November 9 - Carl Sagan Day

Posted on November 9, 2021

Key points

This is an update of my post published on November 9, 2010:

(NOTE: Some groups and people celebrate this holiday on the Saturday closest to Sagan’s November 9th birthday.)

Carl Sagan was an astronomer, author, and popularizer of science. He was born in Brooklyn,

New York, on this date in 1934. For more information on Sagan, see this earlier post.

To celebrate Sagan, read or watch something written by him. Some popular choices are Contact (a science fiction book and a movie starring Jodie Foster), Cosmos (a book and a multi-part television show on science, available on DVD – perhaps at your library?), and Pale Blue Dot (a book and audio book). One of my favorite Sagan books is The Demon-Haunted World. On You Tube there are lots of free videos that are little clips of various Sagan productions.

Here’s a taste of Carl Sagan:

On Astrology

On Intelligence

On Environmental Concerns

Some people enjoy the Symphony of Science videos. Here is one that features Sagan and other eminent scientists.

Make and eat an apple pie…

and as you do so, contemplate Carl Sagan’s words:

“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”

This video splices Sagan’s voice onto images from the movie The Matrix. It really cracks me up.

Also on this date…In 1965, the Great Northeast Blackout:

At 5:27 p.m., there was a massive blackout that left about 30 million people in eight U.S. states and two Canadian provinces without power. For some, the power was out all night—around 12 hours. In New York City this power outage trapped thousands and thousands of people (some sources say almost a million people) underground in the subway system, in office buildings, and in elevators. Apparently there was pretty much no rioting, violence, or looting. Instead, New Yorkers and other people spent the night helping each other out—volunteering to direct traffic, taking food and coffee to people trapped underground, and so forth.

Interestingly enough, a mere 12 years later, there was another long-lasting power outage in New York, and this time there was a lot of violence and looting. Why do some disasters bring out the best in people, and others bring out the worst?