★~♥~♥~★~ El Morno! ♥~★~★~♥ ~
April 5, 2013

★~ Todays Quote: It’s a shallow life that doesn’t give a person a few scars.  ~Garrison Keillor

★~ Go For Broke Day:

On April 5, 1945, Sadao S. Munemori “saved two of his men at the cost of his own life and did much to clear the path for his company’s victorious advance” near Seravezza, Italy, according to the U.S. Army Center of Military History.
Munemori was a member of the 442d Regimental Combat Team, a segregated Japanese-American unit. The 442d RCT “were undoubtedly among the most decorated units in the United States Army.”
The infantry’s motto, “Go for Broke,” “was derived from a Hawaiian pidgen phrase used by gamblers risking all of their money on a single roll of dice,” according to Know Your Phrase. Now that you know the meaning of the phrase there is nothing left to do, but GO FOR IT. . .

★~Caramel Day (caramel is such a hard word for me to spell. And so it seems is writing this sentence which I have corrected multiple times Argg):

Americans began making sugary syrups in the 1600s, but the delicious chewy caramel we know and love today was a more recent innovation. Caramel candy emerged during the 18th century and quickly became one of the most popular sweets on the market. In fact, Milton Hershey’s first business was the Lancaster Caramel Company!

Caramel is made with butter, brown and white sugar, milk or cream, and vanilla. It is usually enjoyed as an ice cream topping, a candy filling, or on its own. You can also find caramel flavored puddings, popcorn, desserts, and coffee.

I vote for Caramel Corn to celebrate caramel day!

★~ Today in History:

♥~ 1614 – Pocahontas married English colonist John Rolfe in Virginia.

♥~ 1887 –  Six-year-old Helen Keller discovered how the word “water” was spelled in sign language, and what it meant, from her teacher, Annie Sullivan.

♥~1966 – Timothy Leary spoke at New York’s Town Hall and compared LSD to a microscope saying that the drug “is to psychology what the microscope is to biology,” leaving not just a few to wonder, “What’s he smokin’?

♥~1976 – Reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes died of kidney failure en route (in a private jet) to a hospital in Houston (from Acapulco, Mexico). He left an estate estimated at $2 billion. Four hundred prospective heirs tried to inherit his fortune, but it eventually went to twenty-two cousins on both sides of his family.

★~ Born Today:

♥~ Some of the world’s best-known superstars were born on this day. Spencer Tracey, Melvyn Douglas, Bette Davis, Gregory Peck. By 1979 they had collected a total of seven Oscars between them

♥~ 1900 – Spencer (Bonaventure) Tracy Academy Award-winning actor: Captains Courageous [1937], Boys Town [1938]; San Francisco, Stanley and Livingstone, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde [1941], Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, Adam’s Rib, Father of the Bride [1950], Pat and Mike, Bad Day at Black Rock, The Mountain, The Old Man and the Sea, How the West Was Won, It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner; died June 10, 1967

♥~ 1901 – Melvyn Douglas (Melvyn Edouard Hesselberg) Academy Award-winning [supporting] actor: Hud [1963], Being There [1979]; The Vampire Bat, Captains Courageous, Ninotchka, Three Hearts for Julia, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, The Americanization of Emily, I Never Sang for My Father, The Candidate, The Seduction of Joe Tynan, The Changeling, Ghost Story; died Aug 4, 1981

♥~ 1908 – Bette (Ruth Elizabeth) Davis Academy Award-winning actress [1935], Jezebel [1938]; Dark Victory, The Letter, The Little Foxes, Now, Voyager, Mr. Skeffington, All About Eve, The Star, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?;died Oct 6, 1989

♥~ 1916 – Gregory Peck (Eldred) Academy Award-winning actor: To Kill a Mockingbird [1962]; The Keys of the Kingdom, The Yearling, Duel in the Sun, Gentleman’s Agreement, Twelve O’Clock High, David and Bathsheba, Captain Horatio Hornblower, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Roman Holiday, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, Moby Dick [1956], The Guns of Navarone, Marooned, MacArthur, The Boys from Brazil, Moby Dick [TV: 1998]; Jean Hersholt Humanitarian (Academy) Award [1968]; died June 12, 2003,

Did you know: The first baseball has been thrown out, Chicago fans are freezing in the stands, Baseball is in full swing.  Here is a run down on how a few of the MBA picked their nickname.

♥~ Arizona Diamondbacks: In 1995, the expansion franchise’s ownership group asked fans to vote from among a list of nicknames that included Coyotes, Diamondbacks, Phoenix, Rattlers, and Scorpions. Diamondbacks, a type of desert rattlesnake, was the winner, sparing everyone the mindboggling possibility of a team located in Phoenix, Arizona, called the Arizona PhoenixAtlanta Braves

♥~ The Braves:  Boston and Milwaukee before moving to Atlanta in 1966, trace their nickname to the symbol of a corrupt political machine. James Gaffney, who became president of Boston’s National League franchise in 1911, was a member of Tammany Hall, the Democratic Party machine that controlled New York City politics throughout the 19th century. The Tammany name was derived from Tammamend, a Delaware Valley Indian chief. The society adopted an Indian headdress as its emblem and its members became known as Braves. Sportswriter Leonard Koppett described Gaffney’s decision to rename his team, which had been known as the Doves, in a 1993 letter to the New York Times: “Wouldn’t it be neat to call the team the “˜Braves,’ waving this symbol of the Democrats under the aristocratic Bostonians? It wouldn’t bother the fans.” And it didn’t, especially after the Braves swept the Philadelphia Athletics in the 1914 World Series.

♥~ Chicago Cubs: Chicago’s first professional baseball team was known as the Chicago White Stockings. When the team began to sell off its experienced players in the late 1880s, local newspapers began to refer to the club as Anson’s Colts, a reference to player-manager Cap Anson’s roster of youngsters. By 1890, Colts had caught on and Chicago’s team had a new nickname. When Anson left the team in 1897, the Colts became known as the Orphans, a depressing nickname if there ever was one. When Frank Selee took over managerial duties of Chicago’s youthful roster in 1902, a local newspaper dubbed the team the Cubs and the name stuck.

♥~ Chicago White Sox: In 1900, Charles Comiskey moved the St. Paul Saints to the South Side of Chicago. The team adopted the former nickname of its future rivals (the Cubs) and became the White Stockings, which was shortened to White Sox a few years after the club joined the American League in 1901.

♥~ Houston Astros: Houston’s baseball team was originally known as the Colt .45’s, but team president Judge Roy Hofheinz made a change “in keeping with the times” in 1965. Citing Houston’s status as “the space age capital of the world,” Hofheinz settled on Astros. “With our new domed stadium, we think it will also make Houston the sports capital of the world,” Hofheinz said. The change was likely also motivated by pressure from the Colt Firearms Company, which objected to the use of the Colt .45 nickname.

♥~ Philadelphia Phillies: Founded in 1883 as the Quakers, the franchise changed its nickname to the Philadelphias, which soon became Phillies. New owner Robert Carpenter held a contest to rename the team in 1943 and Blue Jays was selected as the winner. While the team wore a Blue Jay patch on its uniforms for a couple of seasons, the nickname failed to catch on.

♥~ St. Louis Cardinals: In 1899, the St. Louis Browns became the St. Louis Perfectos. That season, Willie McHale, a columnist for the St. Louis Republic reportedly heard a woman refer to the team’s red stockings as a “lovely shade of Cardinal.” McHale included the nickname in his column and it was an instant hit among fans. The team officially changed its nickname in 1900.

♥~ Kansas City Royals: When Kansas City was awarded an expansion franchise in 1969, club officials chose Royals from more than 17,000 entries in a name-the-team contest. Sanford Porte, one of 547 fans who submitted Royals, was awarded an all-expenses-paid trip to the All-Star Game. Porte submitted the name because of “Kansas City’s position as the nation’s leading stocker and feeder market and the nationally known American Royal Livestock and Horse Show. “¦ Royalty stands for the best—that’s another reason.” Coincidentally, Kansas City’s Negro League team was nicknamed the Monarchs.

♥~ Oakland Athletics: The Athletics nickname is one of the oldest in baseball, dating to the early 1860s and the Athletic Baseball Club of Philadelphia. In 1902, New York Giants manager John McGraw referred to Philadelphia’s American League team as a “white elephant.” The slight was picked up by a Philadelphia reporter and the white elephant was adopted as the team’s primary logo. The nickname and the elephant logo were retained when the team moved to Kansas City in 1955 and to Oakland in 1968.

♥~ San Francisco Giants: The New York Giants moved to San Francisco in 1957 and retained their nickname, which dates back to 1885. It was during that season, according to legend, that New York Gothams manager Jim Mutrie referred to his players as his “giants” after a rousing win over Philadelphia.

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Baseball. In Chicago, we pop a Cubs schedule in our wallet even if we never attend a game. It’s called traffic and crowd control. Wriggleyville becomes a tangled mess, as Cub fans and cars mingle in an already congested neighborhood to attend day and night games. However, nobody really minds all that much and tries to plan accordingly. Cole has seen the Bulls win a championships, the Bears almost win a Super Bowl, the Black Hawks bring home the Stanley cup, but nothing was as exciting as when my nine year old saw the White Sox win the world series. He was lucky enough to attend game two, and stayed up late to watch the White Sox win the World Series sitting between his dad and I.  Joe watched the games with white knuckles, willing the White Sox with all his might not to disappoint his kid. I suspect, many a dad, did the same thing.  Now, will this year be the Cubs year?

Cole leaves for New Mexico to visit his grandparents tomorrow. Sheesh, I hope he doesn’t get use to eating three meals a day! His grandparents spoil him rotten.

TGIF!

Odd Loves Company!