FROM WIKIPEDIA COMMONS

Andrew Jackson Young Jr. (born March 12, 1932) is an American politician, diplomat, and activist. Beginning his career as a pastor, Young was an early leader in the civil rights movement, serving as executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and a close confidant to Martin Luther King Jr. Young later became active in politics, serving as a U.S. Congressman from Georgia, United States Ambassador to the United Nations in the Carter Administration, and 55th Mayor of Atlanta. Since leaving office, Young has founded or served in many organizations working on issues of public policy and political lobbying.

TODAY’S ALMANAC

Question of the Day

A math book I was reading said that the Fibonacci sequence is applicable to certain things in nature. There was a picture of a pinecone in the book. Do pinecones have anything to do with Fibonacci numbers?The Fibonacci sequence is a series of numbers (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, etc.) in which each term, after the second term, is the sum of the preceding two terms. In the study of botany, these numbers have proved useful in describing the positioning of leaves around plant stems, the spiral patterns in sunflower heads, and the scales of pinecones, to name but a few examples.

Advice of the Day

Horsepower was a wonderful thing when only horses had it.

Home Hint of the Day

Melt down your leftover candle stubs and dip pinecones in the wax. They make great fire starters for the fireplace or wood stove and also look nice piled up in a box or basket.

Word of the Day

DiurnalDaily; refers to events which recur every 24 hours, such as a daily temperature cycle.

Puzzle of the Day

Why does a person who is poorly lose his sense of touch?Because he doesn’t feel well.

Died

• Betsy Ross (American seamstress and upholsterer) – 1836
• Orville Wright (aviator) – 1948
• Mahatma Gandhi (Indian spiritual and political leader) – 1948
• John Bardeen (physicist) – 1991
• Pierre Boulle (author) – 1994
• Coretta Scott King (civil rights activist; widow of Martin Luther King Jr.) – 2006
• Wendy Wasserstein (Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning playwright) – 2006
• Sidney Sheldon (author & producer) – 2007

Born

• Walter J. Damrosch (composer) – 1862
• Franklin Delano Roosevelt (32nd U.S. president) – 1882
• David Wayne (actor) – 1914
• Dick Martin (comedian) – 1923
• Dorothy Malone (actress) – 1925
• Gene Hackman (actor) – 1931
• Vanessa Redgrave (actress) – 1937
• Boris Spassky (chessmaster) – 1937
• Dick Cheney (former secretary of defense and U.S. vice president) – 1941
• Marty Balin (singer) – 1943
• Lynn Harrell (cellist) – 1944
• Phil Collins (musician) – 1951
• Christian Bale (actor) – 1974

Events

• Funds were approved to purchase Thomas Jefferson’s library in order to rebuild the Library of Congress, which had been destroyed by the British during the War of 1812– 1815
• Yerba Buena, a U.S. town of 200 people, was renamed San Francisco– 1847
• Great Britain and Japan signed the Anglo-Japanese Alliance– 1902
• The Original Dixieland Jazz Band released Darktown Strutters’ Ball, the first commercial jazz recording– 1917
• Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany– 1933
• The Lone Ranger made its radio debut– 1933
• Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated– 1948
• 30 millionth customer added to U.S. electrical utilities– 1954
• President Kennedy and Aleksei I. Adzhubei, editor of Izvestia, principal Russian newspaper, held conversations at the White House– 1962
• The Beatles gave their last public performance on the roof of their Apple Corps headquarters– 1969
• Pakistan became independent of Great Britain– 1972
• 31-lb. 12-oz. bluefish caught, Hatteras, North Carolina– 1972
• Andrew Young was sworn in as the first African American ambassador to the United Nations– 1977
• David Bradley, the man who wrote the computer code CtrlAltDelete (forces computers to restart when they will no longer follow other commands), retired from IBM after 28.5 years with the company– 2004
• A buffalo escaped from an auction in South Dakota and ended up in a Grand Rapids department store dressing room where it spent a couple of hours staring into a mirror– 2005

Weather

• Two-day storm brought Birmingham, Alabama 11 inches of snow– 1936
• Great Buffalo Blizzard abated after 3 days: 75 mph winds caused whiteouts and huge drifts that paralyzed the city– 1977
• An avalanche shut down a stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway along the B.C.-Alberta border– 2006
• In northern Ohio, a train traveling in high winds derailed on a bridge over Sandusky Bay, sending several freight cars into the water– 2008

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