Winter Solstice

Winter begins today at 4:38 pm MST.

The earth’s axis will be tilted the away from the sun, which means our part of the world will be the farthest away from the sun and the sun won’t be very high in the sky.  Some call it the shortest day of the year; others call it the start of longer days and shorter nights. The Winter Solstice happens in an instant.

It is also-

Humbug Day

But more importantly- Look at the Bright Side Day, always on Humbug Day.

History 101: December 21,1898: Scientists Pierre and Marie Curie discover radium.

Music History 101: December 21, 1970: This singer met President Richard Nixon at the White House after the he offered to become a "Federal Agent-at-Large" to help fight drug abuse. His photo with Nixon is the most requested reproduction from the National Archives, more than the U.S. Constitution.   It was Elvis…

Kind of ironic, isn’t it?

The 101 number one song of the day had it origins in South Africa and wound up in Brooklyn where a group originally calling themselves “Those Guys” were embarrassed by their recording.  Phil Margo – one of the group members, said he tried to convince the producers not to release their version of a song that previously was sung in Zulu by Miriam Makeba. Although new lyrics were written for this record, group members were unhappy with the results. The record company thought otherwise and they were right. It was released on October 17 and by December 21, 1961 it was at number one where it would stay for three weeks. The label wouldn’t let the group use “Those Guys” as a name so one of the group members thought back to their high school days when he was in a singing group with Neil Sedaka. The name used back then was not being used at the time so they decided to use it for themselves and that’s how they became “The Tokens” (The Lion Sleeps Tonight)

The 101 gold Nugget of Knowledge:  A Georgia man had a pearl from his mother’s necklace stuck in his ear for 41 years, but didn’t realize it until now. Emergency room nurses at St. Mary’s Hospital in Athens discovered the pearl when Calvin Wright came in with bronchitis recently. Dr. James Dempsey removed the pearl, and Wright kept it. When Wright was 5, he and his sister, Regina, got hold of their mother’s necklace. “My sister broke the necklace, and the pearls went everywhere,” Wright said. Regina apparently shoved two pearls in his ear. Wright, in pain, was taken to the hospital, where doctors removed one of the pearls, unaware of the other one. Wright said the only effect he suffered all these years was struggling to hear himself speak.