Month: April 2022

Hostess Twinkies Are Invented (1930)

The Twinkie was invented by baker James Dewar, who noticed that the shop’s shortcake pans were only used during the strawberry season and otherwise sat idle. His thrifty idea to use the pans during the off-season led to the development of the banana-filled Twinkie snack cake. During a World War II banana shortage, vanilla filling replaced the original banana. Twinkies disappeared from US shelves in 2012 when Hostess declared bankruptcy but returned in 2013. What is the “Twinkie defense”? Discuss

Founding of the Church of Latter-Day Saints

April 6, 1830, is the day on which Joseph Smith formally established the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (also known as the Mormon Church) in Fayette, New York. Three years later, the anniversary of the Church’s founding was celebrated for the first time. In 1837, a general conference was held to conduct church business and to observe the anniversary. Eventually, the idea of holding an annual conference became an established custom, and it was always scheduled to encompass the April 6 founding date. Discuss

James D. Watson (1928)

Watson is an American biologist who, with Francis Crick, researched the molecular structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) at Cambridge in the 1950s. Their findings earned them the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Watson later became director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York and served as director of the National Center for Human Genome Research, which undertook the Human Genome Project. What landmark non-fiction book did Watson write in 1968? Discuss

Sicily

Sicily, the strategically located largest island in the Mediterranean, has long been a crossroads of history, a “melting pot” of ancient cultures and peoples. It was colonized by Phoenicians, Carthaginians, and Greeks starting in the 8th century BCE and in the millennia that followed fell first to the Romans, then successively to the Vandals, Goths, Byzantines, and Arabs, and finally to the Normans. Today, it is an autonomous region of Italy. Who are some of history’s most famous Sicilians? Discuss

refrain

ballade – A verse or poem made up of three stanzas of equal length with a recurrent line or refrain at the end of each of the stanzas. More…

condone – From Latin condonare, “refrain from punishing,” it does not mean “approve of, endorse”; it means “let something pass without interference even though you probably disapprove,” or “pardon, forgive, overlook.” More…

burden, refrain, chorus – The burden is the main theme or gist of a speech, book, or argument—or the refrain or chorus of a song. More…

deport – The earliest sense of deport was “bear with; refrain.” More…

Battle of Yorktown Begins (1862)

The Battle of Yorktown took place during the Peninsular Campaign of the American Civil War, a major Union offensive aimed at capturing the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia. The battle began when Union forces, under the command of Major General George McClellan, encountered enemy troops near Yorktown. Though the Union forces initially vastly outnumbered the Confederate troops, they failed to exploit this advantage and instead laid siege to the city. Why? Discuss