Saturday

Dec. 26, 1998

from A Christmas Carol

by Charles Dickens

SATURDAY 12/26

Reading: An excerpt from A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens (1843).

Today is the FIRST DAY OF KWANZAA, the celebration marked by African-Americans and others with family roots in Africa.

It's BOXING DAY in Britain and Canada and in other countries around the world.

It's the birthday of American poet and writer JEAN TOOMER, born Nathan Jean Toomer in 1894 in Washington, D.C., author of the book of prose poetry, Cane (1923), which described the people and landscape of Georgia.

It's the birthday of HENRY VALENTINE MILLER, born in New York City in 1891, author of Black Spring (1936), Tropic of Capricorn (1939), and Tropic of Cancer (1934).

It's the birthday of mathematician and computer pioneer CHARLES BABBAGE, born in 1791 in England, who is credited with having designed the first automatic digital computer in the 1830s.

It's the birthday of English poet THOMAS GRAY, born in London in 1716, author of "An Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard."

It was on this day in 1620 that the PILGRIMS—about 102 of them—got off the Mayflower and went ashore at the site of Plymouth, Massachusetts, about 35 miles southeast of Boston. The trip from Plymouth, England had taken them 66 days.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®

 

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