Today is December 14 2015

- National Bouillabaisse Day: More
A fisherman's stew originally made from the fish that they could not sell. From Wikipedia: 'Bouillabaisse is a traditional Provençal fish stew originating from the port city of Marseille. The French and English form bouillabaisse comes from the Provençal Occitan word bolhabaissa, a compound that consists of the two verbs bolhir (to boil) and abaissar (to reduce heat, i.e., simmer)'.

- Roast Chestnuts Day: More
From Wikipedia: 'Chestnuts depart from the norm for culinary nuts in that they have very little protein or fat, their calories coming chiefly from carbohydrates. Fresh chestnut fruits have about 180 calories (800 kJ) per 100 grams of edible parts, which is much lower than walnuts, almonds, other nuts and dried fruit (about 600 kcal/100 g). Chestnuts contain very little fat, mostly unsaturated, and no gluten'.

• Green Monday: More
  From Wikipedia: 'Green Monday is an online retail industry term similar to Cyber Monday. The term was coined by eBay to describe its best sales day in December, usually the second Monday of December. Green Monday is defined more specifically by business research organization comScore as the Monday with at least 10 days prior to Christmas'.

• Animal and Pets
  • Monkey / World Monkey Day: More
    From Wikipedia: 'Monkey Day is an unofficial holiday celebrated internationally on December 14. While the holiday is mainly about monkeys, it also celebrates other non-human primates such as apes, tarsiers, and lemurs. Monkey Day was created and popularized by artists Casey Sorrow and Eric Millikin, in order to spread awareness for the animals, and to show love and care for them. It is celebrated worldwide and often known as 'World Monkey Day'.
  • Christmas Bird Count: More
    Dec. 14 -Jan. 5. From Wikipedia: 'The Christmas Bird Count (CBC) is a census of birds in the Western Hemisphere, performed annually in the early Northern-hemisphere winter by volunteer birdwatchers and administered by the National Audubon Society. The purpose is to provide population data for use in science, especially conservation biology, though many people participate for recreation.'.

• In 1819, Alabama is admitted into the U.S. as the 22nd State.
  From Wikipedia: 'Alabama is a state in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama is the 30th-most extensive and the 24th-most populous of the U.S. states. At 1,300 miles (2,100 km), Alabama has one of the nation's longest navigable inland waterways.
  
  From the American Civil War until World War II, Alabama, like many states in the southern U.S., suffered economic hardship, in part because of continued dependence on agriculture. Despite the growth of major industries and urban centers, white rural interests dominated the state legislature from 1901 to the 1960s, as it did not regularly reapportion the legislature from 1901 to 1961; urban interests and African Americans were markedly under-represented. African Americans and poor whites were essentially disenfranchised altogether by the state constitution of 1901, a status that continued into the mid-1960s before being alleviated by federal legislation. Exclusion of minorities continued under at-large voting systems in most counties; some changes were made through a series of omnibus court cases in the late 1980s to establish different electoral systems.
  
  Following World War II, Alabama experienced growth as the state's economy changed from one primarily based on agriculture to one with diversified interests. The power of the Solid South in Congress gained the establishment or expansion of multiple United States Armed Forces installations, which helped bridge the gap between an agricultural and industrial economy during the mid-20th century. The state economy in the 21st century is based on management, automotive, finance, manufacturing, aerospace, mineral extraction, healthcare, education, retail, and technology.
  
  Alabama is nicknamed the Yellowhammer State, after the state bird. Alabama is also known as the "Heart of Dixie" and the Cotton State. The state tree is the longleaf pine, and the state flower is the camellia. Alabama's capital is Montgomery. The largest city by population is Birmingham, which has long been the most industrialized city, and largest city by land area is Huntsville. The oldest city is Mobile, founded by French colonists in 1702 as the capital of French Louisiana'.
  - At FamousDaily: More
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• In 1900, Concerning Quantum Physics: Max Planck presents a theoretical derivation of his black-body radiation law.
  From Wikipedia: 'In 1894 Planck turned his attention to the problem of black-body radiation. He had been commissioned by electric companies to create maximum light from lightbulbs with minimum energy. The problem had been stated by Kirchhoff in 1859: "how does the intensity of the electromagnetic radiation emitted by a black body (a perfect absorber, also known as a cavity radiator) depend on the frequency of the radiation (i.e., the color of the light) and the temperature of the body?". The question had been explored experimentally, but no theoretical treatment agreed with experimental values. Wilhelm Wien proposed Wien's law, which correctly predicted the behaviour at high frequencies, but failed at low frequencies. The Rayleigh–Jeans law, another approach to the problem, created what was later known as the "ultraviolet catastrophe", but contrary to many textbooks this was not a motivation for Planck.
  
  Planck's first proposed solution to the problem in 1899 followed from what Planck called the "principle of elementary disorder", which allowed him to derive Wien's law from a number of assumptions about the entropy of an ideal oscillator, creating what was referred-to as the Wien–Planck law. Soon it was found that experimental evidence did not confirm the new law at all, to Planck's frustration. Planck revised his approach, deriving the first version of the famous Planck black-body radiation law, which described the experimentally observed black-body spectrum well. It was first proposed in a meeting of the DPG on 19 October 1900 and published in 1901. This first derivation did not include energy quantisation, and did not use statistical mechanics, to which he held an aversion. In November 1900, Planck revised this first approach, relying on Boltzmann's statistical interpretation of the second law of thermodynamics as a way of gaining a more fundamental understanding of the principles behind his radiation law. As Planck was deeply suspicious of the philosophical and physical implications of such an interpretation of Boltzmann's approach, his recourse to them was, as he later put it, "an act of despair ... I was ready to sacrifice any of my previous convictions about physics."
  
  The central assumption behind his new derivation, presented to the DPG on 14 December 1900, was the supposition, now known as the Planck postulate, that electromagnetic energy could be emitted only in quantized form, in other words, the energy could only be a multiple of an elementary unit:'.
  - At Wikipedia: More
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• In 1907, The Wright Brothers make their first attempt to fly the Wright Flyer in North Carolina. It fails. The first historic flight will be three days later.
  From Wikipedia: 'The Wright Flyer (often retrospectively referred to as Flyer I or 1903 Flyer) was the first successful heavier-than-air powered aircraft. It was designed and built by the Wright brothers. They flew it four times on December 17, 1903, near Kill Devil Hills, about four miles south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, US. Today, the airplane is exhibited in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C.
  
  The U.S. Smithsonian Institution describes the aircraft as "the first powered, heavier-than-air machine to achieve controlled, sustained flight with a pilot aboard". The flight of Flyer I marks the beginning of the "pioneer era" of aviation.
  
  Upon returning to Kitty Hawk in 1903, the Wrights completed assembly of the Flyer while practicing on the 1902 Glider from the previous season. On December 14, 1903, they felt ready for their first attempt at powered flight. With the help of men from the nearby government life-saving station, the Wrights moved the Flyer and its launching rail to the incline of a nearby sand dune, Big Kill Devil Hill, intending to make a gravity-assisted takeoff. The brothers tossed a coin to decide who would get the first chance at piloting, and Wilbur won. The airplane left the rail, but Wilbur pulled up too sharply, stalled, and came down in about three seconds with minor damage.
  
  Repairs after the abortive first flight took three days. When they were ready again on December 17, the wind was averaging more than 20 mph, so the brothers laid the launching rail on level ground, pointed into the wind, near their camp. This time the wind, instead of an inclined launch, helped provide the necessary airspeed for takeoff. Because Wilbur had already had the first chance, Orville took his turn at the controls. His first flight lasted 12 seconds for a total distance of 120 ft (36.5 m) – shorter than the wingspan of a Boeing 747, as noted by observers in the 2003 commemoration of the first flight.
  
  Taking turns, the Wrights made four brief, low-altitude flights that day. The flight paths were all essentially straight; turns were not attempted. Each flight ended in a bumpy and unintended "landing". The last flight, by Wilbur, was 852 feet (260 m) in 59 seconds, much longer than each of the three previous flights of 120, 175 and 200 feet. The landing broke the front elevator supports, which the Wrights hoped to repair for a possible four-mile (6 km) flight to Kitty Hawk village. Soon after, a heavy gust picked up the Flyer and tumbled it end over end, damaging it beyond any hope of quick repair. It was never flown again.
  
  In 1904, the Wrights continued refining their designs and piloting techniques in order to obtain fully controlled flight. Major progress toward this goal was achieved with a new Flyer in 1904 and even more decisively in 1905 with a third Flyer, in which Wilbur made a 39-minute, 24-mile (39 km) nonstop circling flight on October 5. While the 1903 Flyer was clearly a historically important test vehicle, its hallowed status in the American imagination has obscured the role of its two successors in the continuing development that led to the Wrights' mastery of controlled powered flight in 1905'.
  - At FamousDaily: More
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• In 1911, Roald Amundsen's team, comprising himself, Olav Bjaaland, Helmer Hanssen, Sverre Hassel, and Oscar Wisting, becomes the first to reach the South Pole.
  From Wikipedia: 'Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen (Norwegian: ; 16 July 1872 – c. 18 June 1928) was a Norwegian explorer of polar regions. He led the Antarctic expedition of 1910–12 which was the first to reach the South Pole, on 14 December 1911. In 1926, he was the first expedition leader for the air expedition to the North Pole.
  
  Amundsen is recognized as the first person, without dispute, as having reached both poles. He is also known as having the first expedition to traverse the Northwest Passage (1903–06) in the Arctic.
  
  In June 1928, while taking part in a rescue mission for the airship Italia, the plane he was in disappeared. Amundsen was a key expedition leader during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, in the class of Douglas Mawson, Robert Falcon Scott, and Ernest Shackleton'.
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• In 1962, NASA's Mariner 2 becomes the first spacecraft to fly by Venus.
  From Wikipedia: 'Mariner 2 (Mariner-Venus 1962), an American space probe to Venus, was the first robotic space probe to conduct a successful planetary encounter. The first successful spacecraft in the NASA Mariner program, it was a simplified version of the Block I spacecraft of the Ranger program and an exact copy of Mariner 1. The missions of Mariner 1 and 2 spacecraft are together sometimes known as the Mariner R missions. Original plans called for the probes to be launched on the Atlas-Centaur, but serious developmental problems with that vehicle forced a switch to the much smaller Agena B stage. As such, the design of the Mariner R vehicles was greatly simplified. Far less instrumentation was carried than on the Soviet Venera probes of this period, including no TV camera as the Atlas-Agena B had only half as much lift capacity as the Soviet 8K78 booster. The Mariner 2 spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral on August 27, 1962 and passed as close as 34,773 kilometers (21,607 mi) to Venus on December 14, 1962.
  
  The Mariner probe consisted of a 100 cm (39.4 in) diameter hexagonal bus, to which solar panels, instrument booms, and antennas were attached. The scientific instruments on board the Mariner spacecraft were two radiometers (one each for the microwave and infrared portions of the spectrum), a micrometeorite sensor, a solar plasma sensor, a charged particle sensor, and a magnetometer. These instruments were designed to measure the temperature distribution on the surface of Venus, as well as making basic measurements of Venus' atmosphere.
  
  The primary mission was to receive communications from the spacecraft in the vicinity of Venus and to perform radiometric temperature measurements of the planet. A second objective was to measure the interplanetary magnetic field and charged particle environment.
  
  En route to Venus, Mariner 2 measured the solar wind, a constant stream of charged particles flowing outwards from the Sun, confirming the measurements by Luna 1 in 1959. It also measured interplanetary dust, which turned out to be scarcer than predicted. In addition, Mariner 2 detected high-energy charged particles coming from the Sun, including several brief solar flares, as well as cosmic rays from outside the Solar System. As it flew by Venus on December 14, 1962, Mariner 2 scanned the planet with its pair of radiometers, revealing that Venus has cool clouds and an extremely hot surface'.
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• In 1972, In the Apollo program, Eugene Cernan is the last person to walk on the moon, after he and Harrison Schmitt complete the third and final extra-vehicular activity (EVA) of the Apollo 17 mission.
  From Wikipedia: 'Eugene Andrew "Gene" Cernan born March 14, 1934, (CAPT, USN, Ret.), is a retired American naval officer and Naval Aviator, electrical engineer, aeronautical engineer, fighter pilot, and NASA astronaut. He traveled into space three times: as Pilot of Gemini 9A in June 1966, as Lunar Module Pilot of Apollo 10 in May 1969, and as Commander of Apollo 17 in December 1972, the final Apollo lunar landing.
  
  On Apollo 17, Cernan became the eleventh person to walk on the Moon and the most recent man to walk on the Moon since he was the last to re-enter the Lunar Module Challenger after the mission's third and final extravehicular activity (EVA). Cernan was also a backup crew member for the Gemini 12, Apollo 7 and Apollo 14 space missions'.
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• In 1977, 'Saturday Night Fever' starring John Travolta, premieres in NYC.
  From Wikipedia: 'Saturday Night Fever is a 1977 American drama film directed by John Badham and starring John Travolta as Tony Manero, a working-class young man who spends his weekends dancing and drinking at a local Brooklyn discothèque; Karen Lynn Gorney as Stephanie Mangano, his dance partner and eventual confidante; and Donna Pescow as Annette, Tony's former dance partner and would-be girlfriend. While in the disco, Tony is the king. His circle of friends and weekend dancing help him to cope with the harsh realities of his life: a dead-end job, clashes with his unsupportive and squabbling parents, racial tensions in the local community, and his general restlessness.
  
  A huge commercial success, the film significantly helped to popularize disco music around the world and made Travolta, already well known from his role on TV's Welcome Back, Kotter, a household name. The Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, featuring disco songs by the Bee Gees, is one of the best-selling soundtracks of all time. The film showcased aspects of the music, the dancing, and the subculture surrounding the disco era: symphony-orchestrated melodies; haute couture styles of clothing; pre-AIDS sexual promiscuity; and graceful choreography.
  
  The story is based upon a 1976 New York magazine article by British writer Nik Cohn, "Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night". In the mid-1990s, Cohn acknowledged that he fabricated the article. A newcomer to the United States and a stranger to the disco lifestyle, Cohn was unable to make any sense of the subculture he had been assigned to write about; instead, the character who became Tony Manero was based on a Mod acquaintance of Cohn's. In 2010, the film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
  
  The sequel Staying Alive (1983) also starred John Travolta and was directed by Sylvester Stallone'.
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• In 2004, The Millau Viaduct, the tallest bridge in the world, is formally inaugurated near Millau, France.
  From Wikipedia: 'The Millau Viaduct (French: le Viaduc de Millau, IPA: ) is a cable-stayed bridge that spans the valley of the River Tarn near Millau in southern France.
  
  Designed by the British architect Norman Foster and French structural engineer Michel Virlogeux, it is the tallest bridge in the world with one mast's summit at 343.0 metres (1,125 ft) above the base of the structure. It is the 17th highest bridge deck in the world, being 270 metres (890 ft) between the road deck and the ground below. The Millau Viaduct is part of the A75-A71 autoroute axis from Paris to Béziers and Montpellier. The cost of construction was approximately €400 million. It was formally inaugurated on 14 December 2004, and opened to traffic on 16 December. The bridge has been consistently ranked as one of the great engineering achievements of all time and received the 2006 International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering Outstanding Structure Award'.
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Tomorrow we have two food holidays
- National Bouillabaisse Day'. A fisherman's stew originally made from the fish that they could not sell. From Wikipedia: 'Bouillabaisse is a traditional Provençal fish stew originating from the port city of Marseille. The French and English form bouillabaisse comes from the Provençal Occitan word bolhabaissa, a compound that consists of the two verbs bolhir (to boil) and abaissar (to reduce heat, i.e., simmer)'.
[The Hankster says] Don't think I have ever had any. Take a tough piece of meat and slow cook it and you have some good BBQ. Take the poorest of the catch and simmer /it a long time and you have a delicious stew.

- Roast Chestnuts Day'. From Wikipedia: 'Chestnuts depart from the norm for culinary nuts in that they have very little protein or fat, their calories coming chiefly from carbohydrates. Fresh chestnut fruits have about 180 calories (800 kJ) per 100 grams of edible parts, which is much lower than walnuts, almonds, other nuts and dried fruit (about 600 kcal/100 g). Chestnuts contain very little fat, mostly unsaturated, and no gluten'. Other celebrations/observances today:
[The Hankster says] Something else I haven't eaten often, actually only once.


Tomorrow is 'Green Monday'. From Wikipedia: 'Green Monday is an online retail industry term similar to Cyber Monday. The term was coined by eBay to describe its best sales day in December, usually the second Monday of December. Green Monday is defined more specifically by business research organization comScore as the Monday with at least 10 days prior to Christmas'.
[The Hankster says] Just when you thought it was safe to go online again, we have another online shopping day with which to contend.


Awareness / Observance Days on: December 14
o Animal and Pets
- 'Monkey / World Monkey Day'. From Wikipedia: 'Monkey Day is an unofficial holiday celebrated internationally on December 14. While the holiday is mainly about monkeys, it also celebrates other non-human primates such as apes, tarsiers, and lemurs. Monkey Day was created and popularized by artists Casey Sorrow and Eric Millikin, in order to spread awareness for the animals, and to show love and care for them. It is celebrated worldwide and often known as 'World Monkey Day'.

- 'Christmas Bird Count'. Dec. 14 -Jan. 5. From Wikipedia: 'The Christmas Bird Count (CBC) is a census of birds in the Western Hemisphere, performed annually in the early Northern-hemisphere winter by volunteer birdwatchers and administered by the National Audubon Society. The purpose is to provide population data for use in science, especially conservation biology, though many people participate for recreation.'.


Historical events in the past on: December 14

In 1782, The Montgolfier Brothers launch the first manned balloon. It was an non-controllable hot air balloon.

In 1819, Alabama is admitted into the U.S. as the 22nd State.

In 1900, Concerning Quantum Physics: Max Planck presents a theoretical derivation of his black-body radiation law.

In 1907, The Wright Brothers make their first attempt to fly the Wright Flyer in North Carolina. It fails. The first historic flight will be three days later.

In 1911, Roald Amundsen?'s team, comprising himself, Olav Bjaaland, Helmer Hanssen, Sverre Hassel, and Oscar Wisting, becomes the first to reach the South Pole.

In 1941, The Bears and Packers, who finished the season tied, meet in the first ever NFL divisional playoff game.

In 1962, NASA's Mariner 2 becomes the first spacecraft to fly by Venus.

In 1972, In the Apollo program, Eugene Cernan is the last person to walk on the moon, after he and Harrison Schmitt complete the third and final extra-vehicular activity (EVA) of the Apollo 17 mission.

In 1977, 'Saturday Night Fever' starring John Travolta, premieres in NYC.

In 2004, The Millau Viaduct, the tallest bridge in the world, is formally inaugurated near Millau, France.

No. 1 song

• Let's Hang On! - Four Seasons: More
  'Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season)' has been displaced by 'Let's Hang On!', which will hold the no. 1 spot until December 18 1965, when 'Taste of Honey - Herb Alpert and The Tijuana Brass', takes over.

Top movie

• A Patch of Blue More
  Having displaced 'That Darn Cat!', it will be there until the weekend box office of Dec 26 1965 when, 'Thunderball', takes over.

• FamousBirthdays.com: December 14 Birthdays More
• FamousDaily.com: December 14 History More
• History.com: Historical Events on 14th December More
• HistoryOrb.com: Famous Deaths on 14th December More
• On-This-day.com history 14th December More
• On-This-day.com music history 14th December More
• Wikipedia.com: History December 14 More

Monthly holiday / awareness days in December

Food
Buckwheat Month
Worldwide Food Service Safety Month

Health
Aids Awareness Month
Take a New Year's Resolution to Stop Smoking (TANYRSS) (12/17 - 2/7)

Other
Bingo's Birthday Month
National Drunk and Drugged Driving (3D) Prevention Month
National Impaired Driving Prevention Month
National Tie Month
National Write A Business Plan Month
Operation Santa Paws (1-19)
Safe Toys and Gifts Month
Universal Human Rights Month

December is:

December origin (from Wikipedia): ' December gets its name from the Latin word decem (meaning ten) because it was originally the tenth month of the year in the Roman calendar, which began in March. The winter days following December were not included as part of any month. Later, the months of January and February were created out of the monthless period and added to the beginning of the calendar, but December retained its name. '

' December is the first month of meteorological winter in the Northern Hemisphere. In the Southern Hemisphere, December is the seasonal equivalent to June in the Northern hemisphere, which is the first month of summer. D ecember is the month with the shortest daylight hours of the year in the Northern Hemisphere and the longest daylight hours of the year in the Southern Hemisphere. '

December 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 1965 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
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• Podcast: The Naked Scientists. Current science, medicine, space and other science
  Home page: More
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• Podcast: Quirks & Quarks. Current science news.
  Home page: More
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• Articles and videos: Universe Today. Current space and astronomy news.
  Home page: More
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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

• 2015 Postal Holidays More
• 2015 Official Federal Holidays More

Holidays Worldwide

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