March 24 History World Tuberculosis Day

Ridley’s Believe It Or Not—March 24, 2015 Trust your Tuesday is proving to be a great one and you have a Popeye’s Louisiana Fried Chicken outlet near you to enjoy its $1.29 two piece special. Great win for the Stanford women who advance to the Sweet 16 for the 11^th time in the last 12 years to face a powerful Notre Dame team in Oklahoma City while the Stanford men play Vanderbilt today in the NIT. As always, I  hope you enjoy the holidays and observances, factoids of interest, music video, and a relevant quote by Jon Yong Kim,  enjoying a bowl of chocolate covered raisins while watching your favorite team play in the NIT or the NCAA Tournaments (both men and women), blessed  with a positive attitude even though you know you will have to wade through tons of spam in your inbox, and secure in the knowledge that if you want to find a gift for any memorable event like birthdays, weddings, or anniversaries, you know that the Alaskanpoet can provide you with a unique customized poem at a great price tailored to the event and the recipient. You need only contact me for details.

       1. World Tuberculosis Day—an observance designed to create awareness of a deadly disease that still infects and kills millions, mostly in the third world.

       2. American Diabetes Association Alert Day—as this nation becomes more and more obese leading to an increased risk of coming down with type II diabetes, alerting Americans of the need to take the American Diabetes Risk Assessment test and start implementing steps to reduce the risk of a disease that leads to amputations, blindness and a whole host of problems that will not make your day.

      3. 1991 Number One Song—celebrating the number one song on this day in 1991, as part of a 2 week run, Coming Out of the Dark by Gloria Estefan, a Cuban American singer and songwriter who has sold more than 100 million records worldwide.. After putting up with an ad for the series Silicon Valley, here  is a link to the song being performed by Gloria: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzO11KQLskM      

      4. National Chocolate Covered Raisins Day—great way to feed your chocolate cravings and take in some iron at the same time.
      5. Smell the Roses Day--celebrating not an excuse to leave work to sniff the roses in your garden or park but rather to celebrate the birthday on this day in 1807 of Louis Rose, a pioneer instrumental in the development of San Diego.
On this day in
     a. 1882 Robert Koch announced the discovery of mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium responsible for tuberculosis.
     b. 1944 in an escape memorialized by the movie The Great Escape, starring among others Steve McQueen who was born on this day in 1930, 76 POWs escaped from Stalag Luft III in Germany; sadly 73 were captured and of these 50 were executed by the Germans.
     c. 1958 Elvis Presley was drafted into the United States Army and ultimately sent to Germany.
     d. 1989 the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound shortly after leaving Valdez and spills over 200,000 barrels of oil into the surrounding waters, one of Alaska’s more prolific commercial fishing grounds.
     e. 2003 the Arab League voted 21-1 to demand the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. and British forces from Iraq. We obviously did not but when we did in 2011 as a result of Obama’s actions without leaving residual forces we created the vacuum which ISIS flowed into with all the violence, terror and beheadings we are seeing today.

Drugs always follow the money whether legal or illegal: “If you look at three diseases, the three major killers, HIV, tuberculosis and malaria, the only disease for which we have really good drugs is HIV. And it's very simple: because there's a market in the United States and Europe.” Jim Yong Kim current president of the World Bank and part president of Dartmouth his observation would also apply to Ebola. Please enjoy the 140 character poems on events of interest on my twitter account below (if you like them, retweet and join 155 growing followers and please follow me) and follow my blogs. Always good, incisive and entertaining poems on my blogs—click on the links below. Go to www.alaskanpoet.blogspot.com for Ridley’s Believe It Or Not—This Day In History, poems to inspire, touch, emote, elate and enjoy and poems on breaking news items of importance. Go to Rhymes On The Newsworthy Times for comments on important and breaking news events that should be of interest. www.alaskanpoet.blogspot.com Ridley's Believe It Or Not  Rhymes On The Newsworthy Times © March 24, 2015 Michael P. Ridley aka the Alaskanpoet Alaskanpoet for Hire, Poems to Admire Poet Extraordinaire Beyond Compare Rhymes for the Memorable Times The Perfect Gift, All Recipients to Receive a Lasting Lift