★~♥~♥~★~ El Morno! ♥~★~★~♥ ~
August 4, 2015

★~ Today’s Quote: And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good. ~ John Steinbeck

★~ Coast Guard Day:

–U.S. Coast Guard:  On August 4, 1790  Congress authorized the President to build and equip ten boats to collect revenue, and provide for a complement of officers and men to operate them. This early service known as the Revenue Marine (later the Revenue Cutter Service) represented an attempt to counter a serious smuggling problem that had tremendous financial impact on the nation’s ability to enforce its laws at sea.

Currently, The Coast Guard oversees maritime safety and security, national defense, mobility, and the protection of natural resources. That means they protect the international water borders, prevent smuggling (drug busts!), perform search and rescue, as well as protect the coastal environments. That’s a pretty darn big job. Hats off to the Coast Guard!

★~ Today in History:

♥~ 1830 – The plans for the city of Chicago were laid out and the rest is history! The area’s original settlers were the Algonquian people. They dubbed it “Shikaakwa,” which means “stinky onion.” The first outsider to build a permanent home in the area was Jean Baptiste Point de Sable; he built a log cabin at the mouth of the Chicago River in the 1780s. The U.S. military built Fort Dearborn in 1804, at what would eventually be the intersection of North Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive. In 1829, the Illinois legislature appointed a commission to make plans for a canal to connect the Chicago and Des Plaines Rivers, and lay out some surrounding streets. The commission hired surveyor James Thompson to draw up the first map. It covered three-eighths of a square mile, bounded by Madison, State, Kinsey, and Halsted Streets; at that time, the city had a population of fewer than 100 people. The filing of the plans marked the first official recognition of the municipality of Chicago. It was incorporated as a city on March 4, 1837.

Given Chicago’s location on the Great Lakes, sharp-eyed East Coast entrepreneurs saw the potential to make it a transportation hub. They bought up the best properties. Four years later, the first commercial schooner entered the harbor from New York. The fertile farmland was also highly desirable to Eastern speculators, and the city grew up very quickly. The agriculture boom led to the construction of roads to transport crops, grain elevators to store them, and docks from which to ship them to New York via the Great Lakes and the Erie Canal. In 1848, the Illinois and Michigan Canal opened up a waterway from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River. The first rail line was completed that same year. When the transportation infrastructure was in place, the city became home to major mail-order retailers like Montgomery Ward and Sears, Roebuck and Company. It also housed huge feedlots and slaughterhouses, which supplied salted meat to diners all over the East. The population of Chicago exploded, and soon it rivaled New York. When the two cities began a race to build the tallest building, a derisive New Yorker article dubbed Chicago “the second city.”

♥~ 1922 – Every telephone in the U.S. and Canada went dead as the Bell System shut down all its switchboards and switching stations for one minute in memory of Alexander Graham Bell, who had died two days earlier.

♥~ 1983 – New York Yankee outfielder Dave Winfield threw a baseball during warmups and accidentally killed a seagull! After the game, Toronto police surrounded the slugger and arrested him for “causing unnecessary suffering to an animal.”

★~Born Today:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/kmfeKUNDDYs[/youtube]

♥~ 1834 – John Venn FRS,  was a British logician and philosopher. He is famous for introducing the Venn diagram, which is used in many fields, including set theory, probability, logic, statistics, and computer science. Check out  Google’s latest Doodle marking the 180th anniversary John Venn’s birth.

♥~ 1901 – (Daniel) Louis Armstrong Satchmo: jazz musician: trumpet; Grammy Award-winning singer: Hello, Dolly! [1964], Lifetime Achievement Award [1971]; It’s a Wonderful World, Mack the Knife, Blueberry Hill; appeared in films: The Five Pennies, The Glenn Miller Story, Hello Dolly!, High Society; American ambassador of good will; inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame [1990]; died July 6, 1971

♥~ 1961 – Barack Obama 44th U.S. President [2009- ], first African American to be elected U.S. President; U.S. Senator from Illinois [2005-2009]; Illinois State Senator [1997-2004]; president of Harvard Law Review [1990]; married [Jun 1989] to Michelle Robinson; two daughters: Malia Ann and Natasha [‘Sasha’]

♥~ 1961 – Lauren Tom actress: The Joy Luck Club, When a Man Loves a Woman, Grace Under Fire, DAG, Max Steel

★~Tip Gallimaufry:

Two clever ways to keep your jeans tucked inside your boots. 

Mitten Clips! 

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El Morno was ready to post at 5am this morning. But I never hit publish. Let’s not talk about it but it might have been the diarrhea that Rascal (my pup) was suffering from that distracted me…..I hope everyone had a terrific day and I’ll see you in the Morno.

Odd Loves Company,