<> Tomorrow's food holidays(s):
* 'Egg Nog Day'.
- From Wikipedia (Eggnog):
'Eggnog, historically also known (when alcoholic) as milk punch or egg milk
punch, is a rich, chilled, sweetened, creamy dairy-based beverage
traditionally made with milk, cream, sugar, whipped eggs (which gives it a
frothy texture, and its name) and, in some contexts, distilled spirits such
as brandy, rum or bourbon.
Eggnog is traditionally consumed throughout Canada and the United States at
Christmas every year, often from American Thanksgiving through the end of
the Christmas season. Eggnog has also gained popularity in Australia with
supermarkets stocking pre-prepared versions of the drink. A variety called
Ponche Crema has been made and consumed in Venezuela and Trinidad since the
1900s, also in the Christmas season. During this period commercially
prepared eggnog is sold in grocery stores in these countries. Eggnog is
also often homemade. Distilled spirits are sometimes added to both
commercially prepared eggnog and homemade eggnog. Eggnog or eggnog
flavoring may also be used in other drinks, such as coffee (e.g. an eggnog
latte espresso drink) and tea, or to dessert foods such as egg-custard
puddings or eggnog-flavored ice cream.
The origins, etymology, and the ingredients used to make the original
eggnog drink are debated. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, nog
was a kind of strong beer brewed in East Anglia Alternatively, nog may stem
from noggin, a Middle English term for a small, carved wooden mug used to
serve alcohol. However, the British drink was also called an Egg Flip, from
the practice of flipping (rapidly pouring) the mixture between two pitchers
to mix it. One dictionary lists the word as being an Americanism invented
in 1765-75. Babson College professor Frederick Douglass Opie ..wrote that
the term is a combination of two colonial slang words — rum was referred to
as grog and bartenders served it in small wooden mugs called noggins. The
drink first became known as egg-n-grog and later as eggnog. Ben Zimmer,
executive editor for vocabulary.com disputes the egg-n-grog theory as
lacking proof Zimmer states that the term nog may be related to the
..Scottish term nugg or nugged ale, meaning ale warmed with a hot poker.
The first example of the term eggnog was in 1775, when Maryland clergyman
and philologist Jonathan Boucher wrote a poem about the drink which was not
published until 30 years after his death: Fog-drams i' th' morn, or (better
still) egg-nogg, / At night hot-suppings, and at mid-day, grogg, / My
palate can regale... The first printed use of the term was in 1788 in the
New-Jersey Journal of March 26, which referred to a young man drinking a
glass of eggnog.
Eggnog may have developed from posset, a medieval European beverage made
with hot milk that was curdled with wine or ale and flavoured with spices.
In the Middle Ages, posset was used as a cold and flu remedy. Posset was
popular from medieval times to the 19th century. Eggs were added to some
posset recipes according to TIME magazine, by the ..13th century, monks
were known to drink a posset with eggs and figs.'.
[The Hankster says] I drink mine UN-spirited. Good for a seasonal coffee.
<> Other holidays / celebrations
* 'Christmas Eve'.
- From Wikipedia (Christmas Eve):
'Christmas Eve is the evening or entire day preceding Christmas Day, the
festival commemorating the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. Christmas Day is
observed around the world, and Christmas Eve is widely observed as a full
or partial holiday in anticipation of Christmas Day. Together, both days
are considered one of the most culturally significant celebrations in
Christendom and Western society.
Christmas celebrations in the denominations of Western Christianity have
long begun on the night of the 24th, due in part to the Christian
liturgical day starting at sunset, a practice inherited from Jewish
tradition and based on the story of Creation in the Book of Genesis: And
there was evening, and there was morning – the first day. Many churches
still ring their church bells and hold prayers in the evening for example,
the Nordic Lutheran churches. Since tradition holds that Jesus was born at
night (based in Luke 2:6-8), Midnight Mass is celebrated on Christmas Eve,
traditionally at midnight, in commemoration of his birth. The idea of Jesus
being born at night is reflected in the fact that Christmas Eve is referred
to as Heilige Nacht (Holy Night) in German, Nochebuena (the Good Night) in
Spanish and similarly in other expressions of Christmas spirituality, such
as the song Silent Night, Holy Night
Many other varying cultural traditions and experiences are also associated
with Christmas Eve around the world, including the gathering of family and
friends, the singing of Christmas carols, the illumination and enjoyment of
Christmas lights, trees, and other decorations, the wrapping, exchange and
opening of gifts, and general preparation for Christmas Day. Legendary
Christmas gift-bearing figures including Santa Claus, Father Christmas,
Christkind, and Saint Nicholas are also often said to depart for their
annual journey to deliver presents to children around the world on
Christmas Eve, although until the Protestant introduction of Christkind in
16th-century Europe, such figures were said to instead deliver presents on
the eve of Saint Nicholas' feast day (December 6)'.
[The Hankster says] Yes my Christmas bags (stockings are too small) will be hung by the chimney with care, in hope that FedX and UPS will soon be there.
* 'Super Saturday'.
From Wikipedia: 'Super Saturday or Panic Saturday is the last Saturday
before Christmas, a major day of revenue for American retailers, marking
the end of the shopping season they and many customers believe begins on
Black Friday. Super Saturday targets last-minute shoppers. Typically the
day is ridden with one-day sales in an effort to accrue more revenue than
any other day in the Christmas and holiday season.
Super Saturday typically nets approximately $15 billion in retail sales. To
compete with each other, stores offer significant discounts and extend
store hours in an attempt to attract customers and drive impulse buying'.
[The Hankster says] I have had a few of these in past years.
<> Awareness / Observances:None.
<> Historical events on December 24
* 'In 1814, The Treaty of Ghent is signed ending the War of 1812.
- From Wikipedia: 'The Treaty of Ghent (8 Stat. 218), signed on December
24, 1814 in the city of Ghent, was the peace treaty that ended the War of
1812 between the United States and the United Kingdom. The treaty restored
relations between the two nations to status quo ante bellum — that is, it
restored the borders of the two countries to the lines before the war
started in June 1812'.
* 'In 1889, Daniel Stover and William Hance patent a bicycle with back
pedal brake. .
- From Wikipedia: 'Karl Drais included a pivoting brake shoe that could be
pressed against the rear iron tyre of his 1817 Laufmaschine. This was
continued on the earliest bicycles with pedals, such as the boneshaker,
which were fitted with a spoon brake to press onto the rear wheel. The
brake was operated by a lever or by a cord connecting to the handlebars.
The rider could also slow down by resisting the pedals of the fixed wheel
drive.
The next development of the bicycle, the penny-farthings, were similarly
braked with a spoon brake or by back pedalling. During its development from
1870 to 1878, there were various designs for brakes, most of them operating
on the rear wheel. However, as the rear wheel became smaller and smaller,
with more of the rider's weight over the front wheel, braking on the rear
wheel became less effective. The front brake, introduced by John Kean in
1873, had been generally adopted by 1880 because of its greater stopping
power.
The next development of the bicycle, the penny-farthings, were similarly
braked with a spoon brake or by back pedalling. During its development from
1870 to 1878, there were various designs for brakes, most of them operating
on the rear wheel. However, as the rear wheel became smaller and smaller,
with more of the rider's weight over the front wheel, braking on the rear
wheel became less effective. The front brake, introduced by John Kean in
1873, had been generally adopted by 1880 because of its greater stopping
power.
Some penny-farthing riders used only back pedalling and got off and walked
down steep hills, but most also used a brake. Having a brake meant that
riders could coast down hill by taking their feet off the pedals and
placing the legs over the handlebars, although most riders preferred to
dismount and walk down steep hills. Putting the legs under the handlebars
with the feet off the pedals placed on foot-rests on the forks had resulted
in serious accidents caused by the feet getting caught in the spokes.
An alternative to the spoon brake for penny-farthings was the caliper brake
patented by Browett and Harrison in 1887. This early version of caliper
braking used a rubber block to contact the outside of the penny-farthing's
small rear tyre.
The 1870s and 1880s saw the development of the safety bicycle which roughly
resembles bicycles today, with two wheels of equal size, initially with
solid rubber tyres. These were typically equipped with a front spoon brake
and no rear brake mechanism, but like penny-farthings they used fixed
gears, allowing rear wheel braking by resisting the motion of the pedals.
The relative fragility of the wooden rims used on most bicycles still
precluded the use of rim brakes. In the late 1890s came the introduction of
rim brakes and the freewheel.
With the introduction of mass-produced pneumatic tyres by the Dunlop Tyre
Company, the use of spoon brakes began to decline, as they tended to
quickly wear through the thin casing of the new tyres. This problem led to
demands for alternative braking systems. On November 23, 1897, Abram W.
Duck of Duck's Cyclery in Oakland, California was granted a patent for his
Duck Roller Brake (U.S. Patent 594,234). The duck brake used a rod operated
by a lever on the handlebar to pull twin rubber rollers against the front
tyre, braking the front wheel.
In 1898, after the advent of freewheel coasting mechanisms, the first
internal coaster brakes were introduced for the rear wheel. The coaster
brake was contained in the rear wheel hub, and was engaged and controlled
by backpedaling, thus eliminating the issue of tyre wear. In the United
States, the coaster brake was the most commonly fitted brake throughout the
first half of the 20th century, often comprising the only braking system on
the bicycle'.
* 'In 1906, Reginald Fessenden transmits the first radio broadcast,
consisting of a poetry reading, a violin solo, and a speech. The
transmission range was about 1 mile. .
- From Wikipedia: 'In 1900 Fessenden left the University of Pittsburgh to
work for the United States Weather Bureau, with the objective of proving
the practicality of using a network of coastal radio stations to transmit
weather information, thus avoiding the need to use the existing telegraph
lines. The contract gave the Weather Bureau access to any devices Fessenden
invented, but he would retain ownership of his inventions. The contract
promised Fessenden $3,000 per year for his work. They also promised to give
him work space, assistance, and housing. Fessenden quickly made major
advances, especially in receiver design, as he worked to develop audio
reception of signals. His initial success came from a barretter detector,
which was followed by the electrolytic detector that consisted of a fine
wire dipped in nitric acid, and for the next few years this later device
would set the standard for sensitivity in radio reception. As his work
progressed, Fessenden also evolved the heterodyne principle, which combined
two signals to produce a third audible tone. However, heterodyne reception
was not fully practical for a decade after it was invented, since it
required a means for producing a stable local signal, which awaited the
development of the oscillating vacuum-tube.
The initial work took place at Rock Point, Maryland, located about 80
kilometers (50 mi) downstream from Washington, DC. While there, Fessenden,
experimenting with a high-frequency spark transmitter, successfully
transmitted speech on December 23, 1900 over a distance of about 1.6
kilometers (one mile), which appears to have been the first audio radio
transmission. At this time the sound quality was too distorted to be
commercially practical, but as a test this did show that with further
technical refinements it would become possible to transmit audio using
radio signals.
As the experimentation expanded, additional stations were built along the
Atlantic Coast in both North Carolina and Virginia. However, in the midst
of promising advances, Fessenden became embroiled in disputes with his
sponsor. In particular, he charged that Bureau Chief Willis Moore had
attempted to gain a half-share of the patents. Fessenden refused to sign
over the rights, and his work for the Weather Bureau ended in August, 1902.
This incident recalled F. O. J. Smith, a member of the House of
Representatives from Maine, who had managed to gain a one-quarter interest
in the Morse telegraph'.
* 'In 1968, During the Apollo program: The crew of Apollo 8 enters into
orbit around the Moon, becoming the first humans to do so. They performed
10 lunar orbits and broadcast live TV pictures that became the famous
Christmas Eve Broadcast, one of the most watched programs in history.
- From Wikipedia: 'Apollo 8, the second human spaceflight mission in the
United States Apollo space program, was launched on December 21, 1968, and
became the first manned spacecraft to leave Earth orbit, reach the Earth's
Moon, orbit it and return safely to Earth. The three-astronaut
crew—Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot James Lovell, and Lunar
Module Pilot William Anders—became the first humans to travel beyond low
Earth orbit, the first to see Earth as a whole planet, the first to
directly see the far side of the Moon, and then the first to witness
Earthrise. The 1968 mission, the third flight of the Saturn V rocket and
that rocket's first manned launch, was also the first human spaceflight
launch from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, located adjacent to Cape
Canaveral Air Force Station.
The mission was originally planned as Apollo 9, to be performed in early
1969 as the second test of the complete Apollo spacecraft, including the
Lunar Module and the Command/Service Module in an elliptical medium Earth
orbit. But when the Lunar Module proved unready to make its first test in a
lower Earth orbit in December 1968, it was decided in August to fly Apollo
8 in December as a more ambitious lunar orbital flight without the Lunar
Module. This meant Borman's crew was scheduled to fly two to three months
sooner than originally planned, leaving them a shorter time for training
and preparation, thus placing more demands than usual on their time and
discipline.
Apollo 8 took three days to travel to the Moon. It orbited ten times over
the course of 20 hours, during which the crew made a Christmas Eve
television broadcast where they read the first 10 verses from the Book of
Genesis. At the time, the broadcast was the most watched TV program ever.
Apollo 8's successful mission paved the way for Apollo 11 to fulfill U.S.
President John F. Kennedy's goal of landing a man on the Moon before the
end of the 1960s. The Apollo 8 astronauts returned to Earth on December 27,
1968, when their spacecraft splashed down in the Northern Pacific Ocean.
The crew was named Time magazine's Men of the Year for 1968 upon their
return'.
* 'In 1979, The first European Ariane rocket is launched.
- From Wikipedia: 'Ariane 1 was the first rocket in the Ariane launcher
family. Ariane 1 was designed primarily to put two telecommunications
satellites at a time into orbit, thus reducing costs. As the size of
satellites grew, Ariane 1 gave way to the more powerful Ariane 2 and Ariane
3 launchers'. .
* 'In 1980, Witnesses report the first of several sightings of unexplained
lights near RAF Woodbridge, in Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, England, United
Kingdom, an incident called 'Britain's Roswell'.
- From Wikipedia: 'In late December 1980, there were a series of reported
sightings of unexplained lights near Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, England,
which have become linked with claims of UFO landings. The events occurred
just outside RAF Woodbridge, which was used at the time by the U.S. Air
Force. USAF personnel including deputy base commander Lieutenant Colonel
Charles I. Halt claimed to see things they described as a UFO sighting.
The occurrence is the most famous of claimed UFO events to have happened in
Britain, ranking among the best-known reported UFO events worldwide. It has
been compared to the Roswell UFO incident in the United States and is
sometimes referred to as Britain's Roswell The Ministry of Defence (MoD)
stated the event posed no threat to national security, and it therefore
never was investigated as a security matter. The sightings have been
explained as a misinterpretation of a series of nocturnal lights – a
fireball, the Orford Ness lighthouse and bright stars.
A comprehensive 2009 evaluation by scientific skeptic author Brian Dunning
concluded there was, in fact, nothing other-worldly about the incident'.
No. 1 song
Top movie
Monthly holiday / awareness days in December
Food
Buckwheat Month
Worldwide Food Service Safety Month
Health
Aids Awareness Month
National Drunk and Drugged Driving Prevention Month
National Impaired Driving Prevention Month
Safe Toys and Gifts Month
Animal and Pet
Operation Santa Paws
Other
National Tie Month
National Write A Business Plan Month
Universal Human Rights Month
Youngsters on The Air 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 1966 More
Sites for downloading or reading free Public Domain eBooks. Available in various formats. More