From time to time I like to pick a date and search for events that happened on that day in history. Today’s lucky date is December 10th, and let me tell you, it doesn’t disappoint. This time I selected five events spanning three centuries. Here is a bit of helpful info (courtesy of Wikipedia):
1768 — The first edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica is published
1787 — Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, who founded the American School for the Deaf, is born
1799 — France adopts the meter as its official unit of length
1817 — Mississippi becomes the 20th U.S. state
1901 — The first Nobel Prize ceremony is held in Stockholm
December 10th is the idea that inspired this week’s reading list, so yes, there’s a theme here (and, oh how I love themes). However, the titles feel random because multiple Deweys are represented. What do I mean by “Deweys”? I have a cat named Dewey, but I’m not referring to cat cloning. Every item in the library’s collection is assigned a call number (which is what you use to locate an item on the shelf), and those call numbers are based on the Dewey Decimal Classification system.
I get a kick out of a blend of random topics, a bibliographically mixed cocktail, so to speak. And when I can match books from the library’s collection with the cocktail’s ingredients, I’m ready to party!
Cheers to encyclopedias, education of the deaf and hard of hearing, units of measurement, Mississippi, and the Nobel Prize (check out “Marie Curie and Her Daughters” because she was the first woman to win a Nobel and the first person to win a Nobel Prize twice). Whoo-hoo to random reads!
