26 April: International Macaroni Day

Today is International Macaroni Day, so here are 10 things you might not know about macaroni.

1. There are two theories as to where the word "macaroni" comes from. One is that it derives from a Greek word, "makaria" which was a kind of barley broth eaten at funerals. The other is that it comes from the Italian "maccare", meaning to pound or crush, because wheat is crushed in order to make pasta.
2. Macaroni is made from durum Wheat, and comes in a variety of shapes and sizes. The little tubes with bends in are called elbow macaroni.
3. One of the most popular uses for macaroni is to make what the Brits call macaroni Cheese, or mac and cheese in North America. It's a comfort food, baking the pasta together with a cheese sauce (usually cheddar) and adding other ingredients, such as breadcrumbs, meat and vegetables, depending on the locality.
4. 100g of dry macaroni contains 371 calories.
5. The earliest recipes for this type of dish originated in 14th century Italy. A cheese and pasta casserole known as makerouns was recorded in the medieval English cookbook, the Forme of Cury, at about the same time.
6. The Victorians used to eat a sweet macaroni pudding containing Milk and sugar.
7. In Hong Kong, they eat macaroni for breakfast. They cook it up with Mushrooms, Peas, ham, Eggs, and chicken stock.
8. It was Thomas Jefferson introduced macaroni to the United States, after eating it during a trip to Italy in 1789. He liked it so much that he bought a macaroni shaping machine to bring home. He even served a macaroni pie at a state dinner in 1802, although one of his guests, Reverend Manasseh Cutler, reportedly didn't like it much.
9. In the 1700s, macaroni was another word for a dandy, or a man who wore flamboyant clothes. The lyrics of the song Yankee Doodle Dandy mention the word in that context.
10. This is also how the macaroni Penguin gets its name. These birds have a yellow crest on their heads, and 19th century English sailors thought they looked like dandies.

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25 April: Thimbles

On this date in 1684 a patent was granted for the thimble. "A small cap, usually of metal, worn to protect the finger when pushing a Needle through cloth in sewing." Here are ten things you might not know about thimbles.

1. I found two possible origins for the word "thimble". One is the old English word thymel, meaning thumbstall. The other is the term used by the first thimble manufacturer in England in the 17th century - the "thumb-bell," which evolved into the word we use today.
2. Early man used pieces of bone to help push needles, as early as 30,000 years ago. By Roman times, thimbles existed - the oldest thimble ever discovered dates back to the first century and was found in Pompeii.
3. Early thimbles were made from whale bone, horn, or ivory. Today, they are made from metal, leather, rubber, wood, glass, or china. Silver thimbles were popular in the 19th century but there was a problem with them. Silver is a soft metal and so it wasn't unknown for a needle to pierce the metal. A manufacturer called Charles Horner solved this problem by using a steel core which was covered inside and out by silver. His Dorcas thimbles are now collectors items.
4. A collector of thimbles is called a digitabulilst. This hobby first became popular after special thimbles were made for the Great Exhibition held in the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park in the 1800s.
5. The largest thimble collection in the world belongs to Robert Harper of Canada, and contains more than 8,000 thimbles.
6. The most expensive one ever is believed to have belonged to Queen Elizabeth I and is made from Gold. It was probably a gift from Mughal Court in India, and Elizabeth gave it to one of her ladies in waiting. It was sold at auction in 1992 for $31,180.00.
7. Protecting fingers from needle pricks isn't the only use thimbles have been put to. In the 1800s they were used to measure spirits (hence the phrase "just a thimbleful"). They could also be used by prostitutes to tap on windows to let their customers know they were there, and Victorian schoolteachers would use them to tap the heads of naughty children.
8. Thimbles have been used as love-tokens and to commemorate important events. At one time they were seen as ideal gifts for ladies, but not always a welcome one, given that there is a superstition which says if a woman has three thimbles given to her as gifts she will never marry.
9. During the First World War silver thimbles were collected from "those who had nothing to give" by the British government and melted down to buy hospital equipment.
10. A thimble is one of the tokens in the game of Monopoly. There's also a children's game called Hunt the Thimble. The rules of this game can be found at https://www.activityvillage.co.uk/hunt-the-thimble.

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24 April: Anthony Trollope

Writer Anthony Trollope was born on this date in 1815. Some facts about him:

1. He didn't have a great childhood. His father, Thomas, a failed barrister, tried farming, but failed at that, too. An expected inheritance didn't materialise because a childless uncle re-married and had some children. In the end, the whole family had to flee to Belgium to escape the debt collectors. Despite the lack of money, Thomas wanted his son to go to a good school. To save on fees, he attended school as a day boy. Possibly because of the lack of money, young Anthony was bullied at school and contemplated suicide when he was twelve. Anthony coped by escaping into daydreams, and constructing complex imaginary worlds.
2. His mother wrote travel books. While the family were living in Belgium, they lived on her earnings.
3. Anthony was offered a job as a clerk in the General Post Office, and returned to London to take up the post when he was nineteen. He worked for the Post Office until he was in his fifties, and earning enough from his writing to allow him to retire.
4. Most of the time, he hated working for the Post Office, and it showed. He was often late for work and had a reputation for insubordination. He was in debt himself by now, and was harassed at work by money lenders. He felt trapped in a job he hated, needing the money to pay off his debts, and constantly fearing that he'd be fired.
5. Things got better when a vacancy arose in Ireland. It wasn't seen as a desirable position, but Trollope hated his job so much that he volunteered to go anyway. His supervisor gave him the job because he wanted to be rid of him. The cost of living in Ireland wasn't so high and so the money troubles eased. The position gave him a new start - his new boss decided to ignore the bad references he brought with him and judge him on merit. His new job involved a certain amount of travel which he enjoyed - he soon began using train journeys for writing. A trip to Salisbury for work inspired the first of his Barsetshire novels. He is even credited with some Post Office history - he introduced the Pillar Box to Britain when they were trialled on the island of Jersey in 1854.
6. He was a prolific writer, setting strict targets as to how much he would write every day. Since he was combining writing with a day job, this involved getting up at 5.30 every morning and writing for three hours before going to work. He wrote 250 words every 15 minutes, pacing himself with a watch. If he finished a novel within his three hour writing time, he'd immediately start another.
7. As well as making a living from writing, he had another ambition - to become an MP. However, working for the Post Office made him a civil servant and therefore not eligible to stand. Once he'd retired, he was eligible and so began looking for a seat to stand for. In 1868, he agreed to stand as a Liberal candidate in the borough of Beverley, in the East Riding of Yorkshire. He came last in the election, and hated campaigning. He described it as "the most wretched fortnight of my manhood", and went back to his writing.
8. He married Rose Heseltine after a long engagement, necessary because neither of them had any money. One of their sons emigrated to Australia and became a sheep farmer. Trollope went to visit in 1871, and spent two years down under. Needless to say, he wrote a novel during the voyage. The press in Australia were uneasy, however, afraid he would write negative things about Australia. What he did write about Australia was mostly positive, although he did criticise a few things.
9. While reading a comic novel Vice Versa, by F. Anstey, he laughed so much it gave him a stroke, from which he never recovered, and died a month later at the age of 67.
10. Fans of his work have included Elizabeth Gaskell, Virginia Woolf, Harold Macmillan, J. K. Galbraith, Tolstoy, Henry James, PD James and Queen Victoria.

See Also: Quotes by Anthony Trollope

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23 April: Shirley Temple

This date in 1928 saw the birth of Shirley Temple, child star and politician.

1. Shirley Temple was enrolled in dance classes by her mother, Gertrude, when she was just three years old. At that point, she was so shy she used to hide behind the Piano. Nevertheless, she was spotted there by Charles Lamont, who was a casting director for Educational Pictures.
2. Her first screen appearance was in a set of short films called Baby Burlesks, in which young children played adult roles - Shirley played a dancer in lacy lingerie alongside boy toddlers dressed as soldiers. Temple later described the series as "a cynical exploitation of our childish innocence".
3. Probably her best known film is Bright Eyes, the 1934 film which was written especially with her in mind and contained her signature song, On the Good Ship Lollipop. This film won her the first Juvenile Oscar and a month later she added her foot and handprints to the forecourt at Grauman's Chinese Theatre.
4. At the age of nine, she sued the writer Graham Greene over a review of her film Wee Willie Winkie. He wrote that her admirers were "middle-aged men and clergymen" who "respond to her dubious coquetry, to the sight of her well-shaped and desirable little body". The settlement remained in trust for the girl in an English bank until she turned 21, when it was donated to charity.
5. She almost played Dorothy in Wizard of Oz, but lost that particular role to Judy Garland, despite Judy being a less well-established star. Rumours as to why that was included that she couldn't sing as well, that the studio she had a contract with at the time didn't want to loan her out or that the producer behaved inappropriately towards her at their meeting.
6. Shirley's mother styled her hair every night into her trademark curls - 56 curls - no more and no less. Rumours abounded that she wore a wig. She later said she wished it had been a wig, for the process of styling her hair was tedious and gruelling. Other fake news that circulated at the time was that she wasn't a child at at all by a 30 year old dwarf. This arose from the fact she never seemed to lose any baby teeth. She did, but wore dental plates and caps to cover the gaps while filming. The rumour was so prevalent that the Vatican sent someone to America to investigate whether or not it was true.
7. She stopped believing in Santa Claus when she was six, and a Santa she visited at a department store asked for her autograph.
8. As she grew up, her films lost their appeal. She retired from acting at the age of 22 after failing to get a part in a Broadway show. As an adult, she went into politics. In 1967 she ran for the House of Representatives as a Republican candidate, but lost. Later, however, she was more successful. She was United States Representative to the United Nations under Richard Nixon, U.S. Ambassador to Ghana under Gerald Ford, and Ambassador to Czechoslovakia under George H.W. Bush. She served in the State Department under Ronald Reagan. Despite her innocent image as a child star, she was described as a "hawk" by her opponents when it came to the Vietnam War.
9. She was married twice, first at the age of 17 to John Agar, an Army Air Corps sergeant and physical training instructor. He became an actor too and they made two films together, but the marriage ended in 1949. Her second marriage was to Charles Alden Black, a World War II Navy intelligence officer who was Assistant to the President of the Hawaiian Pineapple Company. She fell in love with him at first sight despite, or possibly because of, the fact he said he'd never seen any of her films. Their marriage lasted until he died.
10. There are two actresses and a cocktail named after her. A Shirley Temple is a non-alcoholic cocktail made from ginger ale, grenadine syrup and Orange juice topped with a maraschino cherry and slice of Lemon. In 1988 a soft drinks company tried to market it and was taken to court by Shirley Temple who was offended by the use of her name. Actresses Shirley Jones and Shirley MacLaine were both named after her. Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, “As long as our country has Shirley Temple, we will be all right.” She appears on the cover of The Beatles album, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

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22 April: Henry Fielding

The writer Henry Fielding, as born on this date in 1707 - here are 10 quotes:

1. Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.
2. If you make money your god, it will plague you like the devil.
3. Where the law ends tyranny begins.
4. Fashion is the science of appearance, and it inspires one with the desire to seem rather than to be.
5. Adversity is the trial of principle. Without it a man hardly knows whether he is honest or not.
6. When children are doing nothing, they are doing mischief.
7. The slander of some people is as great a recommendation as the praise of others.
8. Wine is a turncoat; first a friend and then an enemy.
9. Tea! The panacea for everything from weariness to a cold to a murder.
10. Money is the fruit of evil, as often as the root of it.

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21 April: Bison

Bison (Bison bison) have been kept in Golden Gate Park since 1891, when a small herd was purchased by the park commission, to help conserve them. On this date in 1892, the first bison calf was born there.

1. The bison is the largest mammal in North America. Male bison (bulls) weigh up to 2,000 pounds and stand 6 feet tall, while females (cows) weigh up to 1,000 pounds and are 4-5 feet tall. Bison calves weigh 30-70 pounds at birth.
2. Their horns can grow to two feet (60cm) in length.
3. What's the difference between a buffalo and a bison? Aside from the fact you can't wash your hands in a buffalo? The words are often used interchangeably - the animal is commonly known both as American buffalo or bison. Its scientific name is bison bison, however. Bison is a Greek word meaning ox-like animal, while the word buffalo came from French fur trappers who called them bœufs, meaning oxen or bullocks.
4. They are not as slow and ungainly as they often look. They can run as fast as 40 mph (64 km/h), and they are also good swimmers.
5. They are actually very dangerous animals, perhaps even more so than bears. In Yellowstone National Park 79 people were injured by bison between 1980 and 1999, while bears only injured 24. Bison will attack people if provoked. Beware of a bison whose tail is standing straight up. That means it's angry and may be getting ready to charge. Although, even if its tail is down, still beware because their moods can change rapidly.
6. Yellowstone National Park is the only place in the USA where bison have continuously lived since prehistoric times. Everywhere else, bison have interbred with cattle but in Yellowstone their DNA is pure bison.
7. A bison’s hump is made of muscle, supported by long vertebrae. It allows them to swing their heads from side-to-side to clear Snow in winter, so they can still eat.
8. Bison eat grasses, weeds and leafy plants and forage for food for 9-11 hours a day.
9. When the calves are born they are orange-red in colour, and so have gained the nickname “red dogs.”
10. The bison is a popular symbol in North America. Kansas, Oklahoma, and Wyoming have adopted the animal as their official state mammal. In Canada, the bison is the official animal of the province of Manitoba and is used in the official coat of arms of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. On May 9, 2016, President Obama signed the National Bison Legacy Act into law, officially making the American bison the national mammal of the United States.

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20 April:Joan Miró

Born on this date in 1893 was Joan Miró, Spanish painter, sculptor and ceramicist.

1. Joan Miró was born in Barcelona, Spain. His father was a watch maker and his mother was a goldsmith.
2. Despite being in creative fields of work themselves, Joan's parents didn't want him to be an artist. They wanted him to get a proper job, so he went to business school and got a job as an accountant. While working as an accountant he used to draw in his account books. He was so badly suited to this kind of work that he eventually suffered a nervous breakdown, at which point his father relented and let him go to art school.
3. Miró's first solo exhibition was in Barcelona in 1918, but it wasn't well received by the critics or the public. His work was ridiculed and vandalised.
4. Two years later, he moved to Paris, drawn to the art scene there where cubism and surrealism were in vogue. He was an admirer of Pablo Picasso, who he'd never met despite the fact their mothers were friends. Picasso was already in Paris, so Miró called on his mother to find out if there was anything he could take with him to give to Pablo. She gave him a cake, which Miró duly delivered and the two artists became lifelong friends.
5. Miró had another famous friend, the writer Ernest Hemingway, who was his boxing partner at a local gym. Hemingway was also a fan of Miró's work. One of his early paintings was called The Farm, which depicted his family's farm in Spain. Miró called it “a summary of my entire life in the countryside”. Hemingway thought it captured the essence of Spain and loved it. He bought it for 5,000 francs as a birthday present for his wife. It's said he wasn't the only person who wanted the picture, and that he had to roll dice with one of his friends for the right to buy it.
6. He married Pilar Juncosa in 1921 and they had one child, a daughter named Dolors.
7. He produced around 2,000 paintings, 500 sculptures, 400 ceramics, 5,000 drawings, 1,000 lithographs, over 250 illustrated books and designed a number of tapestries.
8. He got into tapestry design in 1974 when he was asked to create a tapestry for display in the World Trade Center in New York. As he'd never created a tapestry before, and didn't think he had the required skills, so he declined, but later made one for the hospital which took care of his daughter after an accident. After that, he felt confident enough to team up with Josep Royo to create a tapestry for the World Trade Center. It was one of the most expensive pieces of art lost in the September 11 terrorist attacks.
9. Miró kept on working into his 80s, and his later work was quite experimental - he called it anti-art. He painted with his fingers, stamped on the paintings, cut and even burned them. At 82, he declared that he wasn't producing art for "old dodos" but for the young people of the 21st century. He died of heart failure in 1983, aged 90.
10. He said, "I try to apply colours like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music," and "When I stand in front of a canvas, I never know what I’m going to do – and nobody is more surprised than I at what comes out."

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