Today is November 18 2014

National Vichyssoise Day: More
A chilled soup. Mmade with potatoes, cream, chicken stock, leeks, and onions.

• Mickey Mouse Day : More
  His first cartoon 'Steamboat Willie' in 1928. On YouTube: More
• Occult Day: More
• European Antibiotic Awareness Day: More
• Push-button Phone Day: More
  First Push-button or Touch-Tone, 1in 1963.
• William Tell Day: More
  Celebration of the famed 1307 crossbow and apple incident.

• In 1307, By legend, William Tell shoots an apple off his son's head.
  From Wikipedia: 'William Tell (in the four languages of Switzerland: German: Wilhelm Tell; French: Guillaume Tell; Italian: Guglielmo Tell; Romansh: Guglielm Tell; Portuguese: Guilherme Tell) is a folk hero of Switzerland. His legend is recorded in a late 15th-century Swiss illustrated chronicle. It is set in the time of the original foundation of the Old Swiss Confederacy in the early 14th century. According to the legend, Tell—an expert marksman with the crossbow—assassinated Gessler, a tyrannical reeve of Habsburg Austria positioned in Altdorf, Uri.
  
  Along with Arnold von Winkelried, Tell is a central figure in Swiss patriotism as it was constructed during the Restoration of the Confederacy after the Napoleonic era.
  
  Several accounts of the Tell legend exist. The earliest sources give an account of the apple shot, Tell's escape, and the ensuing rebellion. The assassination of Gessler is not mentioned in the Tellenlied but is already present in the White Book of Sarnen account.
  
  The legend as told by Tschudi (ca. 1570) essentially follows the account in the White Book, but adds further detail, such as Tell's given name Wilhelm, his being from Bürglen, and the precise date of the apple-shot of 18 November 1307.
  
  William Tell was known as a strong man, a mountain climber, and an expert shot with the crossbow. In his time, the Habsburg emperors of Austria were seeking to dominate Uri, and Tell became one of the conspirators of Werner Stauffacher, vowing to resist Habsburg rule. Gessler, the newly appointed Austrian Vogt of Altdorf, raised a pole under the village lindentree, hung his hat on top of it, and demanded that all the townsfolk bow before the hat.
  
  On 18 November 1307, Tell visited Altdorf with his young son and passed by the hat, publicly refusing to bow to it, and was arrested. Gessler—intrigued by Tell's famed marksmanship but resentful of his defiance—devised a cruel punishment. Tell and his son were to be executed. However, he could redeem his life by shooting an apple off of his son, Robert's head in a single attempt. Tell split the apple with a bolt from his crossbow.
  
  Gessler then noticed that Tell had removed two crossbow bolts from his quiver. Before releasing him, he asked why. Tell was reluctant to answer, but after Gessler promised he would not kill him, he replied that if he had killed his son, he would have killed Gessler with the second bolt. Gessler was furious and ordered Tell to be bound, saying that he had promised to spare his life, but instead would imprison him for the remainder of his life.
  
  Tell was brought to Gessler's boat to be taken to the dungeon in the castle at Küssnacht. A storm broke on Lake Lucerne, and the guards were afraid that their boat would sink. They begged Gessler to remove Tell's shackles so he could take the helm and save them. Gessler gave in and Tell leapt from the boat at the rocky site, already known in the "White Book" as the "Tellsplatte" ("Tell's slab"). Since the 16th century the site has been marked by a memorial chapel. The Hohle Gasse between Immensee and Küssnacht.
  
  Tell ran cross-country to Küssnacht. As Gessler arrived, Tell assassinated him with the second crossbow bolt along a stretch of the road cut through the rock between Immensee and Küssnacht, now known as the Hohle Gasse. Tell's blow for liberty sparked a rebellion in which he played a leading part, leading to the formation of the Old Swiss Confederacy.
  
  According to Tschudi, Tell fought again against Austria in the 1315 Battle of Morgarten. Tschudi also has an account of Tell's death in 1354, according to which he was killed trying to save a child from drowning in the Schächenbach river in Uri'.
  - At FamousDaily: More
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• In 1883, Railroads create the first time zones.
  From Wikipedia: 'A time zone is a region of the globe that observes a uniform standard time for legal, commercial, and social purposes. Time zones tend to follow the boundaries of countries and their subdivisions because it is convenient for areas in close commercial or other communication to keep the same time.
  
  Most of the time zones on land are offset from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) by a whole number of hours (UTC-12 to UTC+14), but a few zones are offset by 30 or 45 minutes (for example Newfoundland Standard Time is UTC-03:30, Nepal Standard Time is UTC+05:45, and Indian Standard Time is UTC+05:30). Some higher latitude and temperate zone countries use daylight saving time for part of the year, typically by adjusting local clock time by an hour. Many land time zones are skewed toward the west of the corresponding nautical time zones. This also creates a permanent daylight saving time effect.
  
  Before clocks were first invented, it was common practice to mark the time of day with apparent solar time (also called "true" solar time) – for example, the time on a sundial – which was typically different for every settlement.
  
  When well-regulated mechanical clocks became widespread in the early 19th century, each city began to use some local mean solar time. Apparent and mean solar time can differ by up to around 15 minutes (as described by the equation of time) because of the non-circular shape of the Earth's orbit around the sun (Eccentricity) and the tilt of the Earth's axis (Obliquity). Mean solar time has days of equal length, and the difference between the two averages to zero after a year.
  
  Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) was established in 1675 when the Royal Observatory was built as an aid to mariners to determine longitude at sea, providing a standard reference time when each city in England kept a different local time.
  
  Local solar time became increasingly awkward as rail transport and telecommunications improved, because clocks differed between places by an amount corresponding to the difference in their geographical longitude, which varied by four minutes of time for every degree of longitude. For example, Bristol is about 2.5 degrees west of Greenwich (East London), so when it is solar noon in Bristol, it is about 10 minutes past solar noon in London. The use of time zones accumulates these differences into longer units, usually hours, so that nearby locales can share a common standard for timekeeping.
  
  The first adoption of a standard time was on December 1, 1847, in Great Britain by railway companies using GMT kept by portable chronometers. The first of these companies to adopt standard time was the Great Western Railway (GWR) in November 1840. This quickly became known as Railway Time. About August 23, 1852, time signals were first transmitted by telegraph from the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. Even though 98% of Great Britain's public clocks were using GMT by 1855, it was not made Britain's legal time until August 2, 1880. Some old British clocks from this period have two minute hands—one for the local time, one for GMT.
  
  The improvement in worldwide communication further increased the need for interacting parties to communicate mutually comprehensible time references to one another. The problem of differing local times could be solved across larger areas by synchronizing clocks worldwide, but in many places that adopted time would then differ markedly from the solar time to which people were accustomed.
  
  On November 2, 1868, the then-British colony of New Zealand officially adopted a standard time to be observed throughout the colony, and was perhaps the first country to do so. It was based on the longitude 172°30' East of Greenwich, that is 11 hours 30 minutes ahead of GMT. This standard was known as New Zealand Mean Time.
  
  Timekeeping on the American railroads in the mid-19th century was somewhat confused. Each railroad used its own standard time, usually based on the local time of its headquarters or most important terminus, and the railroad's train schedules were published using its own time. Some junctions served by several railroads had a clock for each railroad, each showing a different time.
  
  Charles F. Dowd proposed a system of one-hour standard time zones for American railroads about 1863, although he published nothing on the matter at that time and did not consult railroad officials until 1869. In 1870 he proposed four ideal time zones (having north–south borders), the first centered on Washington, D.C., but by 1872 the first was centered on the meridian 75° W of Greenwich, with geographic borders (for example, sections of the Appalachian Mountains). Dowd's system was never accepted by American railroads. Instead, U.S. and Canadian railroads implemented a version proposed by William F. Allen, the editor of the Traveler's Official Railway Guide. The borders of its time zones ran through railroad stations, often in major cities. For example, the border between its Eastern and Central time zones ran through Detroit, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, and Charleston. It was inaugurated on Sunday, November 18, 1883, also called "The Day of Two Noons", when each railroad station clock was reset as standard-time noon was reached within each time zone. The zones were named Intercolonial, Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific. Within a year 85% of all cities with populations over 10,000, about 200 cities, were using standard time. A notable exception was Detroit (which is about halfway between the meridians of eastern time and central time), which kept local time until 1900, then tried Central Standard Time, local mean time, and Eastern Standard Time before a May 1915 ordinance settled on EST and was ratified by popular vote in August 1916. The confusion of times came to an end when Standard zone time was formally adopted by the U.S. Congress in the Standard Time Act of March 19, 1918'.
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• In 1916, During WW I, General Douglas Haig finally calls off 1st Battle of the Somme. There were over 1 million casualties: 794,248 for the British and French Empires, and 537,918 for Germany.
  From Wikipedia: 'The Battle of the Somme (French: Bataille de la Somme, German: Schlacht an der Somme), also known as the Somme Offensive, was a battle of the First World War fought by the armies of the British and French empires against the German Empire. It took place between 1 July and 18 November 1916 on both sides of the River Somme in France. It was one of the largest battles of World War I, in which more than 1,000,000 men were wounded or killed, making it one of the bloodiest battles in human history'.
  From Wikipedia: 'The Battle of the Somme (French: Bataille de la Somme, German: Schlacht an der Somme), also known as the Somme Offensive, was a battle of the First World War fought by the armies of the British and French empires against the German Empire. It took place between 1 July and 18 November 1916 on both sides of the upper reaches of the River Somme in France. The battle was intended to hasten a victory for the Allies and was the largest battle of the First World War on the Western Front. More than one million men were wounded or killed, making it one of the bloodiest battles in human history.
  
  The French and British had committed themselves to an offensive on the Somme during Allied discussions at Chantilly, Oise, in December 1915. The Allies agreed upon a strategy of combined offensives against the Central Powers in 1916, by the French, Russian, British and Italian armies, with the Somme offensive as the Franco-British contribution. Initial plans called for the French army to undertake the main part of the Somme offensive, supported on the northern flank by the Fourth Army of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). When the Imperial German Army began the Battle of Verdun on the Meuse on 21 February 1916, French commanders diverted many of the divisions intended for the Somme and the "supporting" attack by the British became the principal effort.
  
  The first day on the Somme (1 July) saw a serious defeat for the German Second Army, which was forced out of its first position by the French Sixth Army, from Foucaucourt-en-Santerre south of the Somme to Maricourt on the north bank and by the Fourth Army from Maricourt to the vicinity of the Albert–Bapaume road. The first day on the Somme was, in terms of casualties, also the worst day in the history of the British army, which suffered 57,470 casualties. These occurred mainly on the front between the Albert–Bapaume road and Gommecourt, where the attack was defeated and few British troops reached the German front line. The British troops on the Somme comprised a mixture of the remains of the pre-war regular army; the Territorial Force; and Kitchener's Army, a force of volunteer recruits including many Pals' Battalions, recruited from the same places and occupations.
  
  The battle is notable for the importance of air power and the first use of the tank. At the end of the battle, British and French forces had penetrated 10 km (6 mi) into German-occupied territory, taking more ground than in any of their offensives since the Battle of the Marne in 1914. The Anglo-French armies failed to capture Péronne and halted 5 km (3 mi) from Bapaume, where the German armies maintained their positions over the winter. British attacks in the Ancre valley resumed in January 1917 and forced the Germans into local withdrawals to reserve lines in February, before the scheduled retirement to the Siegfriedstellung (Hindenburg Line) began in March. Debate continues over the necessity, significance and effect of the battle. David Frum opined that a century later, "'the Somme' remains the most harrowing place-name" in the history of the British Commonwealth'.
  - At Wikipedia: More
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• In 1928, Release of the animated short Steamboat Willie, the first fully synchronized sound cartoon, directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, featuring the third appearances of cartoon characters Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse. This is considered by the Disney corporation to be Mickey's birthday.
  From Wikipedia: 'Steamboat Willie is a 1928 American animated short film directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. It was produced in black-and-white by Walt Disney Studios and was released by Celebrity Productions. The cartoon is considered the debut of Mickey Mouse and his girlfriend Minnie, although both the characters appeared several months earlier in a test screening of Plane Crazy. Steamboat Willie was the third of Mickey's films to be produced, but was the first to be distributed because Walt Disney, having seen The Jazz Singer, had committed himself to producing the first fully synchronized sound cartoon.
  
  Steamboat Willie is especially notable for being the first Disney cartoon with synchronized sound, including character sounds and a musical score. Disney understood from early on that synchronized sound was the future of film. It was the first cartoon to feature a fully post-produced soundtrack which distinguished it from earlier sound cartoons such as Inkwell Studios' Song Car-Tunes (1924–1927) and Van Beuren Studios' Dinner Time (1928). Steamboat Willie became the most popular cartoon of its day.
  
  Music for Steamboat Willie was arranged by Wilfred Jackson and Bert Lewis, and included the songs "Steamboat Bill," a composition popularized by baritone Arthur Collins during the 1910s, and "Turkey in the Straw" , a composition popularized within minstrelsy during the 19th century. The title of the film is a parody of the Buster Keaton film Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928), itself a reference to the song by Collins. Walt Disney performed all of the voices in the film, although there is little intelligible dialogue.
  
  While the film has received some criticism, it has also received wide critical acclaim, not only for introducing one of the world's most popular cartoon characters, but for its technical innovation. In 1994 members of the animation field voted Steamboat Willie 13th in the book The 50 Greatest Cartoons, which listed the greatest cartoons of all time. In 1998 the film was selected for preservation in the United States' National Film Registry for being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant"'.
  - At Wikipedia: More
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• In 1929, Dr Vladimir K Zworykin demonstrates the 'kinescope'. It becomes the only way to make film recordings from a video monitor, until video tape is invented.
  From Wikipedia: 'Kinescope, shortened to kine, also known as telerecording in Britain, is a recording of a television program on motion picture film, directly through a lens focused on the screen of a video monitor.
  
  Typically, the term can refer to the process itself, the equipment used for the procedure (a 16 mm or 35 mm movie camera mounted in front of a video monitor, and synchronized to the monitor's scanning rate), or a film made using the process. Kinescopes were the only practical way to preserve live television broadcasts prior to the introduction of videotape in 1956. A small number of theatrically released feature films have also been produced as kinescopes.
  
  The term originally referred to the cathode ray tube used in television receivers, as named by inventor Vladimir K. Zworykin in 1929. Hence, the recordings were known in full as kinescope films or kinescope recordings. RCA was granted a trademark for the term (for its cathode ray tube) in 1932; it voluntarily released the term to the public domain in 1950.
  
  The General Electric laboratories in Schenectady, New York experimented with making still and motion picture records of television images in 1931.
  
  There is some evidence to suggest that the BBC experimented with filming the output of the television monitor before its television service was suspended in 1939 due to the outbreak of World War II. BBC executive Cecil Madden later recalled filming a production of The Scarlet Pimpernel in this way, only for film director Alexander Korda to order the burning of the negative as he owned the film rights to the book, which he felt had been infringed. However, the evidence for this is purely anecdotal, and indeed there is no written record of any BBC Television production of The Scarlet Pimpernel during the 1936–1939 period. Some of the surviving live transmissions of the Nazi German television station Fernsehsender Paul Nipkow, dating as far back as the 1930s, were recorded by pointing a 35mm camera to a receiver's screen, although most surviving Nazi live television programs such as the 1936 Summer Olympics (not to confuse with the cinematic footage made during the same event by Leni Riefenstahl for her film Olympia), a number of Nuremberg Rallies, or official state visits (such as Benito Mussolini's) were shot directly on 35mm instead and transmitted over the air as a television signal, with only a two minutes' delay from the original event, by means of the so-called Zwischenfilmverfahren
  
  According to a 1949 film produced by RCA, silent films had been made of early experimental telecasts during the 1930s. The films were shot off television monitors at a speed of eight frames per second, resulting in somewhat jerky reproductions of the images. By the mid-1940s, RCA and NBC were refining the filming process and including sound; the images were less jerky but still somewhat fuzzy.
  
  By early 1946, television cameras were being attached to American guided missiles to aid in their remote steering. Films were made of the television images they transmitted for further evaluation of the target and the missile's performance.
  
  The first known surviving example of the telerecording process in Britain is from October 1947, showing the singer Adelaide Hall performing at the RadiOlympia event. From the following month, the wedding of Princess Elizabeth to Prince Philip also survives, as do various early 1950s productions such as It is Midnight, Dr Schweitzer, The Lady from the Sea and the opening two episodes of The Quatermass Experiment, although in varying degrees of quality. A complete 7-hour set of telerecordings of Queen Elizabeth II's 1953 coronation also exists'.
  - At Wikipedia: More
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• In 1932, Walt Disney's 'Flowers and Trees' receives the first Academy Award for a cartoon.
  From Wikipedia: 'Flowers and Trees is a 1932 Silly Symphonies cartoon produced by Walt Disney, directed by Burt Gillett, and released to theatres by United Artists on July 18, 1932. It was the first commercially released film to be produced in the full-color three-strip Technicolor process after several years of two-color Technicolor films.
  
  Flowers and Trees was already in production as a black-and-white cartoon before Disney saw Herbert Kalmus' three-strip Technicolor tests. Deciding that Flowers and Trees would make a perfect test for the process, he had the black-and-white footage scrapped and the short redone in color. The color Flowers and Trees was a commercial and critical success, winning the first Academy Award for Animated Short Subjects.
  
  As a result of the success of Flowers and Trees, all future Silly Symphonies cartoons were produced in three-strip Technicolor. The added novelty of color helped to boost the series' previously disappointing returns. Disney's other cartoon series, the Mickey Mouse shorts, were deemed successful enough not to need the extra boost of color, remaining in black-and-white until The Band Concert (1935).
  
  Disney's exclusive contract with Technicolor, in effect until the end of 1935, forced other animators such as Ub Iwerks and Max Fleischer to use Technicolor's inferior two-color process or a competing two-color system such as Cinecolor'.
  - At Wikipedia: More
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• In 1932, At the 5th Academy Awards:
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  - Outstanding Production - Grand Hotel.
  - Best Actor (tie) - Fredric March for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Wallace Beery for The Champ.
  - Best Actress - Helen Hayes for The Sin of Madelon Claudet.
  - Grand Hotel - at Wikipedia: get x.xMore
  - Grand Hotel - at Internet Movie Database IMDb: More
  - Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - at Wikipedia: More
  - Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - at Internet Movie Database IMDb: More
  - The Champ - at Wikipedia: More
  - The Champ - at Internet Movie Database IMDb: More
  - The Sin of Madelon Claudet - at Wikipedia: More
  - The Sin of Madelon Claudet - at Internet Movie Database IMDb: More
• In 1963, 'Push-button' telephones are introduced into service for the first time. Conceived by Bell Telephone designer Henry Dryfus.
  From Wikipedia: 'The push-button telephone is a telephone that uses buttons or keys for dialing a telephone number to place a call to another telephone subscriber.
  
  Western Electric experimented as early as 1941 with methods of using mechanically activated reeds to produce two tones for each of the ten digits and by the late 1940s such technology was field-tested in a No. 5 Crossbar switching system in Pennsylvania. But the technology proved unreliable and it was not until long after the invention of the transistor when push-button technology matured. On 18 November 1963, after approximately three years of customer testing, the Bell System in the United States officially introduced dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF) technology under its registered Touch-Tone mark. Over the next few decades touch-tone service replaced traditional pulse dialing technology and it eventually became a world-wide standard for telecommunication signaling.
  
  Although DTMF was the driving technology implemented in push-button telephones, some telephone manufacturers used push-button keypads to generate pulse dial signaling. Before the introduction of touch-tone telephone sets, the Bell System sometimes used the term push-button telephone to refer to key system telephones, which were rotary dial telephones that also had a set of push-buttons to select one of multiple telephone circuits, or to activate other features'.
  - At FamousDaily: More
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Tomorrow's food holiday will be 'National Vichyssoise Day'. It is a chilled soup., made with potatoes, cream, chicken stock, leeks, and onions. Yet another French creation, invented by a French chef in America.

Tomorrow all kids, or those of us with a big kid inside us, should celebrate. Tomorrow is ' Mickey Mouse Day'. It is considered as his birthday, since it was on this day in 1928, that is first cartoon 'Steamboat Willie' premiered. It was the first cartoon synchronized with sound.

Gather up those ouija boards, crystal balls or tarot cards. Tomorrow will be 'Occult Day'.

An awareness day tomorrow. It will be 'European Antibiotic Awareness Day'.

We mentioned a few posts back, that the area code system for phones, opened up many possibilities. We celebrate one tomorrow, as it will be 'Push-button Phone Day', and the first Push-button or Touch-Tone, service in the US, in 1963.

Get out those apples, cross bows and look for some volunteers. Tomorrow is 'William Tell Day'. We celebrate the famed 1307 crossbow and apple incident, that by legend, lead to Swiss independence. [The Hankster says] I usually make myself available to participate in holidays. I will for this one. I will volunteer to be a spectator for any such event you hold.

Antonio Porchia once said 'Man goes nowhere. Everything comes to man, like tomorrow. ' [The Hankster says] Since tomorrow isn't here yet, let us look, as we always do, to the past. November 18, in the past is just sitting and waiting for our perusal.

In 1307, By legend, William Tell shoots an apple off his son's head.

In 1883, Railroads create the first time zones in the US and Canada. These were necessary, since there were many, many time zones. Even a town could have it's own time zone and was usually based on a local sun position, such as noon. This made the railroad time tables hard to work with, and lead to many railroad accidents. The governments adopted time zones later.

In 1929, Dr Vladimir K Zworykin demonstrates the 'kinescope'. It becomes the only way to make film recordings from a video monitor, until video tape is invented in 1956. The process and equipment has saved many live television events that would have otherwise been lost. It consisted of a device that synchronized a 16 or 35 mm film recorder with the monitor, in front of which it was placed.

In 1932, 'Flowers and Trees' (by Walt Disney) receives the first Academy Award for a cartoon.

No. 1 song

• Baby Love - The Supremes: More
  'Last Kiss' has been displaced by 'Baby Love', which will hold the no. 1 spot until November 28 1964, when 'Leader of the Pack', takes over.

Top movie

• Roustabout More
  Having displaced 'Kitten with a Whip', it will be there until the weekend box office of December 13 1964 when, 'Father Goose', takes over.

• FamousBirthdays.com: November 18 Birthdays More
• FamousDaily.com: November 18 History More
• History.com: Historical Events on 18th November More
• HistoryOrb.com: Famous Deaths on 18th November More
• On-This-day.com history 18th November More
• On-This-day.com music history 18th November More
• Wikipedia.com: History November 18 More

Food:
National Peanut Butter Lover's Month
National Georgia Pecan Month
National Pepper Month
Other:
National Alzheimer's Disease Awareness Month
National American Indian Heritage Month
National Bladder Health Awareness Month
National Candle Month
National Child Mental Health Month
National Diabetes Awareness Month
National Epilepsy Awareness Month
National Family Caregivers Month
National Fragrance Month
National Healthy Skin Month
National Home Care Month
National Lifewriting Month
National Long Term Care Awareness Month
National Marrow Awareness Month
National Military Family Month
National Native American Heritage Month
National Novel Writing Month
National Pet Awareness Month
National Scholarship Month
National Senior Pet Month

November is:

November origin (from Wikipedia): 'November is the eleventh month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian Calendars and one of four months with the length of 30 days. November was the ninth month of the ancient Roman calendar. November retained its name (from the Latin novem meaning 'nine') when January and February were added to the Roman calendar. '

'November is a month of spring in the Southern Hemisphere and autumn in the Northern Hemisphere. Therefore, November in the Southern Hemisphere is the seasonal equivalent of May in the Northern Hemisphere and vice versa.'

November 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
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• Articles and videos: Universe Today. Current space and astronomy news.
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• 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
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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