Daily Calendar for Tuesday, May 23, 2023
Question of the Day
Why is a nautical mile different from a land mile?
The mile was originally a Roman linear measure of 1,000 paces — about 1,618 yards. (Its length has varied considerably at different periods and in different localities; the legal mile is now 1,760 yards, or 5,280 feet.) Such a linear measurement cannot be used at sea, so the nautical mile is based on the length of one minute of arc (or 1/60 of a degree) of a great circle of Earth. Owing to the fact that Earth is not a true sphere, the mile as thus defined varies considerably. Therefore, the British assigned it a standard value of 6,080 feet.
Advice of the Day
Bigger is not necessarily better and going faster is not necessarily progress.
Home Hint of the Day
A square of asphalt shingles will cover 100 square feet of surface. Three bundles of asphalt shingles (each containing twenty-two 3-foot-long shingles) make up a square.
Word of the Day
Whangdoodle
An imaginary creature, or an undefined character.
Puzzle of the Day
Why should you never tell a joke to an egg?
Because it might crack up.
Died
- Captain William Kidd (hanged in London) –
- John D. Rockerfeller (entrepreneur) –
- Sam Snead (golfer) –
- Anne Meara (actress) –
- Eric Carle (children’s book author, most notably The Very Hungry Caterpillar) –
Born
- Carolus Linnaeus (botanist) –
- Douglas Fairbanks (actor) –
- John Bardeen (physicist) –
- Artie Shaw (bandleader) –
- Rosemary Clooney (singer) –
- Barbara Barrie (actress) –
- Joan Collins (actress) –
- Robert Moog (inventor) –
- Drew Carey (actor; host of The Price is Right) –
- Mitch Albom (author) –
- Ken Jennings (won 74 straight games on Jeopardy! game show in 2004) –
- Jewel (musician) –
Events
- Benjamin Franklin created his own pair of bifocals–
- South Carolina was admitted to the Union as the 8th state–
- Explorer William Clark: “Water freeses [sic] on the oars” in what is now Montana.–
- North-West Mounted Police formed (now Royal Canadian Mounted Police)–
- New York Public Library in New York City is established–
- Townsend-Purnell Plant Patent Act became the first in the United States to grant patent protection to plant breeders–
- Actor Errol Flynn appeared on the cover of LIFE Magazine–
- Queen Juliana of the Netherlands laid the cornerstone of the tower housing the Netherlands Centennial Carillon in Victoria, British Columbia–
- Five people were killed, when a large part of the roof of a new terminal collapsed at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport in France–
- Hugh Laurie was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace–
Weather
- Folks were sleighing in Farmington, Maine–
- Late season snowstorm blanketed eastern Iowa with 4 to 6 inches of snow–