Awww Monday: Meeting Sam

Awww Monday is hosted by Sandee, of Comedy Plus.

Join us every Monday for Awww...Mondays.  Post a picture that makes you say Awww... and that it.

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Amos the Donkey was ill and could not come for Palm Sunday.

Meet Sam the Miniature Donkey, who took Amos' place.

Sam is rather sedate, and very handsome.

Animals draw crowds of children, so i broke up the carrots i brought and gave them to the kids to feed him.

He's not very big, but he has a big heart.

Today is:

Act Happy Week begins -- acting happy releases the body chemicals that aid health, mental and physical

Aizu Higan Shishi/Sanbiki Shishimai -- Aizu Wakamatsu, Japan (lion dances to mark the end of winter)

Back Badge Day -- Gloucestershire Regiment, British Army

Common Courtesy Day -- commonly listed on this day on many sites, with no origin given, but it's not a bad idea!

Dia de Benito Juarez -- Mexico (a Fiestas Patrias)

Fragrance Day and Flower Day -- the first full day of spring

Harmony Day -- Australia (managed by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship)

Human Rights Day -- South Africa

Independence Day -- Namibia(1990)

International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination -- UN

Memory Day -- internet based, to examine the use of memory aids throughout history

Mother's Day -- most Arabic nations

National Common Courtesy Day -- guess it's not so common any more, someone had to declare a holiday to try to foster some

National French Bread Day

National Single Parent Day -- US (by Presidential designation in 1984)

National Tree Planting Day -- Lesotho

Otago Provincial Anniversary -- Otago, New Zealand

Paper Dress Day -- the paper dress was introduced as part of an ad campaign by the Scott Paper Co. on this day in 1966

Save the Florida Panther Day -- FL, US

Shunki-Korei-Sai -- Shinto (rite to honor ancestral spirits, around the vernal equinox)

Single Parents' Day -- sponsored by Parents Without Parners, on the date of their inception in 1957

Spring Fairy Fun Day -- Fairy Calendar

St. Nicholas of Flue's Day (Patron of councilmen, difficult marriages, large families, magistrates, parents of large families, Pontifical Swiss Guards, separated spouses, Switzerland)

Wellderly Day -- and the start of Wellderly Week, focusing on the health of the elderly

World Down Syndrome Day -- UN

World Forest Day/International Day of Forests and the Trees -- UN

World Puppet Day

World Poetry Day -- UNESCO

Youth Day -- Tunisia


Birthdays Today:

James T. Kirk, 2233
Ronaldinho, 1980
Kevin Federline, 1978
Matthew Broderick, 1962
Rosie O'Donnell, 1962
Ayrton Senna da Silva, 1960
Gary Oldman, 1958
Eddie Money, 1949
Timothy Dalton, 1944
Peter Brook, 1925
Julio Gallo, 1910
John D Rockefeller III, 1906
Bascom Lamar Lunsford, 1882
Florenz Ziegfeld, 1867
Modest Mussorgsky, 1839
James Jesse "King Strang" Strang, 1813
Benito Juarez, 1806
Francis Lewis, 1713
Johann Sebastian Bach, 1685


Debuting/Premiering Today:

Annie(Film), 1982
"Stop the Music"(Radio show), 1948


Today in History:

The Byzantine emperor Heraclius restores the "True Cross" to Jerusalem, 630
Accession to the throne of Japan by emperor Antoku, 1188
3,000 Jews are killed in the Black Death riots in Efurt, Germany, 1349
n Oxford, Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer is burned at the stake, 1556
Czar Peter the Great begins his tour through West, 1697
Fire destroys 856 buildings in New Orleans, Louisiana, 1788
With the church leadership driven out of Rome during an armed conflict, Pius VII is crowned Pope in Venice with a temporary papal tiara made of papier-mâché, 1800
Code Napoléon is adopted as French civil law, 1804
The Bahá'í calendar begins, 1844
An earthquake in Tokyo, Japan kills over 100,000, 1857
The Zoological Society of Philadelphia, the first in the US, is incorporated, 1859
Journalist Henry Morton Stanley begins his trek to find the missionary and explorer David Livingstone, 1871
Loretta Walsh becomes the first female US Navy Petty Officer, 1917
Charles Lindbergh is presented the Medal of Honor for his first trans-Atlantic flight, 1928
Shah Reza Pahlavi formally asks the international community to call Persia by its native name, Iran, which means 'Land of the Aryans,' 1935
Alan Freed presents the Moondog Coronation Ball, the first rock and roll concert, in Cleveland, Ohio, 1952
Martin Luther King Jr. leads 3,200 people on the start of the third and finally successful civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, 1965
The first Earth Day proclamation is issued by San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto, 1970
Canadian paraplegic athlete and humanitarian Rick Hansen begins his circumnavigation of the globe in a wheelchair in the name of spinal cord injury medical research, 1985
Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones become the first to circumnavigate the Earth in a hot air balloon, 1999
The first full face transplant is performed by surgeons at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, 2011
Australia's Prime Minister Julia Gillard formally apologizes to people affected by forced adoptions during the 1950s through 1970s, 2013