In honor of Thanksgiving, the prompt this week was to give thanks for people whose work or life gifted us with things that we take for granted, things for which they may not ever have been acknowledged.

This prompt was inspired by the concept that today’s luxuries are tomorrows necessities, and a quote from Seneca in the book “Natural Questions.” Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BCE–65 CE) was a Roman Stoic philosopher, dramatist, statesman, and adviser to emperor Nero.

The time will come when diligent research over long periods will bring to light things which now lie hidden. A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would not be enough for the investigation of so vast a subject… And so this knowledge will be unfolded only through long successive ages. There will come a time when our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them… Many discoveries are reserved for ages still to come, when memory of us will have been effaced.