Happy Ougadi! What’s “Ougadi” you ask? Why it’s the New Year holiday for an ethnic group in India, the Telugu people. It is also the birthday of Ganesha, the god of wisdom and “remover of all obstacles”.
Today, the 5th of April, was also the birthday of Thomas Hobbes, the man who brought us social contract theory, which proposes that self-defense against a violent death is the natural right of all men, and is the basis of all human rights. Hobbes then proceeded to tell us that it’s in the King’s best interest to abide by the law. I guess Hobbes never counted on men like George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
Others born on this day were Albert R. Broccoli, producer of the James Bond films; Ivar Giaever, a Norwegian physicist; and Pedro Rossello, the sixth governor of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.
Today was also the day that Kurt Cobain chose to leave this mortal coil. Bye, Kurt. Kurt shares this day with John Winthrop, the Younger, the governor of Connecticut in the 17th Century (y’know, before the U.S.A. was formed); General MacArthur; and Saul Bellow, who was considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1974 but passed over, and who won it for reals in 1976.
And that’s what happened on This Day In History!