On this date in ...

1918: Bedford Lawyer, 16, died at his Philip Street home from pneumonia brought on by influenza. The boy’s father, frightened by his oldest son’s deteriorating condition, saw a doctor walking by his house and called him inside. The physician declared the boy dead, but also discovered the man and his wife, as well as their six other children, suffering from the flu. No one in the family had ever sought medical attention, despite the outpouring of doctors and nurses available to tend to the needy.

1968: The bare hallway walls of the pediatric section at St. Margaret’s House were filled with artwork — appealing figures of “little people” busy at play. The creativity came from The Paletters, none of them trained artists but all handy with a brush. They included 14 young women from the Albany Junior League, who had been busy at work sketching, determining which colors to use and then painting faces and details. When done with pediatrics, they planned to switch to geriatrics, hoping to convert one wall of a windowless waiting room used by elderly patients to “a flower garden.”

1993: Next July 21, one day after the 25th anniversary of the first human visit to the moon, Jupiter would be visited by a less benign guest. A comet, already torn into 21 pieces by the Jovian tidal-gravitational field, would slam into the nightside of Jupiter, releasing millions of times more energy than an atomic bomb. Thanks to three American spacecraft, earthlings could view the resulting fireball and mushroom cloud. Carl Sagan spoke about the arrival of Comet Shoemaker-levy during a speech at RPI. A popularizer of science in the best sense, Sagan mixed hard data with speculation and, speaking without notes, leavened his sci-fi scenarios with deadpan humor.

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