Late last night it became January 14, 2023. Yesterday wasn’t an unlucky day for me. I set my bar low. If nothing bad happens on a given day, it’s a good day. It’s either one or the other. I fully expect this day to be another good one. It’s Feast of the Ass Day, International Kite Day, Dress Up Your Pet Day, National Vison Board Day, Organize Your Home Day, Take a Missionary to Lunch Day, and National Hot Pastrami Sandwich Day, preferably from Katz’s Deli in NYC. Yum! Now onto history. On this day in 1601 Church authorities in Rome burned Hebrew books. On this day in 1641 the Dutch East India Company conquered the city of Malacca, Indonesia killing 7,000. Interesting because a company, not a country, raised an army of mercenaries to carry out the attack. On this day in 1690 the clarinet was invented. On this day in 1669 Massachusetts holds a day of fasting for wrongly persecuting “witches”. On this day in 1761 in the 3rd battle of Panipat the Muslim Afghani Empire defeated the Hindu Maratha Empire. Between 60,000 and 70,000 people were killed along with 40,000 Maratha prisoners massacred afterwards. Yikes! On this day in 1784 the US Congress ratified the Treaty of Paris ending the Revolutionary War. On this day in 1864 General Sherman began his march to the South. On this day in 1878 the US Supreme Court ruled that race separation on trains was unconstitutional. This is the day in 1956 that Little Richard released the single “Tutti Frutti”. Today’s dead person is English author Lewis Carroll who wrote “Alice in Wonderland.” Lewis said, “One of the secrets of like is that all that is really worth the doing is what we do for others.” “I can’t go back to yesterday because I was a different person then.” “I’m not strange, weird, off, nor crazy. My reality is different from yours.” “If you do not know where you want to go, it doesn’t matter which path you take.” The last quote from Mr. Carroll is so powerful in many ways: “If you want to inspire confidence, give plenty of statistics. It does not matter that they should be accurate, or even intelligible, as long as there is enough of them.” Abide.
