Daily Calendar for Wednesday, April 26, 2023
Question of the Day
Can you tell me the difference between a sweet potato and a yam?
Literally and botanically speaking, the two are not related. Both the yam and the sweet potato grow underground and have yellowish-orange flesh, but there the similarity ends. Yams are large, starchy, edible tuberous roots that can grow two to three feet long and weigh as much as 80 pounds. They grow in tropical/subtropical countries and need eight to ten months of warm weather to mature. The two words became entwined in our household vernacular partly through a publicity campaign. Early in this century, sweet-potato promoters attached the word yam to the deep orange, moist-fleshed varieties and left the words sweet potato to the smaller, yellowish, dry-fleshed varieties. Today it is common to find either or both words used in supermarkets, but whichever is used, what’s on sale is the sweet potato.
Advice of the Day
Repel raccoons with dog hair, human hair, or mothballs.
Home Hint of the Day
Want to examine the condition of the paint on the bottom of a hanging door without taking it off its hinges? Simply slide a small mirror under the door and examine the paint job in the reflection.
Word of the Day
SOS
The letters signified by the signal ( … – … ) prescribed by the International Radiotelegraphic Convention of 1908 for use by ships in distress. SOS was chosen as the universal distress signal because this combination of three dots followed by three dashes followed by three dots (…–…), was easy to send and easily recognized, especially since they were usually sent as a nine-character signal, which stood out against the background of three-character Morse Code letters. The letters themselves are meaningless. SOS does not stand for Save Our Souls, Save Our Ship, Stop Other Signals, or Sure Of Sinking.
Puzzle of the Day
What did they wear at the Boston Tea Party?
T-shirts!
Born
- John James Audubon (naturalist) –
- Frederick Law Olmsted (landscape architect) –
- Ma Rainey (blues singer) –
- Charles Richter (seismologist) –
- Carol Burnett (actress) –
- Duane Eddy (musician) –
- Jet Li (actor and martial artist) –
- Kevin James (actor) –
- Tom Welling (actor) –
Died
- John Wilkes Booth (assassin of President Lincoln, was shot by federal troops at a farmhouse near Washington, D.C.) –
- Eduard Suess (geologist) –
- Count Basie (jazz orchestra leader) –
- Lucille Ball (actress) –
- Mason Adams (actor) –
- Phoebe Snow (singer ) –
- George Jones (country music singer) –
Events
- William Shakespeare baptized–
- Meteorites fell on the town of L’Aigle, France–
- First U.S. weather report broadcast, by WEW in St. Louis, Missouri–
- America’s first guide dog for the blind, a German Shepherd named Buddy, was teamed up with its owner, Morris S. Frank–
- The first international satellite, Ariel 1, was launched from Cape Canaveral–
- A herd of buffalo got loose and wandered around an upscale neighborhood in Maryland, disrupting traffic and alarming homeowners before police officers managed to corral them in a tennis court–
- Five explorers reached the North Pole, setting a world record by coming in several hours earlier than a 37-day trek by American explorer Robert Peary for the same journey in 1909–
- Boston Red Sox outfielder Jacoby Ellsbury stole home. This was the first straight-steal of home plate by a Red Sox player since Billy Hatcher in April of 1994.–
Weather
- Severe frost, Huntsville, Alabama–
- Boston and the surrounding communities experienced a severe snowstorm–
- Twelve inches of snow, Hanover, NH–
- An F5 tornado hit Andover, Kansas, killing more than 15 people–