11-08 Montana Day
November 8th, 2009
National Parents as Teachers Day:
(excerpted from http://www.parentsasteachers.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=ekIRLcMZJxE&b=3526425&ct=4604281)
National Parents as Teachers Day was established in 2001 as a day to pay tribute to the thousands of trained and certified parent educators giving support to parents in the critical early years of their child’s development. Celeberated each year on Nov. 8, more than 3,000 Parents as Teachers sites around the globe will be celebrating with themed events, group meetings and media promotion.
Montana Admission Day:
(excerpted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montana)
Native Americans were the first inhabitants of the state of Montana. Groups included the Crow in the south-central area, the Cheyenne in the southeast, the Blackfeet, Assiniboine and Gros Ventres in the central and north-central area and the Kootenai and Salish in the west. The smaller Pend d’Oreille and Kalispel tribes lived near Flathead Lake and the western mountains, respectively.
Montana east of the continental divide was part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Subsequent to the Lewis and Clark Expedition and after the finding of gold and copper (see the Copper Kings) in the state in the late 1850s, Montana became a United States territory (Montana Territory) on May 26, 1864, and the 41st state on November 8, 1889.
X-Ray Discovery Day:
(excerpted from http://www.uihealthcare.com/depts/medmuseum/galleryexhibits/trailoflight/01discoveryofxray.html)
On November 8, 1895 William Roentgen accidentally discovered a new kind of radiation. He was testing cathode rays to see if they would pass through glass when he noticed a glow emanating from a chemically coated screen lying a few feet away. Roentgen named the unknown rays that caused this fluorescence “X rays.” Working intensely in seclusion for two months, he found that X rays could penetrate some substances but not others. During one experiment, Roentgen tested the X-ray absorption of lead. While holding a lead disk up to the source of radiation, he inadvertently exposed his hand to the rays. The resulting shadows on the detecting screen revealed both the impenetrability of lead and the bones in his hand. Roentgen had discovered that X rays penetrate human flesh, but not bone.
Punsters Day:
(excerpted from http://blog.holidays.net/index.php/2006/11/08/nov08-today-were-celebratingabet-and-aid-punsters-day/)
A pun is a terrible thing to waste. And its your duty today to torture your friends with some of these dreadful puns…
According to the site Pun of the Day these are the best (?) puns:
1. I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit me.Â
2. Did you hear about the guy whose whole left side was cut off? He’s all right now.Â
3. He drove his expensive car into a tree and found out how the Mercedes bends.Â
4. Police were called to a daycare where a three-year-old was resisting a rest.Â
5. I couldn’t quite remember how to throw a boomerang, but eventually it came back to me.
6. Show me a piano falling down a mineshaft and I’ll show you A-flat minor.Â
7. To write with a broken pencil is pointless.Â
8. A small boy swallowed some coins and was taken to a hospital. When his grandmother telephoned to ask how he was a nurse said ‘No change yet’.Â
9. A bicycle can’t stand on its own because it is two-tired.Â
10. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
Dunce Day:
(excerpted from http://www.squarez.com/DateComments.php?days_id=100&date=2004-11-8)
It’s the anniversary of the November 8, 1308 death of Duns Scotus, a medieval scholar who was responsible for the introduction of the word “dunce” into the English language.
Here’s some more info on the origin of the dunce cap:
As it turns out, the dunce cap comes from a 13th-century philosopher named John Duns Scotus, who, not surpisingly, was born in Duns, Scotland.
This well-respected but terribly oblique scholar felt that conical hats actually increased learning potential. Here’s the theory — knowledge is centralized at the apex and then funneled down into the mind of the wearer.
Scotus was an inveterate hair-splitter and came up with terms like “haecceitas,” or “thisness.” He was widely praised in his day, but eventually fell out of intellectual favor. His “duns cap” was a pretty obvious target of derision and came to symbolize stupidity.
So the logic behind the dunce cap is that it makes slow pupils learn better, but it was later used to humiliate the wearer and motivate students to try harder.
Senator John F. Kennedy defeated Vice President Richard M. Nixon (1960)
(excerpted from http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/20081108.html)
On November 8, 1960, Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy defeated Vice President Richard M. Nixon for the presidency. (Go to article.)
Celebrity Birthdays:
(excerpted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morley_Safer)
Morley Safer (born November 8, 1931) is a Canadian reporter and correspondent for CBS News. He is best known for his long tenure on the news magazine 60 Minutes, which began in December 1970.
Safer began his journalism career as a reporter for various newspapers in Canada and England. Later, he joined the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a correspondent and producer.
In 1964, Safer joined CBS News as a London-based correspondent. In 1965, he opened the CBS News bureau in Saigon. That year he followed a group of United States Marines to the village of Cam Ne, for what was described as a “search and destroy” mission. When the Marines arrived, they gave orders in English to the inhabitants—by all accounts harmless civilians—to evacuate the village. When the homes were cleared, the Marines burned their thatched roofs with flamethrowers and Zippo lighters. Safer’s report on this event was broadcast on CBS News on August 5, 1966 and was among the first reports to paint a bleak picture of the Vietnam War. President Lyndon Baines Johnson reacted to this report angrily, calling CBS’s president and accusing Safer and his colleagues of having “shat on the American flag.” Certain that Safer was a communist, Johnson also ordered a security check; upon being told that Safer ‘wasn’t a communist, just a Canadian’, he responded “Well, I knew he wasn’t an American.”
(excerpted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Mitchell)
Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell (November 8, 1900 – August 16, 1949) was an American author, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1937 for her novel Gone with the Wind. The novel is one of the most popular books of all time, selling more than 30 million copies (see list of best-selling books). An American film adaptation, released in 1939, became the highest-grossing film in the history of Hollywood, and received a record-breaking ten Academy Awards. Its record of eight non-honorary Academy Awards stood until 1958.
Birthday Greetings:
Evelyn Flowers Birthday
Happy Birthday Eve!!
November 8th, 2009 at 2:17 am
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