January 22nd is
Answer Your Cat’s Questions Day
Blonde Brownie Day
National Hot Sauce Day *
Southern Food Day
Roe v Wade Day *
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MORE! John Donne, Beatrice Webb and Arthur Miller, click
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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS
Bolivia – Día de la Fundación del
Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia
Cayman Islands – National Heroes’ Day
India and Nepal –
Vasant Panchami/Saraswati Puja
(Hindu spring festival)
New Zealand – Wellington:
Provincial Anniversary Day
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On This Day in HISTORY
871 –The West Saxons, led by King Æthelred I, are defeated by Danelaw Vikings at the Battle of Basing in what is now the English county of Hampshire
1506 – The first contingent of 150 Swiss Guards arrives at the Vatican
1517 – The Ottoman Empire under Selim I defeats the Mamluk Sultanate and captures present-day Egypt at the Battle of Ridaniya
1552 – Walter Raleigh born, English poet, soldier, courtier, and explorer
1561 – Francis Bacon born, English philosopher and politician, Attorney General for England and Wales
1573 – John Donne, English poet and Church of England cleric, wrote the Holy Sonnets
1666 – Shah Jahan, descendant of Genghis Khan, dies at age 74. He was the Mongul emperor of India who built the Taj Mahal as a mausoleum for his wife Mumtaz-i-Mahal
1689 – The Convention Parliament convenes to determine whether James II and VII, the last Roman Catholic monarch of England, Ireland and Scotland, had vacated the thrones of England and Ireland when he fled to France in 1688
1737 – John Hancock born, American revolutionary and statesman
1771 – The Falkland Islands are ceded to Britain by Spain
1788 – Lord Byron born, leading English Romantic poet and member of the House of Lords – quote below from his speech about the Luddites
1789 – Georgetown University is established in what is now Washington DC
1808 – The Portuguese royal family, Sereníssima Casa de Bragança, arrives in Brazil after fleeing the French army’s invasion of Portugal two months earlier
1824 – The Ashantis defeat British forces in the Gold Coast
1849 – Elizabeth Blackwell becomes the first woman in America to receive a medical degree, from the Medical Institution of Geneva NY
1849 –August Strindberg born, Swedish playwright, novelist and poet; Fröken Julie (Miss Julie)
1858 – Beatrice Webb, English economist-sociologist- social reformer, co-founder of the London School of Economics and Political Science, coined term “collective bargaining”
1863 – The January Uprising in Poland, Lithuania and Belarus – a national movement to regain Polish–Lithuanian–Ruthenian Commonwealth from Russian occupation
1867 – Gisela Januszewska born, Austrian Jewish physician; first woman doctor to practice in Banja Luka, Bosnia, and one of the few physicians who treated Bosnian Muslim women, heading an outpatient clinic for them; received highest decorations for her WWI medical corps service; after the war, moved to Graz, where she treated the poor for free, and was the second Austrian physician awarded the title Medizinalrat, for outstanding contributions to medicine; given the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Merit, Austria’s highest honor, in 1937; but when the Nazis invaded Austria, her Graz apartment was confiscated in 1940, forcing her to move to Vienna, where she was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, and died there in 1943
1877 – Rosa Ponselle born, soprano, debuted with Enrico Caruso in 1918, sang with Baltimore Civic Opera after 1950, mentored Beverly Sills
1879 – James Shields begins a term as U.S. Senator from Missouri, having previously served Illinois and Minnesota. He is the first Senator to serve three different states
1879 – British troops are massacred by the Zulus at Isandhlwana
1887 – Columbia Phonograph Company is founded, getting its name from being headquartered in the District of Columbia
1887 –Helen Hoyt born, American poet and associate editor of Poetry magazine (1913-1936); edited several poetry anthologies, including The Second Book of Modern Verse
1890 – The United Mine Workers of America is founded in Columbus OH
1892 – Coca-Cola was incorporated
1898 – Sergei Eisenstein born, influential Russian filmmaker; his “Odessa steps” scene is one of the most studied and imitated in film history
1901 – Queen Victoria dies at the age of 81, having served as Britain’s Monarch for almost 64 years; her son Albert Edward, is proclaimed King, as Edward VII
1903 – Hay-Herrán Treaty is signed by U.S. Secretary of State John M. Hay and Colombian Chargé Dr. Tomás Herrán, granting the U. S. rights to land proposed for the Panama Canal
1904 – George Balanchine born in Russia, Russian-American dancer, choreographer, co-founder/director of the New York City Ballet, and a leading cause of anorexia and bulimia among ballerinas
1905 – Bloody Sunday in Saint Petersburg, beginning of the 1905 revolution, 500 people, most of them workers, are killed
1916 – Henri Dutilleux born, French composer
1917 – U.S. President Woodrow Wilson makes a speech calling for ending the war in Europe with a “peace without victory” – the U.S. will enter WWI the following April
1924 – Ramsay MacDonald becomes the United Kingdom’s first Labour Prime Minister
1930 – Excavation begins in New York City for the Empire State Building
1932 – New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt announces his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination
1938 – Thornton Wilder’s Our Town has its first public performance in Princeton NJ
1946 – President Truman establishes the National Intelligence Authority, forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency
1947 – KTLA, first commercial television station west of the Mississippi River, begins operation in Hollywood
1953 – Arthur Miller’s The Crucible debuts on Broadway
Still photo of the 1953 production of The Crucible
1961 – Wilma Rudolph, sets a new world indoor record in the women’s 60-yard dash, running it in 6.9 seconds
1962 – Tony Bennett records “I Left My Heart in San Francisco”
1962 – Cuba’s membership in the Organization of American States (OAS) is suspended
1963 – The Drifters record “On Broadway”
1964 – The 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified, eliminating the poll tax in federal elections
1964 – Kenneth Kaunda is sworn in as the first Prime Minister of Northern Rhodesia
1966 – The Beach Boys record “Wouldn’t It Be Nice”
1968 – “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” first airs on NBC- TV
1972 – The United Kingdom, the Irish Republic, and Denmark join the EEC
1973 – President Nixon announces an accord has been reached to end the Vietnam War
1973 – The U.S. Supreme Court delivers its decisions in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, voting 7-2 to legalize elective abortion in all 50 states
1977 – The TV mini-series Roots begins airing on ABC
1997 – The U.S. Senate confirms Madeleine Albright as first woman secretary of state
2002 – Lawyers suing Enron Corp. ask a court to prevent further shredding of documents due to the pending federal investigation.
2003 – Scientists in China report finding fossilized remains of a dinosaur with four feathered wings
2006 – Evo Morales is inaugurated as Bolivia’s first indigenous president
2013 – Hot Sauce Day * goes national
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Nicole Plyler Fisk
Gene Howington
FFS Guest Blogger
Joy of Fishes
Chuck Stanley
shortfinals
Terry Welshans
ann li-summers
wordcloud9
Flowers For Socrates 
When I was young, I had a job in a luxury hotel in Detroit (yes, there were several) and managed the dining room at night. After the dining room closed, the staff would sit down and eat their supper, which was generally some sort of stew prepared by the chef, and rice. One of the busboys (a kid from some North African country) sat down and poured a whole bottle of hot sauce into a bowl and began to eat it with a spoon. I was astonished. When I asked him about it, he thought it was an infraction and began to apologize, but I said it was fine, I just wondered how he could do it without burning his tongue. He said, “When I am little boy my mommy says every day, ‘be good all day and you will get a spoon of hot after dinner,’ and every day I try to be good but only can get it half the time because usually I am a little bit bad!”
I had to laugh, thinking about the behavior modification properties of hot sauce.
LOL – Great story Malisha!
When the Celtic Lassie was so sick, our friend Joy of Fishes offered to help out. JoF took one look at the pantry and refrigerator and had to take pictures. Said she had never seen so much “hot” in one place before. Note over on the left is one of Gene’s favorite spice blends, ‘Slap Ya Mama’, right next to the large size Tony Chachere’s Creole spice.
Celtic Lassie’s Kitchen:
That’s a lot of hot!
That looks like the contents of a Christmas basket I used to make for a Zimbabwean friend of mine. One time I found a little grocery, not much bigger than a convenience store, that had an entire five-shelf unit on one wall devoted to hot sauce! Come Christmas season I could always find one or two new brands I hadn’t seen before. I never tasted any of them (garden variety tobasco is hot enough for me) but they got good reviews.
There used to be a store in Ventura (which is a beach town up the coast from Los Angeles) entirely devoted to hot sauces and spices, but when the recession hit, they had to close their doors. We still miss stopping there when we’re in the area. Finding something new to try was so much fun – the names and information on the labels were often high-flown and/or hilarious.