<> Tomorrow's food holidays(s):
* 'National Bratwurst Day'. . By Johnsonville Sausage, LLC.
- From Wikipedia (Bratwurst):
'Bratwurst (German: ( listen)) is a type of German sausage made from veal,
pork or beef. The name is derived from the Old High German Brätwurst, from
brät-, finely chopped meat, and Wurst, sausage, although in modern German
it is often associated with the verb braten, to pan fry or roast.
The first documented evidence of the Bratwurst in Germany dates back to
1313, and can be found in the Franconian city of Nuremberg, which is still
an internationally renowned centre for the production of grill sausages.
Bratwurst, often shortened to brat in American English, is a common type of
sausage in the United States, especially in the state of Wisconsin, where
the largest ancestry group is German. Originally brought to North America
by German immigrants, it is a common sight at summer cookouts, alongside
the more famous hot dog. Wisconsin is also the origin of the beer brat, a
regional favorite where the bratwurst are simmered in beer (generally a
mixture of a pilsner style beer with butter and onions) prior to grilling
over charcoal.
Bratwurst was popularized in Sheboygan County, Wisconsin in the 1920s. In
general, each local butcher shop would take orders and hand make bratwurst
fresh to be picked up on a particular day. The fat content of the sausages
was substantial, making daily pick up necessary to avoid spoilage. Some of
the fat is removed as a result of the cooking over charcoal.
Bratwurst has also become popular as a mainstay of sports stadiums,
especially baseball parks, after Bill Sperling introduced bratwurst to
Major League Baseball in Milwaukee County Stadium in 1954. The brats, which
sold for 35 cents then, were grilled and placed into a container of a
special tomato sauce before being served. The bratwurst were such a hit,
Sperling said, that Duke Snider of the Brooklyn Dodgers took a case back to
New York. Currently Miller Park in Milwaukee is the only baseball stadium
that sells more bratwurst than hot dogs'.
[The Hankster says] Put it on a stick or put it on a bun or put it on a ... Well you get the idea.
<> Other holidays / celebrations
* 'National Airborne Day in the USA'.
Honors the U.S. Airborne Forces and the first parachute jump by the U.S.
Army Parachute Test Platoon on August 16, 1940. See more in the history
section for 1940.
* 'National Tell a Joke Day'.
[The Hankster says] Laughter is good for you (when the joke is on the other guy).
* 'National Roller Coaster Day'.
A wooden roller coaster patent in 1885, was issued to to LaMarcus Adna
Thompson.
- From Wikipedia (LaMarcus Adna Thompson) (LaMarcus Adna Thompson):
'Thompson is best known for his early work developing roller coasters, and
is sometimes called the Father of the Gravity Ride He did not invent the
roller coaster. The history of the roller coaster dates back to at least
the 17th century, and John G. Taylor obtained an earlier patent under the
name Inclined Railway however, over his lifetime, Thompson accumulated
nearly thirty patents related to roller coaster technologies. An example is
the patent granted 22 Dec. 1884 for the Gravity Switch-back Railway.
Thompson's Gravity Pleasure Switchback Railway opened at Coney Island in
1884. A (6 mph) ride cost 5 cents. Eventually he built many more, both in
the U.S. and in Europe. In 1887, along with designer James A. Griffiths, he
opened the Scenic Railway on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City, N.J.
He was managing director of the L. A. Thompson Scenic Railway Company, 220
West 42nd St., incorporated in 1895.
He sadly died at his home, Thompson Park, Glen Cove, Long Island, on May 8,
1919 aged 71'.
[The Hankster says] I can take the ups and downs or a roller coaster, but those that go around and around (like the saucer) always get to me.
* 'Elvis Memorial Day'.
The anniversary of his death August 16, 1977 at age 42.
* 'Wave at Surveillance Day'.
Wave at a security camera near you.
[The Hankster says] Just don't wave with one hand and grab money with the other.
<> Awareness / Observances:
<> Historical events on August 16
* 'In 1858, U.S. President James Buchanan inaugurates the new transatlantic
telegraph cable by exchanging greetings with Queen Victoria of the United
Kingdom. However, a weak signal forces a shutdown of the service in a few
weeks. .
- From Wikipedia: 'In the 1840s and 1850s several individuals proposed or
advocated construction of a telegraph cable across the Atlantic Ocean,
including Edward Thornton and Alonzo Jackman. Cyrus West Field and the
Atlantic Telegraph Company were behind the construction of the first
transatlantic telegraph cable. The project began in 1854 and was completed
in 1858. The cable functioned for only three weeks, but it was the first
such project to yield practical results. The first official telegram to
pass between two continents was a letter of congratulation from Queen
Victoria of the United Kingdom to the President of the United States James
Buchanan on August 16. Signal quality declined rapidly, slowing
transmission to an almost unusable speed. The cable was destroyed the
following month when Wildman Whitehouse applied excessive voltage to it
while trying to achieve faster operation. It has been argued that the
faulty manufacture, storage and handling of the 1858 cable would have led
to premature failure in any case. The cable's rapid failure undermined
public and investor confidence and delayed efforts to restore a connection.
A second attempt was undertaken in 1865 with much-improved material and,
following some setbacks, a connection was completed and put into service on
July 28, 1866. This cable proved more durable'.
* 'In 1896, The Klondike Gold rush kicks off with the discovery of gold in
the tributary of the river in the Northwest Territories in Canada. .
- From Wikipedia: 'The Klondike Gold Rush was a migration by an estimated
100,000 prospectors to the Klondike region of the Yukon in north-western
Canada between 1896 and 1899. Gold was discovered there by local miners on
August 16, 1896 and, when news reached Seattle and San Francisco the
following year, it triggered a stampede of would-be prospectors. Some
became wealthy, but the majority went in vain. The Klondike Gold Rush ended
in 1899 after gold was discovered in Nome, Alaska prompting an exodus from
the Klondike. It has been immortalized by photographs, books, films, and
artifacts.
To reach the gold fields most took the route through the ports of Dyea and
Skagway in Southeast Alaska. Here, the Klondikers could follow either the
Chilkoot or the White Pass trails to the Yukon River and sail down to the
Klondike. Each of them was required to bring a year's supply of food by the
Canadian authorities in order to prevent starvation. In all, their
equipment weighed close to a ton, which for most had to be carried in
stages by themselves. Together with mountainous terrain and cold climate
this meant that those who persisted did not arrive until summer 1898. Once
there, they found few opportunities and many left disappointed.
Mining was challenging as the ore was distributed in an uneven manner and
digging was made slow by permafrost. As a result, some miners chose to buy
and sell claims, building up huge investments and letting others do the
work. To accommodate the prospectors, boom towns sprang up along the routes
and at their end Dawson City was founded at the confluence of the Klondike
and the Yukon River. From a population of 500 in 1896, the hastily
constructed town came to house around 30,000 people by summer 1898. Built
of wood, isolated and unsanitary, Dawson suffered from fires, high prices
and epidemics. Despite this, the wealthiest prospectors spent extravagantly
gambling and drinking in the saloons. The Native Hän people, on the other
hand, suffered from the rush being moved into a reserve to make way for the
stampeders, and many died.
From 1898, the newspapers that had encouraged so many to travel to the
Klondike lost interest in it. When news arrived in the summer of 1899 that
gold had been discovered in Nome in west Alaska, many prospectors left the
Klondike for the new goldfields, marking the end of the rush. The boom
towns declined and the population of Dawson City fell away. Mining activity
of the gold rush lasted until 1903 when production peaked after heavier
equipment was brought in. Since then the Klondike has been mined on and
off, and today the legacy draws tourists to the region and contributes to
its prosperity'.
* 'In 1930, Fiddlesticks was the first color sound cartoon to be produced.
It was created by famous animator Ub Iwerks. .
- From Wikipedia: 'Fiddlesticks is a ground-breaking 1930 animated cartoon
film. This was the first animated sound cartoon that was photographed in
two-strip Technicolor, and was also Ub Iwerks's first cartoon since he
departed from Walt Disney's studio.
This film was simultaneously released with King of Jazz, a musical revue,
and was released with a cartoon depicting how Paul Whiteman, the music
director of the film, became the King of Jazz The animation was made at
Lantz Productions.
This cartoon appeared in the music video for Eminem's song The Real Slim
Shady'.
* 'In 1940, Lieutenant Ryder and Private William N. (Red) King became the
first officer and enlisted man to make an official jump as paratroopers in
the United States Army. .
- From Wikipedia: 'The United States Army Airborne School — widely known as
Jump School — conducts the basic paratrooper (military parachutist)
training for the United States armed forces. It is operated by the 1st
Battalion (Airborne), 507th Infantry, United States Army Infantry School,
Fort Benning, Georgia. The Airborne School conducts the Basic Airborne
Course, which is open to troops of both genders from all branches of the
United States Department of Defense, Reserve Officer Training Corps, and
allied military personnel. All students must volunteer to attend the
course.
In 1940, the War Department approved the formation of a test platoon of
Airborne Infantry under the direction and control of the Army's Infantry
Board. A test platoon of volunteers was organized from Fort Benning's 29th
Infantry Regiment, and the 2nd Infantry Division was directed to conduct
tests to develop reference data and operational procedures for
air-transported troops.
First Lieutenant William T. Ryder volunteered and was made the test
platoon's platoon leader, Lieutenant James A. Bassett was designated
assistant platoon leader, and forty-eight enlisted men were selected from a
pool of 200 volunteers. The platoon moved into tents near Lawson Field, and
an abandoned hangar was obtained for training and parachute packing.
Lieutenant Colonel William C. Lee, a staff officer for the Chief of
Infantry, recommended that the test platoon be moved to the Safe Parachute
Company at Hightstown, NJ and train using parachute drop towers from the
New York World's Fair. Eighteen days after forming, the platoon was moved
to New Jersey and trained for one week on the 250-foot free towers, which
proved to be particularly effective – drops from the tower added realism
otherwise impossible to duplicate outside of an airplane drop, and proved
to the troopers that their parachutes would function safely. Impressed, the
Army purchased two and erected them on what is now Eubanks Field at Fort
Benning. Two more were later added, and today three of the original four
towers are still in use. Parachute landing training was often conducted by
the volunteers jumping from PT platforms and from the back of moving trucks
to allow the trainees to experience the shock of landing.
Less than forty-five days after it was formed, members of the test platoon
made their first jump from a Douglas B-18 over Lawson Field on 16 August
1940. Lieutenant Ryder and Private William N. (Red) King became the first
officer and enlisted man to make an official jump as paratroopers in the
United States Army. On 29 August, the platoon made the first platoon mass
jump held in the United States.
Members of the original test platoon formed the battalion cadre of the
501st Parachute Battalion, the first parachute combat unit. The second, the
502nd Parachute Infantry Battalion, was activated on 1 July 1941. As more
airborne units were activated, a centralized training facility was
organized at Fort Benning on 15 May 1942'.
* 'In 1944, First flight of the Junkers Ju 287, one of the most innovative
aircraft of its time. .
- From Wikipedia: 'The Junkers Ju 287 was an aerodynamic testbed built in
Nazi Germany to develop the technology required for a multi-engine jet
bomber. It was powered by four Junkers Jumo 004 engines, featured a
revolutionary forward-swept wing, and apart from the wing was assembled
largely from components scavenged from other aircraft. It was one of the
very few jet propelled aircraft ever built with a fixed landing gear.
The unfinished second and third prototypes, which far more accurately
reflected the design of the eventual production bomber, were captured by
the Red Army in the closing stages of World War II and the design was
further developed in the Soviet Union after the end of the war'.
* 'In 1954, Sports Illustrated, hits newsstands for the first time. .
- From Wikipedia: 'Sports Illustrated is an American sports media franchise
owned by Time Inc. Its self-titled magazine has over 3 million subscribers
and is read by 23 million people each week, including over 18 million men.
It was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the
National Magazine Award for General Excellence twice. Its swimsuit issue,
which has been published since 1964, is now an annual publishing event that
generates its own television shows, videos and calendars.
There were two magazines named Sports Illustrated before the current
magazine began on August 16, 1954. In 1936, Stuart Scheftel created Sports
Illustrated with a target market for the sportsman. He published the
magazine from 1936–1938 on a monthly basis. The magazine was a life
magazine size and focused on golf, tennis, and skiing with articles on the
major sports. He then sold the name to Dell Publications, which released
Sports Illustrated in 1949 and this version lasted 6 issues before closing.
Dell's version focused on major sports (baseball, basketball, boxing) and
competed on magazine racks against Sport and other monthly sports
magazines. During the 1940s these magazines were monthly and they did not
cover the current events because of the production schedules. There was no
large-base general weekly sports magazine with a national following on
actual active events. It was then that Time patriarch Henry Luce began
considering whether his company should attempt to fill that gap. At the
time, many believed sports was beneath the attention of serious journalism
and did not think sports news could fill a weekly magazine, especially
during the winter. A number of advisers to Luce, including Life magazine's
Ernest Havemann, tried to kill the idea, but Luce, who was not a sports
fan, decided the time was right. and not particularly well run at first,
but Luce's timing was good. The popularity of spectator sports in the
United States was about to explode, and that popularity came to be driven
largely by three things: Economic prosperity, television, and Sports
Illustrated.
After more than a decade of steady losses, the magazine's fortunes finally
turned around in the 1960s when Andre Laguerre became its managing editor.
A European correspondent for Time, Inc., who later became chief of the
Time-Life news bureaus in Paris and London (for a time he ran both
simultaneously), Laguerre attracted Henry Luce's attention in 1956 with his
singular coverage of the Winter Olympic Games in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy,
which became the core of SI's coverage of those games. In May 1956, Luce
brought Laguerre to New York to become assistant managing editor of the
magazine. He was named managing editor in 1960, and he more than doubled
the circulation by instituting a system of departmental editors,
redesigning the internal format, and inaugurating the unprecedented use in
a news magazine of full-color photographic coverage of the week's sports
events. He was also one of the first to sense the rise of national interest
in professional football.
Laguerre also instituted the innovative concept of one long story at the
end of every issue, which he called the bonus piece These well-written,
in-depth articles helped to distinguish Sports Illustrated from other
sports publications, and helped launch the careers of such legendary
writers as Frank Deford, who in March 2010 wrote of Laguerre, He smoked
cigars and drank Scotch and made the sun move across the heavens ... His
genius as an editor was that he made you want to please him, but he wanted
you to do that by writing in your own distinct way.
Laguerre is also credited with the conception and creation of the annual
Swimsuit Issue, which quickly became, and remains, the most popular issue
each year'.
* 'In 1966, The Monkees' first single, 'Last Train to Clarksville', was
released. .
- From Wikipedia: 'Last Train to Clarksville was the debut single by The
Monkees. It was released August 16, 1966 and later included on the group's
1966 self-titled album, which was released on October 10, 1966. The song,
written by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart was recorded at RCA Victor Studio B
in Hollywood on July 25, 1966 and was already on the Boss Hit Bounds on 17
August 1966. The song topped the Billboard Hot 100 on November 5, 1966.
Lead vocals were performed by The Monkees' drummer Micky Dolenz.
Clarksville was featured in seven episodes of the Monkees TV show the most
for any Monkees song.
The lyrics tell of a man phoning the woman he loves, urging her to meet him
at a train station in Clarksville before he must leave, possibly forever.
The Vietnam War was then going on, and what was not made explicit was that
the song was about a soldier leaving for the war zone.
It is often said that the song refers to Clarksville, Tennessee, which is
near Fort Campbell, Kentucky, the home of the 101st Airborne Division,
which was then serving in Vietnam. However, according to songwriter Bobby
Hart, it was not specifically written with that town in mind'.
* 'In 1986, Papa Don't Preach, by Madonna, goes #1 for 2 weeks. .
- From Wikipedia: 'Papa Don't Preach is a song by American singer Madonna
from her third studio album True Blue (1986). The song was written by Brian
Elliot with additional lyrics by Madonna, and produced by Stephen Bray and
Madonna. The song also appears remixed on the 1990 compilation album The
Immaculate Collection and in its original form on the 2009 compilation
album Celebration. The song's musical style combines pop and classical
styling, and its lyrics deal with teenage pregnancy and abortion. It was
based on teen gossip Elliot heard outside his studio, which has a large
front window that doubles as a mirror where schoolgirls from the North
Hollywood High School in Los Angeles regularly stopped to fix their hair
and chat'.
No. 1 song
Top movie
Monthly holiday / awareness days in August
Food
National Catfish Month
National Goat Cheese Month
Rye Month
Health
Children's Eye Health and Safety Month
Children's Vision and Learning Month
National Breastfeeding Month
National Immunization Awareness Month
National Minority Donor Awareness Month
National Spinal Muscular Atrophy Awareness Month
Neurosurgery Outreach Month
Psoriasis Awareness Month
Animal / Pets
Other
American Adventures Month
American Artists Appreciation Month
American Indian Heritage Month
American History Essay Contest
Black Business Month
Boomers Making A Difference Month
Bystander Awareness Month
Child Support Awareness Month
Get Ready for Kindergarten Month
Happiness Happens Month
Motor Sports Awareness Month
National Read A Romance Month
National Traffic Awareness Month
National Truancy Prevention Month
National Water Quality Month
Shop Online For Groceries Month
What Will Be Your Legacy Month
XXXI Summer Olympics: 5-21
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 1966 More
Sites for downloading or reading free Public Domain eBooks. Available in various formats. More