Discovery

I used Wikipedia to research important events that happened on September 11th. I found this entry for 1609: “Henry Hudson discovers Manhattan and the indigenous people living there.” I was surprised this language has not been cleaned up given the precision we now use to describe discoveries. The indigenous people living there had already discovered the island we call Manhattan; and those natives apparently discovered Europeans simultaneously with being discovered. Hudson’s feat is much like my discovery of air and New Yorkers, something I accomplished in August of 1947. Neil Armstrong did not discover the Moon. He was the first earthling to step foot on it unless my daughter-in-law Joanna’s cult is correct that Leif Erikson’s grandfather fashioned a rocket made of ice and died on the Moon in the 970’s. Wikipedia is more precise describing Jonas Salk as “developing one of the first successful polio vaccines.” I would be more willing to call that a discovery. A fellow member of Hair Splitter Anonymous claims that a tree makes a sound when it falls in a forest with no one around to hear it. He says this is a basic law of Physics. I never took Physics which I think is a PE class. But it apparently moots my follow up questions, including whether a chipmunk counts as someone hearing the sound. What about indigenous people? Do they count? This leaves little space to cover the biggest story of September 11th. In the year 9, The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest ended when the Roman Empire suffered its greatest defeat. The Rhine River was established as the border between the Empire and Germanic Barbarians for the next 400 years. Trees still fall in Teutoburg but according to legend, no one has heard them for over 2000 years.