By Rosie Moore

Well, here we are in the year 2016 already. A hundred years from 1916. How things have changed but also some things didn’t change.

Nineteen-sixteen was a leap year. Jack London, an American novelist died this year. He was born in 1876. Emma Goldman was arrested for lecturing on birth control in 1916 (but no protests). President Woodrow Wilson sent 12,000 troops over the U.S.-Mexican border in pursuit of Pancho Ville. Norman Rockwell’s first cover on the magazine, “The Saturday Evening Post” called “Boy with a Baby Carriage” delighted many.

A shark mauled five swimmers along 80 miles of the New Jersey coastline resulting in four deaths and the survival of one youth who required limb amputation. This event is the inspiration for author Peter Benchley, over a half a century later, to write “Jaws.”

In April of 1916, the Chicago Cubs played their first game at Wrigley field, defeating the Cincinnati Reds 7-6 in 11 innings. Margaret Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the U.S. in Brooklyn, N.Y. Wimbledon tennis tournament was not held because of World War I. 1916 was the third year of that war.

Also in April an armed insurrection during Easter week by Irish republicans occurred to end British rule in Ireland.

Here is a partial list of famous people who were born in 1916: Kirk Douglas and Olivia de Havilland, who are both still alive, and Gregory Peck, Walter Cronkite, Jackie Gleason, Glenn Ford, Betty Grable and Roald Dahl, who are all deceased. There are not very many folks still alive who were born in 1916.

There are many others who were born that year and thousands of events that happened, but the times are not so very different in some ways. Sharks are still snipping at swimmers along the shore, people are still lecturing about what they believe, but protesting is growing more aggressive at an alarming rate. “Wars and rumors of wars” still abound all over the world.

Whatever happens in 2016, it remains a New Year and another chance to have a happy one.

Thought for the day: Every new day begins with possibilities; it’s up to us to fill it with the things that move us toward progress and peace.

Send comments to: rosemerrie@att.net or call (865)748-4717. Thank you.