It wasn't supposed to happen like this.

You were supposed to read about noted Pasteur peer Albert Calmette, the New York City draft riots and about as glowing tribute as my heart could muster for the MLB commissioner who let Jackie Robinson play. Og bless, what I could have written.

July 15 would have been an art day (which I do when I don't feel like teaching myself the organic chemistry I'd have to understand to bring you another scientist). July 16 was about Joe Jackson and some biting irony regarding Commissioners Landis and Chandler.

And then July 19 would roll around, and I'd talk about how every diary from the previous week had had some good in it, and this one didn't.

On July 19, 1935, you see, Rubin Stacy was lynched.

And just what in the world does a former South Carolina mill worker have to do with Jackie Robinson?

So much. Oh, so much.

Today in 1888 was born a man talked about more than all but a handful of his contemporaries.

He was in MLB for 13 years, to the tune of 1772 hits. In 1908, his first full year, he hit .408.

And he's part of why you know Jackie Robinson as the man to reintegrate Major League Baseball. He's part of why Satchel Paige and Ted Radcliffe didn't do it, why Josh Gibson's contract got figuratively dumped in a trash can by Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis.

"Shoeless" Joe Jackson, born on July 16, 1888, is part of the story of racism in baseball.

Dr. Parks Lanier guided and informed my entry on Ann Radcliffe.

Dr. Rosemary Guruswamy taught me much of what I knew for my Anne Hutchinson diary.

I accidentally discovered the story of Mikhail Sholokhov while researching a largely separate topic for Dr. Kim Gainer's Medieval English Literature class.

Other people have engendered one or more of my entries.

Today's honoree has guided not only every entry I have written here but everything else I have written in the last five years, easy.

I am one of millions he has informed. And mere millions is a massive understatement.

Elwyn Brooks White, or E.B. White, was born on July 11, 1899. Today we celebrate his birthday and legacy.

1+2=3.

I assume this is not news to anyone.

But 10+15+55=80.

Why should you care?

Because 1+2+3+4=10, 1+2+3+4+5=15 and 1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10=55.

100 is nothing more (or less) than 55+45 (1+2+...9).

1,000 is just 990 (1+2+...44) and 10.

In short (and it gets long), every positive integer is the sum of no more than three triangular numbers. A triangular number is the sum of n and every number between n and 0.

So today, on a triangular number day (10), we're going to have some fun with Carl Friedrich Gauss, who discovered this lovely little rule on July 10, 1796.

She didn't invent the genre, but Lord did she ever capture the imaginations of its readers.

At 30 years old, she had written one of the great Gothic novels.

Really, what can you do after that? Write a second of the great Gothic novels? Try to write the worst popular Gothic novel?

These days, a popular writer would travel the circuit, appearing on talk shows, doing book readings and (my ultimate goal) giving press to bookstores and booksellers with character. I'd go to the kind of places (and visit the kind of people) that don't push you to buy but push you to learn.

Today's honoree didn't do that (in part because there was no 18th century Oprah). In fact, other than write masterful Gothic novels, today's honoree mostly stayed home. The Mysteries of Udolpho was as mysterious as was its author.

Today, as with every other day, you don't have to go anywhere to learn about Ann Radcliffe, born on July 9, 1764.

The results here told me that I am not alone in tiring of the political cycle. FISA this, Iraq that, health care, which candidate the terrorists want to win (the other guy), whose change you can believe in.

And even outside the political cycle, we have the news of yesterday, the racism (as evidenced by recent entries of mine) and enshrined favoritism we are still undoing.

Here, then, is your oasis, your permission to care about something else. For art does not discriminate. It just is.

Althea Gibson was lucky. She got hers before too much time had passed.

Today's honoree was born long before FDR sought the stories of the aging ex-slaves, before Truman integrated the military (though previously, not for lack of trying), before Martin Luther became King.

What had already happened by 1902, though, was the unofficial ban on black players in Major League Baseball, about which more here. So when today's honoree began to show baseball affinity as children, his parents joined millions of others faced with a future in which their children would not be allowed to compete on the content of their skills but on the color of their skin.

He never got to the majors, though he roomed with one of its most famous players.

We will never know how Theodore Roosevelt "Double Duty" Radcliffe, born on July 7, 1902, would have done against Babe Ruth's bat (and arm).

But to end the story there is to penalize him for being born in the wrong time.

The generic biography of so many people reads as follows:

"Barred from competing with peers for decades, this black person dominated their field once allowed to."

I have written on race relations, civil rights and the lives that should be more fully examined so many times that I imagine many of my readers must think I am black.

Because I have deliberately sought out women and topics of particular interest to women, I imagine many of my readers must think I am female.

I am neither.

I am human.

And so was Althea Gibson, who won Wimbledon 51 years ago today, becoming the first visibly black person to win the tennis championship.

The marvelous new militancy, which has engulfed the negro community, must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.

-Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (about 8:27 in)

No names in that speech, just thoughts. Thoughts for everyone.

One name would have merited special consideration. One white man's name, one Southern man's name, merits special consideration today.

You cannot consider the civil rights movement in any kind of depth without considering this man.

Do not misread that, friends. I mean it fully. It is not possible to consider the movement without the man.

The man, Myles Horton, was born on July 5, 1905.

Every July 4 brings the standard fare: overeating, mosquitoes, patriotic songs, Ye Overacting Re-enactor (hint: it ain't ye. It's THE) and fireworks.

And every July 4 has columnists around the country saying "My, what a glorious country are we. We NEVER make mistakes!"

And every year around this time, I wonder how and why people get so delusional. It's not like this country is sentient, not like this land has feelings. (If it had any, we killed them long ago when we started mass deforestation and mass Indian killings.)

Well, scratch part of that. I don't wonder how and why people forget so much. I wonder how and why they have the stomach to pretend. So this year, I've put together a little tribute for those people who think America invented sunshine, kittens and afterglow.

I was in my adolescence before I realized this contemporary writer ("humorist" is so dry) had influenced my father's jokes to the point that my father probably owes a few of his wrinkles to this man.

I'm pretty sure the man in question would respond in an unpredictable way, fitting because the sons of Presbyterian ministers don't predictably go on to win Pulitzer prizes for making us laugh in spite of (and sometimes because of) ourselves.

In 1983, when this man began writing for the Miami Herald, most of us were not reading him on the computer, which probably explains why nationwide sales of lonely keyboards and monitors did not spike until the age of the Internet, when spit takes of coffee and Mountain Dew started to decorate people's computer hardware with regularity.

"If God had intended people to read me online," this writer might one day write in response, "He would have invented sneeze guards, and then he would have removed them from the Applebee's salad bar David Broder frequents."

Whatever Dave Barry (born July 3, 1947) does today, I hope he doesn't read this entry, because I am not funny except accidentally, whereas he ::humorous anecdote::. See? Hilarious!

With July 4 quickly approaching, a number of old assumptions, half-truths and outright lies are being sold and eagerly gobbled up by Americans from sea to shining sea.

The biggest lie is that we declared our independence from Britain on July 4:

Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.

That it is expedient forthwith to take the most effectual measures for forming foreign Alliances.

That a plan of confederation be prepared and transmitted to the respective Colonies for their consideration and approbation.

-declarationdrafts

There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who know about the subject of Today in History and those who do not.

In teaching the history of calculus, including this man is integral, especially if you don't want to believe the old lie, published and pushed by Isaac Newton, that he and he alone is the father of the study.

If you want to study the history of evolutionary thought, you start not with Darwin but with 17th century thinkers like this man.

If you want to get to the core of the Earth's composition, read what this man proposed about it.

If you fancy the idea of a universal language based not on artificial, invented symbols but how people naturally conceive of things, such that language barriers are no longer formidable, check out his characteristica universalis.

I could go on much longer, but there is not time to fully catalog the plenitude of scholarly contributions made by Gottfried Leibniz, who was born on July 1, 1646.

Several months ago, before I conceived "Today in History," and before it became a daily series that has since taken over my life, I planned to write these entries not more than once or twice a week, and to often write not about history but about political topics.

One such entry I had planned was an appeal to people to vote, no matter their political persuasion. I may yet run it, but it will not be making an appearance today.

But running it today (edited for time references to "today") would be entirely fitting. Really, running it any day would work in this political climate, where we have seen what happens when scare tactics and "Let's you and him fight" write the dominant story lines and exit polls discover that voters don't care about flag lapel pins or cookie recipes.

Now more than ever, both major presidential candidates tell us, this country needs direction.

And because of the 26th amendment, which Ohio ratified on June 30, 1971, and which grants voting rights to those ages 18 and older, many more Americans can vote.

It is massively unfair to today's honoree that we spend as much time speculating about her life and health as we do discussing her poetry.

But this is nonetheless the dialog. Any discussion of this poet inevitably falls to the question, unanswerable when last I checked, of just what was physically wrong with her.

How is this unfair? Let me count the ways.

First, it robs us of time we might spend discussing her poetry.

Second, it robs us of time we might spend discussing her poetry.

Third, it robs us of time we might spend discussing her poetry.

Instead of talking about the poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who died on June 29, 1861, we talk about her health and death.

No more.

Labor Day was first observed as a U.S. holiday on this date in 1894.

In 1919, World War I ended five years to the day after Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Sophie Ferdinand were assassinated.

Pat Morita and Gilda Radner were born in 1932 and 1947, respectively.

Three years ago, that subculture made its mark in Canada with the legalization of gay marriage.

On any other day, I would have covered one of those events, or maybe two.

Today is different.

In the early 1960s, President Kennedy and Congress began a lot of work to improve the status of special education in America.

Much has been written on the influence of Rosemary Kennedy on her brother and his education initiatives, especially for children with disabilities.

But inarguably the poster child for this effort — for educating children with disabilities, not just putting them in dark rooms to languish — was no child.

In 1960, she was 80. And as a child, she was educated. She later wrote books, read plenty and appeared in three movies.

And if the nationally recognized social advocate had gone to the premier of any of those movies, she would have been sitting in the dark. Literally.

On June 27, 1880, America's most famous blind and deaf woman, Helen Keller, was born.

Part of the human condition is the ability to be repulsed by most anything.

Fortunately, another part of the human condition is the ability to deal with anything that doesn't kill you (to borrow from someone who said it a little more famously). You might not come out the stronger for it, but you'll still be there.

The fascinating thing, then, is when people are clearly not going to be killed or otherwise harmed by something, but they pretend no danger could be greater than from this then-ominous portent of Things To Come.

On June 26, 2003, the Supreme Court found, 6-3, in Lawrence v. Texas that actually, ominous portents regarding legalizing same-sex sodomy had been a false alarm. (Oops!)

And on June 26, 1988, my brother was born.