Isolation

"Mom, I sneezed in French class today, and the teacher told us we can't say 'bless you.'  Instead, we have to say 'a tes vos souhaits'.  It means 'may all your wishes come true."  Bigger Girl is enjoying learning French.

How interesting, i remarked.

"Yes, isn't it?  We ask the person to be blessed, the Germans wish them good health, but the French hope that all your wishes come true.  But think about it.  If all of everyone's wishes came true, well..."

We would all have to live on separate planets, i noted drily.

Stunned, she did a double take and yelled, "Exactly!  We would all have to live on separate planets if every wish of every person came true!"

Well, think about it.


Today is:

Constitution Day -- Mexico (trad.)

Feast Day of Jacob, Patriarch -- Catholic Christian

Kashmir Day -- Pakistan

Liberation from the Alberoni Occupation -- San Marino (also St. Agatha's Day)

Longest War in History Ends -- The Third Punic War, between Rome and Carthage, was officially ended on this date with a peace treaty signed in 1985, which is 2,131 years after the war began

Move Hollywood & Broadway to Lebanon, PA Day -- sponsored by Wellcat Holidays, and Why would they want it?

National Chocolate Fondue Day

National Weatherperson's Day -- US (mostly, though some other countries now observe it as well; in honor of the first US meteorologist, John Jeffries)

Nones of February -- Ancient Roman Calendar; also
     Fornacalia -- celebration in honor of bread and the ovens used to dry grain; held any day between now and the 17th, one of Rome's few movable feasts)


Runeberg's Birthday -- Finland (National Poet)

Sapporo Snow Festival (Sapporo Yuki Matsuri) -- Sapporo City, Japan (fun in the cold, ice sculping competitons, and hot springs with hot sake to take the edge off; through the 11th)

Shiretoko Fantasia -- Shiretoko, Hokaido, Japan (through March 8; laser lights and music illuminate the drift ice and waves of the Okhotsk Sea)

St. Agatha's Day (Patron of bell-founders, fire prevention, jewelers, martyrs, nurses, rape victims, single laywomen, torture victims, wet-nurses; Malta; San Marino; as well as over 50 cities around the world; against breast cancer, breast disease, earthquakes, eruptions of Mt. Etna, fire, natural disasters, sterility, volcanic eruptions)

Unity Day -- Burundi

World Nutella Day


Birthdays Today:

Jeremy Sumpter, 1989
Michael Sheen, 1969
Jennifer Jason Leigh, 1962
Christopher Guest, 1948
Barbara Hershey, 1948
Roger Stauback, 1942
H.R. Giger, 1940
Alex Harvey, 1935
Henry "Hank" Aaron, 1934
Andrew Greeley, 1928
Red Buttons, 1919
William Burroughs, 1914
Adlai E. Stevenson, Jr., 1900
Andre' Citroen, 1878
Belle Starr, 1848
Dwight Lyman Moody, 1837
Ole Bull, 1810
Sanjo, Emperor of Japan, 976


Today in History:

Earthquake in Pompeii, Italy, 62
King Alfonso V orders Sicily's Jews to attend conversion sermons, 1428
A group of early Japanese Christians are killed by the new government of Japan for being seen as a threat to Japanese society, 1597
The first US livestock branding law is passed, in Connecticut, 1644
Georgia becomes the first state to abolish both entail and primogenature, 1777
Sweden recognizes US independence, 1783
Hannah Lord Montague of New York creates the first detachable shirt collar, 1825
The "Oregon Spectator" is the first newspaper published on the American West Coast, 1846
An adding machine employing depressible keys is patented in New Paltz, NY, 1850
Two innovations which helped pave the way for motion pictures are patented, a hand turned stereoscope by Samuel Goodale of Cincinnati, and the Kinematoscope by Coleman Sellers of Philadelphia, 1861
Four inches of snow falls in San Francisco, 1887
The loop-the-loop centrifugal railroad (a/k/a the roller coaster) is patented by Ed Prescot, 1901
Greek military aviators, Michael Moutoussis and Aristeidis Moraitinis performed the first naval air mission in history, with a Farman MF.7 hydroplane, 1913
Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith launch United Artists, 1919
Reader's Digest magazine is first published, 1922
The Royal Greenwich Observatory begins broadcasting the hourly time signals known as the Greenwich Time Signal, 1924
A hydrogen bomb known as the Tybee Bomb is lost by the US Air Force off the coast of Savannah, Georgia, never to be recovered, 1958
The so-called Big Three banks in Switzerland announce the creation of a $71 million fund to aid Holocaust survivors and their families, 1997