~★~♥~♥~★~ El Morno! ♥~★~★~♥ ~
January 5, 2014

★~ Today’s Quote: “Whipped cream isn’t whipped cream at all if it hasn’t been whipped with whips, just like poached eggs isn’t poached eggs unless it’s been stolen in the dead of the night.”  —Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

★~ Whipped Cream Day:

Whipped Cream Day is celebrated on the birthday of Aaron “Bunny” Lapin, America’s “Whipped Cream King,” the inventor of Reddi-Wip.  Lapin, a master of commercial misspelling, developed “Sta-Whip” as a vegetable-oil wartime substitute for whipping cream made mostly from light cream and vegetable fat, then used real cream to create Reddi-wip in 1948. He contracted with milkmen to deliver it in the St. Louis area before achieving nationwide distribution in 1954. The canned whipped-cream product used a fluted aerosol valve that Lapin invented, and nitrous oxide as a propellant gas, which is why Reddi-wip also became known as “Giggle-wip” when kids started sucking the nitrous oxide to get high. In 1998, Time magazine called Reddi-wip one of America’s 100 greatest consumer products — alongside Spam and the pop-top can.  Reddi-wip sells half of the canned whipped cream in the US, according to the New York Times.

★~ National Bird Day:

The study of birds has been a fashionable pastime ever since the Victorian Era, and the term “bird watching” first appeared as the title of a book in 1901. According to a 2009 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service survey, today, one in every five Americans is a birdwatcher. This is defined as anyone who has traveled for the primary purpose of observing birds or has closely observed and identified birds around the home.

Today, nearly 12 percent of the world’s 9,800 bird species may face extinction within the next century, including nearly one-third of the world’s 330 parrot species. Public awareness and education about the physical and behavioral needs of birds can go far in improving the welfare of the millions of birds both in the wild and in captivity. Visit the National Bird Homepage to learn more.

★~ Today in History:

♥~ 1825 – Alexandre Dumas (Sr.) fought his first duel. In the process, his pants fell down. Dumas told the story later in his memoirs.

♥~ 1948 – Warner Pathe showed the very first color newsreel. Pictures of the Tournament of Roses Parade and the Rose Bowl football classic were seen by theatre audiences.

♥~ 1961 – “Hello. I’m Mr. Ed!” “A horse is a horse, of course, of course”… you know the lyrics. Mr. Ed, the talking horse, debuted for what would be a six-year run

♥~ 1968 – Dr. Benjamin Spock was indicted by a Boston federal grand jury for conspiracy to abet, aid and counsel draft dodgers.

♥~ 1970 – The soap opera “All My Children” premiered on ABC-TV.

★~ Born Today:

♥~ 1931 – Robert Duvall Academy Award-winning actor: Tender Mercies [1983]; A Family Thing, Stalin, A Show of Force, Days of Thunder , Colors, The Natural, True Confessions, Apocalypse Now, Network, The Godfather, M*A*S*H, True Grit, Countdown, Bullitt, To Kill a Mockingbird, Naked City

♥~ 1946 – Diane Keaton (Hall) Academy Award-winning actress: Annie Hall [1977]; Sleeper, Hair, Love and Death

♥~ 1948 – Ted Lange, Actor (“The Love Boat”)

♥~ 1953 – Pamela Sue Martin, Actress (“Dynasty”)

♥~ 1978 – January Jones, Actress (“Mad Men”)

★~ Good to Know: Wind Chill 

What does it really mean when Tom Skolling’s, Chicago’s premier weatherman, says that it feels like minus-20 in Chicago….

♥~ Why does wind make us feel cold:  When the wind blows across the exposed surface of our skin, it draws heat away from our bodies. When the wind picks up speed, it draws more heat away, so if your skin is exposed to the wind, your body will cool more quickly than it would have on a still day.

♥~ Discovery of wind chill factor:  American explorer and geographer Paul Siple and his fellow explorer Charles Passel made the first breakthroughs in wind chill research while on an expedition in the Antarctic in 1940. Siple and Passel suspended bottles of water outside a hut at their base station and measured how long it took the water to freeze under various wind conditions. After taking hundreds of these readings, the pair had a good idea of how rapidly heat was lost at different wind speeds.

♥~ Feels like:  The idea of expressing wind chills in terms of an equivalent temperature—the “feels like” language we hear on the news—didn’t start until the 1970s. Before the switch, weathermen would report the wind chill in three- or four-digit numbers which were a bit difficult for viewers to wrap their heads around. American weathermen started translating wind chills into temperature equivalents in order to give viewers a more familiar term.

♥~ Lowest wind chill recorded: On July 4, 2003, a remote weather station in east Antarctica picked up a minus-94 degree day. That would be plenty frigid on its own, but the wind was also blowing at 75 miles per hour, which would be good for a wind chill of about minus-150.

♥~Wind chill of -20°F means frostbite in 30 minutes; Wind chill of -35°F means frostbite in 10 minutes.; Wind chill of -55°F means frostbite in 5 minutes.

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While cleaning up some Odd achieves I found this link to Draw A Stickman and had fun all over again.

It’s getting a little violent in Chicago…. (Thanks, El Morno friend Cynthia for the share).

I have bit of cabin fever, so I’m going to brave the cold and head out for awhile.  No place exciting, just the pet food store and I might swing by Cosco. I found a bottle of Tylenol with Codeine hanging out in my medicine cabinet and those suckers are making my foot feel a while lot better so I am good to go for a few hours. If you hear a voice in the wind yelling, FREE, FREE at last, you’ll know it’s me.

Wishing everyone a super Sunday.

Odd Loves Company!

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