My Past Birthdays

I don't really remember my first birthday but my mom said that it was at Valley Green there were 30 people there. And that I threw my homemade on the floor. I would imagine after that my mom felt bad because she had to clean it up.

My second birthday party was at McDonald’s the theme was Finding Nemo the cake had Nemo on it I think. But one present I got was a huge Nemo that when I saw it I cried apparently I hated it. The person who got it was my Ganny and I may still have it.

My third birthday was at The house on Monongalia street. The theme was scooby doo. So I imagine I had a scooby doo cake.

My fourth birthday was at Cleveland park in west Virginia. I got my first bike on my 4^th birthday also my mom and dad gave it to me before my party. They did that because my dad had to work he would have stayed home if he could.

And my fifth birthday was at my grandma Linda’s house I had so much fun. It was right before I moved to Texas with my mom and dad. My theme was curious George and I had a curious George cake! I can even remember what the cake looked like it had green icing for grass, and curious George figures on it!

On my sixth birthday we went to Corpus Kristy it was so fun! I could barely swim but it was so worth it we ate ate different seafood restaurants all of which were very good. A drummer even played me a song. One day in Corpus Kristy my dad was being very generous and decided to get me this really cool shell, so he grabbed it out of the ocean and we started to walk back to our hotel. On the way to the hotel my mom threw the shell it turned out that the shell had a crab in it. So after we found that out we took it back to the ocean to let it be free. Then it was my birthday I didn’t really have a cake but one of my presents was the high school musical movie on DVD. Shortly after that we had to leave I had a really fun time in Corpus Kristy!

For my seventh birthday we went to Build-A-Dine its basically the same thing as Build-A-Bear. I made one of my favorite toys there I named it Trixie she is a triceratops! Then after that we went to Chili's. I had a early party in Buckannon to there I had a Horse Ice cream cake it was good!

On my eighth birthday I had a party at Buckannon with Aly my grandma made the cakes. I dont remember any presents though. I also ate cupcakes at my house.

And on my ninth birthday it was at my house were I live at now. My friend Frances was there. And my cake was a horse cake and it was a horse themed party. It was really fun.

My tenth birthday was when I just got back from west Virginia. My present were a bike, initial pillow, and a homemade body pillow! I had a marble cake for that birthday.

And my eleventh birthday well the theme is the ocean I will have a ocean cake. And there will probably more very interesting surprises. My grandparents are even coming up for it!

Soccer

Games revolving around the kicking of a ball have been played in many countries throughout history, such as woggabaliri in Australia, harpastum in the Roman Empire, and cuju in China. The modern rules of association football are based on the mid-19th century efforts to standardise the widely varying forms of football played in the public schools of England. The history of football in England dates back to at least the eighth century. The Cambridge Rules, first drawn up at Cambridge University in 1848, were particularly influential in the development of subsequent codes, including association football. The Cambridge Rules were written at Trinity College, Cambridge, at a meeting attended by representatives from Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester and Shrewsbury schools. They were not universally adopted. During the 1850s, many clubs unconnected to schools or universities were formed throughout the English-speaking world, to play various forms of football. Some came up with their own distinct codes of rules, most notably the Sheffield Football Club, formed by former public school pupils in 1857, which led to formation of a Sheffield FA in 1867. In 1862, John Charles Thring of Uppingham School also devised an influential set of rules. These ongoing efforts contributed to the formation of The Football Association in 1863, which first met on the morning of 26 October 1863 at the Freemasons' Tavern in Great Queen Street, London. The only school to be represented on this occasion was Charterhouse. The Freemason's Tavern was the setting for five more meetings between October and December, which eventually produced the first comprehensive set of rules. At the final meeting, the first FA treasurer, the representative from Blackheath, withdrew his club from the FA over the removal of two draft rules at the previous meeting: the first allowed for running with the ball in hand; the second for obstructing such a run by hacking (kicking an opponent in the shins), tripping and holding. Other English rugby football clubs followed this lead and did not join the FA, or subsequently left the FA and instead in 1871 formed the Rugby Football Union. The eleven remaining clubs, under the charge of Ebenezer Cobb Morley, went on to ratify the original thirteen laws of the game.[19] These rules included handling of the ball by marks and the lack of a crossbar, rules which made it remarkably similar to Victorian rules football being developed at that time in Australia. The Sheffield FA played by its own rules until the 1870s with the FA absorbing some of its rules until there was little difference between the games. The laws of the game are currently determined by the International Football Association Board IFAB. The Board was formed in 1886 after a meeting in Manchester of The Football Association, the Scottish Football Association, the Football Association of Wales, and the Irish Football Association. The world's oldest football competition is the FA Cup, which was founded by C. W. Alcock and has been contested by English teams since 1872. The first official international football match took place in 1872 between Scotland and England in Glasgow, again at the instigation of C. W. Alcock. England is home to the world's first football league, which was founded in Birmingham in 1888 by Aston Villa director William McGregor. The original format contained 12 clubs from the Midlands and the North of England. FIFA, the international football body, was formed in Paris in 1904 and declared that they would adhere to Laws of the Game of the Football Association. The growing popularity of the international game led to the admittance of FIFA representatives to the International Football Association Board in 1913. The board currently consists of four representatives from FIFA and one representative from each of the four British associations. Some of soccer's most famous players were Micheal Ballack and Gabriel Batistuta!

3 recording artists from the 1960's

5 April 1932, Wilmington, North Carolina, USA. Billy Bland was an R&B singer whose best-known recording was the 1960 US Top 10 hit, ‘Let The Little Girl Dance’. Bland, the youngest of 19 children, began his career in 1947 in New York City, where he performed in the bands of Lionel Hampton and Buddy Johnson before starting his own group, the Four Bees. He was brought to New Orleans by producer Dave Bartholomew in 1954 and sang on a single for Imperial Records, ‘Toy Bell’. Bland signed to Old Town Records in 1955 and recorded singles that were hits regionally, such as ‘Chicken In The Basket’ and ‘Chicken Hop’. He recorded the bouncy ‘Let The Little Girl Dance’ in late 1959, also for Old Town, and it reached the charts in early 1960, eventually climbing to number 7. Bland had three further singles in the pop charts, but recorded no albums. He retired in the 70s.

Harold Kenneth Dorman (1931-1988) was an American rock & roll singer/songwriter. Dorman wrote a song called "Mountain of Love", which he released as a single in 1960 on the "Rita" record label. The song became a hit in the U.S., reaching #7 on the Black Singles chart and #21 on the Billboard Hot 100. Though it was Dorman's only hit record, it proved to be a popular song for covers; Charley Pride, Johnny Rivers, and Ronnie Dove all hit the U.S. charts with the song, and it was also recorded by Bruce Springsteen, The Beach Boys, Tommy Cash, and Narvel Felts. Bear Family Records reissued an

album of Dorman's recordings in 1999.

Maurice Williams is one of the most extraordinarily durable figures in the history of classic rhythm-and-blues and rock 'n roll. "Stay," became one of the classic singles in the history of rock 'n roll and r&b-a No. 1 mega-hit upon its release in 1960 on Al Silver's Herald label, and a popular favorite for decades since, revived in 1987 with its prominent use in the movie Dirty Dancing. Williams has remained active as a performer and, periodically, as a recording artist and songwriter, ever since. Maurice Williams was born in Lancaster, S.C. in 1940 (one source indicates Apr. 26, 1938), and showed himself musically inclined from a very early age-he started learning the piano from his older sister in the late 1940's, practicing daily so that by the time he was 10 years old he was having friends from elementary school over for informal jam sessions at his house. Williams had sung in church, but his interest lay more in popular music, and in 1953, he and his friends were ready to form a group that they called the Royal Charms. The group's original membership, in addition to Williams, included Earl Gainey (tenor, guitar) Willie Jones (baritone), William Massey (tenor, baritone, trumpet), and Norman Wade (bass). They played school events and talent shows, winning several and acquiring a local following, before they finally got a paying gig at the local Veterans of Foreign Wars post. The year they'd started out, 1953, Williams had also written two songs that were to have a pivotal effect on his life and career, and the group's history: "Little Darling" and "Stay." He and his band had a one hit wonder which is theresong stay in the 1960;s

Blue Moon

"Once in a blue moon." You have probably heard this expression before. It usually means not very often. But, is there really such a thing? Well, yes, but it’s probably not what you may think, and it’s definitely not what it used to be. According to David Wilton’s fabulous Word Origins web site, the phrase Blue Moon probably started with an anonymous poem from 1528, Read me and be not wrothe, For I say no things but truth: "If they say the moon is blue,"We must believe that it is true."Calling the moon blue was an obvious absurdity, like saying it was made of green cheese. The phrase, “until a blue moon” developed in the 19th century, meaning never, or at least extremely unlikely. After all, they do occur. In 1883, an Indonesian volcano named Krakatoa exploded. Scientists liken the blast to a 100-megaton nuclear bomb. Fully 600 km away, people heard the noise as loud as a cannon shot. Plumes of ash rose to the very top of Earth's atmosphere. And the moon turned blue. Krakatoa's ash was the reason. Some of the ash-clouds were filled with particles about 1 micron (one millionth of a meter) wide--the right size to strongly scatter red light, while allowing other colors to pass. White moonbeams shining through the clouds emerged blue, and sometimes green. Blue moons persisted for years after the eruption. People also saw lavender suns and, for the first time, noctilucent clouds. The ash caused "such vivid red sunsets that fire engines were called out in New York, Poughkeepsie, and New Haven to quench the apparent conflagration," according to volcanologist Scott Rowland at the University of Hawaii. Other less potent volcanos have turned the moon blue, too. People saw blue moons in 1983, for instance, after the eruption of the El Chichon volcano in Mexico. And there are reports of some caused by Mt. St. Helens in 1980 and Mount Pinatubo in 1991. The key to a blue moon is having in the air lots of particles slightly wider than the wavelength of red light (0.7 micron)--and no other sizes present. This is rare, but volcanoes sometimes spit out such clouds, as do forest fires. The use of the phrase blue moon to indicate an actual astronomical phenomenon first started in 1932 with the Maine Farmer’s Almanac. It’s definition was a season with four full moons rather than the usual three, where the third of four full moons would be called a "blue moon." Since seasons are established by the equinoxes and solstices and not calendar months, it is possible for a year to have twelve full moons, one each month, yet have one season with four. That definition mutated into the one most quoted today when in 1946, an article in an astronomy magazine by amateur astronomer James Hugh Pruett misinterpreted the Maine rule to mean two full moons in one month. This definition seems to have stuck, despite its error, possibly thanks to being picked up by the Trivial Pursuit game. As we’ve seen previously, as in the case of seeing the Great Wall of China from space, the writers of Trivial Pursuit are capable of making errors.

Labor Day

Conceived by America's labor unions as a testament to their cause, the legislation sanctioning the holiday was shepherded through Congress amid labor unrest and signed by President Grover Cleveland as a reluctant election-year compromise. Pullman, Illinois was a company town, founded in 1880 by George Pullman, president of the railroad sleeping car company. Pullman designed and built the town to stand as a utopian workers' community insulated from the moral (and political) seductions of nearby Chicago.The town was strictly, almost feudally, organized: row houses for the assembly and craft workers; modest Victorians for the managers; and a luxurious hotel where Pullman himself lived and where visiting customers, suppliers, and salesman would lodge while in town. Its residents all worked for the Pullman company, their paychecks drawn from Pullman bank, and their rent, set by Pullman, deducted automatically from their weekly paychecks. The town, and the company, operated smoothly and successfully for more than a decade.But in 1893, the Pullman company was caught in the nationwide economic depression. Orders for railroad sleeping cars declined, and George Pullman was forced to lay off hundreds of employees. Those who remained endured wage cuts, even while rents in Pullman remained consistent. Take-home paychecks plummeted. And so the employees walked out, demanding lower rents and higher pay. The American Railway Union, led by a young Eugene V. Debs, came to the cause of the striking workers, and railroad workers across the nation boycotted trains carrying Pullman cars. Rioting, pillaging, and burning of railroad cars soon ensued; mobs of non-union workers joined in. The strike instantly became a national issue. President Grover Cleveland, faced with nervous railroad executives and interrupted mail trains, declared the strike a federal crime and deployed 12,000 troops to break the strike. Violence erupted, and two men were killed when U.S. deputy marshals fired on protesters in Kensington, near Chicago, but the strike was doomed. The strike instantly became a national issue. President Grover Cleveland, faced with nervous railroad executives and interrupted mail trains, declared the strike a federal crime and deployed 12,000 troops to break the strike. Violence erupted, and two men were killed when U.S. deputy marshals fired on protesters in Kensington, near Chicago, but the strike was doomed. On August 3, 1894, the strike was declared over. Debs went to prison, his ARU was disbanded, and Pullman employees henceforth signed a pledge that they would never again unionize. Aside from the already existing American Federation of Labor and the various railroad brotherhoods, industrial workers' unions were effectively stamped out and remained so until the Great Depression. It was not the last time Debs would find himself behind bars, either. Campaigning from his jail cell, Debs would later win almost a million votes for the Socialist ticket in the 1920 presidential race.The movement for a national Labor Day had been growing for some time. In September 1892, union workers in New York City took an unpaid day off and marched around Union Square in support of the holiday. But now, protests against President Cleveland's harsh methods made the appeasement of the nation's workers a top political priority. In the immediate wake of the strike, legislation was rushed unanimously through both houses of Congress, and the bill arrived on President Cleveland's desk just six days after his troops had broken the Pullman strike. 1894 was an election year. President Cleveland seized the chance at conciliation, and Labor Day was born. He was not reelected. In 1898, Samuel Gompers, head of the American Federation of Labor, called it "the day for which the toilers in past centuries looked forward, when their rights and their wrongs would be discussed...that the workers of our day may not only lay down their tools of labor for a holiday, but upon which they may touch shoulders in marching phalanx and feel the stronger for it."