Posted March 19, 2020 by Jeffrey Totey This Day in Pop Culture

This Day in Pop Culture for March 14

2009: National Pi Day

Today is National Pi Day. Celebrated on 14th day of the third month (recognizing the numbers of pi: 3:14), the first National Pi Day (or at least the largest event held on the day up to that point) was celebrated on this day in 1988. The event was held at the San Francisco Exploratorium and was organized by Larry Shaw. Today the event is celebrated by math enthusiasts and pie lovers and oftentimes, both. Years later in 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a non-binding resolution recognizing March 14, 2009 as National Pi Day.

1879: Albert Einstein is Born

Albert Einstein was born to a Jewish family on this day in Ulm, Kingdom of Württemberg, German Empire in 1879. He is known for developing the general theory of relativity and for creating “the world’s most famous equation” (E=mc2). In 1921, Einstein received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for his “services to theoretical physics.” He had become a professor at the Berlin Academy of Science in Germany when he visited the U.S. While here, Adolf Hitler came to power in his homeland. Einstein never went back. He became an American citizen in 1940. He alerted President Franklin D. Roosevelt about new “extremely powerful bombs of a new kind” and later with the philosopher Bertrand Russell, signed the Russell–Einstein Manifesto, which spoke of the danger of nuclear weapons. Einstein passed away in 1955. To this day, no one knows who his hair stylist was.