No more complaints about the eight days of Hanukkah.

 (This seems to have published itself several hours earlier than scheduled; so if you were looking for yesterday's edition, it's back there.)

Today is the 14th Day of The Lunar New Year Festival - tomorrow is Lantern’s Day and it marks the end of the Lunar New Year holiday.  The day before the Lantern Festival, the Lantern Display stages are built in the open square in the front of temples.



People bring their decorated lanterns to the display stage for the competition. Some lanterns might take more than a month to completely decorate.


February 10, 1940 -
Puss Gets the Boot, the cartoon short is released by MGM on this date. It's the first appearance of Tom and Jerry.



Yeah, yeah, I know that the cat is called Jasper in this cartoon. But dammit, it's Tom, none the less.


February 10, 1945 -
The no. 1 song in America, on this date, was Rum and Coca Cola by Andrews Sisters. (The copyright holder of the song was Morey Amsterdam of The Dick Van Dyke Show fame, but that's another story.)



It's nice to think back in the more 'innocent' era of America, songs about when mother and daughter prostitute rings in the Caribbean were all the rage.


Today in History:
February 10, 60 CE -
St. Paul was believed to have been shipwrecked near Malta while en route to Rome for trial for practicing Catholicism on this date. (It shouldn't have been a shock to the Romans that St. Paul was practicing Catholicism when his first name was St.)

The story is told in the Bible’s New Testament Acts of the Apostles, chapter 27. Since the shipwreck involves the lead-cup drinking, orgy-mongering Romans (who obviously were otherwise occupied when it came to accurately recording dates in history,) the Maltese commemorate the event every February 10.


February 10, 1535 -
12 Anabaptists ran nude through the cold and snowy streets of Amsterdam on this date. (Once again, I'm sure there's an explanation but why ask me?)

Soon the seven men and five women were apprehended. The women were executed on May 15, the men on February 25, 1535, all by beheading. 

And you wonder why Anabaptism didn't catch on big in the US - I just wanted to put that little thought in you mind today


February 10, 1840 -
Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, (whose first language was German, was taught English and French, and became virtually trilingual, though her mastery of the conjugation of the past-participles irregular verbs in English remained incomplete which was luckily not on the English Monarchy exam), married her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (proving she also failed biology,) on this date.



She arranged marriages for her nine children (mostly to their first cousins) and forty-two grandchildren (mostly to their own first cousins - they needed charts and grafts to make sure they didn't marry their own brothers and sisters) across the continent, tying Europe together; this earned her the nickname "the grandmother of Europe".



Oh those wacky inbred royals.


February 10, 1855 -
US citizenship laws were amended to include all children of US parents born abroad on this date.

I would remind the president of this (but he seems not to want to be bothered by facts.)


February 10, 1863 -
Little people Tom Thumb and Lavinia Warren married in a ceremony at New York's Grace Episcopal Church. P. T. Barnum footed the bill for the wedding, and generated tremendous publicity (and revenue - reception tickets $75, adjusted for inflation, $1250 in today's dollars) in the weeks prior to and
following the nuptials.

Commodore Nutt and Lavinia's shorter and younger sister Minnie acted as attendants. The Thumbs afterwards honeymooned in Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington DC. In Washington they were invited by President Lincoln to be the guests of honor at a special White House reception.


February 10, 1920 -
Polish general and politician Józef Haller, performed a symbolic wedding of Poland to the sea, celebrating restitution of Polish access to open sea.

Happy anniversary (no comment.).


February 10, 1967 -
The 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified on this date.



The 25th Amendment (Amendment XXV) to the United States Constitution deals with succession to the Presidency and establishes procedures both for filling a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, as well as responding to Presidential disabilities. It supersedes the ambiguous wording of Article II, Section 1, Clause 6 of the Constitution, which doesn't explicitly state whether the Vice President becomes the President if the President died, resigned, was removed from office or was unable to discharge the Presidential powers.

Mike Pence sits eagerly by the phone for the call he knows will come.


February 10, 1968 -
Peggy Fleming won the gold medal in women's figure skating for the US at the Winter Olympic Games in Grenoble, France, on this date.



In 1994, Sports Illustrated named her one of the 40 individuals who most significantly altered or elevated sports in the previous 40 years.



And so it goes


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