See all presidential pardons ranked by date and by number at following link. Two presidents granted no pardons, and one granted 3687. http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/pardonspres1.htm

William Henry Harrison, 1841, our ninth president and James Abram Garfield, 1881, our 20th president, were in office less than one year.
http://www.potus.com/

Bryology is the study of mosses and lichens and in the mid-1800s Columbus, Ohio was the national center of this field. Scientists were studying peat moss, instrumental in the formation of coal, the main energy source during the Industrial Revolution.
Echoes, membership newsletter of the Ohio Historical Society September 2008

mainstay (MAYN-stay)
noun: A chief support or main part
On a sailing ship, the mainstay is a strong rope that secures the mainmast. The noun stay (a heavy rope) is from Old English.
A.Word.A.Day

Iris Kievernagel has been told by an appellate court in California that she can’t use her deceased husband’s frozen sperm to inseminate herself. Here’s the story from the San Francisco Chronicle, and here’s the opinion. Citing precedent for the proposition that the right of procreational autonomy is composed of two rights of equal significance–the right to procreate and the right to avoid procreation, the court writes:
In this case we must decide whether a widow has the right to use her late husband’s frozen sperm to attempt to conceive a child where her late husband signed an agreement with the company storing the frozen sperm providing that the frozen sperm was to be discarded upon his death. We conclude that in determining the disposition of gamete material, to which no other party has contributed and thus another party’s right to procreational autonomy is not implicated, the intent of the donor must control.
Interestingly, the court said the situation would be different, the court said, if the dispute involved frozen embryos--fertilized eggs--which would require that both spouses’ wishes be considered.
WSJ Law Blog September 15, 2008

Despite settling a fraud lawsuit filed brought by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo by agreeing to buy back $19 billion of auction-rate securities from clients who got stuck with them, UBS continues to fend off litigation.
Today, a federal judge in Albany, N.Y., ruled that a fraud suit filed by a New York energy company that got stuck with more than $60 million of auction-rate securities could move forward, denying UBS’s motion to dismiss. The company, Plug Power Inc., said UBS lied to its CFO last year by saying the ARS were safe and liquid, despite spikes in their interest rates that suggested otherwise.
Here’s the WSJ story , the amended complaint, and a transcript of today’s hearing.
WSJ Law Blog September 17, 2008

For coaster connoisseurs, there's no place like Cedar Point. Cedar Point, a mile-long, 364-acre, 138-year-old amusement park on a peninsula jutting out into Lake Erie in northern Ohio has 17 roller coasters. The park also has lovely landscaped grounds, kiddie rides, live shows, a variety of restaurants and even a nod to the area's history, with a cluster of transplanted log cabins hauled in from various parts of frontier-era Ohio, plus a barn full of old-fashioned farm tools and a petting zoo.
http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080824/LIVING05/808240334/1015/48HOURS

On September 18, 1851 The New York Times published its first issue. It was founded by George Jones, a banker, and Henry Jarvis Raymond, who was a politician and then worked for the New York Tribune before he got fired. Raymond was so bitter about being fired that he hoped to make a newspaper that was successful enough to drive the Tribune out of business. They set up their office in a decrepit brownstone, and they didn't have lamps yet so they had to put the paper together by candlelight. But the windows didn't have glass yet, so the candles kept blowing out. The paper reached a circulation of 10,000 within 10 days. The first issue proclaimed, "We publish today the first issue of the New-York Daily Times, and we intend to issue it every morning (Sundays excepted) for an indefinite number of years to come." It's now been in print for 157 years.
The Writer’s Almanac