Ridley's Believe It Or Not For December 31, 2015 New Year's Eve

Ridley’s Believe It Or Not For December 31, 2015, 386 days to go in President Obama’s pathetic lame duck term. Trust your last day of 2015 is off to a great start and your New Year’s Resolutions are set and better yet capable of being observed; as always, I hope you enjoy Thursday’s  holidays and observances,  a music link to John Lennon, factoids of interest, a relevant quote from Neil Gaiman, looking forward to enjoying some champagne, blessed with a positive attitude and secure in the knowledge that if you want to find a gift for any memorable event like birthdays, weddings, or anniversaries, you know that the Alaskanpoet can provide you with a unique customized poem at a great price tailored to the event and the recipient. You need only contact me for details.

            1. National First Night—a North American artistic and cultural celebration from the afternoon to midnight on New Year’s Eve first observed in Boston in 1975. I am totally clueless s to why the celebration is not called “Last Night.”                             

            2. World Peace Meditation Day—celebrating since 1986 as day for global meditation on the idea of peace.

            3. 1980 Number One S ong—celebrating the number one song in 1980 on a run of five weeks in that position (Just Like) Starting Over by John Lennon. Here is a link to John Lennon performing (Just Like) Starting Over: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noEdecW8sHg

            4. National Champagne Day—celebrating the perfect drink to welcome 2016.

            5. Rocky Mountain High—commemorating the birthday on this day in 1943 of Colorado’s poet laureate and iconic singer John Denver, who was an avid humanitarian and environmentalist and who tragically died in an experimental plane crash in Monterey Bay..

On this day in:  

       a. 1696 a window tax was instituted in England resulting in many households to brick over their windows to avoid the tax.

       b. 1862 Abraham Lincoln signed legislation admitting West Virginia into the Union, thereby dividing Virginia in two.   

       c. 1874 Thomas Edison demonstrated incandescent lighting to the public for the first time at Menlo Park, New Jersey.                                                            

        d. 1907 the first New Year’s Eve celebration was held in Times Square; tonight up to a million people watched over by 6,000 police officers will descend on Times Square.

         e. 1999 the U.S. handed over control of the Panama Canal and the Panama Canal Zone to Panama.                                

Reflections on New Year’s Eve: “I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're doing something.” Neil Gaiman, noted English author of short stories, novels and comic books.                                                                                                                     Please enjoy the poems on events of interest on my twitter account below (if you like them, retweet and join 165 growing followers and please follow me) and follow my blogs. Always good, incisive and entertaining poems on my blogs—click on the links below. Go to www.alaskanpoet.blogspot.com for Ridley’s Believe It Or Not—This Day In History, poems to inspire, touch, emote, elate and enjoy and poems on breaking news items of importance or go to Ridley's Believe It Or Not  for just This Day In History. © December 31, 2015, Michael P. Ridley aka the Alaskanpoet Alaskanpoet for Hire, Poems to Admire Poet Extraordinaire Beyond Compare The Perfect Gift, All Recipients to Receive a Lasting Lift