Month: April 2025

On this day in 1770, Lieutenant James Cook first landed at Kurnell, on the southern banks of Botany Bay, in what is now Silver Beach, on Sunday 29 April 1770, when navigating his way up the east coast of Australia on his ship, HMS Endeavour. 18 years later, Governor Arthur Phillip sailed the armed tender HMS Supply into the bay on 18 January, 1788. First contact was made with the local Indigenous people, the Eora, who seemed curious but suspicious of the newcomers. Two days later, the remaining ships of the First Fleet arrived to found the planned penal colony.

Watercolor by Charles Gore

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Old school Do Not Disturb

Formerly…

Philosophers ruining stuff…

BADA BING!

I try to be a little overweight because it wouldn’t be fair if I were this good looking, intelligent, funny, AND thin. It’s a public service really.

I hate when people can’t let go of the past. Debt collectors are the worst.

I’ve decided to leave my past behind me. So if I owe you money.. I’m sorry… but I’ve moved on.

I do all my own stunts. But not intentionally.

*Day 3 of the kidnapping* The kidnappers are now offering my wife a ransom if she’ll take me back but she’s holding out for more.

The older I get, the tighter companies are screwing lids on jars.

My dog is the main the reason I know any of our neighbors.

*first date* Her: “Do you like dogs or cats better?” Flipping through the menu: “What page are you on?”

I don’t know if JD Vance killed the Pope, but I think we should deport him to El Salvador just in case.

My wife caught me sucking in my stomach while standing on the bathroom scale. HA! That’s not going to help! she laughed. Actually it does. It’s the only way I can see the numbers. 

My wife says I can be a real idiot sometimes. I think it’s pretty cool that she gives me permission like that.

So the guy who had to pay $25,000,000 for running a fake university is suddenly an expert on what Harvard should teach.

Whenever my wife says, “Cheer up. You could be stuck in a hole in the ground that’s filled with water” I know she means well.

IF PIGS REALLY COULD FLY, I BET THEIR WINGS WOULD BE DELICIOUS.

My psychiatrist says there’s nothing more he can do for me. That means I’m cured right? Right guys?

I’m pretty upset how fast my life went from MySpace to Mychart.

There’s no such thing as a grouchy old person.  Truth is, once you get older, you stop being polite and start being honest.

I want to meet the Tom that got an entire genre of foolery named after him.

ICE in America today is the SS of 1930s Germany.

A tattoo makes someone a gang member the same way a shiny gold cross makes Karoline Leavitt a Christian.

Don’t friend me unless you want to be constantly amazed by the amount of movies and shows I’ve never seen.

Nothing says ‘competent’ like a Homeland Security Secretary who can’t secure her own handbag.

Cutting off a narcissist from your life and radically accepting you are going to be the villain in their delusional world is top-level self-care.

My ex was bitten by a rattlesnake once. After three days of excruciating pain, the snake finally died.

Medical researchers have determined stress will kill you. Great! One more thing to worry about.

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Today is the birthday, in 1945, of American recording artist Tammi Terrell who had a series of duets with singer Marvin Gaye. She had had hits with Marvin Gaye, and scored seven Top 40 singles on the Billboard Hot 100, including ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough’, ‘Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing’ and ‘You’re All I Need to Get By’. Terrell died of a brain tumor on March 16th 1970 after collapsing into Marvin Gaye’s arms on stage during a duet of ‘That’s All You Need To Get By’. Terrell had undergone eight brain operations in 18 months. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IC5PL0XImjw

Today is Sardinia’s Day, (sa die de sa Sardigna; Sassarese: la dì di la Sardigna; Gallurese: la dì di la Saldigna; Algherese: lo dia de la Sardenya; Italian: il giorno della Sardegna). a holiday in Sardinia commemorating the Sardinian Vespers, which occurred from 1794 to 1796.

In the last decades of the 18th century following the Savoyard take-over of the island, tensions had begun to mount among the Sardinians towards the Piedmontese administration. Sardinian peasants resented the feudal rule and both the local nobles and the bourgeoisie were being left out of any active civil and military role, with the viceroy and other people from the Italian mainland being appointed in charge of the island.

In 1793, a French fleet tried to conquer the island. However, the locals managed to resist the invasion by the French, and began expecting the Savoyards to acknowledge the feat and improve their condition in return. The Sardinians thus presented with the King a list of grievances requiring his remedy, amongst which the demand that most of the offices be reserved for native Sardinians, along with autonomy from the Savoyard ruling class.

The King’s peremptory refusal to grant the island any of these wishes eventually spurred the rebellion against Piedmont’s primacy. On 28 April 1794, known as sa dii de s’aciappa (“the day of the pursuit and capture”), people in Cagliari started chasing any Piedmontese functionaries they could find; since many of them started to wear the local robes in order to blend into the crowd, any people suspected to be from the Italian mainland would be asked by the populace to “say chickpea” (nara cixiri) in Sardinian: failure in pronouncing the word correctly would give their origin away.

Thus, Sardinia became the first European country to have engaged in a revolution of its own, the episode not being the result of a foreign military importation like in most of Europe.

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special…

Schadenfreude is so much funnier in Dutch…

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triggering their target audience…

Today is the birthday, in 1952, of American musician Chuck Leavell who was a member of the The Allman Brothers Band during the height of their 1970s popularity. He is the longtime keyboardist and musical director with The Rolling Stones and Leavell has also toured and recorded with Eric Clapton, George Harrison, David Gilmour and John Mayer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCRS4DRmf_w

On this day in 1859, construction began on the Suez Canal.

n 1854 and 1856, Ferdinand de Lesseps obtained a concession from Sa’id Pasha, the Khedive of Egypt and Sudan, to create a company to construct a canal open to ships of all nations. The company was to operate the canal for 99 years from its opening.

The British government had opposed the project from the outset to its completion. The British, who controlled both the Cape route and the Overland route to India and the Far East, favored the status quo, given that a canal might disrupt their commercial and maritime supremacy. International opinion was initially skeptical, and shares of the Suez Canal Company did not sell well overseas. Britain, Austria, and Russia did not buy a significant number of shares. With assistance from the Cattaui banking family, and their relationship with James de Rothschild of the French House of Rothschild bonds and shares were successfully promoted in France and other parts of Europe.

Work started on the shore of the future Port Said on 25 April 1859. The excavation took some 10 years, with forced labor (corvée) being employed until 1864 to dig out the canal. Some sources estimate that over 30,000 people were working on the canal at any given period, that more than 1.5 million people from various countries were employed, and that tens of thousands of laborers died, many of them from cholera and similar epidemics.

The canal opened under French control in November 1869. The opening ceremonies began at Port Said on the evening of 15 November, with illuminations, fireworks, and a banquet on the yacht of the Khedive Isma’il Pasha of Egypt and Sudan.

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More signs…….

It’s Friday so sit back and enjoy or, better yet, get up and dance to this. First released in 2012, the song and dance have been viewed billions of times. If you want to sing along, like this crowd did, the lyrics can be found here. An English translation can be found here. Now dance along with Psy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHfZiQEB0tE

Today is the First Day of Summer in Iceland. Known in Icelandic as ‘Sumardagurinn fyrsti’, this holiday is an Icelandic flag day and marks the arrival of the first day of summer.

Given the climate in Iceland, it might seem strange that summer comes so early to Iceland. However, in Iceland, the old Norse calendar was in use by the first settlers to Iceland in the 9th century and it divided the year into only two seasons, vetur (winter) and (sumar) summer.

On Sumardagurinn Fyrsti, children in Iceland receive summer gifts (“sumargjafir.”) A tradition of gift-giving to children on the first day of summer predating the similar Christmas practice by hundreds of years.

Traditionally children were given food as a gift. They might receive bread or other treats as the need to ration food over the winter was ending. The gift was seen as a way of rewarding the children for having had to endure the long winter.

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How to get there:

Today is the birthday, in 1945, of Doug Clifford, drummer with Creedence Clearwater Revival who scored the 1969 US No.2 & UK No.1 single ‘Bad Moon Rising’, and the 1970 US & UK No.1 album Cosmo’s Factory. The band has sold 26 million albums in the United States alone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWijx_AgPiA

St. George’s Day is celebrated annually on 23rd April, as this is the generally accepted date of St. George’s death. St. George, who famously slew the dragon and saved the maiden, is patron of archers, armorers, Boy Scouts, butchers, cavalry, chivalry, Crusaders, equestrians, farmers, field hands, field workers, horsemen, horses, husbandmen, knights, lepers, Order of the Garter, Palestinian Christians, riders, Romanian Army, saddle makers, saddlers, sheep, shepherds, soldiers, Teutonic Knights; Canada; England; Ethiopia; Georgia; Germany; Greece; Lithuania; Malta; Portugal; Cappadocia; Catalonia; Palestine; over 20 cities and diocese around the world.

St. George was a cavalryman in the Roman army at Lydda, now in modern-day Israel. He was a Christian at a time when Rome was ruled by the emperor Diocletian, who was anti-Christian. He refused to make sacrifices to the Roman gods. As a result, he was tortured over several years and eventually suffered a martyr’s death, when he was beheaded in 303 AD.

Not everyone believes the story about the dragon:

To save a Maid, St. George the Dragon slew

A pretty tale if all is told be true

Most say there are no Dragons, and ’tis said

There was no George; pray God there was a Maid.

— John Aubrey, Remains of Gentilism (1688)

St. George and the Dragon – Raphael (National Gallery of Art)

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me too…

Bargain!

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SIGNZ

and no paddle

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Today is the birthday, in 1940, of Dale Houston, American singer who, along with his performing partner, Grace Broussard, hit the Billboard chart as Dale & Grace with two rock and roll singles. The first was the No. 1 gold record ‘I’m Leaving It Up to You’ in 1963. ‘Stop and Think It Over’ reached No. 8 in 1964. Their recordings are highly regarded examples of the Louisiana-Texas style known as “Swamp Pop”. Houston died on 27 September 2007. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5L5i7ARdAY