Today in History: Nov. 29

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Erwin Schrödinger published a paper titled “The present situation in quantum mechanics” on this date in 1935 in which he presented a thought experiment in a joking way that involved a box that contained a vial of poison, some radioactive uranium, a Geiger counter … and a cat. Happy birthday to Schrödinger’s cat, always simultaneously dead and alive.

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The New York Yankees signed free agent outfielder Reggie Jackson to a five-year, $2.96 million contract 40 years ago today.
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Today in History: Nov. 28

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

“This is how I made 500 friends and 15,000 enemies.”—Truman Capote

Truman Capote spent the summer of 1966 toting around a classic marble-covered composition book in which—he told everyone and anyone he met—he was compiling a list of names to invite to his grand party, to be held that fall in the ballroom of the Plaza Hotel. “Maybe you’ll be invited, and maybe you won’t,” he told anyone and everyone he met that summer.

Those who made the cut received the invitation at top in the mail.

Fifty years ago tonight, Truman Capote threw his party of the century, his “Black and White Ball,” with more than 500 of the country’s most famous and powerful writers, artists, journalists, and politicians in attendance. It was an old-fashioned masked ball, perhaps the last major one in memory. The men wore tuxedos and masks and the women ball gowns and masks.
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Today in History: Nov. 27

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

… So that how it can be that a stone, a plant, a star, can take on the burden of being; and how it is that a child can take on the burden of breathing; and how through so long a continuation and cumulation of the burden of each moment one on another, does any creature bear to exist, and not break utterly to fragments of nothing: these are matters too dreadful and fortitudes too gigantic to meditate long and not forever to worship …—James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, 1941

James Agee was born on this date in 1909.

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San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk were shot and killed by a disgruntled former city supervisor while at work in City Hall on this date in 1978.
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