Daily Calendar for Thursday, February 29, 2024
Question of the Day
Who decided on the placement of the keys on a typewriter (or a computer keyboard)?
We had to go to the expert on this one. Anthony Casillo, collector and historian of typewriters, informs me that Christopher Latham Sholes, who invented the typewriter in 1868, patented as the Sholes & Glidden Type-Writer, first used the QWERTY arrangement as a result of trying to avoid the type bars clashing at the printing point. At first the keys were arranged alphabetically, but the machine kept jamming. When frequently used combinations of letters were separated mechanically in order to avoid this problem, the end result at the keyboard was QWERTY.
Advice of the Day
Leap year was ne’er a good sheep year.
Home Hint of the Day
Keep magnets handy in your toolbox and your shop. They make it easy to pick up hardware that you spread out or spill.
Word of the Day
Syzygy
The nearly straight-line configuration that occurs twice a month, when the Sun and the Moon are in conjunction (on the same side of Earth at the new Moon) and when they are in opposition (on opposite sides of Earth at the full Moon). In both cases, the gravitational effects of the Sun and the Moon reinforce each other, and tidal range is increased.
Puzzle of the Day
Why is it that a man cannot own a cane that is too short?
Because it can never be-long to him.
Died
- Alessandro Striggio (composer) –
- Jerome Lawrence (playwright) –
- Davy Jones (musician; member of The Monkees) –
Born
- Jimmy Dorsey (bandleader) –
- Dinah Shore (singer) –
- Jack Lousma (astronaut) –
- Willi Donnell Smith (fashion designer) –
Events
- Hattie McDaniel became the first African American to win an Academy Award for her role as Mammy in the film Gone With the Wind–
- In Berkeley, California, physicist Ernest Lawrence received his 1939 Nobel Prize in Physics–
- Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau announced his resignation –
- In Bethel, Maine, the largest snowwoman (122 feet, 1 inch tall) was dedicated–
Weather
- A heavy snowstorm dumped 30 inches on Salem, Massachusetts–
