On today's date in 1587, Mary Queen of Scots was executed at Frotheringay Castle in Northamptonshire.  It is written that it took three blows to finally sever her head.  It's also the day of the billhook on the French Republican Calendar.  According to superstition, you must never give someone a knife or a pair of scissors as a gift without collecting a coin from the receiver, so you will not be accountable for any injury or death. 

May Miller was born today.  She wrote the play The Bog Guide.  Today's births also include composer Raymond Scott and Dmitri Mendeleev, who wrote the first periodic table of elements.  The atomic number of oxgen is 8.

Turn on, tune in, drop out: the 8th and final level of conciousness according to Dr. Timothy Leary is the metaphysiological circuit, the gear that  lets the mind engage in intergalactic consciousness outside of relativity or space and time.  Eight is also number of dynamics in life according to Scientology.  Number 8 is God, because of its infinity symbology.  

It is unofficially Science Fiction Day to commemorate the birth of Jules Verne, Coincidentally, it's the 1949 birthdate of Brooke Adams, who starred in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  Also, film director King Vidor was born today.  He's in the Guiness Book for the longest directing career, from 1913 to 1980.  Your fortune for today can be the title of his 1976 autobiography:  A Tree is A Tree.