It’s the 142nd anniversary of the death of Charles Babbage.
The man is a renowned mathematician and philosopher but what I like best about him is like all great men he was a little bit eccentric. It would be fair to say that my favourite story about Babbage is when he trolled/contacted Alfred Tennyson. In response to Tennyson’s poem "The Vision of Sin" Babbage wrote:
"In your otherwise beautiful poem, one verse reads,

Every moment dies a man,
Every moment one is born.

... If this were true, the population of the world would be at a standstill. In truth, the rate of birth is slightly in excess of that of death. I would suggest [that the next version of your poem should read]:

Every moment dies a man,
Every moment 1 1/16 is born.

Strictly speaking, the actual figure is so long I cannot get it into a line, but I believe the figure 1 1/16 will be sufficiently accurate for poetry."
(Doran 2001: 77)