March 12, 2012

Wikipedia: the cause of and solution to so many of our problems

Each day I look up some date in history and write that year as today's date on the board in my classroom.

Today, for example, was 12 March, 1912 in honor of the founding of the Girl Scouts. I then draw a stick figure representation of the event and encourage my students to guess the event. Especially considering my limited art skills, they do pretty well.

It helps me that Wikipedia has an article of every day's significant (by whatever definition the Wikipedia community chooses to define that word) events, births, and deaths. Check out March 12, for example.

I also tend to check the History Channel's Today in History as another source of events and today found that the 1888 blizzard that hit NYC and dumped 40" of snow happened on this date. In the History Channel's article on the blizzard, I found this sentence...
Even "Leather Man," a fixture of New York and Connecticut history who had walked a circuit of 365 miles every 34 days for three decades, was reportedly delayed four days by the Blizzard of 1888.
Clearly, I had to head to Wikipedia to find out about this "Leather Man". I quote from their article here...
The Leatherman (ca. 1839–1889) was a particular vagabond, famous for his handmade leather suit of clothes, who traveled a circuit between the Connecticut and the Hudson River from about 1856 to 1889. Although of unknown origin, he was thought to be Canadian, or possibly French, because of his fluency in French, his broken English and the French Language prayer book found on his person after his death. His identity remains controversial, and unknown.
How fascinating is that? He apparently made his 365-mile circuit around Connecticut every thirty-four days like clockwork, regularly enough that when the blizzard delayed him, people noticed.

I love...Love...LOVE that Wikipedia has documented Leather Man (or Leatherman or Leather-Man).

Could such a person exist in today's world? They could, right? It would be weird but not unheard of, I would guess.


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