Happy Flag Day! This is a holiday that has always confused me. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that it is a day to honor and celebrate our country’s flag, but why would we celebrate the flag on a separate day from our Independence Day? As we do with most of life’s questions, I went to the Internet for answers.

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Today is a seemingly innocent but quite interesting day – Friday the 13th. There are a lot of superstitions and supposed bad luck surrounding this day, but how much of it is true and how much has been blown out of proportion?

Friday has traditionally been thought of as an unlucky day (to me it is the best day of the week – start of the weekend) and 13 has been considered an unlucky number (my lucky number). The combination of the two has even led to a phobia paraskavedekatriaphobia – the abnormal fear of Friday the 13th.

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Many of us in this country think of Cinco de Mayo as just another day to throw a party with great food, but here is some history behind why we celebrate Cinco de Mayo.

There is a common misconception that Cinco de Mayo is Mexican Independence Day, but September 16, 1810 is actually the day that Mexico declared its independence from Spain. The fifth of May is celebrated because it is the day that Mexico won a key battle in the fight to stop France from taking over their country. On May 5, 1862 4,000 brave Mexican soldiers fought against the French army of 6,000 just outside Mexico City.  Although the French did not withdraw until five years later, the Battle of Puebla forced the French back to the coast and was a turning point for Mexico, becoming a symbol of Mexican resistance to foreign domination. This was the first loss Napoleon’s army had suffered in 50 years.

France was interested in stopping the United States growth because the world powers felt threatened by the power the U.S. had. It is thought that if France had taken over Mexico they would have marched north to give aid to the Confederate Army so that they could divide the country into two less powerful countries. President Lincoln and the United States depended on Mexico to hold the French troops off until the Confederacy was defeated and troops could be sent south to help Mexico.

So with all that said, have a happy Cinco de Mayo, and be sure to party responsibly!

Whether you are a prankster and get excited just by the thought of the first of April, or you are not a fan of April Fool’s Day because of being pranked one too many times, this blog is for you. If you dislike this holiday, now you might find out who to blame it on!

April Fool’s Day is kind of a mysterious holiday, but one theory is that in France in the 1500’s they changed the calendar to start celebrating the New Year in January instead of late March or April. News of the change did not travel very fast, so there were still people in rural areas celebrating the New Year in April – thus April Fool’s Day. Another theory is that it was common to pull pranks and camouflage yourself at European spring festivals of renewal. Another is that when Constantine ruled over the Roman Empire, his jesters convinced him to allow one of them to take over for a day, and that day was April 1.  This jester decreed April 1 to forever be the day of absurdity…Okay, so apparently that last one was a prank pulled on an Associated Press reporter by a professor of American humor, but that’s why it counts even more!

Today pranking is done less in the office and home and has become a tradition for big companies and media to play hoaxes on the public. Some are innocent enough, but sometimes others like ThinkGeek, notorious for releasing fake products on April 1st, end up in a bit of trouble. Their Canned Unicorn Meat product started out as an April Fool’s prank, but ended up granting them a cease and desist from the National Pork Board, which leads me to this tip: always consider the possible ramifications of your pranks, no matter how ridiculously obvious they are.

Have you Liked us on Facebook, or are you following us on Twitter? Feel free to share pictures or video of your office pranks with us! Make sure they’re work appropriate though, and getting the IT department involved earns bonus awesomeness points.

Happy (and safe) pranking!

St. Patrick’s Day brings to mind green, treasure, leprachauns, lucky charms, four-leaf clovers, and perhaps corned beef and cabbage? Here are some random facts about the Holiday.

• March 17 in 461 AD St. Patrick, Patron Saint of the Irish, is believed to have died. This is why we celebrate March 17.
• St. Patrick’s Day is a national holiday for Ireland and a provincial holiday in Newfoundland and Labrador.
• Dublin, Ireland has a huge festival from March 15-19 to celebrate.
• The Chicago River, in Chicago, IL is dyed green on St. Patrick’s Day.
• Boston, MA has had a St. Patrick’s Day parade since 1737.
• In Ireland people traditionally wear bunches of shamrocks on their jackets or hats, women and girls wear green ribbons in their hair and children wear orange, white, and green badges.
• According to the 2003 Census 34 million Americans have Irish Ancestry – that is about nine times the population of Ireland.
• Towns in the United States with Irish names; Mount Gay-Shamrock, WV, Shamrock Lakes, IN, Shamrock, OK, Shamrock, TX, Dublin, CA and Dublin, OH.
• The Guiness Book of World Records for most leaves on a clover is 14.
• It is estimated that there are 10,000 three-leaf clovers for every lucky four-leaf clover.
• The legend is that the first leaf of a clover is for hope, the second is for faith, the third for love, and the fourth is for luck.

Wishing  you a lucky St. Patrick’s Day!

March 14 was chosen to represent Pi Day because it resembles 3.14, but the official celebration begins at 1:59 PM to make an appropriate 3.14159. Here are some fun facts about Pi and Pi Day. Here at LearnKey we are celebrating by eating some PIE and you should too! That was a mouthful of Pi for one paragraph.

• Pi is the number of times a circle’s diameter will fit around its circumference.
• Pi is an irrational number.
• So far Pi has passed all randomness tests.
• In August 2010 a supercomputer calculated the value of Pi to 5 trillion decimal places.
• Albert Einstein was born on Pi Day in 1879.
• The first million decimal places of Pi consist of 99,959 zeros, 99,758 1s, 100,026 2s, 100,229 3s, 100,230 4s, 100,359 5s, 99,548 6s, 99,800 7s, 99,985 8s, and 100,106 9s. Glad I wasn’t the one tapped to figure that out.
• Chao Lu holds the Guiness World Record for memorizing Pi to 67,890 places.
• Pi Day was started by Larry Shaw at the San Francisco Exploratorium in 1989.
• In 2009 the U.S. House of Representatives recognized March 14, 2009 as National Pi Day.
• Traditional Pi Day celebrations include walking in circles, eating pie, and reciting as many digits of Pi as possible.
• In 2015 March 15 will reflect 5 digits of Pi. 3/14/15.
• MIT sometimes mails application decision letters to prospective students to be delivered on Pi Day.

President’s Day was designed to celebrate George Washington and Abraham Lincoln’s birthdays, but for many of you it just means an extra day off from work and some amazing sales. So, in honor of the Presidents of the United States of America (the actual Presidents, not the 90’s alt-rock band), here are some fun facts about our nation’s past leaders:

Continue reading “Presidential Facts for President’s Day”