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June 15 is Magna Carta Day

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magna carta dayMagna Carta Day, explained in the style of Jeff Spicoli:

In 1215, the king of England was a total wad, so a bunch of rich baron dudes got together and decided his divine right was bogus, so they drew up some cool rules they called the Great Charter until somebody said it sounded way more righteous in Latin. They took it to the king on June 15th and told him, “Sign it, or you’ll never party again,” which was a gnarly scene for a minute, but then he signed it. 

The Pope was not cool with that and said, “Later, dudes!” and kicked all the baron guys out of the church. But none of it matters anyhow because Julius Caesar’s calendar was a mess so we use a different one now, which means the Carta got signed on June 8th, but then, like, did it even happen?

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June 14 is Pop Goes the Weasel Day

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pop goes the weasel day

Today is Pop Goes the Weasel Day, celebrating the rhyme we’ve known since childhood and the tune that sticks in our heads every time we hear it played on an ice cream truck. But what does the song mean? pop goes the weasel dayThe short answer is that it’s probably nonsense verse made popular (no pun intended) because children enjoyed shouting, “Pop!” It’s believed to have originated in the 1700s in England, but the first official version of the song wasn’t published there until the 1850s. Within a few years, it jumped the pond and appeared in Boston and New York newspapers.

The British version had many variations but usually shared these basic verses:

Half a pound of tupenny rice,
Half a pound of treacle.
That’s the way the money goes,
Pop! goes the weasel.

Every night when I get home
The monkey’s on the table,
Take a stick and knock it off,
Pop! goes the weasel.

Up and down the City Road,
In and out the Eagle.
That’s the way the money goes,
Pop! goes the weasel.

The first verse seems to refer to cheap rice and treacle, a molasses-based syrup. Several British slang dictionaries agree that “monkey” represented £500, a tidy sum in those days. The Eagle most likely refers to the name of a pub on City Road in London. Today it displays a plaque endorsing this interpretation of the verse.

Is “Pop Goes the Weasel” about a dad who takes the money meant to put better food on the table and heads to the pub to drink it away? Maybe, maybe not. What does any of this have to do with a weasel, and why does it pop? Theories abound:

  1. It refers to a dead weasel. Weasels pop their heads up when alarmed. Apparently, things did not go well for this one.
  2. A “Spinner’s weasel” is a spoked reel that measures yarn and makes a popping sound to indicate the desired length, usually a skein, has been reached.
  3. In English (usually Cockney) rhyming slang, “weasel” is short for “weasel and stoat,” which stands for “coat, ” usually a fancy one to wear to church on Sunday.
  4. “Pop” stands for “pawn.”

This leaves us with a dead rodent, a woman—sorry to reinforce gender norms, but that’s how it was—working her fingers to the bone spinning yarn and/or a man who spends so much on beer that he has to pawn his coat on Monday morning, then work all week so he can buy it back to wear on the following Sunday.

Soon after “Pop Goes the Weasel” arrived in the U.S. in the 1850s, it began to evolve. Today, its lyrics vary but tend to contain some permutation of the following:

All around the mulberry bush,
The monkey chased the weasel.
The monkey thought ’twas all in good sport,
Pop! goes the weasel.

A penny for a spool of thread,
A penny for a needle—
That’s the way the money goes,
Pop! goes the weasel.

Jimmy’s got the whooping cough
And Timmy’s got the measles.
That’s the way the story goes,
Pop! goes the weasel.

Even if we can’t agree on the words and their meanings (or lack thereof), we all remember bits of that first verse, and the tune is universal. What does it remind you of? We think of warm summer days playing tag and running after the ice cream truck.

Happy Pop Goes the Weasel Day. And to all you weasels: Let’s be careful out there.

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Donald Duck Day

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donald duck dayJune 9 is Donald Duck Day. It celebrates the date in 1934 when he first appeared in a Disney cartoon called “The Wise Little Hen.” His rise was meteoric. Only nine years later, in 1943, Donald won an Oscar for his role in a satire about Nazis, only to see the film shelved by Disney for the next 71 years.

In his 1941 authorized biography, The Life of Donald Duck, he revealed he’d been born on Friday the 13th. When he starred in “Donald’s Happy Birthday” in 1949, his car’s license plate number read 313, which many fans took to mean he was born on March 13th.

This has caused a schism between those who celebrate Donald Duck Day on June 9th and those who insist it should be observed on March 13th. Although his publicist has not returned our calls, we believe Donald Fauntleroy Duck would approve of at least two days dedicated in his honor.

His performance in “Der Fuehrer’s Face” helped it win the 1943 Academy Award for best animated short film. In it, he awakens in a nightmare world where he is a Nazi. (Its original title was “Donald Duck in Nutzi Land” but was changed to “Der Fuehrer’s Face” after the novelty song by that name became a runaway hit for Spike Jones and his City Slickers.)

Propaganda films weren’t unusual, but because Donald appeared as a Nazi, however unwillingly, the cartoon was considered objectionable and relegated to the Disney vault after the end of World War II. In 1994, a group of 1,000 members of the animation industry voted it one of the 50 greatest cartoons ever made. Ten years later, Disney finally released it in a set called “Walt Disney Treasures: On the Front Lines.”

In June 2025, the set could still be found on secondary markets, such as eBay, at high prices because Disney produced a limited edition of 250,000 sets in 2004. We can’t find it on the Disney YouTube channel, but if you’re curious, the cartoon is available through a few unofficial sources. Here’s one:

There are links here and here to a version that includes a short explanatory prologue.

We want to leave you with an observation made by Chandler Bing from the TV show “Friends.”

You know what’s weird? Donald Duck never wore pants. But whenever he’s getting out of the shower, he always puts a towel around his waist. I mean, what is that about?

It’s a question for the ages. May we all remain as ageless as our favorite waterfowl, and have a happy Donald Duck Day!

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June 7 is VCR Day

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vcr day

Ampex VRX-1000, 1956

Today is VCR Day. It commemorates the date in 1975 when Sony Corporation supposedly released the Betamax videocassette recorder (VCR) made specifically for home use. Some historians place the release in November 1975. In any case, it beat JVC’s Video Home System (VHS) to market by a year.

A VCR records the analog audio and video of a television broadcast or other signal source onto a removable, magnetic tape videocassette for subsequent playback. A programmable timer allows the user to schedule the recording to initiate, run, and conclude while unattended. It can also play back prerecorded tapes.

The history of the VCR dates back to the Ampex VRX-1000, which was released in 1956. Due to its substantial size and prohibitive cost of $50,000, it was affordable only to television networks and the largest individual stations. Toshiba, Philips, and RCA joined the fray; Sony partnered with Ampex for a while to share technology.

In 1965, Sony introduced the reel-to-reel type CV-2000, which stands for Consumer Video, as its first home-use model. (One ad shows the price as $695.) Despite Sony’s marketing efforts, it was primarily used for medical and industrial applications. Companies jockeyed for position for another decade.

There are many theories about why Sony won the battle to beat JVC to market in 1975, only to lose the war. One irrefutable fact is that each videocassette format was compatible only with its own VCR, ensuring that VHS and Betamax would never be able to play nice.

Sony may have gambled on its customers’ desire for quality over quantity, offering higher-definition tapes that could only record up to one hour of programming. While we value that today, it was much less of a selling point in 1975, when simply being able to record a show and watch it was more of a priority than being able to parse every speck of dust on M*A*S*H in hallucinatory detail.

When JVC released its VCR a year later, it used VHS tapes that held two hours. By the time Sony caught up, it was too late. VHS had become the standard. In 1981, Betamax had only a 25% market share. By 1986, it had dropped to 7.5% and continued to decline. Although it began selling VHS recorders in 1988, Sony continued to manufacture Betamax recorders until 2002 and only stopped producing Betamax tapes as of March 2016.

Of course, VHS didn’t stay on top forever. JVC stopped manufacturing standalone VCRs in 2008, long after DVD and Blu-Ray players had supplanted them. Streaming services put another nail in the VCR’s coffin.

Can a direct neural interface be far behind? As long as it doesn’t require the skull drilling we see in science fiction movies and the monthly fee is good, we say bring it on!

Until then, let’s celebrate our technological past and have a happy VCR Day!

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