61 years ago today, the Blue Ribbon Sports company was founded in Oregon. Remaining so named for the next 7 years, it would eventually change to a new moniker: Nike. The world’s largest supplier of athletic shoes and apparel and a major manufacturer of sports equipment, with revenue in excess of US$46 billion, Nike took its name from the Greek goddess of victory. 

103 years ago today, Lehman Caves National Monument was enshrined by presidential decree, protecting the longest-known cave in Nevada which had been used as a refuge by Native Americans. 68 years later, Lehman Caves suddenly found itself lying at the center of 77,000 acres of the newly made Great Basin National Park and was included among many natural treasures, including some of the oldest single trees ever discovered by science.

193 years ago today, the father of impressionism, Edouard Manet, was born in Paris. He grew up rejecting the legal career imagined for him to become the painter that would lead the transition from the realist to the impressionist styles.