1. César Chávez Day--celebrated as an official holiday in
California, Colorado and Texas.
2. Thomas Mundy Peterson Day--observed in New Jersey
to honor Thomas Mundy Peterson, an Afro-American Republican who was the first
person to vote in a an election (held on this day in Perth Amboy, New Jersey in
1871 to consider an amendment to the city's charter) following the passage of
the XV Amendment to the Constitution.
3. Eiffel Tower Day--for
Francophiles, celebrating the completion of one of the world 's
iconic structures on this day in 1889 after two years of work.
4. Sign Up Or Pay Up Day--bemoaning the day in which under the ACA you have to have enrolled in
Obamacare or face a penalty, regardless of whether you want to be insured or
not--depending on the results in November, this holiday may be very short
lived.
On this
day in:
a. 1906 the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States
(later the National Collegiate Athletic Association) was formed to set rules
for college sports in the U.S.
b. 1951 the UNIVAC1, the first computer designed for business and
administrative purposes, was sold to the U. S. Census Bureau. Looking at one's
Notepad today, it is hard to believe that UNIVAC I used 5,200 vacuum tubes, weighed 29,000 pounds
(13 metric tons), had a footprint 35.5 square meters, consumed 125 kW, and
could perform about 1,905 operations per second running on a 2.25 MHz clock.
c. 1995 in what has become to be known as "Black Friday" in
the Hispanic community, Selana was shot to death by her friend Yolanda
Saldivar, cutting short a career that was just beginning to skyrocket.
If after trying to lift the UNIVAC 1, more women would have
gone into engineering, would we have had
purse friendly tablets far sooner? "Most
engineers like to proceed from A to B to C in a series of logical steps. I'm
the rare engineer who says the answer is obviously Z and we will get on with
that while you guys work out how to do all the intermediate steps. It makes me
a dangerous person to employ in IT but a useful one." — Sophie Wilson, designer of the Acorn
Micro-Computer and BBC Micro, BBC BASIC programming language, and the ARM
(Acorn RISC Machine), a foundational technology for handheld computing devices.
Please enjoy the 140
character poems on events of interest on my twitter account below (if you like
them, retweet and join almost 140 growing followers and please follow
me) and follow my blogs. Always good, incisive and entertaining poems on my
blogs--click on links below. www.alaskanpoet.blogspot.com
for poems on the Mustangs going to the Dance with a losing record; to honor Cindy
Abbott, a half blind 54 year old mother suffering from a rare disease who
competed in last year's Iditarod until forced out with a broken pelvis after
600 miles; on Bode Miller and the human spirit; for Cupid on Valentine's Day;
to honor Cory Remsburg to join a great collection of my poems to inspire,
touch, emote, elate and enjoy. Go to Rhymes On The Newsworthy
Times for poems on the death of Pastor Fred Phelps, founder of the Westboro
Baptist Church; Obama's "sanctions" compared to Rolling Thunder 49
years ago: Mustangs advance in the Dance
to await the Shockers; Russian Roulette with Putin; EPA's war against a Wyoming
family; on Jolly's upset win over Sink in the House's 13th District of Florida;
China's red line on war in Korea; De Blasio's payback to his union contributors
by attacking charter schools; Rutgers' faculty despicable attempt to ban Condi
Rice from being a commencement speaker; Newport Beach's assault on recovery
homes, including the Ohio House; on students protesting Keystone XL as the
world's largest oil producer militarily occupies the Crimea: the banning the
wearing of the American flag on Cinco de Mayo to join numerous other comments
on news events always in rhyme of course.
©March 31, 2014 Michael P. Ridley aka the Alaskanpoet
www.alaskanpoet.blogspot.com www.twitter.com/alaskanpoet Rhymes On The Newsworthy Times Ridley's Believe It Or Not www.facebook.com/Alaskanpoet www.linkedin.com/in/octechlaw
