~★~♥~♥~★~ El Morno! ♥~★~★~♥ ~
January 13, 2012

★~ Today’s Quote: Superstition is foolish, childish, primitive and irrational – but how much does it cost you to knock on wood? ~Judith Viorst

★~ Friday The 13^th:

The number 13 has been unlucky for centuries. Some historians believe the superstition started with the 13 Apostles who attended the Last Supper (neither Jesus nor Judas came out of that one O.K.), but ancient Babylon’s Code of Hammurabi omits the number 13 in its list of laws, so the superstition dates back to at least 1700 BC.

Fear of the number 13 has plagued such historic figures as Napoleon Bonaparte, J. Paul Getty, Herbert Hoover, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR’s secretary, Grace Tully, wrote that her boss was “superstitious, particularly about the number 13.” She reported that on a number of occasions she was abruptly summoned to be a guest at a White House dinner in order to round out the number of people at the table to 14. Interesting that this was the man who calmed a troubled nation with the words, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” One stress management center has recorded that as many as 17 to 20 million people are affected in varying degrees by Friday the 13th. The name given to this specific phobia is “paraskavedekatriaphobia.”The fear of the number 13 is called triskaidekaphobia.

However calming you pounding heart with this optimistic facts: A 2008 Dutch study showed that fewer car accidents, fires and crimes occur on Friday the 13th and according to CNBC, the US market has been up 80 times out of the past 140 occasions when the 13th of a month landed on a Friday.

★~Rubber Ducky Day:

Oh, every day when I, make my way to the tubby
I find a little fellow who’s cute and yellow and chubby!
Rub-a-dub-dubby!

You make bathtime lots of fun,
Rubber Duckie I’m awfully fond of you
Vo-vo-dee-o!

I figured you cannot go wrong celebrating Rubber Ducky Day with Ernie! In 1970, Jim Henson performed the song “Rubber Duckie” as Ernie on Sesame Street, and the rubber duck bath toy has been an iconic American symbol ever since. Rubber ducks have been around since the rise of the rubber industry in the late 1800s, but no one knows their exact origin.

Did you know that in January of 1992, a shipment of 29,000 rubber duckies fell off a cargo ship in the Pacific Ocean? By 2007, the “Friendly Floatees” had traveled 17,000 miles around the world on the ocean currents. Some are still afloat today! Over the years, people reported rubber ducky sightings in Indonesia, Australia, South America, the Bering Strait, the Arctic, and (eventually) the Atlantic Ocean

★~ Peach Melba Day:

Peach Melba it’s a refreshingly simple pairing of peaches and ice cream topped with Melba sauce. Created by the noted French chef Auguste Escoffier, this dessert is fit for a queen — or at least a diva, like Dame Nellie Melba , the Australian opera singer for whom it was created. While Melba was performing in London, Escoffier created the dish in her honor, serving the peach-topped vanilla ice cream in an ornate ice-carved swan and topping the dessert with spun sugar. He later adapted it for the Carlton Hotel in 1900 by creating a new “Melba” sauce, consisting of pureed red currant jelly, raspberries, sugar and cornstarch.

Indulge your inner Diva and enjoy a dish of Peach Melba

★~ Today in History:

♥~ 1863 – Thomas Crapper pioneered the one-piece pedestal flushing toilet. He is also said to have pioneered the self raising seat for said toilet, which worked on a system of counter weights that left men free to concentrate on the job at hand.

♥~ 1957 – The Wham-O Company developed the first plastic Frisbee. The most popular theory as to how this flying disc came to be dates back to the 1920s when Yale students invented a game of catch by tossing around metal pie tins from the Frisbee Baking Company in nearby Bridgeport, Connecticut. They would frequently shout “Frisbieeeee” to warn passersby of the oncoming pie plate. Building inspector Fred Morrison puttered with and refined a plastic flying disc that he sold to WHAM-O (for $1 million) in 1955. The disc was introduced to the consumer market in 1957 as the Pluto Platter (the name inspired by the U.S. obsession with UFOs). Wham-O changed the name to Frisbee in 1958, upon hearing the Yale pie-tin story. (Mattel now owns the rights to Frisbee, which has become an American icon.)

♥~ 1973 – Carly Simon’s No Secrets was the #1 album in the U.S. for the first of five weeks

★~Born Today:

♥~ 1961 – Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Emmy Award-winning actress: Seinfeld, The New Adventures of Old Christine; Saturday Night Live, Hannah and Her Sisters, North, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation 1962,

♥~ 1962 – Chubby Checker went back to No.1 on the US singles chart with ‘The Twist’. The song first went to No.1 in Sept 1960 and became the only record in American chart history to top the charts on two separate occasions.

♥~ 1966 – Patrick Dempsey actor: Fast Times, The Right to Remain Silent, Loverboy, Meatballs, Grey’s Anatomy

★~ Did You Know:

♥~ Belief that the number 13 is unlucky is the most common Western superstition..

♥~ Months with a Friday the 13th always begin on a Sunday.

♥~ It is from the Norse goddess Frigg, or Freyja, that we get Frigg’s Day, or Freyja’s Day which became the English Friday.

♥~ In a traditional hangman’s noose there are 13 twists of the rope and 13 steps to the gallows.

♥~ There is no 13th Avenue in San Francisco, instead Funston Avenue is between 12th and 14th Avenues. There is however a 13 Street. It’s covered by the Central Skyway making it one of the darkest and ugliest streets in San Francisco.

♥~ In Formula 1, there is no car with the number 13. The number has been removed after two drivers were killed in crashes — both driving cars numbered 13.

♥~ According to Dr. Donald Dossey, founder of the Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute in Asheville, North Carolina, more than 80% of high-rises lack a 13th floor.

♥~ Infamous murderers Charles Manson, Harold Shipman, Frederick West, Saddam Hussein, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, Theodore Bundy, and Jack the Ripper each have 13 letters in their names.

♥~ Folklore remedies for triskaidekaphobia include climbing to the top of a mountain or skyscraper and burning all the socks you own that have holes in them. Another is to stand on your head and eat a piece of gristle.

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Do you treat Friday the 13^th like any other day or does it worry you a little?  Odd Loves Company so if you have a Morno moment share your thoughts.

Wishing you a very lucky Friday!

Odd Loves Company!