★~♥~♥~★~ El Morno! ♥~★~★~♥ ~
April 15, 2014

Luna Eclipse: April 15, 2014

★~ Today’s Quote:  “We all shine on…like the moon and the stars and the sun…we all shine on…come on and on and on…”  ― John Lennon

★~ Rubber Eraser Day:

Without the invention of the rubber eraser, our faux pas would not be erased, and our documents and drawings would be messy. We would live in a constant state of “do over.”  Today we are grateful for the invention the rubber erasers!

 ★~ Take A Wild Guess Day: 

A celebration of hunches, guesses, and gut feelings. Can you guess the answer to this question?

A rooster laid an egg on top of the barn roof. Which way did it roll?

And of-course if you get the answer wrong just grab your handy rubber eraser!

★~ Glazed-Spiral Ham Day:

The spiral-ham slicer was invented in the mid 1950s by Harry Hoenselaar, who was also the founder of the HoneyBaked Ham Company.

Bourbon, Pineapple & Orange-Glazed Ham

★~ Today in History:

♥~ 1770- The rubber eraser was invented (more or less)by the noted scientist Sir Joseph Priestley (discoverer of oxygen).

♥~ 1934 – Dagwood and Blondie Bumstead welcomed a baby boy, Alexander, to the comic strip, Blondie. The child would be nicknamed, Baby Dumpling.

♥~ 1955 – “Two all beef patties…” This is the anniversary of McDonald’s. Ray Kroc opened the first McDonald’s — in Des Plaines, IL. Kroc began his career by selling milk shake machines. Among his first customers were the McDonald brothers from Southern California. After selling them several machines and watching the efficiency of their drive-in restaurant, Kroc bought the rights to market the brothers’ good fortune and hired them to work for him. On his first day of business, sales of 15-cent hamburgers and 10-cent French fries totaled $366.12. Thirty years later, McDonald’s grossed a whopping $8.6 billion annually

♥~ 1956 – The worlds’ first all-color, TV station was dedicated — in Chicago, IL. It was named WNBQ-TV and is now WMAQ-TV

♥~ 1971 – George C. Scott refused the Oscar for his Best Actor performance in Patton at the 43rd Annual Academy Awards ceremony at LA’s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. He had previously told reporters that he did not want the honor, saying (after the votes had been cast and tallied), “It is degrading to have actors in competition with each other.” Scott called the Oscar ceremony, “a two-hour meat parade, a public display with contrived suspense for economic reasons.

♥~ 1989 – Roy Orbison’s You Got It hit #9 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was the first top-ten hit for Orbison since Oh, Pretty Woman in 1964.

♥~ 1947 – Jackie Robinson played his first major-league baseball game (he had played exhibition games previously) for the Brooklyn Dodgers. He went 0-for-4 against Boston. Robinson did get on base due to an error and scored the winning run in a 5-3 win for the Dodgers.

★~Born Today:

♥~  1707 – Leonard Euler, physicist and mathematician. Euler’s made notable contribution to discoveries in the fields of infinitesimal calculus and graph theory,

♥~1452 – Leonardo da Vinci artist: Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, The Virgin of the Rocks, The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne; died May 2, 1519

♥~1933 – Elizabeth Montgomery actress: Bewitched, Robert Montgomery Presents; died May 18, 1995.

♥~ 1951 – Heloise (Ponce Kiah Marchelle Heloise Cruse Evans) newspaper columnist, writer: Hints from Heloise; she took over the Heloise empire after her mother, the original Heloise, died in 1977

Popular Heloise Tip: Easy Window-Cleaning Formula
To clean windows I go with my mother’s homemade formula. Just grab your bottle of household vinegar — white or apple cider, whichever is cheaper at the store. You can mix about 1/4 cup of vinegar with 1 quart water. You can also mix 1 tablespoon of clear (nonsudsing) ammonia with 1 quart of water. Be sure to label the spray bottle well, and you can even add a drop of blue food coloring so the cleaner looks like the store-bought stuff. I still swear by newspapers to dry with. Some people don’t like them because they can leave ink on your hands, but they sure make the windows shine and don’t leave lint like paper towels. A squeegee is a must for washing windows and will really do a good job. Remember, don’t wash windows on a bright sunny day; the cleaning solution dries too quickly and may streak. Also, if doing both sides, wipe in an up-and-down motion on one side, then side-to-side on the other. You will be able to see which side the streaks are on.

♥~1990 – Emma Watson actress: Harry Potter series.

★~ Good to Know: 

♥~  What causes an eclipse:  The cause of lunar eclipses is simple: Earth gets in the way. The Moon is a shiny beacon because it reflects sunlight. The Moon makes no light of its own. Earth always casts a shadow into space, and every now and then everything aligns just right so that the shadow falls on the Moon. Lunar eclipses can only occur during a Full Moon,  when the Moon is directly opposite the Earth in relation to the Sun.

♥~ Why lunar eclipses don’t occur every month:   Eclipses are relatively rare because the plane in which the Moon orbits around Earth is tilted 5 degrees compared to the plane of Earth’s travels around the Sun, a plane that astronomers call the ecliptic. To visualize, think of commingling Hula Hoops — one big and one small — floating on the surface of a pool, and push the inner one down so that half of it is below the surface and half above. When the Moon gets into the ecliptic –right at the surface of the pool — during its full phase, then a lunar eclipse occurs. (The word “ecliptic” stems from the word “eclipse.”) The geometry of any eclipse — the relative positions of the Sun, Earth and Moon — is eventually repeated during a set of complex cycles that each last just more than 18 years. This Saros cycle, as the whole thing is called, is behind the bunching of eclipses, too. Astronomers have figured it out and can predict eclipse timing and circumstances far into future

♥~ The Name Blood Moon: During an eclipse, the moon may turn a red or coppery color as it reflects sunrises and sunsets happening around the world. While the moon is in shadow, some light from the sun shines through Earth’s atmosphere. Red light (unlike other colors that are blocked and scattered) is better able to penetrate the atmosphere, which creates this “bloody” effect.

.♥~ A bite out of the Moon: For ancient people, eclipses were odd and inexplicable, even terrifying. Some cultures saw lunar eclipses as signs of celestial wrath that portended famine or disease. The Chinese word for eclipse is chih, which means “to eat.”

♥~  Myths persist today:  In Japan, some people still cover wells to avoid being poisoned by the disease of the Moon during an eclipse. Native residents of Arctic regions are known to turn over their utensils to avoid contamination. In other cultures, people yell at the Moon during an eclipse, or they bang pots or even shoot into the air.

♥~  Stonehenge may have predicted eclipses: The mysterious arrangement of boulders in England has long been associated with celestial meaning. One purpose for the arrangement of the rocks may have been to predict lunar eclipses. In the year 2000, a researcher who had been studying Stonehenge for two decades stumbled upon the observation that if a person placed stone markers at strategic locations atop 19 columns, a known 47-month cycle of lunar eclipses would become apparent.

♥~ Eclipses changed history: When the Moon disappeared in 413 BC, Athenians saw it as a bad omen and delayed their planned retreat from the Sicilian city of Syracuse, where they had fought for two years in the Peloponnesian War. The Syracusans used the delay as an opportunity to break the siege, contributing — some believe — to the fall of Greek civilization. Christopher Columbus and his crew were stranded in Jamaica in 1503, this was his fourth voyage ,and they were wearing out their welcome with the natives, who were feeding them. Columbus knew a lunar eclipse was coming, so he “predicted” the Moon’s disappearance. The natives begged him to bring it back and, of course, he did, in due time.

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I went out last night at 2am to check out the moon. It was cloudy, but the clouds parted for about 15 seconds and I was able to capture the picture at the top of El Morno.  I lightened the picture so the moon was not as red as it appears in the picture but it was red. Watching the eclipse was exciting and a little eerie since I was the only one out moon gazing. Cole told me I could wake him, but he had just gone to bed an a couple of hours earlier so I figured he could catch the next one. This was the first total lunar eclipse of 2014,  marking the start of an eclipse tetrad — four back-to-back total lunar eclipses will happen over the next 18 months. I strongly recommend setting your alarm and heading outside to watch. Don’t let a cloudy night keep you in bed, because you just never know!

Hope everyone has a terrific Tuesday, but if it’s less than terrific feel free to rant – It’s Rant Tuesday!

Odd Loves Company,