★~♥~♥~★~ El Morno! ♥~★~★~♥ ~
February 18, 2013

★~ Today’s Quote: A little flattery will support a man through great fatigue.” – James Monroe

★~ Presidents Day:

From the silly, odd, and scandalous how well do you know our Presidents?   Answers Below

1. Which president was so tiny, he probably could have shopped at a sample sale?

James Garfield

James Madison

2. Which president was a phone-rejecting luddite?

Calvin Coolidge

Warren Harding

3. Which president served the shortest tern in office?

James A Garfield

William Henry Harrison

4. Which president was ousted from his own bedroom by the entourage of a visiting prince?

James Bychanan

Millard Fillmore

5. Which president was a Yellowstone park ranger and a fashion model prior to his stint as president?

Gerald Ford

Lyndon B. Johnson

6. Which president’s father gave his own son a lackluster recommendation to accompany his college application?

Richard Nixon

John F Kennedy

7. Which president owned two pet dogs unimaginatively named Him and Her?

Lyndon B Johnson

Ronald Reagan

8. Which president enjoyed the bizarre ritual of having his head rubbed with Vaseline while eating breakfast in bed?

Calvin Coolidge

Dwight D Eisenhower

9. Which president could speed-read at a rate of 2,000 words per minute?

Bill Clinton

Jimmy Carter

10. Which president was fined $20 for a speeding ticket while in office?

Ulysses S. Grant

Chester A Arthur

11. Which of these scoundrels was arrested while in office?

Franklin Pierce

William McKinley

12. Which president was the first to attend a major league baseball game?

James K Polk

Benjamin Harrison

13. Who was the only president to be elected to two nonconsecutive terms?

Grover Cleveland

Rutherford B. Hayes

14. Which president was the first to own an automobile while in office?

William McKinley

Theodore Roosevelt

15. Which president frequently went skinny-dipping in the Potomac before work?

John Quincy Adams

James Monroe

★~  National Crab-Stuffed Flounder Day:

Is it summer yet? Stuffed flounder is a meal usually enjoyed during the summer months. After a long night of floundering, you get up the next morning, prepare the crab stuffing and stuff the flounder. That night you bake it in the oven and serve it with lemon wedges.

Of-course If you are not up to floundering yourself or live in a location where  fishing  for your own flounder isn’t possible then you can run down to the seafood market and pick up a nice fish and crab meat. Or make reservations at a sea food restaurant and sit back, sip wine and let them flounder. That would work best for me. Crab-Stuffed Flounder Recipe

★~  Drink Wine Day:

The first wino was Dionysus: the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness and ecstasy in Greek mythology. People have been producing wine since at least 6000 B.C. There are dozens of ancient legends about humans who accidentally consumed fermented grapes and became intoxicated, which is probably how wine was first conceived. Eventually, people began experimenting with the fermentation process. The methods for making wine spread from the region of Mesopotamia to Egypt, Greece, Rome, France, Spain, and eventually the New World. Today, over 20 million acres of the earth’s surface are dedicated to growing grapes for wine. Studies have shown that drinking a glass of wine a day improves heart health, reduces forgetfulness, boosts immunity, and increases bone density.  Cheers!

★~ Today In History:

♥~1735 – The first opera performed in America, known as either Flora or Hob in the Well, was presented in Charleston, SC.

♥~ 1856 –  The Know-Nothing Party nominated its first and only presidential candidate, former president Millard Fillmore. He carried only the state of Maryland in the November election.

♥~ 1930 – Elm Farm Ollie became the first cow to fly in an airplane. Elm Farm Ollie was a Guernsey who took to the air and as a special added attraction, got a milking in flight (mmmmmoooooooo!) while over St. Louis, MO. The milk was sealed in little paper containers and then parachuted over the city.

♥~ 1930 – Pluto, the ninth planet in order from the sun, was discovered this day. Clyde W. Tombaugh stumbled across Pluto using the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. (The announcement of the discovery wasn’t made until March 13, 1930.) Note: In 2006 Pluto was reclassified as a ‘dwarf planet’ by the International Astronomical Union. However, a number of scientists continue to hold that Pluto should be classified as a planet

♥~ 1953 – The new fad in America was 3-D, as demonstrated in the movie, Bwana Devil. The 3-D feature opened at Loew’s State Theatre in New York City. Arch Oboler directed the movie which starred Robert Stack and the three-dimensional Barbara Britton.

♥~ 1970 – The Chicago 7 were acquitted. The seven anti-war protesters had been tried for conspiring to incite riots during the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago.

★~ Born Today:

♥~ 1848 – Louis Comfort Tiffany artist and designer best known for his work in stained glass, including lampshades, jewelery, tiles and vases; son of Charles Lewis Tiffany, founder of Tiffany and Company; died Jan 17, 1933

♥~ 1898 – Enzo Ferrari auto racer, auto manufacturer; died Aug 14, 1988

♥~ 1922 – Helen Gurley Brown feminist; publisher: Cosmopolitan; author: Sex and the Office; died Aug 13, 2012

♥~ 1933 – Yoko Ono Lennon singer: Walking on Thin Ice; artist; John Lennon’s widow

♥~ 1950 – John Hughes film writer, producer, director: Sixteen Candles, Maid in Manhattan, Just Visiting, Reach the Rock, Flubber, Miracle on 34th Street [1994], Baby’s Day Out, Home Alone, The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off; died Aug 6, 2009

♥~ 1950 – Cybill Shepherd actress: Cybill, Moonlighting, The Last Picture Show, The Long Hot Summer

♥~ 1964 – Matt Dillon actor: My Bodyguard, Drugstore Cowboy, The Outsiders, There’s Something About Mary

♥~ 1968 – Molly Ringwald actress: Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, The Facts of Life, Requiem for Murder. Interesting Side Note: John Huges ^ and Molly Ringwald were born on the dame day. Hughes became a popular movie director and featured Ringwald in three hit films, including “Sixteen Candles” and “The Breakfast Club.” Most of Hughes’ movies are set in and around Chicago.

★~ Did You Know:

1. Which president was so tiny, he probably could have shopped at a sample sale? James Madison (1751-1836) was a munchkin of a president at 5’4, and only 100 lbs.

2. Which president was a phone-rejecting luddite? President Coolidge (1872-1933) famously refused to use the telephone for presidential business. The first telephone was installed by Rutherford B. Hayes in 1877 — 46 years before President Coolidge took office. Talk about a slow adopter!

3. Which president served the shortest tern in office? William Henry Harrison (1773-1841) was America’s 9th president for a measly 31 days before succumbing to pneumonia. James A. Garfield comes in at a close second for shortest term served in the White House. President Garfield was assassinated just 199 days into his presidency by Charles Guiteau, who felt cheated out of an appointment as American consul general to Paris.

4.  Which president was ousted from his own bedroom by the entourage of a visiting prince? According to White House lore, the Prince of Wales brought such an enormous entourage with him from Great Britain when visiting the White House in 1860 that President Buchanan (1791-1868) slept in the hallway to accommodate them. How gracious!

5. Which president was a Yellowstone park ranger and a fashion model prior to his stint as president?  Not only did 38th President Gerald Ford (1913-2006) work as a Yellowstone park ranger during the summer of 1936, but he also struck some sassy poses for Cosmo and Look in the 1940s. Who knew he was such a rustic charmer?

6. Which president’s father gave his own son a lackluster recommendation to accompany his college application? When JFK applied to his father’s alma mater, Harvard University, his dad Joseph wrote to the dean that “Jack has a very brilliant mind for the things in which he is interested, but is careless and lacks application in those in which he is not interested. This is, of course, a bad fault.” Even with mediocre test scores, JFK matriculated and graduated cum laude.

7.  Which president owned two pet dogs unimaginatively named Him and Her? Lyndon B. Johnson owned five pet dogs over the course of his presidency, but beagles Him and Her were by far the most famous. He often took them for a stroll while chatting with the press corps on the White House lawn.

8.  Which president enjoyed the bizarre ritual of having his head rubbed with Vaseline while eating breakfast in bed? President Coolidge (1872-1933) was a peculiar man. In addition to this odd affinity for oily head-rubbing, Pres. Coolidge also had a mechanical horse installed in the White House to keep his horseback riding skills sharp.

9. Which president could speed-read at a rate of 2,000 words per minute? Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, along with about thirty White House staff members, enrolled in an evening speed-reading course offered to them by the Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics company. His impressive rate of 2,000 words per minute presumably helped him keep pace with the 300 pages of material that crossed his desk every day.

10:  Which president was fined $20 for a speeding ticket while in office? Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885), 18th president and famous Civil War general, was fined $20 (the equivalent of about $380 in today’s currency) for speeding on his horse and buggy in Washington. He then allegedly was forced to walk home. No special treatment, even for a war hero!

11:  Which of these scoundrels was arrested while in office?  Franklin Pierce (1804-1869) was arrested during his first year in office for running over an old woman on horseback. He was let off the hook due to insufficient evidence, but met with both political controversy and personal tragedy throughout adulthood.

12. Which president was the first to attend a major league baseball game? On June 6, 1892, President Harrison (1833-1901) became the first presidential spectator at a major league baseball game. It wasn’t until 1910, however, that President Howard Taft began the tradition of having the sitting president throw the first pitch of each season.

13. Who was the only president to be elected to two nonconsecutive terms?  President Cleveland (1837-1908) was both the 22nd and 24th president of the United States. After winning the popular vote in 1888 but losing to Benjamin Harrison in the electoral college, he was re-nominated in 1892 and won fair and square.

14. Which president was the first to own an automobile while in office? While William McKinley (1843-1901) was the first president to ride in an automobile while in office, Teddy Roosevelt (1858-1919) was the first acting president in possession of a White House vehicle (a Stanley Steamer). Teddy Roosevelt supposedly still preferred to ride horses, and the White House stables were only replaced with an automobile fleet during William Howard Taft’s presidency.

15. Which president frequently went skinny-dipping in the Potomac before work? Sixth U.S. president John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) wasn’t the only president who enjoyed the occasional birthday suit swim. The White House has a salacious history of presidential nude swimming, which includes LBJ, Jimmy Carter, FDR, Theodore Roosevelt, and JFK. Legend holds that female journalist Anne Royall squatted on John Quincy Adams’s clothing on the shore until he answered all her questions. What a way to get caught with your pants down…or off altogether.

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This made me smile…

Hope every one has a Merry Monday! I am making apple pancakes for breakfast this morno. Mary Lee shared the recipe and I can’t wait to try them..I will share with you depending on the outcome.

My sweet mom was number 6th on the tracking field, in the hot dessert sun and Trinket said, “Forget this, lets get ice cream.” Not really but the luck of the draw was not with them this time. It’s a crap out for sure but as we are fond of saying in Chicago…there is always next time. If not tracking then something else…..And lets not forget Trinket already has more titles than the Queen of England. And she earned her titles! It’s also not as bad as losing at Westminister to a blind judge and Affenpincher. . .Hey, dog show people have never been called nice, and we just pretend to be good sports 😀

Odd Loves Compay,