Much Ado, Part Two

Remember the Y2K mania?

We were members of a church at that time that had a very influential member caught up in it mightily.

He and his family went in with some other families they knew and bought land, guns, and supplies, dug a well and built it into the house they put on the land so they could defend it, and spent December 31, 1999 holed up on their property expecting to have to defend it from the hordes of unprepared people who would show up wanting to pillage.

Of course, it was much ado about nothing.

This coming June 30, there will be a Leap Second Adjustment.  This is done every few years because our clocks would get out of sync with the actual time and seasons, since the earth doesn't go around the sun in exactly 365 days to the second. 

Leap days every four years (besides years that end in 00) take care of the majority of the time disparity, but it can't be that clean and neat and easy.

So a second has to be added once in a while, and this June 30, right before midnight Coordinated Universal Time/Greenwich Mean Time. 

What's the big deal?  Well, the stock markets around the world are in a dither.  After all, trades are now made on the split second with computer programs, and how the computers are going to react to the extra second added has them worried.

Color me unimpressed.  If Y2K didn't shut the world down, i hardly think adding a second to the clocks is going to do much damage.

Well, maybe to the programmers who have the headache of dealing with it, but i believe the rest of us can rest easily.  And those programmers might have an easier time of it if, next time a leap second needs adding, they do it on a day when all of the stock markets are closed.  (There has to be at least one hour, once in a year, when all of them are closed.)

No need to go get supplies, unless you want to throw a party that night to celebrate getting an extra second added to your year.

My plan is to snooze right through it.

If it ends the world as we know it, i guess someone will tell me the next morning.

Today is

American Red Cross Founder's Day -- established by Clara Barton on this day in 1881

Anastenarides Feast -- Greece (feast to St. Constantine and St. Helen)

Battle of Las Piedras Day -- Uruguay

Circassian Day of Mourning -- Circassians

Día de la Afrocolombianidad -- Columbia (Afro-Colombian Day; commemorates Columbia's abolition of slavery on this date in 1851)

Dia De Las Glorias Navales -- Chile (Navy Day)

Festival for Vevodus -- Ancient Roman Calendar (god of the dead, swamps, and volcanic movements, and sometimes regarded as the king of the Di Manes)
 
Grand Prix de Monaco -- Monaco (premier Formula 1 race through the streets of Monte Carlo, run since 1929; through Sunday)

Hay Festival of Literature -- Hay-on-Wye, Powys, Wales (largest annual festival of literature in a beautiful market town in the Black Mountains of the Welsh marches; through May 31)

Honvédelem Napja -- Hungary (Day of Patriots and Military)

Independence Day -- Montenegro

"I Need A Patch For That" Day -- sponsored by Wellcat Holidays, which notes that since everything else has a patch, why shouldn't you?

Kodiak Crab Festival -- Kodiak, AK, US (there's more than bears up here, you know! through Monday)

Lilies and Roses Day -- London, England (memorial of the death of Henry VI on this day in 1471; held at the Tower of London with representatives of Eton College and King's College, which he founded.)

Memory Days -- Grayson, KY, US ("WOW! Just look at us Now!" is this year's theme, with a parade, art show, music, Firefighter's Dinner and more; through Monday)

Mudbug Madness -- Shreveport, LA (festival of crawfish and Cajun heritage, arts, entertainment, and more; through Sunday)

National Memo Day -- an internet holiday with no known origin, just take a memo

National Strawberries and Cream Day

National Waitstaff Day 

One Day Without Shoes -- sponsored by Toms Shoes, to raise global awareness for children's health and education, which can be compromised when they do not have shoes http://www.toms.com/onedaywithoutshoes

Passion Play Day -- the first Oberammergau, Germany, Passion Play was staged this date in 1634

Sister Maria Hummel Day -- birth anniversary of the Franciscan nun and artist

St. Constantine's Day (Greek Orthodox Church; Patron of Greece)

St. Eugene de Mazenod's Day (Patron of disfunctional families)

St. Helen's Day (Greek Orthodox Church; Patron of Greece)
     St. Helena Day -- St. Helena 

World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest -- Peoria, IL, US (competition and festival of ragtime, honky-tonk and old-time music; through Monday)

World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development -- UN


Anniversary Today:

Humphrey Bogart marries Lauren Bacall, 1945


Birthdays Today:

Sarah Ramos, 1991
Ashlie Brillault, 1987
Lisa Edelstein, 1966
Judge Reinhold, 1957
Mr. T, 1952
Ian McEwan, 1948
Leo Sayer, 1948
Janet Dailey, 1944
Bobby Cox, 1941
Heinz Hollinger, 1939
Peggy Cass, 1924
Andrey Dmitriyevich Sakharov, 1921
Raymond Burr, 1917
Dennis Day, 1917
Harold Robbins, 1916
Sister Maria Innocentia Hummel, 1909
Fats Waller, 1904
Armand Hammer, 1898
Glenn Hammond Curtiss, 1878
Elizabeth Gurney Fry, 1780
Alexander Pope, 1688
Albrecht Dürer, 1471


Debuting/Premiering Today:

The Empire Strikes Back(Film), 1980
"Gypsy"(Musical), 1959
"Le Fils prodigue / The Prodigal Son(Prokofiev ballet, Op. 46), 1929
"Pagliacci"(Opera), 1892


Today in History:

Syracuse, Italy is captured by the Muslim sultan of Sicily, 878
The island of Saint Helena is discovered by the Portuguese navigator João da Nova, 1502
The nobility elect John Sobieski King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, 1674
The Order of St. Alexander Nevsky is instituted in Russia by the empress Catherine I; it would later be discontinued and then reinstated by the Soviet government in 1942 as the Order of Alexander Nevsky, 1725
Mary Campbell is abducted from her home in Pennsylvania by Lenape during the French and Indian War, 1758
Slavery  is abolished in Colombia, South America, 1851
Russia declares an end to the Russian-Circassian War and many Circassians are forced into exile, 1864
French troops invade the Paris Commune and engage its residents in street fighting, 1871
The American Red Cross is established by Clara Barton, 1881
The Manchester Ship Canal in England is officially opened by Queen Victoria, 1894
The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) is founded in Paris, 1904
Charles Lindbergh touches down at Le Bourget Field in Paris, completing the world's first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean, 1927
Bad weather forces Amelia Earhart to land in a pasture in Derry, Northern Ireland, and she thereby becomes the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, 1932
Oskaloosa, Iowa, becomes the first municipality in the United States to fingerprint all of its citizens, 1934
A Soviet station becomes the first scientific research settlement to operate on the drift ice of the Arctic Ocean, 1937
The National War Memorial in Canada is unveiled by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in Ottawa, 1939
Physicist Louis Slotin is fatally irradiated in a criticality incident during an experiment with the Demon core at Los Alamos National Laboratory, 1946
The opening of the Ninth Street Show, otherwise known as the 9th Street Art Exhibition – a gathering of a number of notable artists, and the stepping-out of the post war New York avant-garde, collectively know as the New York School, 1951
Michelangelo's Pietà in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome is damaged by a vandal, 1972
Democratic Republic of Yemen and North Yemen agree to a unity, merging into Republic of Yemen, 1990
The Ethiopian Civil War ends, 1991
Suharto, Indonesian president of 32 years, resigns, 1998
The clipper Cutty Sark is badly damaged by fire in London, England, 2007
JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, launches the solar-sail spacecraft IKAROS aboard an H-IIA rocket, 2010
The most active volcano in Iceland, Grimsvotn, erupts and triggers 50 small earthquakes, 2011