Today is Sunday, June 17 and there are only 93 days until National Cheeseburger Day, so start looking for good recipes and sending out your invitations.  Today we remember the birthdays of William Hooper, Sir William Crookes and John Hersey.  On this day in 1837 Charles Goodyear obtained his first rubber patent, in 1885 the Statue of Liberty arrived in NYC aboard the French ship ‘Isere” and in 1950 the first kidney transplant was performed.  In Iceland it is Republic Day, in Japan it is the Lily Festival and in the US it is Father’s Day, National Apple Strudel Day, National Cherry Tart Day and National Stewart’s Root Beer Day.

Let’s take a minute to address Father’s Day.  Today is a celebration honoring fathers and celebrating fatherhood, paternal bonds, and the influence of fathers in society.  A customary day for the celebration of fatherhood in Catholic Europe is known to date back to at least the Middle Ages, and it is observed on March 19.  Father's Day was not celebrated in the US, outside Catholic traditions, until the 20th century. As a civic celebration in the US, it was inaugurated in the early 20th century to complement Mother’s Day by celebrating fathers and male parenting.  The first observance of a "Father's Day" was held on July 5, 1908 in Fairmont, West Virginia. 

Grace Golden Clayton was mourning the loss of her father, when in December 1907, the Monongah Mining Disaster in nearby Monongah killed 361 men, 250 of them fathers, leaving around a thousand fatherless children. Clayton suggested that her pastor Robert Thomas Webb honor all those fathers.  Clayton's event did not have repercussions outside Fairmont and the celebration was never promoted outside the town itself and no proclamation of it was made by the city council.  A bill to accord national recognition of the holiday was introduced in Congress in 1913.  In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson went to Spokane to speak at a Father's Day celebration and he wanted to make it an officially recognized federal holiday, but Congress resisted, fearing that it would become commercialized.

In 1966, President Lyndon B Johnson issued the first presidential proclamation honoring fathers, designating the third Sunday in June as Father's Day.  Six years later, the day was made a permanent national holiday when President Richard Nixon signed it into law.  That should satisfy your need for Father’s Day trivia.

I have noticed recently that the newest trend in driving is to ignore traffic signs that tell a driver that he or she cannot do what they want to do.  One of the signs I see ignored a lot is the STOP sign.  Many people see it as a Slow Down, Look Quickly and Then Go sign.  They never actually come to a stop.  There are stop signs in the community where I live and many of the people ignore them completely.  I guess it never occurs to them that if other people ignore them, too, there could be some interesting wrecks. 

I won’t even go into speed limit signs because we all know they are considered suggestions and not restrictions.  In our community there are a number of older people.  The speed limit is set at 20 to safeguard the people crossing the street.  The way some people drive here, I can envision some driver cruising through a stop sign and people flying into the air like in cartoons.  It is a simple thing – do 20 MPH and stop at the stop signs and yet it is such a hard thing for people to do.

Lately I have been seeing more and more people ignoring the No Left Turn signs.  Maybe they are confused about why they can’t make a left turn, or they do not understand that the arrow on the sign pointing left with a big red circle around it and a slash through it means you cannot make a left turn.  I think they don’t care because they want to make the turn rather than go a little further and do things the right way.   Generally, they do this to go into an entrance to a store parking lot.  The entrance is curved and only for people turning right into the lot.  To make the left turn, the driver has to go past the entrance and then swing around, almost making a U turn to be able to get into the lot.

There is a road near me that used to allow a left turn, but, because of construction, the area has been reconfigured and does not allow for it anymore and there are signs to let you know that there is no left turn.  Just the other day I saw several people make the turn anyway, in spite of the signs and construction workers trying to wave them off.  Maybe the drivers thought the workers were just doing some stretching exercises before going to work.  Once again, let me say that if police were stationed at some of these areas they could probably go a long way toward solving municipal budget issues.  Of course many of those police personnel are sitting in their car all day with their lights flashing while utility work is done.  

For years utility workers were able to go out on a job, place their bright orange cones and get their work done.  Now they need police cars sitting around all day.  Is this because they are afraid someone will steal the cones?  Perhaps if they were out enforcing traffic laws, they wouldn’t need to be sitting around watching other people work.  For that matter, they could give me a car with flashing lights and have me sit there.  I wouldn’t cost anywhere near as much and the money they collected from traffic fines would more than cover my time and a sandwich for lunch.

This week our fact tells us that fossilized bird droppings are one of the chief exports of Nauru, an island nation in the Western Pacific.  If we could come up with a use for fossilized bovine droppings, most of the state capitols could provide a never-ending source of income.