The Monster Sago Palm and the Minuscule Cat (Wordless Wednesday), A Special Message, and Words for Wednesday

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Linking up with Wordless Wednesday and Sandee at Comedy Plus.     

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A special message to those from the top of the Northern and Western Hemisphere:  Happy Canada Day!

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Words for Wednesday was begun by Delores and has become a moveable feast of word or picture or music prompts to encourage us to write stories, poems, or whatever strikes our fancy.    

This month, the prompts are being provided by Cindi and are being posted by Elephant’s Child.          

This week's prompts are:

• In 60 words or less, write the happiest scene you can.

Have fun.

“Grandma, how much longer ‘til the cookies come out of the oven?”

Laughter.  “We just put them in, child!  Let them get warm, and we will watch them puff up, then settle, and then...”

“We eat!”

“Well, when they cool enough to touch.”

“That’s what dunking in cold milk is for!”

“Then by all means, get the milk, they’re done!”

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Today is:

Canada Day -- Canada

Cherokee Green Corn Ceremony -- honoring maize goddess Selu with thanksgiving for the maize harvest; date approximate, as many towns set their own times to celebrate

Creative Ice Cream Flavors Day -- a great way to start off Ice Cream Month; try a new one and you just might find a new favorite.

Day to Celebrate All the World's Creatures -- commemorates the day in 1975 that endangered species became internationally protected.

Distressed Elves Day -- Fairy Calendar

Doctors' Day -- India

Emancipation Day -- Sint Maarten

Halfway Point of the Year Day -- related observance

     Half-Year Day -- China

Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Establishment Day -- Hong Kong

Hug a Cowboy Day -- always on Canada Day

Independence Day -- Burundi(1962); Rwanda(1962)

Intact Day -- celebrating genital integrity, as far as possible on the calendar from the Feast of the Circumcision on Jan. 1 

International Chicken Wing Day -- some sites say the 2nd, celebrate today or tomorrow, your choice

International Joke Day -- as declared by many internet sites, but i can't find out why today; then again, why not?

International Reggae Day 

International Tartan Day -- anniversary of the repeal, in 1782, of the Act of Proscription which banned the wearing of Tartans; celebrated especially by Scottish diaspora in Australia; New Zealand

July Morning -- Bulgaria (dates back to the '70s, young and old people hitchhike to the Black Sea in late June to greet the dawn of July 1 with Uriah Heep's hit song July Morning; began as a suble anti-communist protest, now in memory of the fall of communism and to celebrate the start of summer vacation)

Keti Koti -- Suriname (Emancipation Day)

Madeira Day -- Madeira

Memorial Day -- Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada

Mount Fuji Official Climbing Season begins -- Japan (through Aug. 31) 

Moving Day -- Quebec, Canada

National Boating Day -- US

National Ducks and Wetlands Day -- US (presidential designation in 1990)

National Financial Freedom Day -- can't find how this one started, but it's as good a day as any to take a good look at your finances, and start learning how to better manage them.

National Gingersnap Day

Republic Day -- Ghana; Somalia

Sir Seretse Khama Day -- Botswana

Skiraphoria -- Ancient Greek Calendar (festival of cutting and threshing the grain)

St. Serf of Culross' Day (patron of the Orkney Islands)

Sts. Cosmas and Damian's Day -- Eastern Catholic Churches

     Holy Healers' Day -- Bulgaria (a special festival for the two saints/brothers who were healers; celebrated especially by all healers, fortune-tellers, witches, sorceresses and herbalists)

Territory Day -- British Virgin Islands

U.S. Postage Stamp Day -- first US postage stamp issued this day in 1847

Zip Code Day -- US (inaugural anniversary in 1963; when you mail that letter, zip it up! no zip, slow trip; wrong zip, long trip)

Anniversaries Today:

Prince Albert II of Monaco marries Charlene Whittstock, 2011

Haleakala National Park established, HI, US, 1961

Mammoth Cave National Park established, KY, US, 1941

Dwight D. Eisenhower marries Mamie Geneva Dowd, 1916

Birthdays Today:

Hilary Burton, 1982

Liv Tyler, 1977

Ruud Van Nistelrooy, 1976

Missy Elliott, 1971

Pamela Anderson, 1967

Andre Braugher, 1962

Princess Diana, 1961

Carl Lewis, 1961

Michelle Wright, 1961

Alan Ruck, 1956

Dan Aykroyd, 1952

Deborah Harry, 1945

Karen Black, 1942

Genevieve Bujold, 1942

Twyla Tharp, 1941

Jamie Farr, 1934

Jean Marsh, 1934

Leslie Caron, 1931

Farley Granger, 1925

Olivia DeHavilland, 1916

William James "Willie" Dixon, 1915

Estee Lauder, 1906

Charles Laughton, 1899

Thomas Andrew Dorsey, 1899

Louis Charles Joseph Blériot, 1872

Ignaz Semmelweis, 1818

George Sand, 1804

Debuting/Premiering Today:

CourtTV(Network, now TruTV), 1991

"Nick at Nite"(TV), 1985

"The Liberace Show"(TV), 1952

"Mama"(TV), 1949

NBC(Network, first scheduled TV broadcast ever), 1941

Today in History

Tiberius Julius Alexander orders his Roman legions in Alexandria to swear allegiance to Vespasian as Emperor, 69

La Noche Triste: a joint Mexican Indian force led by the Aztec ruler Cuitláhuac defeat Spanish Conquistadores led by Hernán Cortés, 1520

Lexell's Comet passed closer to the Earth than any other comet in recorded history, approaching to a distance of 0.0146 a.u., 1770

American privateers attack Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, 1782

A system of the civil registration of births, marriages and deaths is established in England and Wales, 1837

U.S. Postage stamps went on sale for the first time, 1847

In the first instance of photojournalism, a French photographer's daguerrotypes of Paris riots were turned into woodcuts so as to be published in the weekly newspaper L'Illustration Journal Universel on this date in 1848

Keti Koti (Emancipation Day) in Suriname, marking the abolition of slavery by the Netherlands, 1863

The British North America Act of 1867 takes effect as the Constitution of Canada, creating the Canadian Confederation and the federal dominion of Canada; Sir John A. Macdonald is sworn in as the first Prime Minister of Canada, 1867

The Philadelphia Zoological Society, the first US zoo, opens; admission twenty-five cents for adults and ten cents for children, 1874

The world's first international telephone call is made between St. Stephen, New Brunswick, Canada, and Calais, Maine, United States, 1881

SOS is adopted as the international distress signal, 1908

Grant Park Music Festival begins its tradition of free summer symphonic music concert series in Chicago's Grant Park, which continues as the United States' only annual free outdoor classical music concert series, 1935

NBC makes the first scheduled television broadcast, 1941

Tokyo City merges with Tokyo Prefecture and is dissolved; since then, no city in Japan has had the name "Tokyo" (present-day Tokyo is not officially a city), 1943

The merger of two princely states of India, Cochin and Travancore, into the state of Thiru-Kochi (later re-organized as Kerala) in the Indian Union ends more than 1,000 years of princely rule by the Cochin Royal Family, 1949

Zip Codes are introduced for the U.S.mail, 1963

The first color television transmission in Canada takes place from Toronto, 1966

The European Community is formally created out of a merger with the Common Market, the European Coal and Steel Community, and the European Atomic Energy Commission, 1967

Sony introduces the Walkman, 1979

O Canada officially becomes the national anthem of Canada, 1980

German re-unification: East Germany accepts the Deutsche Mark as its currency, thus uniting the economies of East and West Germany, 1990

The People's Republic of China resumes sovereignty over the city-state of Hong Kong, ending 156 years of British colonial rule, 1997

Saturn orbit insertion of Cassini-Huygens begins at 01:12 UTC and ends at 02:28 UTC, 2004

Smoking is banned in all indoor public spaces in England, 2007

The oldest European remains of a white man are discovered in Australia; the Manning River Skull may belong to a man born in 1650, predating the country's history that Captain James Cook was the first to land on Australia's east coast in 1770, 2013

Croatia becomes the twenty-eighth member of the European Union, 2013

Greece becomes the first developed country to default on loans from the International Monetary Fund, 2015

Tedros Adhanom takes office as first African Director-General of the World Health Organization, 2017