Next up is Richard Henry Dana, Jr. He died in 1882. As a young student at Harvard, he got the measles and found his eyesight weakened. (doesn't make sense to me either, but whatever). It was suggested to him that he go to California as a common sailor. So he did. And he returned two years later. Appalled by how the common sailors were treated, he wrote a book which he called "Two Years Before The Mast". It became a best-seller. How big? He revisited California twenty-some years later, and had people tell him that things had changed from "the old days" and that it wasn't like the days of the Pilgrim and the Alert (the two ships he sailed on). And those were people who didn't know who he was. It is a really interesting book, which I've been meaning to re-read. So you should do the same. You can find it for free online.
In 1919, Theodore Roosevelt died. He was quite a character. I had a professor who had edited some of his writings (or all of them). Apparently TR went into a bar once, while working as a cowboy, and told the bartender to give him a drink and "hasten quickly". His peers started using the expression "hasten forward quickly" a lot. The same professor told a story of going to meet a woman, the offspring of another prominent American of the time- sadly I don't recall exactly who. As they were leaving someone commented on the lovely house, inherited from her parents, and asked if TR had ever been there. She said he had, and that he told her parents that "I like that room because it has a high ceiling. And I like that room because it has a low ceiling.". As is so often the case, there's a lesson there, but God knows what it is.
Lost on this date in 1945 was Edith Frank. She was Anne's mother. She died of starvation caused by saving every possible scrap of food to give to her two daughters. Alas, you know how the story ends. Her noble actions didn't help any of them.
And on that depressing note, we're done for another day.
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