On this day in 1883 New York State Governor Grover Cleveland passed legislation that would allow for the creation of the first state park in the United States, Niagara Falls State Park. The bill approved the “selection, location and appropriation of certain lands in the village of Niagara Falls” and in 1885 the Park was officially opened. The landscape architect Frederick Olmsted had been a big proponent of the bill, believing that the area should be preserved for its obvious natural beauty and open for the general public to enjoy. 

And on this day in 1997, “The Puppy Episode” premiered on ABC toward the end of season 4 of the TV sitcom Ellen. In the episode, Ellen Morgan, played by Ellen DeGeneres, came out as gay. It might seem common place now to have TV show characters of all different sexual orientations, but just 22 years ago, it was a big deal. Despite protests and boycotts of the show in certain towns, it was the highest rated show of the series with 42 million viewers. 

Today is the birthday of Carl Friedrich Gauss, a German mathematician and physicist in the first half of the 19th century. 

Gauss’s mother, being illiterate, did not record the date of little Carl’s birthday, but Carl, intrigued to know later in life, discovered his day of birth by coming up with a formula for calculating what day of the year Easter is both in the past and future. The only detail his mother remembered about the day is that Carl was born eight days before the Feast of the Ascension, which is always 39 days after Easter. Quite a juicy little math puzzle if you know the variables.

His efforts really shone in geometry where he was able to turn geometric principles and surfaces into algebraic equations. Perhaps the most well know of his findings is the Theorem Egregium otherwise known as Gaussian curvature or the Bell Curve. 

Gauss, who said “It is not knowledge, but the act of learning…the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment.” was slow to publish his findings. Colleagues would sometimes complain that he did not publish more, but Gauss was a perfectionist and refused to publish his conjectures, though many of his thoughts and notes have since been proven by other mathematicians. 

And today is the birthday of Cecily Lefort, female spy for England and France during WWII. She and her husband opened their home in Brittany, northwestern France, to the French Resistance. As Cecily spoke both English and French, she was recruited for the Jockey Network and tasked with gathering information on the enemy. 

She was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 and unfortunately did not survive the concentration camp she was sent to. She is listed as Killed in Action and received a posthumous Croix de Guerre.

Today is also the birthday of Luigi Russolo, Italian painter and maker of instruments. His noise instruments were called intonarumori and to be honest, sound pretty weird. He composed songs for the instruments and the few concerts he held were met with outrage and rioting, which he predicted. Jury still out on whether they were outraged because the noise music struck a cord or if it was because they had paid to see it. 

Having listened to intonarumori, I can attest it’s kind of odd. Interesting, but odd. (You can listen to a modern day reproduction of it here.) The noises are akin to sounds of Industrial Revolution Era streets, though some ears say it’s a precursor of the synthesizer. Russolo’s early noise music is quite different from the noise music that is around today. 

Emily Dickinson