Jan. 27, Monday — Sts. Timothy and Titus. Moon at descending node. Composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart born, 1756.
Jan. 28, Tuesday — First woman (writer Julia Ward Howe) elected to American Academy of Arts and Letters, 1908. Space shuttle Challenger exploded, 1986.
Jan. 29, Wednesday — Baseball Hall of Fame established, Cooperstown, N.Y., 1936. Talk-show host Oprah Winfrey born, 1954.
Jan. 30, Thursday — Franklin Delano Roosevelt born, 1882. Dallas, Texas, installed the first moving sidewalk, 1958. Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi assassinated, 1948.
Jan. 31, Friday — The first serial daytime soap opera ("These Are My Children") telecast, Chicago, Ill., 1941. The first monthly Social Security issued, 1940.
Feb. 1, Saturday — New Moon. St. Brigid. Chinese New Year. Four African-American students held first sit-in at a Woolworth lunch counter, Greensboro, N.C., 1960.
Feb. 2, Sunday — Candlemas. Punxsutawney, Penn., celebrated its first official Groundhog Day, 1887. Inventor William Painter received patent for the crown-cork bottle cap, 1892.
Ask The Old Farmer's Almanac:My local greenhouse was giving away free bags of tulip bulbs over the holiday — I assume because it was too late to plant them. What can I do with them? — A.D., New York, N.Y.
Answer: Put them in your refrigerator for six to eight weeks, to give them the cold period they need, then pot them for forced indoor blooms long before the spring flowers are showing in New York City. Once they're in the soil, water well, and give them plenty of sunlight, turning the pots occasionally so that they grow straight.
If you lived in Zones 9 or 10 (southern Florida and southern Texas, for instance), you could give them the cold period in the refrigerator, then plant them outdoors in the early spring, for outside blooms. In New York, the windowsill is your best bet.
Some people like to pot the bulbs first, then chill the entire pots for the cold period. Either way works fine, but unless you've got a cold cellar (not freezing), you'll probably find that the bulbs fit better into your crisper tray in the bottom of the refrigerator without all that soil and those clay pots!
For more gardening advice, read The Old Farmer's Almanac Gardener's Companion quarterly. To subscribe, call (800) 895-9265, x220, or visit www.almanac.com/garden/index.html.
Ask The Old Farmer's Almanac: I'm told that the 3M logo on Scotch tape comes from the business name Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Co. Is this true, and what's sticky about mining? — P.S., Harveyville, Kan.
Answer: Indeed, 3M stands for Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Co. (for the three M's in the name). As for mining and stickiness, sandpaper is the connection. Five businessmen in Two Harbors, Minn., formed a company to mine a mineral they thought would approximate the hardness of diamonds, that all-too-precious gem that happens to make great abrasives, cutting edges and grinding tools. The mineral didn't pan out, but the company changed its focus somewhat and decided to go into the sandpaper business. As you can imagine, sandpaper manufacturing requires that some sort of grit, with varying grades of coarseness, be adhered to paper. Here comes the sticky part: the company had to experiment with both the papers and the adhesives to find the proper combination.
Then the car industry entered the picture. Auto-body painting required a considerable amount of sanding, and the 3M engineers were trying to make sandpaper that would work while wet, which reduced the amount of dust. At the same time, they hoped to solve another auto-industry problem: how to mask off part of a car to achieve the two-tone paint styles that were all the rage. Butcher's paper was applied with shop glue or surgical tape, but the glues were either hard to remove or pulled off the new paint with them. After much troubleshooting, the 3M company came up with an early version of masking tape that had adhesive applied to the two edges but not along the middle. The concept was good, but the application proved impractical. The heavy paper made the tape pull off, causing an irate worker to send the two-edged tape back to the manufacturer for more adhesive. After making several adjustments, including completely covering one side with adhesive, the tape was a success.
Ask The Old Farmer's Almanac:Is bay rum a drink or a hair tonic or what? — M.P., Ely, Nev.
Answer: The most common association with bay rum is probably as a men's aftershave. Bay rum is a simple (and quite old) mixture of rum and water, in roughly equal parts, with a small amount of oil of bay or distilled bay leaves added for aromatic appeal. One version we've seen calls for 18 ounces each of alcohol and water, with one drachm of oil of bay. (A drachm — also called drachma or dram — is about an eighth of an ounce.) In this particular old recipe, the mixture was then filtered through magnesia, perhaps to take away the residual stickiness of any molasses or sugar in the rum. For drinking, the straight rum, without the bay, is the way to go; the essential oil of bay included in bay rum is not for internal use, as it may be moderately toxic.
In the cosmetics world, rum is considered an excellent oil reducer and astringent toner. It's often used in shampoos and hair tonics, as well as for facial rinses or a bracing aftershave. The bay used in bay rum is from Pimenta racemosa, or the West Indian bay tree, a k a bayberry, which produces an aromatic liquid when distilled. It is not the same bayberry that is typically used medicinally, that being Myrica cerifera, also an astringent. The bay leaves we commonly use in cooking, from the bay tree Laurus nobilis, might produce similar results, although we haven't tried it.
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