On this day in 1994 the Channel Tunnel rail line opened between England and France. The idea of a tunnel under the English Channel connecting France and England was proposed as early as 1802 by a French mining engineer, but it wasn’t until 1988 that a plan was approved of. The Tunnel has the longest underwater section in the world and construction ended up costing nearly twice as much as the original budget, about £9 million.

Today is the birthday of Willie Mays, Baseball Hall of Famer. Both of Mays parents were athletically gifted, his father playing baseball on a local Alabama team. Willie was playing catch by five and sitting on the bench at his dad’s baseball games by age ten. By high school he was playing on a semi-pro Negro league team, and by age 19 in he was playing in the MLB Minor Leagues. That same year on May 24th, he was called up to the Majors to play for the New York Giants, where he would stay for nearly 20 years. His final two seasons were with the New York Mets. 

His accolades, among many, include 24 All-Star Game appearances, Rookie of the Year, a World Series Championship, and a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015. 

Today is the birthday of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. Much of Freud’s work led to significant developments and new understandings in the field of psychology and psychoanalysis, despite large parts of his original work being disproved. Freud showed curiosity from a young age and was very fond of reading. Literary critic Harold Bloom even goes so far as to say that Freud’s love of Shakespeare impacted Freud’s understanding of human psychology. 

Freud was living in Austria at the time of the Nazi take over in Germany. He resisted leaving, despite his know Jewish origins. It wasn’t until the German takeover of Austria in 1938 that things got serious. It wasn’t until his daughter was arrested and questioned by the Gestapo, that Freud was definitively swayed to leave. By then however, the leaving proved more difficult. 

Freud had been assigned a Kommissar, a Nazi official who monitored Freud’s financial assets and his appeal for departure. Despite the Kommissar’s respect for Freud after reading all Freud’s work, there was only so much he could do. The “flight tax” was still more than Freud had at his disposal, his assets having been mostly seized by the Nazi regime. The Princess Marie Bonaparte of France, a longtime patron and friend of Freud paid the flight tax and arranged Freud’s travel plans to leave Austria.

And today is the birthday of Júlio César de Mello e Souza, Brazilian author and professor of mathematics. His most popular book was The Man Who Counted, which he published under the pen name Malba Tahan. It tells the story of two travelers in Arabia and contains a number of delightful math puzzles and curiosities in the telling. Although Júlio never traveled to Arabia himself, he was a big fan of the Arabian Nights and all the tales in it. 

As a professor he strove to come up with teaching methods that were more engaging to help students retain information better. His works on teaching theory are still praised today, and he taught and lectured to teachers up until his death in 1974 at the age of 79. 

Henry Charles Beeching