This was a day of chaos and order in history. The first US copyright statute was enacted as the Copyright Act of 1790 and the clock tower at the British House of Parliament, which houses Big Ben, began keeping time in 1859. But then in 1899 the Johnstown Flood destroyed Johnstown Pennsylvania and caused over 2,200 deaths. The Mexican Revolution cause long-time President /dictator Porfirio Diaz to fell the country in 1911. And the Tulsa race massacre killed at least 55 to 300 people and destroyed the black-owned business section of the city in 1921 – an incident that has been largely forgotten by history but should not be forgotten.

Today was the birthdate of American poet Walt Whitman (1819) as well as the first woman to practice Western medicine in Japan, Kusumoto Ine (1827), and the first African-American scientist to work on the Manhattan Project, Lloyd Quartermann (1918) a chemist who specialized in fluorine. It was also the birthday of famed quarterback Joe Namath (1943), actor Clint Eastwood (1930), and singer-songwriter Peter Yarrow (1938), who I got to hear in concert several years ago and whose music with Peter Paul & Mary will live forever (who can forget Puff the Magic Dragon?).

On this day the music ended for Austrian pianist and composer Joseph Haydn and the writing and experimenting stopped for psychologist, author and LSD-dropping Timothy Leary (1993, “tune in, turn on, drop out”). We also said farewell to Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to receive a medical degree in the US (1910), boxer Jack Dempsey (1983), and the long-suffering ‘Edith Bunker” Jean Stapelton (2013). And we remember the murder of physician George Tiller, gunned down while serving as a church usher, for the “crime” of helping support women’s health rights.:(

For those who wish to quit smoking, cold turkey, or otherwise, today is World No Tobacco Day.