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smileymlc
Today is the first full day of Fall. One hundred and fifty-eight years ago on this day, Lyev Nikolayevich Tolstoy went out with his dogs and shot a pheasant, then went home and began work on his second novel. Today is Bruce Springsteen’s birthday. In 1846, on this day, a German astronomer named Johann Gottfried Galle was the first person to observe the planet Neptune (although its existence had been mathematically proven a year earlier by the French astronomer Urbain La Verrier). It’s National Day in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which officially came into existence in 1932 when the kingdoms of Hejaz and Nejd were unified. Fifty-eight years ago (one hundred years after Tolstoy shot a pheasant), Vice Presidential candidate Richard Nixon gave his famous ‘Checkers’ speech, in which he denied receiving illegal campaign contributions but admitted to accepting the gift of a dog named Checkers, “and the kids, like all kids, love the dog and I just want to say this right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we’re gonna keep it.” The speech saved Nixon’s career (temporarily) and made the dog famous.
Today is the first full day of Fall. At some point today, this dog—who is not famous, who will probably not save anybody’s career, who will almost certainly not hunt pheasants with a famous Russian writer—will eat some food and take a nap. That will be enough for the dog to consider it a good day.
It’s the first day of Fall. So—what are you going to do today?
Blog photograph copyrighted to the photographer and used with permission by utata.org. All photographs used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and are obtained via the flickr API. Text is copyrighted to the author, greg fallis and is used with permission by utata.org. Please see Show and Share Your Work
