John Harvard, founder of Harvard College, born today in 1607 - in Southwark, as it happens, south London.
Siena and Toulouse, Naples and Padova, Bologna and Oxford, Heidelberg and Salamanca .... how wonderful, for your personal tracks in the sand, a deathbed bequest from a minister of the cloth with just £748, half of his worldly estate, to give: to leave behind a college that would grow into a university of the same stature as theirs, and it isn't down to your philanthropy (which is usually your method of laundering illegal cash and washing your sin-stained hands in a single process), but to your vision of a better world, one in which educated humans who may or may not follow the deity have a better chance of achieving it than the god-fanatical ignoramuses were ever likely to do.
His dad, Robert, was a butcher, who also owned a tavern, so that part of his background was not auspicious. His mum, Katherine Rogers, grew up in Stratford-upon-Avon, and her dad sat next to Shakespeare's dad on the town council (until Shakespeare's dad got thrown off the council for being caught money-lending - again!). John was baptised in his local parish church, which was then called St Saviour's, but is now Southwark Cathedral. At the age of 18, in 1625, seven siblings and his dad were carried off by bubonic plague; surviving brother Thomas, and his mother, lasted just another dozen years, which time John spent at Emmanuel College Cambridge, earning a BA and obtaining ordination.
Married to Ann Sadler in 1637, the couple joined the early pioneers for the New World, intending to help build the Massachussetts Bay Colony, settling in Newetowne, which was soon to be renamed Cambridge. But John had contracted tuberculosis, and within a year he was dead, his three and only contributions to the world a very vocal support for the establishment of a place of learning, that small financial donation, and his personal library of about four hundred books. In gratitude, the Trustees decided to name the college after him.
Sadly the face in the statue at the top of this page is not John Harvard, though his name is attached, and it is there to honour him, in Harvard Yard. It was made by Daniel Chester French in 1884, and as no known portrait of the original existed, he just made himself a good-looking, well-dressed guy, and effigied him there.
Amber pages (or on this occasion the colour may be mistaken for salted peanuts)
William Cowper, another of the great English poets whom I will bet you have never read and cannot even name a poem by, though I'll also bet you've quoted his great platitude a dozen times (click here, but switch off your sound first); born today in 1731.
Have you noticed how days appear to have themes (which is to say, if you happen to be looking for a limited range of items, of which there are huge numbers of instances, and three turn up on the same date, of which there is always a one in three hundred and sixty-fifth chance, then the option becomes available to speak of fate, destiny, chance, hazard and coincidence, to note that the DNA material inside the stars is manifestly planned; and on those days where no such coincidence appears, this too is the natural state of things...). Today's inevitable coincidence of a "theme" is the Absurd: Charles Dodgson's "Alice in Wonderland", published today in 1865
Eugène Ionescu, playwright, born today in 1912
Charles Monroe Schulz, the man who drew "Peanuts", born today in 1922
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