Why You Don't Let a Cat Nibble Your Ear (Wordless Wednesday)

Linking up with Wordless Wednesday.

Today is:

Day of Remembrance for Princess Olga -- Slavic Pagan Calendar

Earth at Perihelion -- 05:34 UTC (closest point to the Sun)

Hakozakigu Tamaseseri -- Fukuoka, Japan (ceremony of the red ball which brings good luck to the team which catches it)

Humiliation Day -- drawing attention to the fact that it's okay to be humble, but not to humiliate others

Icing Morning -- Fairy Calendar

J.R.R. Tolkien Day -- birth anniversary

Memento Mori / "Remember You Die" Day -- Wellcat Holidays suggests putting these words where you can see them often, to remind you to cherish what you have today

National Chocolate Covered Filled Cherry Day

National Write to Congress Day -- US (the new session begins today or, if the 3rd is on a weekend, the following Monday; write your Congress-persons and Senators and tell them what you think)   

Revolution Day -- Burkina Faso

Shigoto-hajime -- Japan (first work day of the New Year; work begun well today will prosper)

St. Genevieve's Day (Patron of females in the military; Paris, France; against plague, disasters, fevers)

Tamaseseri Festival -- Hakozaki Shrine, Fukuoka, Japan (men in fundoshi - loincloths - compete for the ball; if the winning team is from a seaside town, it will be an auspicious year for fishermen, if the land team wins, there will be a good harvest)

Tenth Day of Christmas

Anniversaries Today:

Alaska becomes the 49th US State, 1959

Establishment of Wind Cave National Park, SD, US, 1903

Birthdays Today

Eli Manning, 1981

Danica McKellar, 1975

Joan Chen, 1960

Mel Gibson, 1956

Victoria Principal, 1950

John Paul Jones, 1946

Stephen Stills, 1945

Van Dyke Parks, 1943

Dabney Coleman, 1932

Robert Loggia, 1930

George Martin, 1926

Jan Walsh Anglund, 1926

Maxine Andrews, 1918

John Sturges, 1911

Victor Borge, 1909

Ray Milland, 1905

Zasu Pitts, 1898

Marion Davies, 1897

Clement Richard Attlee, 1883

J.R.R. Tolkien, 1892

Father Joseph Damien, 1840

Lucretia Coffin Mott,  1793

William Tucker, 1624 (first African American child born in North America)

Cicero, BC106

Debuting/Premiering Today:

"The Arsenio Hall Show"(TV), 1989

"Queen for a Day"(TV), 1956

"Look Up and Live"(TV), 1954

"Symphonic Dances"(Rachmaninoff, Op. 45), 1941

"An Ideal Husband"(Play), 1895

Today in History:

Joan of Arc is handed over to the bishop for trial, 1431

Leonardo da Vinci unsuccessfully tests a flying machine, 1496

Martin Luther is formally excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church, 1521

The first theater in Amsterdam, the Schouwburg, opens, 1638

Benning Wentworth issues the first of the New Hampshire Grants, leading to the establishment of Vermont as a separate state, 1749

Stephen F. Austin receives a grant of land in Texas from the government of Mexico, 1823

Joseph Jenkins Roberts is sworn in as the first president of the independent African Republic of Liberia, 1848

The Meiji Restoration returns authority to Japan's emperors, 1868

Oleomargarine is patented by Henry Bradley, Binghamton, NY, 1871

The wax drinking straw is patented, by Marvin C Stone in Washington DC, 1888

The refracting telescope at the Lick Observatory, then the largest in the world, is put into use, 1888

The first known use of the word automobile was seen in an editorial in The New York Times, 1899

British explorer Howard Carter discovers the sarcophagus of Tutankhamen in the Valley of the Kings, near Luxor, Egypt, 1924

Benito Mussolini announces he is taking dictatorial powers over Italy, dissolves the Italian parliament, 1925

Minnie D. Craig becomes the first female elected as Speaker of the North Dakota House of Representatives, the first female to hold a Speaker position anywhere in the United States, 1933

Frances Bolton and her son, Oliver from Ohio, become the first mother and son to serve simultaneously in the U.S. Congress, 1953

Edmund Hillary reaches South Pole overland, 1958

The West Indies Federation is formed, 1958

Apple Computer is incorporated, 1977

Margaret Thatcher becomes the longest-serving British Prime Minister in the 20th Century, 1988

In Moscow, George H. W. Bush and Boris Yeltsin sign the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), 1993

More than seven million people from the former Apartheid Homelands, receives South African citizenship, 1994

The People's Republic of China announces it will spend fight erosion and pollution in the Yangtze and Yellow river valleys, 1977

The Mars Polar Lander is launched, 1999

Australian researchers discover the 1912 plane that was the first taken to Antarctica, 2010

The Ezadeen, an abandoned ship carrying 450 Syrians, is rescued from choppy waters and brought safely to shore in Italy; the ship is the second to be abandoned by human traffickers off the nation's coast in the last four days, 2014