Category Archive: 2016

The Chinese called it the Year of the Monkey.  The United Nations dubbed 2016 the International Year of Pulses.  It was the year that Star Trek and the Canada Pension Plan turned 50.  Kellogg’s Corn Flakes turned 100 years old in 2016 which also marked the 100^th anniversary of:

• the electric refrigerator

• the world’s 1^st billionaire ^{(John D. Rockefeller)}

• the iconic contoured Coca-Cola bottle.

• Peanut ^{(he Planter’s Peanut Co. mascot)}

• L. Kraft’s process cheese.

• the American Professional Golfers Association (PGA)

• the Boeing Aircraft Company

• the Bavarian Motor Works (BMW) Company

• the largest recorded 24-hour change in temperature ^{(100°F in Browning, Montana)}

• the 1^st successful blood transfusion ^{using blood that was stored and cooled}

• the Canadian Parliament Buildings fire

• the US Army’s punitive expedition into Mexico ^{(in pursuit of Pancho Villa)}

• the toggle light switch

• America’s 1^st invasion of the Dominican Republic

• the Battle of the Somme ^{(more than one million soldiers die / outcome: tactically inconclusive)}

• the Battle of Vimy Ridge ^{(Canadian Corps successfully routes three German divisions)}

• the New Jersey shark attacks ^{(4 die, 1 wounded over 12 days / would later inspire, “Jaws”)}

• the Matheson Forest Fire in Northern Ontario ^{(6 towns destroyed / 233 people die).}

• the Black Tom explosion ^{(7 die when German agents blow up munitions plant in New Jersey)}

• the Wolf Cubs are founded as the junior arm to the Boy Scouts association

• the 2^nd Quebec Bridge collapse ^{(13 workers die)}.

• the highest scoring football game in history ^{(222-0 Georgia Tech beats Cumberland)}

• the 1^stS. birth control clinic

• the 1^st employer mandated 40-hour work week ^{(Endicott-Johnson New York).}

• the 1^st woman elected to US House of Representatives ^{(Jeannette Rankin/ Montana)}

• the Sopwith Camel fighter plane ^{(built as countermeasure to Germany’s Fokker)}

• the composition of The Planets, Opus 32 by Gustav Holst

• the hanging of a circus elephant ^{(it killed it’s handler)} in Erwin, Tennessee.

Notwithstanding the fact that another Canadian town was consumed by wildfire this year nothing could have possibly been more bizarre than a well hung elephant in America, right?

Funny you should ask. While on the subject of the bizarre, America,  and the odd billionaire, its time to dive into my flotscrum from 2016…