Song of the day:
Wayback Wednesday
My grandmother - I called her Grandmommie - would have been 102 years old today. She passed in 2014 but we still miss her and think of her always, especially on her birthday. This is one of my favorite pictures of her. She and my grandfather, as well as my mom and Frank spent Christmas at my house, and I made stockings for everyone filled with silly toys and candy. She was laughing at something in hers and this always makes me smile.
Black History Month / Meet Daniel Hale Williams
After apprenticing with a surgeon, Daniel Hale Williams earned a medical degree and started working as a surgeon in Chicago in 1884. Hospitals at that time, however, barred Black doctors from working on staff so Dr. Williams opened the nation’s first Black-owned interracial hospital.
Provident Hospital offered training to African American interns and established America’s first school for Black nurses. On July 10, 1893, Williams successfully repaired the pericardium (the sac surrounding the heart) of a man who had been stabbed in a knife fight. The operation is considered to be the first documented successful open-heart surgery on a human, and Williams is regarded as the first African American cardiologist.
He went on to cofound the National Medical Association, and became the first Black physician admitted to the American College of Surgeons. (Source: Everyday Health)
Lunar New Year / Ancestors
Honoring the dead is a Chinese New Year’s tradition that’s kept to the word. Many Chinese people visit ancestors' graves on the day before the Chinese New Year's day, offer sacrifices to ancestors before the reunion dinner (to show that they are letting their ancestors "eat" first), and add an extra glass and place it at the dinner table on New Year’s eve. (Source: China Highlights)
Video of the day:
Take my money, Disney.