Today September 29th.

A happy birthday wish goes out to The Singing Cowboy as the late Gene Autry was born on this date.

Also in the music business, Jerry Lee Lewis is celebrating his birthday today.

On this date in the year 1996, the Number 34 was hoisted to the rafters of the Astrodome. And I'm sure that we all know that is the number of Alvin's very own Nolan Ryan.

And finally...

Our story today is about a young man named Rudolph who was born in 1858 in Paris, France. His father, a hard-working leather craftsman, was a strict disciplinarian with an entrepreneurial spirit. But all of these positive traits could not make up for the fact that he was a very unsuccessful manager of his money. For this reason, Rudolph's father would always be moving his family from town to town opening new stores and then subsequently closing them when the money ran out.

Throughout his youth Rudolph and his family moved several times, to several different countries: France, England, The Netherlands, Germany. The moves were sometimes due to his father's jobs and other times due geo-political reasons, such as the Franco-Prussian War. But no matter where Rudolph lived, he always spent his free time at the local museums and art exhibits. He was especially mesmerized by any and all mechanical gadgets and inventions.

Rudolph was a very smart young man. He fluently spoke three languages. He would always finish at the top of his class in elementary school, high school and trade school. Eventually he graduated as a mechanical engineer from Munich Polytechnic School as the youngest student with the highest grades.

In January of 1880, Rudolph would move to Switzerland to begin working as an apprentice in a factory that built refrigeration and heat engines. Due to primitive technology, nearly 90% of the fuel used to run engines at that time was wasted. Rudolph knew that there had to be a way to build a better, more efficient engine.

Within a year, he had patented and built a new machine for making table ice. Yes, just regular table ice that we all take for granted now. But, for young Rudolph making table ice was not his ultimate goal. His real goal was to design and manufacture a very efficient engine. The thought of 90% of the fuel that was poured into an engine going to waste was just not acceptable. Rudolph knew that there was incredible wealth waiting for the first person that could improve the fuel economy of engines in the late 1800's. Soon, he would invent and patent such an engine. Rudolph would not only build and sell his engines, but he would also sell the rights to manufacture them to various companies all over the world. As an example, Adolphus Busch, yes, the Adolphus Busch the beer manufacturer, paid Rudolph 1 million German Marks for the rights to manufacture the engine in the United States. That was only the tip of the iceberg. Money was pouring in from all over the world. Rudolph, who had spent much of his childhood studying inventions in various European museums, now had an invention himself,and it was making him tons and tons of money.

Do you remember a few minutes ago when I mentioned that Rudolph's father was not a good money manager? As fate would have it, that trait was handed down to Rudolph as well. It seemed that no matter how successful Rudolph would become, or how rich he would appear to grow, his debt would always grow larger. For every dollar that he earned, he would spend two. For every million dollars that he would bring in, it would not be enough to pay for the two million dollars in new debt that he would always seem to accumulate. By the age of 55, he had accumulated seemingly insurmountable debt by buying extravagant mansions, fancy race cars and lavish vacations. Unfortunately, as many of us know, financial difficulties can, and often does,lead to stress, declining mental and physical health and sometimes even depression.

The man in this story, Rudolph Diesel, whose career-defining invention, the diesel engine, was not immune to these symptoms. And it was on this date, September 29th, in the year 1913 that he would take his own life by jumping over the side of a cruise ship, just off the coast of England.

And that is just one of the things that has occurred on this day in history