02/24 - The Gregorian Calendar
Today may or may not be Shrove Monday which has no fixed date because Easter has no fixed date, presumably because it didn't happen on a specific date, or happened on a roving magic date, or something...
View Article03/03 Open Thread - Second Opium War
When I was growing up one of the many cultural stereotypes floating around was that of the Chinese of a certain era wearing long pigtails and funny shoes laying around in opium dens stoned out of their...
View Article03/10 Open Thread - Harriet Tubman Day (United States of America)
Harriet Tubman's parents were enslaved people and she was, accordingly, born into slavery in 1822. She was able to escape and then made around thirteen return trips to Dixie to rescue about seventy...
View Article3/17 Open Thread - A St. Paddy's Day Primer
Ye Basics: He wasn't Irish, he was "Romano-British" He wasn't Catholic, they weren't around yet He's not officially canonized, either, but that doesn't really matter anyway Nobody knows precisely where...
View Article03/24 Open Thread - World Tuberculosis Day
Tuberculosis, aka TB, has been with us for ages, at lest 6,000 years in humans and 17,000 years in some animals. It primarily attacks the lungs, is contagious, and often fatal if untreated. Once known...
View Article03/31 Open Thread - International Taco Day
OK, I'm just gonna go straight to the wiki on this. A taco (US: /ˈtɑːkoʊ/, UK: /ˈtækoʊ/, Spanish: [ˈtako]) is a traditional Mexican dish consisting of a small hand-sized corn- or wheat-based tortilla...
View ArticleApril 7 Open Thread - Metric System Day
Oh whoopee, mensuration. This is so sad. When I looked for the title photo I at one point searched Flickr for "Meter" and up came a lot of pictures of electric meters, water meters, voltage meters,...
View Article04/14 Open Thread - The Titanic
Word of The Day: Today;s word is HubrisAt 11:40 pm on April 14, 1912, the ship, RMS Titanic struck an iceberg and began to sink, a process it completed between 2:10 and 2:15 am on the morning of the...
View Article04/21 - Grounation Day
Grounation is a Rastafarian thing. I am not a Rasta. There are those out there who call it Groundation. I don't even have an oar to put in there. Grounation Day celebrates and commemorates Haile...
View Article4/28 Open Thread - The US Invaded the Dominican Republic
On this date in 1941, the Ustaše began their genocidal campaign against Serbs in the so-called Independent State of Croatia. They were quite as bad as the NAZIs, with death camps and all but get very...
View Article05/05 Open Thread - The Battle of Puebla
It is well known that the number of people who know that Cinco de Mayo is a celebration vastly outnumber the number of people who know what the hell is being celebrated. Hint - see title, supra. I...
View Article05/12 Open Thread - Various and Sundry
On this date in 1497, the Pope excommunicated Girolamo Savonarola for non approved thinking regarding. Principally, Savonarola had 2 main idees fixee; the destruction of secular art and culture (the...
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