1774 ~ Rhode Island became the first American colony to outlaw the importation of slaves.

1811 ~ Birthday of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Author.

1865 ~ Birthday of William Butler Yeats, poet and dramatist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in literature.

1892 ~ Birthday of Basil Rathbone, Actor.

1897 ~ Birthday of Paavo Nurmi, Runner.

1970 ~ "The Long and Winding Road" became the Beatles' last #1 song.

1983 ~ Pioneer 10 became the first manmade object to leave the solar system.

1995 ~ French president Jacques Chirac announced the resumption of nuclear tests in Polynesia.


I close this evening with a quote from “The Second Coming”, penned by Mr. Yeats in 1921, about our own times:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Poets are indeed the antennae of civilizations!

__________________
Eudaimonia