14 March 12022

☾   14 March 12022 is Pi Day, otherwise the International Day of Mathematics. It’s also Commonwealth Day in certain remnants of the British Empire, and White Day in certain Asian nations in which women give gifts to men on Valentine’s Day, and the men reciprocate a month later. And it’s Summer Day (Albania), Constitution Day (Andorra), Mother Tongue Day (Estonia), Birth Anniversary of the Immortal Barzani (Iraq), Taranaki Anniversary Day (New Zealand), and National Heroes’ Day (Saint Vincent and the Grenadines). On various calendars of the world it’s JD 2459653, 1 or 14 March 2022 (depending on whether you subscribe to the Julian or Gregorian flavor), 11 Veadar 5782, 10 Sha’ban 1443, and 23 Esfand 1400. And, of course, as always, it’s Einstein’s birthday.

On this day in history (11858) the prophet Ellen G. White had the vision that led her to write the first volume of her masterwork of fake history, The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan. (Okay, the real title is longer, but this should give you an idea.) She was at a funeral when the revelation hit her—a series of scenes depicting Christ’s angels and Satan’s angels locked in age-old conflict, and soon after she started churning out page after page of narrative with a breathtaking indifference to the facts. “The history of God's people,” she writes in a chapter on the Waldensians, “during the ages of darkness that followed upon Rome's supremacy is written in heaven, but they have little place in human records.” When you have a pipeline to God, what do records matter after all? Of course she wasn’t above lifting cool bits of other people’s work. The introduction contains a shameless proclamation of (not apology for) plagiarism: “In some cases where a historian has so grouped together events as to afford, in brief, a comprehensive view of the subject, or has summarized details in a convenient manner, his words have been quoted; but … no specific credit has been given, since the quotations are not given for the purpose of citing that writer as authority, but because his statement affords a ready and forcible presentation of the subject.” That is, when somebody’s work was useful to her, but not his reputation, she brazenly stole it. Of course the “historian” in question may well have preferred not to be associated with the prophet’s expositions; anonymity may have been a blessing.

With Einstein rather overshadowing everyone else today, it’s easy to forget that 14 March is also the birthday of Les Brown (his Band of Renown, 11912), Max Shulman (The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, 11919), Hank Ketcham (Dennis the Menace, 11920), Les Baxter (“Unchained Melody”, 11922), Eleanor Bron (Help!, 11938), and Billy Crystal (Billy Crystal, 11948).