Today we celebrate a holiday flower that we all love, the Poinsettia. This day is observed annually on December 12th.
The Poinsettia flower is known as the Christmas Star. It is a commercial plant species of the spurge family of plants the Euphorbiaceous, particularly well known for its red and green foliage and is widely used in Christmas floral displays.
Poinsettia’s name was derived from Roberts Poinsett, the first United States Minister to Mexico who introduced the plant to the US in 1825. In Mexico, the flowers are called La Flores de la Noche Buena, or the Flowers of the Holy Night, and are displayed on December 12, the Day of the Virgin of Guadalupe, marking the beginning of the Christmas season.
Today, poinsettias are the best selling potted plant in the United States. Because of the great role, the Ecke family played in this, a July 2002 Congressional resolution honored Paul Ecke Jr. This resolution also acknowledged that National Poinsettia Day had existed for over 150 years, possibly referencing that it has existed since Joel Robert Poinsett’s death.
So, today, celebrate this day, by heading to your local store and get some Poinsettia in preparation for holiday floral arrangement and decoration all over your house. You can also give Poinsettia as gifts for the holidays to your friends and family. Share on social media some photos using #PoinsettiaDay.
1901 First radio transmission sent across the Atlantic Ocean
Italian physicist and radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi succeeds in sending the first radio transmission across the Atlantic Ocean, disproving detractors who told him that the curvature of the earth would limit transmission to 200 miles or less. The message–simply the Morse-code signal for the letter “s”–traveled more than 2,000 miles from Poldhu in Cornwall, England, to Newfoundland, Canada.
Born in Bologna, Italy, in 1874 to an Italian father and an Irish mother, Marconi studied physics and became interested in the transmission of radio waves after learning of the experiments of the German physicist Heinrich Hertz. He began his own experiments in Bologna beginning in 1894 and soon succeeded in sending a radio signal over a distance of 1.5 miles. Receiving little encouragement for his experiments in Italy, he went to England in 1896. He formed a wireless telegraph company and soon was sending transmissions from distances farther than 10 miles. In 1899, he succeeded in sending a transmission across the English Channel. That year, he also equipped two U.S. ships to report to New York newspapers on the progress of America’s Cup yacht race. That successful endeavor aroused widespread interest in Marconi and his wireless company.
(excerpted from https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/marconi-sends-first-atlantic-wireless-transmission)
