Did you know that there’s SO little difference between Moths and Butterflies that [in the great, humongous, majority of cases] they’re actually all Butterflies?!
Yes, I know – it’s unbelievable isn’t it… however, it’s true.
You can have bright, vivid colour moths, just as you can have rather dull looking butterflies. There are heaps of day moths – that is – moths who like being around and flitting, flying during the daytime hours – in fact there are more day-time moths in the UK than there are butterflies. But there are also Butterflies who like to fly at night.
There’s heaps more I could tell you which you might not know – but instead of me blathering on, I’ll give you a link at the end of this post so that those of you who would like to know more can click and the link will open up for you.
But now … … onto the crafty reason of my post today….
I’d like to introduce you to….
The Church Moth.
Maany moons ago, I got acquainted with a moth which wore glasses. Well, not actual real glasses (or spectacles), but he had a colouring around his front end (face) which made him look like he was wearing glasses. This moth was called a ‘Spectacled Moth’. (Which I didn’t know – I had to research it to find out what the dickens it was.). I’ve found a couple of photographs on the web, so that I could share this moth with you….
The Spectacle Moth. – Photograph by Robert Thompson @ naturepl.com
The memory of that amazing moth obviously stuck with me,for when I came to designing this fabulous moth which I’m sharing with you today, I knew I wanted to make a moth which wore spectacles.
I began by choosing fabricsfrom my stash, and the beautiful fabric I chose for the main wings instantly gave me the name of the Moth I was going to create. I said it out loud as it came into my head: “The Church Moth!”. It was the perfect fabric pattern for a Church Moth for it had a sort of stained glass window effect to it. It’s a tapestry style, but soft feel fabric which I had a smallish piece of – it was so perfect!
I drew, and made a pattern, cut, and snipped, and pinned and sewed. I inked and stained some of the fabrics. Then I stitched, and hand sewed, attached and applied, then … I stopped and held up the incredible creation which I had in my hand, and looked and then said quietly but out loud, … “Ohhh, bless him! Isn’t he perfect!…..” ~ I loved him from the tips of his antennae to the end of his tail.
Then… I fiddled and made, then made again, and again, until I finally managed to produce a pair of beautiful rose gold glasses. I popped them on his nose to check the fit. I’m absolutely convinceed I heard him exclaim with delight that he would finally be able to see the words in the hymn books! He seemed terribly excited.
Can you see his rose gold spectacles?
Of course … that wasn’t the end of the Spectacled Church Moths creation … I had to finish him off with a bit of flair and fuss ….
He had to have lace on the underside of his wings, as well as the tops – because all the best dressed Men of the Cloth had special robes which had lace on them somewhere – so obviously this Church Moth simply HAD to have lace too! (He also has his Union Flag (aka Union Jack) button, which shows he was born in England!)
The gentle feathering around the edges of his wings, is a nod to the feathering which most moths (and butterflies) have on and around their wings. And …. It seemed right to have the feathers around the edges of his wings, for I felt that he would (naturally) help with the upkeep of the church in which he lived, so he would help with the dusting by fluttering his wings, which would brush away any dust which dared to lay upon any surfaces within his church.
Every church should have a church moth like this one.Don’t you agree?
Well that’s me done and dusted…. oh hang on, NO! WAIT!!!
I’m forgetting the . . .
Monday Funday Stuff.…
And finally …..
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This is a ‘sorry I’m later than I should be’ Monday post, bought to you by a busy inside her head female who no longer knows what day it is because every day is the blinking same as every other flippin’ fluffin’ day!!! grrrr!
I think I need a secretary who will remind me every hour, on the hour, what the date and day it is. [sigh] Applications for the job are now being taken. Please use the comment box as your application and let me know your qualifications. Oh … and tell me what you will bring to the job – such as chocolate and cake.
Thank you so much for coming, and for having a coffee moment with me. I love seeing you here.
As always. . . I love your company and adore chatting with you, so please say a few words or more, in a comment so that I know who I’m chatting to! Let me know what you think. Let me know what’s going on in your life.
I hope you had a magnificent Monday, whatever you did, and that you have a truly blessed, wonderful week. Sending much love to you along with a huge bunch of squidges.
If you’re a sewist -a sewer – or you sew things – then the chances are that you will have heard of a Bodkin. If you don’t sew things, you may still have heard of a bodkin. But … if you haven’t heard of a Bodkin, then I share the definition of ‘bodkin’, as per the Merriam-Webster Dictionary:-
Definition of bodkin
1a: dagger, stiletto
b: a sharp slender instrument for making holes in cloth
c: an ornamental hairpin shaped like a stiletto
2: a blunt needle with a large eye for drawing tape or ribbon through a loop or hem
This is exactly how my Grandma showed me how to substitute a safety pin if you couldn’t find your bodkin!
It was that:- “b: a sharp slender instrument for making holes in cloth“ on which I focused while I was embroidering tiny little pieces of fabric, which I wanted to make brooches (or ‘pins’)
Read on dear reader, read on . . .
I wanted a special name for my brooches. One which said something about them, instead of just calling them ‘brooches’ or ‘pins‘. I looked around my work desk for inspiration. Needles; thimbles; threaders; embroidery threads; markers; beads; buttons…. no, nothing seemed to give me the joy I always feel, deep within my heart and within the central core of my body, when I know I’ve found the right name for something.
When suddenly … ‘Bodkin‘ came to mind.
Now I know that there is a Fairy Elf, in the Land of Fae, called Bodkin.
Meet Bodkin ~ image of him according to Cobs
Bodkin is a sewer and stitcher of all things which require a needle, thread and, more importantly … his expertise. His knowledge knows no bounds. He has skills unknown to man, not just in a particular field of sewing, but in the whole worldy world of sewing ANYTHING!
It all made sense! A bodkin is a sharp slender instrument for making holes in cloth …. and a brooch has a pin which is a sharp slender instrument, which makes holes in cloth – in clothes! It makes the holes in your clothes to attach the brooch to your jumper, blouse, top, dress, coat or cardigan, – or even your tie! That was it!!! My Brooches were to be called: Bodkins!
So, now you know this …. may I introduce you to my first Bodkin Brooch ….
~The Lords my Shepherd~
Measuring just 2.9cm, which is just a smidgen over an inch, this little brooch has three, tiny, hand embroidered sheep, complete with white daisies and bright yellow buttercups which they’ve found to chomp on.
The pale pink ribbon you see ‘attached’ to the brooch (in the photo above) is a piece of re-cycled silk. It’s been washed and roughly cut into a ‘flag’ shape, onto which I printed the name of the brooch/pin – ‘The Lord’s my Shepherd’. The delicate ribbon isn’t a permanent fixture on the brooch, it can be taken off by simply undoing the pin on the rear of the brooch.
To pack the brooches – rather than simply put them into boxes, I wanted something a little more tactile and textile – so I chose to tissue wrap each brooch, and put them into a little drawstring top muslin bags which have the Cobwebs logo printed on them.
And that, fabulous readers, is what a Bodkin is according to Cobwebs. I think Bodkin the Fairy Elf will approve.
I’m sure I see him nodding – I think he likes the brooches/pins! RESULT!
You might now be thinking that that is the end of this post. Ohhhh no. You still have some Monday Jokes to read!
These are the Jokes Folks!
Q: Why did the yoghurt go to the art exhibition?
A: Because it was cultured.
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Q: What breed of dog can jump higher than buildings?
A: Any dog, because buildings can’t jump.
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Q: What do you call a train carrying bubblegum?
A: A chew-chew train.
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And that’s it! You’ve managed to get through another post from me, with all your brain cells in tact!
Thank you SO much for coming and spending a little time with me. Please… talk to me, via a comment, so that I know who I’m talking to. To make a comment you simply have to click to read this post (click the heading at the top of the page on my blog) – then scroll down to the bottom, where you’ll find a box, inviting you to comment. You don’t have to say a hundred words of chat – just simply hello and a few words – even inviting me to your blog to see something. It’s just so fabulous to ‘know’ who’s reading and who I’m talking to!
May you have the happiest of Mondays, and I hope your week ahead is a good one.
Don’t forget to count your blessings – you have more reasons to smile than you might imagine.
Sending heaps of squidges and lots of love ~ from me in my corner, to you in yours.
Most of you know,but just in case you, dear reader, don’t: I’ve been having my craft room painted, and having new shelving and storage in there so that I could get myself more organised. Ha! More ORGANISED. That’s a joke.
I don’t know where anything is any more! Things had a place where they lived and I could (kind of, mostly) find them. But now . . . I can’t find anything. Everything is in a new place! So to help the situation I’ve put little sticky notes with various things written on them and fix them on door cupboards and drawers, and on various different bits of papers/acetate/card, etc, so that I give myself a fighting chance to find things again. There’s still some stuff under my sewing desk – but it’s nothing of major importance so it can wait a little while. But there are some boxes stuff on the sewing desk, and I need to finish doing those over the weekend…. in between real life getting in the way – like it does. tsk tsk.
Well … while I’ve been getting on with getting on …. Spring jumped into the mix and ohhh how wondrous it’s made everything here where I am in the South of England. There are now Bluebells flowering in my garden, along with Primulas, Grape Hyacinth, and even my mums Poppies have pushed through the soil and are warming their new leaves and little stems in the wonderful sunshine we’ve had going on. Everything has felt so happy and sea-sidey.
I’ve driven past the bay and along the Harbour side many times over the past couple of weeks, and as I gazed out over the ocean, I swear that someone had sprinkled diamond dust over it for it was twinkling and sparkling like no diamond ring could ever achieve. I so wanted to stop and park, just so that I could enjoy the feeling of deep peace which comes over me when I sit and keep the ocean company. I’ve booked myself an appointment to keep the Ocean company over this weekend. I’ll take some coffee and just sit quietly with it, while it talks to me, in its low, gentle shhhhushing sounds, and I listen to its wisdom and calming voice. It’s the most incredible, peace giving feeling, and I highly recommend it.
Anyhoo . . . I couldn’t come to chat and then leave without sharing a smile or two with you, so … get your chuckle muscle ready – we’re going to give it a workout!
These are the Jokes Folks!
A lorry-load of tortoises crashed into a trainload of terrapins, and I thought,‘That’s a turtle disaster.’
If quizzes are quizzical,what are tests?
I stopped buying women’s magazines.The only time I ever see someone who looks like me is under the word ‘Before’.
My New Year’s resolution was to get in shape.I choose round. So far it’s going really well!
I found a new way to know if you’ve put weight on. There’s a car park near me which has a barrier that goes up when it senses a car is near. I was carrying two bags of shopping, and …
Old ladies in wheelchairs with blankets over their legs? I don’t think so! … I believe they’re retired mermaids.
The worst job I ever had was as a forensicologist for the United Nations. One time I thought I’d come across the mass grave of a thousand snowmen,but it turns out it was just a field of carrots.
I was walking along the other day and on the pavement I saw a white baby ghost;however, come to think of it, it may have been a tissue.
A lot of people like cats. Take the Pope, for example:I read that he was a cat-oholic!
My mother made us eat all sorts of vitamins and supplements,until one day I nearly choked on part of The Sunday Times.
As a child I watched Mary Poppins so many times I suffered from a condition with my sight.Umdiddleiddleiddleumdiddle Eye.
. . . and finally . . .
I had a dream last night that I was cutting carrots with the Grim Reaper.Dicing with death.
Before I go .. I have bit of mind-blowingly exciting news that I’m bubbling over about, and which I’ve known about for about 3 weeks, but didn’t know how to go about sharing this news as I didn’t want anyone to think I was showing off or anything like that.
I’ve been nominated for an award in the WordPress Annual Bloggers Bash Awards 2018!This news made me so, so happy that I sat here and blubbered (cried) about it.
Now I live under no delusions of winning – there are a lot of other blogs nominated in my category who are far worthier than my little bit of the World Wide Web – but to be nominated — Ohh my goodness! That alone is the most incredible, magical thing to me. Such an honour and so unbelievably wonderful to see my name there amongst all those others – aw heck, – I could cry all over again just telling you about it.
I’ll give you a link to the page on WordPress so that you can read about the awards for yourself. (Voting closes at midnight on April 30th (BST)). If you want to see my name there, scroll down to the category of: MOST INFORMATIVE (Original Content) Blogger – and you’ll find my name in the box under the explanation of what this category is about.
Please know that I’m not asking you to vote for me – I wouldn’t ever do that. The joy of seeing my name amongst all those others is mind-blowing. I have no pipe dreams about winning. I don’t ‘do’ Facebook or any of the social media things like that – and no one in my family reads my blog, except for the lovely Mr.Cobs (bless him), so I have no ‘in family’ or friend supporters, but hey, that doesn’t matter …. IWASNOMINATED! And that alone means more to me than you could ever imagine.
Thank you to the lovely fellow blogger who put my name forward. I am touched to the heart of me and filled with thanks for your kindness. Bless you. I think I know who this is, but I won’t embarrass them by naming them here.
So . . . that’s me, back in the saddle again. Now I know that trying to catch up with everyone’s blog posts I’ve missed reading is going to be a task on the impossible scale, so what I’m planning to do is pick up from today. However . . . if there is a post that I’ve missed over the past couple of weeks, which you were hoping for me to see, or comment on, then please leave a link to it in a comment below and I’ll go straight to it and have a peep.
What have you been up to? Been anywhere? Seen something? Created anything? Do share!
Until we talk – and I hope we do talk … may your day be bright. May your smiles be brighter. And may your life be filled with contentment. If it’s not … make it so!
Well I don’t know about anyone else, but this was a week and a half! I don’t know why it seemed so long, but I was beginning to think that Friday was never going to arrive! But … I should have trusted it… for here it is. 🙂
Well, you’re here for this weeks expensive edumacation, so find a seat, put your chewing gum in the bin, get your books out and a pen or pencil (crayon for you … you know who you are – oh, and your mother says you are NOT to eat ANY crayons this week!) – put the date a the top of your page, and we shall begin.
Ready? Here we go . . .
On this Day in History
1742 – Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington, becomes British Prime Minister.
1852 – Studebaker Brothers wagon company, precursor of the automobile manufacturer, is established.
Studebaker Corporation,or simply Studebaker, was a United States wagon and automobile manufacturer based in South Bend, Indiana. Originally, the company was a producer of wagons for farmers, miners and the military, founded in 1852 and incorporated in 1868 under the name of the Studebaker Brothers Manufacturing Company.
Studebaker entered the automotive business in 1902 with electric vehicles and in 1904 with gasoline vehicles, all sold under the name “Studebaker Automobile Company”. It partnered with other builders of gasoline-powered vehicles—Garford and E-M-F—until 1911.
The first gasoline cars to be fully manufactured by Studebaker were marketed in August 1912. Over the next 40 years, the company established an enviable reputation for quality and reliability.
In 1954, after a dramatic and unexpected fall in sales, Studebaker merged with the Packard Motor Car Company, forming the Studebaker-Packard Corporation. The final Packard-designed cars were built by the company in Detroit in 1956, and the last Packards with Studebaker bodies were built in 1958. “Packard” was then dropped from the company’s name as Studebaker rapidly diversified, buying up companies such as Schaefer, which made commercial refrigerators, STP, which made automotive oil treatments, and Paxton Products, which made automobile superchargers. Even a commercial airline, Trans International Airlines, founded by Kirk Kerkorian, came into the corporate fold in the early ‘sixties.
By 1963, however, the company’s mainstay products, automobiles and trucks, were selling very poorly. The South Bend plant was closed and cars were built solely at the satellite plant in Hamilton, Ontario until March 1966.
Studebaker merged with Worthington Corporation to become Studebaker-Worthington in 1967 . McGraw-Edison purchased Studebaker-Worthington in 1979, eliminating the century-old Studebaker name from the corporate landscape.
1923 – Howard Carter unseals the burial chamber of Pharaoh Tutankhamun. Tutankhamun (1341 BC – 1323 BC) was an Egyptian Pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty (ruled 1333 BC – 1324 BC in the conventional chronology), during the period of Egyptian history known as the New Kingdom. The 1922 discovery by Howard Carter of Tutankhamun’s intact tomb received worldwide press coverage and sparked a renewed public interest in ancient Egypt, for which Tutankhamun’s burial mask remains the popular face.
1937 – Wallace H. Carothers receives a patent for nylon. Wallace Hume Carothers (April 27, 1896 – April 29, 1937) was an American chemist, inventor and the leader of organic chemistry at DuPont, credited with the invention of Nylon.
Carothers was a group leader in DuPont’s Experimental Station laboratory, near Wilmington, Delaware, where most polymer research was done. Carothers was a brilliant organic chemist who, in addition to first developing nylon, also helped lay the groundwork for Neoprene. After receiving his Ph.D, he taught at several universities before he was hired by the DuPont Company to work on fundamental research.
He married the former Helen Sweetman on February 21, 1936. Wallace Carothers had been troubled by periods of mental depression since his youth. Despite his success with Nylon, he felt that he had not accomplished much and had run out of ideas. His unhappiness was compounded by the death of his favourite sister, and on April 29, 1937, he checked into a Philadelphia hotel room and died after drinking a cocktail of lemon juice laced with potassium cyanide. His daughter, Jane, was born seven months later on November 27, 1937.
Nylon is a generic designation for a family of synthetic polymers known generically as polyamides and first produced on February 28, 1935 by Wallace Carothers at DuPont. Nylon is one of the most commonly used polymers.
Nylon is a thermoplastic silky material, first used commercially in a nylon-bristled toothbrush (1938), followed more famously by women’s stockings (“nylons”; 1940). It is made of repeating units linked by peptide bonds (another name for amide bonds) and is frequently referred to as polyamide (PA). Nylon was the first commercially successful polymer.
Nylon was intended to be a synthetic replacement for silk and substituted for it in many different products after silk became scarce during World War II. It replaced silk in military applications such as parachutes and flak vests, and was used in many types of vehicle tyres.
Nylon fibers are used in many applications, including fabrics, bridal veils, carpets, musical strings, and rope.
Solid nylon is used for mechanical parts such as machine screws, gears and other low to medium-stress components previously cast in metal. Engineering-grade nylon is processed by extrusion, casting, and injection moulding. Solid nylon is used in hair combs. Type 6/6 Nylon 101 is the most common commercial grade of nylon, and Nylon 6 is the most common commercial grade of moulded nylon. Nylon is available in glass-filled variants which increase structural and impact strength and rigidity, and molybdenum sulfide-filled variants which increase lubricity.
1957 – The “Toddlers’ Truce”, a controversial television close-down between 6.00pm and 7.00pm – was abolished in the United Kingdom. The Toddlers’ Truce was a piece of early British TV scheduling policy which required transmission halt for an hour each weekday from 6-7pm. This was from the end of children’s TV and the evening schedule so that young children could be put to bed.
Background
It may have originated when the BBC resumed television after the end of the war in 1946. The policy remained fairly uncontroversial until ITV began transmission in 1955. At that time the Truce was accepted as policy by the Postmaster General, Earl De La Warr, in the interests of smoothing relations between ITV and the fledgling ITA. The problem became apparent in 1956 when the ITV franchise-holders under the ITA’s jurisdiction were struggling to stay in business. As the BBC were and still are funded by a TV licence fee, their budget was not related to the number of hours of transmission. Indeed the Truce saved them money. ITV, on the other hand, were funded entirely by advertising and the Truce caused a loss of revenue in the hour’s close-down. Supporters of ITV, which had faced strong political opposition, argued that the Truce had little to do with social responsibility and was simply a way to give the BBC an unfair advantage.
Abolition The ITA had encouraged the ITV companies (Granada, ABC Television, ATV and Associated – Rediffusion) to seek abolition of the Truce. Action was taken finally in July 1956, probably the result of a lack of effective cooperation between the companies rather than political objection. The Postmaster General, Charles Hill, had disliked the policy as an example of the BBC’s paternalism toward its audience, saying:
This restriction seemed to me absurd and I said so. It was the responsibility of parents, not the state, to put their children to bed at the right time… I invited the BBC and the ITA to agree to its abolition …
The BBC could not, however, be persuaded to accept the abolition or even to a compromise of reducing the period to 30 minutes. Hill tired of the disagreement and asked Parliament for the abolition which was agreed on 31 October 1956. However, the BBC and ITA couldn’t even agree a date for the abolition to take place. Hill decided on Saturday, 16 February 1957.
Subsequent use of the time The BBC filled the hour with a music programme, ‘Six-Five Special’ from the first Saturday and with the ‘Tonight’ news magazine from Monday to Friday. The BBC however continued to close from 6.15-7.00pm on Sundays, the time of evening church services, until ‘Songs of Praise’ was launched on 1 October 1961. Until 1992 this time on Sundays was used for religious programmes on BBC1 and ITV. The 6-7pm slot has ever since been devoted to news, especially regional news, in the weekday schedules of both BBC1 and ITV, though ‘Crossroads’ (a Monday to Friday soap opera, no longer made) was also shown at this time in most ITV regions.
1957 – The first computer bulletin board system is created (CBBS in Chicago, Illinois). A Bulletin Board System, or BBS, is a computer system running software that allows users to connect and login to the system using a terminal program. Originally BBSes were accessed only over a phone line using a modem, but by the early 1990s some BBSes allowed access via a Telnet, packet switched network, or packet radio connection.
Once logged in, a user could perform functions such as downloading or uploading software and data, reading news, and exchanging messages with other users, either through electronic mail or in public message boards. Many BBSes also offered on-line games, in which users could compete with each other, and BBSes with multiple phone lines often offered chat rooms, allowing users to interact with each other.
Monochrome, a modern BBS still running today.
The term “Bulletin Board System” itself is a reference to the traditional cork-and-pin bulletin board often found in entrances of supermarkets, schools, libraries or other public areas where people can post messages, advertisements, or community news.
During their heyday from the late 1970s to the mid 1990s, most BBSes were run as a hobby free of charge by the system operator (or “SysOp”), while other BBSes charged their users a subscription fee for access, or were operated by a business as a means of supporting their customers. Bulletin Board Systems were in many ways a precursor to the modern form of the World Wide Web and other aspects of the Internet.
Early BBSes were often a local phenomenon, as one had to dial into a BBS with a phone line and would have to pay additional long distance charges for a BBS out of the local calling area. Thus, many users of a given BBS usually lived in the same area, and activities such as BBS Meets or Get Togethers, where everyone from the board would gather and meet face to face, were common.
As the use of the Internet became more widespread in the mid to late 1990s, traditional BBSes rapidly faded in popularity. Today, Internet forums occupy much of the same social and technological space as BBSes did, and the term BBS is often used to refer to any online forum or message board.
1983 – The Ash Wednesday bush-fires in Victoria and South Australia claim the lives of 75 people. The Ash Wednesday bush-fires were a series of bush-fires that occurred in south-eastern Australia on 16 February 1983. Within twelve hours, more than 180 fires fanned by winds of up to 110 km (68 mph) per hour caused widespread destruction across the states of Victoria and South Australia. Years of severe drought and extreme weather combined to create one of Australia’s worst fire days in a century. The fires are the second deadliest bush-fire disaster in Australian history – only the 2009 Victorian bush-fires have claimed more lives.
Ash Wednesday is one of Australia’s costliest natural disasters. Over 3,700 buildings were destroyed or damaged and 2,545 individuals and families lost their homes. Livestock losses were very high, with over 340,000 sheep, 18,000 cattle and numerous native animals either dead or later destroyed. A total of 4,540 insurance claims were paid totalling A$176 million with a total estimated cost of well over $400 million (1983 values) for both states or $1.3 billion in adjusted terms (2007).
The emergency saw the largest number of volunteers called to duty from across Australia at the same time—an estimated 130,000 firefighters, defence force personnel, relief workers and support crews.
2006 – The last Mobile army surgical hospital (MASH) is decommissioned by the United States Army.
The first computer dates back to Adam and Eve. It was an Apple with limited memory, just one byte. And then everything crashed.
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I just asked my husband if he remembers what today is … Scaring men is SO easy.
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I saw a documentary on how ships are kept together; riveting!
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Behind every very cross woman is a man who has absolutely no idea what he did wrong.
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I went to a karaoke bar last night that didn’t play any 70’s music… at first I was afraid, I was petrified.
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If I repeatedly stab my cornflakes does that make me a cereal killer?
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My uncle has a weird hobby; he collects empty bottles…which sounds so much better than “alcoholic.”
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I went to the garden centre in December and bought a Christmas Tree. The assistant asked me, “Will you be putting that up yourself?” I replied, “No, you idiot. I’ll be putting it up in my living room.
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I used to be in a band called ‘Missing Cat’… you probably saw our posters.
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My husband and I met at a Castanet class… we clicked.
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I phoned up the spiritual leader of Tibet, he sent me a large goat with a long neck, turns out I phoned dial-a-lama.
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and finally …. I’d like to finish with a song . . .
Don’t go bacon my heart. I couldn’t if I fried.
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Time for a coffee and a moment of contemplation. . .
Thought for the Day
CONFIDENCE:
Once all village people decided to pray for rain. On the day of the prayer all the people gathered and only one boy came with an umbrella. That’s Confidence.
TRUST:
Trust should be like the feeling of a one year old baby when you throw him in the air; he laughs…. because he knows you will catch him. That’s Trust.
HOPE:
Every night we go to bed, we have no assurance to get up alive the next morning, but still we have plans for the coming day . . . That’s Hope.
Keep Confidence.
Trust others.
Never lose Hope.
~ ❤ ~ ❤ ~ ❤ ~
And that wraps up our Edumacation for today! 🙂
May your day be blessed with all that you need, a little of what you want, and a sprinkle of wisdom for those moments when you need it.
Thank you for coming and sharing a coffee with me. It’s such a blessing to me that you’re here.
Sending you much love and squidges, from me in my corner, to you in yours. ~
Hello and a BIG WELCOME to Friday!Comes round regular as clockwork, doesn’t it?! But it’s a popular day with heaps of people, so it must have something good about it, is my way of thinking.
So let’s get into the groove [sings well-known Madonna song to self] and take our seats for some Friday Edumacation, shall we? Ready? Sitting comfortably? . . . . Then lets GO!
On this Day in History
Today is the 40th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar.
1870 – The U.S. Weather Bureau was established. 1895 – William G. Morgan creates a game called Mintonette, which soon comes to be referred to as volleyball.
1900 – Davis Cup competition is established. The Davis Cup is the premier international team event in men’s tennis. The largest annual international team competition in sports, the Davis Cup is run by the International Tennis Federation (ITF) and is contested between teams of players from competing countries in a knock-out format. The competition began in 1900 as a challenge between the United States and Great Britain. In 2005, 134 nations entered teams into the competition. The most successful countries over the history of the tournament are the United States (winning 32 tournaments and finishing as runners-up 29 times) and Australia (winning 28 times and finishing second 19 times and also winning on four occasions with New Zealand under the name ‘Australasia’).
The women’s equivalent of the Davis Cup is the Fed Cup.
(additional note – just for fun…When I typed that last sentence instead of typing “… Davis Cup is the Fed Cup” …. what I actually typed by accident was: “The women’s equivalent of the Davis Cup is the Fed up.” – Totally different meaning, Totally an accident. But … was it? Could it have been a Freudian slip, I wonder? LOL).
1922 – Brazil becomes a member of the Berne Convention copyright treaty. The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, usually known as the Berne Convention, is an international agreement governing copyright, which was first accepted in Berne, Switzerland in 1886. … Link: Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (link will open in a new window)
1942 – World War II:Top United States military leaders hold their first formal meeting to discuss American military strategy in the war. 1942 – Year-round Daylight saving time is re-instated in the United States as a wartime measure to help conserve energy resources.
1950 – Second Red Scare: Senator Joseph McCarthy accuses the United States State Department of being filled with Communists. McCarthyism is a term describing the intense anti-communist suspicion in the United States in a period that lasted roughly from the late 1940’s to the late 1950’s. This period is also referred to as the Second Red Scare, and coincided with increased fears about communist influence on American institutions and espionage by Soviet agents. Originally coined to criticise the actions of U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy, “McCarthyism” later took on a more general meaning, not necessarily referring to the conduct of Joseph McCarthy alone.
During this time many thousands of Americans were accused of being Communists or communist sympathisers and became the subject of aggressive investigations and questioning before government or private-industry panels, committees and agencies. The primary targets of such suspicions were government employees, those in the entertainment industry, educators and union activists. Suspicions were often given credence despite inconclusive or questionable evidence, and the level of threat posed by a person’s real or supposed leftist associations or beliefs was often greatly exaggerated. Many people suffered loss of employment, destruction of their careers, and even imprisonment. Most of these punishments came about through trial verdicts later overturned, laws that would be declared unconstitutional, dismissals for reasons later declared illegal or actionable, or extra-legal procedures that would come into general disrepute.
The most famous examples of McCarthyism include the Hollywood blacklist and the investigations and hearings conducted by Joseph McCarthy. It was a widespread social and cultural phenomenon that affected all levels of society and was the source of a great deal of debate and conflict in the United States.
1960 – Joanne Woodward receives the first star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Joanne Gignilliat Trimmier Woodward (born February 27, 1930) is an American Academy Award, Golden Globe, Emmy and Cannes award-winning actress. Woodward is also a television and theatrical producer. 1964 – The Beatlesmake their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, performing before a “record-busting” audience of 73 million viewers. 1965 – Vietnam War: The first United States combat troops are sent to South Vietnam. 1969 – First test flight of the Boeing 747.
1971 – The 6.4 on the Richter Scale Sylmar earthquake hits the San Fernando Valley area of California. 1971 – Apollo program: Apollo 14 returns to Earth after the third manned moon landing.
1986 – Comet Halley reaches perihelion, its closest approach to the sun, during its second visit to the inner solar system in the 20th century.
Halley’s Comet or Comet Halley(officially designated 1P/Halley) is the most famous of the periodic comets and can currently be seen every 75–76 years. Many comets with long orbital periods may appear brighter and more spectacular, but Halley is the only short-period comet that is clearly visible to the naked eye, and thus, the only naked-eye comet certain to return within a human lifetime. During its returns to the inner solar system, it has been observed by astronomers since at least 240 BC, but it was not recognized as a periodic comet until the eighteenth century when its orbit was computed by Edmond Halley, after whom the comet is now named. Halley’s Comet last appeared in the inner Solar System in 1986, and will next appear in mid-2061.
Halley is generally pronounced rhyming with valley, or (especially in the US) “Hailey”, but Edmond Halley himself probably pronounced his name “Hawley”, with the “hall-” rhyming with “tall” or “small”.
1995 – Space Shuttle astronauts Bernard A. Harris, Jr. and Michael Foale become the first African-American and first Briton, respectively, to perform spacewalks. 1996 – The Irish Republican Army (the I.R.A)declares the end of its 18 month ceasefire shortly followed by a large bomb in London’s Canary Wharf.
1996 – Copernicium is first discovered
Copernicium is a synthetic chemical element with symbol Cn and atomic number 112. It is an extremely radioactive element, and can only be created in a laboratory. The most stable known isotope, copernicium-285, has a half-life of approximately 29 seconds. Copernicium was first created in 1996 by the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research near Darmstadt, Germany. It is named after the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus. LINK: (opens in a new page for you); The Periodic Table of Videos (University of Nottingham)
2001 – The American submarine USS Greenevilleaccidentally strikes and sinks the Ehime-Maru, a Japanese training vessel operated by the Uwajima Fishery High School.
The Ehime-Maru and USS Greeneville collision was a ship collision between the United States Navy (USN) submarine USS Greeneville (SSN-772) and the Japanese fishing training ship Ehime Maru on 9 February 2001, about 9 nautical miles (17 km) off the south coast of Oahu, Hawaii, USA. In a demonstration for some civilian visitors, Greeneville performed an emergency surfacing manoeuvre. As the submarine surfaced, it struck Ehime Maru, a high school fishing training ship from Ehime Prefecture, Japan. Within minutes of the collision, Ehime Maru sank. Nine of its crew members were killed, including four high school students.
Many Japanese, including government officials, were concerned over news that civilians were present in Greeneville’s control room at the time of the accident. Some expressed anger because of a perception that the submarine did not try to assist Ehime Maru’s survivors and that the submarine’s captain, Commander Scott Waddle, did not apologise immediately afterwards. The Navy conducted a public court of inquiry, placed blame on Waddle and other members of Greeneville’s crew, and dealt non-judicial punishment or administrative disciplinary action to the captain and some crew members.
In response to requests from the families of Ehime Maru’s victims and the government of Japan, the USN raised Ehime Maru from the ocean floor in October 2001 and moved it to shallow water near Oahu. Once there, Navy and Japanese divers located and retrieved the remains of eight of the nine victims from the wreck. Ehime Maru was then moved back out to sea and scuttled in deep water. The Navy compensated the government of Ehime Prefecture, Ehime Maru’s survivors, and victims’ family members for the accident. Waddle travelled to Japan in December 2002 to apologise to the ship’s survivors and victims’ families.
The accident renewed calls by many in Japan for the United States to make more effort to reduce or eliminate crimes and accidents involving U.S. military personnel who injure or kill Japanese citizens. In response to the accident, the Navy changed its policies regarding civilian visits to its ships.
2016 – Two passenger trains collided in the German town of Bad Aibling in the state of Bavaria. Twelve people died, and 85 others were injured
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Born on this Day
1789 – Franz Xaver Gabelsberger, German inventor of the stenography (d. 1849)
1907 – Harold Scott MacDonald Coxeter, English-Canadian mathematician and academic (d. 2003)
1909 – Carmen Miranda, Portuguese-Brazilian actress, singer, and dancer (d. 1955)
1909 – Heather Angel, British actress (d. 1986)
1914 – Gypsy Rose Lee, American dancer (d. 1970)
1940 – Brian Bennett, English drummer & musician (The Shadows)
1942 – Carole King, American singer
1943 – Joe Pesci, American actor
1945 – Mia Farrow, American actress
1960 – Holly Johnson, British singer (Frankie Goes to Hollywood)
1981 – Tom Hiddleston, English actor, producer, and musical performer
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Died on this Dayand remembered here
1981 – Bill Haley. – American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1925)
2002 – Princess Margaret of the United Kingdom (b. 1930), the Queens younger sister.
2006 – Freddie Laker – British airline entrepreneur (b. 1922)
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*PLAYTIME BELL RINGS!
THESE are the jokes, folks!
I’d like to start with the chimney jokes – I’ve got a stack of them.
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I had a dream last night that I was cutting carrots with the Grim Reaper– dicing with death.
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I saw a man chatting-up a cheetah and I thought: ‘He’s trying to pull a fast one.’
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I’ve decided to sell my Hoover – it was just collecting dust.
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I went to the local supermarket and said: ‘I want to make a complaint – this vinegar’s got lumps in it.’ He said:‘Those are pickled onions’.
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You know, somebody actually complimented me on my driving today. They left a little note on the windscreen, it said‘Parking Fine’.So that was nice. 😀
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I was in this restaurant and I asked for something herby.They gave me a Volkswagen with no driver.
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A lot of people cry when they cut onions. – The trick is not to form an emotional bond.
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Q. What did the little boat say to the yacht? A.Can I interest you in a little row-mance?
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Meanwhile, in a parallel universe: “Oh for God’s sake! Where are all these extra single socks coming from?!”
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Mr. Cobs and I often laugh about how competitive we are.But Ilaughmore. 😉
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and finally ….
did you know …..
Moses had the first tablet that could connect to the cloud!
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Now, shall we have a coffee and a moment of contemplation? . . .
Thought for the Day
What would you do if you weren’t afraid?
Fear can make you stand still – and that’s not what we were made for. Instead, use fear as a tool and not as a handicap.
Fear is inbuilt into us because it’s that wise old owl who tells us not to go too close to the edge of the cliff, because the wind could take us over it.
Fear is that little voice that tells you not to get into the bath of hot water until you’ve tested the temperature first. Fear is that thing that is one of your guides.
However, what fear isn’t, is a stop sign for everything.
Fear shouldn’t make you stop. Fear should just get you to think about the possibilities for a moment and then work out the best way to go about doing what you want to do.
Fear isn’t meant to hold you in the palm of its hand and manipulate you.
If you have a fear about something, then that’s ok. But remind yourself that you are in control. If fear is keeping you suspended animation then step out of it.
Work out what it is that is your worst fear. Once you know that … put it on one side … sort of on a shelf in your brain. Out of the way. Because once you know what it is, you don’t need to keep going over it, over and over and over again.
You simply have to acknowledge what your worst fear is and once you understand it, you can get on with your life, knowing that you know what the fear is, but not letting it stop you from enjoying what life has to offer you.
Now I ask again . . . What would you do if you weren’t afraid?
LIVE your LIFE.
Don’t live your fear.
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Ok, that costly edumacation that your parents pay for is now over for another Friday. I absolutely LOVE seeing you here, thank you so very much for coming. It’s a total thrill to know that you’re visiting and having a read. It makes ‘building’ this regular Friday ‘bit of fun’ all worthwhile.
Thank you to all who come for a visit, and an especially big THANK YOU to those who stay a few minutes to leave a bit of a chat behind. It tickles the heck out of me when we get together on a Friday and all have a good old chin wag.
May your Friday be filled with happiness, peace and joy. May your weekend be filled with contentment and love.
Sending you squidges and love, from me here in my corner to you there in yours.
Hello and Happy Second of February to you. Did you say ‘White Rabbits’ yesterday? If not, please say it right now. This very moment. Although it’s a little late, it might still work and give you the chance of a happy February. Just play along – even if you don’t believe. What harm can it do, eh?
But anyhoo … you’ve come for your Friday Edumacation Lessons, so please find your seats and settle down. We shall begin. . . .
On this Day in History
1653 – New Amsterdam (later renamed The City of New York) is incorporated. New Amsterdam (Dutch: Nieuw Amsterdam) was a 17th century Dutch colonial settlement that later became New York City.
The town developed outside of Fort Amsterdam on Manhattan Island in the New Netherland territory (1614–1674) which was situated between 38 and 42 degrees latitude as a provincial extension of the Dutch Republic as of 1624. Provincial possession of the territory was accomplished with the first settlement which was established on Governors Island in 1624. A year later, in 1625, construction of a citadel comprising Fort Amsterdam was commenced on the southern tip of Manhattan and the first settlers were moved there from Governors Island.
Earlier, the harbour and the river had been discovered, explored and charted by an expedition of the Dutch East India Company captained by Henry Hudson in 1609. From 1611 through 1614, the territory was surveyed and charted by various private commercial companies on behalf of the States General of the Dutch Republic and operated for the interests of private commercial entities prior to official possession as a North American extension of the Dutch Republic as a provincial entity in 1624.
The town was founded in 1625 by New Netherland’s second director, Willem Verhulst who, together with his council, selected Manhattan Island as the optimal place for permanent settlement by the Dutch West India Company. That year, military engineer and surveyor Krijn Frederiksz laid out a citadel with Fort Amsterdam as centrepiece. To secure the settlers’ property and its surroundings according to Dutch law, Peter Minuit created a deed with the Manhattan Indians in 1626 which signified legal possession of Manhattan. He was appointed New Netherland’s third director by the local council after Willem Verhulst was recalled to patria and sailed away in November 1626.
The city, situated on the strategic, fortifiable southern tip of the island of Manhattan was to maintain New Netherland’s provincial integrity by defending river access to the company’s fur trade operations in the North River, later named Hudson River. Furthermore, it was entrusted to safeguard the West India Company’s exclusive access to New Netherland’s other two estuaries; the Delaware River and the Connecticut River. Fort Amsterdam was designated the capital of the province in 1625 and developed into the largest Dutch colonial settlement of the New Netherland province, now the New York Tri-State Region, and remained a Dutch possession until September 1664, when it fell provisionally and temporarily into the hands of the English.
The Dutch Republic regained it in August 1673 with a fleet of 21 ships, renaming the city New Orange. New Netherland was ceded permanently to the English in November 1674 by treaty.
The 1625 date of the founding of New Amsterdam is now commemorated in the official Seal of New York City (formerly, the year on the seal was 1664, the year of the provisional Articles of Transfer, ensuring New Netherlanders that they “shall keep and enjoy the liberty of their consciences in religion”, negotiated with the English by Petrus Stuyvesant and his council).
1709 – Alexander Selkirk is rescued from shipwreck on a desert island, inspiring the book Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe.
1812 – Russiaestablishes a fur trading colonyat Fort Ross, California.
1887 – In Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania the first Groundhog Day is observed.
1901 – Queen Victoria’s funeral takes place. Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was from 20 June 1837 the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and from 1 May 1876 the first Empress of India of the British Raj until her death. Her reign as the Queen lasted 63 years and seven months, was longer than that of any of her predecessors. The period centred on her reign is known as the Victorian era, a time of industrial, political, and military progress within the United Kingdom.
Though Victoria ascended the throne at a time when the United Kingdom was already an established constitutional monarchy in which the king or queen held few political powers and exercised its influence by the prime minister’s advice, she still served as a very important symbolic figure of her time. The Victorian era represented the height of the Industrial Revolution, a period of significant social, economic, and technological progress in the United Kingdom. Victoria’s reign was marked by a great expansion of the British Empire; during this period it reached its zenith, becoming the foremost global power of the time.
1922 – Ulysses by James Joyce is published. Ulysses is a novel by James Joyce, first serialised in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on February 2, 1922, in Paris. It is considered one of the most important works of Modernist literature.
Ulysses chronicles the passage through Dublin by its main character, Leopold Bloom, during an ordinary day, June 16, 1904. The title alludes to the hero of Homer’s Odyssey (Latinised into Ulysses), and there are many parallels, both implicit and explicit, between the two works (e.g., the correspondences between Leopold Bloom and Odysseus, Molly Bloom and Penelope, and Stephen Dedalus and Telemachus). June 16 is now celebrated by Joyce’s fans worldwide as Bloomsday.
Ulysses totals about 265,000 words from a vocabulary of 30,030 words and is divided into 18 “episodes”. The book has been the subject of much controversy and scrutiny since its publication, ranging from early obscenity trials to protracted textual “Joyce Wars.” Ulysses’ stream-of-consciousness technique, careful structuring, and experimental prose—full of puns, parodies, and allusions—as well as its rich characterisations and broad humour, have made the book perhaps the most highly regarded novel in the Modernist pantheon. In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Ulysses first on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
1935 – Leonarde Keeler tests the first polygraph machine. Leonarde Keeler (1903–1949) was the co-inventor of the polygraph.
On February 2, 1935, Detective Keeler conducted the first use of his invention, the Keeler Polygraph—otherwise known as the lie detector. Keeler used the lie detector on two criminals in Portage, Wisconsin, who were later convicted of assault when the lie detector results were introduced in court.
1940 – Frank Sinatradebuts with the Tommy Dorsey orchestra.
1959 – Nine experienced ski hikers in the northern Ural Mountains in the Soviet Union die under mysterious circumstances.
1971 – Idi Amin replaces President Milton Obote as leader of Uganda. Idi Amin Dada (c.1925 – 16 August 2003), commonly known as Idi Amin, was a Ugandan military dictator and the president of Uganda from 1971 to 1979. Amin joined the British colonial regiment, the King’s African Rifles, in 1946, and advanced to the rank of Major General and Commander of the Ugandan Army. He took power in a military coup in January 1971, deposing Milton Obote. His rule was characterized by human rights abuses, political repression, ethnic persecution, extrajudicial killings and the expulsion of Asians from Uganda. The number of people killed as a result of his regime is unknown; estimates from human rights groups range from 100,000 to 500,000.
From 1977 to 1979, Amin titled himself as “His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular.” In 1975–1976, despite opposition, Amin became the Chairman of the Organisation of African Unity, a pan-Africanist group designed to promote solidarity of the African states. During the 1977–1979 period, Uganda was appointed to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.
Dissent within Uganda, and Amin’s attempt to annex the Kagera province of Tanzania in 1978, led to the Uganda-Tanzania War and the fall of his regime in 1979. Amin fled to Libya, before relocating to Saudi Arabia in 1981, where he died in 2003.
1972 – The British embassy in Dublin is destroyed in protest over Bloody Sunday. Bloody Sunday (Irish: Domhnach na Fola) is the term used to describe an incident in Derry, Northern Ireland, on 30 January 1972 in which 27 civil rights protesters were shot by members of the 1st Battalion of the British Parachute Regiment during a Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association march in the Bogside area of the city. External Link:BBC Coverage
1980 – Reports surface that FBI were targeting Congressmen in the Abscam operation.Abscam (sometimes ABSCAM) was a United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) sting operation run from the FBI’s Hauppauge, Long Island, office in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The operation initially targeted trafficking in stolen property but was converted to a public corruption investigation.
1982 – Hama Massacre: Syria attacks the town of Hama. 1989 – Soviet war in Afghanistan: The last Soviet Union armoured column leaves Kabul. 1989 – Satellite television service Sky Television plc launched.
1990 – Apartheid: F.W. de Klerk allows the African National Congress to legally function and promises to release Nelson Mandela.
Apartheid(meaning separateness in Afrikaans cognate to English apart and hood) was a system of legal racial segregation enforced by the National Party government of South Africa between 1948 and 1994. Apartheid had its roots in the history of colonisation and settlement of southern Africa, with the development of practices and policies of separation along racial lines and domination by European settlers and their descendants. Following the general election of 1948, the National Party set in place its programme of Apartheid, with the formalisation and expansion of existing policies and practices into a system of institutionalised racism and white domination.
Apartheid was dismantled in a series of negotiations from 1990 to 1993, culminating in elections in 1994, the first in South Africa with universal suffrage. The vestiges of apartheid still shape South African politics and society. External Link:Apartheid at Wikipedia
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Born on this Day
1585 – Judith Quiney. William Shakespeare’s youngest daughter (d. 1662)
1585 – Hamnet Shakespeare. William Shakespeare’s only son (d. 1596)
1650 – Nell Gwynne, English actress and royal mistress (d. 1687
1882 – James Joyce, Irish author (d. 1941)
1925 – Elaine Stritch,American actress (d. 2014)
1931 – Les Dawson, British comedian (d. 1993)
1940 – David Jason,English actor
1942 – Graham Nash, British-born American musician – born in Lancashire, England and known for his light tenor vocals and for his songwriting contributions with the British pop group The Hollies, and with the folk-rock band Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
1944 – Geoffrey Hughes, British actor. (d. 27 July 2012). Mr. Hughes provided the voice of Paul McCartney in the 1968 animated film Yellow Submarine, and rose to fame for portraying much-loved binman Eddie Yeats in the British soap: Coronation Street. He also appeared in the popular British television sitcom Keeping Up Appearances, playing lovable slob Onslow – husband of Daisy, who was the sister of thewonderful social-climbing snob Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced ‘Bouquet’). Daisy was the sister without the large house, Mercedes, sauna, Jacuzzi, swimming pool and Daisy didn’t have room for a pony either. It was sister Violet who had all these things – plus she also had a musical bidet. (I include this information for those of us who are lovers of the programme – and I know there are plenty of us! lol)
1947 – Farrah Fawcett, American actress (d. 2009)
1954 – Christie Brinkley, American model
1963 – Eva Cassidy, American singer (d. 1996)
1972 – Dana International,Israeli singer.
1977 – Shakira, Colombian singer
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Died on this Day and remembered here
1969 – Boris Karloff,English actor (b. 1887)
1970 – Bertrand Russell, English mathematician and philosopher, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1872)
1979 – Sid Vicious, English musician (Sex Pistols) (b. 1957)
1980 – William Howard Stein, American biochemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1911)
1987 – Alistair MacLean,Scottish novelist and screenwriter (b. 1922)
1995 – Fred Perry, British former tennis player (b. 1909)
1995 – Donald Pleasence, English actor (b. 1919)
1996 – Gene Kelly, American dancer, actor, and director (b. 1912)
2007 – Billy Henderson, American singer (The Spinners) (b. 1939)
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[end of school bell sounds]
PLAYTIME! (These are the jokes folks!)
Two male friends talking to each other, and the one says: “I’m certain there are female hormones in beer. When I drink too much, I talk nonsense and I cannot control my car”.
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I’ve read so many horrible things about eating chocolate and drinking wine recently that I made a new, firm New Year’s resolution: NO MORE READING!
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Has anyone else noticed that the ‘&’ symbol looks like a dog dragging its bottom over the floor?
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I heard the Secret Service had to change their commands. They can’t say “Get down!” anymore when the President is under attack. Now it’s “Donald! Duck!”
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Two immigrants arrive in the United States and are discussing the difference between their country and the U.S.
One of them mentions he’s heard that people in the U.S. eat dogs, and if they’re going to fit in, they better eat dogs as well. So they head to the nearest hot dog stand and order two ‘dogs.’
The first guy unwraps his, looks at it, and nervously looks at his friend.
“Which part did you get?”
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Four elephants go for a walk on a stormy day. They only have one umbrella between them. How come they none of them get wet?
– Well did anybody say it was raining?
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Thought for the Day
Did you know that in an average day it’s estimated that we have roughly 60,000 thoughts? I wonder, out of all those thoughts, how many of them are happy ones.
I know, for myself, that happy thoughts create happy perceptions. I know that when I’m happy, I seem to have this glow. People seem to notice something about me – I have no idea what it is, but this happy feeling inside seems to show and glow on the outside of me. I also seem to be able to conjure up this never-ending circle of happiness that just attracts more happiness into my life.
However, I also know that if I think negatively, or are pestering over something, worrying, or am angry or fearful about something, all the warmth goes out of my life. And that ‘glow’ that I have when I’m happy, seems to totally disappear.
If we think negatively, or are angry or fearful, then those feelings seem to take us away from our pathway in life. These negative thoughts seem to strip us of all of our power and out ability to negotiate life effectively We seem to become afraid of everything and even act defensively in some situations that normally, we wouldn’t. In return, this pushes away all the good things in life, like friends and the ability to see possibilities and then we just become even more negative which eventually leads to us being lonely and even more negative. It’s like a vicious circle.
So … I guess that the way to a happy you, is via your thoughts. Not just because you instantly begin to feel better and brighter, but you also become stronger and have a more solid and stable foundation to your whole life.
Have a happy day, think happy … and remember that you’re in control of those thoughts, not the other way round.
You won’t be bounced around by life if you’re in the driving seat!
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Well that’s me done and dusted. All that’s left for me to say is … Thank you so much for coming and having a coffee moment with me.
May your day be blessed with peace, joy and all those things which will make your face smile and your heart happy.
Hello dear pals . . . happy last Thursday in January 2018. In part, this month has flown past at great speed… but at about the 22nd something changed and since then it’s slowed down somewhat. Oddest thing, but I can’t explain it better than that. (But then … I’m an odd thing myself and I can’t explain ‘me’ either! lol)
Right …. let the EDUMACATION BEGIN!
Today is Australia Day, also known as Anniversary Day and Foundation Day.
Australia day is the national day of Australia, and has been an official public holiday since 1994. Celebrated annually on 26th January, the day commemorates the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788, marking the start of British colonisation of Australia. Records of the celebration of Australia Day date back to 1808, with Governor Lachlan Macquarie having held the first official celebration of Australia Day in 1818
On this Day in History
1340 – King Edward III of Englandis declared King of France.
1500 – Vicente Yáñez Pinzón becomes the first European to set foot on Brazil. Vicente Yáñez Pinzón (Palos de la Frontera (Spain) c. 1460 – after 1523) was a Spanish navigator, explorer, and conquistador. Along with his older brother Martín Alonso Pinzón, he sailed with Christopher Columbus on the first voyage to the New World in 1492, as captain of the Niña.
1565 – Battle of Talikota, fought between the Vijayanagara Empire and the Islamic sultanates of the Deccan, leads to the subjugation, and eventual destruction of the last Hindu kingdom in India, and the consolidation of Islamic rule over much of the Indian subcontinent.
1788 – The British First Fleet,led by Arthur Phillip,sails into Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour) to establish Sydney, the first permanent European settlement on the continent. Commemorated as Australia Day.
1808 – Rum Rebellion, the only successful (albeit short-lived) armed takeover of the government in Australia. The Rum Rebellion, also known as the Rum Puncheon Rebellion, of 1808 was the only successful armed takeover of government in Australia’s recorded history. The Governor of New South Wales, William Bligh, was deposed by the New South Wales Corps under the command of Major George Johnston, working closely with John MacArthur, on 26 January 1808, 20 years to the day after Arthur Phillip founded European settlement in Australia.
Afterwards, the colony was ruled by the military, with the senior military officer stationed in Sydney purporting to act as the Lieutenant-Governor of the colony until the arrival from Britain of Major-General Lachlan Macquarie as the new Governor at the beginning of 1810.
1837 – Michigan is admitted as the 26th U.S. state.
1841 – James Bremer takes formal possession of Hong Kong Island at what is now Possession Point, establishing British Hong Kong.
1905 – The Cullinan Diamond – the world’s largest Diamond ever –is found near Pretoria, South Africa at the Premier Mine. Weighing at 3,106.75 carats (621.35 g or 1.3698 pounds). It was named after Thomas Cullinan, the mine’s chairman.
In April 1905, the diamond was put on sale in London, but despite considerable interest, it was still unsold after two years. In 1907 the Transvaal Colony government bought the Cullinan and presented it to King Edward VII on his 66th birthday.
Cullinan produced stones of various cuts and sizes, the largest of which is named Cullinan I or the Great Star of Africa, and at 530.4 carats (106.08 g) it is the largest clear-cut diamond in the world. Cullinan I is mounted in the head of the Sovereign’s Sceptre with Cross. The second-largest is Cullinan II or the Second Star of Africa, weighing 317.4 carats (63.48 g), mounted in the Imperial State Crown. Both diamonds are part of the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom.
Seven other major diamonds, weighing a total of 208.29 carats (41.66 g), are privately owned by Queen Elizabeth II, who inherited them from her grandmother, Queen Mary, in 1953. The Queen also owns minor brilliants and a set of unpolished fragments.
Anecdotes In 1905, transport from South Africa to England posed a bit of a security problem. Detectives from London were placed on a steamer ship that was rumoured to carry the stone, but this was a diversionary tactic. The stone on that ship was a fake, meant to attract those who would be interested in stealing it. The actual diamond was sent to England in a plain box via parcel post, albeit registered mail.
The story goes that when the diamond was split, the knife broke during the first attempt. “The tale is told of Joseph Asscher, the greatest cleaver of the day,” wrote Matthew Hart in his book Diamond: A Journey to the Heart of an Obsession, “that when he prepared to cleave the largest diamond ever known, the 3,106 carat (632 g) Cullinan, he had a doctor and nurse standing by and when he finally struck the diamond and it broke perfectly in two, he fainted dead away.” It turns out the fainting story is a popular myth. Diamond historian Lord Ian Balfour wrote that it was much more likely he opened a bottle of champagne, instead.
Rumours abound of a “second half” of the Cullinan diamond. According to Sir William Crookes the original, uncut diamond was itself “a fragment, probably less than half, of a distorted octahedral crystal; the other portions still await discovery by some fortunate miner“. Crookes thus indirectly indicates that the original, larger crystal broke in a natural way and not by a man-made cut. Others have speculated that before Frederick Wells sold the diamond to Sir Thomas Cullinan he broke off a piece which sized in at about 1,500 to 2,000 carats (300 to 400 g).
1907 – The Short Magazine Lee-Enfield Mk IIIis officially introduced into British Military Service, and remains the oldest military rifle still in official use.
1911 – Glenn H. Curtiss flies the first successful American seaplane.
1915 – The Rocky Mountain National Parkis established by an act of the U.S. Congress.
1920 – Former Ford Motor Co. executive Henry Leland launches the Lincoln Motor Company which he later sold to his former employer.
1926 – The first demonstration of the television by John Logie Baird.
John Logie Baird was a Scottish engineer, innovator, one of the inventors of the mechanical television, demonstrating the first working television system on 26 January 1926, – and inventor of both the first publicly demonstrated colour television system, and the first purely electronic colour television picture tube.
1934 – The Apollo Theatrereopens in Harlem, New York City. The Apollo Theatre in New York City is one of the most famous clubs for popular music in the United States.
1961 – John F. Kennedy appoints Janet G. Travell to be his physician. This is the first time a woman holds this appointment. 1962 – Ranger program: Ranger 3 is launched to study the moon. The space probe later missed the moon by 22,000 miles (35,400 km). 1965 – Hindi becomes the official language of India.
1966 – The Beaumont Children go missing from Glenelg Beach near Adelaide, South Australia.Jane Nartare Beaumont (aged 9), Arnna Kathleen Beaumont (aged 7), and Grant Ellis Beaumont (aged 4) were three siblings who disappeared without a trace from a beach near Adelaide, South Australia in 1966. Known collectively as The Beaumont Children, their case resulted in the largest police investigation in Australian criminal history, and remains Australia’s most infamous unsolved cold case.
1978 – The Great Blizzard of 1978, a rare severe blizzard with the lowest non-tropical atmospheric pressure ever recorded in the US, strikes the Ohio – Great Lakes region with heavy snow and winds up to 100 mph (161 km/h).
1988 – Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera has its first performance on Broadway, at the Majestic Theatre in New York.
1992 – Boris Yeltsin announces that Russia is going to stop targeting United States cities with nuclear weapons. 1998 – Lewinsky scandal: On American television, U.S. President Bill Clinton denies having had “sexual relations” with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
2001 – The 7.7 Mw Gujarat earthquake shakes Western India with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (Extreme), leaving 13,805–20,023 dead and about 166,800 injured.
2006 – Western Union discontinues use of its telegram service.
❤ ~ ❤ ~ ❤
Born on this Day
1857 – the 12th Dalai Lama (d. 1875)
1880 – Douglas MacArthur, American general and Medal of Honor recipient (d. 1964)
1904 – Ancel Keys, American scientist (d. 2004)
1905 – Maria von Trapp, Austrian-born singer (d. 1987)
1908 – Jill Esmond, English actress (d. 1990)
1922 – Michael Bentine, British comedian (d. 1996)
1925 – Paul Newman,American actor, activist, director, race car driver, and businessman, co-founded Newman’s Own (d. 2008)
1958 – Anita Baker,American singer
1958 – Ellen DeGeneres, American actress and comedian
1963 – Andrew Ridgeley, English musician
1967 – Col Needham,English businessman, co-founded – ‘Internet Movie Database’
~ ❤ ~
Died on this day and remembered here:
1795 – Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach, German composer (b. 1732)
1973 – Edward G. Robinson, American actor (b. 1893)
1979 – Nelson Rockefeller, 41st Vice President of the United States (b. 1908)
2008 – Christian Brando, actor and son of Marlon Brando (b. 1958)
~ ❤ ~ ❤ ~ ❤ ~
Well that’s it. Schools over.But …. now we have . . . PLAYTIME!
These are the jokes, folks! …
Did you hear about the actor who fell through the floorboards? He was just going through a stage!
❤
My dog ate all the scrabble tiles, and now he keeps leaving little messages all around the house.
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Have you visited that new restaurant yet? The one called Karma? There’s no menu, you just get what you deserve.
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Why don’t scientists trust atoms? Because they make up everything.
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Why did the chicken go to the séance? To get to the other side.
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Where are average things manufactured? The Satisfactory.
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What sits at the bottom of the sea and twitches? A nervous wreck.
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What kind of exercise do lazy people do? Diddly Squats.
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What does Charles Dickens keep in his spice rack? The Best of Thymes, The Worst of Thymes.
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Harry prays to God: “Dear Lord, please make me win the lottery”.
The next day Harry begs the Lord again: “Please make it so I win the lottery, Lord!”
The next day, Harry again prays: “Please, please, dear Lord, make me win the lottery!”
Suddenly he hears a voice from above: “Harry, would you kindly go and buy a lottery ticket.”
❤ ❤ ❤
Thought for the Day
Bucket Lists. I don’t believe in having ‘Bucket Lists’. Why would a person make a list of things they want to do, when there’s so much to do in life anyway? Why limit your life to a shopping list?
Your life is happening NOW. Don’t miss a thing. Don’t miss going outside and seeing the colour of the grass. Don’t think about seeing XYZ in another country when you haven’t even seen to the bottom of your own back garden! Why long to visit Buckingham Palace and see the Queen, when you haven’t even seen your own Aunt for …. how long was that?
Instead of a bucket list, lets throw that list in the bin and make a sign instead. A sign, on a piece of A4 (or something bigger if you have it), and pin it up where you can see it every single morning, without fail.
On that piece of paper, write:
LIFE BEGINS TODAY.
Seize the day …. make the most of the present and stop thinking about next week, next month, next year, sometime in the future. Live NOW. Right now. You could be run over by a bus any day soon.
Don’t let your last thoughts be: I wish I’d have appreciated the colours of the pansies my mom grew. – I wish I’d have visited a coffee-house weekly and ordered a different coffee (or tea) every single time I went, so that I could experience them all.
Do as much as you possibly can now.Right now. Because you don’t know that everything will fall into place for that shopping list you fondly call your ‘Bucket List’. Benefit your life now, . . . because: LIFE BEGINS TODAY.
❤ ❤ ❤
Well that’s me done and dusted. 😀
All that’s left for me to do now is wish you a truly wonderful weekend. May you find some magical smiles this weekend. And … may the coming week, the last few days of January, bring you peace and joy. The earth is warming up – although I know that some of you might not think it is … but it is. I can feel it happening. Spring is on its way …. unless of course, you live in Australia or one of the other places upon Earth which are just about to leave their summer and go into Autumn.
Thank you so much for coming and having a coffee with me. Sending you much love and a big bucket of squidges ~
Firstly … sorry to still be posting Christmas cards, in the middle of January, but this was one which I couldn’t post before Christmas as it would have spoilt the surprise, so sharing it with you now.
Originally this was a children’s book called Dear Zoo.
It was one of those books which is ‘interactive’. It had opening doors on each page. So I began by cutting those doors out so that the pages lay closely together.
I set to work and first measured out how much of a section I wanted to cut out of the book in order to leave the right size ‘hole’ inside the card/book at the end. Once I’d cut through the pages, I then glued and used double-sided tape to ensure that the pages I wanted to stay shut actually stay that way.
Then … I went to town. Papers, card, ribbons, flowers, baubles, a sleigh, handmade hearts, berries, printed pictures from a CD Rom, cutting, pearls, snowflakes, die cutting … you name it, I think I probably either did it or thought about doing it.
Inside, showing page 1, of the book/card.
I die cut the Christmas trees, then painted them roughly with a little paint then once dry I added some dimensional ‘snow’ and added a little twinkling glitter. While those dried I stamped the blue backing paper with clear embossing ink and added some softly twinkly embossing powder so that it gave the background a bit of twinkle. The snowflakes are all die cuts too.
Inside of the book/card – page 2
I printed this page (above) three times, and cut out various parts of the page so that I could do a little decoupage and give the page some depth.
I added a little white glitter here and there, on these layers, just to catch the light and again, add some depth.
The back of the card/book
The spine of the book (and spreading round to the front and back) … when you see it in real life, looks like leather. It’s not. It’s actually made from regular craft card and glycerine. (and an embossing folder – but you can use any embossing folder you like). I won’t bore you to death with a ‘how to’, because people have posted how to’s about doing it all over the web. But instead, I’ll give you a video of the fabulous lady who taught me how to make this faux leather: (her name is Sheena Douglass and she’s Scottish – so give yourself chance to adjust to her accent and you’ll be fine then). . .
And that’s all there was to it!
Have to admit that the most difficult bit was actually cutting through those individual pages. Coooo, those were thick and really tough work. But then … I’m a bit of a weakling so taking the top off a bottle can challenge me most days! tsk tsk. drat these muscleless arms!
Well .. it’s Tuesday(or Chewsday as my friend pronounces it), and I think we need a little Tuesday fun, so here are a few jokes to turn the corners of your mouth up . . .
Why don’t you ever see hippopotamus hiding in trees? Because they’re really good at it.
How does NASA organise their company parties? They planet.
My friend recently got crushed by a pile of books, but he’s only got his shelf to blame.
What did Jay-Z call his girlfriend before they got married? Feyoncé.
What do you call dangerous precipitation? A rain of terror.
What do you call a big pile of kittens? A meowntain.
…. and finally ….
Atheism is a non-prophet organisation.
Well even if only one of them made you smile, then I’ve done my job. 😀
Thank you so much for coming. I love seeing you here. Each blog post is, for me, like opening up my front door and waiting for you to arrive . . . and then you all come, one by one, and stop for a coffee with me. I just love it. (and I love it even more when you stay for a chat – so please feel free to chat away in comments. I can promise I’ll reply because, as everyone will tell you, I love to chat!) 😀
HAPPY NEW YEAR! Gosh, I haven’t seen you since last year! Time flies.
It’s my first day back posting on my blog here since a couple of days before Christmas, and Christmas only seems like it was last week! I cannot believe how quickly the time has flown past. I knew I was going to give myself a little holiday from actually posting on my blog – but I only thought it would be …. “aw, around a week or so” … well I was obviously enjoying Christmas and the New Year so much that I just lost track of time!
I’ve been visiting blogs in an effort to keep up with the reading and commenting – but I’m behind. So … if I’ve missed something on your blog that you really wanted me to see, then pleeeeeeeease – leave a link to it in a comment and I’ll pop along and have a read.
I haven’t been crafting. Nope, not even one bit – but I have been trying to clear up the unimaginable mess I made before Christmas. I was crafting right up till lunch time on the 24th December. I did think about take a photograph of my craft room .. but I was so ashamed of the mess that I just couldn’t. So I’ll leave it to your imagination to build the scene. Eeeeek!
But anyhoo . . . You’re here now to take a gander over what happened on this day in times gone by … so in an endeavour to take up the chalk and educationamalise you a little more, I shall begin where I usually do, by saying:
On This Day In History
1759 – George Washington marriesMartha Dandridge Custis.
1846 – The United States House of Representatives votes to stop sharing the Oregon Territory with the United Kingdom. 1854 – The San Francisco steamer sinks, killing 300 people.
1895 – Dreyfus Affair: French officer Alfred Dreyfus is stripped of his rank and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island. The Dreyfus Affair was a political scandal which divided France from the 1890s to the early 1900s. It involved the conviction for treason in November 1894 of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French artillery officer of Jewish background who was in advanced training with the Army’s General Staff. Alfred Dreyfus was sentenced to life imprisonment, which he began to serve in solitary confinement on Devil’s Island in French Guiana.
Two years later, in 1896, the real culprit was brought to light and identified: a French Army major named Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy. However, French high-level military officials dismissed or ignored this new evidence which exonerated Alfred Dreyfus. Thus, in January 1898, military judges unanimously acquitted Esterhazy on the second day of his trial. Worse, French military counter-intelligence officers fabricated false documents designed to secure Dreyfus’s conviction as a spy for Germany. They were all eventually exposed, in large part due to a resounding public intervention by writer Emile Zola in January 1898. The case had to be re-opened, and Dreyfus was brought back from Guiana in 1899 to be tried again. The intense political and judicial scandal that ensued divided French society between those who supported Dreyfus (the Dreyfusards) and those who condemned him (the anti-Dreyfusards, such as Edouard Drumont, director of La Libre Parole, and Hubert-Joseph Henry).
Eventually, all the accusations against Alfred Dreyfus were demonstrated to be baseless. Dreyfus was exonerated and reinstated as a major in the French Army in 1906. He later served during the whole of World War I, ending his service with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.
1896 – An Austrian newspaper reported that Wilhelm Roentgen has discovered a type of radiation later known as X-rays.
1914 – The Ford Motor Company announcesan eight-hour workday and a minimum wage of $5 for a day’s labor. 1918 – The Free Committee for a German Workers Peace, which would become the Nazi party, is founded.
1925 – Nellie Taylor Ross of Wyomingbecomes the first female governor in the United States.
1933 – Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge begins in San Francisco Bay.
1944 – The Daily Mail becomes the first transoceanic newspaper. The Daily Mail is a British newspaper, currently published in a tabloid format. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom’s second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper, The Mail on Sunday, was launched in 1982. An Irish edition of the paper was launched in 2006. The Daily Mail was Britain’s first daily newspaper aimed at what is now considered the middle-market and the first to sell 1 million copies a day.
1962 – A replica of the miraculous statue, the Holy Infant of Good Health,is presented to Blessed Pope John XXIII. The Holy Infant of Good Health (Santo Niño de la salud) is a statue of the Christ Child regarded by many to be miraculous, which was found in 1939, in Morelia (Michoacán State), Mexico. The statue is eleven inches tall and has apparently been responsible for many healings.
The veneration of the statue was approved by Luis M Altamirano y Bulnes, Archbishop of Morelia, in 1944. That same year, the image was solemnly crowned by pontifical command. On January 5, 1959, a replica of the Infant was presented to Blessed Pope John XXIII. And on November 12, 1970, an Order of Religious sisters, the Missionaries of the Holy Infant of Good Health, were founded in Morelia.
The little statue is dressed “with symbols of the power of Christ, wearing a royal mantle, trimmed in ermine, a golden scepter in the left hand while the right is raised in blessing, and on the head an imperial crown of precious stones.” The Holy Infant of Good Health’s Feast Day is celebrated on April 21st.
1972 – U.S. President Richard Nixon orders the development of a space shuttle program. 1975 – The Tasman Bridge in Tasmania, Australia, is struck by the bulk ore carrier Lake Illawarra, killing twelve people.
1993 – The oil tanker MV Braer runs agroundon the coast of the Shetland Islands,spilling 84,700 tons of crude oil. Fortunately for Shetland, the Gulfaks crude the Braer was carrying is not a typical North Sea oil. It is lighter and more easily biodegradable than other North Sea crude oils, and this, in combination with some of the worst storms seen in Shetland (naturally dispersing the oil by wave action and evaporation), prevented the event becoming an even bigger disaster. However, the destruction to wildlife was still massive. The total number of bird corpses recovered from beaches, due to this oil spill, during January was 1538.
1993 – Washington state executes Westley Allan Doddby hanging (the first legal hanging in America since 1965). Westley Allan Dodd (July 3, 1961 – January 5, 1993) was a convicted serial killer and child molester from Richland, Washington.
Dodd began sexually abusing children when he was 13 years old; his first victims were his own cousins. All his victims (over 50 in all) were children below the age of 12, some of them as young as two. Dodd’s fantasies became increasingly violent over the years. He eventually progressed from molesting his victims to torturing, raping and then murdering them.
After he was arrested for trying to abduct a boy from a movie theater, the police found a homemade torture rack in his home, as yet unused. He was arrested by local police in Camas, Washington and interviewed by task force detectives. Portland Police Bureau Detective C. W. Jensen and Clark County Detective Sergeant Dave Trimble obtained Dodd’s confession and served the search warrant on his home.
Dodd was sentenced to death in 1990 for molesting and then stabbing to death Cole Neer (age 11) and his brother William (10) near a Vancouver, Washington, park in 1989, as well as for the separate rape and murder of Lee Iseli (aged 4).
Less than four years elapsed between the murders and Dodd’s execution. He refused to appeal his case or the capital sentence, stating “I must be executed before I have an opportunity to escape or kill someone within the prison. If I do escape, I promise you I will kill prison guards if I have to and rape and enjoy every minute of it.” While in court he said that, if he escaped from jail, he would immediately go back to “killing kids.”.
Dodd was executed by hanging at 12:05 a.m. on January 5, 1993 at Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla. By Washington state law, Dodd had to choose the method of his execution, and state law gave Dodd two options: lethal injection or hanging. Dodd chose hanging. He also requested that his hanging be televised, but that request was denied.
His execution was witnessed by 12 members of local and regional media, prison officials, and representatives of the families of the three victims. He ate salmon and potatoes for his last meal. His last words, spoken from the second floor of the indoor gallows, were recorded by the media witnesses as: “I was once asked by somebody, I don’t remember who, if there was any way sex offenders could be stopped. I said, `No.’ I was wrong. I was wrong when I said there was no hope, no peace. There is hope. There is peace. I found both in the Lord, Jesus Christ. Look to the Lord, and you will find peace.”.
Dodd was pronounced dead by the prison doctor and his body transported to Seattle for autopsy. The King County Medical Examiner, Dr. Donald Reay, found that Dodd had died quickly and probably with little pain. He was cremated following the autopsy, and his ashes turned over to his family.
2005 – Eris, the largest known dwarf planet in the solar system, is discoveredby the team of Michael E. Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David L. Rabinowitz using images originally taken on October 21, 2003, at the Palomar Observatory.
Eris was first spotted in 2003 by a Palomar Observatory-based team led by Mike Brown but not identified until 2005. Eris has one moon, Dysnomia; and recent observations have found no evidence of further satellites. The current distance from the Sun is 96.7 AU, roughly three times that of Pluto. With the exception of some comets the pair are the most distant known natural objects in the Solar System.
Because Eris is larger than Pluto, its discoverers and NASA called it the Solar system’s tenth planet. This, along with the prospect of other similarly sized objects being discovered in the future, motivated the International Astronomical Union (IAU) to define the term planet for the first time. Under a new definition approved on August 24, 2006, Eris is a “dwarf planet” along with Pluto, Ceres, Haumea and Makemake.
❤️ 💛 💚 💙 💜
Born On This Day
1829 – Sir Roger Tichborne, missing U.K. heir who was the subject of the longest criminal trial in British history (d. c. 1854)
1834 – William John Wills, English explorer of Australia, member of the Burke and Wills expedition (d. 1861)
1903 – Harold Gatty, Australian aviator, navigator with Wiley Post (d. 1957)
1906 – Kathleen Kenyon, English archaeologist (d. 1978)
1917 – Jane Wyman, American actress (d. 2007)
1931 – Robert Duvall, American actor
1940 – Michael O’Donoghue, American writer (d. 1994)
1940 – Athol Guy, Australian singer, member of The Seekers
1942 – Jan Leeming, English television presenter and newsreader
1946 – Diane Keaton, American actress
1949 – George Brown,American drummer (Kool & The Gang)
1950 – Chris Stein, American guitarist (Blondie)
1965 – Vinnie Jones, English-born Welsh footballer and actor
1969 – Marilyn Manson, American singer
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Died on this day and Remembered here:
1939 – Amelia Earhart, American aviator declared dead after disappearance in 1937. (b. 1897)
1941 – Amy Johnson,English aviator (b. 1903)
1998 – Sonny Bono, American entertainer and politician (b. 1935)
2003 – Roy Jenkins, British politician (b. 1920)
❤️ 💛 💚 💙 💜
Thought for the Day
If you could make a wish, right now, right at this very moment, what would you wish for? Be quick! You only have a tiny window of opportunity to answer this question so make your wish NOW!
What did you wish for? Money? New house? New Car? Love? Great Job? Jewellery?
I wonder what you’d have got if your next door neighbour had to make the wish for you? Would they have wished for what you might have wanted?
What about if this question was asked of me…. What if the Genie in the Bottle had popped up and said that I had to make your wish for you. Do you think I might have made the right wish? Would I have wished a wish that would have given you what your heart longed for?
Would you still be talking to me, I wonder, if I told you that the thing I would have wished for you to be in receipt of was . . . . . . contentment?
A little while ago I was chatting with someone I know, and we were talking about writing Christmas and New Year Cards, and what to write on them. I said that when I was wishing anyone a Happy New Year, or writing a card for a wedding; for the birth of a new baby; Engagement; Anniversary . . . or anything that required me to wish that person(s) something tangible, I ALWAYS wished contentment for them.
You see, I believe that if a person has contentment then everything else just falls into place. There is nothing to really wish for that they didn’t already have, for they are content! Nothing of any import missing. Nothing for them to feel ‘disgruntled’ about.
Contentment, for me, is the ultimate goal every single day. If I can go to bed at night-time and think back over my day, and feel contented, then I know I’ve had a really great day.
Think about it for a moment . . . and while you’re thinking, … I’ll make my wish for you, ~ for contentment.
May you have oodles of contentment. May each day fill you with sleepy contentment at the end of it, and may you wake up each morning knowing that the only goal you have to reach that day is contentment.
And … when you go to bed tonight …. may you think about what I’ve said and look back over your day, to find that you actually are content. Oh … and don’t forget to thank your God, the universe, or whoever you personally thank for the wonderful things in your life.
❤️ 💛 💚 💙 💜
[Play Time Bell Rings . . . .]
These are the Jokes Folks!
Crime in multi-storey car parks. That is wrong on so many different levels.
I have downloaded this new app. Its great, it tells you what to wear, what to eat and what you shouldnt be eating, if you’ve put on weight.Its called the Daily Mail newspaper.
I was playing chess with my friend and she said, ‘Let’s make this interesting’. So we stopped playing chess.
My friend Richard told me: “I usually meet my girlfriend at 12:59 because I like that one-to-one time.”
My husband surprised me the other day when he said: “When I was younger I felt like a man trapped inside a woman’s body. Then I was born.”
My grandad has a chair in his shower which makes him feel old,so in order to feel young he sits on it backwards like a cool teacher giving an assembly about drugs.
Is it possible to mistake schizophrenia for telepathy?I hear you ask.
You can’t lose a homing pigeon. If your homing pigeon doesn’t come back,then what you’ve lost is a pigeon.
My husband told me: ‘Sex is better on holiday.’ . . . That really wasn’t a nice postcard to receive.
As a child I was made to walk the plank.We couldn’t afford a dog.
Oh my goodness!!!, mega drama the other day: My dishwasher stopped working!Yup, his visa expired.
❤️ 💛 💚 💙 💜
Hopefully, your chuckle muscle has received a good workout now and may even be aching a little bit! 😀 You’ll now be able to tell people that you’ve already had your workout today.
It’s lovely to be back in the saddle and here, chatting with you. I’ve missed you. 😊
May your day today be a truly great one for you, and may your weekend be filled with contentment. Take very good care of yourself, and, whatever you’re doing or wherever you’re going, may your God go with you.
Sending squidges, and love, in a rainbow of colours. ❤️ 💛 💚 💙 💜
OK …. let’s get this over and done with. It’s unpleasant, and I know that it will cause you some anguish and pain, and even cause you to close all the curtains and lie down with either a cake, a bar of chocolate or a stiff drink …. or maybe all three if the first one doesn’t work … so we’ll just do it and get it over with, OK?
Get ready. Sit up straight and gird your loins.
We know that this may be dangerous or difficult for your brain to compute, but we’re going to do it because we is ADULTS!
Ready?
Deep breath in ….. let it out slowly as if you are blowing down a straw ….
…. …. …. there are … … … … ninedaystillChristmas (not counting today or the day itself).
I know… I know. Some of you will find that a thoroughly unpleasant thought. But we have to face it at some point. No good skirting around it or believing that, if no one mentions it then it’s not really that close. Your advent calendar should be telling you the truth! Look on me as your unpaid for, not stolen, loving, living, breathing, caring, Advent Calendar.
So anyhoo … we’ve got that over and done with so shall we get on with some edumacation? Good. Let’s get on with it then . . .
On This Day in History
1791 – The United States Bill of Rights becomes law when ratified by the Virginia legislature.
1863 – Romania used for the first time a mountain railway (from Anina to Oravita). A mountain railway is a railway that ascends and descends a mountain slope that has a steep grade. Such railways can use a number of different technologies to overcome the steepness of the grade. Mountain railways commonly have a narrow gauge to allow for tight curves in the track and reduce tunnel size and structure gauge, and hence construction cost and effort.
1891 – James Naismith introduces the first version of basketball, with thirteen rules, a peach basket nailed to either end of his school’s gymnasium, and two teams of nine players.
1905 – The Pushkin House is established in St. Petersburg to preserve the cultural heritage of Alexander Pushkin. Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin (June 6 1799 – February 10 1837) was a Russian Romantic author who is considered to be the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature. Pushkin pioneered the use of vernacular speech in his poems and plays, creating a style of storytelling – mixing drama, romance, and satire – associated with Russian literature ever since and greatly influencing later Russian writers.
Born in Moscow, Pushkin published his first poem at the age of fifteen, and was widely recognized by the literary establishment by the time of his graduation from the Imperial Lyceum in Tsarskoe Selo. Pushkin gradually became committed to social reform and emerged as a spokesman for literary radicals; in the early 1820s he clashed with the government, which sent him into exile in southern Russia. While under the strict surveillance of government censors and unable to travel or publish at will, he wrote his most famous play, the drama Boris Godunov, but could not publish it until years later. His novel in verse, Eugene Onegin, was published serially from 1825 to 1832.
Pushkin and his wife Natalya Goncharova, whom he married in 1831, later became regulars of court society. In 1837, while falling into greater and greater debt amidst rumors that his wife had started conducting a scandalous affair, Pushkin challenged her alleged lover, Georges d’Anthe’s, to a duel. Pushkin was mortally wounded and died two days later.
Because of his liberal political views and influence on generations of Russian rebels, Pushkin was portrayed by Bolsheviks as an opponent to bourgeois literature and culture and a predecessor of Soviet literature and poetry. In 1937, the town of Tsarskoe Selo was renamed Pushkin in his honor.
1914 – Gas explosion at Mitsubishi Hojyo coal mine Japan, 687 killed. This accident is the worst coal mine disaster in Japanese history.
1939 – Gone with the Wind premiered at Loew’s Grand Theater in Atlanta, GA, USA. Gone with the Wind is a 1939 American dramatic-romantic-war film adapted from Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 novel of the same name and directed by Victor Fleming (Fleming replaced George Cukor). The epic film, set in the American South in and around the time of the Civil War, stars Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable, Leslie Howard, and Olivia de Havilland, and tells a story of the Civil War and its aftermath from a white Southern viewpoint.
It received ten Academy Awards, a record that stood for twenty years. In the American Film Institute’s inaugural Top 100 American Films of All Time list of 1998, it was ranked number four, although in the 2007 10th Anniversary edition of that list, it was dropped two places, to number six. In June 2008, AFI revealed its 10 top 10 the best ten films in ten American film genres after polling over 1,500 persons from the creative community. Gone with the Wind was acknowledged as the fourth best film in the Epic genre. It has sold more tickets in the U.S. than any other film in history, and is considered a prototype of a Hollywood blockbuster. Today, it is considered one of the greatest and most popular films of all time and one of the most enduring symbols of the golden age of Hollywood. (I haven’t ever managed to watch this film all the way through. I’ve seen bits of it, but never seen the film from start to finish, in full).
1960 – Richard Paul Pavlick is arrested for attempting to blow up and assassinate the U.S. President-Elect, John F. Kennedy only four days earlier. Richard Paul Pavlick (February 13, 1887 ¨C November 11, 1975) was a retired postal worker from New Hampshire who stalked and then attempted to assassinate U.S. President-Elect John F. Kennedy on Sunday, December 11, 1960 in Palm Beach, Florida. He failed, but 3 years later in Dallas, Texas, Kennedy was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald.
Richard Paul Pavlick
Pavlick, 73 years old at the time of the assassination attempt, had previously lived in the small town of Belmont, New Hampshire with no family. He became known at local public meetings for his angry political rants, which included complaints that the American flag was not being displayed appropriately, and also criticized the government and disparaged Catholics, focusing much of his anger on the Kennedy family and their wealth. On one occasion, Pavlick’s anger erupted when he met the supervisor of the local water company at his home with a gun, which was then confiscated.
Pavlick’s enmity toward John F. Kennedy boiled over after the close 1960 U.S. Presidential election, in which Kennedy had defeated Republican Richard Nixon by 118,000 votes. Turning over his run-down property to a local youth camp, Pavlick disappeared after loading his meager possessions into his 1950 Buick.
After Pavlick left town, Thomas M. Murphy, the 34-year-old U.S. Postmaster of the town of Belmont, New Hampshire began receiving bizarre postcards from Pavlick that stated the town would hear from him soon “in a big way.” Murphy soon noticed that the postmarked dates coincided with visits by John F. Kennedy to the communities and he then called the local police. The local police, in turn, contacted the Secret Service, who interviewed locals and learned of his previous outbursts. In the midst of these conversations, they also found out that Pavlick had purchased dynamite.
During his travels, Pavlick had visited the Kennedy compound at Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, photographing the Kennedy home while also checking out the compound’s security.
Shortly before 10 a.m. on Sunday, December 11, as John F. Kennedy was preparing to leave for Mass at St. Edward Church in Palm Beach, Pavlick waited in his dynamite-laden car hoping to crash his car into Kennedy’s vehicle to cause a fatal explosion. However, Pavlick changed his mind after seeing John F. Kennedy with his wife, Jacqueline, and the couple’s two small children.
While waiting for another opportunity over the next few days, Pavlick visited the church to learn its interior, but the Secret Service had informed local Palm Beach police to look for Pavlick’s automobile.
Four days after the attempt, on Thursday, December 15, Palm Beach, police officer, Lester Free, spotted Pavlick’s vehicle as he entered the city via the Flagler Memorial Bridge into Royal Poinciana Way. Police immediately surrounded the car (which still contained 10 sticks of dynamite) and arrested him. After his arrest, Pavlick said, “Kennedy money bought the White House and the presidency. I had the crazy idea I wanted to stop Kennedy from being President.”
On January 27, 1961, Pavlick was committed to the United States Public Health Service mental hospital in Springfield, Missouri, then was indicted for threatening Kennedy’s life seven weeks later.
In a tragically ironic twist, charges against Pavlick were dropped on December 2, 1963, ten days after Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas. Judge Emmet C. Choate ruled that Pavlick was unable to distinguish between right and wrong in his actions, but kept him in the mental hospital. The federal government also dropped charges in August 1964, and Pavlick was eventually released from the New Hampshire State Mental Hospital on December 13, 1966.
Pavlick died at the age of 88 on November 11, 1975 at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Manchester, New Hampshire-eleven days short of the 12th anniversary of Kennedy assassination.
1973 – John Paul Getty III,grandson of J. Paul Getty, American billionaire is found alive near Naples, Italy, after being kidnapped by an Italian gang on July 10, 1973.
1993 – History of Northern Ireland: The Downing Street Declaration is issued by British Prime Minister John Major and Irish Taoiseach Albert Reynolds.The Downing Street Declaration was a joint declaration issued on December 15, 1993 by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, John Major and Albert Reynolds, the Taoiseach of Ireland. It affirmed the right of the people of Northern Ireland to self-determination, and that the province would be transferred to the Republic of Ireland from the United Kingdom if and only if a majority of its population was in favour of such a move. It included for the first time in the history of Anglo-Irish relationships, as part of the prospective of the so-called Irish dimension, the principle that the people of the island of Ireland, North and South had the exclusive right to solve the issues between North and South by mutual consent. The latter statement was key to produce a positive change of attitude by the Republicans towards a negotiated settlement.
The joint declaration also pledged the governments to seek a peaceful constitutional settlement, and promised that parties linked with paramilitaries (such as Sinn Fein) could take part in the talks, so long as they abandoned violence.
The declaration, after it was ‘clarified’ by the Northern Ireland Office, was considered sufficient by the Provisional Irish Republican Army to announce a ceasefire on August 31, 1994 which was then followed on October 13, by an announcement of a ceasefire from the Combined Loyalist Military Command.
2001 – The Leaning Tower of Pisa reopensafter 11 years and $27,000,000 to fortify it, without fixing its famous lean. The Leaning Tower of Pisa (Italian: Torre pendente di Pisa) or simply The Tower of Pisa (La Torre di Pisa) is the campanile, or freestanding bell tower, of the cathedral of the Italian city of Pisa. It is situated behind the cathedral and is the third oldest structure in Pisa’s Piazza del Duomo (Cathedral Square) after the cathedral and the baptistry.
Although intended to stand vertically, the tower began leaning to the southeast soon after the onset of construction in 1173 due to a poorly laid foundation and loose substrate that has allowed the foundation to shift direction. The tower presently leans to the southwest.
The height of the tower is 55.86 m (183.27 ft) from the ground on the lowest side and 56.70 m (186.02 ft) on the highest side. The width of the walls at the base is 4.09 m (13.42 ft) and at the top 2.48 m (8.14 ft). Its weight is estimated at 14,500 metric tons (16,000 short tons). The tower has 296 or 294 steps; the seventh floor has two fewer steps on the north-facing staircase. The tower leans at an angle of 3.97 degrees. This means that the top of the tower is 3.9 metres (12 ft 10 in) from where it would stand if the tower were perfectly vertical. BBC News on the Day – The Leaning Tower of Pisa
2005 – The 2005 Atlantic Power Outage began. The Atlantic Power Outage of 2005 caused hundreds of thousands of people along the Atlantic coast of the United States to suffer power outages. Winter ice storms caused power cuts starting on December 15, 2005.
Electricity was not restored in many places until December 20, 2005, by which time one death was blamed on the outage.
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Born on This Day
1892 – J. Paul Getty, American oil tycoon (d. 1976)
1939 – Cindy Birdsong, American singer (The Supremes)
1942 – Dave Clark, English musician (The Dave Clark Five)
1948 – Cassandra Harris,Australian actress (d. 1991) – Born Sandra Colleen Waites in Sydney, Australia, Harris was a student of NIDA acting school from 1960 to 1963 and performed in the successful Sydney stage production of Boeing Boeing from 1964 to 1965. She appeared in The Greek Tycoon (1978), Rough Cut (1980), and the James Bond film, For Your Eyes Only as the Countess Lisl von Schlaf, the ill-fated mistress of Milos Colombo (played by Israeli actor Topol). While she was filming this movie, her third husband, Pierce Brosnan, met James Bond series producer Albert R. Broccoli, which eventually led to his casting as the new James Bond with starring roles in four James Bond films. Harris had allegedly always wanted to see her husband portray James Bond, but her death occurred prior to his selection for the role in “Golden Eye.”
1949 – Don Johnson, American actor
1955 – Paul Simonon, English bassist (The Clash)
1963 – Andrew Luster, Max Factor heir
1970 – Frankie Dettori, Italian jockey
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Died on this Day and Remembered here
1944 – Glenn Miller, American musician (later declared dead on this date, exact date of death unknown) (b. 1904)
1962 – Charles Laughton, English actor (b. 1899)
1966 – Walt Disney, American animator (b. 1901)
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Thought for the Day
Every book starts with just one word.
Every great idea is sparked by a single thought.
Every morning sees a new sunrise.
And every journey begins with a single step.
So now, knowing all of this, why are you waiting for whatever you’re waiting for?
If you don’t begin, you can’t win!
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And finally . . .
I think it’s time, since it’s only NINE DAYS TILL CHRISTMAS DAY, to break out the old joke book and give you a few smiles to take out into your day, and annoy other people with. Obviously, given the time of year, it’s going to be Christmas Jokes, so whine all you like, I shall simply end up asking you if you’d like a little cheese with that whine.
What does Santa suffer from if he gets stuck in a chimney? Claustrophobia!
What do you call an elf who sings?
A wrapper!
Why does Santa have three gardens? So he can ‘ho ho ho’!
Why does Santa Claus go down the chimney on Christmas Eve?
Because it soot’s him
Why did Santa go to the doctor? Because of his bad “elf”!
Why are Christmas trees so fond of the past?
Because the present’s beneath them.
What kind of motorbike does Santa ride? A Holly Davidson!
What do you call a cat in the desert? Sandy Claws!
And that, indeed, is ‘all folks’!
Thank you so much for coming and having a coffee moment with me. I so love it when we all get together around the table and have a few giggles and laughs over a coffee, and a bit of an Ooooh and Aaaah, over the history of the day.
May your Friday be wonderful. I hope the day gently does what Fridays normally do – get to the end and give you a sigh. May you find some fun in the day, and see that the mood you’re in was a choice. When you realise this, you can then decide to make a better choice. Choose your mood wisely. Who knows what might be dependant upon what mood you’re in.
Sending you my warmest wishes during this cold December that most of us are experiencing. Stay warm, dress right for the weather, and come home safely.
The Art of Cobwebs 