Fun License Plate (Wordless Wednesday) and Words for Wednesday

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Linking up with Wordless Wednesday, BeThere2Day, and Sandee at Comedy Plus.     

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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, Charlotte (MotherOwl) is providing the prompts on her blog.

For today the prompts are: 

Building

Tailfeather

Trees

Metal

Cloak

Linen

     and/or

Boots

Ring

Spirit

Opera Mints

Phone

Whole

Charlotte (MotherOwl) has also chosen Light Ivory as the color of the month.

She smiled as she spread the Light Ivory LINEN tablecloth out and began to set the table.

Dinner was cooking, wine was chilling, she'd gathered some apple blossoms from the TREES for decorating, knowing there were more than enough left for them to have a bumper crop of apples anyway.

In the SPIRIT of the special evening, she had even made his favorite dessert and ordered OPERA MINTS, a nod to his childhood memories.

She just hoped the PHONE would not RING tonight with an emergency from the BUILDING.  Those people tended to treat everything as if their TAILFEATHERs were on fire and they had to have the boss' input.  They were perfectly competent to decide some things for themselves and she hoped tonight they would do so.

Her timing was just right.  As she finished putting the serving platters with their meal on the table, she heard him open the door.  His BOOTS hit the floor with a thunk and he stored them in the boot box, then she knew he would hang up his CLOAK on the METAL coatrack.  

Walking into the dining room, his eyes lit up at the spread and with a smile he asked, "What's the occasion?"

"You and me, we're an occasion.  I thought it would be a nice change of pace."

"It is," he said, putting his arms around her and giving her a kiss.  "I'm glad I told Benson not to call tonight."

Benson didn't, and on the WHOLE it was a lovely evening.

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Today is:

Amelia Earhart Day

Children's Day -- Vanuatu

Cousins Day -- because cousins are wonderful people to have around! sponsored by Claudia Evart of New York City, who must have had great cousins

Festival of St. Eloi -- French Basque

Jakaba Diena -- Ancient Latvian Calendar (beginning of St. James' [Jacob] Festival, whose day is tomorrow; the beginning of hay harvest)

National Drive Through Day -- but only if you won't pass out from the heat when you roll down the window! on the founding date of Jack-in-the-Box, the first drive through burger chain

National Tequila Day -- celebrate North America's first native-born distilled spirit

Pioneer Day -- Mormon Christian

Pop a Wheelie Day -- before, not after, the tequila, please; a hospital visit is no fun

Public Opinion Day -- the first public opinion poll was published this date in 1824!

Simon Bolivar Day -- Ecuador; Venezuela

Sts. Boris and Gleb's Day (Patrons of princes; Moscow, Russia)

St. Christina the Astonishing's Day (Patron of all with mental handicaps, disorders, or illnesses, and mental health care workers, psychiatrists and therapists; against insanity and mental disorders)

St. Christina of Bolsena's Day (Patron of archers, mariners, millers)

Sumarauki -- Iceland (their calendar's extra days added to take into account the "drift" of the calendar from the moon phases)

Tell an Old Joke Day

Tenjin Matsuri -- Tenmangu Jinja, Osaka, Japan (one of Japan's 3 major festivals, through tomorrow)

Anniversary Today:

Richard Moll marries Susan Brown, 1993

Birthdays Today

Bindi Irwin, 1998

Dhani Lennevald, 1984

Anna Paquin, 1982

Summer Glau, 1981

Rose Byrne, 1979

Eric Szmanda, 1975

Jennifer Lopez, 1969

Kristin Chenoweth, 1968

Kadeem Hardison, 1965

Barry Bonds, 1964

Julie A. Krone, 1963

Lynda Carter, 1951

Michael Richards, 1949

Peter Serkin, 1947

Robert Hays, 1947

Chris Sarandon, 1942

Ruth Buzzi, 1936

Pat Oliphant, 1935

Billy Taylor, 1921

Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, 1900

Chief Dan George, 1899

Amelia Earhart, 1897

Oswald Chambers, 1874

Alexandre Dumas, pere, 1802

Simon Bolivar, 1783

John Newton, 1725 (wrote Amazing Grace)

Debuting/Premiering Today:

The Fellowship of the Ring(Publication date), 1954

Today in History

Death in Kyoto, Japan, of Kamo no Chomei (b. 1155), Japanese author, poet (waka) and essayist, critic of Japanese vernacular poetry and major figure of Japanese poetics, 1216

Citizens of Leeuwarden, Netherlands strike against a ban on foreign beer, 1487

Jacques Cartier plants a cross on the Gaspé Peninsula and takes possession of the territory in the name of Francis I of France, 1534

Mary, Queen of Scots, is forced to abdicate and replaced by her 1-year-old son James VI, 1567

Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac founds the trading post at Fort Pontchartrain, which later becomes the city of Detroit, Michigan, 1701

A Spanish treasure fleet of 10 ships under Admiral Ubilla leaves Havana, Cuba for Spain; on the 31st, all ships will be lost and come to be known as the !715 Treasure Fleet, 1715

Slavery is abolished in Chile, 1823

The first opinion poll was carried out in Delaware, USA, 1824

Benjamin Bonneville leads the first wagon train across the Rocky Mountains by using Wyoming's South Pass, 1832

After 17 months of travel, Brigham Young leads 148 Mormon pioneers into Salt Lake Valley, resulting in the establishment of Salt Lake City, 1847

The first tramway opened in England, 1861

Tennessee becomes the first U.S. State to be readmitted to the Union following the American Civil War, 1866

Captain Matthew Webb, who was the first person to swim the English Channel, drowned while trying to swim the rapids above Niagara Falls, 1883

O. Henry is released from prison in Austin, Texas after serving three years for embezzlement from a bank, 1901

Hiram Bingham III re-discovers Machu Picchu, "the Lost City of the Incas", 1911

The passenger ship S.S. Eastland capsizes while tied to a dock in the Chicago River. A total of 844 passengers and crew are killed in the largest loss of life disaster from a single shipwreck on the Great Lakes, 1915

The first insulin treatment is carried out, on a six-year-old girl, at St Guy's Hospital, London, 1925

The Kellogg-Briand Pact, renouncing war as an instrument of foreign policy, goes into effect, 1929*

The dust bowl heat wave reaches its peak, sending temperatures to 109°F (44°C) in Chicago and 104°F (40°C) in Milwaukee, 1935

During an official state visit to Canada, French President Charles de Gaulle declares to a crowd of over 100,000 in Montreal: Vive le Québec libre! ("Long live free Quebec!"), 1967

The Quietly Confident Quartet of Australia wins the Men's 4 x 100 metre medley relay at the Moscow Olympics, the only time the United States has not won the event at Olympic level, 1980

Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the last Tsar of Bulgaria when he was a child, is sworn in as Prime Minister of Bulgaria, becoming the first monarch in history to regain political power through democratic election to a different office, 2001

Lance Armstrong wins his 7th consecutive Tour de France, 2005

Over half of the country of Peru enters a state of emergency as a result of unusually cold weather, 2011

The scientific theory of supersymmetry is challenged after experiments with the Large Hadron Collider yield an incredibly rare particle decay event, 2013

After being reintroduced to Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada, the first bison is born there in 140 years, 2018

The US Federal Trade Commission hands down it’s largest fine ever, $5 billion, to Facebook for violating consumer privacy, 2019

In Yamaguchi City, Japan, a series of wild monkey attacks on people lead to the police carrying tranquilizer guns, 2022

The gender pay gap in the US between men and women working full time falls to its lowest level ever, with women earning 84 cents for every $1 men earn, up from 78 cents a decade ago, 2023