Robert Reid (died 1989)

In 1807, on February 19th, former Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr was arrested on charges of treason, accused of plotting to grab parts of Louisiana and Mexico in order to create an independent republic. On September 1st, he was acquitted of the charges. Although he was deemed to be guilty of plotting against the U.S., he was not found to be guilty of an "overt act" - which is the Constitutional requirement to be met. Burr's reputation, after the charges and the duel with Alexander Hamilton, was ruined, however.

In 1900, the German physicist Max Planck formulated an energy theory, postulating the existence of "quanta," which lays the groundwork for the quantum theory of modern physics. In December, he introduced a paper on the Planck postulate which stated that E=hv - the energy of a photon is proportional to its frequency times a constant. Planck won a Nobel Prize in 1918 for his work in theoretical Physics.

In 1957, on October 4th, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I, the first man made earth-orbiting satellite - and triggered the Space Race. Sputnik I was only 23 inches in diameter and had no tracking equipment, only 4 antennas, but it had a big impact.

In 1961, on May 5th, Navy Cmdr. Alan B. Shepard, Jr., made the first manned Project Mercury flight, MR-3, in a spacecraft he named Freedom 7. He was the second man to go into space, the first was Yuri Gagarin - a Soviet cosmonaut.

In 1989, in the year of Robert Reid's passing, on March 24th, the Exxon Valdez, an oil tanker, struck a reef in Alaska's Prince William Sound and oil began spilling out of the hold. The oil would eventually contaminate more than a thousand miles of coastline. It is estimated that over 10.8 million gallons of crude oil spilled into the Sound - killing 100,000 to 250,000 seabirds, over 2,800 sea otters, about 12 river otters, 300 harbor seals, 247 bald eagles, and 22 orcas - as well as an unknown number of salmon and herring.