Friday, January 2, 2015

The Shop Around the Corner is a 1940 American romantic comedy film produced and directed by Ernst Lubitsch and starring James Stewart, Margaret Sullavan, and Frank Morgan.  The screenplay was written by Samson Raphaelson based on the 1937 Hungarian play Parfumerie by Miklós László.  Eschewing regional politics in the years leading up to World War II, the film is about two employees at a gift shop in Budapest who can barely stand each another, not realizing they're falling in love as anonymous correspondents through their letters.  The Shop Around the Corner is ranked #28 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Passions, and is listed in Time's All-Time 100 Movies.  In 1999, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."  The supporting cast included Joseph Schildkraut, Sara Haden, Felix Bressart, and William Tracy.   The film spawned a musical remake, In the Good Old Summertime (1949), which stars Judy Garland and Van Johnson.  The plot element of two people who dislike each other while developing an anonymous romance by correspondence is used in the film You've Got Mail (1998) with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, in which one of the protagonists owns a bookstore named "The Shop Around The Corner."  Screen credit is given to Miklós László for Parfumerie.  The Broadway musical She Loves Me was also inspired by the film.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shop_Around_the_Corner

There are 67 confirmed moons of Jupiter.  This gives it the largest retinue of moons with reasonably secure orbits of any planet in the Solar System.  The most massive of them, the four Galilean moons, were discovered in 1610 by Galileo Galilei and were the first objects found to orbit a body that was neither Earth nor the Sun.  From the end of the 19th century, dozens of much smaller Jovian moons have been discovered.   Eight of Jupiter's moons are regular satellites, with prograde and nearly circular orbits that are not greatly inclined with respect to Jupiter's equatorial plane. The Galilean satellites are ellipsoidal in shape, due to having planetary mass, and so would be considered dwarf planets if they were in direct orbit about the Sun.  The other four regular satellites are much smaller and closer to Jupiter; these serve as sources of the dust that makes up Jupiter's rings. The remainder of Jupiter's moons are irregular satellites, whose prograde and retrograde orbits are much farther from Jupiter and have high inclinations and eccentricities.  These moons were probably captured by Jupiter from solar orbits.  There are 17 recently discovered irregular satellites that have not yet been named.
Find more information and see graphics at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moons_of_Jupiter

Regions of the United States  The smallest region is the Northeast, and that contains New England and Mid-Atlantic states.  Geographers don’t always agree on which states belong to which region or subregion—for example, whether Delaware is a Mid-Atlantic or South
Atlantic state.  Look closely and find eight panhandles.
panhandle (n.)  "something resembling the handle of a pan," 1851, from pan  + handle.  Especially in reference to geography, originally American English, from 1856, in reference to Virginia (now West Virginia);  "an act of begging" is attested from 1849, perhaps from notion of arm stuck out like a panhandle, or of one who handles a (beggar's) pan.
panhandle (v.)  "to beg," 1888, from panhandle (n.) in the begging sense.

The tradition of Philadelphia Mummery started in the late 17th century as a continuation of the Old World customs of ushering in the New Year.  The Swedes were Philadelphia’s first settlers.  When they came to Tinicum, just outside of Philadelphia, they brought their custom of visiting friends on “Second Day Christmas”, December 26th.  Later they extended their period of celebration to include New Year’s Day, and welcomed the New Year with masquerades and parades of noisy revelers.  Masqueraders paraded the through the streets of Philadelphia.  Some of the earliest mummers date back to early Egypt.  Mummers would lead the burial procession of the Pharaohs in extravagant costumes, playing finger cymbals, tambourines and other rhythm instruments.  Tracing back through the mazes of history that led to England, Wale, Scotland, Germany, ancient France, and pagan Rome and Greece, we find mummery has influenced customs and perpetuated many interesting traditions.  Every nation had its festivals at one time or another, each marked by parades and displays of fanciful costumes.  As early as 400 BC, Roman laborers observed the feast of the Saturnalia in honor of their god, Saturn, and the reaping of the harvest.  They made calls on friends, they exchanged gifts and it was customary for some of the gifts to bear greetings for a Happy New Year.  http://fralinger.org/about/mummers-history/

The Tournament of Roses Parade was founded in 1890, staged and sponsored by Pasadena's recently-formed Valley Hunt Club.  Before long, this small rose-themed festival expanded to include motorized floats that awed parade watchers, as well as equestrians and local school and community-based marching bands.  Games were held in the town park and the whole city turned out for the event.  The event's popularity resulted in the formation of a new Tournament of Roses Association in 1895, the same organization that still handles the organization of the parade today.  A football game was added in 1902, the first being played by Stanford and the University of Michigan.  When Stanford suffered a crushing loss in that initial game, the football portion of the day's activities were cancelled but eventually returned in 1916.  A new stadium for the event was built 7 years later and quickly earned the nickname "The Rose Bowl."  http://www.latourist.com/index.php?page=rose-parade-history

Lithuania is an EU member state which joined the eurozone by adopting the euro on 1 January 2015.  This made it the last of the three Baltic States to adopt the euro, after Estonia (2011) and Latvia (2014).  All members of the European Union, except Denmark and the UK, are required by treaty to join the euro once certain economic criteria have been met.  Read more and see graphics at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithuania_and_the_euro


http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1238  January 2, 2015  On this date in 1788, Georgia became the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution.  On this date in 1920, Isaac Asimov, American chemist and author, was born.

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