Sunglasses Day - June 27

Everyone has at least one pair of them but Elton John has over a thousand. what are we talking about? about sunglasses of course!

Sunglasses are an item designed to protect our eyes. They absorb radiation and regulate the entry of sunlight to prevent glare, but they are also a popular fashion item that is necessary to complete our look and add a cool style.

We do not know why June 27 was chosen as sunglasses day, but what is known is that sunglasses were invented a long time ago. Already in the prehistoric period, the Inuit peoples (Eskimos) who lived in the Arctic realized that they needed to reduce the amount of light entering their eyes to prevent blindness that could be caused by the glare created by the sunlight returning from the snow. They made ivory accessories that limited the amount of light that entered the eyes.

Inuit sunglasses designed to reduce the entry of sunlight into the eyes

In the 14th century, Chinese court judges used "smoky" quartz glasses to hide their eye expressions during the trial and appear indifferent.

In the mid-18th century, James Iscoff of the United States experimented with glasses with lenses made of dark glass in order to find effective remedies for vision problems. His goal was not to protect the eyes from sunlight to prevent vision problems, but to solve the problems after they appeared. His glasses are similar to the sunglasses we have today, but they have not yet completely protected the eyes from the harmful rays of the sun.

One of the surviving testimonies from the history of sunglasses is that of the famous French scientist Antoine Lavoisier in 1772, who wore dark glasses while conducting an experiment related to combustion created by increasing sunlight.

In the photo: Antoine Lavoisier wears sunglasses (Source)

The sunglasses as we know them today began to be marketed only in 1929, when entrepreneur Sam Foster began selling them to people who visited the promenade on the shores of Atlantic City in the USA.

Those who have made a significant contribution to the promotion of sunglasses and their recognition as an essential commodity are the pilots of the U.S. Air Force in World War I. Many pilots have complained that sunlight causes them headaches, dizziness and nausea and also blinds them and interferes with them performing gentle maneuvers. Therefore, in 1933, the U.S. military ordered a large number of sunglasses from the optics company Bush & Lomb to protect its pilots.

In 1937, Bush & Lomb created the "Ray Banner" brand, which means "Ray Banner". The glasses gained much popularity mainly among men, thanks to the masculinity they radiated because of their connection to the military pilots.

In the 1960s, sunglasses became a fashionable accessory. In the time of the flower children the sunglasses were given an infinity of new shapes, sizes and colors, to complete the popular hippie look.

How to celebrate Sunglasses Day?

Sunglasses have a very long history, but also a promising future. They are a must-have item for everyone both for health and for appearance. The Sunglasses Day website wants to upload selfies with sunglasses to social media and add the hashtag #SunglassSelfie or #NationalSunglassesDay to celebrate this day.

June 27 is also Industrial Workers Of The World Day and Pineapple Day

Yo-Yo Day - June 6

 Yo-Yo Day is celebrated every year on June 6th.

The yo-yo is a toy made up of two discs of equal size, made of plastic, metal or wood, and connected to each other in the middle of a hinge around which a wire is wound. To play yo-yo grab the wire at the end, throw it away from the body and yo-yo jumps down and returns up to the hand.

What makes Yo-Yo go back up is the gyroscopic inertia, the force in motion that causes the object to return to the state it was in.

The reason for choosing June 6 as the yo-yo day is unknown, but it may be because it is the birthday of Donald F. Duncan Sr., the American businessman who introduced the yo-yo into business and successfully marketed it as a modern toy in the 1930s. Duncan is sometimes mistaken for the invention of the yo-yo.

Yo-yo has a very long history. As early as 500 BC there is evidence that it was played in ancient Greece.

After the dolls, the yo-yo is the second oldest toy in the world.

Yo-yo became a popular toy in the ancient world through trade. He came to Scotland, England, India and Egypt and became a favorite game there as well.

To the modern world yo-yo came from the Philippines. In Filipino the origin of the name is "Tagalog" which means "to walk around".

In 1866 James L. Haven and Charles Hettrich patented  Yo-Yo's in U.S. But yo-yo became a success story in 1928, when Pedro Flores, an American of Filipino descent, opened a yo-yo factory in Santa Barbara, California.

How to celebrate Yo-Yo Day?

It is best to celebrate this day in a yo-yo competition, where everyone brings their unique yo-yo and together throws them. The winner is the one who managed to make his yo-yo fall down and come back up the longest, without stopping and without getting involved.

You can also learn to do very complicated and impressive tricks with your own yo, as in the video here:

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Want Yo Yo with your name? You can order here

June 6 is also Russian Language Day 

Cellophane Tape Day - May 27

How would we manage without the cellophane tap? It is hard to imagine what we would do without it, how would we stick covers of gifts, books, etc.?

May 27 is the day of the cellophane paper.

It was invented by Richard Garley Drew (June 22, 1899 - December 14, 1980).

Drew began working for 3M in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1920, which was a small company manufacturing products for industry, including sandpaper.

One day, while testing their new sandpaper, WetorDry, Drew realized that their popular automatic painting machines had difficulty distinguishing between two colors. So he started working hard in 3M labs and invented the first masking-tape strip, which was 5 cm wide and glued with light glue using pressure.

In the first masking tape the glue was smeared on the edges, but not in the middle. During the product's first trial year, the glue fell off the automatic dyeing machine and Drew growled in response to his assistant: "Take this paper back to your stingy bosses and tell them to put more glue on it!". When he said "stingy" he used the word "Scotch" which in slang meant "thrifty". And so in 1930 he invented an improved adhesive tape called "Scotch".

In 1925 Drew invented the world's first transparent cellophane adhesive (called cellophane tape in the UK and other countries in the world and velcro in the United States). Following the economic crisis and the collapse of Wall Street in 1929, people began to use the thing paper to fix things instead of throwing them away and so the 3M company was able to grow out of the Great Depression and invent another variety of products.

Cellophane Tape

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May 27 is also Sun Screen Day

Zipper Day - April 29th

It is found on bags, coats, pants and boots. It is really impossible to imagine life without it- the zipper. They are so common and the truth is also not so noticeable, that it is easy to take them for granted. But when they break down, it's impossible ...

Zipper Day comes to remind us of the origin and history of this useful and wonderful invention that accompanies us almost everywhere.

The exact zipper's birthday is controversial, but the zipper day is traditionally celebrated on April 29th. On this day in 1913, Swedish-American scientist and inventor Gideon Sundback registered his strange device as a patent. Although there were similar inventions around the 1850s, its version is accepted as the first modern zipper.

The zipper quickly found where to fit into modern life, for example the United States military adopted it for uniforms and bags. The zipper is a functional and fashionable accessory, sometimes it even appears as an ornament. There is no doubt that the invention of Sundback has improved our lives and deserves us to dedicate a special day to it!

April 29 is also World Wish Day and International Dance Day

National Pack Your Lunch Day - March 10

National Pack Your Lunch Day is a day founded in the United States where everyone takes to work or school or wherever they go, a lunch box where they have prepared their own lunch.

A lunch box is a way to pack the food you have prepared yourself and take it with you wherever you want. A good box keeps food fresh and clean. If you take your lunch to work or school in a box, you will not have to buy food outside and thus you will also save money, and you will also eat healthier and cleaner food.

Lunch boxes first appeared around the 1880s, when people took food from home for work. The boxes were made of metal and not particularly decorative.

A few years later, the children wanted to emulate their fathers and began to take to school also lunch boxes that were made of empty tin boxes that were used to store tobacco or cookies, and decorated them themselves.

The first time they started selling lunch boxes was in 1902. These were boxes reminiscent of a metal picnic basket.

Mickey Mouse was the first cartoon character to appear on a lunch box in a 1935 film.

In the 1950s, lunch boxes began to gain momentum along with popular TV shows, with manufacturers realizing that once the box featured popular characters like Aladdin, the lone rider, and child western star Hopalong Cassidy, the boxes were snatched as enthusiastically as rolls.

Link

In the 1960s cheap vinyl lunch boxes appeared, but the metal still dominated the lunch box market until the 1980s, when it took over the cheap and lightweight plastic sector.

Today the lunch boxes are made of materials like plastic, metal or fabric, they usually contain a few compartments or small boxes so that the food does not mix and you can also take sauces and liquid foods and antique lunch boxes (vintage) are a sought-after collectible item.

Lunch Bag

March 10 is also International Wig Day and Mario Day

Battery Day - February 18

Battery Day is a holiday of the electric battery, invented by Alessandro Volta in 1800 and we use it to this day. Thanks to the electric battery invented by Volta, scientists in his time were able to study electricity and its properties.

Battery Day was celebrated on the birthday of Alessandro Volta, the Italian physicist who was born on February 18, 1745 and died on March 5, 1827.

Some facts you should know about the electric battery:

The volt, the unit of measure of electrical voltage, is named after Alessandro Volta.

Batteries should be kept in the refrigerator to prevent the appearance of chemical reactions that occur during heating. However, today's batteries are manufactured so that no chemical processes take place in them as long as they are at room temperature, up to 25 degrees.

Cooling is also a disadvantage - when you take the battery out of the refrigerator it takes time to reach peak output and produce the chemical process needed to produce energy.

The first battery built by Volta was a liquid chamber containing zinc and copper plates, placed one on top of the other, alternating between a porous material, saturated with electrolyte, usually a solution of mixed sulfuric acid. The first battery was called the "Voltaic Cell".

February 18 is also Drinking Wine Day, Eat Ice Cream For Breakfast Day and Pluto Day

Radio Day - February 13

Once when we wanted to hear news or music, we would settle for the humble radio that would update us on what was happening in the world once an hour.

When we wanted to hear a song we like, without buying the whole record, we would record it from the radio (and no one said it was illegal). We would sit with our finger on the record button, and as soon as the song started we would quickly press it and wait with our finger on the pause button. How annoying were the announcers who had to speak in the background of the beginning of the song or enter at the end ...

UNESCO announced in 2011 a radio day to be held on February 13 every year, to celebrate the importance of radio in our lives. The proposal to hold this day was raised by Spain. Every second and can also download and listen to unlimited songs, but there are still places in the world for which radio is a technological miracle. There are entire populations in the world that do not have access to modern information technologies. Poor villages in Africa gather around the only radio around every night Children in remote agricultural communities in Australia attend school through radio.

Radio animated gifs

Radio is a major tool in our lives. In Israel, there are about 20 radio stations that broadcast various content such as different types of music, current affairs programs, counseling and more, stations for different populations such as immigrants from Russia, religious, Arabs and more. You can also hear through the internet many radio stations from around the world.

By the way, if you thought you did not need a home radio and that this device has already passed from the world, know that in an emergency, such as a war or a major earthquake, you need to equip a radio transistor with batteries, in case the electricity and internet do not work. That's why you should have a radio at home for any trouble that may come.

So what's your favorite radio station? What do you hear when you travel or at home?

February 13 is also Tortellini Day and Madly In Love With Me Day

Tin Can Day - January 19

A tin can is a box in which food is stored in an airtight manner without contaminating microenzymes.

We all sometimes buy cans of pickles, olives, tuna or beans and store them in the pantry for hours when needed. Canned food can hold for a long time and is therefore also considered an "emergency" food.

Who Invented the Tin Can?

The canned food preservation process is thought to have been created by the Frenchman Philippe de Girard, and the idea was passed on to the British merchant Peter Durand who served as an agent to register Girard's idea as a patent in 1810.

Girard's idea of ​​preservation was based on an attempt to preserve food in glass containers the year before, by the French confectioner Nicolas Francois Aper, for Napoleon's army.

In 1812 Durand sold his patent to two Englishmen, Brian Donkin and John Hall, who processed the process and product, and set up the world's first commercial cannery in Southark Park, London. In 1813 they produced cans for the British Royal Navy. In 1820, the cans were used for gunpowder, seeds, and turpentine.

The early cans were sealed by soldering with a lead alloy and tin, which could have led to lead poisoning. In 1845, Sir John Franklin's expedition from Britain to the North Pole suffered from severe lead poisoning and was thought to be the result of eating canned food. A more recent study found that the lead poisoning was actually caused by the water pipes on the expedition's ships.

The early cans were sealed by soldering with a lead alloy and tin, which could have led to lead poisoning.

The cans are made of non-perishable metal and therefore cause ecological damage to the earth. It is recommended to recycle them and not throw them in the trash.

In honor of Tin Can Day, you can make creations from cans such as beautiful flower pots, flower vases, tools for storing stationery, a savings account, wind chimes, a bride and groom's car decoration and more.

Lids for closing cans (Source: Amazon) 

January 19th is also Popcorn Day

Sticker Day- January 13

Sticker Day is a day to celebrate in honor of all types of stickers wherever they are. Stickers for decoration, stickers that are used as labels to mark prices, stickers to mark property, barcodes, stickers (stickers) and more.

 

It seems obvious to us that there are stickers that can be used for a lot of things, but what was before the stickers were invented?

The idea of ​​labeling the product came from European merchants in the 1980s. In order to promote their goods they would stick paper labels on their wares with the help of chewing gum.

Even before the merchants, an older sticker emerged - the stamp for sending letters. The first official postage stamp in the world was the "Black Penny", a stamp issued by the United Kingdom on 1 May 1840. The purpose of the stamps was to indicate that the delivery for the letters was paid for by the sender, because until then the letter delivery method was cumbersome and inefficient. The payment for the shipment applies to the recipient of the letter who did not always agree to pay and tracking the payment was very difficult.

The sticker day falls on January 13 each year in memory of R. Stanton Avery, who was born that day in 1907. Avery was an American from Oklahoma City who invented the self-adhesive labels (modern stickers). He took out a $ 100 loan and built a machine that created the pressure-sensitive stickers, the world's first patent for adhesive paper. In 1953 he founded the company now known as Avery Dennison Corporation.

Since then the stickers have become more and more popular, and more and more uses have been found for them.

From childhood, stickers are used in kindergarten to teach children to catch up and develop fine motor skills. Kids love to collect colorful and decorated stickers and swap with each other. At school, stickers are affixed to notebooks and books and bags of sandwiches with the student's name. In supermarkets stick stickers with prices on products. There are stickers that stick to vehicles with political and other messages on them. Stickers have endless uses and when you think about it - this is a really ingenious and important invention.

 You can find thousands of stickers in Amazon

January 13th is also Skeptics Day and Rubber Duck Day

World Braille Day - January 4

The world celebrates Braille Day on January 4, the birthday of Louis Braille, the inventor of Braille.

The Braille script is a script used by the blind to read by touching up-highlighted dots on the page.

Louis Braille was born on January 4, 1809 in a small village near Paris, France. His father was a tanner (leather processor), and one day, when he was 3, Louis was playing with his amulet and was injured in the eyes. He lost his sight but his parents sent him to study in the company of sighted children. At the age of 12 he was sent to study at a school for the blind. At the school, founded by Valentin Howie, the children learned to read with the help of embossed letters they touched. Braille learned this way, but encountered difficulties because the letters were very large and so the books were very heavy and large.

The books were also very expensive, as they were printed using a special printing press with barbed wire. The letters were also too close to each other and made it difficult to read. The school where he studied at Braille had only fourteen books, and despite the difficulty of reading them, he read them all.

Braille was looking for a simpler method that would allow the blind to read. In 1821 a soldier named Charles Barbia appeared at the school, telling of a method he had invented that allowed soldiers on the battlefield, who were inside canals, to correspond with each other without revealing their place. He called the method "night writing" and it was based on the use of matrices of twelve prominent points. Barbia's method was cumbersome and rejected by the military, but Braille decided there was potential in the idea of ​​using highlighted points, and developed a method based on six-point matrices.

In 1852 Braille died of tuberculosis. Two years after his death, the Braille letter was accepted as standard.

Pictured: Doodle (Google Scribble) made by Google in honor of Louis Braille's 107th birthday, in 2006. (link)

Nowadays, the computer has taken the place of heavy braille books. There are special Braille keyboards and computer monitors that highlight the Braille so that a blind person can read them.

Braille Day is an opportunity to raise awareness for the blind and visually impaired, and that they need help and consideration. This is also a great opportunity to remember that limitations can be overcome, and that if you want, you can always find alternative methods to do things that seem obvious to people without disabilities.

Pictured: Braille 'n Speak PDA that works with Braille technology and provides voice output.  link

 Hungarian tactile cube suitable for the blind and visually impaired (link)

January 4 is also Trivia Day and Hypnosis Day

Drinking Straw Day - January 3

Imagine a world without drinking straws: Is it possible to drink a milkshake without a straw? How can you successfully drink juice from a cardboard box? How many soft drinks would be poured on you in the dark cinema without straws? I think we can all agree that straws have changed our lives for the better enough to be worthy of their own holiday.

Drinking Straw Day is celebrated in honor of the invention of the straw that changed our lives forever.

It is known in history that the first use of drinking straws was made by the Sumerians, thousands of years before BC, who drank beer with them, which at that time contained many solid by-products as a result of the fermentation process, which they wanted to filter.

Thousands of years later, in the 1800s, rye grass straw became popular because it was cheap and soft. Unfortunately, this straw also tended to turn into a liquid porridge itself inside the drink.

One day, while drinking mint water with ice, inventor Marvin Stone was annoyed that the drink got the taste of rye from his straw, and thought of a new way to create paper straws.

In those days Stone was engaged in the production of paper holders for cigarettes and he thought of using the idea for drinking as well. He formed paper tubes by tying pieces of paper around the pencil and gluing them together and then sliding the pencil out. So that the straw would not be wet and soft while drinking he tried waterproof types of paper. After many attempts Stone decided that the ideal straw would be 21.6 inches long, and the width at which lemon seeds would not be able to pass through it.

On January 3, 1888 Marvin Stone registered the patent and later also manufactured machines for making paper drinking straws with wax that would not dissolve in the bourbon drink he loved to drink.

If you want to celebrate the day of the invention of the drinking straw, you can do so by making a straw yourself from paper, using a pencil, drinking and discovering that it has no taste of rye and telling Marvin Stone well on his invention, which we take for granted but is actually ingenious in its simplicity.

Nowadays plastic straw has lost its popularity.

Today there are many people who oppose the use of drinking straws. The average duration of use of a plastic straw is about two minutes, but its lifespan is an eternity and the damage it causes to the environment is immense. Plastic is a non-perishable material and the list of environmental disasters it causes on land, in the air and at sea is endless. Scientists estimate that about 12 million tons of plastic reach the sea each year and they predict that by 2050 the weight of plastic in the sea will be greater than the weight of the animals that live in it.

As a replacement for the plastic straw, reusable bamboo or metal straw can be used.

January 3 is also Festival Of Sleep Day and Chocolate-Covered Cherry Day

Coca Cola inventor John Pemberton's birthday- July 8th

Did you know that Coca-Cola was originally created as a medicine and that it is named after the two main ingredients in it: Coca-Cola?

Coca is a shrub from which cocaine is produced and cola is a nut that grows in the rainforests of Africa. But do not worry, Coca-Cola no longer has cocaine.

When American pharmacist John Pemberton first invented Coca-Cola, in 1886, it was as a result of a search for a non-alcoholic version of his Coca-Cola wine.

John Pemberton was born on July 8, 1831 in the US state of Georgia. As a soldier he fought in the American Civil War in the Confederate Army (South) and was wounded in the Battle of Columbus.

He received morphine from the military doctors and became addicted to it.

After completing his military service he worked as a pharmacist and began looking for a cure for addiction. He brewed himself a wine from cola nuts and added the coca plant to it, until he finally managed to invent the "Pemberton's French Wine Coca". When he saw that his wine was helping him cope with the pain, he began selling it to other military veterans suffering from morphine addiction, depression and alcoholism, as well as to women suffering from nervous weakness (neurasthenia).

In 1885, drought laws were enacted in Georgia, prohibiting the production, sale and drinking of alcohol. Pemberton was forced to create a non-alcoholic version of his wine drink. He worked hard to create a recipe for a non-alcoholic version, until in 1886 he invented a secret recipe according to which he decided to mix his Coca-Cola syrup with soda water. He sold it for five cents a glass as a patent. People at the time believed that carbonated water was good for their health, and Pemberton claimed that its special soda was a drug for morphine addiction, indigestion, neurasthenia, headaches and other health problems. In May of that year, Pemberton founded the Coca-Cola Company and marketed the drink as having medicinal properties and as a drug for morphine or opium addiction.

It is estimated that the original Coca-Cola recipe contained about nine milligrams of cocaine in a glass. The average dose of cocaine is between 15 and 35 milligrams. However, the effect of coca leaves was balanced in the presence of the caffeine in the cola nut. In 1903 cocaine was removed from the secret recipe but Coca-Cola still has the flavor of the coca plant.

The first Coca-Cola model, Hilda Clark, in an advertisement from 1890 in which she offers a glass of Coca-Cola for the price of 5 cents.

Hilda Clark in a Coca-Cola commercial, The Ideal Brain Tonic, A drink for summer and winter, especially for headaches, relieves mental and physical exhaustion

Coca Cola vintage radio

International Safety Pin Day - April 10

Legend has it that in 1849, Walter Hunt, a car mechanic from New York, invented the safety pin to make money in order to repay his friend a $ 15 debt. On April 10 of that year he registered it as a patent, and since then we have enjoyed his simple but practical invention.

The truth is that it was not entirely his invention. As early as the 14th century BC, there was a similar accessory in Mycenaean Greece called Fibula, but how were he and the people in the patent office supposed to know that? Did they have a Wikipedia then?

In honor of the safety pin day, maybe you too will invent something simple but ingenious?

April 10 is also Free Cone Day at Ben & Jerry's