The date is July 10th, Wednesday, and today I’m coming to you from Portland, Oregon. Today is the birthday of Nikola Tesla , Serbian-born American engineer. He is known for his Tesla Coil and the contributions he made to alternating current electricity supply system. He was born in 1856 to an Eastern Orthodox Priest and his wife. Tesla’s mother, Đuka Mandić Tesla, had a knack for crafting tools for use in the home and fixing what mechanical appliances the family had. Despite no formal education,...
Jul 10, 2019•5 min•Ep. 57
The date is July 9th, Tuesday, and today I’m heading from Los Angeles, California to Portland, Oregon, in the USA. Today is the birthday of Elias Howe , American inventor of the sewing machine. Born in 1819 in Massachusetts, Elias Howe was reportedly interested in machines and how they worked from an early age. He began working in a cotton factory in Boston as soon as he was old enough. To survive the hard financial times of 1837 and preceding years, Howe bounced from factory to factory. The exp...
Jul 09, 2019•5 min•Ep. 56
The date is July 8th, Monday, and today I’m coming to you from Los Angeles, California, in the USA Today is the birthday of John Pemberton , American pharmacist and inventor of the Coca-Cola secret recipe. Pemberton was born and raised in Georgia, outside of Atlanta. He finished up a medical degree at age 19 in 1850. He tried practicing medicine and surgery but was ultimately drawn toward the chemistry side. He opened up a drug store in a town outside of Atlanta. He got married, had a son, and l...
Jul 08, 2019•5 min•Ep. 55
The date is July 5th, Friday, and today is my last day in La Serena, Chile. Today is the birthday of Étienne (EH-tien) de Silhouette , a notoriously cheap Comptroller-General of finances under King Louis XV in 1759. As the head of France’s finances he was in charge of pulling the nation out of a mound of debt. He did so by taxing the wealthiest citizens, curtailing the spending habits of the Royal family, and reforming state pensions. Although his methods were more or less effective, they earned...
Jul 05, 2019•5 min•Ep. 54
The date is July 4th, Thursday, and today I’m coming to you from La Serena, Chile. On this day in 1776, America’s Second Continental Congress unanimously voted to ratify the Declaration of Independence. As such, today America celebrates its independence and it is a national holiday in the States. I’ll spare everyone the long story that is the American Revolution this year, and instead opt for a reading the poem “The Star Spangled Banner” by Francis Scott Key. The poem was set to music in the yea...
Jul 04, 2019•4 min•Ep. 53
The date is July 3rd, Wednesday, and today I’m coming to you from La Serena, Chile. On this day in 1608, Québec City was founded by Samuel de Champlain. Champlain landed with three ships at the shore of the city on the bank of the St. Lawrence River. He and his crew set about fortifying the city with walls and a moat. Québec City is one of the oldest European settlements in North America and the only city north of Mexico City to still have parts of its original fortifying walls. Today is the bir...
Jul 03, 2019•5 min•Ep. 52
The date is July 2nd, Tuesday, and today I’m coming to you from La Serena, Chile. Today is the ‘midpoint’ of the year. We’ve put 182 days of 2019 behind us and there are 182 days to go. Today, people in Chile and Argentina will experience a Total Solar Eclipse – including me! A Total Solar Eclipse is when the moon passes directly in front of the sun, blocking it out completely. It essentially becomes nighttime for two minutes during the middle of the day, with stars visible during totality. You ...
Jul 02, 2019•5 min•Ep. 51
A French aviator, American poet, and the only Olympic Medalist from Ecuador share a birthday. “The Morning Glory” starts off the new month. The date is July 1st, Monday, and today I’m coming to you from La Serena, Chile. Today is the birthday of Louis Blériot, French engineer and aviator . In 1909 he became famous as the first person to fly across the English Channel and received £1000 from a contest held by the Daily Mail. But before that he made his fortune in car headlamps. In his early twent...
Jul 01, 2019•5 min•Ep. 50
The date is June 28th, Friday, and today I’m coming to you from La Serena, Chile. Today is the birthday of Jean-Jacques Rousseau , Genevan writer and philosopher. His writings The Social Contract and Discourse on Inequality were heavily influential in the European Enlightment, as well as various independence movements in the Western Hemisphere. Born in 1712, Jean-Jacques’s mother died of fever just nine days after his birth. His father’s sister moved in and helped raise Jean-Jacques and his olde...
Jun 28, 2019•5 min•Ep. 49
The date is June 27th, Thursday and today I’m coming to you from La Serena, Chile. Today is the birthday of Paul Laurence Dunbar , African American poet, novelist, and playwright. Dunbar, though he had a short career, achieved a good deal of success mostly through his poetry. Born in 1872 in Dayton, Ohio, Paul was the child of an emancipated mother and a father who has escaped slavery just before the end of the Civil War. The marriage wasn’t happy though and the couple separated after the birth ...
Jun 27, 2019•5 min•Ep. 48
The date is June 26th, Wednesday, and today I’m coming to you from La Serena, Chile. Today is the birthday of Pearl S. Buck, American writer. Her most famous work is certainly her novel The Good Earth , though she would write over 85 combined novels, short stories, and essays during her career. The Good Earth was the best-selling fiction book in America for 1931 and 1932 and Pearl was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for it. Pearl was born to Christian missionary parents in 1892. That same yea...
Jun 26, 2019•5 min•Ep. 47
The date is June 25th, Tuesday, and today I’m coming to you from La Serena, Chile. Today is the birthday of English writer Eric Arthur Blair, known better by his pen name George Orwell. He’s remembered today for his novella Animal Farm and novel Nineteen Eighty-Four . From his work we get terms like “Big brother” and the “Thought Police” and of course there is the word “Orwellian” which refers to the dystopian reality depicted in Nineteen Eighty-Four . During his short lifetime, Blair, or Orwell...
Jun 25, 2019•5 min•Ep. 46
The date is June 24th, Monday, and today I’m coming to you from La Serena, Chile. On this day in 1947 aviator Kenneth Arnold of Washington State made the first widely reported UFO sighting . As he was flying a plane near Mt Rainer in Washington, he claims to have seen nine unusual flying objects. He said they were shaped like a pie pan or like a saucer. The term “flying saucer” was quickly used by the media. The US Government was quick to label Arnold’s sighting a mirage as they generally are wo...
Jun 24, 2019•5 min•Ep. 45
The date is June 21st, Friday, and today I’m coming to you from La Serena, Chile. Today is the Summer Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere and the Winter Solstice in the Southern Hemisphere. The Earth is at a point of maximum tilt toward the sun, accounting for the longest day of year for the Northern hemisphere and shortest day for the Southern. Just part of another trip around the sun! Although in regions closer to the equator, today is mid-summer, in the more seasonal climates it is the offici...
Jun 21, 2019•5 min•Ep. 44
The date is June 20th, Thursday, and today I’m coming to you from La Serena, Chile. Today is the birthday of Charles W. Chesnutt , African American writer and activist. He was born in 1858, a few years before the start of the civil war, to free-born parents in Ohio. His parents were of mixed race, resulting in Chesnutt’s light complexion. The mystery surrounding who his grandfathers were, would lead to Chesnutt’s life-long fascination with miscegenation, or mixed-race persons. Struggling to iden...
Jun 20, 2019•5 min•Ep. 43
The date is June 19th, Wednesday, and today I’m coming to you from La Serena, Chile. Today is Juneteenth . On this day in 1865 in Galveston Texas, Union Army General Gordon Granger read “General Order No. 3” from the top deck of Ashton Villa. It had been two years since Lincoln had given the Emancipation Proclamation, and this was the first the slave population was hearing of their freedom. General Granger had arrived with 2000 troops to enforce the freeing of all the slaves. The beginning of hi...
Jun 19, 2019•5 min•Ep. 42
The date is June 18th, Monday, and today I’m coming to you from La Serena, Chile. Today is the birthday of Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia, sometimes referred to as Princess Anastasia. Born in 1901, she was the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, the last Russian Tsar. Anastasia’s birth was a grave disappointment to her parents. The tsarina’s biological clock was ticking and instead of a male heir, they had produced a fourth girl. Fortunately, the birth of her brother Prince Alex...
Jun 18, 2019•5 min•Ep. 41
The date is June 17th, Monday, and today I’m coming to you from La Serena, Chile. Today is the birthday of Ruth Graves Wakefield , American chef and inventor of the most popular cookie in America: the chocolate chip cookie . After graduating in 1924 from what is now known as Framingham State University, with a degree from the Department of Household Arts, Ruth lectured and worked as a dietician in the Massachusetts town. In 1930, Ruth and her husband bought a small inn in Whitman, MA a popular s...
Jun 17, 2019•5 min•Ep. 40
The date is June 14th, Friday, and there are 200 days left of 2019. Today I’m coming to you from La Serena, Chile. In honor of Father’s Day this weekend , we have a bit about the origins of Father’s Day. Before it was nationally observance in the US, Father’s Day was primarily celebrated by Catholics and Christians on March 19th, the feast day of St. Joseph. In Latin America, Father’s Day is generally still celebrated on March 19th. Once Mother’s Day became a tradition in the US, it didn’t take ...
Jun 14, 2019•5 min•Ep. 39
The date is June 13th, Thursday, and today I’m coming to you from La Serena, Chile. Today is the birthday of Irish poet William Butler Yeats, more commonly referred to as W.B. Yeats . He was born to an artist father and heiress mother in 1865 in Ireland, but the family moved to London shortly thereafter to benefit his father’s artistic career. While in London, Yeats along with his three siblings were informally homeschooled by their mother and father. Their mother regaled the children with Irish...
Jun 13, 2019•5 min•Ep. 38
The date is June 7th, Friday, and today is my second to last day in Buenos Aires! Today is the birthday of Paul Gauguin , French artist. He was active in the second half of the 19th Century and painted in the post-Impressionist style, which was characterized by an experimental use of color and folk-art influences. (MoMA published a catalogue of Gauguin’s work, which you can see/get here .) He did extensive traveling for an artist and caught the traveling bug at an early age. As a baby, his famil...
Jun 07, 2019•5 min•Ep. 34
The date is June 6th, Thursday, and today I’m coming to you from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Today is the birthday of Thomas Mann, German-born writer. Mann received the Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 54 for his two epic novels Buddenbrooks and The Magic Mountain and his numerous short stories. It was Thomas Mann who said: “In books we never find anything but ourselves. Strangely enough, that always gives us great pleasure, and we say the author is a genius.” In Mann’s fiction work, readers...
Jun 06, 2019•5 min•Ep. 33
The date is June 5th, Wednesday, and today I’m coming to you from Buenos Aires, Argentina. On this day in 1851 the first two chapters of Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe appeared in The National Era . Uncle Tom’s Cabin was set to run for just a few weeks in the abolitionist newspaper, but the story and its characters became so popular, that Harriet Beecher Stowe expanded the narrative. It ended up running for 40 weeks. On the weeks that Uncle Tom’s Cabin was not in print, The National ...
Jun 05, 2019•5 min•Ep. 32
The date is June 4th, Tuesday, and today I’m coming to you from Buenos Aires, Argentina. As weird as it might sound, on this day in 1855 Major Henry C. Wayne set sail on the USS Supply to procure a small herd of camels for the US military. He stopped in the Mediterranean making it to Greece, Turkey, Egypt (of course), and Tunisia, picking up 33 camels, two being pregnant. They also hired five expert camel drivers and bought a variety of gear including saddles and saddle packs that they wouldn’t ...
Jun 04, 2019•5 min•Ep. 31
The date is June 3rd, Monday, and today I’m coming to you from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Today is the birthday of Josephine Baker , African American dancer, entertainer, spy, and activist. Josephine was born in 1906 under suspicious circumstances. As noted by her son in Baker’s biography, Josephine’s mother was taken in by a white hospital in St. Louis, Missouri, and given care unknown to African American women at the time. Most minorities gave birth at home with the help of a midwife or nurse. J...
Jun 03, 2019•5 min•Ep. 30
The date is May 31st, Friday, and today I’m coming to you from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Today is the birthday of American writer and poet Walt Whitman . Born in 1819 on Long Island, Walt considered his childhood relatively unhappy with an impecunious father leading the family. When Whitman was just four, the family moved to Brooklyn, his father seeking better employment. Brooklyn is where Walt would grow up, the city and country still reveling in its young glory of being an independent nation. W...
May 31, 2019•5 min•Ep. 29
The date is May 30th, Thursday, and today I’m coming to you from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Today is the feast day of Joan of Arc, patron saint of soldiers and France. She was born around 1412 in rural France to a farmer with 50 acres and his wife. She never received any formal education and was illiterate. Her local church however was right around the corner from her home and it could be inferred that her ecclesiastical knowledge came from her close proximity to the church as well as her intense ...
May 30, 2019•5 min•Ep. 28
The date is May 29th, Wednesday, and today I’m coming to you from Buenos Aires, Argentina. On this day in 1953, Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary reached the top of Mount Everest . They were the first to conclusively reach the top and took plenty of pictures looking down to prove it. Hillary also took the now-iconic picture of Norgay on the summit, holding his ice axe overhead. Afterwards, Norgay , a Nepali-Indian Sherpa mountaineer, decided to take May 29th as his birthday . He knew he was born...
May 29, 2019•5 min•Ep. 27
The date is May 28th, Tuesday, and today I’m coming to you from Buenos Aires, Argentina. On this day in 585 BCE the Battle of Halys (hey-lis) came to a quick end when a Solar Eclipse occurred over the battlefield. When the sunny skies suddenly turned dark, the two armies immediately dropped their weapons and came to a truce, ending a five-year-long war. The account was written down by the Greek philosopher and scientist Thales and remains the first ever noted solar eclipse. If you’ve ever witnes...
May 28, 2019•5 min•Ep. 26
The date is May 24th, Friday, and today I’m coming to you from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Today is the birthday of Lillian Moller Gilbreth , an industrial/organizational psychologist. The title sounds fancy, but it’s really quite practical. She, along with her husband Frank Gilbreth ran a consulting business, helping companies increase productivity and efficiency in their systems. They were particularly looking at things on the human level. [A lot of their early work was on how to increase worker ...
May 24, 2019•5 min•Ep. 25
