Wasn't it funny?  Hear it all people!  Little Tom Thumb has swallowed a steeple! 
How did he do it?  I'll tell you, my son:  'Twas made of white sugar - and easily done!

The Little Mother Goose (1912), illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith, and Primer Language Reader Series (1909), by Franklin T. Baker  http://www.mamalisa.com/?t=es&p=2038

Read about The History of Sugar Art by L.C. Dunn  at http://www.ehow.com/about_6567183_history-sugar-art.html  See also http://www.historicfood.com/Royal-sugar-Sculpture.htm and http://blogs.getty.edu/iris/the-art-of-sculpting-with-sugar/

Little Nemo, also known as Winsor McCay:  The Famous Cartoonist of the N.Y. Herald and His Moving Comics, is a 1911 silent animated short film by American cartoonist Winsor McCay.  One of the earliest animated films, it was McCay's first, and featured characters from McCay's comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland.  Its expressive character animation distinguished the film from the experiments of earlier animators.  Inspired by flip books his son brought home, McCay came to see the potential of the animated film medium.  He claimed to be the first to make such films, though James Stuart Blackton and Émile Cohl were among those who preceded him.  The short's four thousand drawings on rice paper were shot at Vitagraph Studios under Blackton's supervision.  Most of the film's running time is made up of a live-action sequence in which McCay bets his colleagues that he can make drawings that move.  He wins the bet with four minutes of animation in which the Little Nemo characters perform, interact, and metamorphose to McCay's whim.  Little Nemo debuted in movie theaters on April 8, 1911, and four days later McCay began using it as part of his vaudeville act.  Its good reception motivated him to hand-color each of the animated frames of the originally black-and-white film.  The film's success led McCay to devote more time to animation.  He followed up Little Nemo with How a Mosquito Operates in 1912 and his well-known film, Gertie the Dinosaur, in 1914.  Read more and see graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Nemo_(1911_film)

Patricia Barber Polacco (born July 11, 1944, Lansing, Michigan) is an American author and illustrator.  She struggled in school because she was unable to read until age 14 due to dyslexia; she found relief by expressing herself through art.  Polacco endured teasing and hid her disability until a school teacher recognized that she could not read and began to help her.  Her book Thank You, Mr. Falker is Polacco's retelling of this encounter and its outcome.  She also wrote such books as Mr. Lincoln's Way and The Lemonade Club.  See list of books, audios,videos, and literary awards at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patricia_Polacco   See also 10 Facts About Author and Illustrator Patricia Polacco at https://www.thoughtco.com/author-and-illustrator-patricia-polacco-626859

Corporate inversion is the process by which companies, especially U.S.-based companies, move overseas to reduce the tax burden on income.  Companies that receive a significant portion of their income from foreign sources employ corporate inversion as a strategy, since that income is taxed both abroad and in the country of incorporation.  Companies undertaking this strategy are likely to select a country that has lower tax rates and less stringent corporate governance requirements.  Corporate inversion is one of the many strategies companies employ to reduce their tax burden.  One way that a company can re-incorporate abroad is by having a foreign company buy its current operations.  The foreign company then owns the assets, the old corporation is dissolved, and the business--while it remains the same in its daily operations--is now effectively domiciled in a new country.  For example, take a manufacturing company that incorporated itself in the United States in the 1950s.  For years, the majority of its revenue came from U.S. sales, but recently the percentage of sales coming from abroad has grown.  Income from abroad is taxed in the United States, and U.S. tax credits do not cover all taxes that the company has to pay abroad.  As the percentage of sales coming from foreign operations grows relative to domestic operations, the company will find itself paying more U.S. taxes because of where it incorporated.  In addition, its U.S. income is taxed at a high domestic rate.  If it incorporates abroad, it can bypass having to pay higher U.S. taxes on income that is not generated in the United States.  To achieve this, the company would proceed to a corporate inversion.  Often, the U.S. operations are then financed by loans from the foreign parent to a new U.S. operating company, creating tax deductions in the U.S. and reducing the U.S. tax payable on domestic income as well.  http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/corporateinversion.asp

On 15 August 2005, Norway opened a fully functioning national library for the first time in its history.  This occurred exactly 100 years after Norway dissolved its union with Sweden.  Although gaining independence in 1905 marked the peak of Norwegian nationalism, it took Norway a century to go from being a sovereign nation-state to establishing its own national library.  The establishment of the national library evolved as a result of a lengthy political process.  Since 1813, the University of Oslo Library had functioned as both a library for the university and a national library.  In 1989, Norway established a repository in Rana in the northern part of the country as part of the national library, with a mandate to preserve everything published within the country in compliance with a revised version of the Legal Deposition Act.  The University of Oslo Library retained its mandate to preserve historical and unique collections and to make all its collections available to the public.  In 1999, these tasks were consolidated within a newly established branch of the national library in Oslo.  Provisional arrangements were made for the period between 1999 and 2005, while the library building was being renovated.  In 2005, the national library moved into a renovated building in Oslo, which marked the true beginning for this new national institution.  With its reopening in 2005, the national library launched its redesigned website.  The institution intended to present itself as a modern library, with both a physical presence and a digital appearance.  According to the website, it was to be the premier source of information about Norway, Norwegians and Norwegian culture, and Norway’s main resource for the collection, archiving and distribution of Norwegian media. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Library_of_Norway

May 11, 2017  Lloyd Cotsen  has died at the age of 88  Mr. Cotsen, former chief executive officer and chairman of the board of Neutrogena Corporation, founded the Cotsen Foundation for the ART of TEACHING in 2001.  Education is one among several fields, including folk art, children’s literature, and archaeology, to which Mr. Cotsen made a commitment. The Neutrogena Wing/Cotsen Gallery at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico includes over 3,000 art objects and folk art.  The Cotsen Children’s Library at Princeton University houses his collection of illustrated children’s books donated to the library in 1997.   In recognition of Mr. Cotsen’s contributions, the University of California, Los Angeles renamed its Institute of Archaeology the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology in February 2000.  http://cotsen.org/about-lloyd-cotsen/

           

matriotism  noun  1.  School, hometown, or parish pride or loyalty, as opposed to nationalism or patriotism. [from 19th c.]  2.  Love or celebration of a woman's influence upon society; the female equivalent to male patriotism.  3.  Love of the motherland, as opposed to patriotism as love of the fatherland.  4.  Pacifist patriotism; love of society as opposed to love of the state.  5.  Devotion to Mother Earth, ecology, sustainability, peace, and the survival of the human species for as long as possible.  Wiktionary

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1709  May 15, 2017  On this date in 1988, after more than eight years of fighting, the Soviet Army began to withdraw 115,000 troops from Afghanistan.  On this date in 1991, Édith Cresson became France's first female premier.