ginsburglights.bsky.social
ginsburglights.bsky.social
ginsburglights.bsky.social
@ginsburglights.bsky.social
Date: 10/7/2026
Event: Niels Bohr's Birthday (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niels_Bohr)
Description: Copenhagen, 1885. Run a current through hydrogen and it glows pink; a prism splits the glow into a few sharp lines. In 1913 Bohr explained why: electrons may only jump between fixed orbits.
October 7, 2026 at 7:08 PM
Date: 10/6/2026
Event: 51 Pegasi b (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/51_Pegasi_b)
Description: Announced in 1995: 51 Pegasi b, the first planet found around a sun-like star, now named Dimidium for its half-Jupiter mass. It circles in 4.2 days, far closer than Mercury to the Sun. Nobel Prize, 2019.
October 6, 2026 at 7:09 PM
Date: 10/5/2026
Event: Louis Lumière's Birthday (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autochrome_Lumière)
Description: Besançon, 1864; with Auguste he built the Cinématographe. Their Autochromes filtered light through starch grains dyed red-orange, green and blue-violet: hazy, 'the colour of dreams'.
October 5, 2026 at 7:08 PM
Date: 10/4/2026
Event: The Gregorian Calendar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar)
Description: In Rome, Spain, Portugal and Poland, Thursday 4 October 1582 was followed by Friday the 15th; Britain waited until 1752. The reforming pope, Gregory XIII, bore a gold dragon on red.
October 4, 2026 at 7:09 PM
Date: 10/3/2026
Event: St Francis dies, 1226 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_of_Assisi)
Description: He died at dusk on 3 October 1226, 800 years ago tonight, in a hut by the Porziuncola. Italy makes his feast tomorrow a national holiday again. Colours from the frescoes of Assisi.
October 3, 2026 at 7:08 PM
Date: 10/2/2026
Event: Gandhi Jayanti (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandhi_Jayanti)
Description: Born 1869; also the UN's Day of Non-Violence. The flag he backed had a spinning wheel at its centre, for homespun khadi. In 1947 the Ashoka Chakra replaced it; until 2021 the flag had to be khadi.
October 2, 2026 at 7:08 PM
Date: 10/1/2026
Event: NASA opens (https://www.nasa.gov/history/)
Description: NASA opened for business on 1 October 1958, a year after Sputnik, built on the NACA's 8,000 staff and three labs. Its meatball insignia: a blue planet, white stars and orbit, a red wing for aeronautics.
October 1, 2026 at 7:08 PM
Date: 9/30/2026
Event: Botswana at 60 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Botswana)
Description: Bechuanaland became Botswana in 1966, one of the poorest countries on earth; diamonds turned up the next year. The flag's pale blue is rain, for the motto Pula; its black and white are the zebra.
September 30, 2026 at 7:09 PM
Date: 9/29/2026
Event: Fermi at 125 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Pile-1)
Description: Born in Rome, 1901. When his graphite pile under Chicago's Stagg Field went critical in 1942, Wigner opened a Chianti bought in his honour; they drank from paper cups and signed its straw basket.
September 29, 2026 at 7:09 PM
Date: 9/28/2026
Event: Today's date is not in the spreadsheet
Description: Everything is red
September 28, 2026 at 7:08 PM
Date: 9/27/2026
Event: Meskel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meskel)
Description: Ethiopia's feast of the Finding of the True Cross. At dusk the Demera, a cone of branches dressed in yellow Meskel daisies, is lit in Addis Ababa; how the pole falls and the smoke drifts are omens for the year.
September 27, 2026 at 7:09 PM
Date: 9/26/2026
Event: Gershwin's Birthday (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhapsody_in_Blue)
Description: Born in Brooklyn, 1898. Rhapsody in Blue was written in weeks for a 1924 concert; the clarinet slide began as a rehearsal joke. Ira took the title from Whistler's Nocturne in Black and Gold.
September 26, 2026 at 7:08 PM
Date: 9/25/2026
Event: Mid-Autumn Festival (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Autumn_Festival)
Description: The fifteenth of the eighth lunar month: mooncakes, lanterns, Chang'e on the Moon with the Jade Rabbit. The Harvest Moon rises full at sunset; Irvine's festival is at the Great Park from 5.
September 25, 2026 at 7:08 PM
Date: 9/24/2026
Event: Jim Henson at 90 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Henson)
Description: Born in Greenville, Mississippi, 1936. The first Kermit was half a ping-pong ball and his mother's old coat. At his memorial nobody wore black, by his wish; foam butterflies went down the aisle.
September 24, 2026 at 7:09 PM
Date: 9/23/2026
Event: Coltrane at 100 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Coltrane)
Description: Born in Hamlet, North Carolina, 1926; dead at 40. Blue Train, Giant Steps, A Love Supreme, Kind of Blue with Miles; a San Francisco church made him a saint. Blue Train blue, tenor brass at the window.
September 23, 2026 at 7:09 PM
Date: 9/22/2026
Event: Hobbit Day (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobbit_Day)
Description: Bilbo's and Frodo's shared birthday. At the Long-Expected Party Bilbo turned eleventy-one and Frodo thirty-three, so 144 guests dined; Gandalf's fire-drake roared three times overhead and burst over Bywater.
September 22, 2026 at 7:08 PM
Date: 9/21/2026
Event: H. G. Wells at 160 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._G._Wells)
Description: Born in Bromley, 1866. The War of the Worlds gave us the Heat-Ray, the red weed that choked the Thames, and Martians killed by bacteria; his Invisible Man matched his refractive index to air.
September 21, 2026 at 7:08 PM
Date: 9/20/2026
Event: Cannes at 80 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1946_Cannes_Film_Festival)
Description: The first festival opened in the old Casino in 1946. A storm tore off the roof before the prizes, Notorious ran with reels out of order, The Three Musketeers upside down. Eleven films tied.
September 20, 2026 at 7:08 PM
Date: 9/19/2026
Event: The Versailles Balloon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgolfier_brothers)
Description: In 1783, before Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, the Montgolfiers sent up a sheep, a duck and a rooster in a balloon of sky blue painted with gold suns and zodiac signs. All landed alive.
September 19, 2026 at 7:09 PM
Date: 9/18/2026
Event: Tiffany & Co. founded (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiffany_%26_Co.)
Description: Charles Tiffany and John Young opened a fancy-goods shop at 259 Broadway in 1837 on $1,000 from Tiffany's father. The robin's-egg blue of its boxes was trademarked in 1998: Pantone's 1837 Blue.
September 18, 2026 at 7:08 PM
Date: 9/17/2026
Event: Riemann at 200 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernhard_Riemann)
Description: Born Breselenz, 1826, a poor pastor's son; dead of TB at 39. In eight pages of 1859 he guessed where the zeta zeros lie; no one has proved it. Functions drawn by hue: the wheel, zeros in the window.
September 17, 2026 at 7:08 PM
Date: 9/16/2026
Event: Mexican Independence Day (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cry_of_Dolores)
Description: About 2:30 in the morning of 16 September 1810, Hidalgo had the bells of Dolores rung and called the town to revolt; nobody wrote down what he said. The president rings that bell each year.
September 16, 2026 at 7:09 PM
Date: 9/15/2026
Event: Central America at 205 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Republic_of_Central_America)
Description: Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica all date independence from the act signed in Guatemala City in 1821. Their flags keep its blue-white-blue.
September 15, 2026 at 7:08 PM
Date: 9/14/2026
Event: Ganesh Chaturthi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganesh_Chaturthi)
Description: Ten days of Ganesha begin today and end with the idols carried into the water. Clay figures under marigold and red hibiscus, vermilion on the brow, and modak of coconut and jaggery for the god.
September 14, 2026 at 7:08 PM
Date: 9/13/2026
Event: Schoenberg's Birthday (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Schoenberg)
Description: Born on a 13th in 1874; died Friday the 13th, 1951, as he feared. 'Farben' passes one chord, C-G#-B-E-A, through changing instrumental colours. The chord in Scriabin's key-colours, top down.
September 13, 2026 at 7:08 PM