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

★~  Today’s Quote: Saying you don’t look good in a hat is like saying you don’t look good in shoes! (unknown)

★~ Hat Day:

Be it cloche or wide-brimmed, knit or straw, today is the day to wear your most chic chapeau.

Carol, El Morno wishes you and all the red hat gals a happy red hat day.

★~ Strawberry Ice Cream Day:

The ice cream we know and love today evolved from ancient flavored ices. As early as 3000 BC, people in China served their guests sweet juices mixed with ice or snow.The average American eats a whopping 23.2 quarts of ice cream. According to a survey conducted by the International Ice Cream Association, strawberry is the third most popular ice cream flavor, favored by 5.3% of the population; vanilla and chocolate are the favorites. Here’s an interesting tidbit, should you need to defend your strawberry cone choice: Dolley Madison served strawberry ice cream at President Madison’s second Inaugural Ball in 1813.

★~ Today in History:

♥~ 1919 – Twenty-one people were killed and more than 100 others were injured by a flash flood in Boston — a flood of molasses. A 50-foot-tall holding tank owned by the Purity Distilling Company burst open, and more than two million gallons of molasses poured out in a wave that was said to be as high as 15 feet. The tank had sprung leaks before that day, and experts think the “Great Molasses Flood” might have been caused by unusually warm winter weather.

♥~ 1967 –  At the Los Angeles Coliseum, the Green Bay Packers beat the Kansas City Chiefs in the first-ever world championship game of American football.

♥~ 1943 – The world’s largest office building was completed, just outside of Washington, DC, in Arlington, VA. The massive structure covers 34 acres of land and has 17 miles of corridors, plus, a whole lot of secret places that we’ll never know about. Why? Because it’s the Pentagon, the headquarters of the United States defense effort.

♥~ 1947 – The mutilated remains of 22-year-old aspiring actress Elizabeth Short, known as the ‘Black Dahlia’ (for the dark outfits she wore), were found dumped in a vacant lot in Los Angeles. The Black Dahlia murder case remains unsolved even though some 500 hundred men have confessed to the murder.

♥~ 1967 – Ed Sullivan told The Rolling Stones to change the lyrics AND the title to the song, Let’s Spend the Night Together, or “be off my riiiillly big shew!” So, the Stones gave in… changing the tune to Let’s Spend Some Time Together

♥~ 1974 – Happy Days began an 11-year run on ABC-TV

♥~ 1981 – Hill Street Blues premiered on NBC-TV. It ran through May 19, 1987.

♥~ 2001 – 13 year anniversary of Wikipedia, web-based encyclopedia.

♥~ 2009 – Another East Coast disaster 90 years later had a much happier ending -the “Miracle on the Hudson,” when U.S. Airways pilot Chesley Sullenberger landed Flight 1549 from New York’s La Guardia Airport onto the Hudson River after birds flew into the engines two minutes into the flight. All of the crew members and the 150 passengers survived the water landing.

★~ Born Today:

♥~  1939 – Martin Luther King, Jr. . His dream was to bring about social, political and economic equality for blacks. In the quest for his ideals, he became one of the greatest civil rights leaders of the 20th century. A Baptist minister (as were his father and grandfather before him), he preached ‘nonviolent resistance’ to achieve full civil rights for all. Leading the African-American struggle for equality through non violent demonstrations. King was award the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

♥~ 1906 – Aristotle Onassis Greek shipping magnate: 2nd husband of Jaqueline Kennedy

♥~ 1913 – Lloyd Bridges actor: Sea Hunt, Roots, High Noon, Airplane!, Airplane 2, The Grace Kelly Story, The Rainmaker, The Great Wallendas, Joe Versus the Volcano; Jeff & Beau’s dad;

♥~ 1951 – Charo (Maria Rosario Pilar Martinez Molina Baeza) ‘The Hootchy Cootchy Girl’: actress: Chico and the Man, Airport ’79; singer: LPs: Guitar Passion, Cuchi-Cuchi, Ole Ole, Caliente!, Gusto

★~  Hat Gallimaufry: A Brief History of Hats

♥~ 1400 – The hennin: A tall, cone-shaped headdress for women called a hennin comes into vogue; it’s described by writer Colin McDowell as “one of the most bizarre and impractical items of dress ever created.”

♥~ 1529 – “Milliner”: The first record of the term milliner, which derived from Millaners – people who imported fine straw hats made in the Milan region of Northern Italy.

♥~ 1690 –  Men get the best hats. While women’s headdresses were merely variations on hoods, kerchiefs and caps for centuries, men were peacocks, by comparison.

♥~ 1760 –  The tricorne: The cavalier, a big-brimmed hat dripping with feathers and were impractical for riding, so gentlemen gradually adopted the tricorne, or “cocked” hat. The style was copied by the lower classes.

♥~ 1840 –  The top hat: These stove pipe hats were made of silk, beaver fur, oilcloth, you name it. They were popular for more than 100 years, and were still regularly worn into the 20th century.

♥~ 1865 –  The cowboy hat: John B. Stetson bought $10 worth of fur and founded his eponymous hat company in Texas. A year later, the iconic “Boss of the Plains” hat was born.

♥~ 1900 –  Hats hit the outer limits: Women come into their own, and “the art of millinery is pushed to its outermost limits,” author Colin McDowell says. By 1910, most hats are enormous and are festooned with feathers, silk flowers, waxed satin ribbon and tulle.

♥~ 1950 –  Pre-war habit: Before World War II, it was a rare woman or man who would leave the house without a hat, but that trend began to wane after the war.

♥~ 1961 –  The pillbox: Halston started working as a milliner at Bergdorf Goodman in New York, where one of his most loyal customers was Jackie Kennedy. He took the pillbox hat first worn by Greta Garbo in the 1930s and redesigned it for Kennedy, who made it a style icon. Fact: Halston’s head was the same size as Kennedy’s, so he tried on the hats he created for her before shipping to make sure they fit.

♥~ 1963 –  Hair: the new hat:  By the early 1960s, hats had fallen out of favor and stylish women turned to hairdressers as the creators of headdress.

♥~ 1981 –  Royalty brings a return of the hat. After two difficult decades, hats started coming back, thanks to Princess Diana, who favored the chic designs of John Boyd.

♥~ 2011 – Fascinators:  Hats play a starring role in the royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, an event that brought the “fascinator” into common parlance. British milliner Philip Treacy created dozens of the cross between a hat and a hairpiece for the wedding, and Princess Beatrice’s taupe-colored, ribbony example became an Internet punch line. Sales of fascinators soared.

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A friend of Cole’s gave him a 2000 piece puzzle, and we’ve been staying up much too late working on it. Our normal jigsaw puzzles are about 500 pieces. I’m currently in charge of sorting pieces by color. My first job, of-course, was turning over the pieces and pulling out the border pieces. If you have any tips for working large unruly puzzles please do share. I can’t imagine what Cole did to his friend to deserve a 2000 piece puzzle but I plan to ask her. I’m guessing it has to do with his overall puzzle smugness.

I am going to make a Double Chocolate Coca Cola Cake today. I’ll share pictures, and the recipe if it turns out. It sure looks good and has rave reviews.

The only hats I am wearing these days are knit and fit snugly over my ears. My favorite one is red.

Thursday Motivation….I’ll post the quotes as long as I can find them.

Odd Loves Company,