August 26 – National Toilet Paper Day



Posted on August 26, 2015

According to Quilted Northern Toilet Paper, August 26, 1871, was the first time that toilet paper was ever sold on a roll.

That explains why today is National Toilet Paper Day, but how do people celebrate National Toilet Paper Day?

Well, the best way is to really sit around and consider how much less comfortable life would be if there were no such thing as toilet paper. Obviously, a lot of people lived a lot of days before this date in 1871 – what did they use or do? Is toilet paper in other countries as soft as Charmin or Quilted Northern?

So, enjoy your plentiful, soft toilet paper – don't take it for granted!

Here are some other ways to celebrate the day:

  • Of course, sometimes toilet paper companies celebrate their special day in a special way. For example, in 2011 Charmin set a new world's record for World's Largest Toilet Roll. The record-setting roll was 8 feet high and 9 feet wide. It contained over one MILLION square feet of paper! A manager at the P&G Paper Products Company said that it would take about 95 thousand rolls of toilet paper to equal that amount of paper!

  • Some crafty people like to create things out of toilet paper. For example, here is a toilet paper wedding dress crafted by Judith Henry.

  • TP something!

    (Note: Toilet papering houses, cars, and so on can be against the law. Make sure you have permission of the owner of said house or car. Also, be sure to clean up the TP yourself; don't contribute to a blown litter problem.

    For ideas of beautiful TPing, check out     this earlier post.  )


  • I guess that some hosts make their toilet paper pretty before guests come. (I guess that some hosts have too much time on their hands.)


  • Use some of those cardboard rolls that toilet paper comes on in some crafty or artistic way.


Did you know...?

  • The hottest controversy in toilet paper is whether to hang rolls with sheets going over or under the roll. I'm firmly in the “over” camp – and according to ABC News, 72 percent of Americans agree.

  • According to The Toilet Paper Encyclopedia, more than half of men surveyed either folded or stacked toilet paper before use, and more than half of women surveyed grabbed and wadded TP before use. It basically evens out, with almost half of us folding and half of us wadding. The remaining 20% are a mystery – most of them claim to do both, depending!
I read in one source that there was a rumor
that German people generally fold TP, while
American generally crumple it. (Of course,
crumpling and wadding are the same thing, when
it comes to toilet paper.) But there didn't seem
to be any evidence to back the claim!
  • Some other ways to use toilet paper is to wipe noses and eyeglasses (but not with the same squares, please!), to cover toilet seats, to remove makeup, and to keep fragile items safe when storing or shipping. And of course to TP houses and cars and brides!



Also on this date:


















Women's Equality Day here...




...and here








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August 25 – Liberation of Paris

Posted on August 25, 2015

U.S. soldiers during the Liberation of Paris

Wars are horrible, and World War II was certainly one of the most horrible of wars! One of the places Hitler and the Nazis conquered during World War II was France and its capital city, Paris.

Nazi Germany took over France in just six weeks of battles. It was a stunning turn of events – because the French army was considered one of the best in all of Europe.

After the Nazi takeover, almost two million French soldiers became prisoners of war who were sent to Germany to work to be imprisoned and assigned to dangerous or difficult work duty. Some French soldiers escaped to Britain and other places and were able to become the Free French Forces under Charles de Gaulle.

The Nazis had controlled France for
four long years!
The citizens of France had varied experiences while the Nazis occupied their nation. Some people joined the French Resistance, small groups of armed men and women who helped Allied soldiers and airmen escape the Nazis, who spied on the Nazis, who published underground newspapers to communicate with one another and with the Allied troops, and who took part in guerrilla warfare on Nazi troops.

And sometimes the members of the French Resistance attacked the last category of French people:

The Nazi collaborators!

The Nazi collaborators were French people who who went along with the Nazis in order to save their own skins. The Vichy government ruled the southern half of French, with fascist-like laws, and most French colonies, overseas, were also under Vichy control. Some of these collaborators did horrible things as they went along with the Nazis - the Vichy opened concentration camps in which they imprisoned and mistreated Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and others; they sent Jews off to German death camps; they participated in Gestapo raids.

De Gaulle, from his exile in Britain, tried to rally his fellow French citizens to join in resisting the Nazis; later he invaded Northern Africa and took back Algiers, Algeria, where he moved the base of the Free French Forces. At that point, members of the Resistance became the French Forces of the Interior, and the two groups fighting the Nazis inside and outside of France's borders grew from 100,000 to 400,000 to 1,200,000 soldiers!

Finally, on this date in 1944, French General Jacques Leclerc reentered Paris and began to free French civilian prisoners. The Free French Forces started mopping up all the Germans who continued to fight, and some of the French people, when they saw Nazis, attacked them – even the Nazis who had given up and were trudging off to become prisoners of war!

French collaborators were often killed the minute they were captured. Other collaborators faced trials and death sentences or other, lesser, punishments. A few were found guilty of crimes against humanity.



Despite the high death count and the desire for revenge, the Liberation of Paris was a time of great joy!



The Free French Forces and the U.S. Army were both involved -
and both joyfully greeted and celebrated - during the Liberation of Paris.




  
Also on this date:

























Constitution Day in Paraguay













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August 24 – Flag Day in Liberia

Posted on August 24, 2015

The Liberian flag tells us something important – that Liberia has some connection to America. You can see how like the U.S. flag it is:


Most African nations were colonized by European nations, and some were bandied about a bit from one European nation to another. But only Liberia started as an American colony.

Don't get me wrong; Liberia was never an official colony of the United States. But a private organization, the American Colonization Society, started Liberia as a place in Africa for free-born blacks and previously enslaved people.

This map shows where Liberia
(colored blue) is located on the
coast of Western Africa.
In 1822 the first ships traveled from the Americas back to Western Africa with volunteers to establish the colony. Eventually, more than 13,000 Americans settled in Liberia. A few other colonies were established, called things such as Mississippi-in-Africa and the Republic of Maryland, but Liberia annexed them. In 1847, Liberia declared its independence.


Of course there were people living in Liberia who had never lived in America, but the leaders of the new nation were the “Americo-Liberians,” as they called themselves. They patterned their new constitution on the U.S. Constitution; they modeled their homes and fashions on those of Southern U.S. slaveowners; and they based their flag on the U.S. flag.

I read that the Liberian flag has 11 stripes to represent the 11 signers of the Liberian Declaration of Independence. Red stands for courage, white stands for purity, and the blue field represents the continent of Africa. The single white star represents freedom; the name Liberia means “Land of the Free.”

Today, on flag day, children are taught about their country's history and flag, and they are given small flags to hold during a parade.

For more about Liberia, check out this earlier post. 

Here are two photos of Liberia:





Also on this date:







Actress Marlee Matlin's birthday











Anniversary of the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius







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August 23 – Happy Birthday, World Wide Web!

Posted on August 23, 2015

I have never heard of the word “internaut” before – have you? – but I read that it is a portmanteau of the words “internet” and “astronaut.” It means a person who either designs internet sites, or operates internet sites, or even uses internet sites (which includes just about all of us, although I think “internaut” is supposed to include only those of us internet-users who are technologically knowledgeable!).

Today is considered by some to be The Internaut's Day.

That's because today is the anniversary of the opening up of the World Wide Web to the general public, to new users, to the whole world.

The World Wide Web, usually referred to as the Web (or WWW, or W3), was the brainchild of British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee. He first developed the system of identifiers (URIs) and hyperlinks, to be accessed via the Internet, as a better system for CERN scientists to communicate with one another. But he instantly realized that the system could be used throughout the world. He built the very first website in December of 1990, tested how it worked, wrote up the results in August of 1991, and finally opened up the system to all users on August 23, 1991.

Note the sarcastic "Yeah, right" inserted by British editors over the
claim that the invention of the "computer geek" Berners-Lee
would change billions of lives...... And guess who got the last laugh?

What's the difference between the World Wide Web and the Internet?

The Internet is a huge network of networks.

It is the infrastructure that connects millions of computers together all over the world. A computer in Spot A can communicate with a computer halfway around the world, at Spot B, as long as both computers are connected to the Internet.

Information travels over the Internet using several different languages (or “protocols”).


The World Wide Web is an information-sharing model that is built on top of the Internet. It uses only one protocol, HTTP. Users can either type a URL (which all start “http://” and often include “www.”) in order to find a particular website, or they can use a Web browser such as Google to find websites that suit their needs. Websites can include text, graphics, sounds, and videos.

If the World Wide Web was a gigantic circle that included all websites, the Internet would be an even larger circle that entirely contained the Web – BUT also included e-mail, Usenet news groups, Instant Messaging, etc.


Did you know...?

Tim Berners-Lee was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his contributions to the world, and he was also honored at the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony. He appeared in person at the London Olympic Stadium, where he tweeted “This is for everyone.” The message was instantly spelled out in LED lights attached to the 80,000 chairs in the stadium. So the people sitting in the stadium got to see the message while actually sitting within the message. Awesome-sauce!


Also on this date:






















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