Sure, there's Thanksgiving, but in November, there is also so much more. You'll be glad to know that you can send e-greeting cards to your loved ones for just about every one of these "days."
For example, did you know that, among other things, November is
- Learn Chinese Month
- National Impotency Month
- National Novel Writing Month
- National Pomegranate Month
- International Microfinance Month
Did you know that the pomegranate is originally from Iran and the Himalayas?
Babylonians chewed the seeds before battle, hoping to be made invincible.
(Photo from The Food Paper)
It is also currently
Coming up soon are the Better Conversation Week, National Family Week, and National Game & Puzzle Week (organized by the people who are now concentrating more on the Million Minute Family Challenge).
There are also very special individual days in the month of November.
- We've missed Plan Your Epitaph Day (the 2nd), so you'll just have to wait another year to do that.
- We've also missed Use Your Common Sense Day (the 4th). Too bad.
- I think that on Abet and Aid Punsters Day (the 8th), I actually did tell a few puns.
Coming up, World Hello Day is on the 21st, before Thanksgiving. To celebrate, say hello to ten people. The 24th is Flossing Day, which is always the day after Thanksgiving. So you can say hello to 10 people, eat your turkey, and then floss afterwards.
Some people make various crafty things using dental floss. This necklace, made of dental floss and plastic bloody teeth, was an entry in an ugliest necklace contest.
The 19th is Have a Bad Day Day. It is intended to allow retail workers to wish people, "Have a bad day," instead of the usual alternative. This holiday is actually copyrighted by Thomas & Ruth Roy. Copyrighting a holiday seems in keeping with the whole "have a bad day" concept.
If you actually do have a bad day on the 19th, fear not, for Name Your PC Day follows immediately on its heels and will surely be a balm to your bad day. Although this one is copyrighted, too. :(
But perhaps most important of all, the 24th is National D.B. Cooper Day.
- In 1971, Mr. Cooper hijacked an airliner flying from Portland, OR, to Seattle and threatened to blow it up unless the airline company, Northwest Orient, paid him $200,000 cash.
- The plane landed at its destination, he got his $200 Gs, and he released the 36 passengers and two members of the crew. Then he made the remaining crew members take off again and fly him to Mexico.
- When the plane reached 10,000 feet, with winds gusting at 80 knots and in a driving, freezing rain, at night, he jumped out of the plane via the rear stairs. He was equipped with four parachutes and twenty-one pounds of $20 bills strapped to his chest.
- He was never seen again. No one knows if he died or is still alive.
Police sketch of Dan "D.B." Cooper
(Image from the FBI)
- It is possible that he survived. At least two others copied his crime only a few months later and those hijackers lived to tell about it -- albeit in court.
- D.B. Cooper is actually a name that one newspaper printed by mistake. He registered for his flight under the name Dan Cooper, but that might not be his real name.
- Although this crime took place during the reign of the tenacious J. Edgar Hoover, it remains the only unsolved skyjacking.
- He has been invited to attend a celebration in his honor on the 24th, at Chloride, Arizona, which is near the Hoover Dam and Route 66.
[For updates about the D. B. Cooper case, check out this more recent Daily Apple.]
Sources
Purdue University Center for New Crops & Plant Products, Pomegranate
MO-SPAN Green Ribbon Awareness Week
T.J. DeGroat, "Let it Go," Hatch Magazine
National Flossing Council Online
Crime Library, A Mystery (Story of D.B. Cooper)
U.S. News Online, Mysteries of History
Kingman Area Chamber of Commerce, D.B. Cooper Day
wahoo! My birthday's on November 8th.. so why do I find that so very very punny :D
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