The Parent Trap

It’s still Hayley Mills’ birthday and I also loved this film.

Fox On The Run

Happy birthday Mike Vickers, 60 today.

The Truth About Spring

Happy birthday Hayley Mills, 64 today.

I loved this film when I was a kid and wanted to be Spring and/or saila round the world. Sigh.

The dangers of jam

How many people have contracted any sort of illness from eating jam cooked in a home kitchen?

The question first came up several years ago when a woman approached then-MP Katherine Rich at the Upper Clutha A&P Show.

The woman had been making jam for a Save The Children charity shop in Canterbury  for years, raising thousands of dollars for a very good cause in the process. But she’d been told it would no longer be acceptable unless she upgraded her kitchen to commercial standard or shifted her jam making to a commercial kitchen.

A media fuss followed and the local body involved backed down. But now another one is waving the big stick at charity cooks.

If I eat at a restaurant or buy food from a supermarket I expect high standards and have no problem with the authorities getting involved to monitor them. But if I buy jam or baking form a charity stall I know it’s come from a home kitchen and accept the tiny risk which comes with that.

Will they follow us home to make sure we store and use the jam the correct way next?

Jam is made from boiling fruit and sugar. I’d think the danger of conrating anything untoward from it would be considerably less than the risk to your helath from batting your head against bureaucracy.

Hat Tip: goNZo Freakpower.

High tea and literary conversation

The invitation was to A Proper High Tea at Burnside  with the added attraction of a conversation in which Fiona Kidman and Owen Marshall would share their thoughts on The Spirit of Place in Writing.

Burnside is one of North Otago’s original homesteads which specialises in Victorian fare. The proper high tea included pease pudding, devilled chicken, cold sliced venison, jellied beetroot, green salad and rooled bread and butter.

Dainty cinnamon oysters, chocolate cream cakes and a selection of fruit tarts followed.

In between courses the two writers took us around New Zealand and the world with poetry and prose.

The evening was a fundraiser for the Janet Frame Eden Street Trust.

Earlier in the day Fiona had led a workshop on writing memoirs in the Janet Frame room at Waitaki Girls’ High School followed by lunch and writing time at Janet’s childhood home at 56 Eden Street.

April 18 in history

On April 18:

1025 Bolesław Chrobry was crowned in Gniezno, becoming the first King of Poland.

1480 Lucrezia Borgia, Florentine ruler and daughter of Pope Alexander VI, was born.

1506 The cornerstone of the current St. Peter’s Basilica was laid.

  

1518  Bona Sforza was crowned as queen consort of Poland.

1738 Real Academia de la Historia (“Royal Academy of History”) founded in Madrid.

1775  American Revolution: The British advancement by sea began; Paul Revere and other riders warned the countryside of the troop movements.

 

1783 Fighting ceased in the American Revolution, eight years to the day since it began.

1797 The Battle of Neuwied – French victory against the Austrians.

1831 The University of Alabama was founded.

1847 A Maori raid on the Gilfillan farm at Matarawa, near Wanganui, left four family members dead.

 

1848 American victory at the battle of Cerro Gordo opened the way for invasion of Mexico.

 

1880 An F4 tornado struck Marshfield, Missouri, killing 99 people and injuring 100.

1881  Billy the Kid escaped from the Lincoln County jail.

1889 Jessie Street, Australian suffragette, feminist, and human rights activist, was born.

 

1899 The St. Andrew’s Ambulance Association was granted a Royal Charter by Queen Victoria.

1902  Quetzaltenango, second largest city of Guatemala, was destroyed by Earthquake.

1906 The 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire destroyed much of San Francisco.

1906 – The Los Angeles Times story on the Azusa Street Revival launched Pentecostalism as a worldwide movement.

 

1909 Joan of Arc was beatified in Rome.

1912  The Cunard liner RMS Carpathia brought 705 survivors from the RMS Titanic to New York City.

 

1915 Joy Gresham Lewis, American writer, wife of C. S. Lewis, was born.

1915 French pilot Roland Garros was shot down and glided to a landing on the German side of the lines.

1923 Yankee Stadium, “The House that Ruth Built,” opened.

 

1924 Simon & Schuster published the first Crossword puzzle book.

1930 BBC Radio infamously announced that there was no news on that day.

1930 Clive Revill, New Zealand born actor, was born.

1940 Mike Vickers, British guitarist and saxophonist (Manfred Mann)British guitarist and saxophonist (Manfred Mann).

1942 World War II: The Doolittle Raid – Tokyo, Yokohama, Kobe and Nagoya bombed.

1942 – Pierre Laval became Prime Minister of Vichy France.

1943 World War II: Operation Vengeance, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was killed when his aircraft was shot down by U.S. fighters over Bougainville Island.

1945 More than 1,000 bombers attackedthe small island of Heligoland, Germany.

1946 Hayley Mills, English actress, was born.

1946 The League of Nations was dissolved.

1949  The Republic of Ireland Act came into force.

1954 Gamal Abdal Nasser seizes power in Egypt.

1955 Twenty-nine nations met at Bandung, Indonesia, for the first Asian-African Conference.

1958 A United States federal court ruled that poet Ezra Pound was to be released from an insane asylum.

1961 CONCP was founded in Casablanca as a united front of African movements opposing Portuguese colonial rule.

1971 David Tennant, Scottish actor, was born

1974 The prime Minister of Pakistan Zulfikar Ali Bhutto inaugurated Lahore Dry port.

1980 – The Republic of Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) came into being, with Canaan Banana as the country’s first President.

1983 – A suicide bomber destroyed the United States embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 63 people.

1988 The United States launched Operation Praying Mantis against Iranian naval forces in the largest naval battle since World War II.

1992 General Abdul Rashid Dostum revolted against President Mohammad Najibullah of Afghanistan and allied with Ahmed Shah Massoud to capture Kabul.

 

1993President of Pakistan, Ghulam Ishaq Khan dissolved the National Assembly and dismissed the Cabinet.

1996 In Lebanon, at least 106 civilians are killed when the Israel Defense Forces shelled the UN compound at Quana where more than 800 civilians had taken refuge.

2007  The Supreme Court of the United States upheld the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act in a 5-4 decision.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia