Celebrate

Let the celebrations begin! This is the traditional date in 1693 which is ascribed to Dom Perignon’s invention of champagne. In 1789 we could celebrate the abolition of feudalism by the National Constituent Assembly in France. Saturday improved with the publication of the Saturday Evening Post as a weekly newspaper for the first time in 1821. And energy management took a step forward in 1977 when President Carter signed legislation creating the Department of Energy.

One of the leading lights of the Scottish Enlightenment, Thomas Blackwell, was born in 1701. The English Romantic period poet Percy Bysshe Shelley as born in 1792. This was also the birthdate for jazz and blues great trumpeter Louis Armstrong (1901) , Maurice “the Rocket” Richard (1921) the Canadian great hockey player, former President Barack Obama (1961), and current Duchess of Sussex and wife of Prince Harry, Meghan Markle (1981).

Those who passed on this day include the Danish storyteller Hans Christian Andersen (1875), failed 1876 presidential candidate and former New York City mayor Samuel Tilden (1886), and gun control activist and 15th White House Press Secretary James Brady (2014) who was himself wounded in the assassination attempt on President Reagan in 1981.

It is Coast Guard Day in the US, celebrating the formation of what was to become the Coast Guard. And in Illinois it is celebrated as Barack Obama Day, remembering his service in the Illinois legislature and representing Illinois in the US House before becoming US President.