Presidents Day: Weird Presidents and Fun Trivia

President John F. Kennedy

Updates with new links added! From Denny:  Presidents' Day comes and goes in a flash.  Some years it's wildly popular generating interesting articles and other years, well, no one cares.  Seems like this year is one of those off years for interest, especially with the winter Olympics in full swing in Sochi, Russia, garnering so much attention.

Poking around online I found some amusing - and downright weird - facts about the U. S. Presidents you may not know - just when you thought you heard it all.  Yeah, trivia kings and queens live at our house.

President John F. Kennedy, known for a great education and his wealth, had an annoying father to say the least.  In his application to study at Harvard, it was, well, just plain "unimpressive by today's standards."  His father, Joseph, was a Harvard alum.  What did he say to help his son get into the university?  Wouldn't you think a father would try to be helpful to get his son accepted?

Joseph Kennedy's recommendation said of his son, who later became a popular President, Jack "was careless and lacks application."  Are you kidding me?  Of course, what do you expect from a bootlegging crook?  Here's a factoid:  Joseph Kennedy, as U. S. ambassador to Britain, also wanted to allow Britain to be destroyed in WWII as he considered them to be total losers, unable to withstand the German onslaught.  Joseph Kennedy preferred for America to make a deal with the devil:  Hitler.  So, obviously, this guy didn't know how to size up a situation - or a person - accurately...

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New Year Celebrations: History And Trivia

Check out how celebrating the New Year was once considered controversial throughout history.

From Denny: Ever wonder about the history of the New Year celebration around the world? Ever wonder how we came to celebrate it on 1 January?

Ancient cultures celebrated at different times of the year

Scholars believe the earliest  idea of a New Year celebration goes back at least about 4,000 years to Mesopotamia in about 2000 B.C. They celebrated their New Year around the time of mid-March when the vernal equinox occurred. The vernal equinox is when the sun crosses directly over the Earth's equator. When it happens in the Northern Hemisphere, like in America, it's called the vernal equinox. (When it happens in the Southern Hemisphere it's called the autumnal equinox.)

Trivia: The word "equinox" means "equal night." What happens when the sun is positioned over the Earth's equator is that day and night are about equal in length all over the world. Quite the odd phenomenon.