The Gad About Town

One hundred years ago today, American newspapers reported that John D. Rockefeller (above) had become the first individual to be worth more than a billion dollars.

Rockefeller’s 247,692 shares of stock in his Standard Oil Co. were now worth close to $499 million, after an increase in their share price the previous day. The article concluded that this amount, when combined with his possessions “in various banks, railroads, enormous blocks of national, state, and municipal bonds, [that] brings his total up to the billion mark.”
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The Norman forces led by William, Duke of Normandy, landed at Pevensey in Sussex, in the south of England, 950 years ago today.

A few years later, the event was depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry, the enormous (230 feet long) artwork that commemorates the Norman invasion and victory at the Battle of Hastings. (Seen above.)

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“The affair between Boston and Ted Williams has been no mere summer romance; it has been a marriage, composed of spats, mutual disappointments, and, toward the end, a mellowing hoard of shared memories. It falls into three stages, which may be termed Youth, Maturity, and Age; or Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis; or Jason, Achilles, and Nestor.”—John Updike, “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu,” October 22, 1960, The New Yorker

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