Calvin Coolidge, at the time Governor of Massachusetts, addressed the exercises on the Three Hundredth Anniversary of the Landing of the Pilgrims, at Plymouth, Massachusetts, December 21, 1920. Three centuries ago to-day the Pilgrims of the Mayflower made final landing at Plymouth Rock. They came not merely from the shores of the Old World. It [...]
I was trying to help Mary (not her real name) with her genealogy. She had brought a folder full of documents to the library. As we went through them, a key one was a photocopy from a compiled genealogy. But neither of us can figure out what the source actually is. We just know it [...]
William Shanks (1812-1882) was an Englishman and amateur mathematician. He spent 17 years of his life calculating the digits of the mathematical constant π. In the days before computers this was a laborious pencil and paper calculation. As he made progress, and raced against others for how far he could take the calculation, he reported [...]
