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November 14 is National American Teddy Bear Day

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Today is National American Teddy Bear Day, whereas September 9th is National Teddy Bear Day. Why? We think it’s because one holiday isn’t enough to contain the cuddly stuffed animal’s cuteness.

Here’s what we do know: teddy bears got their name from Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States.  The date coincides with a hunting trip in November 1902.

The governor of Mississippi invited President Roosevelt to a bear hunt, but after three days, Roosevelt hadn’t spotted one. To keep the president’s trip from ending in failure, the guides set the dogs loose; they tracked down an old black bear and attacked it.

The guides brought the wounded bear back to camp and tied it to a tree for the president. When Roosevelt saw the old bear he refused to shoot it because to do so would be unsportsmanlike. However, since it was injured, Roosevelt directed the men to put the bear down to end its suffering.

Word traveled quickly across the country. The Washington Post ran this headline on November 15, 1902:

PRESIDENT CALLED AFTER THE BEAST HAD BEEN LASSOED,
BUT HE REFUSED TO MAKE AN UNSPORTSMANLIKE SHOT

Political cartoonist Clifford Berryman drew a single panel that appeared in the Post the next day. In it, the president stands in the foreground, a guide and bear behind him. Berryman depicted the bear as a cub trembling with fear. He began to include the cub in other drawings of Roosevelt, forever linking him to bears.

national american teddy bear day

Morris Michtom, a Brooklyn candy shop owner,  saw Berryman’s cartoons and was inspired to make a stuffed bear. Michtom wrote to Roosevelt and asked his permission to call the toy “Teddy’s Bear.” Although the president agreed to lend his name to the new invention, he is said to have doubted it would ever amount to much in the toy business.

The runaway popularity of the cuddly bears led Michtom to mass-produce them, forming the Ideal Novelty and Toy Company in 1903. It soon became a multimillion-dollar business.  By 1908, the toy had become so popular that a preacher in Michigan warned that replacing dolls with toy bears would destroy the maternal instincts of little girls. If that were true, there would be no one left to read (or write) this.

A Teddy’s Bear made in 1903 is owned by The National Museum of American History. It’s in perfect condition.

national american teddy bear day

Happy National American Teddy Bear Day!

Copyright © 2017 Worldwide Weird Holidays

Chaos Never Dies Day: Part Two

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In Which I Inadvertently Prove that Chaos Never Dies

Chaos Never Dies Day proved all too true for me today, November 9, 2017,  when I was briefly interviewed by Michael S. Robinson on Microbin Radio. I had been invited to be a guest on the radio show only the day before so I dutifully spent a day cramming the online equivalent of Chaos Theory for Dummies to prepare.

I’d been told I’d be quizzed on how I came to write about weird holidays and asked about holidays taking place before the end of the year. I gathered information on two of the wackiest: Start Your Own Country Day and Tió de Nadal, which involves a Christmas log that craps out presents. I’ve never been on the radio before and was wargaming it all out until three minutes before I went on-air.

What I didn’t know ahead of time was that the guests on the docket before me were scheduled to talk about the mass shooting in Texas and the difficulties of parenting. The theme for the day was “Are we Stuck in a Bad News Hell?”

The Michael S Robinson Show banner

When Mr. Robinson introduced me, I launched into a description of the beauty of the order that dwells in chaos even though we can’t perceive it.

I gave the example of football, which can’t be predicted in strictly linear terms by the sum of the players’ and team’s rankings because of variables like team chemistry, whether it’s a home or away game, the quarterback’s attitude, etc. Since I’m confident that you’ll never hear this, I’m going to say it was brilliant.

But Mr. Robinson wanted to talk about the chaos we deal with every day. Of course. I have a lot to say about the unprecedented amount of chaos we’re experiencing nowadays, but I ended up being woefully unprepared. I should have known that was what he would want to discuss.

How did I make such a mistake and overshoot what should have been an interesting and informative conversation? I didn’t just strike out. I left my bat in the dugout and brought a cello to the plate. I’d like to credit chaos in some artful way, say it created a perfect trajectory I can’t identify. That’s hogwash, of course—or is it? (It is.)

Also, I had feedback blasting my words back at me, making it almost impossible to speak normally. There’s nothing worse than hearing your own voice faltering in near-real time. Again, chaos. I don’t think I’ll get invited back. It’s probably just as well that they spelled my name Kathlene Zaya.

$99,000 Answer The Honeymooners Ralph KramdenAll this reminds me of the $99,000 Answer, an episode of The Honeymooners in which Ralph Kramden prepares to go on a game show where he’ll be required to identify songs by the first few bars.

He rents a piano and has Ed Norton play musical selections all week to prepare for the event. Ed always warms up by playing the first few bars of “Swanee River,” which never fails to annoy Ralph.

The night of the show, the first tune played is “Swanee River,” which he can’t name. He loses in spite of all his preparation. I laughed but felt bad for Ralph, perpetual loser.

It also reminds me of every Curb Your Enthusiasm episode when Larry David does something stupid or thoughtless by misunderstanding the context of a situation—or just because he’s a jerk. (That’s every episode.)

Fictional chaos theorist David Malcom said in Jurassic Park, “Life finds a way.” So do laughs but not always the ones you want or on the schedule you’d prefer.

CHAOS NEVER DIES, PART THREE:

November 9. 2018: I have not been invited for a return engagement by Michael S. Robinson. Perhaps my invitation was lost in the (e)mail. There certainly is quite a bit of chaos to discuss: the midterm elections, Trump’s firing of Jeff Sessions, the discovery that the Mayans invented television. (In honor of Chaos Never Dies Day, I invite you to Google that last one.)

Correction: In Part Two, I misidentified fictional character Ian Malcolm as fictional character David Malcom. I regret the error and know that my use of flawed web research one year ago has introduced another tiny bit of chaos to the Internet. So, I guess you could say I’m doing my part.

Copyright © 2018 Worldwide Weird Holidays

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October 23 is National Mole Day

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National Mole Day is not a time to pay tribute to cute furry diggers, secret agents, Mexican sauces, freckles or skin tags. (By the way, you really ought to have that thing checked out.)national mole day

Once a year on October 23 from 6:02 a.m. to 6:02 p.m., National Mole Day celebrates Avogadro’s Number (6.02 x 1023), a unit of measurement in chemistry. Mole Day originated in an article from The Science Teacher in the early 1980s. Inspired by the article, a chemistry teacher in Wisconsin created the National Mole Day Foundation on May 15, 1991.

In 1811, Lorenzo Romano Amedeo Carlo Avogadro di Quaregna e di Cerreto—Amadeo Carlo Avogadro to his parents—proposed a law stating that equal volume of all gasses, at the same temperature and pressure, have the same number of molecules.

Avogadro contradicted better-known scientists of his time, didn’t publish his work in highly regarded journals and hailed from Italy, which had fallen out of favor as a site of scientific innovation. It took almost a hundred years for the scientific community to catch on. Chemist and Nobel laureate Jean Baptiste Perrin proposed in 1909 that the total number of particles contained in one mole be called the Avogadro Constant.

6.02×10^23

One mole is a mass (in grams) whose number is equal to the molar mass of the molecule. Because atoms are so small, they can only be measured in enormous numbers, on the scale of Avogadro’s number.

1 Mole = ∼ 602,200,000,000,000,000,000,000

It ‘s hard to imagine such a large number. Oklahoma State University has some useful analogies to help envision it:

  • Astronomers estimate that there is a mole (6.02 x 1023) of stars in the universe.
  • Water flows over Niagara Falls at about 650,000 kL (172,500,000 gallons) per minute. It would take 134,000 years for one mole of water drops to flow over Niagara Falls.
  • One mole of marbles, each 2 cm in diameter, would form a mountain 116 times higher than Mount Everest. The base of the marble mountain would be slightly larger than the area of the USA.

National Mole Day has always been about fostering interest in chemistry. It has been celebrated by teachers, students and schools for decades and inspires participants to create activities, thought experiments and even music videos to make learning about Avogadro’s Number fun.

Avogadro would be so proud!

Copyright © 2017 Worldwide Weird Holidays

August 29 is National Chop Suey Day

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national chop suey dayToday is National Chop Suey Day. It honors the popular Chinese-American dish of uncertain provenance.

Legends abound regarding the origin of chop suey. Some say it was invented in the 1860s by a Chinese cook in San Franciso who, fearing he would be beaten by a rowdy bunch of miners demanding food after hours, served them a stir-fry made of leftovers.

Others claim the dish was created in 1896 for Qing Dynasty statesman Li Hongzhang (romanized name: Li Hung Chang) when he visited the U.S. and, disliking a banquet’s offerings, had one of his chefs go into the kitchen and prepare something from the ingredients he found there. This myth was perpetuated by the publication in 1913 of Memoirs of Li Hung Chang, which was exposed as a forgery ten years later.

Chinese history shows that chop suey has roots there under various names: za sui in Mandarin and shap sui or tsap tsui in Cantonese, which translate to “mixed bits.” The recipe seems to have originated with residents of the Taishan, (also known as Taisan or Toisan) area of Canton, many of whom immigrated to the U.S.

It was originally composed of entrails such as chicken livers, gizzards and tripe mixed with bamboo shoots, fungi and bean sprouts in a brown sauce. Chinese cooks later adapted these ingredients for American tastes
by replacing organ meats with the chicken, pork, beef or shrimp.

Today is a great day to set aside the debate about who deserves credit and order chop suey or break out the wok and stir-fry a batch. After all, General Tso had nothing to do with the chicken dish that bears his name, but that doesn’t stop anyone from enjoying it.

Happy National Chop Suey Day!

Copyright © 2017 Worldwide Weird Holidays