Observed the world over on April 25th, World Penguin Day recognizes one of the unique birds on the planet.  There are 18 species of penguins, and all their natural habitats are in the Southern hemisphere.

Did you know the Emperor Penguin is the biggest of the 18 penguin species and largest of all birds? There are estimated to be (2017) approximately 595,000 adult Emperors today, and from birth, they spend their entire life around the Antarctic ice. These wondrous critters also incubate their eggs like other birds; only they can do so in temperatures nearing -50 degrees Celsius – that’s cold!

Emperor Penguins are the tallest… about 4 feet tall. The smallest, Little Blue, stands about 16 inches. And Penguins are excellent swimmers with the fastest penguin swimmer getting up to about 22 mph.

Saint Patrick’s Day, or the Feast of Saint Patrick (Irish: Lá Fhéile Pádraig, lit. ‘the Day of the Festival of Patrick’), is a cultural and religious celebration held on 17 March, the traditional death date of Saint Patrick (c. 385 – c. 461), the foremost patron saint of Ireland.

Saint Patrick’s Day was made an official Christian feast day in the early 17th century and is observed by the Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion (especially the Church of Ireland),^[6] the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the Lutheran Church. The day commemorates Saint Patrick and the arrival of Christianity in Ireland,^[5] and celebrates the heritage and culture of the Irish in general.^[7] Celebrations generally involve public parades and festivals, céilís, and the wearing of green attire or shamrocks.^[8] Christians who belong to liturgical denominations also attend church services^[7][9] and historically the Lenten restrictions on eating and drinking alcohol were lifted for the day, which has encouraged and propagated the holiday’s tradition of alcohol consumption.^{[7][8][10][11]}

Saint Patrick’s Day is a public holiday in the Republic of Ireland,^[12] Northern Ireland,^[13] the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador (for provincial government employees), and the British Overseas Territory of Montserrat. It is also widely celebrated in the United Kingdom,^[14] Canada, United States, Brazil, Argentina, Australia and New Zealand, especially amongst Irish diaspora. Saint Patrick’s Day is celebrated in more countries than any other national festival.^[15] Modern celebrations have been greatly influenced by those of the Irish diaspora, particularly those that developed in North America. However, there has been criticism of Saint Patrick’s Day celebrations for having become too commercialised and for fostering negative stereotypes of the Irish people.^[16]

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Source: Wikipedia

Collective action and shared ownership for driving gender parity is what makes International Women’s Day impactful. Gloria Steinem, world-renowned feminist, journalist and activist once explained “The story of women’s struggle for equality belongs to no single feminist nor to any one organization but to the collective efforts of all who care about human rights.” So make International Women’s Day your day and do what you can to truly make a positive difference for women.

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Source: InternationalWomensDay.com

Strange that the invention of breakfast cereal was founded on the fact that the American diet of the mid 1800’s was a poor one packed with protein, booze and caffeine. Or maybe it’s not so strange. After all, cereal was considered a remedy – a sort of 19th-century health or wonder food for the ailing masses. So if you’re raising a milk-sopped spoonful of oats or bran or wheat today, give a little nod to 
National Cereal Day, which honors this classic morning meal and midnight snack on March 7.​

The 1st United States Congress, comprising the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives, met from March 4, 1789, to March 4, 1791, during the first two years of George Washington‘s presidency, first at Federal Hall in New York City and later at Congress Hall in Philadelphia. With the initial meeting of the First Congress, the United States federal government officially began operations under the new (and current) frame of government established by the 1787 Constitution. The apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives was based on the provisions of Article I, Section 2, Clause 3 of the Constitution. Both chambers had a Pro-Administration majority. Twelve articles of amendment to the Constitution were passed by this Congress and sent to the states for ratification; the ten ratified as additions to the Constitution on December 15, 1791, are collectively known as the Bill of Rights, with an additional amendment ratified more than two centuries later to become the Twenty-seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution.

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Source: Wikipedia

Who was Francis Scott Key?

Francis Scott Key penned his poem during a naval attack on Fort McHenry in Baltimore, on the Chesapeake Bay, by British ships during the war of 1812.

The Maryland-born attorney had been helping to negotiate the release of an American civilian who was captured in an earlier battle. As a condition of the release, the British ordered the Americans not to return to shore during the attack on Baltimore, according to History.com.

As a result, Key watched the battle unfold in the pouring rain — and eventually, he was able to determine that the Fort’s storm flag had survived the barrage and that by dawn, the larger revile flag was proudly raised.

“He had witnessed Britain’s 25-hour bombardment of the Fort, and for Key, the raising of the American flag was a triumphant symbol of bravery and perseverance,” the National Parks Service writes.

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Dr. Seuss’s Birthday

March 2nd

Get involved! Dr. Seuss’s Birthday is a nationwide reading celebration that takes place annually on March 2 — Dr. Seuss’s birthday.

Across the country, thousands of schools, libraries, and community centers participate by bringing together kids, teens, and books, and you can too!

Incorporate our printable guides and activities to celebrate reading with young people.

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Source: SeussVille

The Robinson family is a fictional family in the children’s television series Sesame Street. The family consists of husband Gordon, a high school science teacher, and his wife Susan, a nurse. Later, the family expands to include their adopted son Miles, as well as Gordon’s sister Olivia, his father Mr. Robinson, and a brother. As African Americans, the family was created as leads for the show, originally targeted to underprivileged inner city children. Even as human roles were slowly reduced over the years, their characters maintained a constant presence.

Inception

Sesame Street was created, through private and federal grants, as a television series to “give the disadvantaged child a fair chance at the beginning,” as co-creator Joan Ganz Cooney wrote in the 1967 study The Potential Uses of Television in Preschool Education.^[1]

Especially before the inclusion of the Muppets in Street scenes,^[2] Sesame Street was centered on Gordon and Susan. As per suggested by Harvard psychologist Jerome Kagan, Cooney advised in The Potential Uses that a series should feature a male lead, to “provide continuity from one segment to another, establish the tone, and function, subtly, as the master teacher.” A male teacher would both encourage kids to emulate an intelligent adult, and “defeminize the early learning atmosphere.”^[1] The decision to create such a character was backed up by research in the US government study The Negro Family: The Case for National Action. Known better as the Moynihan report, Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan suggested “the Negro community has been forced into a matriarchal structure which, because it is so out of line with the rest of the American society, seriously retards the progress of the group as a whole.”^[3] His report suggested that, after the Slavery-era of US history, the rise of out-of-wedlock births, absent fathers, and female-headed families only perpetuated cyclical poverty.^[4]

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During the height of the Roman Empire, low-quality bread, deemed “unfit for human consumption,” was referred to as “dog bread” and fed to stray and companion dogs. Over the centuries, it transformed into the treats we give our own pooches today.

Of note in this transformation from rotten bread to fine treat, is James Spratt of Cincinnati, who in the mid-19th Century, traveled to England and observed dogs scavenging on hardtack (the cracker-like rations made to sustain soldiers).  He quickly came up with a prototype biscuit made of meat, grains, and vegetables that would provide hunting dogs, of the country gentlemen, the extra energy they needed for a day in the field.  Spratt patented the idea and marketed his “Meat Fibrine Dog Cakes,” and they eventually made their way to the States⁷.

A few years later, an American inventor named Carleton Ellis, was asked by a slaughterhouse to come up with a use for “waster milk,” so he devised the milk-based biscuit we have all heard of and that dog’s love, and put the finishing touch on it by shaping it into a bone. The F.H. Bennett Biscuit Company of New York then began selling the biscuits they called “Malatoid” until the product name was changed to “Milk-Bone.” Nabisco Biscuit Company eventually acquired these bone-shaped treats and dominated the market for the next decade or more until they were purchased by the National Biscuit Company (aka Nabisco)⁸.

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Source: MetLife

The Battle of Iwo Jima (19 February – 26 March 1945) was a major battle in which the United States Marine Corps and United States Navy landed on and eventually captured the island of Iwo Jima from the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) during World War II. The American invasion, designated Operation Detachment, had the purpose of capturing the island with its two airfields: South Field and Central Field.

The Japanese Army positions on the island were heavily fortified, with a dense network of bunkers, hidden artillery positions, and 18 km (11 mi) of tunnels.^[e] The American ground forces were supported by extensive naval artillery and had complete air supremacy provided by U.S. Navy and Marine Corps aviators throughout the battle.^[11] The five-week battle saw some of the fiercest and bloodiest fighting of the Pacific War.

The Japanese combat deaths numbered three times the number of American deaths, but uniquely among Pacific War Marine battles, the American total casualties (dead and wounded) exceeded those of the Japanese.^[12] Of the 21,000 Japanese soldiers on Iwo Jima at the beginning of the battle, only 216 were taken prisoner, some of whom were captured only because they had been knocked unconscious or otherwise disabled.^[f] Most of the remainder were killed in action, but it has been estimated that as many as 3,000 continued to resist within the various cave systems for many days afterwards until they eventually succumbed to their injuries or surrendered weeks later.^[2][9]

Despite the bloody fighting and severe casualties on both sides, the American victory was assured from the start. Overwhelming American superiority in numbers and arms as well as complete air supremacy—coupled with the impossibility of Japanese retreat or reinforcement, as well as sparse food and supplies—permitted no plausible circumstance in which the Japanese could have ultimately won the battle.^[13]

The action was controversial, with retired Chief of Naval Operations William V. Pratt stating that the island was useless to the Army as a staging base and useless to the Navy as a fleet base.^[14] The Japanese continued to have early-warning radar from Rota island, which was never invaded,^[15] and the captured air field was barely used. Experiences with previous Pacific island battles suggested that the island would be well defended, and thus casualties would be significant.

Joe Rosenthal‘s Associated Press photograph of the raising of the U.S. flag at the top of the 169 m (554 ft) Mount Suribachi by six U.S. Marines became an iconic image of the battle and the American war effort in the Pacific.^[16]

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Source: Wikipedia