02-09 Read in the Bathtub Day
February 9th, 2010
Extraterrestrial Culture Day:
(excerpted from http://www.space.com/searchforlife/et_roswell_0303225.html)
New Mexicans can now celebrate every second Tuesday in February as “Extraterrestrial Culture Day” after a Roswell lawmaker’s proposal won approval in the House.
Some lawmakers scoffed at the idea. But the sponsor of the memorial, Republican Rep. Daniel Foley, of Roswell, said life on other planets — if you believe in it — surely has its own set of cultural beliefs.
“They have some sort of culture, whether it’s something we understand or not,” he said.
Read in the Bathtub Day:
(excerpted from http://threedogsmommy.blogspot.com/2009/02/read-in-bathtub-day.html)
This may be my favorite celebration of all time. I celebrate it, pretty much, 3 times a week. I will definitely be celebrating it tonight as #1 – Jim has school until late; #2 – I’m reading a great book and #3 – I need a soak already (and it’s only 5:32 AM). Yowza!
Toothache Day:
(excerpted from http://holidayinsights.com/moreholidays/February/toothacheday.htm)
Toothache Day, one can only ask…. Why!?
There’s a lot of bizarre days. Many celebrate funny or silly or strange events. But, we wonder why someone would want to celebrate a toothache!? Unfortunately, we have yet to uncover a website or any written documentation about this day.
We suggest you participate in this day by learning or reviewing the cause of toothache and tooth decay. Pass this education along to your kids. If you have a toothache today, by all means call your dentist.
(1825) House of Representatives elects John Quincy Adams President of the United States.:
(excerpted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Quincy_Adams)
Under the terms of the Twelfth Amendment, the presidential election was thrown to the House of Representatives to vote on the top three candidates: Jackson, Adams, and Crawford. Clay had come in fourth place and thus was ineligible, but he retained considerable power and influence as Speaker of the House. Crawford was unavailable due to the stroke.
Clay’s personal dislike for Jackson and the similarity of his American System to Adams’ position on tariffs and internal improvements caused him to throw his support to Adams, who was elected by the House on February 9, 1825, on the first ballot. Adams’ victory shocked Jackson, who had gained the plurality of the electoral and popular votes and fully expected to be elected president. When Adams appointed Clay as Secretary of State—the position that Adams and his three predecessors had held before becoming President—Jacksonian Democrats were outraged, and claimed that Adams and Clay had struck a “corrupt bargain.” This contention overshadowed Adams’ term and greatly contributed to Adams’ loss to Jackson four years later, in the 1828 election. As the election of 1824 drew near people began looking for candidates. New England voters admired Adams’ patriotism and political skills and it was mainly due to their support that he entered the race. The old caucus system of the Democratic-Republican Party had collapsed; indeed the entire First Party System had collapsed and the election was a free-for-all based on regional support. Adams had a strong base in New England. His opponents included John C. Calhoun, William Crawford, Henry Clay and the hero of New Orleans, Andrew Jackson. During the campaign Calhoun dropped out, and Crawford fell ill giving further support to the other candidates. When the election day came, Andrew Jackson won, although narrowly, pluralities of the popular and electoral votes, but not the necessary majority of electoral votes. Under the terms of the Twelfth Amendment, the presidential election was thrown to the House of Representatives to vote on the top three candidates: Jackson, Adams, and Crawford. Clay had come in fourth place and thus was ineligible, but he retained considerable power and influence as Speaker of the House. Crawford was unavailable due to the stroke.
(1870) National Weather Service established:
(excerpted from http://www.nws.noaa.gov/pa/history/timeline.php)
A Joint Congressional Resolution requiring the Secretary of War “to provide for taking meteorological observations at the military stations in the interior of the continent and at other points in the States and Territories…and for giving notice on the northern (Great) Lakes and on the seacoast by magnetic telegraph and marine signals, of the approach and force of storms” was introduced. The Resolution was passed by Congress and signed into law on February 9, 1870, by President Ulysses S. Grant. An agency had been born which would affect the daily lives of most of the citizens of the United States through its forecasts and warnings.
(1964) The Beatles made their first live American TV appearance, on “The Ed Sullivan Show:
(excerpted from http://www.iamthebeatles.com/article1036.html)
When The Beatles made their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show that February 1964, it was and remains the most important event in the history of rock music.
Those of us in our forties today remember with fondness and excitement the atmosphere created by four young guys from Liverpool, England. As all of us remember where we were during the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, we likewise remember being mesmerized in front of our small black & white television sets on Sunday February 9, 1964, at 8 p.m., when the Beatles made their first American debut on The Ed Sullivan Show.
In preparation for their appearance, the CBS Television office on West-Fifty-Third Street in New York was overwhelmed by more than 50,000 requests for tickets to a studio that held 703. During their appearance, the Beatles sang five songs in the following order: All My Loving, Till There Was You, She Loves You, I Saw Her Standing There, and I Want To Hold Your Hand. On this night, 73 million people watched The Beatles. Their appearance had such an impact that most normal activities in America came to a standstill watching their performance. Criminal activity in most of the major cities and towns in America was put on hold, and getting a taxi or bus in New York was almost impossible, until their performance was over. Mass hysteria resulted wherever the Beatles appeared, and Beatlemania was created. Can you imagine 73 million people watched? That’s a lot of people. But, I must say that when I see the films of that amazing performance today, it is just as exciting. Oh, and for the girls who watched – do you remember when the camera was focused on John Lennon when The Beatles sang Till There Was You? The television stations superimposed the words, “Sorry Girls, He’s Married,” over Lennon. Oh well…
Celebrity Birthdays:
(excerpted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Paine)
Thomas Paine (February 9, 1737 [O.S. January 29, 1736] – June 8, 1809) was an author, pamphleteer, radical, inventor, intellectual, revolutionary, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Born in England, Paine emigrated to the British American colonies in 1774 in time to participate in the American Revolution. His principal contributions were the powerful, widely-read pamphlet Common Sense (1776), advocating colonial America’s independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain, and The American Crisis (1776–1783), a pro-revolutionary pamphlet series. The historian Saul K. Padover in the biography Jefferson: A Great American’s Life and Ideas, refers to Paine as “a corsetmaker by trade, a journalist by profession, and a propagandist by inclination.”
(excerpted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Henry_Harrison)
William Henry Harrison (February 9, 1773 – April 4, 1841) was the ninth President of the United States, an American military officer and politician, and the first president to die in office. The oldest president elected until Ronald Reagan in 1980, and last President to be born before the United States Declaration of Independence, Harrison died on his thirty-second day in office of complications from a cold – the shortest tenure in United States presidential history. His death sparked a brief constitutional crisis, but that crisis ultimately resolved many questions about presidential succession left unanswered by the Constitution until passage of the 25th Amendment.
Before election as president, Harrison served as the first territorial congressional delegate from the Northwest Territory, governor of the Indiana Territory and later as a U.S. representative and senator from Ohio. He originally gained national fame for leading U.S. forces against American Indians at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, where he earned the nickname “Tippecanoe” (or “Old Tippecanoe”). As a general in the subsequent War of 1812, his most notable contribution was a victory at the Battle of the Thames in 1813, which brought an end to hostilities in his region.
