AUGUST 20th - Leaving Legacies



On this day in 1741, Danish explorer Vitus Bering led a Russian expedition to the “discovery” of Alaska. Besides having the very memorable name of Vitus Bering, homeboy was a pretty active explorer who traveled into the great unknown--a very cold great unknown--with courage and tenacity. The Bering Strait. Bering Island. Bering Sea. Bering Glacier. All named for Vitus. Which is a heck of a legacy to leave. Who wouldn’t want things named after them? Unless it was a deadly flesh-eating disease that you contracted while doing something completely mundane like watering your garden. That would suck. So would something completely random or weird. Like I wouldn’t want that rough elephant-like patch of skin that covers the elbow to be named after me. “Looks like little Timmy skinned his Mark sliding into second base.” Nope. No thank you. But land and sea? Even a glacier. That’s pretty awesome. Thomas Jefferson wouldn’t be impressed, but TJ once saw a man build the Brooklyn Bridge out of toothpicks, which was doubly amazing since the bridge was not actually completed until close to sixty years after TJ kicked the bucket. But TJ didn’t care about any of that. He just grabbed a toothpick and picked a bit of mango from out his teeth. TJ loved mango. But he wasn’t impressed by ridiculously large and intricate toothpick suspension bridges. Even so, having a sea, a strait, a land-bridge, a glacier, and an island named after you is pretty impressive. So cheers to Vitus Bering and his courageous forays into the cold great unknown. May you leave a lasting legacy like Vitus Bering, minus the whole dying in the cold months after discovering some of said legacies. That’s not like having that rough elephant-like patch of skin covering the elbow named after you, but I wouldn’t call it an optimal outcome either.

This day has been Marked.

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