Happy National Yo-Yo Day, celebrated every June 6 in honor of the birthday of Donald F. Duncan Sr., who made the toy a commercial success in the United States. He was not the first, however, to market the toy in this country. That distinction goes to Pedro Flores, … Read More
April 15, a day dreaded by taxpayers around the nation, shares an annual frivolous counterpart: Take a Wild Guess Day. Motivational speaker Jim Barber figured to bring some relief to the laborious and stressful process of getting tax returns in the mail before the midnight deadline, being scrupulously … Read More
It happens millions of times every day in factories around the world. Chunks of graphite and clay are crushed in a rotating drum. Water is added and the mixture is blended, dried, hardened, ground into a fine powder, rehydrated into a paste, extruded into thin rods and baked … Read More
March 25 was the date of the downfall of Sauron, Lord of the Rings. Since 2003, it has also been Tolkien Reading Day. Writer, poet, linguist and university professor John Ronald Reuel (J.R.R.) Tolkien was born in 1892 in South Africa to an English bank manager and his … Read More
Happy birthday (March 20) to Fred McFeely Rogers, a remarkable man whose strength was his kindness and gentility; whose example was his serene, steadfast morality; and whose legacy was the unconditional love he personified and advocated throughout the nearly 75 years he graced this all-too-often heartless world. An … Read More
March 7 is National Cereal Day. The ancestor of today’s sugary, gimmicky, kid-targeted breakfast cereal actually started out as a treatment for sanitarium patients. The typical American breakfast in the mid-1800s offered less than a healthy start to the day. Morning staples included, almost exclusively, pork, beef, coffee … Read More
It is probably only natural the strawberry, the first fruit to ripen every year (thus called “the taste of spring”), should be celebrated so early in the year. Every Feb. 27 the nation recognizes the nutrition-packed fruit, rated the third best antioxidant U.S. food. Strawberries are low calorie … Read More
Celebrated every Feb. 22, World Thinking Day was instituted by the Girl Scouts and Girl Guides to inspire people to ponder other cultures and contemplate global concerns. This year’s theme is “Connect” and emphasizes three kinds of connections, according the website for the World Association of Girl Guides … Read More
The Brady Bunch did it. So did Bugs Bunny and Bob the Builder. The Western American square dance, celebrated every Nov. 29, is the third most recognized dance form in the world, behind dances from China and India. American square dancing, affectionately dubbed “friendship set to music,” is … Read More
Who doesn’t remember visiting old friends, experiencing exciting adventures, traveling to new worlds — all courtesy of that glorious art form known as the comic book? First appearing in the United States in 1933, the comic book has remained a steadfast mainstay of literary entertainment for young and … Read More
From its mundane beginning as a wallpaper cleaner, the household compound now known as Play-Doh has come a long way. The product was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 1998 and five years later was recognized as one of the 100 most memorable and creative … Read More
We call them goobers, monkey nuts and ground peas; we eat them by the millions of tons; and we devote every Sept. 13 to celebrating the versatile culinary ingredient that started as pig food. National Peanut Day rolls around again Sunday, Sept. 13, so it may be appropriate … Read More
We’ve all done it. We’ve put off until later something we could have — and probably should have — done now. Some of us may be more chronic about it than others, but procrastination is a universal trait among us fallible humans. Procrastination, from the Latin words meaning … Read More
The U.S. Patent Office knows it, among other things, as “a helical spring having substantially no lateral force between turns in closed position when no external force is acting … and in which the spring cross section is of a shape which has essentially lower torsional stiffness of … Read More
They are indispensable to our food supply, live in highly organized societies and, according to Albert Einstein, if they leave us, mankind will be extinct within four years. Honeybees are honored annually on World Honey Bee Day, the third Saturday of August. Honeybees live in astoundingly organized colonies, … Read More
For most of their history, lighthouses (celebrated nationally every Aug. 7) were not houses. At the very beginning, they weren’t even buildings. Nature periodically provided the first nighttime navigational landmarks in the form of glowing volcanoes. The first man-made lighthouse was the tallest ever built. The Pharos of … Read More
