1497 Florentine Americus Vespucci left on his first voyage to the New World. He went on to demonstrate that Brazil was a separate land mass, not the eastern edge of Asia. Once that was realised it had to be named and his seemed the obvious choice. In all he sailed for the King of Portugal to the New World four times. I once saw his statue on the Uffizi as below.
1752 Benjamin Franklin flew a kite during a lightning storm. His aim was to demonstrate that lighting and electricity were the same thing. He put lightning rods on the roof of his house and elaborate bells connected to them that rang to alert him of the approach of a lightning storm, much to the irritation of Mrs Franklin. I read Walter Isaacson’s turgid biography of Ben years ago. Franklin was quite a fellow, and — did one know? — briefly President of Pennsylvania.
1869 Promontory Summit (Utah), Technology. The Golden Spike was driven binding the transcontinental railroad, reducing the sea-to-sea journey from four months to one week. Though lives were lost in the construction, the job was completed ahead of schedule and under budget. Though I lived and worked for a year nearby in Logan and Ogden, I never visited the site. My bad.
1908 Philadelphia, Society: The first informal Mother’s Day was observed. Anna Jarvis (pictured below) advocated such a day to recognise the role of women as mothers, and she and others lobbied President Woodrow Wilson who conceded in 1914. Business interest, photographers and greeting cards, quickly took it up much to the irritation of Jarvis who in response organised boycotts and launched lawsuits against Hallmark Cards, because she had registered a trademark for Mother’s Day in 1912. Hallmark dropped the apostrophe and continued. Jarvis was arrested for disturbing the peace in her later protests.
1994 Nelson Mandela took the oath of office to serve all South Africans as president, ending three hundred years of white rule. He is the saint of our time.
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