~★~♥~♥~★~ El Morno! ♥~★~★~♥ ~
September 18, 2011

★~  Today’s Sunset: Another beautiful sunrise taken by Yvonne Treacy

★~  Today’s Quote: “The riskiest thing you can do is get greedy.”  Lance Armstrong

★~  Hug a Greeting Card Writer Day:

My family (myself included) has the bad habit of standing in the greeting card aisle and laughing loudly. Some of the cards are very funny and very clever. I don’t like mean or insulting cards, but Maxine just cracks me up. Remember before the Internet when we used to send cards to friends and family just because? Those were the days . . . before a card cost $3 not including postage. My mom and I still send each other cards occasionally, but we don’t sign them, so that we can send them again. Recycling at its finest. I don’t know any greeting card writers, but I know a lot of clever, funny people who could be greeting card writers, so I will hug them.

★~  National Cheeseburger Day :

Wow! Is this synchronistic or what!! We were just talking about hamburgers and cheeseburgers on Facebook. I mentioned that I did not like Five Guys. Well, I like the Five Guys, just not the food. The Bison Burger seems to be popular. Lots of local Chicago places serve good burgers. Firing up the grill was a universally popular way to make a great burger. However you celebrate Cheeseburger Day, don’t forget the grilled onions and all the fixins . . . and remember Coke not Pepsi…chips no fries. (see “Did You Know” below for more fascinating burger facts).

★~ Today in History:

♥~ 1830 – A race was held between a horse and an iron horse. Tom Thumb, the first locomotive built in America, was pitted against a real horse in a nine-mile course between Riley’s Tavern and Baltimore. Tom Thumb suffered mechanical difficulties including a leaky boiler. If you had your money on the horse, you won! Tom Thumb lost by more than a nose.

♥~ 1895 – If you’ve ever had a chiropractic adjustment you owe it to not only your chiropractor, but to Daniel David Palmer. He gave the first chiropractic adjustment to Harvey Lillard in Davenport, Iowa (now the home of Palmer Chiropractic College).

♥~ 1932 – Peg Entwistle, formerly a successful Broadway actress, had made only one film in Hollywood, and could not land another movie job. She was broke, depressed and didn’t even have train fare back to New York. But Entwistle became a Hollywood legend when she leaped into history. She climbed to the top of Mount Lee to the huge ‘HOLLYWOODLAND’ (as it read at the time) sign and up the ladder to the top of the 50-foot high letter ‘H’, from which she leaped to her death. There are still some who believe the sign is haunted by her ghost.

♥~ 1955 – What had been The Toast of the Town on CBS Television (since 1948) became The Ed Sullivan Show. This “rilly big shew” remained a mainstay of Sunday night television until June 6, 1971. Sullivan was a newspaper columnist/critic before and during the early years of this pioneering TV show.

♥~ 1964 – The Addams Family Premiere:   Charles Addams’s quirky New Yorker cartoon creations were brought to life in this ABC sitcom about a family full of oddballs. Cousin Itt was my favorite!

♥~ 1965 – Larry Hagman (Captain Tony Nelson) and Barbara Eden (Jeannie) starred in the first episode of I Dream of Jeannie on NBC-TV. Capt. Nelson had been forced to make a parachute landing on a desert island. He happened upon an old bottle that had washed up on the shore. He popped the top and – bingo! Out popped Jeannie, a 2000-year-old, very pretty genie. Jeannie took to Tony and started making weekly magic that lasted until September 1, 1970.

♥~ 1965 – Get Smart Premiere:  A spy-thriller spoof appearing on both NBC (1965–69) and CBS (1969–70). Don Adams starred as bumbling CONTROL Agent 86, Maxwell Smart. His mission was to thwart the evildoings of the KAOS organization. Agent Smart was usually successful with the help of his friends: Barbara Feldon as Agent 99 (whom Smart eventually married), Edward Platt as the Chief, Robert Karvelas as Agent Larrabee, Dick Gautier as Hymie the Robot and David Ketchum as Agent 13.

♥~ 1982 – The seven-minute epic by Dire Straits ‘Private Investigations’ went to No.2 on the UK singles chart, held off No.1 by survivors ‘Eye Of The Tiger’.

♥~ 1993 – Garth Brooks’ In Pieces debuted at #1 in the U.S. on both the Billboard Hot 200 and Country LP charts. The album has sold over 8 million copies.

♥~ 2007 – A cranberry report out this day said cranberry juice combats a wide range of bacteria, including those that cause stomach ulcers, gum disease and food-borne illnesses as well as urinary tract infections. Research suggested that astringent compounds in the berry, called proanthocyanidins, work to prevent infection-causing bacteria from adhering to cells in the urinary tract.

★~Born Today:

♥~ 1709 – Samuel Johnson writer: created the first true dictionary of the English language in 1755; poet; essayist; novelist: Rasselas: Prince of Abyssinia; died Dec 13, 1784

♥~ 1910 – Ray Geiger editor: The Farmer’s Almanac [1934-1993]; the longest-held position of any almanac editor in America; died Apr 1, 1994

♥~ 1920 – Jack Warden Emmy Award-winning actor: Brian’s Song [1971-72]; N.Y.P.D., Bad News Bears, Crazy like a Fox, Shampoo, From Here to Eternity, All the President’s Men, Problem Child, Used Cars; died July 19, 2006

♥~ 1933 – Robert Blake (Michael James Vijencio Gubitosi) Emmy Award-winning actor: Baretta [1974-1975]; In Cold Blood, Pork Chop Hill, PT 109, Our Gang, Little Beaver & Red Ryder series

♥~ 1939 – Frankie (Frances) Avalon (Avellone) singer: Venus, Bobby Sox to Stockings, A Boy Without a Girl, Just Ask Your Heart, Why, Dede Dinah; actor: Disc Jockey Jamboree, Guns of the Timberland, The Carpetbaggers, Beach Party series, Back to the Beach

♥~ 1971 – Lance Armstrong world/Olympic cycling champ [U.S]: won the Tour de France seven straight times [1999-2005]

★~ Did You Know: 

♥~ Hamburg German made the first hamburgers….which is explains the name.

♥~ The nomadic people called the Tartars may have invented the hamburger. The tenderized their beef by pacing it under a horse’s saddle which flattened it.

♥~ Others believe it was the German immigrants who invented the hamburger.  They traveled to the United States during the 19th century bringing with them their favorite meal called Hamburg Style Beef– a raw chopped, piece of beef.

♥~ Americans take credit for first cooked beef patty on a roll at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1921.

♥~ Americans consumed more than 13 billion burgers  a year.  If you put all those burgers in a straight line, they would circle the earth more than 32 times.

♥~ The most expensive hamburger is the FleurBurger 5000  made of Kobe beef, foie gras that’s goose liver and black truffles The burger is available at Fleur de Lys, a traditional French restaurant located in Las Vegas’ Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino.  The price of this burger is about $ 75. You can have it with cheese.

♥~ “Cheezborger, Cheezborger, Cheezborger. No Pepsi. Coke,” These words, with Pepsi and Coke in reverse order, were originally spoken and immortalized by John Belushi in,  in, “Olympia Cafe,” an early Saturday Night Live sketch that was inspired by the Chicago Billy Goat tavern. Belushi had never set foot inside Billy Goat but Bill Murray  and sketch writer (and bit player) Don Novello were regulars at the Billy Goat.

♥~ In 1936  Louis Ballast of Denver, Colorado filed a trademark for the name ‘cheeseburger’  He never enforced it though.

♥~ It is claimed that cheeseburgers were first served in 1934 at Kaelin’s  restaurant in Louisville, Kentucky.

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Cole is sad because he is leaving for a two day camping trip next Thursday, and all his favorite shows are premiering. Oh my aching heart. This from a kid who averaged an hour of television a week for the first 12 years of his life. But I do remember (back in the days when I watched television) being excited when re-runs ended and the new season began. Do you remember the fabulous line up that Thursday night use to have: Cosby, Family Ties, Cheers, and LA Law?  Remember Thirty-Something? or Sister’s? Joe and I always use to have shows we watched together: Picket Fences, Promised Land, Touched by An Angel, Roswell, The Practice, and Mad Men. These days the Internet claims most of my screen time . . . but this season, I think I’m going to find a weekly show to watch. What shows do you anxiously wait to premier each year? Are you excited by the upcoming season?