Daily Calendar for Thursday, March 30, 2023
Question of the Day
Before gravity was understood, what did the ancients think caused tides?
Some people explained the motion of the planets by assuming that the planets were being pushed by angels. The same may have been true for tides. In other words, the explanation was found in supernatural forces. Since the Mediterranean Sea is very little affected by the tides, the ancient Greeks and Romans paid very little attention to it. Plutarch and Aristotle recognized the Moon as the cause of the tides, without understand gravitational pull. Pliny believed that the Moon had an attraction which caused the tides. Other scientists, like Ptolemy, settled just for a description without searching for a cause.
Advice of the Day
Cut branches of mock orange for forced indoor blooms.
Home Hint of the Day
If you look through a magnifying glass at a file, you’ll be able to see the teeth that do the actual filing. Always direct the file so that it’s cutting. If you draw the file along wood or metal in the opposite direction, you’ll clog the file.
Word of the Day
Declination
The celestial latitude of an object in the sky, measured in degrees north or south of the celestial equator; analogous to latitude on Earth.
Puzzle of the Day
How much dirt is there in a hole five feet deep, six feet long, and three feet wide?
None; there is no dirt in a hole.
Born
- Moses Maimonides (rabbi) –
- Anna Sewell (author) –
- Vincent van Gogh (Dutch artist ) –
- Sean O'Casey (playwright) –
- Jo Davidson (sculptor) –
- Warren Beatty (actor) –
- Eric Clapton (musician) –
- Tracy Chapman (musician) –
- Celine Dion (singer) –
- Secretariat (racehorse) –
- Norah Jones (singer) –
- Scott Moffatt (musician, of The Moffatts) –
- Anna Nalick (musician) –
Died
- Queen Mother Elizabeth (Britain’s beloved Queen Mum”“) –
- Timi Yuro (singer) –
Events
- President Washington proclaimed boundary of new capital city on Potomac River–
- Dr. Crawford Long of Jefferson, GA, placed an ether-soaked towel over the face of James Venable and removed a tumor from his neck. This was the first recorded use of anesthesia–
- H. L. Lipman, of Philadelphia, patented the first pencil with eraser–
- America bought Alaska from Russia due to pressure from Secretary of State William Seward (Seward’s Folly). The price was $7.2 million, or slightly more than $0.02 an acre–
- Impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson began–
- Texas readmitted to the Union–
- Queensboro Bridge, the first double-decker, opened in New York City–
- Official opening of Canada’s first subway (Toronto)–
- Woody Guthrie’s song This Land is Your Land copyrighted–
- Jeopardy! game show made its television debut–
- The last rum ration was issued in the Royal Canadian Navy–
- President Ronald Reagan was shot and wounded outside a Washington, D.C., hotel–
- An anonymous buyer paid over $39 million for Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers–
- Possible UFO seen, Little Fox Lake, Yukon Territory–
- Superathletes Kirill Shimko and Pavel Soroka pulled five railway cars more than 20 feet–
Weather
- Hurricane-force winds uprooted trees and brought high tides to the coast and heavy snows inland from Pennsylvania to Maine–
- In North Dakota, heavy rain and snowmelt around Fargo produced severe flooding–
- A line of thunderstorms and tornadoes tore up homes and knocked down power lines in Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, and Nebraska–