1912: Alan Mathison Turing, one of the greatest pioneers of modern computing and artificial intelligence, is born in the Paddington district of London, England.

1868: Christopher Latham Sholes, a tinkerer from Wisconsin, patents a practical typewriter.

1836: With the U.S. national debt eliminated in 1835, and the federal budget running a huge surplus, Pres. Andrew Jackson's plan to distribute the surplus to the states is enacted. Jackson repeatedly declares that with no more national debt, the U.S. will "always" have a budget surplus. Here's a better signal of what the future really holds: By the time the distribution is actually paid out, in 1837, it has already shrunk below $37.5 million, 25% less than the government's original estimate of $50 million.

Bray Hammond, Banks and Politics in America: from the Revolution to the Civil War (Princeton Univ. Press, 1991 ed.), pp. 454-456;Peter L. Rousseau, "Jacksonian Monetary Policy, Specie Flows, and the Panic of 1837," National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 7528, Cambridge, Mass., 2000 p. 2.