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January 29: Thomas Paine (1737)

It was on this date, January 29, 1737 (N.S February 9), that English-born American patriot and pamphleteer Thomas Paine was born in Thetford, Norfolk, into an English Quaker family. He worked as a stay-maker for women’s dresses, and as an excise-man, but in London Benjamin Franklin persuaded the budding writer to emigrate to America. As a soldier in George Washington’s army, Paine witnessed the struggle for independence for himself and penned Common Sense, which made him so popular that the title became Paine’s nickname.

To read more, go to THIS LINK.

Originally published January 2003 by Ronald Bruce Meyer.

Ronald Bruce Meyer

Our Fearless Leader.


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August 9: Marvin Minsky

Marvin Minsky (1927) It was on this date, August 9, 1927, that the MIT professor Marvin Minsky, known in computer science as the father of artificial intelligence, was born into a Jewish family in New York City. After serving in the US Navy from 1944 to 1945, Minsky earned a BA in Mathematics from Harvard […]



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