September 21 is:
International Peace Day
Miniature Golf Day
World Gratitude Day – a day to give gratitude for all the little things that bring joy into your everyday existence.
National Pecan Cookie Day
If the body does not get enough zinc, it may have difficulty producing testosterone – a key hormone in initiating sexual desire in both men and women. Pecans provide nearly 10 percent of the recommended Daily Value for zinc.
It would take 11,624 pecans, stacked end to end, to reach the top of the Empire State Building in New York City.
Texas adopted the pecan tree as its state tree in 1919. In fact, Texas Governor James Hogg liked pecan trees so much that he asked if a pecan tree could be planted at his gravesite when he died.
Albany, Georgia, which boasts more than 600,000 pecan trees, is the pecan capital of the U.S. Albany hosts the annual National Pecan Festival, which includes a race, parade, pecan-cooking contest, the crowning of the National Pecan Queen and many other activities.
Pecan trees usually range in height from 70 to 100 feet, but some trees grow as tall as 150 feet or higher. Native pecan trees – those over 150 years old – have trunks more than three feet in diameter.
Believed to be the date of the death of the Roman poet Virgil in 19 BCE; the creator of the Aeneid.
Birthday of Margaret Taylor (September 21, 1788), wife of Zachary Taylor first lady from 1849-1850. With the rise in Zachary Taylor’s political career, Peggy Taylor literally prayed for his defeat, for she dreaded the personal consequences of his becoming president. By the time she became First Lady, the hardships of following her husband from fort to fort and the birth of several children had taken their toll. A semi-invalid, she remained in seclusion on the second floor of the White House, leaving the duties of official hostess to her daughter Mary Elizabeth “Betty” Bliss.
On this date in 1823 – Moroni first appeared to Joseph Smith, according to Smith. And on the same date in 1827 – According to Joseph Smith Jr., the angel Moroni gave him a record of gold plates, one-third of which Joseph translated into The Book of Mormon.
Birthday of Charles Jean Henri Nicolle (September 21, 1866), French physician and bacteriologist, awarded the 1928 Nobel Prize for his identification of lice as the transmitter of epidemic typhus.
Birthday of Herbert George Wells (September 21, 1866), English novelist, sociological writer whose most important work was the “Outline of History”. His most notable science fiction works include The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, and The Island of Doctor Moreau.
The Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” editorial was published in the New York Sun in 1897. Dr. Philip O’Hanlon was asked by his then eight-year-old daughter, Virginia (1889–1971), whether Santa Claus really existed. O’Hanlon suggested she write to The Sun, a prominent New York City newspaper at the time, assuring her that “If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.”
She wrote:
Dear Editor,
I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say that there is no Santa Claus. Papa says “If you see it in the Sun, it is so.” Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?
Editor Francis P. Church replied:
Virginia,
Your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except what they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds.
All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to our life its highest beauty and joy.
Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.
Not believe in Santa Claus? You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your Papa to hire men to watch all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove?
Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see.
Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders that are unseen and unseeable in the world.
You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, or even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernatural beauty and glory beyond.
Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else as real and abiding.
No Santa Claus? Thank God he lives and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, maybe 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the hearts of children.
It must be true…it was in a New York newspaper!
George Marshall was sworn in as the 3rd Secretary of Defense of United States in 1950. The European Recovery Program, as it was formally known, became known as the Marshall Plan.