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Post by SAR01 on Feb 14, 2018 12:28:57 GMT -5
On this day around the year 278 A.D., Valentine, a holy priest in Rome in the days of Emperor Claudius II, was executed. Also on this date, Venus appears as both a morning star and evening star (1894), John Lennon and Yoko Ono co-host the Mike Douglas Show for entire week (1972), and the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft becomes first vehicle to land on an asteroid (2001).
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Post by SAR01 on Feb 15, 2018 12:06:00 GMT -5
On this date in 1903, the first teddy bear went on sale in America at a toy store owned by Russian immigrants in Brooklyn. The name was thought to be connected with an incident involving Pres. Theodore Roosevelt (nicknamed "Teddy"). He'd spared the life of a bear cub orphaned during a hunt in the previous year ( depicted in this cartoon).
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Post by SAR01 on Feb 16, 2018 13:25:48 GMT -5
On this day in 600 AD, Pope Gregory decreed that "God Bless You" could be the only response to a sneeze . One of the world's worst traffic jams took place on February 16, 1980 on a stretch of road in France from Lyon to Paris- cars were backed up for 109 miles! Pamela Colman Smith, the artist who drew the images on the Rider-Waite Tarot card deck, was born on this date in 1878.
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Post by SAR01 on Feb 17, 2018 15:09:21 GMT -5
It was on this date in 1795 that a man yanked a 17 lb. potato from his garden in Chester, England. Hello tater tots!... Drifting back further to the year 1600, Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for his heretical views on the plurality of worlds.
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Post by SAR01 on Feb 19, 2018 13:07:53 GMT -5
Born on this date in 1473, Nicolaus Copernicus is said to be the founder of modern astronomy with his heliocentric model that displaced Earth as the center of the universe. In 1847, the first rescuers reached the Donner Party in Northern California.
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Post by SAR01 on Feb 20, 2018 22:16:46 GMT -5
On this date in 1962, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth, circling the globe three times at more than 17,000 mph. In 1934, the Utopian Society in Los Angeles started a chain-letter campaign proclaiming that "profit is the root of all evil."
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Post by SAR01 on Feb 21, 2018 13:43:57 GMT -5
Today in Strangeness:
This is the time of Roman Feralia where spirits of the dead are said to hover over their graves. On this date, Donald Davis ran one mile backwards in six minutes and 7 seconds (1983), and the man said at one time to be the world's oldest, Shigechiyo Izumi, died at 120 (1986).
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Post by SAR01 on Feb 23, 2018 17:26:46 GMT -5
On February 23, 1885, English authorities attempted to hang convicted murderer John Lee. Despite three attempts at execution, the hanging gallows would not work. Bewildered by this turn of events, the court considered the unexplained malfunction to be an "act of God" and spared Lee's life.
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Post by SAR01 on Feb 26, 2018 18:11:25 GMT -5
On this date in 1975, on the Today Show, the 1st televised kidney transplant took place. And on Feb. 26, 2006, the U.S. Census Bureau's World Population Clock ticked up to 6.5 billion people. It is now beyond 7.2 billion.
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Post by SAR01 on Feb 27, 2018 21:09:51 GMT -5
Today in Strangeness:
On this date in 1827, the first Mardi Gras in New Orleans took place, with a group of masked and costumed students dancing through the streets. In 1890, a 100-round boxing match was fought in San Francisco, and declared to be a draw after 6.5 hours.
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Post by SAR01 on Mar 2, 2018 12:52:46 GMT -5
Today in Strangeness:
Said to come in like a lion and go out like a lamb, the month of March takes its name from Mars, the Roman god of war. Originally, March was the first month of the year. Congress appropriated $30,000 on this day in 1855 to install camels in the American Southwest , as part of the U.S. Army. Though they proved successful as pack animals, after the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, the camels became all but forgotten about.
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Post by SAR01 on Mar 4, 2018 11:47:50 GMT -5
Today in Strangeness
Congress appropriated $30,000 on this day in 1855 to install camels in the American Southwest, as part of the U.S. Army. Though they proved successful as pack animals, after the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, the camels became all but forgotten about.
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Post by SAR01 on Mar 6, 2018 13:07:32 GMT -5
Today in Strangeness:
On this date in 1899, Bayer received a patent for their new pain reliever-- aspirin. Pharmacist Felix Hoffman was said to synthesize heroin and aspirin in the same month. In 1950, Silly Putty was introduced as a toy by Peter Hodgson. Packaged in plastic eggs, the one-ounce pieces of rubber-like material could be used to transfer colored ink from newsprint.
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Post by SAR01 on Mar 9, 2018 14:39:04 GMT -5
On this date in 1934, Yuri Gagarin was born. Gagarin would go on to become the first human to both enter space and orbit the Earth. Seven years following his historic achievements, Gagarin died in a helicopter crash, the cause of which remains a mystery to this day.
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Post by SAR01 on Mar 12, 2018 21:18:39 GMT -5
On March 12, 1894, the first bottles of Coca-Cola were sold. Invented by an Atlanta pharmacist, the original formula included lime, cinnamon, and coca leaves. On this date in 1928, the St. Francis Dam Disaster took place (the second-worst disaster in California history), and in 2002, Homeland Security unveiled their color-coded terrorism threat advisory scale.
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