Ernest Hemingway completes his short novel The Old Man and the Sea. He wrote his publisher the same day, saying he had finished the book and that it was the best writing he had ever done. The critics agreed: …

Happy Birthday Russian vodka! (But not really…)

On this day, in 1865, renowned chemist Dmitry Mendeleev defended his doctoral dissertation, “On Combining Water and Alcohol,” in which he began the exploration of the ratios, concentration and weights of various concentrations, …