Also, this day in 1688 William Cheselden was born. An English surgeon and teacher, he was one of the first to describe the role of saliva in digestion.

In 1886 Horace Williams, John L. Alberger and Louis R. Alberger, of Buffalo, NY, received a patent for a “process of making salt from brine and the apparatus used, it being especially adapted to the manufacture of fine salt and to the saving of fuel usually employed.”

In 1917 In France, Salvation Army volunteer Helen Purviance made the first doughnuts for homesick U.S. soldiers. The doughnuts became a symbol of the spirit of the Salvation Army’s work to ease the hardship of WW I soldiers on the frontline.