Garrison Keillor's Podcast

It's the birthday of Minnesota Poet Laureate Joyce Sutphen. Sutphen spent her childhood on a farm near St. Joseph, Minnesota. She said: "Like many of the people I had read about, I set out on a long journey to find truth and beauty. As usual, the road led straight back to the beginning: home, country roads, the sun setting through the woods."

On this day in 1974, Richard Nixon officially resigned from the presidency. Half an hour later, Gerald Ford gave his first speech as the president of the United States, saying, "My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works; our great republic is a government of laws and not of men."

It's the birthday of physicist Ernest O. Lawrence, who won the Nobel Prize in 1939 for inventing the particle accelerator known as the cyclotron--or as he originally dubbed it, a "proton merry-go-round."

At 7:15 A.M. on this day in 1974, Philippe Petit walked a tightrope between the Twin Towers a total of eight times. Petit's astonishing high-wire act made him an instant celebrity and garnered affection for the brand-new buildings, which had been criticized for a lack of character.

It was on this day in 1964 during a speech in Congress that Senator Ernest Gruening of Alaska said, "All Vietnam is not worth the life of a single American boy." But the next day, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, authorizing expanded military action in Vietnam.

The New York Daily News debuted the comic strip "Little Orphan Annie" on this day in 1924. It ran for 86 years and inspired a radio show, a Broadway musical, film adaptations, mass-marketed books, and merchandise including everything from lunchboxes to curly wigs.

It's the birthday of jazz musician Louis Armstrong, born 1901. Growing up in New Orleans, Armstrong listened to pioneers like cornetist King Oliver, who gave Armstrong his big break by letting him play in the Creole Jazz Band in Chicago in 1922.

On this date in 1527, the first known letter from the New World to the Old was sent to King Henry VIII of England. The letter writer, Master John Rut, was on an expedition to find the Northwest Passage, a northerly route to Asia through or around North America.

"You write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can't, but also knowing that literature is indispensable to the world. The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even but a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it."

–James Baldwin, born this day in 1924

Today is the birthday of Maria Mitchell, the first acknowledged female astronomer, born in 1818 on the island of Nantucket in Massachusetts. In 1849, she was awarded a gold medal from the king of Denmark for the comet she discovered, which became known as "Miss Mitchell's Comet."