Library to host many food-related celebrations in June

Are you look­ing for some­thing to cel­e­brate this week? How about cel­e­brat­ing a week’s worth of food hol­i­days? June is full of food-related cel­e­bra­tions, and the Delaware County Dis­trict Library’s shelves are packed with cook­books to help you find some­thing yummy to pre­pare for all of them.

Today is National Fudge Day, tomor­row is National Apple Strudel Day, Mon­day is National Cherry Tart Day, Tues­day is National Dry Mar­tini Day, Wednes­day is National Vanilla Milk­shake Day, Thurs­day is National Peaches and Cream Day, Fri­day is National Choco­late Éclair Day and next Sat­ur­day is National Pecan Sandy Day. Other days to cel­e­brate with a new recipe in June include National Straw­berry Par­fait Day, National Choco­late Pud­ding Day, National Tapi­oca Day and National Ice Cream Soda day.

If you’re into food and recipes, you should add June 28, to your cal­en­dar to attend the Cook Book Club pro­gram at the Delaware (Main) Library, begin­ning at 7 p.m. The fea­tured title is Martha Stewart’s Bak­ing Hand­book. You can pick up a copy of the book at the library, and then make your favorite dish to bring in and share with the group. Have fun dis­cussing the book and the food.

If ghosts and the para­nor­mal are more your cup of tea, the library will be host­ing author and para­nor­mal inves­ti­ga­tor James Willis, the founder of Ghosts of Ohio, a nation­ally rec­og­nized para­nor­mal research orga­ni­za­tion. In addi­tion, he has writ­ten or con­tributed to numer­ous books about spooky or strange places and events, includ­ing Weird Ohio and Haunted Indi­ana. His pro­gram “Meet the Ghosts of Ohio” will be held at 7 p.m. June 19 at the Delaware Library.

What is the Rosetta Stone?

The Rosetta Stone gave the world the key to the long-forgotten lan­guage of ancient Egypt, accord­ing to the World Book Ency­clo­pe­dia. A French offi­cer of Napoleon’s engi­neer­ing corps found the stone half buried in the mud near Rosetta, a city near Alexan­dria, Egypt, in 1799. The Rosetta stone was later taken to Eng­land, where it is still pre­served in the British Museum. On the stone is carved a decree by Egypt­ian priests to com­mem­o­rate the crown­ing of Ptolemy V Epiphanes, king of Egypt from 205 to 180 B.C. The first inscrip­tion is in ancient Egypt­ian hiero­glyph­ics. The sec­ond is in demotic, the pop­u­lar lan­guage of Egypt at that time. At the bot­tom of the stone the same mes­sage is writ­ten again in Greek.

The lan­guage of ancient Egypt had been a rid­dle to schol­ars for hun­dreds of years. A French scholar named Jean Fran­cois Cham­pol­lion used the Rosetta stone to solve the rid­dle. Using the Greek text as a guide, he stud­ied the posi­tion and rep­e­ti­tion of proper names in the Greek text and was able to pick out the same names in the Egypt­ian text. This enabled him to learn the sounds of many of the Egypt­ian hiero­glyphic characters.

Is Triple Crown win­ner Affirmed still living?

Affirmed, the last horse to win the Triple Crown, won the title in 1978. He was born on Feb. 21, 1975, the great-great-grandson of Triple Crown win­ner War Admi­ral through dam­sire Crafty Admi­ral, and thereby the great-great-great grand­son of Man o’ War who won two of the three Triple Crown races him­self. Affirmed retired to stud in Octo­ber 1979, fin­ish­ing his career as the first horse to sur­pass $2 mil­lion in win­nings. His 700-plus foals earned roughly $40 mil­lion. Affirmed was euth­a­nized in 2001 after devel­op­ing lamini­tis, a dis­ease of the feet. For more infor­ma­tion, check out Horse of a Dif­fer­ent Color: A Tale of Breed­ing Geniuses, Dom­i­nant Females and the Fastest Derby Win­ner Since Secretariat.

What is the pur­pose of the dan­gling thing in the back of my mouth?

Sci­en­tists are not totally sure what the pur­pose of the uvula (that dan­gling thing in the back of your mouth) is. How­ever, they agree that it pri­mar­ily serves as an acces­sory to speech because humans are the only mam­mals that have uvu­las. The uvula is there to pro­vide the proper lubri­ca­tion for com­pli­cated human speech. To quote one study in The Ency­clo­pe­dia of the Human Body on the sub­ject, it “may be another marker of human evo­lu­tion that dif­fer­en­ti­ates man from other mammals.”

If you have a ques­tion that you would like to see answered in this col­umn, mail it to Mary Jane San­tos, Delaware County Dis­trict Library, 84 E. Win­ter St., Delaware, OH 43015, or call 740–362-3861. You can also email your ques­tions by vis­it­ing delawarelibrary.org or directly to Mary Jane at mjsantos@delaware library.org. No mat­ter how you con­tact us, we’re always glad you asked!

Posted by Mary Santos on Jun 15 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.