(Roughly) Daily

From the always-amusing xkcd

As we contemplate coincidence, we might pause to remember Chester Greenwood, who died on this date in 1937.  One of the Smithsonian Institution’s “America’s 15 Outstanding Inventors,” Greenwood created the bottom whistling kettle, the mechanical mouse trap, and the spring steel rake, among many other indispensables.  But he is best remembered as the inventor (at age 15) of earmuffs.  By his mid-twenties, he had a factory and 11 workers producing Greenwood Champion Ear Protectors in his hometown of Farmington, ME, producing 50,000 earmuffs yearly; output grew to 400,000 pairs by the year he died. In 1977, the Maine state legislature officially declared the first day of Winter, December 21, “Chester Greenwood Day,”  which Farmington celebrates with a parade.

Chester Greenwood