Happy New Year from OneTubeRadio.com!
It’s that time of year again, when the Big Calendar Companies take part in a conspiracy for you to hand over your hard-earned money to buy a new calendar. But 2024 is a leap year starting on Monday, just like 1940 was. So save your money, and feel free to print out the 1940 calendar shown here, which will work just fine in 2024. This one appeared in the Oregon Almanac for 1940, and it also works just fine outside of Oregon.
Happy New Year from OneTubeRadio.com!
For the cynics who believe that the New Year is just a conspiracy by the Big Calendar Companies to sell more calendars, you can beat them at their own game. There are only 14 possible calendars (January 1 falling on Sunday through Saturday, for both regular years and leap years), so it is quite possible to re-use your old calendars.
2023 starts on a Sunday, as did 1911. So rather than spending your money on a new calendar, just print out this perfectly good 1911 calendar, taken from the 1911 edition of the Old Farmer’s Almanac.
The book is full of other interesting information, such as the 1911 postal rates:
The distinction between the 1 cent and the 2 cent letter rate is that the 1 cent rate is the “drop letter” rate. It covers letters brought to the post office to be delivered to a customer who picks them up at the same office. But if the office has either local delivery or rural delivery, or if it’s sent to another post office, then the 2 cent rate applies.
The book also contains a description of the 1910 appearance of Halley’s Comet, which I was able to see (albeit barely) in 1986.
Wikipedia image, photo by Sergei Strunnikov.
Happy New Year from OneTubeRadio.com!
We’ve had a tough couple of years, but it wasn’t “Siege of Leningrad” tough. The picture shown above was taken 80 years ago today at the Leningrad Children’s Hospital, where the children were celebrating the new year 1942. Despite their predicament of being surrounded by the German army, these young comrades seem stoic and determined to endure.
While these children were all born before the start of the siege, the fierce battle surprisingly marked the beginning of a baby boom within the city. In 1943, the number of marriages in the city were up 13%, leading to a 1944 birth rate that was 23.6% higher than the pre-war level. From the start of the siege, special efforts were made to ensure nutrition for infants, and surprisingly, infant mortality actually declined in 1942.
You can read more about this aspect of the siege of Leningrad at the Russian Wikipedia. Google should provide a good translation of the fascinating article.
As you prepare for the new year, you’re undoubtedly in need of a good 2022 calendar. But there’s no need to run out and buy a new one, as you can re-use this 101 year old calendar from 1921. This one was provided courtesy of the Atlanta Tri-Weekly Journal.
For your listening pleasure, here’s what you would have heard on the radio 75 years ago tonight, New Year’s Eve 1944, the Jack Benny show:
13th Guards Rifle Division at Stalingrad. Wikipedia photo.
Here was the scene in Stalingrad on New Year’s Day 75 years ago, 1943. The battle lasted into February, when the Soviets won a decisive victory, but only after over 1.2 million total casualties; with 478,741 officially listed as killed or missing.
Happy New Year from OneTubeRadio.com!
As we enter 2017, we look back 75 years to January 1, 1942, the first New Year’s Day of the War. The nation’s industry was already largely on a wartime footing, as shown by these night shift workers at the Northern Pump Company in Minneapolis. They took a half hour break to don paper caps and give 1942 a short defiant cheer. Then, they went back to work making anti-aircraft guns for the Navy.
The company was founded in 1929 by the merger of Northern Fire Apparatus Company and the Pagel Pipe Company. It moved to the Fridley plant shown here in January 1941. In 1942, it created subsidiary Northern Ordinance Incorporated. Northern Ordinance continued naval production until 1964 when it was purchased by Food Machinery Corporation (FMC), which operated the site until 1994. BAE Systems currently owns and operates the Fridley site.
Northern Pump currently operates in Grantsburg, Wisconsin.
This photo appeared in the January 12, 1942, issue of Life Magazine.