TRIVIA:
QUOTES:
CHUCKLES/BELLY
LAUGHS & GROANERS
TRIVIA:
July begins on the same day of the week as
April every year and also January in leap years.
July's flower is the water lily or larkspur.
July's birthstone is the ruby.
July in the Northern Hemisphere is the seasonal
equivalent to January in the Southern Hemisphere and vice versa.
July is the most common birth month, along
with October.
July is the seventh month of the year in the
Gregorian Calendar and one of seven Gregorian months with the length of
31 days. It is, on average, the hottest month within much of the Northern
hemisphere.
July begins (astrologically) with the sun in
the sign of Cancer and ends in the sign of Leo. Astronomically speaking,
the sun begins in the constellation of Gemini and ends in the constellation
of Cancer.
July was renamed for Julius Caesar, who was
born in that month. Previously, it was called Quintilis in Latin, since
it was the fifth month in the ancient Roman calendar, before January became
the first month of the calendar year (the year when displayed as twelve
months in order) during the time of the decemvirs about 450 BC. In the
pagan wheel of the year July ends at or near to Lughnasadh in the northern
hemisphere and Imbolc in the southern hemisphere.
Potentially useless trivia for
a July afternoon
By Wally Edge - July 18, 2007
Lady Bird Johnson lived for nearly 44 years
after her husband left the Vice Presidency following John F. Kennedy’s
assassination in 1963. That is the longest a former Second Lady of the
United States has lived after leaving office.
The second longest tenure as a former Second
Lady belongs to a New Jerseyan, Jennie Tuttle Hobart, who died in 1941
-- 42 years after the death of her husband, Garrett Hobart.
Hobart began a career in politics two years
after their marriage in 1869. He served as Paterson City Attorney and as
Counsel to the Passaic County Board of Freeholders before winning a State
Assembly seat in 1872. He became Assembly Speaker in 1874 and won election
to the State Senate in 1876; he was Senate President in 1881 and 1882.
He was the Republican National Committeeman from New Jersey from 1884 to
1896.
The 1896 Republican National Convention featured
a floor fight between two presidential candidates, Ohio Governor William
McKinley and Maine’s Thomas Reed, the Speaker of the House. The New
Jersey delegation was evenly split between the two -- Hobart was an early
backer of four-term U.S. Senator William Boyd Allison of Iowa for President,
but later switched to McKinley -- but New Jersey to the McKinley column
after commitments to back Hobart for the Vice Presidency.
(Reed’s state campaign chairman was former
Congressman John Kean, the great-uncle of future Governor Thomas Kean,
Sr.)
Hobart and Kean were political rivals. Hobart
was the Campaign Manager for John Griggs in the 1895 Republican gubernatorial
primary. (Griggs resigned as Governor in 1898 to become McKinley’s Attorney
General). Kean was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1899 -- a seat that
Hobart was interested in before becoming Vice President.
Hobart served as Vice President for just 32
months before he passed away at age 55. He had been ill for a few weeks
and died of angina pectoris -- today a treatable condition. Had Hobart
lived, he would have become President in September 1901 following McKinley’s
assassination. Instead, McKinley’s 1900 running mate, Theodore Roosevelt,
succeeded to the presidency.
Second Lady Trivia for extreme junkies only:
Franklin Roosevelt’s first Vice President, John Nance Garner, began his
political career in 1893, at age 25, as a candidate for Uvalde County (Texas)
Judge. His first electoral victory, in the Democratic primary, was against
Mariette Rheiner, the 24-year-old daughter of a prominent local rancher.
That campaign could not have been terribly contentious: two years later,
Garner and Rheiner were married.
QUOTES:
I have always been
among those who believed that the greatest freedom of speech was the greatest
safety, because if a man is a fool, the best thing to do is to encourage
him to advertise the fact by speaking.
-- Woodrow T. Wilson
Liberty means responsibility.
That is why most men dread it.
-- George Bernard
Shaw
Right actions for
the future are the best apologies for wrong ones in the past.
-- Tyron Edwards
"So many dreams
at first seem impossible. And then they seem improbable. And
then when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable."
-- Christopher
Reeve
The life that conquers
is the life that moves with a steady resolution and persistence toward
a predetermined goal. Those who succeed are those who have thoroughly learned
the immense importance of plan in life and the tragic brevity of time.
-- W. J. Davison
Happiness is good
health and a bad memory.
-- Ingrid Bergman
"It matters not
what someone is born, but what they grow to be."
-- Professor Dumbledor
in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire