Remember the Road Less Taken

In 1812 a political cartoon in the Boston Gazette coined the term gerrymandering, meaning redistricting manipulation for political gain, taking its name from founding father Elbridge Gerry. In 1830 the Book of Mormon was published in Palymrya New York. And in 1975 nearly seventy years after they were used massively in WWI the Biological Weapons Convention came into effect.’s

In 1979 a stunning peace treaty, the Camp David Accords, was signed by Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, Isreal’s Menachem Begin, and US President Jimmy Carter. And in 1982 the groundbreaking ceremony was held for the sobering name-etched Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial was held in Washington DC.

This was the birthday of American poet laureate Robert Frost (1874), American mythologist and author Joseph Campbell (1904), American playwright Tennessee Williams (1911), and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and Nixon gadfly Bob Woodward (1943).

It was the birthdate for actors Leonard Nimoy (Spock, 1931) and James Caan (Rollerball and the Godfather, 1940). Glass-ceiling breakers Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor (1930) and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (1940) began their rise to history on this date.

This date marked the departure of the one and only Beethoven (1827) who kept composing even when he was so deaf that he had the lay his head of the piano and write by vibrations. The leaves of grass finally wilted for American poet Walt Whitman in 1892. And the controversial English-South African colonialist and politician Cecil Rhodes passed away in 1902, leaving a legacy of academic scholarships for deserving students.

We also said goodbye to one of the leaders of WWI – David Lloyd George, Prime Minister of England in 1945, and the first female US VP candidate Geraldine Ferraro.

It is Independence Day for Bangladesh and Purple Day in the US and Canada, recognizing the struggle against epilepsy