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Mule Appreciation Day

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mule appreciation dayAccording to numerous sources on the Internet:

President Ronald Reagan signed a bill in 1985, designating October 26th as Mule Appreciation Day. Two hundred years before on this date, a ship docked in Boston, bearing the gift of a donkey from King Charles III of Spain to President George Washington.

We went a little crazy researching this holiday, delving into government records and scrutinizing proposed bills and signed laws. We can report that the bill did exist:

S.J.RES.39
Latest Title: A joint resolution to designate October 26, 1985, as “Mule Appreciation Day”.
Sponsor: Sen Gore, Albert, Jr. [TN] (introduced 2/5/1985)
Related Bills: H.J.RES.76

Yes, that’s right. Al Gore, senator from Tennessee, submitted this bill. (An identical bill was proffered by Representative Jim Cooper, also of Tennessee.) Both have this notation:

Latest Major Action: Referred to Senate committee. Status: Read twice and referred to the Committee on Judiciary.

We can find no confirmation that Reagan signed the bill into law. So that part of the story surrounding Mule Appreciation Day is probably bunk. But the actual story is still fascinating.

George Washington wasn’t just our first president; he was also an avid mule breeder and wanted Andalusian donkeys (known as jacks) to mate with his mares. But Spain forbade their export. In 1785, when word of Washington’s wish reached King Charles III, he dispatched a ship carrying two of the prized animals.

Only one of the jacks, dubbed Royal Gift, survived the sea voyage. Most accounts omit this detail and report the shipping of only one,  perhaps because it is a sad footnote to the story.

In 1786, the Marquis de Lafayette sent Washington a jack and two mares (jennies) from a famous breed in Malta. These three historical figures influenced the breeding of mules forever.

Of course, Washington wasn’t the only person breeding mules. The Andalusian and Maltese breeds, along with the Catalonian, Majorcan, and Poitou, were incorporated over time into the development of today’s American Mammoth jack.  According to the North American Saddle Mule Association (NASMA):

There are no longer any real populations of true donkey breeds in the United States. The registries are bound by size, not breed type….The tall, slender black jack may be used for saddle mules, and the heavy-boned, drafty dappled red roan used for draft mules.

Some say a mule is more intelligent than either parent. While that’s debatable, renowned veterinarian Robert M. Miller, a mule breeder, said the hybridization “accounts for his amazing strength and stamina.”  A mule exhibits the best qualities of both parents.

A mule is generally sturdier than a horse, with stronger feet less likely to need shoeing, and will often live and work longer. His legendary sure-footedness and stability make him the animal of choice for those who pack or hike on steep mountain trails.

Because a mule inherits a strong sense of self-preservation from the donkey side of the family, he reacts differently to perceived threats. Miller states that when frightened, a horse will usually panic and flee blindly, often hurting itself in the process. “A frightened mule, on the other hand, will usually assess the situation and avoid injuring himself,” according to Miller.

Maybe that’s what makes mules the preferred mode of transport on the precipitous trails that descend to the floor of the Grand Canyon. Legend has it that Brighty (a burro) accompanied President Theodore Roosevelt there when he hunted mountain lions.

That last part is a dodgy bit of Internet lore. Brighty (short for Bright Angel) did live in the canyon from about 1892 to 1922 and inspired a book and a movie. Roosevelt visited in 1903. Whether they came in contact with each other is a question for the ages.

We know this much is true: Visitors who ride all the way down to Phantom Ranch can send postcards from the bottom that say Mailed by Mule from the Bottom of the Grand Canyon. 

Mules have played a significant role in our country’s history and deserve to be appreciated year-round. So the next time we see a mule, we’re going to pay him some respect. After all, he might just be looking back at us, thinking we’re jackasses.

Happy Mule Appreciation Day!

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Columbus Day

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Columbus Day might not seem to qualify as a weird holiday, but why not take a closer look?  Why do we celebrate the second Monday in October every year? How did this become a federal holiday in 1968? A Congressional Research Service report entitled Federal Holidays: Evolution and Application explains:

By commemorating Christopher Columbus’s remarkable voyage, the nation honored the courage and determination of generation after generation of immigrants seeking freedom and opportunity in America….Such a holiday would also provide “an annual reaffirmation by the American people of their faith in the future, a declaration of willingness to face with confidence the imponderables of unknown tomorrows.

christopher columbusAlthough that’s a laudable goal, most of us have outgrown the sanitized version of events we learned in school. Can we celebrate the beauty of an idea while acknowledging the ugliness beneath the surface? It’s a complex subject, worthy of impassioned debate. For our purposes, however, let’s lighten the mood and debunk a few myths about Christopher Columbus.

MYTH: Columbus set sail to prove that the world was round.

Roughly 2,000 years before Columbus’s voyage, Aristotle showed the earth’s spherical nature by pointing out the curved shadow it casts on the moon. By Columbus’s time, virtually all educated people believed that the earth was not flat.

Columbus was a self-taught man who greatly underestimated the Earth’s circumference. He also thought Europe was wider than it was and that Japan was farther from the coast of China than it was. He believed he could reach Asia by sailing west, a concept considered foolish by many—not because the Earth was flat, but because Columbus’s math was so wrong. Columbus essentially got lucky by bumping into land that, of course, wasn’t Asia.

The flat-earth myth may have originated with Washington Irving’s 1828 biography of Columbus; there’s no evidence of it prior to the book’s publication. His crew wasn’t scared of falling off the Earth. Irving’s romanticized version, however, portrayed Columbus as an enlightened hero who overcame myth and superstition, and that is what became enshrined in history.

MYTH: Columbus discovered America in 1492.

The first Native Americans likely arrived in North America via a land bridge across the Bering Sound during the last ice age, roughly 20,000 to 30,000 years ago. When Europeans arrived, there were approximately 10 million Native Americans in the area north of present-day Mexico.

If Columbus discovered America, he didn’t know it. For the rest of his life, he claimed to have landed in Asia, even though most navigators knew he hadn’t.

What Columbus “discovered” was the Bahamian archipelago and then the island that now comprises Haiti and the Dominican Republic. On subsequent voyages, he went farther south, to Central and South America. He never got close to what is now called the United States.

MYTH: Columbus did nothing of significance.

While Columbus was wrong about many things, he contributed to knowledge about trade winds, specifically the lower-latitude easterlies that blow toward the Caribbean and the higher-latitude westerlies that can blow a ship back to Western Europe. His voyages initiated the European pilgrimage to both North and South America.

News of his landing’s success spread like wildfire, setting the stage for an era of European conquest. We can argue whether that was good or bad for humanity—that is, the spread of Christianity, rise of modernism, exploitation and annihilation of native cultures, and so on. But it’s hard to deny Columbus’s direct role in quickly and radically changing the world.

Sources:
CRS Report for Congress – senate.gov
Top 5 Misconceptions about Columbus – livescience.com
American Myths: Christopher Columbus –  teachinghistory.org

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National #2 Pencil Day

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Today is National #2 Pencil Day. Though this holiday’s provenance is unclear, there’s no question that this classic writing instrument has made its mark on history. (Sorry, had to do it.)

There’s no lead in a pencil; its core is made of graphite. According to Britannica, it was initially believed to be a type of lead. We’ve used the misnomer “pencil lead” ever since. After the discovery of a large deposit in Borrowdale, England, in the 1500s, shepherds found that the black mineral was perfect for marking sheep—and humans quickly realized it worked on paper too.

In the late 1700s in France, Nicolas-Jacques Conté developed a process to mix clay with graphite to control its hardness. Over time, manufacturers around the world instituted their own grading variations, but here in the US, a simple system has prevailed. There are four basic designations, from #1 (softest and darkest) to #4 (hardest and lightest).

The #2 pencil won out because early machines like the Scantron that scored standardized tests required moderately dark, easily legible marks. (Remember filling in those multiple-choice bubbles?) The #2 had the perfect balance of darkness and smudge resistance while being soft enough to easily erase. More modern scanners didn’t have that issue, but the #2 was already established, and it has remained, well, #1 ever since.

An oft-repeated “fact” states that each standard pencil can draw a line about 35 miles long (or write roughly 45,000 words). On May 4, 2007, Keith Eldred of Hollidaysburg(!), PA, put pencil to paper to test that assertion. On June 9, he and a group of volunteers finished transcribing To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. The novel has about 90,000 words. We love a good debunking!

Per Guinness World Records, the longest pencil measured 1091.99 m (3582 ft and 7.73 in) and was achieved by BIC in Samer, France, on 10 October 2017. The pencil was made out of a graphite center encased in polystyrene, making it flexible and light so it could be easily assembled and then measured without having to hold it in a straight line and support the weight of the wood. Personally, we think this is cheating, and we’re surprised Guinness allowed it. BIC’s mechanical pencil is a cheat in itself, with its graphite snapping off so easily and its woefully inadequate eraser. But we digress.

What should you do today? Why not journal by hand, sketch and shade, write a note to a friend, jot down a grocery list, or just sharpen one and let the smell of pencil shavings take you back like a grade-school version of Proust’s madeleine.

No matter how you choose to celebrate, have a happy National #2 Pencil Day!

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Presidential Joke Day

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presidential joke dayToday is Presidential Joke Day. On August 11, 1984, while preparing to give a weekly radio address from his ranch in California, Ronald Reagan was asked to do a routine sound check.

Although the president enjoyed telling jokes about Russia, on that morning, his remark was meant only for the sound engineers getting ready for the National Public Radio broadcast. Instead of counting “one, two, three” and so on, the president said:

My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation which will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.

The comment was captured on tape and leaked to the media, then the world. NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw reported that on August 15, 1984, a coded message sent from Soviet headquarters placed troops on wartime alert, stating, “We now embark on military action against the U.S. forces.”

The alert was withdrawn 30 minutes later, after ships in the North Pacific contacted headquarters to question their orders. The official word from the Kremlin claimed that someone in the Far Eastern Command had declared a state of war without authorization.

Some U.S. officials believed the Soviet government had sanctioned the action to retaliate against Reagan’s offensive words. Others thought it was a joke. One speculated the culprit had been drunk. We’ll never know because the guilty party was never revealed.

Setting aside its questionable humor value, we must conclude that Ronald Reagan’s joke is the most powerful ever told because the hard feelings it engendered could have caused a nuclear war.

Hear the quip here. Have a happy Presidential Joke Day and remember: Always, always, always assume the mic is live and don’t say anything you wouldn’t want to hear on the six o’clock news!

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