The earliest mention of hot cross buns, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, dates to 1733.  Poor Robin’s Almanac contains the rhyme:  Good Friday comes this month, the old woman runs with one or two a penny hot cross buns.  However, there are many signs that the Easter cake existed long before then.  There were simply very few written records to offer concrete evidence.  One story claims that the buns were first made in the 12th century, by a monk who decided to mark them with a cross in honour of the Easter season.  As they grew in popularity, they became an annual tradition.  But there are other claims that the buns have a much earlier origin story.  Some historians say that they are a part of the pre-Christian celebrations of Ostara, celebrating rebirth and the arrival of spring after the long winter.  The cross divides the cake into four quarters, representing the four seasons and the compass points.  See pictures and recipe at https://britishfoodandtravel.com/2018/03/27/hot-cross-buns-for-easter/   

Hot Cross Buns Recipe by Nagi  Fluffy, fragrant, homemade Hot Cross Buns recipe!  With a short recipe video and some cheeky but effective tips, I think you’ll be amazed how easy it is to make hot cross buns.  https://www.recipetineats.com/hot-cross-buns-recipe/  See also https://www.thepioneerwoman.com/food-cooking/recipes/a11482/hot-cross-buns/

Banbury is a market town in on the edge of the northern Oxfordshire Cotswolds.  A nursery rhyme, 'Ride a Cock Horse', has made Banbury one of the best-known towns in England.  It has been suggested that the 'Fine Lady' of the nursery rhyme may have been Lady Godiva or Elizabeth I.  More likely it was a local girl who rode in a May Day procession.  The original cross was pulled down at the end of the 16th century.  

Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross
To see a fine lady ride on a white horse
With rings on her fingers and bells on her toes
She shall have music wherever she goes.

The written history of this 'nursery rhyme' goes back to 1784 but it was not written for children and like many other so called nursery rhymes this rhyme may well carry its own delightfully history.  The catchy little rhyme has made Banbury famous throughout the English speaking world and Banbury Cross a tourist attraction.  But the Cross that stands in the centre of Banbury has nothing to do with the rhyme.  The cross now standing was erected in 1859 to commemorate the marriage of Queen Victoria's eldest daughter. 

Banbury had at least three other crosses:  the High Cross, the Bread Cross, and the white Cross.  The Puritans destroyed the crosses.  It is possible that Banbury Cross refers not so much to a monument as to the location of crossroads.  Banbury was built at the junction of two ancient roads the Salt Way, still used as a bridle path and Banbury Lane, part of the Jurassic Way which ran from the Humber to the Avon.  The real story behind the nursery rhyme is lost in history.  https://www.cotswolds.info/strange-things/banbury-cross.shtml   

It was called Rejuvenique:  a facial mask endorsed by actress Linda Evans, of "Dynasty" fame, in 1999.  It was not only creepy looking, but had electrodes that shocked a person's face.  "It was never really approved by any authority, but the reviews said it feels like there were a thousand ants biting your face," said Samuel West, the founder and curator of the Museum of Failure.  The mask is one of more than 130 items from around the world that didn't quite do the trick—and are now on display in the traveling exhibition at Industry City in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.  A number of the epic fails are from well-known brands like Coca-Cola, Ford, Colgate, Nintendo and Pepsi.  West founded the museum in Sweden in 2017.  Food items like Crystal Pepsi and flavored waters for pets are featured, as well as the famous story of New Coke from Coca-Cola in the mid-1980s.  "Coke decided to change their original classic formula, created chaos, and consumers were super annoyed and worried that they wouldn't have their original Coke," said West, who noted that somehow this worked in Coke's favor, as people went out of their way to stock up on original Coke.  The original Coke was brought back as "Coca-Cola Classic" three months later.  Other failures include the tragic story of the Titanic, the "unsinkable" luxury liner that sadly did sink after hitting an iceberg in the north Atlantic on its maiden voyage in 1912, with more than 1,500 passengers and crew perishing.  There was also the Mercedes-Benz A-class compact car, which rolled over during a safety test. 

On the tech side, the Nintendo Power Glove was a huge failure when it was released in 1989.  "High expectations; this was like the future of gaming.  However, it was really difficult, almost impossible, to make it work," said West, who noted that failure would lead to more success for Nintendo with their Wii gaming system.  That's a big focus of the museum:  that sometimes failure has to happen before things get figured out.  "Here we are looking at some of the failures that didn't make it, but we often forget that the successes are built upon sort of multiple, hundreds of failures before it," West said.  All of this failure will be on display at Industry City through May 14, 2023.  Roger Clark https://www.ny1.com/nyc/brooklyn/news/2023/03/20/museum-of-failure-spotlights-massive-flops-through-history   

Dame Jane Morris Goodall DBE (born Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall on 3 April 1934), formerly Baroness Jane van Lawick-Goodall, is an English primatologist and anthropologist.  She is considered the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees, after 60 years studying the social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees.  She is the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and the Roots & Shoots programme, and she has worked extensively on conservation and animal welfare issues.  As of 2022, she is on the board of the Nonhuman Rights Project.  In April 2002, she was named a UN Messenger of Peace.  Goodall is an   honorary member of the World Future Council.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Goodall   

“Every individual matters.  Every individual has a role to play.  Every individual makes a difference.”  https://quotefancy.com/jane-goodall-quotes   

On April 10th, 1925, Charles Scribner’s Sons published The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third novel, which Fitz had begun drafting almost three years before.  “The whole idea of Gatsby,” Fitzgerald once wrote, “is the unfairness of a poor young man not being able to marry a girl with money.  This theme comes up again and again because I lived it.”  (That would be in regards to his failed love affair with Ginevra King, who inspired Daisy Buchanan.  Bet Zelda loved that.)  Famously, the book was almost called something else—a number of something elses, in fact.  “Before reluctantly deciding on The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald hemmed and hawed over more than half a dozen names,” writes Dustin Illingworth. “Gatsby; Among Ash-Heaps and Millionaires; Trimalchio; Trimalchio in West Egg; On the Road to West Egg; Under the Red, White, and Blue; Gold-Hatted Gatsby; and The High-Bouncing Lover.  As late as one month before publication, he was still trying to change the title.  His final opinion of the name of his masterpiece was not exactly a ringing endorsement:  ‘The title is only fair, rather bad than good,’ he said.”  Though The Great Gatsby was received warmly by Fitzgerald’s peers and enjoyed (mostly) positive reviews from critics, it did not sell well, particularly as compared to Fitzgerald’s previous two novels, This Side of Paradise (1920) and The Beautiful and the Damned (1922).  But books can have long lives.  During WWII, The Great Gatsby was selected by the Council on Books in Wartime to be one of the titles sent to American soldiers stationed overseas—and its popularity soon soared.  Literary Hub  April 9, 2023   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2655  April 10, 2023