Mickey Mouse

Mickey Mouse made his first appearance on screen on this day in 1928.

Saturday’s smiles

 Golf can best be defined as an endless series of tragedies obscured by the occasional miracle, followed by a good bottle of beer.

You hit down to make the ball go up. You swing left and the ball goes right. The lowest score wins. And on top of that, the winner buys the drinks.

 Golfers who try to make everything perfect before taking the shot rarely make a perfect shot.

 A ‘gimme’ can best be defined as an agreement between two golfers …..neither of whom can putt very well.

An interesting thing about golf is that no matter how badly you play; it is always possible to get worse.

Golf’s a hard game to figure.. One day you’ll go out and slice it and shank it, hit into all the traps and miss every green. The next day you go out and for no reason at all you really stink.

 Golf is the only sport where the most feared opponent is you.

Golf is like marriage: If you take yourself too seriously it won’t work, and both are expensive.

The best wood in most amateurs’ bags is the pencil.

Ten Reasons Why Golf Is Better Than Sex……

 #10… A below par performance is considered damn good.

#09… You can stop in the middle and have a couple of beers.

#08… It’s much easier to find the sweet spot.

#07… Foursomes are encouraged.

#06… You can still make money doing it as a senior.

#05… Three times a day is possible.

#04… Your partner doesn’t hire a lawyer if you play with someone else.

#03… If you live in Hawkes Bay, Canterbury, Central or North Otago, you can do it almost every day.

#02… You don’t have to cuddle with your partner when you’re finished.

#01… When your equipment gets old you can replace it.

Judging books by covers

 You can’t judge a book by its cover, nor can you judge what someone will read by their appearance.

Helping at last week’s Rotary Bookarama in Oamaru was a fascinating study in human nature.

Had I put bets on what people might be interested in I’d have been sadlyout of pocket: the woman I thought might go for something literary opted for chick lit; the one I’d classified as a chcik-lit fan chose biographies; the mild-mannered bloke went for horror; one who looked like a professor bought westerns and a little old lady chose the raciest Mills and Boons.

The club took in a little more than $10,000 which was up about $1,000 on last year’s total.

That’s not a bad earner when most hardbacks were sold for only a dollar and paperbacks for half that.

Haere Mai

Day 15 of New Zealand Music Month: The Patea Maori Club with Haere Mai.

For Better For Worse and For Lunch

 For Better For Worse and For Lunch by Christina Hindahuagh is the book I wish I’d written.

It’s a novel, written as a diary of a city woman who marries a farmer and moves to Boolaroo – Aborigine for flies but, her husband assures her, that’s as in the speed of time not the insects.

Jessie finds that the skills which helped her in publishing aren’t a lot of help on the farm but her determination and sense of humour do as she adapts to country life and country people.

While she had to give up her career when she moved to the farm, she didn’t give up her independence:

“So what did you all leave your husbands for lunch today?” asks a third woman joining the group.

“I left mine a casserole,” says the aqua lady.

“I left mine a quich,” says the pink.

“Oh I left Edward a note,” I say smiling.

This is a book written with warmth and wit by a woman whose love of country life is obvious, if tempered by the knowledge that adjusting to it isn’t always easy.

The author’s appreciation of literature show in both content and style.

I have read this book at least once a year since it was first recommended to me at least a decade ago and enjoy it more each time.

While it has obvious appeal for women who take on farmers, it’s also been enjoyed by urban women and some blokes admit to liking it oo.

May 15 in history

On May 15:

1252  Pope Innocent IV issued the papal bull ad exstirpanda, which authorised but also limited, the torture of heretics in the Medieval Inquisition.

1514  Jodocus Badius Ascensius published Christiern Pedersen‘s Latin version of Saxo’s Gesta Danorum, the oldest known version of that work.

 

1525 The battle of Frankenhausen ended the Peasants’ War.

1536  Anne Boleyn stood trial on charges of treason, adultery and incest; she was condemned to death by a specially-selected jury.

1567  Mary, Queen of Scots, married  James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, her third husband.

 

1602  Bartholomew Gosnold became the first European to see Cape Cod.

1618 Johannes Kepler confirmed his previously rejected discovery of the third law of planetary motion.

1648  The Treaty of Westphalia was signed.

1701  The War of the Spanish Succession began.

1718   James Puckle, a London lawyer, patented the world’s first machine gun.

 

1755 Laredo, Texas was established by the Spaniards.

1756 The Seven Years’ War began when Great Britain declares war on France.

 

1776  American Revolution: the Virginia Convention instructed its Continental Congress delegation to propose a resolution of independence from Great Britain.

 

1791  Maximilien Robespierre proposed the Self-denying Ordinance.

1792 War of the First Coalition: France declaresdwar on Kingdom of Sardinia.

1793 Diego Marín Aguilera flew a glider for “about 360 meters”, at a height of 5-6 meters, during one of the first attempted flights.

1796  First Coalition: Napoleon entered Milanin triumph.

1800 George III survived two assassination attempts in one day.

1811  Paraguay declaresdindependence from Spain.

1817  Opening of the first private mental health hospital in the United States, the Asylum for the Relief of Persons Deprived of the Use of Their Reason (now Friends Hospital) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1836 Francis Baily observed “Baily’s beads” during an annular eclipse.

 

1849 Troops of the Two Sicilies took Palermo and crushed the republican government of Sicily.

1850  The Bloody Island Massacre:  a large number of Pomo Indians in Lake County were slaughtered by a regiment of the United States Cavalry, led by Nathaniel Lyon.

1851  Rama IV was crowned King of Thailand.

1858 Opening of the  Royal Opera House in Covent Garden.

 

1859 Pierre Curie, French physicist, Nobel Prize laureate, was born  (d. 1906).

 

1862 President Abraham Lincoln signed a bill into law creating the United States Bureau of Agriculture.

1864  American Civil War: Battle of Resaca, Georgia ended.

1864  American Civil War: Battle of New Market, – students from the Virginia Military Institute fought alongside the Confederate Army to force Union General Franz Sigel out of the Shenandoah Valley.

1869 Woman’s suffrage:, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton formed the National Woman’s Suffrage Association.

 

1891  Rerum Novarum, the first document of the Catholic Social Teaching tradition, was published by Pope Leo XIII.

1897  The Greek army retreated with heavy losses in the Greco-Turkish War.

1905  The Russian minelayer Amur laid a minefield about 15 miles off Port Arthur and sank Japan’s battleship Hatsuse, 15,000 tons, with 496 crew.

1905 – Las Vegas, Nevada, was founded when 110 acres (0.4 km²), in what later would become downtown, were auctioned.

1910 The last time a major earthquake happened on the Elsinore Fault Zone.

1911  The United States Supreme Court declared Standard Oil to be an “unreasonable” monopoly under the Sherman Antitrust Act and ordered the company to be broken up.

1918 The Finnish Civil War ended.1919 – The Winnipeg General Strike begins. By 11:00 a.m., almost the whole working population of Winnipeg, Manitoba had walked off the job.

 

1919  Greek invasion of Izmir. During the invasion, the Greek army kills or wounds 350 Turks.

1920 Wanganui mayor  Charles Mackay shot poet and returned soldier Walter D’Arcy Cresswell who alleged that Mackay had made homosexual overtures to him.

1920 Council of Lithuania adjourned as the newly elected Constituent Assembly of Lithuania met for the first time in Kaunas.

1928 Mickey Mouse premiered in his first cartoon, Plane Crazy.

1929  A fire at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio killed 123.

 

1932  The May 15 Incident: in an attempted Coup d’état, the Prime Minister of Japan Inukai Tsuyoshi was killed.

 

1934 Kārlis Ulmanis established an authoritarian government in Latvia.

 

1935 The Moscow Metro was opened to public.

1936  Amy Johnson arrived back in England after a record-breaking return flight to Cape Town.

1937 Madeleine Albright, U.S. Secretary of State, was born.

1940  World War II: After fierce fighting, the poorly trained and equipped Dutch troops surrendered to Germany, marking the beginning of five years of occupation.

1940 – McDonald’s opened its first restaurant in San Bernardino, California.

1942 World War II: in the United States, a bill creating the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) was signed into law.

 

1943 Joseph Stalin dissolvesdthe Comintern (or Third International).

1945 World War II: The final skirmish in Europe was fought near Prevalje, Slovenia.

1948   Egypt, Transjordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia invaded the territory partitioned for the Arab state by the British Mandate of Palestine  starting the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

1948 Brian Eno, British musician and record producer, was born.

1951 The Polish cultural attache in Paris, Czesław Miłosz, asked the French government for political asylum.

 

1953 Mike Oldfield, British composer, was born.

1955  The Austrian Independence Treaty was signed.

 

1955 – The first ascent of Makalu, the world’s fifth highest mountain.

1957  At Malden Island  Britain tested its first hydrogen bomb in Operation Grapple. The device failed to detonate properly.

 

1958  The Soviet Union launched Sputnik 3.

1960  The Soviet Union launched Sputnik 4.

 1962 – Lisa Curry-Kenny, Australian Ironwoman, was born.

1963 Project Mercury: The launch of the final Mercury mission, Mercury-Atlas 9 with astronaut L. Gordon Cooper on board. He beccame the first American to spend more than a day in space.

1964 – Lars Løkke Rasmussen, Prime Minister of Denmark, was born.

1966 Prime Minister Nguyen Cao Ky of South Vietnam’s ruling junta launched a military attack on the forces of General Ton That Dinh, forcing him to abandon his command.

 

1969 People’s Park: California Governor Ronald Reagan had an impromptu student park owned by University of California at Berkeley fenced off from student anti-war protestors, sparking a riot called Bloody Thursday.

 

1970  President Richard Nixon appointed Anna Mae Hays and Elizabeth P. Hoisington the first female United States Army Generals.

1970  Philip Lafayette Gibbs and James Earl Green were killed at Jackson State Universit by police during student protests.

1972  The island of Okinawa, under U.S. military governance since its conquest in 1945, reverts to Japanese control.

1972 Arthur Bremer shot and paralysed Alabama Governor George Wallace while he was campaigning to be become President.

1974  Ma’alot massacre: In an Arabterrorist attack and hostage taking at an Israeli school, 31 people were killed, including 22 schoolchildren.

 

1987  The Soviet Union launched the Polyus prototype orbital weapons platform. It fails to reach orbit.

 

1988  Soviet war in Afghanistan: After more than eight years of fighting, the Red Army began its withdrawal from Afghanistan.

1990 Portrait of Doctor Gachet by Vincent van Gogh was sold for a record $82.5 million, the most expensive painting at the time.

1991  Edith Cresson became France’s first female prime minister.

1997 The United States government acknowledged the existence of the “Secret War” in Laos and dedicated the Laos Memorial in honor of Hmong and other “Secret War” veterans.

2008 California became the second U.S. state to legalize same-sex marriage after the state’s own Supreme Court ruled a previous ban unconstitutional.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia