I had an experience this weekend that absolutely blew my mind.
I was together with two of my very best friends from high school. We were back in the area where we grew up because one friend’s Dad had just died. We gathered together for the funeral. The three of us stayed in an Airbnb together for the weekend in the area where we grew up.
While we were there, we started looking through a big, hefty book that my friend had found while cleaning out her Dad’s house. Out of curiosity, she had begun thumbing through it and discovered that it was filled with newspaper articles that were a hundred years old — and in a few instances, even a little older than that.
I was already stunned that this thin newspaper paper could be so well preserved. But then something even stranger happened.
When we flipped the pages, a small note slipped out. I picked it up and looked at it first, utterly flabbergasted.
“What?!?” I said.
My friend next to me leaned over and said, “Edwin Hubble?!?”
Another friend asked, “Who’s Edwin Hubble?”
And we said, “The Edwin Hubble. The astronomer the telescope is named after.”
Edwin Hubble taught at New Albany High School in Indiana from 1913 to 1914. I already knew that, but what I didn’t know is in addition to physica and math, he taught Spanish.
The note we found is written in Spanish.
Translated, it says: “I will come with great pleasure, my señorita.”
So now we’re left with a question.
Is this a highly suggestive and flirty note from Edwin Hubble? Or is it simply saying that he will gladly come to an event or invitation?
We’re not sure. But we checked his signature, and it looks completely authentic.
I am absolutely stunned by this and very excited about the find. My friend will have to decide what she wants to do with the note — perhaps give it to Hubble’s collection at the Huntington Library near Pasadena, California, or perhaps keep it.
Either way, what an incredible discovery.
And such a mystery.
Who were you writing to, Edwin?
Smuggling Grace 