Today is August 23 2014

National Sponge Cake Day: More

• National Ride With The Wind Day: More
  
• International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition: More
  Designated by: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
• Valentino Day: More

• In 1784, Western North Carolina (now eastern Tennessee) declares itself an independent state under the name of Franklin; it is not accepted into the United States, and only lasts for four years.
  From Wikipedia: 'The State of Franklin (also the Free Republic of Franklin or the State of Frankland) was an unrecognized, autonomous territory located in what is today eastern Tennessee, United States. Franklin was created in 1784 from part of the territory west of the Appalachian Mountains that had been offered by North Carolina as a cession to Congress to help pay off debts related to the American War for Independence. It was founded with the intent of becoming the fourteenth state of the new United States.
  
  Franklin's first capital was Jonesborough. After the summer of 1785, the government of Franklin (which was by then based in Greeneville), ruled as a "parallel government" running alongside (but not harmoniously with) a re-established North Carolina bureaucracy. Franklin was never admitted into the union. The extra-legal state existed for only about four and a half years, ostensibly as a republic, after which North Carolina re-assumed full control of the area.
  
  The creation of Franklin is novel, in that it resulted from both a cession (an offering from North Carolina to Congress) and a secession (seceding from North Carolina, when its offer to Congress was not acted upon, and the original cession was rescinded)'.
  - At Wikipedia: More
  - On YouTube: More
• In 1902, Fannie Merrit Farmer opened her cooking school, Miss Farmer’s School of Cookery, in Boston, MA Her book The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book was published in 1896.
  From Wikipedia: 'Fannie published her best-known work, The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, in 1896. Her cookbook introduced the concept of using standardized measuring spoons and cups, as well as level measurement. A follow-up to an earlier version called Mrs. Lincoln's Boston Cook Book, published by Mary J. Lincoln in 1884, and some criticized her for using some of the recipes, the book under Farmer's direction eventually contained 1,850 recipes, from milk toast to Zigaras à la Russe. Farmer also included essays on housekeeping, cleaning, canning and drying fruits and vegetables, and nutritional information
  
  The book's publisher (Little, Brown and Company) did not predict good sales and limited the first edition to 3,000 copies, published at the author's expense. The book was so popular in America, so thorough, and so comprehensive that cooks would refer to later editions simply as the Fannie Farmer Cookbook, and it is still available in print over 100 years later.
  
  Farmer provided scientific explanations of the chemical processes that occur in food during cooking, and also helped to standardize the system of measurements used in cooking in the USA. Before the Cookbook's publication, other American recipes frequently called for amounts such as "a piece of butter the size of an egg" or "a teacup of milk." Farmer's systematic discussion of measurement — "A cupful is measured level ... A tablespoonful is measured level. A teaspoonful is measured level." — led to her being named "the mother of level measurements."
  
  Farmer left the Boston Cooking School in 1902 and created Miss Farmer's School of Cookery. She began by teaching gentlewomen and housewives the rudiments of plain and fancy cooking, but her interests eventually led her to develop a complete work of diet and nutrition for the ill, titled Food and Cookery for the Sick and Convalescent which contained thirty pages on diabetes. Farmer was invited to lecture at Harvard Medical School and began teaching convalescent diet and nutrition to doctors and nurses. She felt so strongly about the significance of proper food for the sick that she believed she would be remembered chiefly by her work in that field, as opposed to her work in household and fancy cookery. Farmer understood perhaps better than anyone else at the time the value of appearance, taste, and presentation of sickroom food to ill and wasted people with poor appetites; she ranked these qualities over cost and nutritional value in importance'.
  - At Wikipedia: More
• In 1904, Harry D. Weed received a patent for 'Grip-Tread for Pneumatic Tires' (automobile tire chain / snow chains).
  From Wikipedia: 'Snow chains were invented in 1904 by Harry D. Weed in Canastota, New York. Weed received U.S. Patent Number 768495 for his "Grip-Tread for Pneumatic Tires" on August 23, 1904. Weed's great-grandson, James Weed, said that Harry got the idea of creating chains for tires when he saw drivers wrap rope, or even vines, around their tires to increase traction on muddy or snowy roads, which were the norm at the turn of the 20th century. He sought to make a traction device that was more durable and would work with snow as well as mud.
  
  In July 1935, the Canadian Auguste Trudeau obtained a patent for his tread and anti-skidding chain'.
  - At Wikipedia: More
• In 1938, The movie, You Can’t Take It With You, from the play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, directed by Frank Capra and starring James Stewart and Jean Arthur premieres. It won best Picture (1939).
  From Wikipedia: 'You Can't Take It with You is a 1938 American romantic comedy film directed by Frank Capra and starring Jean Arthur, Lionel Barrymore, James Stewart, and Edward Arnold. Adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, the film is about a man from a family of rich snobs who becomes engaged to a woman from a good-natured but decidedly eccentric family.
  
  The film received two Academy Awards from seven nominations: Best Picture and Best Director for Frank Capra. This was Capra's third Oscar for Best Director in just five years, following It Happened One Night (1934) and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936). It was also the highest-grossing picture of the year'.
  - At Wikipedia: More
  - On YouTube: More
• In 1954, The C-130 Hercules transport aircraft has it's first flight.
  From Wikipedia: 'The Lockheed Martin C-130J Super Hercules is a four-engine turboprop military transport aircraft. The C-130J is a comprehensive update of the Lockheed C-130 Hercules, with new engines, flight deck, and other systems. The Hercules family has the longest continuous production run of any military aircraft in history. During more than 60 years of service, the family has participated in military, civilian, and humanitarian aid operations. The Hercules has outlived several planned successor designs, most notably the Advanced Medium STOL Transport contestants. Fifteen nations have placed orders for a total of 300 C-130Js, of which 250 aircraft have been delivered as of February 2012.
  - At FamousDaily: More
  - At Wikipedia: More
  - On YouTube: More
• In 1966, The first picture of the Earth from the orbit around the moon is taken by Lunar Orbiter 1.
  From Wikipedia: 'The Lunar Orbiter 1 robotic (unmanned) spacecraft, part of the Lunar Orbiter Program, was the first American spacecraft to orbit the Moon. It was designed primarily to photograph smooth areas of the lunar surface for selection and verification of safe landing sites for the Surveyor and Apollo missions. It was also equipped to collect selenodetic, radiation intensity, and micrometeoroid impact data.
  
  Lunar Orbiter 1 was injected into an elliptical near-equatorial lunar orbit 92.1 hours after launch. The initial orbit was 189.1 by 1,866.8 kilometres (117.5 mi × 1,160.0 mi) and had a period of 3 hours 37 minutes and an inclination of 12.2 degrees. On August 21, perilune was dropped to 58 kilometres (36 mi) and on August 25 to 40.5 kilometres (25.2 mi). The spacecraft acquired photographic data from August 18 to 29, 1966, and readout occurred through September 14, 1966.
  
  A total of 42 high-resolution and 187 medium-resolution frames were taken and transmitted to Earth covering over 5 million square kilometers of the Moon's surface, accomplishing about 75% of the intended mission, although a number of the early high-resolution photos showed severe smearing. It also took the first two pictures of the Earth ever from the distance of the Moon. Accurate data were acquired from all other experiments throughout the mission'.
  - At FamousDaily: More
  - At Wikipedia: More
  - On YouTube (this one has the pic): More
  - On YouTube: More
• In 1977, The Kremer prize for human powered flight goes to the Gossamer Condor
  From Wikipedia: 'The Kremer prizes are a series of monetary awards, established in 1959 by the industrialist Henry Kremer, that are given to pioneers of human-powered flight. The competitions and prize awards are administered by the Royal Aeronautical Society's Human Powered Aircraft Group.
  
  The first Kremer prize of £50,000 was won on 23 August 1977 by Dr. Paul MacCready when his Gossamer Condor, piloted by Bryan Allen, was the first human-powered aircraft to fly a figure eight around two markers one half mile apart, starting and ending the course at least 10 feet (3.0 m) above the ground.
  
  The second Kremer prize of £100,000 was won on 12 June 1979, again by Paul MacCready, when Bryan Allen flew MacCready's Gossamer Albatross from England to France.
  
  A Kremer prize of £20,000 for speed was won in 1984 by a design team of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for flying their MIT Monarch B craft on a triangular 1.5 km (0.93 mi) course in under three minutes (for an average speed of 32 km/h (20 mph)). Further segments of a total prize pot of £100,000 were to be awarded for every improvement in speed of at least 5%; the next segment was won in the MacCready Bionic Bat with a flight of 163.28 seconds on 18 July 1984, piloted by Parker MacCready. The third segment was won by Holger Rochelt flying Musculair 1 designed by Günther Rochelt. The fourth segment was won on 2 December 1984, with a flight of 143.08 seconds in the MacCready Bionic Bat piloted by Bryan Allen. The fifth and final segment was won by Holger Rochelt flying Musculair 2, after which the prize competition was withdrawn by the Royal Aeronautical Society on grounds of safety.
  
  There are currently three Kremer Prizes that have not yet been awarded, for a total of £150,000:
  26 mile Marathon course in under an hour (£50,000),
  Sporting aircraft challenge stressing maneuverability (£100,000),
  Local challenge that is limited to youth groups (under 18 years) in the UK'.
  - At FamousDaily: More
  - At Wikipedia: More
  - On YouTube: More
• In 1991, Tim Berners-Lee opens the WWW, World Wide Web to new users.
  From Wikipedia: 'Berners-Lee's vision of a global hyperlinked information system became a possibility by the second half of the 1980s. By 1985, the global Internet began to proliferate in Europe and in the Domain Name System (upon which the Uniform Resource Locator is built) came into being. In 1988 the first direct IP connection between Europe and North America was made and Berners-Lee began to openly discuss the possibility of a web-like system at CERN.
  
  In March 1989 Tim Berners-Lee issued a proposal to the management at CERN for a system called "Mesh" that referenced ENQUIRE, a database and software project he had built in 1980, which used the term "web" and described a more elaborate information management system based on links embedded in readable text: "Imagine, then, the references in this document all being associated with the network address of the thing to which they referred, so that while reading this document you could skip to them with a click of the mouse." Such a system, he explained, could be referred to using one of the existing meanings of the word hypertext, a term that he says was coined in the 1950s. There is no reason, the proposal continues, why such hypertext links could not encompass multimedia documents including graphics, speech and video, so that Berners-Lee goes on to use the term hypermedia.
  
  With help from his colleague and fellow hypertext enthusiast Robert Cailliau he published a more formal proposal on 12 November 1990 to build a "Hypertext project" called "WorldWideWeb" (one word) as a "web" of "hypertext documents" to be viewed by "browsers" using a client–server architecture. At this point HTML and HTTP had already been in development for about two months and the first Web server was about a month from completing its first successful test.
  
  This proposal estimated that a read-only web would be developed within three months and that it would take six months to achieve "the creation of new links and new material by readers, authorship becomes universal" as well as "the automatic notification of a reader when new material of interest to him/her has become available." While the read-only goal was met, accessible authorship of web content took longer to mature, with the wiki concept, WebDAV, blogs, Web 2.0 and RSS/Atom.
  
  On 6 August 1991, Berners-Lee published a short summary of the World Wide Web project on the newsgroup alt.hypertext. This date also marked the debut of the Web as a publicly available service on the Internet, although new users only accessed it after 23 August. For this reason this is considered the internaut's day. Several newsmedia have reported that the first photo on the Web was published by Berners-Lee in 1992, an image of the CERN house band Les Horribles Cernettes taken by Silvano de Gennaro; Gennaro has disclaimed this story, writing that media were "totally distorting our words for the sake of cheap sensationalism"'
  - At Wikipedia: More
  - On YouTube: More

Need a tasty, light dessert for tomorrow. It will be 'National Sponge Cake Day'. I wonder if this is Mr. S. Squarepants favorite.

I don't remember ever jumping off the roof with a bath towel as a cape, but I'm sure I thought about it. Others have made their mark in the air (not in the ground. Tomorrow will be 'National Ride With The Wind Day'. It celebrates the prize for the first human air powered flight.

Tomorrow is also, ' International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition'. Designated by: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)

Ladies, the 23rd of August commemorates the death of a great movie star (silent) Tomorrow will be 'Valentino Day'. I wonder how many lights it would have taken to put his real name on the movie marquee, Rudolfo Alfonzo Raffaelo Piero Filibert Guglielmi De Valentina D’Antonguolla

A good spin of the time-tuner, to the left, may have stopped at these events on August 23 in the past.

In 1954, The first flight of the C-130 Hercules transport aircraft was made. This is the huge aircraft used to move large things or amounts of material. It is a little known secret that it is used to deliver pizza to my house when I order online home delivery . Via parachute of course.

In 1966, 'Lunar Orbiter 1' takes the first picture of the Earth from it's orbit around the moon. Selfies are not a new thing.

In 1977, 'Gossamer Condor,' wins the Kremer prize for human powered flight

In 1991, Tim Berners-Lee opens the WWW, World Wide Web to new users. Nice gesture, but it can't last. We have our 6-transistor radios, vinyl records and 8-tracks. What else do we need?

No. 1 song

• Where Did Our Love Go - The Supremes: More
  'Everybody Loves Somebody' has been displaced by 'Where Did Our Love Go', which will hold the no. 1 spot until Sept. 5 2014, when 'The House of the Rising Sun', takes over.

Top movie

• A Hard Day's Night More
  Having displaced 'The Night of the Iguana', it will be there until the weekend box office of August 30 1964 when, 'Mary Poppins', takes over.

• FamousBirthdays.com: August 23 Birthdays More
• FamousDaily.com: August 23 History More
• History.com: Historical Events on 23rd August More
• HistoryOrb.com: Famous Deaths on 23rd August More
• On-This-day.com history 23rd August More
• On-This-day.com music history 23rd August More
• Wikipedia.com: History August 23 More

National Catfish Month, National Goat Cheese Month, National Peach Month, National Brownies at Brunch Month

August is:

August origin (from Wikipedia): Originally named Sextili (Latin), because it was the sixth month in the original ten-month Roman calendar: under Romulus in 753 BC, when March was the first month of the year.
"About 700 BC it became the eighth month when January and February were added to the year before March by King Numa Pompilius, who also gave it 29 days. Julius Caesar added two days when he created the Julian calendar in 45 BC giving it its modern length of 31 days. In 8 BC it was renamed in honor of Augustus According to a Senatus consultum quoted by Macrobius, he chose this month because it was the time of several of his great triumphs, including the conquest of Egypt. "

August at Wikipedia: More

If you couldn't afford 90 cents for a movie ticket, 50 years ago, or your 45 RPM record player was broke, you might watch one of these shows on TV.
From this Wikipedia article: More

Best selling books of 1964 More

• Astronomy Picture of the Day: More
• NOAA: - National Hurricane Center - Atlantic Graphical Tropical Weather Outlook: More
• Listen to Old Radio Shows: (streaming mp3 with schedule) More
• NASA TV: (video feed) More
  NASA TV schedule: More
• Public Domain eBook Links

  Sites for downloading or reading free Public Domain eBooks. Available in various formats. More

• Podcast: A Moment of Science. Approximately 1 minute general science facts.
  Home page: More
  RSS: More
• Podcast: The Naked Scientists. Current science, medicine, space and other science
  Home page: More
  RSS: More
• Podcast: Quirks & Quarks. Current science news.
  Home page: More
  RSS: More
• Articles and videos: Universe Today. Current space and astronomy news.
  Home page: More
  RSS: More
• Old Picture of the Day - "Each day we bring you one stunning little glimpse of history in the form of a historical photograph."
  Home page: More
  RSS: More

Below, are listed several holiday sites that I reference in addition to other holiday researches.

US Government Holidays

• 2014 Postal Holidays More
• 2014 Official Federal Holidays More

Holidays Worldwide

• List of holidays by country More
• Holidays and Observances around the World More