Words 3.6

 Words Twice a Week       3.6

Kind of rough this week, but that’s life sometimes.  Anyway, Neil Sedaka’s birthday.  That’s got to perk us up a bit!

Some days from the church calendar -

Mar 8  Geoffrey Anketell Studdert Kennedy   He was an Anglican priest and poet.  During the First World War he got the nickname Woodbine Willie for handing out Woodbine cigarettes to the soldiers he met.  He wrote a poem called Indifference.  Another called Roses in December.

Mar 10  Harriet Tubman   Born into slavery, she escaped and subsequently made some 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 enslaved people, including family and friends, using the Underground Railroad.  At the turn of the 20th century, Tubman became heavily involved with the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in Auburn. In 1903, she donated a parcel of real estate she owned to the church, under the instruction that it be made into a home for "aged and indigent colored people".[ The home did not open for another five years, and Tubman was dismayed when the church ordered residents to pay a $100 entrance fee. She said: "[T]hey make a rule that nobody should come in without they have a hundred dollars. Now I wanted to make a rule that nobody should come in unless they didn't have no money at all."

Mar 13  James Theodore Holly - was the first African-American bishop in the Protestant Episcopal Church, and spent most of his episcopal career as missionary bishop of Haiti.  He was ordained a priest on 2 January 1856 in New Haven, Connecticut. He co-founded the Protestant Episcopal Society for Promoting the Extension of the Church Among Colored People, which worked to have the General Convention adopt a position against slavery and eventually became the Union of Black Episcopalians.

And some days from the world/earth calendar

Mar 7 

+ Bloody Sunday  1965

Mar 8

+ CD’s were introduced in 1979.  Does anyone remember what cd’s are?

+ The Hitchhiker”s Guide to the Galaxy’s first episode was broadcast in 1978

+ Raymonde de Larouche became the first woman with a pilot’s license in 1910 at age 27.  She died at age 36 when her plane crashed in northern France.

Mar 9

+ It’s Barbie’s birthday – she went on sale in 1959

+ the electron microscope was invented in 1931 – changed the way we see things – like viruses!

+ birthday of Vyacheslav Molotov   (1890)  He was a strong supporter of Stalin, and involved in many atrocities.  The “cocktail” had been used in several other wars, but was essentially named by the Finns during the Winter War of 1939.

Mar 10  

+ first telephone call (1876)  – ________________ called ____________ and said “______”

+ most destructive bombing raid hits Tokyo – 1945.  About 100,000 civilians died in the fires caused by U.S. Airforce incendiary bombing.

Mar 11

+ Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan - 2011

+ 1990 – Lithuania becomes first Soviet republic to declare independence.

+ Douglas Adams was born in 1952.   He went on to write the above mentioned Hitchhiker’s Guide...

+ Rupert Murcock was born in 1931.  He went on to be the force behind Fox News, and others.

Mar 12

+ Hitler’s army invaded Austria in 1938

+ Gandhi embarked on his Salt March in 1930

+ Moscow became the capital of Russia, supplanting St Petersburg.

Mar 13

+ Uranus was discovered in 1781.  It’s the third largest (by radius) planet in the solar system, and the butt of high school (and sometimes adult bloggers!) jokes!

+ Neil Sedaka was born in 1939.  Breaking Up Is Hard To Do, Calendar girl, Stairway to Heaven, Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen, and more.  He was a founding member of The Tokens (The Lion Sleeps Tonight)!  On a 1965 episode of the quiz show I've Got a Secret, Sedaka's secret was that he was to represent the United States at the 1966 Tchaikovsky classical piano competition in Moscow. Unaware of Sedaka's secret, panelist Henry Morgan challenged Sedaka with the fact that the Soviet bureaucracy had outlawed rock 'n' roll music, and that any Western music young Russians wanted had to be smuggled into the country. Once Sedaka's secret had been revealed, he impressed the show's panelists with his performance of Frederic Chopin's "Fantaisie Impromptu".  Morgan's warning turned out to be prescient, however: despite Sedaka's classical roots, his "other" life as a pop star spurred the Soviet Union to disqualify him from entering the competition.

+ Susan B Anthony died in 1906. 

That’s what I got for now…..

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