7 February 19

It's fairly hard to find an occasion suitable for this one-black-sheep tie, but I'll wear it today for no particular reason. Birthdays for today include Charles Dickens (1812-1870), Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867-1957), Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) and John Deere (1804-1886). This is also the anniversary of the first recognized "table of elements," in 1863, when English chemist John Newlands published a chart that organized the then-known 56 elements into 11 groups based on the "Law of Octaves." This preceded by six years the better known periodic table of Dmitri Mendeleev.