December 28, Babies!

Looking like another slow day here... To start, we have the day in 1612 when Galileo sees a new heavenly body... and no, I don't mean the waitress down at the local café.  Apparently he thought it was a star, at least initially, but it turned out to be Neptune.  Close enough, I guess. 

Interesting little fact here:  In 1867, the US claims a small atoll in the middle of the Pacific.  I suppose it was intended for a coaling station or something similar.  (Actually, the initial idea was to get guano from it, aka bird poop.  But it was later intended as a coaling station though it was apparently unsuitable.  Then the Navy put up an airfield, and spit spot, it became useful).  What's significant is that it's the first piece of land the US claimed outside of North America.  What's sorta significant too is the name:  Midway Island.  I suspect we'll see that sleepy little atoll show up in history again someday.  Just a hunch I have. 

In 1912, a western city starts running streetcars on the, well, streets.  But they were owned by the City itself!  Exciting, eh?  Not one of those streetcars was, to my knowledge, named "Desire".  But the city was of course San Francisco.  And shortly after that, they began selling Rice-A-Roni, I guess.  Though I could be wrong about that. 

For football fans, this is the anniversary of "The Greatest Game Ever Played", as it's generally known.  I think that could be argued today, but whatever.  It was of course the Baltimore Colts, who sneaked out of town in the middle of the night some years ago, on the instructions of the owner to become the Indianapolis Colts, and the New York Giants who strolled out of town a long time ago to play in New Jersey, along with the other "New York" football team.  At any rate, the game went into overtime of the sudden death variety, and the Colts won.  And yet, just last year Donovan McNabb still apparently didn't know that overtime games were sudden death.  Of course, in one of their dramatic wins this season, Detroit had to remind the officials that since it was overtime, and the rules during the regular season are that overtime is... you guessed it, sudden death... the other team didn't get the ball.  Which was nice, since for once the officials made a call in a Lions game that wasn't against the Lions.  Always nice when that happens. 

And if you're old enough to remember when they mattered, you might care that it was on this date in 2000 that Montgomery Ward (or more familiarly, Monkey Ward) announced they were closing all their stores and going under.  Shoppers responded with a resounding "Huh?  They were still in business?"