A wild nor'easter with lashing wind-driven rain, gusts up to 40 mph. Look at the size of this storm in the satellite image below. This thing is huge, swirling from the Caribbean to Canada, covering the whole eastern seaboard west to the Mississippi. Perfect for an indoor Sunday, writing, reading and cooking (Roofscape's special mac 'n cheese). I can't believe I was out biking in this storm yesterday. It looked so innocent when I left the house, just small showers, but when I left JP several hours later it bared its fangs.
On this Day ... in 1794, Westborough native Eli Whitney applied for a patent on the cotton gin. Raised on a farm in Massachusetts, he invented a machine that made growing cotton so profitable that the South became a "cotton kingdom" where millions of Africans toiled in slavery. After nearly a decade in the South, Whitney returned to New England and developed what became known as the "American System" of manufacture. He designed machines that turned out standardized, interchangeable parts. These machines made mass production possible and were critical to the coming Industrial Revolution. Eli Whitney's innovations transformed the economy first of the American South and later of the North.
... Courtesy of Mass. Moments.
Image ... Upham's Corner Firehouse. Dorchester, Massachusetts.
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