Kittens! (Awww Monday), Inspiring Quote of the Week, and Our Daily Read (Poetry Monday)

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Awww Monday is hosted by Sandee at 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!

More shelter kittens:

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Sparks, the brainchild of Annie of McGuffy's Reader, is on hiatus, so here's an Inspiring Quote of the Week in her honor.

EverydayPower

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Poetry Monday was started by Diane at On The Alberta/Montana Border.  Charlotte/Mother Owl participates, too.  This week the theme is Newspapers.                   

Every morning it is there,

Sitting on the sidewalk,

We bring it in and scan and read,

Over breakfast as we talk.

In our house the sports section gets

The short end of the stick,

When i need to line the cat box,

That's the first section i pick!

We jostle for the funnies,

But at least i get to play

All of the puzzles by myself,

After work, they make my day.

Yes, we still get a paper,

But numbered are its days,

Someday i'm afraid it will vanish,

Replaced in newfound ways.

(We do get a newspaper, still.  They are, however, on their slow decline, and someday they will die off.  It's going to be a sad day, at least for me.)

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Today is:

Birth of the Blues Day -- birth anniversary of W.C. Handy, "Father of the Blues"

Button Day -- internet generated; a day to collect, or reminisce about collecting, buttons, with information about buttons here

Cartagena Independence Day -- Cartagena, Columbia

Chinggis Khan's (Genghis Khan) Birthday -- Mongolia (also National Pride Day)

Dagur Islenskrar tungu -- Iceland (Icelandic Language Day)

Day of Declaration of Sovereignty / Day of National Rebirth -- Estonia

Deepavali/Diwali(Festival of Lights) -- Hindu; Jain; Sikh (3rd day of the festival)

     Gai Tihar and Laxmi Puja -- Day of Cows and Laxmi (goddess of wealth; day three of the festival)

Famous San Diego Chicken Day -- a day to celebrate anyone who has ever slugged a purple dinosaur

Flag Day/Statia and America Day -- St. Eustatius

Global Entrepreneurship Week   

Have a Party with Your Bear Day -- no comment, it's too obvious

Hecate Night -- Ancient Greek Calendar (date approximate; celebrated still by some Wiccans)

International Day for Tolerance - UN

Mothers' Day -- North Korea

National Fast Food Day 

Revolution Day -- Mexico (obs.)

St. Gertrude the Great's Day (Patron of nuns; Naples, Italy; West Indies)

St. Margaret of Scotland's Day (Patron of learning, parents of large families, queens, widows; Scotland; against the death of children)

St. Matthew the Evangelist's Day (Eastern Churches)

Anniversaries Today:

Oklahoma becomes the 46th US State, 1907

Birthdays Today:

Maggie Gyllenhall, 1977

Oksana Baiul, 1977

Martha Plimpton, 1970

Lisa Bonet, 1967

Diana Krall, 1964

Dwight Gooden, 1964

Susanna Clarke, 1959

Marg Heigenberger, 1958

Shigeru Miyamoto, 1952

Elizabeth Drew, 1935

Daws Butler, 1916

Burgess Meredith, 1908

W.C. Handy, 1873

Tiberius, Roman Emperor, BC42

Debuting/Premiering Today:

The Roman Catholic Church issues the first new Universal Catechism since 1563, to address modern issues, 1992

"The Real Thing"(Stoppard play), 1982

"The Sound of Music"(Musical), 1959

Today in History:

The second and final revision of the Codex Justinianus is published, 534

Francisco Pizarro captures the Incan emperor Atahualpa after the victory at Cajamarca, 1532

The first colonial prison is organized, in Nantucket, Massachussetts, 1676

Kentucky becomes the first state to nullify an act of Congress, 1798

The New York Evening Post publishes its first edition, 1801

An earthquake in Missouri causes the Mississippi River to flow backwards, 1811

Missouri trader William Becknell arrives in Santa Fe, New Mexico over a route that became known as the Santa Fe Trail, 1821

Napoleon Guerin of NYC patents a cork life preserver, 1841

Fyodor Dostoevsky is sentenced to death for anti-government activities; sentence is commuted to hard labor, 1849

Amsterdam post office at Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal opens, 1856

William Bonwill patents dental mallet to impact gold into cavities, 1875

6,000 Armenians massacred by Turks in Kurdistan, 1894

Arturo Tuscanini begins conducting NY's Metropolitan Opera, 1908

US Federal Reserve System formally opens, 1914

LSD is first synthesized by Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann at the Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, Switzerland, 1938

UNESCO is founded, 1945

NASA launches Skylab 4 with a crew of three astronauts from Cape Canaveral, Florida for an 84-day mission, 1973

The Hoxne Hoard is discovered by metal detectorist Eric Lawes in Hoxne, Suffolk, 1992

After nearly 18 years of incarceration, the People's Republic of China releases Wei Jingsheng, a pro-democracy dissident, from jail for medical reasons, 1997

The People's Republic of China begins to implement the "Great Firewall," filters which make it impossible to connect to internet sites the government deems illegal or unhelpful to the communist ideal, 2006

Hostess Brands reveals plans to file bankruptcy because of a baker's union strike, 2012

Chocolate manufacturers state that a cocoa-pod fungus and dry weather in cocoa-growing regions has created a shortage of cocoa that may increase in the future; world chocolate demand already exceeds production capacity, 2014

The largest diamond discovered in more than a century, a 1,111 carat stone, is found in the Karowe mine, Botswana, 2015

French President Francois Hollande declares the country at war with ISIS in an address to parliament, 2015

Leonardo da Vinci's painting "Salvator Mundi" sells for $450.3 million at auction in New York, world record price for any artwork, 2017

Nineteen countries pledge to phase out coal at UN Climate Summit in Bonn, Germany, 2017

Scientists agree to redefine the kilogram, measuring it against Planck's Constant instead of measuring it against a physical artifact specimen, 2018