It was the first arms control agreement signed in the Cold War period.

1990 - British and French workers digging the English Channel Tunnel, the "Chunnel" between their countries finally met in the service tunnel after knocking out a passage large enough to walk through and shake hands, 22.3 km from the UK and 15.6 km from France. Squeegee men immediately appeared and offered wipe their visors.

1997 - Eight planets from our Solar System lined up from West to East beginning with Pluto, followed by Mercury, Mars, Venus, Neptune, Uranus, Jupiter, and Saturn, with a crescent moon alongside, in a rare configuration visible from Earth that lasted until Dec 8. Of course at that time, Pluto was a planet, now it isn’t.

2.       1804- In Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris (not Indiana), Napoleon Bonaparte crowned himself, Napoleon I. He became the first Frenchman to hold the title of emperor in a thousand years. Pope Pius VII handed Napoleon the crown that the 35-year-old general placed on his own head. Napoleon’s rationale was based on an ostensible plot to do him in by the Bourbons ( family of Louis XVI). He argued that there should be a hereditary monarchy of Bonapartes in order to prevent the return of the Bourbons. In May of next year, Napoleon was crowned King of Italy. Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo by the Duke of Wellington and von Blucher in 1815. He was captured, imprisoned and then exiled to the island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean.

            1823 -President James Monroe proclaimed the "Monroe Doctrine." He stated that Marilyn Monroe should only star in comedies and not dramas like The Misfits . No no no he didn’t.  It was a new U.S. foreign policy initiative, primarily the work of Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, the Monroe Doctrine forbade European interference in the American hemisphere but also asserted U.S. neutrality in regard to future European conflicts.

             1859 – John Brown kaput. In Charles Town, Virginia, abolitionist John Brown was executed on charges of treason, murder, and insurrection. Brown and followers attempted to take over the U.S Military arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Va. and use the weapons to start a slave rebellion and then a republic of freed slaves and abolitionist whites. A U.S army contingent led by Col. Robert E. Lee ended the plans and arrested Brown.

              1859 – And on the same day John Brown left the world, Happy Birthday, Georges Seurat, as the French painter, famous for his dots rather than brush strokes and famous for his masterwork, Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Grand Jatte, entered the world.

             1877 -  French scientist, Louis-Paul Cailletet  became the first to liquefy oxygen. He was also was first to liquefy nitrogen, hydrogen, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, and acetylene. Through cooling and compression, the volume of a gas can be reduced by so much that its molecules collapse upon each other and come into contact, changing into a liquid.

             1895 – Twelve years after Cailletet’s work (see above, 1877), James Dewar James Dewar exhibited his new apparatus for the production of liquid air at the Royal Institution  in London. Dewar also invented the Dewar flask or thermos in 1892)and co-invented cordite, a smokeless gunpowder,  in 1889,

          1902 - The first working V-8 engine was patented in France by French engine designer Leon-Marie-Joseph-Clement Levavasseur. The engine block was the first to arrange eight pistons in the V-formation. This was more successful than the Q-8 and W-8 formations previously tried.  Actually, they went through most of the alphabet and were thinking of turning to Cyrillic when the V-8 finally worked.

            1906 - Happy Birthday, Peter C. Goldmark American engineer – born in Hungary.  While working for Columbia Broadcasting System(CBS), in 1936 he developed the first commercial color television system which used a rotating three-color disk.  And in these days of the MP3 player, the LP (long playing record ) is a distant memory but in the mid-1940s Goldmark  began developing a new sound technology—the long-playing record (LP). Goldmark  the diameter of 33 1/3 records to 12 inches and experimented with recording techniques to capture sound better. By 1948, the LP was introduced to the public. They could hold much more music—an entire symphony—and produce better sound then a 78…..even if it was Fabian doing the singing.

            1927 - The first Ford Model A car was rolled out in New York City and in 35 other cities around the U.S., Canada and Europe. The car was affordable: the Phaeton sold for $395 and the Tudor Sedan for $495.  Credit terms were easy and the salesmen wore funny clown suits and yelled and had camels walking around and….no  wait, that’s what happens today.

          1942- The first nuclear chain reaction (fission of the uranium isotope 235) beneath the West Stands of Stagg Field in Chicago, was produced by Drs. Arthur Compton and Enrico Fermi.  This was the birth of the Atomic Age. Three years earlier, they had discovered that if an atom of uranium was bombarded by neutrons, the uranium atom would sometimes was split – fission would take place. Later, it had been found that when an atom of uranium fissioned, additional neurons were emitted and became available for further reaction with other uranium atoms. These facts implied the possibility of a chain reaction, similar in certain respects to the reaction which is the source of the sun's energy and…..boom!

            1957- The first full-scale atomic electric generating station in the U.S. began operation in Shippingport, Pennsylvania -15 years to the day after Fermi's experiment at the University of Chicago.  The plant supplied power to Pittsburgh and the castle of a Dr. Frankenstein who was able to create life that we now know as Lindsay Lohan.  

             1971- The Mars 3 (U.S.S.R.) made the first soft landing on Mars and  returned sixty photos the first radio signals from its surface.            Included in the pictures were some of Elvis, Jimmy Hoffa, and Amelia Earhart.  

            1982- Dr. Barney Clark became the first human to receive an artificial heart. Doctors used the Jarvik-7, named after its designer Robert K. Jarvik, an American physician at the University of Utah. Designed to function just like a natural heart, the Jarvik-7 had two pumps (like the ventricles), each with a disk-shaped mechanism that pushed the blood from the inlet valve to the outlet valve Clark survived for 112 days.  He then  became one of the Zombies that attacked the mall in Dawn of the Dead.

            1988 – The first of several space shuttle flights on December 2 through the years.  Atlantis (STS 27) made a classified (secret) mission.  Astronauts wore fake moustaches and big horn rimmed glasses along with blue fright wigs.

            1990- The shuttle Columbia (STS 35), after one of the longest delays ever – it had been scheduled for a May launch- with its primary mission being round-the-clock observations of celestial sphere in ultraviolet and X-ray astronomy with the ASTRO-1 observatory which consisted of four telescopes.

            1992- The shuttle Discovery (STS 53) was launched for a secret flight for the Defense Department.  Due to the secret nature of the mission the disguised astronauts all wore Bill Clinton masks and kept asking Mission Control to define “is”.

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3.        1714- An object later identified by Sir William Herschel in 1781 as Uranus, was discovered by John Flamsteed,- who catalogued it in his star catalogue as 34 Tauri. Flamsteed was to become the first Astronomer Royal.

1732- The first mouth to mouth resuscitation occurred when miner James Blair was rescued from a fire in a coal mine in Alloa, Scotland. William Tossach, a Scottish surgeon whose documentation is the first record of artificial respiration…: "there was not the least pulse in either heart or arteries, and not the least breathing could be observed:  So that he was in all appearance dead. I applied my mouth close to his and blowed my breath as strong as I could... I blew again my breath as strong as I could, raising his chest fully with it; and immediately I felt six or seven very quick beats of the heart." This was the first clinical use of artificial respiration, or…..18^th century “forbidden” love.

            1818 - Illinois was the 21st state to enter the United States.  The state of Illinois was named after the Illinois River. The river was named by French explorer Robert Cavelier Sieur de La Salle in 1679 after the Indians he found living along the banks. Illinois is the French spelling for the Illinois and Peoria Indian word "iliniwok," meaning men or warriors and perhaps referring to members of the Illinois tribe. Illinois was the first of nine states that would be admitted to the Union during December.

            1826 – Happy Birthday, George MacClellan, Union Civil War general loved by his troops and  noted for his overestimation of the strength of the enemy, failing to follow up on Robert E. Lee’s weakened forces after the Battle of Antietam, and running for President as a Democrat against Abraham Lincoln in 1864.

1828 – The Electoral College met to elect Andrew Jackson as 7th President of the United States.  Jackson (and vice presidential candidate John C. Calhoun) easily defeated John Quincy Adams (and Richard Rush) in a re run of the election of 1824 – which Jackson had lost when it went to the House of Representatives which decided in favor of Adams.

1833- Happy Birthday Carlos Juan Finlay, Cuban epidemiologist who persuaded Dr. Walter Reed to try to prove that mosquitoes carry yellow fever. Finlay Cuban discovered that yellow fever is transmitted from infected to healthy humans by a mosquito. Although he published experimental evidence of this discovery in 1886, his ideas were ignored for 20 years.

1838- Happy Birthday Cleveland Abbe, (brother of Dear Abbe and Westminster Abbe ) first official weather forecaster (meteorologist) in the U.S. Abbe started a private weather reporting and warning service in Cincinnati. His weather reports or bulletins began to be issued on Sept. 1, 1869. Abbe was the only man in the country who was already experienced in drawing weather maps from telegraphic reports and forecasting from them, so when the U.S Weather Service was created he became the official forecaster of the weather. After all, folks had to blame somebody ! ….when the forecasts were wrong.

            1857 – Happy Birthday, author Joseph Conrad born Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski  in Poland. Conrad spent most of his life in England and spent sixteen years with the British Merchant Navy.  The experience provided his with the materials for his most famous works, Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, and Nostromo.

1895 - Happy Birthday Anna Freud, Austrian scientist, psychoanalyst; Sigmund's daughter. She was not “afreud” of the dark but was a founder and one of the foremost practitioners of child psychoanalysis.

            1910- Neon lighting, which had been developed by French physicist Georges Claude, made its public debut at the Paris Motor Show. The colored light is produced by passing electrical current through inert gases in a vacuum tube. As with many inventions, there was a lot of “accident” going on.  His purpose was actually to employ an inexpensive, high quality method of producing pure oxygen to sell to hospitals and welding shops. Looking for a way to use the large quantities of leftover gases such as argon and neon, Claude decided to fill a "Moore" tube with gases and then bombard those gases with electricity; this process, instead of producing pure oxygen, produced intense red and blue lights.  This day should probably be a civic holiday in Las Vegas.

            1912 – The preface to World War I – the first Balkan War ended as Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, and Montenegro signed an armistice with Turkey. In 1913, the Second Balkan War began after Serbia and Greece demanded that Bulgaria cede to them portions of Macedonia. On June 28, 1914, a Serbian, Gavrilo Princip assassinated Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo initiating a series of events connected to entangling alliances that would result in the start of WWI two months later.

1929 – Oh Herb!  President Herbert Hoover announced to the U.S. Congress that the worst effects of the recent stock market crash were behind the nation and the American people have regained faith in the economy.

1933 – Happy Birthday, Paul Crutzen, Dutch atmospheric chemist who received the 1995 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for demonstrating, in 1970, that chemical compounds of nitrogen oxide accelerate the destruction of stratospheric ozone, which protects the Earth from the Sun's ultraviolet radiation.  You know, like melting the polar ice caps.

            1947- A Streetcar Named Desire (discarded titles included; A Streetcar Named Like, A Streetcar Named Mild Infatuation; and A Streetcar Named Stalking), written by Tennessee Williams and starring Marlon Brando – who yelled for “Stella!”, Jessica Tandy, Kim Hunter, and Karl Malden opened on Broadway. The play would run until December 1949 and then be turned into the movie that made Brando a star in 1951.

            1960 –Lerner and Lowe’s musical, Camelot opened on Broadway starring Richard Burton, Robert Goulet (who stole the show as Lancelot) and Julie Andrews. 

1967 - Cape Town, South Africa, Dr. Christiaan Barnard, with his team of 20 surgeons, performed the first human heart transplant on a South African businessman, 54-yr-old Louis Washkansky.  The donor was Denise Durval who had been hit by a vehicle while walking to her car from a fast food shop in South Africa. As she  was dying. Her father consented to the removal of her heart.  Washkansky died 18 days later from double pneumonia, contracted after destruction of his body's immunity mechanism by drugs administered to suppress rejection of his new heart.

            1973 - Pioneer 10, the first mission to be sent to the outer planets of the Solar System,  sent back the first close-up images of Jupiter from a distance of about 200,000 km. It spotted a life form, later identified as the pod that came to Earth and caused people to become idiots who appeared on  reality television shows. The spacecraft signal was last detected on Jan. 23, 2003. No signal at all was detected during a final attempt on Feb. 6-7, 2003. Pioneer Project staff at NASA Ames then concluded that the spacecraft power level had fallen below that needed to power the onboard transmitter, so no further attempts would be made

            1979 – In the words of the famous t-shirt, “I’d walk over you to see the Who”…..In Cincinnati, Ohio, eleven fans were killed during a stampede for seats before the British rock group Who concert at Riverfront Coliseum.

1984 - Shortly after midnight, the inhabitants of the city of Bhopal, in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, became victims of the world's worst industrial disaster. Over 40 tons of highly poisonous methyl isocyanate gas leaked out of the Union Carbide pesticide factory. Poisonous gases covered an area of  40 sq. kms killing thousands of people in its immediate wake. Over 500,000 suffered from acute breathlessness, pain in the eyes and vomiting as they ran in panic to get away from the poison clouds that hung close to the ground for more than four hours.  People continue to die from the after effects and the death toll has reached 20,000.

            1999- Mars Polar Lander kaput. The craft, launched in January of 1999  was in the final minutes of slowing itself down, ready to make a self-controlled touch down. It was never heard from again.  An investigation gave the most probable cause for the $ 110,000 failure as spurious signals when the trio of lander legs deployed during descent gave a false indication to onboard smarts of the spacecraft. It fooled itself into thinking it had landed, although it was high above Mars. (Sort of like Herbert Hoover, see 1929 above, thought the economy had recovered)The result  was  a premature shutdown of the spacecraft's engines and the destruction of the lander when it fell onto the planet. In this scenario, the probe would have been destroyed as it smacked into the surface at 50 miles per hour.

            1999- On the same day that Mars Polar Lander (see above) was lost, Tori Murden became the first woman to row across the Atlantic….she arrived at the pier just after her liner had sailed, jumped into a row boat and began rowing to try to catch it and ended up rowing the whole way from the Canary Islands to the West Indies…no, no, no Professor Sy Yentz has his trans-Atlantic sense of humor. Actually, she was on pace to set a record until being caught in a hurricane.  She rowed 3,333 miles in eighty-two days.

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4.        1783 – Nine days after the last British soldiers left American soil and truly ended the Revolution, at  Fraunces Tavern in New York City, US General George Washington formally said farewell to his officers.  “See ya guys,  take care”.  No, no, no Professor Sy Yentz has his oratorical sense of humor.

             1812-Peter Gaillard of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, patented the horse-drawn power mower. Lawns were large in those days – most of Pennsylvania was a lawn in fact- but think of a lawn mower being pulled by a horse except the lawn mower looks more like a plow that doesn’t dig….got it? One does wonder about what he invented to remove the horse droppings that replaced the grass mowed.        

            1843- Manila paper was patented  by J.M Hollingsworth of Massachusetts. This manilla tasted a bit more bland  than chocolate paper.    Manilla a strong paper or thin cardboard with a smooth light brown finish made from e.g. Manila hemp. And manila hemp is a kind of hemp obtained from the abaca plant in the Philippines.  And hemp is a plant fiber.      

           1849 – Happy Birthday, Crazy Horse, war chief of the Oglala Sioux, one of the bands of the Lakota. He was a prominent leader in the Sioux resistance to white encroachment in the mineral-rich Black Hills of South Dakota. He joined Sitting Bull and Gall in defeating George Armstrong Custer at the battle of the Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876.

            1858 – This was another of those “why hadn’t anyone thought of that before” inventions, so Happy Birthday, Chester Greenwood, American inventor and manufacturer of earmuffs. The fifteen year-old, had experienced very uncomfortable cold ears while skating in winter (duh!) near his home in Maine, and he solved his problem with beaver fur pads on a wire frame.  He patented an improved model with a steel band which held them in place and with Greenwood's Champion Ear Protectors, he established Greenwood's Ear Protector Factory. He made lots of money supplying Ear Protectors to U.S. soldiers during World War I.          

            1872 -The mystery of the Mary Celeste .The Dei Gratia, a small British brig, observed the Mary Celeste, an American vessel, sailing erratically but with full sail near the Azores Islands in the Atlantic Ocean. The ship was seaworthy, its stores and supplies were untouched, but not a single human was onboard.  Where did everyone go? Free Happy Meals at Azore’s MacDonalds? Forgot their passports and swam back to get them?  They were hiding and waiting for a signal to jump out and yell “surprise” but no one gave the signal so they just stayed hidden? Tis a mystery.

           1894-George Parker was issued a. patent for a fountain pen design that became the Parker Pen Company's first major success. The pen, named “The Lucky Curve”, solved the problem of  previous pens, which while carried in a pocket, retained ink in the feed tube, as opposed to depositing it in one’s bag or pocket.  Warmed by body temperature, the ink expanded forcing ink from the pen point into the cap and onto the barrel, causing ink-stained shirts or pants and soiled fingers on the next use. Parker’s feed system was designed to drain the ink back into the reservoir by capillary action (think of how liquid travels through plants) when the pen was upright in the pocket of its owner. Oh, and sort of putting the cart before the horse…… the slip-on outer pen cap was patented in 1898.

          1908 – Happy Birthday Alfred D. Hershey, American biologist and creator of the famous “blender experiment” – just like you’d see in a high school science class – to research viruses that infect bacteria, bacteriophages. He proved that only DNA, and not protein, was injected into a bacterial cell by an infecting phage particle. The DNA was sufficient to transfer to the bacteria all the genetic information needed to produce more phage……one could “turn the phage” or as Bob Dylan looked on it in the song, My Back Phages.  He put the phages in a bacterial colony and mixed them but then at the crucial moment he whirred them in a Waring Blendor, which he had discovered produced just the right shearing force to tear the phage particles from the bacterial walls.He won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1969.
           1952 – Not a Stephen King movie but  a heavy smog (a smog is fog that has become mixed and polluted with smoke, technically it’s a form of air pollution produced by the photochemical reaction of sunlight with hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides that have been released into the atmosphere, especially by automotive emissions) descended on  London, England, It persisted  for four days, leading to the deaths of at least 4,000 people. A seemingly harmless high-pressure air mass stalled over the Thames River Valley. When cold air arrived suddenly from the west, the air over London became trapped in place. Fumes from cars and factories were  also trapped in place.  To make matters worse, it was colder than normal which caused residents to burn extra coal in their furnaces. All that “gook” (Professor Sy Yentz likes his scientific vocabulary) caused an extraordinarily heavy smog to smother the city. The smog became so thick and dense that by December 7 there was virtually no sunlight and visibility was reduced to five yards in many places.

            1965- Gemini 7 was launched with astronauts Frank Borman and James Lovell (of Apollo 13 - "Houston, we have a problem" fame) aboard.  Of note is that a just-used urine collection bag split open early in the mission. The crew never managed to collect all the floating globules. When asked to describe the record flight later, Lovell described it as '...two weeks in the Men's Room'. The primary objectives of the mission were demonstrating manned orbital flight for approximately 14 days and evaluating the physiological effects of a long-duration flight on the crew. Among the secondary objectives were providing a rendezvous target for the Gemini 6-A spacecraft – more practice for the docking that would be needed for Moon landings.

            1978-  Pioneer Venus 1, launched in May of 1978 became the first craft to orbit Venus.  The Orbiter was inserted into an elliptical orbit around Venus The Orbiter was a flat cylinder 2.5 m in diameter and 1.2 m high.  It discovered that Venus’s was inhabited by a group of Amazons with pseudo actress/professional wife, Zsa Zsa Gabor as their ruler.  This was made into the documentary, Queen of Outer Space in 1958 – twenty years before the Venus Pioneer…amazing!

            1998 - The space shuttle Endeavor (STS-88) with crew of six astronauts was launched on the first mission to begin assembling the international space station.  By the way, Endeavor, as was all space shuttles, was named after a famous ship of discovery, the Endeavour of Capt. James Cook which sailed from 1768 -1771 during which he “discovered”, Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia: South Coast, Australia: North Coast and the Great Barrier Reef

5.        771 - Charlemagne became the sole King of the Franks after the death of his brother Carloman.  Charles has become known as Charles The Great or Charlemagne. His long reign changed the face of Europe politically and culturally, and he himself would remain fixed in the minds of people in the Middle Ages as the ideal king. In more recent times, many historians have taken his reign to be the beginning of the Middle Ages 'proper'. Yet in terms of territorial expansion and consolidation, of church reform and entanglement with Rome, Charlemagne's reign was merely bringing the policies of his father Pippin to their logical conclusions. The Franks (before they became a favorite fast food at Coney Island) The Franks were a confederation formed in Western Germany of a certain number of ancient barbarian tribes who occupied the right shore of the Rhine from Mainz to the sea. Their name is first mentioned by Roman historians in connection with a battle fought against this people about the year 241.  They later moved into Belgaic Gaul (France).

            1360 – Frankly speaking, speaking  of Franks (see Charlemagne 771 above, on this day the French Franc (the basic unit of the monetary system) was created. The franc was introduced by King John II. Its name comes from the inscription reading Johannes Dei Gratia Francorum Rex ("Jean by the grace of God King of the Franks").  John had been captured by the English and was freed by  ransom.  This instilled confidence (??) and the coinage of silver and billon was strengthened. With it came  the creation of a new gold coin called the "Franc d'or à cheval" (on horseback). It is the first FRANC of monetary history.

            1492 - Christopher Columbus, remember him from October?, became the first European to set foot on the island of Hispaniola. Columbus originally named it Espanola.  It is the second largest island of the West Indies, and located within the Greater Antilles. It is divided politically into the Republic of Haiti (west) and the Dominican Republic (east).

            1443 – Happy Birthday, Pope Julius II, Giuliano della Rovere, the “Warrior Pope” – he actually wore armor during an attack on Venice, also responsible for Michelangelo’s ceiling in the Sistine Chapel and Raphael’s paintings in the Vatican apartments.

            1868- The first American bicycle school opened in New York City. Funny, we didn't know that bicycles had to go to school.

            1782- Happy Birthday Martin Van Buren, 8th President of the U.S and the first to be native born, meaning born after the Revolution, not running around in a loin cloth and fishing with spears, although the thought of Martin Van Buren in a loin cloth………………..

            1791 – Mozart kaput. Composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died in Vienna at age 35. The reason for his death has for a long time been one of the mysteries of musical history, and is likely to remain so. Many theories have been put forward, suggesting ailments such as typhoid fever and kidney failure, and even murder. Rheumatic fever seems most likely, died during an epidemic. Mozart had also suffered from the disease several times as a child, and was thus more likely to contract it as an adult. He was struck suddenly by fever. Rashes and painful swellings followed, and he passed away 15 days later. He is currently decomposing

            1822- Happy Birthday, Elizabeth Cabot Agassiz,  U.S. naturalist and educator who was the first president of Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Mass. She married the Swiss naturalist, Louis Agassiz, in 1850. Agassiz made revolutionary contributions to the study of natural science with landmark work on glacier activity and extinct fishes. He achieved lasting fame through his innovative teaching methods, which altered the character of natural science education in the United States.  They traveled extensively together. When her husband died in1873, Elizabeth became interested in the idea of college for women to be taught by the "Harvard Annex" in Cambridge. In 1894 the Annex became Radcliffe College

 1839 – Happy Birthday, George Armstrong Custer –the day after Crazy Horse, see December 4, 1849 above), born in Rumley, Ohio -brevet Union General (brevet is a  commission promoting a military officer in rank without an increase in pay) – graduated at the bottom of his class from West Point in 1961- whose troops killed  Confederate Cavalryman Jeb Stuart at Yellow Tavern in May 1864 and met a gruesome end at the hands of the Oglala and Lakota Sioux led by Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull during “Custer’s Last Stand” at the Little Big Horn in June of 1876.

1854-  Although folding chairs have been around for a while.  They were used by the Egyptians, Etruscans, Greeks, Romans, during the middle ages and through the Renaissance. The next time you go to a show, a sporting event, or the movies, think of Aaron H. Allen of Boston, Mass. who was issued a patent for a folding chair as an "Improvement in Self-Adjusting Opera-Seat" for theatres or other public buildings. Not portable, but the notion of
foldability, adjustability and flexibility of design was paramount, The seat was constructed with weights or springs so it would assume and retain a vertical position when pressure upon it was relieved as the occupant got up from it. It’s basically the same principal and design as the folding seats you sit in now.

 1876- In a wrenching experience for all, D.C. Stillson of Somerville, MA. patented his Stillson wrench. It is a large pipe wrench with L-shaped adjustable jaws that tighten as pressure on the handle is increased.

            1901- We are certain we can say with certainty, Happy Birthday, Werner Heisenberg, German physicist and philosopher who discovered a way to formulate quantum mechanics in terms of matrices in1925. For that discovery, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for 1932. He is most famous, however for his indeterminacy, or uncertainty, principle published in 1927 upon which he built his philosophy. The uncertainty principle is the concept that precise, simultaneous measurement of some complementary variables -- such as the position and momentum of a subatomic particle -- is impossible. You can know where something (and electron) is but you cannot know its speed, conversely, you can know its speed but not where it is. Contrary to the principles of classical physics, the simultaneous measurement of such variables is inescapably flawed; the more precisely one is measured, the more flawed the measurement of the other will be. The uncertainty principle, component of quantum theory. Werner Heisenberg  explained it as "The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa."

            1901 – Happy Birthday, Walt Disney (born on the same day – see above as physicist Werner Heisenberg). Disney was a  pioneer of animated cartoon films (Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, Pluto, and Tom Cruise) and founder of the Disney theme parks, and countless merchandising ideas designed to separate people from their money.

             1908 - Numbers were used for the first time on football uniforms worn by college football players. The University of Pittsburgh Panthers wore their new numbers in the big  game with Washington and Jefferson.

 1933 – “I’ll drink to that.”  The 21^st Amendment to the Constitution repealed the 18^th Amendment to the Constitution.  This was the first time that an amendment repealed an amendment. Prohibition of alcohol was seen as an affront to personal liberty, pushed on the nation by religious moralists. Alcohol was also seen as a source of revenue for the local and national governments. In case you were wondering about the two that came between, the 19^th Amendment was women’s right to vote and the 20^th moved up the date of presidential inauguaration and the new Congress to to January 19 and January 3  respectively.

1945 - The story of the "Lost Squadron" established the legend of the Bermuda Triangle, an area of the Atlantic Ocean where ships and aircraft are said to disappear without a trace. The Bermuda Triangle is located  from the southern U.S. coast across to Bermuda and down to the Atlantic coast of Cuba and Santo Domingo.  Five U.S. Navy Avenger torpedo-bombers comprising Flight 19 left the Ft. Lauderdale Naval Air Station in Florida on a routine three-hour training mission. Flight 19 was scheduled to take them due east for 120 miles, north for 73 miles, and then back over a final 120-mile leg that would return them to the naval base. They never returned.  No trace of the bodies or aircraft was ever found.

            1952- Popular movie ( Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Buck Privates, The Time of Their Lives) comedians Bud Abbott and Lou  Costello debuted their TV show. They made only 52 episodes, but the show still appears in reruns.

            2006 – Your “Nanny State” at work as New York became the first city in the nation to ban artery-clogging trans fats at restaurants. Hydrogenation solidifies liquid oils and increases the shelf life and the flavor stability of oils and foods that contain them. Trans fat is found in vegetable shortenings and in some margarines, crackers, cookies, snack foods and other foods. Trans fats are also found in abundance in "french fries." Trans fats wreak havoc with the body's ability to regulate cholesterol.

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6.       1421 – Happy Birthday, King Henry VI of England. Henry was the “bud” if you will, in the Wars of the Roses. Only occasionally sane, Henry, a Lancaster,  was usurped by his cousin Edward of York who became Edward IV and eventually murdered in 1471.

            1598- Happy Birthday, Giovanni Bernini (brother of Heart Bernini), Italian who was perhaps the greatest sculptor of the 17th century and also an outstanding architect – the piazza and colonnades at St. Peter’s in Rome.  Bernini created the Baroque style of sculpture.  If a sculpture fell off its pedestal and hit the ground it was “baroque”.  No no no, Professor Sy Yentz has his baroque humor working overtime.

          1670- Happy Birthday, Niccolo Zucchi,. Italian astronomer who, in 1616, designed one of the earliest reflecting telescopes. This pre-dated the telescopes of  James Gregory and Sir Isaac Newton. Zucchi  had become interested  in astronomy from a meeting with Johannes Kepler. With his telescope Zucchi discovered the belts of the planet Jupiter in 1630 and the elastic waist-band of  Mars. Of course a vegetable was named after one of his body joints—the Zucchi Knee. Oh we have no shame.

             1778- Happy Birthday, Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac, French chemist.. In 1805, by exploding together given volumes of hydrogen and oxygen, Gay-Lussac discovered they combined in ratio 2:1 by volume to form water. Yup, H²O.

            1802 – Happy Birthday Paul-Emil Botta (brother of Bread & Botta),
French consul and archaeologist whose discovery of the palace of the Assyrian king Sargon II at Dur Sharrukin (modern Khorsabad -a village in northern Iraq, 15 km northeast of Mosul,), Iraq, initiated a rush of archaeological explorations  in ancient Mesopotamia. Sargon II, who ruled from 721 to 705 BC, believed in modest living, his palace was an entire city within walls a mile long with huge stone sculptures

          1833 – Happy Birthday, John Singleton Mosby, American Confederate partisan leader. Always working with small groups of men, his effectiveness in harassing Union troops can be debated. Early in 1863, with 29 men, he rode into Fairfax Court House and roused Union General Edwin H. Stoughton from bed with a slap on the rear end. Following the capture of Generals Crook and Kelley by McNeil's partisans, Mosby complimented them, stating that he would have to ride into Washington and bring out Abraham Lincoln to top their success. On another occasion he came near capturing the train on which Grant was traveling.       

            1848- Happy Birthday, Johan Polisa, Silesian (Poland) astronomer who was a prolific discoverer of asteroids, 122 in all, beginning with Asteroid 136 Austria on 18 Mar 1874, using a 6” refractor telescope  to Asteroid 1073 Gellivara in 1923 - all by visual observation, without the aid of photography. Cloudy nights with no observation opportunities were described as a “pain in the asteroid”.

            1865 – Georgia ratified the