A couple of interesting quotes for today.

Your dresses should be tight enough to show you're a woman and loose enough to show you're a lady.
Edith Head -- born this day in 1907

In honor of today being the anniversary of the dedication of the Statue of Liberty:
There are four boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
Ed Howdershelt


Today is:

Feast of Haddad -- Ancient Phoenician Calendar (sun god)

French Food Festival -- LaRose, Louisiana (through the 31st)

Fyribod (or Forebode) -- Ancient Norse Calendar (Either way, whatever it is, it sounds forbidding)

Independence Day -- Czechoslovakia (from Austria-Hungary)

Isia -- Ancient Egyptian Calendar (first day of the Isis festival, through Nov. 3)

Milvian Bridge Day -- Christian

National Chocolate Day

National Holiday, Hungary

Ngetal begins -- Celtic Tree Calendar Month (month of the reed tree, through Nov. 24)

Okunchi Matsuri -- Karatsu Shrine, Karatsu, Japan (Local Shinto festival, through the 30th)

Oxi Day, Greece (Sometimes "Ochi" Literally "No Day", celebrating resistance to Mussolini.)

Plush Animal Lover's Day

Punky Night -- Hinton St George, Somerset, England: a celebration for children and adults who carry candle-lit punkies (the best one wins a prize) made out of mangel-wurzels, a type of beet, and sing old punky songs

St. Jude's Day, (patron of desperate or hopeless cases -- the reason Danny Thomas chose this saint to invoke as patron of the hospital he helped found.)

St. Simon's Day

Tenrikyo Matsuri -- Tenri City, Japan (Local Shinto festival)

Wild Foods Day


Anniversaries Today:

Universidad Santo Tomas Aquino is established, 1538 (first university in the New World)
Founding of Harvard University, 1636
Maimonides College is founded, 1867 (first Jewish college in the US)
Statue of Liberty dedicated, 1886


Birthdays Today:

Joaquin Phoenix, 1974
Julia Roberts, 1967
Daphne Zuniga, 1962
Bill Gates, 1955
Bruce Jenner, 1949
Dennis Franz, 1944
Charlie Daniels, 1936
Cleo Laine, 1927
Jonas Salk, 1914
Edith Head, 1907


Today in History:

Constantine the Great defeats Maxentius, 312
Battle of Yaunis Khan in which Turkish forces under the Grand Vizier Sinan Pasha defeat the Mameluks near Gaza, 1516
Battle of Amba Sel, in which Imam Ahmad ibn Ibrihim al-Ghazi again defeats the army of Lebna Dengel, Emperor of Ethiopia; the southern part of Ethiopia falls under Imam Ahmad's control, 1531
Peruvian cities of Lima & Callao are demolished by an earthquake, 18,000 die, 1746
Eli Whitney applies for a patent on the cotton gin, 1793
The first railroad in Spain, between Barcelona and Mataro, is opened, 1848
The Statue of Liberty is dedicated by President Grover Cleveland, and celebrated by the first ticker tape/confetti parade in NYC, 1886
An earthquake strikes Mino-Owari, Japan, kills 7,300, 1891
Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 in B Minor, Pathétique, receives its première performance in St. Petersburg, only nine days before the composer's death, 1893
The St. Louis police try a new investigation method -- fingerprints, 1904
Czechoslovakia gains its independence in the break up of Austria-Hungary, 1918
The Volstead Act, passed by Congress over Wilson's veto, starts Prohibition, 1919
The first coast to coast radio broadcast of a football game, 1922
U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt rededicates the Statue of Liberty on its 50th anniversary, 1936
The Alaska Highway (Alcan Highway) is completed through Canada to Fairbanks, Alaska, 1942
Swiss chemist Paul Müller is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of the insecticidal properties of DDT, 1948
The modern Kingdom of the Netherlands is re-founded as a federal monarchy, 1954
Nikita Khrushchev announces that he had ordered the removal of Soviet missile bases in Cuba, 1962
Nostra Aetate, the "Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions" of the Second Vatican Council, is promulgated by Pope Paul VI; it absolves the Jews of responsibility for the death of Jesus, 1965
Britain launches its first satellite, Prospero, into low Earth orbit atop a Black Arrow carrier rocket, 1971
The centenary of the dedication of the Statue of Liberty is celebrated in New York Harbor, 1986