Nat’l Games Day 354 of 2007 11 days left in this year

HAWAIIAN PROVERB OF THE DAY — “He is a tobacco-eating bug.”

December 20th, 1848: Officially, 18 species of roaches now call Maui home, including the largest breed, the Madeira roach, growing two inches or more. The first roach was from Surinam (pictured), the multicolored roach arrived in 1822.

Bugs have a great and noble history on our island. Mosquitoes arrived in 1826 on a ship from Mexico which bore water casks. It just beat the residence of the centipede, which can grow more than six inches in length and arrived in 1829, though exactly how is not known.

Maui’s four breeds of termites arrived between 1869 and 1907. The most damaging is the dry-wood termite.

Though fruit flies first came from the orient as early as 1885, the most damaging of the breed, the Mediterranean fruit fly, arrived in 1907 on a ship from Australia.

This is not to give short shrift to the estimated 10,000 indigenous Hawaiian insect species, few of which have been lost over time. Insects are a hardy lot, and that is what makes them noble.

HISTORICAL EVENTS ON THIS DAY – December 20th

•  1669: The first jury trial is held in Delaware
• 1699: Peter the Great orders the Russian New Year changed from September 1st to January 1st 
• 1803: the Louisiana Purchase is completed for $27 million 
• 1812: Sacagawea, the Shoshone interpreter for Lewis & Clark, dies 
• 1820: Missouri imposes a $1 bachelor tax on unmarried men 
•  1835: The Cherokee tribe of Native americans are compelled to cede their ancestral lands (eventually the tribe is forced to move west of the Mississippi River, travelling on what is called the “Trail of Tears”)  
• 1879: Thomas Edison demonstrates the incandescent light 
• 1892: The pneumatic automobile tire is patented (Syracuse NY)
• 1977: The world’s first “space walk” is made by cosmonaut G Grechko from Salyut
• 1984: Thirty-three unknown Bach keyboard works are discovered in the Yale library  
• 1989: U.S. troops invade Panama and oust Manuel Noriega 
• 1990: Robert F.X. Sillerman purchases the WAFL NY-NJ Knights for $11 million  
• 1999: The Vermont Supreme Court rules that homosexual couples are entitled to the same benefits and protections as wedded couples of the opposite sex 

BORN ON THIS DAY – December 20th

• 1579: John Fletcher, Elizabethan dramatist
• 1805: Thomas Graham, father of colloid chemistry      
• 1868: Harvey S Firestone, Industrialist
• 1875: T.F. Powys, writer
• 1911: Hortense Calisher, novelist 
• 1944: Robert Colomby, rocker 
• 1945: Peter Criss, rock musician 
• 1946: John Spencer, actor 
• 1947: Peter Criss, Brooklyn, singer
• 1958: Billy Bragg, British rocker 
• 1970: Nicole de Boer, actress