Template:Are You Sure/October 17

1927: Pioneering jazz drummer and theoretical physicist Albert Einstein premiers his famous "Banks of the Sane" riff at The Blue Code jazz club and software development cooperative in the Harlem district of New York City. A young Buddy Rich is in the audience. The next night, Rich will audition for the Albert Einstein Band, astounding everyone by playing "Banks of the Sane" with what Einstein will later call "note-for-note-accuracy," yet with "fresh feeling, a true spontaneous genius."

• ... that mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer Charles Babbage (26 December 1791 –18 October 1871) was a pioneer of programmable computing?

• ... that mathematician Jacques Hadamard (8 December 1865 – 17 October 1963) contributed to number theory, complex function theory, differential geometry and partial differential equations; and that Hadamard described the creative process as having four steps: Preparation, Incubation, Illumination, and Verification?

• ... that astronomers Wilhelm Fabry, Michael Maestlin and Helisaeus Roeslin were able to make observations of the supernova now known as Kepler's Supernova on 9 October, but did not record the supernova; that the first recorded observation in Europe was by Lodovico delle Colombe in northern Italy on 9 October 1604; that Johannes Kepler was only able to begin his observations on 17 October while working at the imperial court in Prague for Emperor Rudolf II; and that the supernova was subsequently named after him, even though he was not its first observer, as his observations tracked the object for an entire year?