Happy birthday, Alexander Hamilton

It is the birthday of United States Founding Father Alexander Hamilton (1755 or 1757), who wrote more than half of the Federalist Papers that promoted adoption of the United States Constitution and today serves as a primary source for Constitutional interpretation. Hamilton also helped set up a national banking system and helped establish the Federalist Party, the country’s first political party. He died from a gunshot wound received in an illegal duel with Vice President Aaron Burr, Jr., a political rival whom Hamilton considered untrustworthy. Charges were dropped and Burr was never tried for shooting Hamilton.

Happy birthday, George Washington Carver

We celebrate the birth of botanist and inventor George Washington Carver today, though his exact birthday is not known, nor is the year but scholars believe it was 1864 or 1965. Carver is known for researching and promoting the use of alternative crops to cotton such as sweet potatoes, soybeans, and most notably, peanuts. He is credited with finding 300 uses for peanuts, including cosmetics, shoe polish, talcum powder, and mayonnaise. Time magazine called him the “Black Leonardo” in 1941. He taught agriculture at Tuskegee Institute for 47 years. Carver wrote a memoir, My Larger Education : Being Chapters from My Experience (1911). In the 1920s he wrote a newspaper column, Professor Carver’s Advice.

Happy birthday, Richard Halliburton

Clockwise, from top left: Halliburton (left) and pilot aboard The Flying Carpet; On an elephant crossing the Alps.

It is the birthday of famed travel writer Richard Halliburton (1900), who was well known for his travel books, syndicated newspaper columns, lectures, radio appearances, and newsreels. He hired a pilot to fly him around the world in an open biplane. He rode an elephant across the Alps, explored the Mayan Well of Death, and followed Ulysses’ path in ancient Greece as told in Homer’s The Odyssey. He famously swam the length of the Panama Canal and paid the lowest canal toll in history (36 cents).

In March 1939, Halliburton set sail on the Chinese junk Sea Dragon from Hong Kong bound for San Francisco. It was last sighted by an American ocean liner in a typhoon near Midway Island. Wreckage believed to be from the Sea Dragon washed ashore in California in 1945. Halliburton and his crew were never found.

Among his books were The Royal Road to Romance (1925), The Glorious Adventure (1927), New Worlds to Conquer (1929), The Flying Carpet (1932), India Speaks with Richard Halliburton (1933), Seven League Boots (1935), Richard Halliburton’s Book of Marvels: The Occident (1937), and Richard Halliburton’s Second Book of Marvels: The Orient (1938). Other books were published after his death.

Happy birthday, General Longstreet

It is the birthday of Confederate General James Longstreet (1821), who earned great respect as a trusted officer of Robert E. Lee during the Civil War but was vilified after the war for his support of the Republican Party and campaigning for his friend Ulysses S. Grant in 1868. He distinguished himself at the Battles of First and Second Bull Run and later at Antietam and Fredericksburg. But he disagreed with Lee’s tactics and reluctantly directed Pickett’s Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg, which ended in defeat. After the war, Longstreet wrote critically of Lee, and earned enmity throughout the south. Rutherford B. Hayes appointed him ambassador to Turkey and William McKinley named him U.S. railroad commissioner.