David Prashker's Book Of Days: November 2

Amber pages

k.d. lang, singer, born today in 1961

Annie Oakley, or Phoebe Ann Moses, sharpshooter, not sharp enough, today in 1926

The Declaration, by Lord Arthur Balfour on behalf of the British Government, that "His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people", sent in a letter to Lord Rothschild, today in 1917

Luis de Torres is mentioned on Feb 1, but his tale belongs on this date. Yosef ben Ha Levi Ha Ivri before he was required to adopt Christianity and take a Christian name; he sailed as interpreter on Columbus's first expedition, chosen for reasons of no obvious use whatsoever given that they were going west not east: he was fluent in Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic. It was today that he was sent, with the sailor Rodrigo de Jerez, to explore the first piece of land that they had finally reached, which they thought was the continent of Asia, but turned out to be Cuba; on this day too that he became the first European ever to smoke tobacco. He was one of the thirty-nine who stayed behind to garrison La Navidad, Hispaniola, when Columbus went back to Spain in January 1493; within months they had either quarreled each other to death, or been killed by a band of pagan-heathen terrorists known as the Hispaniola Liberation Army (sorry, that should simply read "natives of the island").