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| Cook a Sweet Potato Day |
Monday, February 22, 2016
The 53 day of the year
312 days left to go
312 days left to go
THIS WEEK IS
- National Entrepreneurship Week
- Bird Health Awareness Week
- Brotherhood / Sisterhood Week
- National Date (fruit) Week
- National Eating Disorders Awareness Week
- National Engineers Week
- National FFA Week
- National Invasive Species Awareness Week
- National Pancake Week
- Through With The Chew
TODAY IS
- 87th Academy Awards Ceremony
- Museum Advocacy Day
- National Margarita Day
- Woolworth's Day
- World Thinking Day
- George Washington's Birthday
- Tex Avery Day
- National Cook a Sweet Potato Day
ON THIS DATE...
1349: Jews are expelled from Zurich Switzerland
1630: Native Americans introduce popcorn to English colonists (See quick trivia)
1732: George Washington is born (read more).
1777: Archibald Bulloch dies under mysterious circumstances (read more)
1879: Frank W. Woolworth opened his first 5 and 10-cent store in Utica, New York.
1919: The first dog race track to use an imitation rabbit opened in Emeryville, CA.
1923: The first chinchilla farm opened. It was in Los Angeles, CA. (read more)
1958: Roy Hamilton’s record, Don’t Let Go, became #13 in its first week on the record charts. The song was the first stereo record to make the pop music charts.
1959: Lee Petty wins first Daytona 500 (Read more)
1969: Barbara Jo Rubin became the first woman to win a U.S. thoroughbred horse race. She was riding Cohesian at Charlestown Race Course in West Virginia.
1975: Drew Barrymore is born (bio).
1980: In Lake Placid, New York, the United States hockey team defeats the Soviet Union hockey team 4-3. (See History Spotlight).
1992: Kristi Yamaguchi of the United States won the gold medal in women’s figure skating at the Albertville Olympics (watch).
HISTORY SPOTLIGHT
Miracle on Ice (Source)
On February 22, 1980, the American ice hockey team played the “Miracle on Ice”—it defeated the Soviet Union at the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York. The hockey game was a complete upset, and put the U.S. in position to win the gold medal against Finland two days later.
The Soviet team was so heavily favored that the game was not shown live on American television. The Soviets had won the gold medal at every Winter Olympic competition since 1964, and lost just three world championships in that time.
Cold War tensions contributed to the emotions surrounding the game. President Jimmy Carter was considering withdrawing the American team from the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, Russia, Soviet Union, to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan months earlier. (The U.S. did not participate in the Summer Olympics that year.)
The “Miracle on Ice” was named the international “story of the century” by the International Ice Hockey Federation in 2008, and Sports Illustrated’s “sports moment of the century” in 1999.
QUICK TRIVIA
Popcorn Facts (Source)
- Americans consume some 16 billion quarts of this whole grain, good-for-you treat. That’s 51 quarts per man, woman, and child.
- Popcorn is a type of maize (or corn), a member of the grass family, and is scientifically known as Zea mays everta.
- Of the 6 types of maize/corn—pod, sweet, flour, dent, flint, and popcorn—only popcorn pops.
- Popcorn needs between 13.5-14% moisture to pop.
- Most U.S. popcorn is grown in the Midwest, primarily in Indiana, Nebraska, Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky and Missouri.
- Most popcorn comes in two basic shapes when it's popped: snowflake and mushroom. Snowflake is used in movie theaters and ballparks because it looks and pops bigger. Mushroom is used for candy confections because it doesn't crumble.
- Popping popcorn is one of the number one uses for microwave ovens. Most microwave ovens have a "popcorn" control button.
- The world’s largest popcorn ball was created by volunteers in Sac City, Iowa in February, 2009. It weighed 5,000 lbs., stood over 8 ft. tall, and measured 28.8 ft. in circumference.
WORD OF THE DAY
Fractious [frak-shuhs] –adjective
refractory or unruly; readily angered; peevish; irritable; quarrelsome
"The ladies loved to have Mr. Green's grandson, Brutus in the nursery, but they all had to admit he was a little fractious"
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