This is a good day to start a blog

Observing the calendar, the twenty-seventh day of February, seems highly propitious for new ventures - much better, say, than the twenty-sixth, which historically seems to have been a day of sheer bloodshed and nastiness; and infinitely better than the twenty-eighth, which is most remembered in recent times as the day of the 1993 Branch Davidians gun battle in Waco, Texas.

If we are to levitate apples with our MacIntoshes, I doubt there's a better day than this one: the anniversary of the 1782 British House of Commons vote directed at ending the war with the United States; the day that, in 1827, New Orleans kicked off its first Mardis Gras; and the day that, in 1906, the world marked the passing of Samuel Pierpont Langley, builder of the first heavier-than-air flying machine to achieve sustained flight.

Sam's flying machine weighed twenty-six pounds, had two sets of fourteen-foot wings, and was powered by a small steam engine. The inventor passed on to obscurity in Aiken, South Carolina, and the unknowing jet jockeys from Shaw Air Force Base probably send vibrations through his grave every day.














Another welcome thing to happen on this day was the fire at the Borley Rectory in 1939. It was described as "the most haunted house in England" (presumably excluding the House of Lords) and the locals were glad to see it go.

Not only is the twenty-seventh day of February distinguished by inventiveness but by discovery. Constantine Fahlberg discovered saccharine on this day in 1879 at Johns Hopkins University - and it's hard to find a packet of sugar in the cafeteria there to this day. And Cambridge University's James Chadwick discovered the neutron on this day in 1932 - for which he later received the Nobel Prize. Mind you, we have to take his word for the fact that they exist - but I'm okay with that.

Compare all these goings-on with the twenty-eighth and you'll be glad you posted your opinions in the sunshine of enlightenment. As just one example, tomorrow is 362 years to the day away from the one on which the Massachusetts Puritans put poor old Roger Scott on trial for falling asleep in church.

Imagine that. He gets bored into unconsciousness and they blame him. Let's hope the practice doesn't spread to the baseball diamonds this summer.

- Himself