Sunday

Nov. 7, 1999

Broadcast Date: SUNDAY: November 7, 1999

Poem: "The Fear of God" by Robert Frost from The Poetry of Robert Frost published by Holt, Rinehart, Winston.

We're at the HALFWAY POINT OF AUTUMN today. As of 4:27 EST this morning, an equal amount of time—44 days, 20 hours, and 36 minutes—has elapsed since the first day of autumn back on September 23, and that which will elapse before the first day of winter, December 22.

The 30th annual NEW YORK CITY MARATHON is today, 29,000 runners competing for the 1st-place purse of $50,000. Last year's top two finishers were Kenyans John Kagwe (KOG-way) and Joseph Chebet (CHEH-bet), who finished three seconds apart, Kagwe coming in at 2:08:45. Runners officially get ten hours to run the race on city streets—anybody out after that has to hit the sidewalks to finish.

It's the anniversary of the 1917 BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION. Bolshevik in Russian means "One of the Majority," and it was a workers' party formed in 1903 by Vladimir Lenin. They pitted themselves against a group of conservatives they derisively called Mensheviks, or "Those of the Minority." Lenin's slogan was "peace, land, and bread." The November Revolution was actually the second one of 1917: the first was in the spring and it saw the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II; after a provisional government tried all summer and early-fall to establish order, Lenin led the Bolsheviks in the November coup, occupying government buildings, telegraph stations, and other strategic points. Within days they began suppressing all rival political organizations.

It's the birthday of the French philosopher and writer ALBERT CAMUS, born in Algiers, 1913. Between the late 1930s and his death in 1960 at 46, he published essays, short stories, plays and novels about man's isolation in the universe, and the problem of evil in the world. His first novel The Stranger (1942), was about a man condemned to death partly for shooting another man, but more for the fact that he only says exactly what he feels and refuses to conform to proper society. Other novels followed: The Plague (1947), and The Fall (1956), and he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature when he was 44 years old.

It's the birthday of MARIE CURIE, born in Warsaw, Poland, 1867, and famous for her work on radioactivity; and one of the rare double Nobel Prize winners. Her father was a math and physics teacher in Warsaw and Marie got her early basic education there, but she moved to Paris when she was 24 years old to begin studying physics. She married Pierre Curie and together they discovered two important new elements: polonium, which she named after her native Poland, and radium; both elements are radioactive, a term that Curie coined. They won the 1903 Nobel in Physics for their work, and eight years later she captured the Nobel in Chemistry, for the further work she'd done on radium.

It was on this day in 1805 that LEWIS AND CLARK sighted the Pacific Ocean on their great overland expedition that began at St. Louis the year before. It was near the mouth of the Columbia River, not far from where Astoria, Oregon stands today. They wrote in their journal that day: "Great joy, we are in view of the ocean which we have been so long anxious to see, and the roaring or noise made by the waves breaking on the rocky shores may be heard distinctly."

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

 

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