Howard Schultz, the developer of Starbucks, is 55 today. The Writer’s Almanac has an interesting profile that includes this:
On a vacation to Italy in 1983 he had an epiphany. Sitting at an espresso bar in Milan, he realized that there strong fresh brewed coffee was an integral part of people’s daily lives, that the coffeehouse was a third place for people after home and work. He decided that this could happen in Seattle.
George McGovern, a very good man if a very poor presidential candidate, is 86 today. This also from today’s Writer’s Almanac.
A bomber pilot in World War II, he flew 29 combat missions before his plane was badly damaged over Vienna and his navigator killed. He survived a crash landing on an island in the Adriatic Sea and won a Distinguished Flying Cross before returning for five more missions. Although both of his parents were Republicans, McGovern ran for Congress in 1956 as a Democrat and won, the first South Dakota Democrat to go to the House of Representatives in 22 years. After a losing campaign in 1960, he was elected to the Senate in 1962, and, upon re-election in ’68, emerged as a leading opponent to the war in Vietnam. He said, “I’m fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.”
Anthony Edwards, “Goose,” is 46 today.
Sam Colt was born on this date in 1814.
Sam Colt’s success story began with the issuance of a U.S. patent in 1836 for the Colt firearm equipped with a revolving cylinder containing five or six bullets. Colt’s revolver provided its user with greatly increased firepower. Prior to his invention, only one- and two-barrel flintlock pistols were available. In the 163 years that have followed, more than 30 million revolvers, pistols, and rifles bearing the Colt name have been produced, almost all of them in plants located in the Hartford, Connecticut, area. The Colt revolving-cylinder concept is said to have occurred to Sam Colt while serving as a seaman aboard the sailing ship Corvo. There he observed a similar principle in the workings of the ship’s capstan. During his leisure hours, Sam carved a wooden representation of his idea. The principle was remarkable in its simplicity and its applicability to both longarms and sidearms.
“Abe Lincoln may have freed all men, but Sam Colt made them equal.”
Sam Colt also put some of his money to good use by funding the first library in the state of Arizona, located near Arivaca, Arizona, where the tent city of workers for the mining camps once swelled the population of the area to nearly 10,000 people. I’m not a fan of guns, but I am certainly a fan of libraries.