Wednesday
Mar. 3, 1999
Vacuuming Spiders
Poem: "Vacuuming Spiders," by Charles Goodrich, from Insects of South Corvallis (Knot House).
It's the birthday of British mystery writer NICOLAS FREELING, 1927, London, author of Love in Amsterdam (1965), The Widow (1979), and Wolfnight (1982).
It's the birthday of poet JAMES MERRILL, born in New York in 1926, the son of the founder of the brokerage house, Merrill-Lynch. His Nights and Days won the National Book Award in 1966, and Divine Comedies the 1976 Pulitzer Prize.
The first issue of TIME magazine went on sale on this day in 1923.
It's the anniversary of INTERNATIONAL AIRMAIL, the first packages flown from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Seattle in 1919.
It's the anniversary of the 1863 CONSCRIPTION ACT, a declaration by President Abraham Lincoln ordering all able-bodied men between the ages of 20 and 45 to sign up for the Union army unless they could pay $300.
It was on this day in 1817 that the FIRST COMMERCIAL STEAMBOAT ROUTE from Louisville, Kentucky, on the Ohio River, down to New Orleans began.
Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®