366 days of gratitude

A picnic lunch with a great niece, great nephew, their parents and grand parents; dinner with friends and the All Blacks record-breaking 18th consecutive win.

It’s been a very happy Labour weekend Saturday and I’m grateful for it.

Word of the day

Dabster – one that is especially skilled; expert; one who is master of their profession; a handy person; a dabbler or bungler;  an unskilled hand; a person who works in a superficial or clumsy manner.

Saturday’s smiles

An old man and a young boy were travelling through their village with
their donkey.

The boy rode on the donkey and the old man walked.  As they went along they passed some people who remarked it was a shame the old man was walking and the boy was riding. 

The man and boy thought maybe the critics were right, so they changed positions.  Later, they passed some people who remarked, “What a shame, he makes that little boy walk.”

They then decided they both would walk. 

Soon they passed some more people who thought they were stupid to walk when they had a decent donkey to ride. So, they both rode the donkey. 

Now they passed some people who shamed them by saying “how awful to put such a load on a poor donkey”.

The boy and man said they were probably right, so they decided to carry the donkey.  But as they crossed a bridge, they lost their grip on the animal and he fell into the river and drowned.

The moral of the story?

If you try to please everyone, you might as well kiss your ass good-bye.

Saturday’ soapbox

Saturday’s soapbox is yours to use as you will – within the bounds of decency and absence of defamation. You’re welcome to look back or forward, discuss issues of the moment, to pontificate, ponder or point us to something of interest, to educate, elucidate or entertain, amuse, bemuse or simply muse, but not abuse.

Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack. Besides, in this random miscellaneous company we may rub against some complete stranger who will, with luck, turn into the best friend we have in the world. – Virginia Woolf

October 22 in history

362  A mysterious fire destroyed the temple of Apollo at Daphne outside Antioch.

1383  The 1383-1385 Crisis in Portugal: King Fernando diedwithout a male heir to the Portuguese throne, sparking a period of civil war and disorder.

1633 Battle of southern Fujian sea: The Ming dynasty defeated the Dutch East India Company.

1707 – Scilly naval disaster: four British Royal Navy ships ran aground near the Isles of Scilly because of faulty navigation. Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell and thousands of sailors drowned.

1730 Construction of the Ladoga Canal  completed.

1734  Daniel Boone, American pioneer and hunter, was born (d. 1820).

1746 The College of New Jersey (later renamed Princeton University) received its charter.

1784  Russia founded a colony on Kodiak Island, Alaska.

1790  Warriors of the Miami tribe under Chief Little Turtle defeated United States troops under General Josiah Harmar in the Northwest Indian War.

1797 André-Jacques Garnerin made the first recorded parachute jump 1,000 metres (3,200 feet) above Paris,.

1811 Franz Liszt, Hungarian pianist and composer, was born (d. 1886).

1836  Sam Houston was inaugurated as the first President of the Republic of Texas.

1844  The Great Anticipation: Millerites, followers of William Miller, anticipate the end of the world in conjunction with the Second Advent of Christ.

1875  First telegraphic connection in Argentina.

1877  The Blantyre mining disaster in Scotland killed 207 miners.

1878 The first rugby match under floodlights took place in Salford, between Broughton and Swinton.

1882 – N. C. Wyeth, American painter and illustrator was born (d. 1945).

1883 The Metropolitan Opera House in New York City opened with a performance of Gounod’s Faust.

1895  In Paris an express train overran a buffer stop and crossed more than 30 metres of concourse before plummeting through a window atGare Montparnasse.

1907  Panic of 1907: A run on the stock of the Knickerbocker Trust Company set events in motion that led to a depression.

1910  Dr. Crippen was convicted of poisoning his wife.

1919  Doris Lessing, British writer, Nobel Prize laureate, was born (d. 2013).

1924  Toastmasters International was founded.

1934 – Donald McIntyre, New Zealand opera singer, was born.

1934   Federal Bureau of Investigation agents shot and killed notorious bank robber Pretty Boy Floyd.

1941  French resistance member Guy Môquet and 29 other hostages were executed by the Germans in retaliation for the death of a German officer.

1943  World War II: in the Second firestorm raid on Germany, the Royal Air Force conducts an air raid on the town of Kassel, killing 10,000 and rendering 150,000 homeless.

1944  World War II: Battle of Aachen: The city of Aachen fell to American forces after three weeks of fighting, making it the first German city to fall to the Allies.

1946  Deepak Chopra, Indian-American physician and writer, was born.

1953  Laos gained independence from France

1957 Vietnam War: First United States casualties in Vietnam.

1960  Independence of Mali from France.

1962   Cuban Missile Crisis: US President John F. Kennedy, after internal counsel from Dwight D. Eisenhower, announced that American reconnaissance planes have discovered Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba, and that he has ordered a naval “quarantine” of the Communist nation.

1963  A BAC One-Eleven prototype airliner crashed in UK with the loss of all on board.

1964  Jean-Paul Sartre was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, but turned it down.

1964  A Multi-Party Parliamentary Committee selected the design which became the new official Flag of Canada.

1966  The Supremes became the first all-female music group to attain a No. 1 selling album (The Supremes A’ Go-Go).

1966  The Soviet Union launched Luna 12.

1968  Apollo 7 safely splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean after orbiting the Earth 163 times.

1970  Tunku Abdul Rahman resigned as Prime Minister of Malaysia.

1972 Poet James K. Baxter died.

1972 Vietnam War: In Saigon, Henry Kissinger and South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu met to discuss a proposed cease-fire.

1975  The Soviet unmanned space mission Venera 9 landed on Venus.

1976  Red Dye No. 4 was banned by the US Food and Drug Administration after it is discovered that it causes tumors in the bladders of dogs.

1981 The TGV railway service between Paris and Lyon was inaugurated.

1983  Two correctional officers are killed by inmates at the United States Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois. The incident inspires the Supermax model of prisons.

1991 Dimitrios Arhondonis, was elected 270th Archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch as Patriarch Bartholomew I of the Orthodox church.

1999  Maurice Papon, an official in the Vichy France government during World War II, was jailed for crimes against humanity.

2005  Tropical Storm Alpha formed in the Atlantic Basin, making the 2005 Atlantic Hurricane Season the most active Atlantic hurricane season on record with 22 named storms.

2006  A Panama Canal expansion proposal was approved by 77.8% of voters in a National referendum.

2007  Raid on Anuradhapura Air Force Base carried out by 21 Tamil Tiger commandos.

2008  India launched its first unmanned lunar mission Chandrayaan-1.

2013 – The Australian Capital Territory became the first Australian jurisdiction to legalize same-sex marriage with the Marriage Equality Legislation Australian Capital Territory, 2013.

2014  – Michael Zehaf-Bibeau attacked the Parliament of Canada in Ottawa, Canada, killing a soldier and injuring three other people.

2015 – A teacher and a student were killed, and 2 students injured, in an attack at a high school in Trollhättan, Sweden.

Sourced from NZ history Online & Wikipedia