May 16th – Love a Tree Day

May 16, 2017 at 12:01 am | Posted in Today's Reasons To Celebrate | Leave a comment

Good morning tree-huggers. Today is Tuesday, May 16, 2017. Today’s reasons to celebrate are:

Love a Tree Day

Love a Tree Day celebrates the symbiotic relationship between mankind and trees. What’s not to love about trees? They are majestic and beautiful. They benefit mankind by providing shade on those long hot summer days. And, through a process called photosynthesis, give off oxygen; which mankind needs to exist. Win! Win! Although some may disagree, when trees drop their leaves each fall as part of their natural life process, they also provide a form of light exercise as you rake the leaves and dispose of them.
To celebrate Love a Tree Day, pamper your trees today. If they need to be trimmed, trim them. If  there are any competing plants or weeds nearby, remove them. Give your trees some fertilizer, and a good drink of water. Then relax and enjoy a nice cold beverage of your choice in the shade they provide.
Below are some fun facts about trees. 

• There are some tree species that live to be several thousand years old.
• A mature tree can remove nearly 70 times more airborne pollution than a newly planted one.
• A single tree produces about 260 pounds of oxygen each year. Two fully mature trees can provide enough oxygen each year to support a family of 4.
• Over 20% of the Earth’s oxygen is produced in the Amazon Rainforest.

Wear Purple for Peace Day

If you think that Wear Purple For Peace Day is just another one of those namby-pamby, stomach-turning holidays created by the United Nations or some “hippiesque” group wanting peace throughout the world, you are mistaken. Wear Purple for Peace Day is much weirder than that.
Wear Purple For Peace Day was created out of the belief that the only reason outer space aliens have not yet visited Earth is because we are too violent. The goal is to make Earth a peaceful place so that the aliens might someday deem us worthy of a visit.
How silly! Everyone knows that the aliens are already here. They live among us now. They have taken over every level of our Government, our universities, and are slowly getting us accustomed to subjugation, tyranny and omnipresent power in the hands of a select few. How else can you possibly explain what is going on with our state and local governments and on college campuses these days?

Biographer’s Day

The modern style of biography originated in the eighteenth-century and is most closely associated with James Boswell, who undertook an extraordinary biography of his charismatic companion Samuel Johnson. Samuel Johnson was a famous author and lexicographer, who wrote, among other things, the ‘Dictionary of the English Language’ (published in 1755), the first English dictionary. The ‘Dictionary of the English Language’ was the book upon which most dictionaries were based until it was superseded by the publishing of the ‘Oxford English Dictionary’ in 1928.
Biographer’s Day commemorates the date when the two first met in a London bookshop in 1763. Boswell’s work, The Life of Samuel Johnson, published in 1791, is widely considered to be the greatest biography ever written. Boswell’s expansive work about Mr. Johnson, warm, uncompromising, and exhaustively detailed, established a new way of writing a biography and shaped the emergence of the biography format that is popular today.

Mimosa Day

Mimosa Day celebrates the tasty, yet simple to make cocktail made with equal parts of orange juice and champagne. It is an elegant cocktail which was created in 1925 at the Ritz Hotel in Paris. It is traditionally served in a champagne flute and is usually enjoyed on special occasions such as weddings, Easter and Mother’s Day, and on cruise ships or at resorts. In recent history, it is becoming popular during Sunday brunches as well.

National Coquilles St. Jacques Day

Coquilles St. Jacques translates to  St. James’s Scallops. It is a classic French dish made with made with scallops, heavy cream, butter, mushrooms, and Parmesan cheese, baked in a scallop shell. If you are inquisitive and adventurous this link gives you the legend of St. James the Greater, his association with scallops, and a recipe for Coquilles St. Jacques.

More Holidays 

• Drawing Day
• Honor Our LGBT Elders Day
• National Piercing Day
• National Sea Monkey Day
• Sex Differences in Health Awareness Day – Observed Tuesday of National Women’s Health Week.

On This Date 

• In 1770 – Marie Antoinette, at age 14, married the future King Louis XVI of France, who was 15.
• In 1868 – President Andrew Johnson was acquitted during the Senate impeachment hearing, by one vote.
• In 1888 – The first demonstration of recording on a flat disc was demonstrated by Emile Berliner.
• In 1888 – Austin became the official Capitol of Texas.
• In 1910 – The U.S. Bureau of Mines was authorized by the U.S. Congress.
• In 1914 – The American Horseshoe Pitchers Association (AHPA) was formed in Kansas City, Kansas.
• In 1919 – Albert Cushing Read took off on the first transatlantic flight in history. The crossing from New York City to Lisbon, Portugal on a Curtiss NC-4 flying boat took 19 days.
• In 1929 – The first Academy Awards were held in Hollywood. The first Academy Awards were presented at a private dinner with about 270 attendees. Today, it is the world’s most important entertainment awards ceremony.
• In 1939 – The Philadelphia Athletics and the Cleveland Indians met at Shibe Park in Philadelphia for the first baseball game to be played under the lights in the American League.
• In 1946 – Jack Mullin introduced the first magnetic tape recorder.
• In 1960 – A Big Four summit in Paris collapsed due to the American U-2 spy plane incident.
• In 1960 – Theodore Maiman, at Hughes Research Laboratory in California, demonstrated the first working laser. The American physicist’s invention, an advancement of earlier research by scientists in the United States and the Soviet Union, was patented in 1967.
• In 1966 – In China, the Cultural Revolution began. The publication of the May 16 notification marks the beginning of the political campaign, which was initiated by Mao Zedong and lasted ten years. Its objective was to strengthen communism by removing capitalist, traditional and cultural elements from Chinese society.
• In 1975 – Japanese climber Junko Tabei became the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest. The ascent by the Japanese adventurer came 22 years after Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first to reach the summit.
• In 1977 – Five people were killed when a New York Airways helicopter, idling on top of the Pan Am Building in Manhattan, toppled over, sending a huge rotor blade flying.
• In 1985 – Michael Jordan was named Rookie of the Year in the NBA.
• In 1987 – The Bobro 400 set sail from New York Harbor with 3,200 tons of garbage. The barge traveled 6,000 miles in search of a place to dump its load. It returned to New York Harbor after 8 weeks with the same load.
• In 1988 – The Supreme Court ruled that police do not need a search warrant to search discarded garbage.
• In 1990 – Legendary performer Sammy Davis Jr. succumbed to his battle with throat cancer.
• In 1990 – Muppet and Sesame Street creator Jim Henson died from toxic shock syndrome.
• In 1991 – Queen Elizabeth II became the first British monarch to address the U.S. Congress.
• In 1996 – Admiral Jeremy “Mike” Boorda, the nation’s top Navy officer, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound after some of his military awards were called into question.
• In 2000 – U.S. First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton was nominated to run for U.S. Senator in New York. She was the first U.S. first lady to run for public office.
• In 2003 – Adam Rich, the child actor who played the youngest son on the television program “Eight is Enough”, was placed on three years probation after he pled no contest to misdemeanor charges of driving under the influence and being under the influence of a controlled substance. He was also ordered to take part in a 60-day treatment program and pay about $1,200 in fines.

Noteworthy Birthdays

If you were born on this date, Happy Birthday. You share your birthday with the following list of illustrious individuals – and about 20-million other people.

• William Seward 1801 – Politician.
• Henry Fonda 1905 – Actor.
• Studs Terkel 1912 – Author, actor, broadcaster.
• Liberace 1919 – Entertainer.
• Harry Carey Jr. 1921 – Actor.
• Robert Pierpoint 1925 – Broadcast journalist.
• Billy Martin 1928 – Baseball Manager.
• Yvonne Craig 1937 – Actress.
• Bill Smitrovich 1947 – Actor.
• Pierce Brosnan 1953 – Actor.
• Olga Korbut 1955 – Gymnast.
• Debra Winger 1955 – Actress.
• Mare Winningham 1959 – Actress.
• Janet Jackson 1966 – Singer.
• Tracey Gold 1969 – Actress.
• Gabriela Sabatini 1970 – Tennis player.
• David Boreanaz 1971 – Actor.
• Tori Spelling 1973 – Actress.