Author Archives: dcaligari

Christmas decorating sends nearly 15,000 people to the ER. In fact, the Consumer Product Safety Commission estimates that 14,700 people visit hospital emergency rooms each November and December from holiday-related decorating accidents. So please, be careful when you’re putting up the holly and the ivy. So now you know.

According to Dairy Industries International, the global cheese sales surpassed $201.99 billion in 2020, and have followed a steady upward revenue pattern year over year. As it turns out, the cheese business is big enough that black market sales of it are also quite lucrative. This may explain why a reported 4% of all cheeseContinue reading “Cheese is big business (even on the illegal market.)”

December 10, 1954 –To determine whether or not a pilot can safely eject from an aircraft traveling at supersonic speeds, Lieutenant Colonel John Paul Stapp, a flight surgeon, rides in a rocket sled that accelerates to 632mph in just five seconds then stops in just 1.25 seconds at Holloman Air Force Base, in New Mexico,Continue reading “That has got to hurt”

December 10, 1974 – Another Rankin/Bass animated holiday special The Year Without A Santa Claus premiered on ABC-TV on this date. The names of the reindeer are consistent with the Clement Moore poem and other sources. Vixen is the baby reindeer who takes Jingle & Jangle to Southtown (and gets sick). Dasher is the oneContinue reading “The Year Without A Santa Claus”

Useless Christmas Trivia: The lighting of candles and decorating with candles has always been popular, but also one of biggest sources of danger during the Christmas holidays. In 1895 a New England Telephone employee, Ralph Morris, while looking at the newly installed string of lights made for the telephone switchboard decided to take some homeContinue reading “Another court-ordered ACME PSA”

The first Christmas card was created in England on December 9, 1843. Like most of us, Henry Cole, an Englishman, was too busy to write personal greetings for all of his Christmas greetings in 1843. Cole hired artist John Calcott Horsley to design a ready-to-be-sent card. The hand-colored card Horsley designed was lithographed on stiff,Continue reading “Send those holiday cards out folks”

Today’s episode of Monsterpiece Theatre is an adaptation of the action packed policier – Lethal Weapon 3. Holy Guacamole indeed! Demand Euphoria!

It’s apparently National Brownie day today, as opposed to ‘Send Kevin the loose bills in your pocket day.’ According to several sources, Brownies seem to have made their first appearance at the Parker House Hotel in Chicago in 1893 celebrating the Columbian Exposition World’s Fair in Chicago, (you may find their original recipe for theContinue reading “Life is short, eat brownies first”

I believe some of you are really going to need an old lady in church, saying the rosaries on a Tuesday afternoon in the back row of your church to explain this one to you: December 8, 1854 –Pius IX promulgates the doctrine of Immaculate Conception (Ineffabilis Deus) – the Virgin Mary is free fromContinue reading “I don’t believe I can explain this all to you”

December 8, 1966 – The Star Trek episode The Conscience of the King first airs on this date. In it, Captain Kirk crosses paths with an actor suspected of having been a planetary governor who ordered a mass-murder twenty years earlier. In this episode, we learn that Kirk was on Tarsus IV, and was oneContinue reading “Star Trek”