~★~♥~♥~★~ El Morno! ♥~★~★~♥ ~
July 17th,2012

★~ Today’s Quote:  Life is like an ice-cream cone, you have to lick it one day at a time. ~ Charles M. Schulz

★~ Yellow Pig Day!

What the heck is Yellow Pig Day? So there were two guys, Michael Spivak and David C. Kelly, who were math students at Princeton, and their assignment was to analyze the properties of the number 17.  Well, as you can imagine, thinking about the number 17 and ONLY the number 17 for too long probably made them go a little delirious, and they suddenly came up with the idea of a new majestic mythical creature: the yellow pig. They may have been taking a break at the local bar. Their yellow pig had seventeen toes, seventeen teeth, seventeen eyelashes. Now mathematicians in colleges and universities everywhere celebrate Yellow Pig Day by eating Yellow Pig cake and singing Yellow Pig carols. We could make up our own songs! The Yellow Pig of Texas? How about The Yellow Pigmarine?  Feel free to join in!

★~ Peach Ice Cream Day:

In 1984, President Ronald Reagan designated July as National Ice Cream Month. He also declared that the third Sunday in July would be National Ice Cream Day. President Reagan’s favorite flavor of ice cream was coffee.  Today’s suggested ice cream flavor is peach, which is President Clinton’s favorite flavor of ice cream. President Obama does not really care for ice cream or sweets but occasionally enjoys a butter-pecan cone.  The best way to celebrate peach ice cream day is to scoop up your favorite flavor and savor every lick.  Click for More ‘Did You Know’ Ice cream trivia 

★~ Today in History:

♥~ 1866 – Authorization was given to build a tunnel beneath the Chicago River. The project was completed three years later at a cost of $512,709. The Washington Street traffic tunnel was in use until 1953.

♥~ 1938 – ‘Wrong Way’ Corrigan. Douglas Corrigan, unemployed airplane mechanic. It was on this, a foggy day in 1938, that Doug left Floyd Bennett Field in New York, supposedly headed for Los Angeles. He landed his 1929 Curtiss Robin monoplane about 28 hours later – not in California but in Ireland at Dublin’s Baldonnel Field.Corrigan made the 3,150-mile flight without benefit of a radio or navigational equipment other than a compass. His explanation for the monumental mistake was that he was following the wrong end of the compass needle. (Folks were never sure whether his feat was a mistake or moxie.) He was, however, welcomed home as a hero (ticker tape parade and all) and known forever more as ‘Wrong Way’ Corrigan.

♥~ 1955 – Disneyland opened the gates to “The Happiest Place on Earth” in Anaheim, California. In the famous theme park’s first year of operation, some four million people visited Main Street USA, Fantasyland, Frontierland and Tomorrowland. On its opening day, Disneyland held a gala TV broadcast featuring Walt Disney, Bob Cummings, Art Linkletter and Ronald Reagan.

♥~ 1959 – Mary Leakey, half of the husband and wife team of Dr. and Mrs. Louis Leakey, discovered the oldest known human skull — in the Olduvai Gorge in Tanganyika (now Tanzania). Zinjanthropus boisei, as the skull was named, was later determined to be 1.75 million years old.

♥~ 1993 – Barbra Streisand’s Back to Broadway was the #1 album in the U.S. for one week. The album is among only a handful of recordings ever to become number one on the sales charts in their initial week of release and to go platinum through their first shipping orders.

★~Born Today:

♥~ 1899 – James Cagney  (James Francis Cagney, Jr.) Academy Award-winning actor: Yankee Doodle Dandy [1942]; Mr. Roberts, The Seven Little Foys, Man of a Thousand Faces; died Mar 30, 1986

♥~ 1917 – Phyllis Diller (Driver) comedienne: The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show, actress: Boy Did I Get the Wrong Number

♥~ 1935 – Donald Sutherland actor: Dirty Sexy Money, JFK, Klute, Backdraft, M*A*S*H, The Dirty Dozen, National Lampoon’s Animal House, Outbreak, Commander in Chief

♥~ 1960 – Mark Burnett Emmy Award-winning producer: Survivor [2000]; On the Lot, Rock Star: INXS, The Apprentice, The Apprentice: Martha Stewart

★~ Did You Know:

♥~ The Pythagoreans were horrified by the number 17.

♥~ The shortest form of Japanese poetry (known as Haiku) contains exactly 17 syllables

♥~  The Mars Odyssey Orbiter began its journey from Launchpad 17A.

♥~ It takes 17 muscles to produce a smile.

♥~“17” was the original title of the Beatle’s song “I Saw Her Standing There.”

♥~ The Wall Street Journal once had a special 17-week introductory offer for new subscribers within the continental United States

♥~ The Neuschwanstein Castle took 17 years to build.

♥~ The world’s largest caldera (or volcano crater) is that of Mt. Aso in Kyushu, Japan, which measures 17 miles north to south and 71 miles in circumference. Note that 17 and 71 are reversible primes (emirps). ♥~ The 17-year locust has the longest cycle of development of any known insect.

♥~ The Parthenon is 17 columns long.

♥~ There are 17 different ways that a wallpaper design can repeat.

♥~ Friday 17th is unlucky in Italy. This is thought to derive from Roman tomb stones which often included the word VIXI (I lived) as part of the narrative (VI=6 + XI=11 giving 17).

♥~ King Tutankhamen was wrapped in 17 cloths.

♥~ Moderately active people can estimate their daily calorie requirement by using the following formula: Weight (in lbs.) x 17.

♥~ Former President Bill Clinton’s dog Buddy was killed by a vehicle driven by a 17-year-old girl.

♥~“At Seventeen” was a hit song for Janis Ian in 1975. (It reached No. 3 on the Billboard singles chart.) [Litman]

♥~ The longest word of prime length in the Bible is Chushanrishathaim, which has 17 letters.

♥~ A cow’s saliva increases by 17% while grazing

♥~ 17 and Apple. There are 17 sets of chromosomes in the apple. Eve was traditionally 17 years of age when she fed Adam the apple. There were 17 different PowerMacs made by Apple computer

#

It’s funny, I ‘ve been thinking a lot about numbers lately and the significance they play in our lives.  Of-course, the moment I started to think about numbers, they started to show up in my life in the oddest ways. This blog post for example is about the number 17.  Odd Friend Rachel probably kickstarted my number pondering with her blog post Dead Ex-Husband…Alive at the DMV! (Part 1).

Do you have a favorite number? And if your do, when it shows up in your life does it mean anything significant to you?