‘Making Our Voices Heard’: Rare Disease Day 2016

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Last year, when I wrote about Rare Disease Day, a friend asked, tongue firmly in cheek, “Why not have Rare Disease Day on February 29th?” I admit that when I learned about Rare Disease Day several years ago, after I was diagnosed with one, a similar joke crossed my mind. Each year, the last day in February is the date for International Rare Disease Day, and Leap Day, that quadrennial day, is a good one for us to remind the world that rare diseases are not at all rare.

Today, February 29, is International Rare Disease Day, and “Making the voice of rare diseases heard” is this year’s slogan.

Rare Disease Day was first established in 2008 by EURODIS, the European Rare Disease Organization. In 2009, the National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD) in the United States joined the effort to educate the public.
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Today in History, Leap Year’s Edition

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

If it was not for our leap seconds—and, every four years, leap days—our clocks and calendars would slide and slip all over the place compared to what they are measuring; if not for leap days, eventually New Englanders would be confronted with a frigid July and the dog days of December, and vice versa for the Southern Hemisphere.
 
What our clocks and calendars are measuring is perfect: a year is X number of seconds, days, months, but not the same every year. The earth’s orbit is regular and perfect, but not 365 days every year. It is almost 365 days, and a day is almost exactly 24 hours in length, and we live with the compromise we call clocks and calendars. The ancients came as close to exactly right simply from observation as they could—to within seconds.—”Time’s Mulligan,” TGAT

Today is Leap Day. Every four years, Leap Day William (pictured above) travels from his home in the Mariana Trench to trade candy for children’s tears. It is a beloved national holiday honoring the taking of chances.

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Today in History, February 27

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Iraq President Saddam Hussein ordered his forces to retreat from Kuwait and U.S. President George H.W. Bush declared that nation liberated 25 years ago today.

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Five sections of Gustav Holst’s orchestral suite “The Planets” were performed in public for the first time by the Royal Philharmonic Society conducted by Sir Adrian Boult on this date in 1919. The movements that were performed were Mars, Mercury, Saturn, Uranus, and Jupiter. This selection became a popular version of “The Planets,” even though Holst himself disdained performances that concluded with Jupiter. His daughter wrote that he “disliked having to finish with Jupiter, to make a ‘happy ending’, for, as he himself said, ‘in the real world the end is not happy at all.'”
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