Ant Farmer's Almanac

Today's Birthdays!

1820: Susan B. Anthony; 1874: Sir Ernest Shackleton; 1882: John Barrymore; 1907: Cesar Romero; 1918: Allan Arbus;  

1948: Art Spiegelman;

1954: Matt Groening.

On This Day in History...

Today is "Presidents' Day." It is also "Family Day." So, when is "Presidents' Family Day" and do we get the day off from work?

1798: First mustard manufactured in America is advertised; some believe its slogan "Revolutionary Taste!" may have inspired Founding Fathers.

1903: Morris and Rose Michtom introduce the first Teddy Bear in the U.S.; namesake Teddy Roosevelt declares it to be, "Bully," then shoots it.

1941: Duke Ellington records Take the A Train; string section arrives late due to subway delays.

On This Day in History...

1994: Edvard Munch's painting The Scream is stolen from a museum in Oslo, Norway; suspiciously enough, no one hears a thing.

Today's Birthdays!

1663: Cotton Mather; 1809: Charles Darwin, Abraham Lincoln; 1915: Lorne Greene; 1923: Franco Zeffirelli; 1930: Arlen Specter; 1955: Arsenio Hall; 1968: Josh Brolin; 1980: Christina Ricci.

On This Day in History...

1942: Archie comic book debuts. As timely and funny then as it is today.

2006: Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shoots Harry Whittington in the face while bird hunting. All of Cheney's companions for an upcoming deep-sea fishing trip suddenly remember that they have previous engagements that weekend... 

Today's Birthdays!

1847: Thomas Edison; 1917: Sidney Sheldon; 1921: Lloyd Bentsen, Eva Gabor; 1922: Leslie Nielsen; 1934: Tina Louise, Mary Quant; 1936: Burt Reynolds; 1938: Manuel Noriega; 1969: Jennifer Aniston.

Today's Birthdays!

1893: Jimmy Durante; 1906: Lon Chaney, Jr.; 1929: Jerry Goldsmith; 1930: Robert Wagner; 1937: Roberta Flack; 1944: Peter Allen; 1950: Mark Spitz; 1955: Greg Norman; 1961: George Stephanopoulos.

On This Day in History...

1863: P.T. Barnum's world-famous dwarf performers "General" Tom Thumb and Lavinia Warren marry in what is described as a "small ceremony."

1933: A Dutch seaplane bombs a Dutch ship; this sort of thing explains why Holland is no longer a world power.

Seaplane pictured above is not the Dutch seaplane in question; it's a Polish seaplane. Write your own joke.

On This Day in History...

1870: U.S. Weather Bureau established; it's all anyone can talk about.

1871: Federal fish protection office is authorized by Congress; fish in this program are given new identities and relocated to different states.

1891: First shipment of asparagus arrives in San Francisco; recipients refuse to take delivery without proof that it's, "like totally organic, was grown cruelty free and harvested by well-paid, union labor."

1894: Hershey Chocolate Co. founded.

1964: Beatles' first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.

Today's Birthdays!

 1904: Ray Bolger; 1909: Carmen Miranda; 1914: Gypsy Rose Lee, Ernest Tubb, Bill Veeck; 1928: Frank Frazetta, Roger Mudd; 1939: Sal Mineo; 1942: Carol King; 1943: Joe Pesci; 1945: Mia Farrow, Rod Steward; 1952: Mookie Wilson.

Rejected Pin-Up Girl Calendar Themes

Miss Alignment
(Auto Shops)

Miss Spelling
(Dictionary Publishers)

Miss Diagnosis
(Nursing Schools)

Miss Direction
(Maps)

Miss Herd
(Cowboys with hearing loss)

Today's Birthdays!

1819: John Ruskin

1820: William Tecumseh Sherman

1878: Martin Buber

1880: Franz Marc

1894: King Vidor

1921: Lana Turner

1922: Audrey Meadows

1925: Jack Lemmon

1926: Neal Cassady

1931: James Dean

1940: Ted Koppel

1941: Nick Nolte

1942: Robert Klein

1949: Brooke Adams

1953: Mary Steenburgen

1955: John Grisham

On This Day in History...

1587: The beheading that launched a thousand costume dramas; Mary, Queen of Scots is executed for plotting to murder Queen Elizabth I.

1922: First radio is installed at the White House; President Harding spends the morning trying to be the first caller who knows "The Phrase That Pays!"

Pictured above is neither former U.S. President Warren G. Harding or, so far as we know, the White House telephone switchboard operator in 1922.

 

Today's Birthdays!

1900: Adlai Stevenson

1906: John Carradine

1914: William S. Burroughs

1919: Red Buttons

1934: Hank Aaron

1940: H.R. Giger

1948: Christopher Guest

1948: Barbara Hershey

1948: Errol Morris

1964: Laura Linney

On This Day in History...

1960: Elvis Presley ends his two-year hitch in the U.S. Army; many blame his subsequent film career on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

China Repossesses U.S. Pandas

High-Scoring Math Students May be Next, Economists Warn

BEIJING, CHINA (Ant Farmer's Almanac NewsWire) In what some fear could be the first of many such actions, the People's Republic of China —  to whom the United States owes an estimated $800 billion — today repossessed two pandas from American zoos.

"We're up to our eyeballs in debt to the Chinese," says economist Kay Seurat, "I mean, they already took back Hong Kong. God only knows what they'll want next... pasta, fireworks, P.F. Chang's?"

"This is only the beginning," Seurat continued gravely, "It's only a matter of time before we start getting those annoying phone calls at dinner time."

Amid a crowd of loudly protesting demonstrators, the two pandas, Mei Lan from the Atlanta zoo and Tai Shan from the National Zoo in Washington, DC, were loaded onto a specially outfitted Federal Express plane for the long trip to their new home at the Chengdu Panda Breeding Research Center in the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan.

Economic concerns however, were not the biggest issue with protesters.

"It's an outrage that two of God's most adorable creatures are being sent into life-long captivity in a communistic country," insisted the group's spokesperson Esther Rickles, "For all we know, they'll be adopted by atheistic, legally married same-sex Chinese couples!"

Assurances that the pandas will be encouraged to breed served only to further inflame the crowd, which now added "sex slaves" to the list of things being shouted and scrawled on banners.

In Other News: Celebrity cougar Demi Moore responded to the news that her much-younger husband Ashton Kutcher "hates Valentine's Day," saying, "Not as much as he's gonna hate the day after Valentine's Day."

Today's Birthdays!

1881: Fernand Leger

1895: Nigel Bruce

1902: Charles Lindbergh

1913: Rosa Parks

1914: Ida Lupino

1947: Dan Quayle

1948: Alice Cooper

On This Day in History...

1945: FDR, Churchill and Stalin meet in Yalta; they agree that, "It's been too long!" "Hey, you look great!" and that they, "Shouldn't only get together when there's a war on."

1972: Senator Strom Thurmond suggests that John Lennon be deported, claiming he poses a threat to the Confederacy.

Dictionarium

Dopplerganger: When the weather someplace else is exactly like it is where you are.

PSINO: Public Servant in Name Only.

On This Day in History...

1913: A Date That Will Live in Infamy! The 16th Amendment is ratified, authorizing the Federal government to impose and collect income taxes.

1953: J. Fred Muggs, a chimpanzee, becomes a regular on The Today Show. Just a little something to mull over next time you start thinking that TV news going all to hell is something new. 

1962: Moments after receiving a thousand of his favorite Cuban cigars, JFK bans all trade with Cuba.

1973: Not realizing his own presidency would soon be one, Richard Nixon signs the Endangered Species Act.