Day Tripping: March 13
Genius, Genocide, and Galaxies
Welcome to my daily feature where each day on the calendar marks a part of our shared history.
Warming To An Idea
At the age of fifteen, Chester Greenwood was skating during a frigid day at his home of Farmingham, Maine when he came up with an idea to keep his ears warm. With help from his grandmother who provided tufts of fur, Greenwood attached them to wire and created the earmuff. Four years later in 1877, Chester was granted a patent for his invention of an improved ear warmer.
Greenwood’s little spark of ingenuity became a business that kept Farmingham residents employed for more than sixty years.
Cold Blooded Terror
In 1943, Nazi forces set about the business of liquidating all Jews in the ghetto of Krakow, Poland. While 2000 able body Jews were sent to a labour camp in Paszow, several thousand others were either rounded up for transport to Auschwitz concentration camp or murdered in the street. The Nazis were intent on eradicating the more than 30,000 Jewish citizens that were forced to live in the tiny segregated village.
Having advanced notice of the impending total liquidation of all Jews, Oskar Schindler, a non-Jewish factory owner and employer of Jewish workers, kept his charges hidden from…
