More than Amanda

Here is your open thread for March 10, 2020.

Happy 73rd birthday to reluctant rocker, inventor, and all-around odd dude Tom Scholz.

On March 10, 1848, the US Senate ratified the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, thereby making a big huge chunk of Mexico part of the United States.

On March 10, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell called his assistant Thomas Watson on the telephone. Watson didn’t have caller ID, but he knew it was Bell because theirs was, at that point, the only working phone. The entire conversation consisted of Bell saying, “Mr. Watson, come here – I want to see you,” which is pretty much how I use the phone today — as a way of letting someone know I’d like to get together so we can talk for real, rather than over the phone.

U.S.-backed right-wing military dictator Fulgencio Batista seized control of Cuba in a military coup on March 10, 1952. Batista slashed civil liberties, used his secret police to create a reign of fear, and exported much of Cuba’s wealth to his friends in American business and the American mafia, but he wasn’t the Cuban leader that seven American presidents tried (and failed) to overthrow.

March 10 is Harriet Tubman day — chosen for the day of her death in 1913 because the day of her birth was never recorded by the people who enslaved her and her parents. Tubman was an outlaw, an activist, a military scout and spy, and the first civilian woman to lead a U.S. military operation. She was never captured, never outsmarted, and never defeated in battle. She was America’s Robin Hood, except her legend is real.

Still ticked off that we elected a white-nationalist president who stopped us from getting the Tubman $20 bill.

Nurse and nursing advocate Lillian Wald was born on March 10, 1867. Twenty-six years later she founded the Henry Street Settlement, which still serves 50,000 people every year in New York City.

March 10 produced both Rick Rubin (57) and Timbaland (48).

Chuck Norris turns 80 today. Sharon Stone turns 62 and Jasmine Guy turns 58. (Whatever Chuck Norris joke you were thinking of just now, tell it about Stone or Guy instead. It’ll be funnier that way.)

It’s Neneh Cherry’s 56th birthday. Janet Mock and Carrie Underwood both turn 37. Olivia Wilde turns 36.

Talk amongst yourselves.