11-23 Fibonacci Day
November 23rd, 2009
Labor Thanksgiving Day (Japan):
(excerpted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_Thanksgiving_Day)
Labor Thanksgiving Day (勤労感謝の日, Kinrō kansha no hi?) is a national holiday in Japan. It takes place annually on November 23. The law establishing the holiday cites it as an occasion for commemorating labor and production and giving one another thanks.
Events are held throughout Japan, one such being the Nagano Labor Festival. The event encourages thinking about the environment, peace and human rights.
It is not unusual for early grade elementary students to create drawings for the holiday and give them as gifts to local kōbans, or police stations.
Labor Thanksgiving Day is the modern name for an ancient rice harvest festival known as Niiname-sai (新嘗祭?), believed to have been held as long ago as November of 678. Traditionally, it celebrated the year’s hard work; during the Niiname-sai ceremony, the Emperor would dedicate the year’s harvest to kami (spirits), and taste the rice for the first time.
The modern holiday was established after World War II in 1948 as a day to mark some of the changes of the postwar constitution of Japan, including fundamental human rights and the expansion of workers rights. Currently Niiname-sai is held privately by the Imperial Family while Labor Thanksgiving Day has become a national holiday.
Fibonacci Day:
(excerpted from http://oakford.wordpress.com/2008/11/24/fibonacci-day/)
Fibonacci Day is on November 23 because the first numbers of the Fibonacci Series are 1, 1, 2, 3. The Fibonacci sequence adds the previous 2 numbers to get the third.
Leonardo of Pisa, sometimes known as Leonardo Fibonacci or just Fibonacci, was an Italian mathematician. He didn’t invent or discover the Fibonacci sequence, but he used it as an example in his book, Liber Abaci.
(excerpted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci)
In the Fibonacci sequence of numbers, each number is the sum of the previous two numbers, starting with 0 and 1. Thus the sequence begins 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610 etc.
The higher up in the sequence, the closer two consecutive “Fibonacci numbers” of the sequence divided by each other will approach the golden ratio (approximately 1 : 1.618 or 0.618 : 1).
Eat a Cranberry Day:
(excerpted from http://holidayinsights.com/moreholidays/November/eatacranberryday.htm)
Eat a Cranberry Day is today. Cranberries are good for you. How many cranberries will you eat today?
Native to North America, cranberries are grown in bogs, and are primarily grown in New England. When the pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, they found Native Americans harvesting them, and eating them. Native Americans also used them as dyes for clothing, and for medicinal purposes.
National Cashew Day:
(excerpted from http://holidayinsights.com/moreholidays/November/cashewday.htm)
The plain, or salty truth of it ,is that today is National Cashew Day. It’s a nutty day, if there ever was one.
Celebrate this day by eating cashews. Eat them any way you like: plain or salted, as a snack or in a recipe. Eating them is all there is to participating in National Cashew Day.
We believe that this day will truely be all that’s its cracked up to be. In a nutshell, this day is a lot of fun.
(1936) Life magazine, created by Henry R. Luce, was first published:
(excerpted from http://www.answers.com/topic/henry-luce)
(born April 3, 1898, Dengzhou, Shandong province, China — died Feb. 28, 1967, Phoenix, Ariz., U.S.) U.S. magazine publisher. Luce was born to U.S. missionary parents. He graduated from Yale University in 1920. While at Yale he had met Briton Hadden, with whom he launched Time in 1923. He added the business magazine Fortune in 1929 and Life magazine in 1936. Among other Luce magazines were House & Home, established in 1952, and Sports Illustrated, launched in 1954. His publications, founded as means of educating what Luce considered a poorly informed U.S. public, had many imitators, and Luce became one of the most powerful figures in the history of U.S. journalism. Both he and his wife, Clare Boothe Luce, had a major influence on the Republican Party and on national affairs.
Celebrity Birthdays:
(excerpted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Pierce)
Franklin Pierce (November 23, 1804 – October 8, 1869) was the 14th President of the United States, serving from 1853 to 1857, an American politician and lawyer. To date, he is the only President from New Hampshire. He was also the first President to be born in the 19th century.
Pierce was a Democrat and a “doughface” (a Northerner with Southern sympathies) who served in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. Later, Pierce took part in the Mexican-American War and became a brigadier general. His private law practice in his home state, New Hampshire, was so successful that he was offered several important positions, which he turned down. Later, he was nominated for president as a dark horse candidate on the 49th ballot at the 1852 Democratic National Convention. In the presidential election, Pierce and his running mate William R. King won by a landslide in the Electoral College, defeating the Whig Party ticket of Winfield Scott and William A. Graham by a 50% to 44% margin in the popular vote and 254 to 42 in the electoral vote. According to historian David Potter, Pierce was sometimes referred to as “Baby” Pierce, apparently referring to both his youthful appearance and his being the youngest president to take office to that point (although he was, in reality, only a year younger than James K. Polk when he took office).
His inoffensive personality caused him to make many friends, but he suffered tragedy in his personal life and as president subsequently made decisions which were widely criticized and divisive in their effects, thus giving him the reputation as one of the worst presidents in U.S. history. Pierce’s popularity in the North declined sharply after he came out in favor of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, repealing the Missouri Compromise and reopening the question of the expansion of slavery in the West. Pierce’s credibility was further damaged when several of his diplomats issued the Ostend Manifesto. Historian David Potter concludes that the Ostend Manifesto and the Kansas-Nebraska Act were “the two great calamities of the Franklin Pierce administration…. Both brought down an avalanche of public criticism.” More important says Potter, they permanently discredited Manifest Destiny and “popular sovereignty” as a political doctrine and slogan of that time that purported to delegate the decision whether slavery should be allowed in a particular territory to the eligible white male voters therein, instead of being determined by a national scheme such as that embodied in the Missouri Compromise and similar agreements between the free and slave interests.
Abandoned by his party, Pierce was not renominated to run in the 1856 presidential election and was replaced by James Buchanan as the Democratic candidate.
(excerpted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Roberts_(newscaster))
Robin Rene Roberts (born November 23, 1960), is an American television broadcaster. Roberts is the co-anchor of ABC’s morning show Good Morning America.
She joined ESPN as a sportscaster in February 1990 and became well known on Sportscenter for her catchphrase, “Go on with your bad self!”. Roberts began to work for ABC News, specifically as a featured reporter, for Good Morning America in June 1995.
In 2001, Roberts received the Mel Greenberg Media Award, presented by the WBCA.
For many years, Roberts worked at both ESPN and Good Morning America, contributing to both programs. During that time, she served primarily as the news anchor at GMA. In 2005, Roberts was promoted to co-anchor of Good Morning America.
In the fall of 2005, she anchored a series of emotional reports from the Mississippi Gulf Coast after it was devastated by Hurricane Katrina; her hometown of Pass Christian was especially hard hit, with her old high school completely reduced to rubble.
On February 22, 2009, she hosted the Academy Awards preshow for ABC.
Roberts has earned three Emmy Awards for her sportscasting work at ESPN.
