1484 Westminster, Literature: William Caxton printed a translation of Aesop’s ‘Fables.’ He was the first person to operate a printing press in England, and the first retailer of printed books, starting with this one.
1920 Princeton (NJ), Literature: Twenty-three year old Scott Fitzgerald of Minnesota published ‘This Side of Paradise.’ He was a distant relative of Francis Scott Key. Maxwell Perkins at Scribners worked with him and gambled on his success.
1953 Pittsburg (PA), Science: Jonas Salk announced on radio that he had a proven vaccine against poliomyelitis. In 1952 there were 58,000 new cases of polio recorded. Within two years the number of new cases dropped to 6,000. Now the few new cases are usually traced to imported origins. Though the anti-Vaxxers want to change that. Those who cannot remember the past will repeat it on someone else.
1996 Sydney, Library: A sculpture of Trim on a window sill of the Mitchell Library was unveiled. Trim accompanied Matthew Flinders on his circumnavigation of the content of Australia. Trim lived all his days on ships, and after falling overboard more than once, learned to swim. The exception was the two months the shipwrecked Flinders spent on an island and another six months when the French imprisoned Flinders on Mauritius as a spy. Trim came and went freely and learned to like French Creole cuisine and stayed on the island. Trim’s effigy is just behind a statue of Flinders the Macquarie Street side.
2005 Bristol, Entertainment: After an absence of sixteen years Dr Who returned to the small screen embodied by Christopher Eccleston as the ninth doctor with the Tardis and the sonic screwdriver. Eccleston agreed to one year only and offered a much more spare and focussed Doctor than many of his predecessors or successors. This Doctor also often deferred to his associates in a way previous Doctors did not do.
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