Writing Gooder

Tomorrow is the fourth of July!  Also known as eat, drink and set fire to flying objects day!   But, we should all have a little fun knowledge to share while waiting for the fireworks so remember some of these:

-31 places nationwide have “Liberty” in their name.  Iowa has the most with 4.

-74+ million americans said they took part in a barbeque last year. 

-Fun facts about your barbeque food? 1-in-6 chance your burgers came from Texas.  1-in-4 chance your hotdog and ribs came from Iowa. 75% chance your lettuce came from California. 95% chance your ketchup also came from Cali. 1-in-3 chance your baked beans came from North Dakota.

-$207 Million worth of fireworks were imported from China in 2007.  $14.9 million worth were exported from the US, Japan bought the most.

-$7.9 Million worth of American Flags imported in 2002.  It was $51.7 Million in 2001. It was only $4.7 Million in 2007.

-Japan buys the most US Flags.

 

Feel enlightened yet?  I’m certainly ready for a bbq!

Here are some nifty facts about today I thought were pretty cool.

1812

The War of 1812 began.

1815

Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo by British, German, and Dutch forces.

1873

Suffragist Susan B. Anthony was fined $100 for attempting to vote in the 1872 presidential election.

1928

Aviator Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. She completed the flight from Newfoundland to Wales in about 21 hours.

1948

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights adopted its International Declaration of Human Rights. The General Assembly would give it final approval on Dec. 10, 1948.

1983

Sally Ride became the first American woman in space.

When Gutenberg made his printing press, the first book he printed with it was the Bible, which is now popularly known as the Gutenberg Bible. So you might be forgiven if you think the Bible would be the world’s oldest printed book, but that’d be an erroneous assumption.

Gutenberg wasn’t the first to realize that a moving-type press could more quickly produce books. Rather, that honor goes to the Chinese who developed the first printing press sometime in the first millennium.

So what is the world’s oldest surviving printed book? It’s the Diamond Sutra, a Bhuddist Scripture published in 868 AD. A copy of it was found sealed up in a cave in China in 1907 by Sir Aurel Stein, a Hungarian born archaeologist. (more…)

Make sure you are firmly sitting down for if you have not seen it before, then you are about to read the shortest story you will ever encounter in your bleak, meaningless life:

“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

According to legend, that is Hemingway’s six-word story and he referred to it as the greatest story he ever wrote. Ever the minimalist, it’s not beyond doubt that he did write it. After all, Faulkner once said, “Hemingway has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.” However, you’d expect Hemingway would have a bit more to say about his “greatest story” than just “according to legend.”

(more…)

We all know today was the start of NaNoWriMo, which is in fact a ‘national event’.  We also know it is the day after Halloween.  But, did you know it is also the beginning of the Day of the Dead celebration in Mexico?  Or National Day in Algeria?  Or World Vegan Day?  There are many other things going on on November 1st:

Thank you Wiki

Ever wonder how writing came to be?  Well…

There’s actually some debate to which civilization can properly claim writing developed there first.  Each of the world’s four major civilizations have a claim; that is, the Europeans, the Chinese, the Mesopotamians, and the Indus River Valley.

(more…)

First, I know ‘tragedical’ is not a word…but it should be.

Now, on with the story.   I was sitting in my Human Growth and Development class today, which is definitely in the top 5 most boring classes of my lifetime, and I (shock) was bored.  In our book, we have little pictures on the sides of the pages that I take upon myself to color in with my highlighters, no matter what the picture is.  I just find the light colors of the picture and go over them.  Well, I had my highlighter out today to continue my routine, but as I looked down to the picture I was about to color, I stopped and put the highlighter down–I couldn’t color it.  It was one picture atop another, one of 9/11 and one of a family of Katrina victims.  It got me to thinking about how much the things that happen in our lifetime affect us rather than those that happened in our parents or grandparents (etc.) lifetimes. 

I was not directly affected by either 9/11 or Katrina, but they were huge tragedies that affected the entire country.  I can still remember where I was when we were given the first hint that ‘a plane accidently crashed into a building in new york’ (the argument over how poorly my school handled it I’ll save for another day) …sitting in my 8th grade math class.  And even though it was six years ago now, I still feel like it happened last year.  Pearl Harbor, the Civil War, Vietnam (etc.) are all events I know were horrible, but other than that they are just a significant date in history to me.  None of them have the same affect on me when I see a picture of it as 9/11, Katrina, or even the Virginia Tech tragedy. 

Anyway, this was really a pointless post……just telling you what I was thinking about while wasting my time in Human Growth and Development. 

Seems I missed this, but yesterday was the seventieth anniversary of the first date of publishing of The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. Although fantasy existed before The Hobbit, it never came into its own until the book.

1776: British forces defeated the Continental Army at the Battle of Long Island in Brooklyn, New York.  The battle was the largest of the Revolutionary War and pitted General William Howe of the British against General George Washington, both of them military masterminds.

1883: The eruption of Krakatoa.  The eruption immediately led to massive tsunamis, and also led to a dramatic cooling of the planet for the next five years.

1928: Over sixty nations signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which renounced war as an instrument of foreign policy.  Ten years later, World War II begins.

1942: Singapore falls to Japan.

1549: France declares war on England… and then promptly sues for peace

1588: In a stunning Naval battle that changed the course of history, English forces inflicted a crippling defeat upon the Spanish Armada.

1673: The Dutch recaptured New York City from the British during the third Anglo-Dutch War and this time decided to call it “New Orange.” They relinquished it a year later in exchange for “Run Island” in Indonesia, which was more valuable at the time.

1945: The Soviet Union declared war against Japan in WWII.

1974: Former President Richard Nixon announces his resignation during the Watergate scandal.