While going through boxes of 'memorabilia' earlier this month, I found a 1928 Liberty Head dollar coin. I decided to slip it into my pocket and carry it with me as a tangible, portable connection with the past.

OS veteran Verbal Remedy recently posted a thought-provoking piece entitled For rent: one planet. Using a roll of toilet paper unfurled down a long hallway to represent the lifetime of the earth, all of recorded human history (a mere ten thousand years) occupies just 0.1mm at the very end of the last square.

Out of curiosity, this morning I looked up the year 1928 on Wikipedia. Here are just a few things which happened just eighty-one years ago: 

• Charles Jenkins Laboratories becomes the first holder of a television broadcasting license from the Federal Radio Commission.

• Charles Lindbergh is presented the Medal of Honor for his first trans-Atlantic flight

• Aviator Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to successfully pilot an aircraft across the Atlantic Ocean.

• The first ever east-west transatlantic flight takes place from Dublin, Ireland to Greenly, Canada.

• The last section (wise - wyze) of the original Oxford English Dictionary is completed and ready for publication.

• The first regular schedule of television programming begins in Schenectady, New York by General Electric's television station W2XB. W2XBS, RCA’s first television station, is established in New York City.

• The animated short Plane Crazy is released by Disney Studios featuring the first appearances of Mickey and Minnie Mouse; later in the year, Mickey Mouse appears in Steamboat Willie, the first cartoon with sound.

• New York Governor Alfred E. Smith becomes the first Catholic nominated by a major political party for U.S. President at the Democratic National Convention in Houston, Texas. He is later defeated in the presidential election by a wide margin by Republican Herbert Hoover.

• The Representation of the People Act of 1928 becomes law, extending the right to vote to all women in the United Kingdom.

• Paul Galvin and his brother Joseph incorporate the Galvin Manufacturing Corporation, now known as Motorola.

• Alexander Fleming discovers Penicillin.

• An iron lung respirator is used for the first time at Children's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.

• American soft-drink Coca Cola enters Europe through the Amsterdam Olympics.

• Eliot Ness begins to lead the prohibition unit in Chicago.

• Frederick Griffith conducts Griffith's experiment, indirectly proving the existence of DNA.

• The first (and last) Academy Award for Best Title Writing is given.

• The first patent for the transistor principle is registered in Germany to Julius Edgar Lilienfeld.

Here are a mere few of the influential human beings born in that year; a number of these people are still living:

• 1/7 - William Peter Blatty, American writer (The Exorcist)
• 1/10 - Philip Levine, American poet
• 1/11 - David L. Wolper, American television producer
• 1/17 - Vidal Sassoon, English hairdresser
• 1/24 - Desmond Morris, English anthropologist and writer
• 1/26 - Roger Vadim, French film director
• 2/9 - Roger Mudd, American television journalist
• 2/26 - Fats Domino, American musician
• 2/27 - Ariel Sharon, Prime Minister of Israel
• 3/10 - James Earl Ray, American assassin
• 3/19 - Patrick McGoohan, Irish actor
• 3/20 - Fred Rogers, American children's television host
• 3/25 - Jim Lovell, American astronaut
• 3/28 - Zbigniew Brzezinski, Polish-born U.S. National Security Advisor
• 3/31 - Gordie Howe, Canadian hockey player
• 4/1 - Jane Powell, American dancer, actress, and singer
• 4/4 - Maya Angelou, African-American poet and novelist
• 4/7 - James Garner, American actor
• 4/7 - Alan J. Pakula, American producer and director
• 4/9 - Tom Lehrer, American songwriter
• 4/23 – Shirley Temple, American actress and politician
• 5/4 - Maynard Ferguson, Canadian jazz trumpeter
• 5/4 - Hosni Mubarak, President of Egypt
• 5/12 - Burt Bacharach, American composer
• 5/16 - Billy Martin, American baseball player and manager
• 5/23 - Rosemary Clooney, American singer and actress
• 5/24 - Adrian Frutiger, Swiss typeface designer and cutter
• 5/26 - Jack Kevorkian, American physician, right-to-die advocate
• 6/10 - Maurice Bernard Sendak, American children's author/illustrator
• 6/12 - Richard M. Sherman, American songwriter
• 6/13 - John Forbes Nash, Jr., American mathematician, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics
• 7/5 - Warren Oates, American actor
• 7/26 - Stanley Kubrick, American film director
• 8/6 - Andy Warhol, American artist
• 8/7 - James Randi, Canadian magician
• 8/10 - Eddie Fisher, American singer
• 8/31 - James Coburn, American actor
• 9/15 - Julian Cannonball Adderley, American saxophonist
• 9/19 - Adam West, American actor
• 10/1 - George Peppard, American actor
• 11/9 - Anne Sexton, American poet
• 12/7 - Noam Chomsky, American linguist
• 12/16 - Philip K. Dick, American author
• 12/30 - Bo Diddley, African-American musician

To quote Pee-Wee Herman: "What's the significance? I don't know!"

Just try to live well, I guess, and try to leave the place a little better than you found it.