One definition of the word “promontory” is “point of high land over water.” Another would be “great view here.”

The First Transcontinental Railroad was completed with a single golden spike on this date in 1869 at Promontory Point, Utah, almost 5000 feet above sea level. The rail lines were laid down on a steep incline to such a high elevation because the Great Salt Lake was considered an impediment; the west-to-east Central Pacific line detoured around the lake. Great view, indeed.

Promontory Point was selected by cartographers after conferences in Washington, DC, were held to determine where the Central Pacific line construction (heading east, over the Sierra Nevada Mountains) and the Union Pacific line construction (heading west across the plains, from Omaha, Nebraska) would meet.

The meeting of the rail lines (the “Wedding of the Rails” as newspapers headlined it at the time) was to take place on May 8, but bad weather held the ceremony (photo above) until May 10. Remarkably, the last 10 miles of track had been laid down in only 12 hours to be ready for the May 8 ceremony.
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The story of the publication of the novel Watership Down is almost as beloved as the novel itself: Richard Adams, part of the U.K. Ministry of Housing and Local Government throughout the 1950s and ’60s (he rose to the rank of Assistant Secretary), began composing a story to tell his two daughters for each day’s drive to school.

Richard Adams is 96 today. He told the Telegraph in 2014, “The stories I told in the car had nearly always been shaped and cut and edited by myself for oral narration. When I was lying down to go to sleep in the evening I would think out the bit of story I was going to tell the girls the next day.” In 1972, at the age of 52, he typed up the story that he had been telling his daughters and sent it to literary agents and publishers. Four publishers rejected it, as did three agencies.
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In the United States and many other nations, today is Mother’s Day. Like many people, I have a mom (waves to the camera), and I love my mom very much. In much of the world, Mother’s Day is celebrated with the spring equinox or at the end of Lent.

As I have gotten older, I have involuntarily started saying “Mommy” when saying so long on a phone call or good night to her. And I am not 8.

To all the moms out there: you have my love and respect and admiration.

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Don Rickles is 90 today. He is still performing and even has an appearance scheduled for this week. His stand-up act is remarkable, for someone his age or any age, really: it’s unscripted. Yes, he knows what “insults” he will deploy “against” audience members, and he knows that somehow he will convey that he is on the audience member’s side and not punching down at them. “If I were to insult people and mean it, that wouldn’t be funny. There is a difference between an actual insult” and doing that, he often states.
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