Tomorrow's food holiday will be 'National Cherry Pie Day'.
From Wikipedia:' 'Cherry pie is a pie baked with a cherry filling. Traditionally, cherry pie is made with tart rather than sweet cherries. Morello cherries are one of the most common kinds of cherry used, but other varieties such as the black cherry may also be used.
Cherry pie is associated with North America, Donauwelle in Germany and Austria. It is
a very popular treat in North America and prior to the advent of refrigeration it was most commonly eaten in midsummer (harvest of cherries in North America coincides with Canada Day on July 1 and America's Independence Day on July 4)'.
[The Hankster says] I know, but I do have a few foreign followers that might not know exactly what it is. I will take mine with vanilla ice cream on top and a tall glass of cold milk (or coffee if the pie is cold).
Other celebrations/observances tomorrow:
- 'Handcuff Day'. The day in 1912 that George A. Carney patent for his 'swinging bow ratchet - type' handcuffs.
[The Hankster says] I've tried to think of something funny, but can't . If you can, put it in the comments.
Awareness / Observance Days on: February 20
o Animal and Pets
- 'Love Your Pet day'. Show even a little bit more love to your pet on this day.
o Other
- 'World Day of Social Justice'. U.N. awareness day: 'recognizing the need to promote efforts to tackle issues such as poverty, exclusion and unemployment'.
Historical events in the past on: February 20
- In 1685, René-Robert Cavelier establishes Fort St. Louis at Matagorda Bay thus forming the basis for France's claim to Texas.
From Wikipedia: 'The French colonization of Texas began with Fort Saint Louis in present-day southeastern Texas. It was established in 1685 near Arenosa Creek and Matagorda Bay by explorer Robert Cavelier de La Salle. He intended to found the colony at the mouth of the Mississippi River, but inaccurate maps and navigational errors caused his ships to anchor instead 400 miles (640 km) to the west, off the coast of Texas. The colony survived until 1688. The present-day town of Inez is near the fort's
site'.
- In 1792, President George Washington signs legislation creating the U.S. Postal Service.
From Wikipedia: 'The United States Postal Service, also known as the Post Office, U.S. Mail, or Postal Service, often abbreviated as USPS, is an independent agency of the United States federal government responsible for providing postal service in the United States. It is one of the few government agencies explicitly authorized by the United States Constitution'. 'Before the Revolution, individuals like Benjamin Franklin and William Goddard were the colonial postmasters who managed the mails then and
were the general architects of a postal system that started out as an alternative to the Crown Post.
The official post office was created in 1792 as the Post Office Department (USPOD). It was based on the Constitutional authority empowering Congress "To establish post offices and post roads". The 1792 law provided for a greatly expanded postal network, and served editors by charging newspapers an extremely low rate. The law guaranteed the sanctity of personal correspondence, and provided the entire country with low-cost access to information on public affairs, while establishing a right to personal
privacy'.
'To cover long distances, the Post Office used a hub-and-spoke system, with Washington as the hub and chief sorting center. By 1869, with 27,000 local post offices to deal with, it had changed to sorting mail en route in specialized railroad mail cars, called Railway Post Offices, or RPOs. The system of postal money orders began in 1864. Free mail delivery began in the larger cities in 1863'.
- In 1839, Anti-dueling law was passed by U.S. Congress for the area of Washington D.C.
- In 1872, The 'Metropolitan Museum of Art' opens in New York City.
From Wikipedia: 'The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially "the Met", located in New York City, is the largest art museum in the United States and among the most visited art museums in the world. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among seventeen curatorial departments.'
'The New York State Legislature granted the Metropolitan Museum of Art an Act of Incorporation on April 13, 1870 "for the purpose of establishing and maintaining in said City a Museum and Library of Art, of encouraging and developing the Study of the Fine Arts, and the application of Art to manufacture and natural life, of advancing the general knowledge of kindred subjects, and to that end of furnishing popular instruction and recreations".
The museum first opened on February 20, 1872, housed in a building located at 681 Fifth Avenue in New York City. John Taylor Johnston, a railroad executive whose personal art collection seeded the museum, served as its first president, and the publisher George Palmer Putnam came on board as its founding superintendent. The artist Eastman Johnson acted as co-founder of the museum'.
- In 1872, Luther Crowell patents a machine that manufactures flat bottom paper bags.
- In 1934, Ernest Orlando Lawrence is issued a patent for the cyclotron.
From Wikipedia: 'A cyclotron is a type of particle accelerator invented by Ernest O. Lawrence in 1932 in which charged particles accelerate outwards from the centre along a spiral path. The particles are held to a spiral trajectory by a static magnetic field and accelerated by a rapidly varying (radio frequency) electric field. Lawrence was awarded the 1939 Nobel prize in physics for this invention. Cyclotrons were the most powerful particle accelerator technology until the 1950s when they were superseded
by the synchrotron, and are still used to produce particle beams in physics and nuclear medicine. The largest single-magnet cyclotron was the 4.67 m (184 in) synchrocyclotron built between 1940 and 1946 by Lawrence at the University of California at Berkeley, which could accelerate protons to 730 MeV. The largest cyclotron is the 17.1 m (56 ft) multimagnet TRIUMF accelerator at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia which can produce 500 MeV protons.
There are over 1200 cyclotrons used in nuclear medicine worldwide for the production of radionuclides'.
- In 1940 - Larry Clinton and his Orchestra record 'Limehouse Blues'.
From Wikipedia: '"Limehouse Blues" is a popular 1922 British song written by the London-based duo of Douglas Furber (lyrics) and Philip Braham (music). It was made famous by Gertrude Lawrence. It has been recorded hundreds of times since, and remains in the standard jazz repertory. Some of the most notable recordings include those by Sidney Bechet, Django Reinhardt, Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, Tony Bennett, Stan Kenton, The Dave Brubeck Quartet featuring Gerry Mulligan, the Ellis Marsalis Trio, Chet
Atkins with Les Paul and The Mills Brothers. Outside jazz it has been recorded by a number of bluegrass artists, most notably by Reno and Smiley'.
- In 1942, Lt. Edward O'Hare takes off from the aircraft carrier Lexington in a raid against the Japanese position at Rabaul-and minutes later becomes America's first flying ace (5 downed planes). The downs 4 fighters and a bomber.
From Wikipedia: 'Lieutenant Commander Edward Henry “Butch” O’Hare (March 13, 1914 – November 26, 1943) was an Irish-American naval aviator of the United States Navy, who on February 20, 1942 became the Navy's first flying ace when he single-handedly attacked a formation of 9 heavy bombers approaching his aircraft carrier. Even though he had a limited amount of ammunition, he managed to shoot down or damage several enemy bombers. On April 21, 1942, he became the first naval recipient of the Medal of Honor
in World War II'.
- In 1951, The movie 'The African Queen', starring Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart, opens at the Capitol Theatre in New York City.
From Wikipedia: 'The African Queen is a 1951 adventure film adapted from the 1935 novel of the same name by C. S. Forester. The film was directed by John Huston and produced by Sam Spiegel and John Woolf. The screenplay was adapted by James Agee, John Huston, John Collier and Peter Viertel. It was photographed in Technicolor by Jack Cardiff and had a music score by Allan Gray. The film stars Humphrey Bogart (who won the Academy Award for Best Actor – his only Oscar), and Katharine Hepburn with Robert
Morley, Peter Bull, Walter Gotell, Richard Marner and Theodore Bikel.
The African Queen was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry in 1994, with the Library of Congress deeming it "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant"'.
- In 1962, John Hershel Glenn Jr. is successfully launched into space aboard the Friendship 7 spacecraft on the first orbital flight by an American astronaut.
From Wikipedia: 'John Herschel Glenn, Jr. (born July 18, 1921), (Col, USMC, Ret.), is a former Marine Corps aviator, engineer, astronaut, and United States senator. He was selected as one of the "Mercury Seven" group of military test pilots selected in 1959 by NASA to become America's first astronauts and fly the Project Mercury spacecraft. On February 20, 1962, Glenn flew the Friendship 7 mission and became the first American to orbit the Earth and the fifth person in space, after cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin
and Gherman Titov and the sub-orbital flights of Mercury astronauts Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom'.
- In 1971, The United States Emergency Broadcast System is accidentally activated in an erroneous national alert.
From Wikipedia: 'A nationwide activation of the EBS was called an Emergency Action Notification (EAN), and was the only activation that stations were not allowed to ignore; the Federal Communications Commission made local civil emergencies and weather advisories optional (except for stations that agreed to be the "primary" source of such messages).
To activate the EAN protocol, the Associated Press= and United Press International wire services would notify stations with a special message. It began with a full line of X's, and a bell inside the Teletype machine would sound ten times. To avoid abuse and mistakes, the message included a confirmation password which changed daily.'
'Despite these safeguards, the system was accidentally activated at 9:33 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on February 20, 1971. Teletype operator W. S. Eberhardt "played the wrong tape" during a test, which sent an activation message authenticated with the codeword "HATEFULNESS" through the entire system, ordering stations to cease regular programming and broadcast the alert of a national emergency. A cancellation message was sent at 9:59 a.m. EST, but it used an incorrect codeword. A cancellation message with
the correct word, "IMPISH", was not sent until 10:13 a.m. EST After 40 minutes and six incorrect cancellation messages, the accidental activation was terminated.
This false alarm demonstrated major flaws in the EBS. Many stations had not received the alert but more importantly, the vast majority of those that did either ignored it (because it came at the time of a scheduled test), or did not know what to do in an emergency. Some stations followed the procedures for an activation, but cancelled them prematurely. It is estimated that only 20% of the stations that received the activation followed the procedures completely. While several stations went off the air, the
one best remembered was WOWO in Fort Wayne, Indiana, which broadcast the 1971 events as they happened, a recording of which has become available. Another recording of how the error sounded on WCCO-AM in Minneapolis/Saint Paul, Minnesota can be heard on RadioTapes.com
Numerous investigations were launched, and several changes were made to the EBS. Among them, the on-air alert announcement was streamlined, eliminating one version of the script that warned the audience of an imminent attack against the country (the WOWO broadcast above does not contain the reference to an attack). Another change was moving the tapes for genuine alerts away from the broadcasting machines to prevent them being mistaken for the weekly test tapes'.
No. 1 song
Top movie
Monthly holiday / awareness days in February
Food
Barley Month
Fabulous Florida Strawberry Month
Grapefruit Month
National Cherry Month
National Hot Breakfast Month
Health
AMD/Low Vision Awareness Month
American Heart Month
International Boost Self-Esteem Month
International Expect Success Month
International Prenatal Infection Prevention Month
Marfan Syndrome Awareness Month
National Condom Month
National Children's Dental Health Month
National Therapeutic Recreation Month
Animal / Pet
Adopt A Rescued Rabbit Month
Beat The Heat Month
Dog Training Education Month
International Hoof-care Month
National Bird Feeding Month
National Pet Dental Health Month
Responsible Pet Owner's Month
Spay/Neuter Awareness Month
Other
Cricket World Cup
International Month of Black Women in The Arts
Library Lovers Month
Love The Bus Month
National African American History / Black History Month
National African American Read-In
National Care About Your Indoor Air Month
National Parent Leadership Month
National Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month
National Time Management Month
National Weddings Month
National Women Inventors Month
North American Inclusion Month
Relationship Wellness Month
Return Shopping Carts to the Supermarket Month
Youth Leadership Month
February is:
February origin (from Wikipedia):
'The Roman month Februarius was named after the Latin term
februum, which means purification, via the purification ritual
Februa held on February 15 (full moon) in the old lunar Roman
calendar. January and February were the last two months to
be added to the Roman calendar, since the Romans originally
considered winter a monthless period. They were added by
Numa Pompilius about 713 BC. February remained the last month
of the calendar year until the time of the decemvirs (c. 450 BC),
when it became the second month. At certain intervals February
was truncated to 23 or 24 days, and a 27-day intercalary month,
Intercalaris, was inserted immediately after February to realign
the year with the seasons.
Under the reforms that instituted the Julian calendar, Intercalaris
was abolished, leap years occurred regularly every fourth year,
and in leap years February gained a 29th day. Thereafter, it
remained the second month of the calendar year, meaning the
order that months are displayed (January, February, March,
..., December) within a year-at-a-glance calendar. Even during
the Middle Ages, when the numbered Anno Domini year began
on March 25 or December 25, the second month was February
whenever all twelve months were displayed in order. The
Gregorian calendar reforms made slight changes to the system
for determining which years were leap years and thus contained
a 29-day February.'
February is the second month of the year in the Julian and
Gregorian calendars. It is the shortest month and the only month
with fewer than 30 days. The month has 28 days in common years
or 29 days in leap years.
February is the third month of meteorological winter in the
Northern Hemisphere. In the Southern Hemisphere, February
is the third month of summer (the seasonal equivalent of August
in the Northern Hemisphere, in meteorological reckoning).
February at Wikipedia: More
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Sites for downloading or reading free Public Domain eBooks. Available in various formats. More