★~♥~♥~★~ El Morno! ♥~★~★~♥ ~
June 10, 2015

★~ Today’s Quote: “There should be a place where only the things you want to happen, happen” ― Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are

★~ Ball Point Pen Day

In 1943, brothers Laszlo and Georg Bíró filed a patent for what’s now one of the world’s most common writing instruments, the ball point pen.  Others had tried to design a self-inking mechanical pen that rolled on a ball, with little success. The Bírós perfected the design, named it the Birome, and opened a pen shop in Argentina. In 1945, the pens went on sale in the U.S., at Gimbel’s in New York, for $12.50 each ($145, inflation adjusted). The store sold $125,000 worth on day one, and Bic, which bought the patent, has sold 100 billion-plus since 1950.

★~ Ice Tea Day:

Iced tea is an iconic summer beverage and one of the most refreshing elixirs known to man. There is something magical about the combination of brewed tea, sugar, mint leaves, and fresh lemon slices served over ice. Historians believe that people began serving cold tea sometime during the 19th century. The drink became popular when vendors started selling it at public events and the World’s Fair.

Sweetened or unsweetened, flavored or unflavored, celebrate Iced Tea Day with a nice, tall glass of your favorite iced tea!  Lipton cold brew ice tea is a tasty choice. I drink it by the gallons in the summer. Other options include:

Southern Sweet Iced Tea
Iced Tea Granita
Long Island Iced Tea
Peach Iced Tea

★~ Today in History:

♥~ 1902 –  Americus F. Callahan patented (U.S. No. 701,839) what he called the outlook or see-through envelope. The rest, of course, is accounts payable history…

♥~ 1972 – Sammy Davis Jr. earned his place at the top of the popular music charts for the first time, after years in the entertainment business.  The Candy Man, stayed at the top for three consecutive weeks.

♥~ 1976 – Paul McCartney and Wings set a record for an indoor concert crowd as 67,100 fans gathered at the Kingdome in Seattle, WA to hear the former Beatle and his new group.

♥~ 1988 – An American clergyman claimed the TV cartoon character “Mighty Mouse” had been shown snorting cocaine. CBS producers denied the claim and said he was only sniffing flowers.

★~Born Today:

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 ♥ ~ 1881 – Leo Tolstoy Author,  Tolstoy two greatest novels, were War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877)

♥~ 1895 – Hattie McDaniel Academy Award-winning actress: Gone with the Wind [1939]: 1st African-American to win Oscar; Judge Priest, The Little Colonel, Showboat, Saratoga, Since You Went Away; died Oct 26, 1952

♥~ 1915 – Saul Bellow Nobel Prize-winning writer: The Adventures of Augie March, Herzog, Mr. Sammler’s Planet, Dangling Man, The Victim, Henderson the Rain King; died Apr 5, 2005

♥~ 1922 – Judy Garland (Frances Ethel Gumm) singer: Over the Rainbow, The Trolley Song, You Made Me Love You, The Man that Got Away; actress: The Wizard of Oz, Meet Me in St. Louis, A Star is Born, Easter Parade, The Harvey Girls, Judgment at Nuremberg; mother of Liza Minnelli and Lorna & Joey Luft; died June 22, 1969

♥~ 1928 – Maurice Sendak author, illustrator:  Sendak was discovered by legendary children’s book editor Ursula Nordstrom in the 1940s while working as a painter for window displays at F.A.O. Schwarz. He went on to publish more than 50 books, including “Where the Wild Things Are,” one of the most beloved children’s books of all time. Sendak’s works are known as complex and characteristically dark. His many awards have included the Caldecott Medal, the Hans Christian Andersen Medal, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, the National Medal of Arts, and the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award.

♥~ 1965 – Elizabeth Hurley, Model, actress: Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, Christabel, Orchid House, Passenger 57

★~ Pen Gallimaufry:

♥~ They’re 5,000 Years Old:  The ancient Egyptians used reed straws with a split nib to write on papyrus as long ago as 3,000BC. They would mix soot or red ochre with vegetable gum and beeswax to produce ink.

♥~ Where There’s A Quill There’s A Way:The reed pen was gradually replaced by the feather quill. The quill was more flexible than the reed pen and allowed more ornate lettering to be produced. Goose feathers were most commonly used, although other birds were also used.

♥~ The Industrial Revolution:Quill pens continued to be used right up until the early 19th century when they were replaced by the metal dip pen. In the 1850s, Birmingham became the global capital of pen nib manufacture, producing half of all the pens in the world.

♥~Reel Around The Fountain Pen: People had been experimenting with fountain pens in one form or another since the 10th century, there had been little success. Lewis Edison Waterman is believed to have invented the first successful fountain pen while working as an insurance salesman. A faulty pen is said to have leaked onto a contract he was about to sign, and as he prepared a fresh copy, the client signed with somebody else.

♥~ It Takes Twenty-One Ballpoints To Run A Marathon: The average Bic Cristal ballpoint can produce a line of around 1.24 miles. That means that one single pen could draw a line over four times longer than the height of the Empire State Building.

♥~ Truly Mightier Than The Sword: Modern ballpoint pens feature metal balls as the writing point, often these are made from tungsten carbide. Three times tougher than steel and denser than titanium, tungsten carbide means that the pen truly is mightier than the sword.

♥~ Unique Style:  While ballpoints use tungsten carbide for their writing points, fountain pens usually use either steel or, on more expensive models, precious metals like gold. Gold-nibbed fountain pens slowly adjust to your writing style – as you use the pen, the gold nib will flex and soften, giving greater character to your handwriting and becoming truly unique.

♥~ Diamonds Are A Pen’s Best Friend Although it might sound extravagant to buy a pen with a gold nib, it’s nothing compared to the Aurora Diamante. With a solid platinum barrel, and coated with two thousand gems (including 30 carats of diamonds), the pen is valued at around $1.28m. At a price like that, you’d make sure you never lost it.

♥~ One Pen You Would Never Lose: You wouldn’t need to worry about losing a pen if you were Acharya Makunuri Srinivasa. In 2011 in India, he created the world’s biggest ballpoint pen, measuring 5.5 m (18 ft 0.53 in) and weighing 37.23 kg (82.08 lb 1.24 oz).

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Ok. The picture at the top of El Morno is a sunset picture; not a sunrise picture. But I couldn’t resist showing off one of Chicago’s spectacular sunset that I snapped from across the lake while on the Indiana dunes shoreline.

I almost killed my teen over a ballpoint pen the other day.  I picked up an innocent looking pen off the patio table and it promptly leaked ink all over my hands. Whilst I was trying to scrub the blue ink off, the horrid teen, mentioned that the same pen had leaked on him earlier in the day. He wasn’t sure why he didn’t throw it away…Is it to late to sell him to the gypsies? Do you have a favorite type of ballpoint pen?

Have a wonderful Wednesday,

Odd Loves Company!