[Sca-cooks] December 22nd Holiday Exchange

[kingstaste at mindspring.com]

DEC 22
First Full Day of Winter

Wodin’s Celebration* - Norse/Germanic - 13 days during Midwinter,
Wodin/Wotan/Odin travels the skies clad in a broad brimmed black hat with a
white beard, riding on his white horse Sleipnir as the Old Gift Bringer,
distributing punishments to the wicked and rewards to the worthy.

Thermometer Invented - 1714 - Daniel Fahrenheit, the man who put thermometry
on  a  solidfooting, was born in the Polish city of Gdansk in 1686.  When
he was 15 his parents both died  from  eating  poisonous  mushrooms. Between
1707 and  1714  Fahrenheit  worked  out  an  alcohol thermometer scale based
on three points:  Zero was freezing point  of a salt-water mixture, 32
degrees was  the  freezing  point  of water,  and  body  temperature  was
called  96  degrees.    Body
temperature was a little off in this scale, but it was close.  In
1714 he startled the world with a pair of thermometers that both
gave the same readings.  No one had  ever  managed  to  do  that.
Later he made mercury  thermometers  that  let  him  use  the
boiling point of water instead of the human body temperature.

First Christmas Lights go on sale - 1882