Kitten Love (Awww Monday) and Sparks!

(Because some people like Blogger and some like WordPress, i am putting the same content at both.  If you would prefer to read this on the other site, it is linked here.)

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's it.

Make sure you get the code from Sandee's site, linked above, and leave a link to your post so we can visit you.  What better way to start the week than with a smile!

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The wonderful Annie of McGuffy's Reader has started the blog hop called Sparks as a way to put more positive energy into the world.  Join her in combating the often negative influence of social media by adding your own Spark!

I believe we are meant to be lights in this world. If we allow our light to shine, we can see where we are going. It is then that we can begin to truly see each other clearly. Together, we can light up the entire world! ~ McGuffy Ann Morris

My "Spark" for the day 

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Today is:

Bramley Apple Week begins -- UK (celebrating these wonderfully delicious fruits, the best cooking apples in the world!)   

Constitution Day -- Mexico

Constitution Day -- Mexico (trad.)

Feast Day of Jacob, Patriarch -- Catholic Christian

Hurling the Silver Ball -- St. Ives, Cornwall, England (keeping up the over 1,000 year old tradition of an early form of rugby, the person who returns the silver ball to the Mayor on the steps of St. Ives Guildhall at midday gets a silver coin; pennies are thrown to the children in the afternoon)

Just Say No to Powerpoint® Week begins -- please, use something else, like communicating with your audience! begun by Nancy Stern

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

Love a Mensch Week begins -- because mensches are decent and responsible men and women, and we should appreciate how they enhance our lives; info from Robin Gorman Newman 

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)

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

Sara Evans, 1971

Bobby Brown, 1969

Michael Sheen, 1969

Laura Linney, 1964

Jennifer Jason Leigh, 1962

Christopher Guest, 1948

Barbara Hershey, 1948

David Alan Ladd, 1947

Charlotte Rampling, 1946

Roger Stauback, 1942

Jane Bryant Quinn, 1941

David Selby, 1941

H.R. Giger, 1940

Alex Harvey, 1935

Henry "Hank" Aaron, 1934

Andrew Greeley, 1928

Red Buttons, 1919

William Burroughs, 1914

John Carradine, 1906

Adlai E. Stevenson, Jr., 1900

Andre' Citroen, 1878

Belle Starr(Myra Maybelle Shirley), 1848

Dwight Lyman Moody, 1837

Ole Bull, 1810

Robert Peel, 1788

John Witherspoon, 1723

Sanjo, Emperor of Japan, 976

Debuting/Premiering Today:

"Where On Earth Is Carmen San Diego"(TV), 1994

"Hagar The Horrible"(Comic strip), 1973

"Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour"(TV), 1967

"Peter Pan"(Disney cartoon film), 1953

"Otello"(Verdi Opera), 1887

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 pateneted, 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

Danish special forces storm a ship captured by Somali pirates, freeing 25 crewmembers on board, 2010