~★~♥~♥~★~ El Morno! ♥~★~★~♥ ~
January 27

★~ Today’s Quote: No good fish goes anywhere without a porpoise.  Lewis Carroll

★~ Chocolate Cake Day:

Cakes have a rich culinary history. In Greece, cakes (or “plakous”) were heavy and flat, and people served them with nuts and honey. The Romans made cakes that were more like cheesecake or pastry, and presented them as offerings to the gods. In Medieval England, people used the words “bread” and cake” interchangeably to refer to anything made with flour dough.

A company called O. Duff and Sons pioneered the first boxed cake mix in the late 1920s. In 1947, after years of research and development, General Mills released the first “just add water” Betty Crocker cake mixes. The available flavors were Ginger, Spice, Yellow, and White. In 1948, Pillsbury introduced the first chocolate cake mix.

Today, the most popular kind of cake is chocolate. … Black Forest, Devil’s Food, Flourless, Fudge, Ganache, German Chocolate, Lava, and the list goes on. Head to your local bakery or whip up your favorite recipe to celebrate Chocolate Cake Day!

★~ Today in History:

♥~ 1870 – Kappa Alpha Theta, the first women’s Greek letter society, or sorority, was founded at Indiana Asbury University — now DePauw University — in Greencastle, Indiana.

♥~ 1880 – Thomas Alva Edison of Menlo Park, NJ patented the electric incandescent lamp. We’ve been turning it on ever since…

♥~ 1910 – Sir Thomas Crapper- one of history’s great inventors died on this date. Then again, maybe he didn’t. It depends on whether he ever lived. Sir Thomas Crapper is widely recognized as the inventor of the flush toilet. Honest. His biography is classified as non-fiction by the Library of Congress. It appears now, however, that Sir Thomas lived only in the mind of British author Wallace Reyburn, who wrote the alleged biography entitled Flushed With Pride. According to the bathroom history, Clean And Decent by Lawrence Wright, the island of Crete had flush toilets as early as 2500 B.C.; so you can see where that leaves Sir Thomas Crapper. There is a ton of craptroversy around Sir Thomas Crapper. . .I will leave further research up to you.

♥~ 1968 – The Bee Gees played their first American concert, as a group. They earned $50,000 to entertain at the Anaheim Convention Center in California.

♥~ 1968 – Otis Redding’s (Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay was released, seven weeks after the singer’s death. It became #1 on March 16, 1968 and remained at the top spot for a month.

♥~ 1976 – Laverne and Shirley, a spin-off from Happy Days, premiered on ABC TV. Penny Marshall starred as Laverne De Fazio and Cindy Williams was Shirley Feeney. The show ran through May 10, 1983.

♥~ 1984 – ‘The Great One’, Wayne Gretzky, set a National Hockey League record for consecutive game scoring, as his streak ended at 51 games. The streak began on October 5, 1983, ending with the L.A. Kings defeating the Edmonton Oilers, 4-2. Gretzky collected 153 points (61 goals and 92 assists) during the run. Gretzky left Edmonton to play for the Kings in 1988.

★~Born Today:

♥~ 1756 – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Theophilus) composer: Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro, Symphony #41, Requiem, A Little Night Music; died in 1791; died Dec 5, 1791

♥~ 1832 – Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson) mathematician, writer: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, The Hunting of the Snark; died Jan 14, 1898

♥~ 1948 – Mikhail Baryshnikov, Ballet dancer, a household name even to non-balletomanes. Widely considered to be one of the greatest and biggest names in dance.

★~ Did You Know:

♥~ According to some data the toilets are flushed more times during the super bowl halftime than at any time during the year.

♥~ An average person visits the toilet 2,500 times per year what is 6-8 times per day. Therefore we spend at least 3 years of our lives on the toilet.

♥~ Seven million cell phones are dropped in the toilet every year.

♥~ 43 percent of homes in the U.S. have two or more bathrooms, and 18 percent of those homeowners scrub and clean their shower in the nude.

♥~ Americans use more toilet paper than people anywhere else in the world: seven sheets per bathroom trip, on average. (source: ABC News)

♥~ The average desktop is covered in 400 times more bacteria than the average toilet seat. (source: ABC News)

♥~ Most toilets flush in the key of E flat. I tested this… Do Re Mi #Mi (oops that was a sharp). Mi Mi whooosh. Nope, mine is more of a C natural.

♥~ One-third of all Americans flush the toilet while they are still sitting on it.

♥~ There are 333 squares of toilet paper on a roll.

♥~ Advice in one book suggests that a person exit a public restroom stall immediately after flushing, since “fecal matter” can fly 20 feet into the air when flushed.

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What a week it has been! But I do have a funny end-of-week story to share with you . . . Cole told it to me on Belly Laugh Day while we were driving home from school. I was laughing so hard I had to pull my car over. This story amuses me because I find teenage boys so amusing, and when they speak off the cuff, their humor is so real and straight up.

One of Cole’s classmates (let’s call her Mary) went to lunch and realized when she returned to school that she had left her i-Phone behind at Chipotle. Mary is currently on i-Phone number three, so we will use the word “dreamy” to describe her — she is also high on drama 24/7. When she realized that she had left the phone behind, the classroom was immediately engulfed in a tsunami of i-phone hysteria. The classroom teacher, being an understanding soul — and I am certain, overwhelmed by the drama — put the class on hold and allowed Mary to call Chipotle immediately. Instead of having the conversation outside the classroom, she had it at back of the room where everyone could hear her. It went like this:

Hi, I was in your restaurant just a little bit ago and left my i-phone in a $30 case with $20 in the back of it. Did anyone turn it in?

No. Well, did you see anyone take it?

You did! Please tell me what he looked like . . .

(Now keep in mind there is one African-American kid in Cole’s class — let’s call him Mike.)

We can assume the Chipotle person offered a description at this point because Mary said

Ok, hang on,

and hollered,

MIKE, DID YOU TAKE MY I-PHONE?

(The class went silent.)

Mike quips, without missing a beat,

Let me guess; he was black,

at which point the class bursts out laughing. Mary, of course, was clueless, and still sadly without an i-Phone.

Hope you all have fabulous Friday!

♥