On This Date: 09/16/16

First, and importantly, Happy National Guacamole Day!

On this date in 1620 the Mayflower set sail from England with Captain Christopher Jones and crew and their 102 passengers.  About half lived long enough to step foot on land again.

On this date in 1810 a Roman Catholic priest rang the church bells in Dolores, Mexico, and urged the people to revolt and launched the war that led to Mexico’s independence from Spain.

On this date in 1908, at age forty-six, William C. Durant invested $500,000 to create General Motors.  Durant went bankrupt during the Great Depression and reportedly ended up managing a bowling alley in Flint, Michigan, in his eighties.

On this date in 1959 Xerox introduced the first copy machine to the world on live television.  The 914 model featured “scorch eliminators” since they periodically burst into flames and marketers thought that the word “fire” in fire extinguisher was a bad idea.¹

On this date in 1970 yours truly was born in Arkansas, completing the little Sturgeon family.  Little me snagged the same birthday as legends like Lauren Bacall, B.B. King, Elgin Baylor, David Copperfield, and exactly one year later, Amy Poehler.

I find all of this interesting, particularly the part involving my birth.  But to be honest, I’m more interested in what will happen on this date.  Today.  September 16, 2016.

What will you do with this gift of a day?  Maybe you’ll do something to make the history books, but my hope is that you do something world-changing that won’t.  The greatest moments in life are those quiet treasures like investing time in the life of a child, getting to know someone different from you, sharing with someone who is living without, and lending your friendship to someone who is lonely.

We will all do something on this date, but once this day is in the books, will anyone care to remember?

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¹ Hemmungs Wirtén, Eva (2004). No Trespassing: Authorship, Intellectual Property Rights, and the Boundaries of Globalization. University of Toronto Press. p. 61.