After the 'nog is sipped, cabin fever has been known to sit in. Since the weather outside is far from frightful, why not head out to town. There's music, movies, and, of course, mass.

July 12, when the Congress authorized the Medal of Honor (1862), when a fever epidemic began in New Orleans, which would wipe out 4,500 people (1878), when the 16th Amendment was approved, providing power to tax incomes (1909), the first televised tennis match (1928), and apparently, the very day that U.S. Surgeon General Leroy Burney connected smoking with lung cancer, in 1957. It’s birthday time for Julius Caesar (100 B.C.), Henry David Thoreau (1817), Pablo Neruda (1904), and Bill Cosby (1937), and goodbye to the legendary D. T. Suzuki. So let’s be totally clear, whatever we do:

July 11, when Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities was published (1859), when The U.S. Marine Corps was created by an act of Congress (1798), when Big Ben chimed for the first time (1859), when Vice President Aaron Burr shot and killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel (1804), when Tijuana, Mexico was founded (1889), when Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird was first published (1960), when E.B. White (1899) and Lil’ Kim were born (1975), and when George Gershwin died (1937). So read some lit., eat a crumpet, drink a Horchata, and see some French films, which are among these offerings:

July 9, when the 14th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, granting full citizenship to African Americans (1868), when the inaugural Wimbledon Championships opened (1877), when British and Canadian forces captured Caen, France in WWII’s Battle of Normandy (1944), when Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans exhibition opened at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles(1962), and when Pan Am Flight 759 crashed in Kenner, Louisiana, killing 145 (1982); it’s when June Jordan (1936), O.J. Simpson (1947), Courtney Love (1964), Jack White (1975), and Fred Savage (1976) were born, and when Zachary Taylor, the nation’s 12th President, died. So take a walk in City Park, and then:

July 7th, when Joan of Arc was acquitted of heresy charges, 25 years too late (1456), when sliced bread was sold for the first time by Missouri’s Chillicothe Baking Company (1928), when President Reagan announced the nomination of who later became the first female U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Arizona’s Sandra Day O’Connor (1981), The San Fermines Bulls run in Pamplona, Italian film director Vittorio De Sica (1901), Ringo Starr (1940) and Shelley Duvall’s (1949) birthdays, and Gone With the Wind’s Scarlet, actress Vivian Leigh’s death (1967). And today? Voila:

July 6th, when Richard III was crowned King of England (1483), when the dollar was chosen as the official monetary unit for the United States (1785), when the first Republican Party Convention was held, in Jackson, Michigan (1854), when Jefferson Airplane formed (1965), and when Garrison Keillor’s ‘A Prairie Home Companion’ debuted live from St. Paul, MN (1974); it’s when Frida Kahlo (1907), George W. Bush (1946), Sylvester Stallone (1946), and 50 Cent (1975) were born, and when Fats Navarro (1950) and Roy Rogers (1998) died. So we ask what RR himself once wanted to know: “What's a butterfly garden without butterflies?” Perhaps this:

 July 5th, when Isaac Newton published Philosophice Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687), when The Salvation Army was founded, in London’s East End (1865), when Hormel Foods introduced SPAM (1937), when BBC broadcast it’s first televised news bulletin (1954), when President Nixon formally lowered the voting age from 21-18 (1971), when Arthur Ashe became the first black man to win Wimbledon (1975), when Dolly the sheep became the first mammal cloned from an adult cell (1996), when Cecil Rhodes (1853) and Jean Cocteau (1889) were born, and when Ernie K-Doe died (2001). So Here Come the Events:

July 1, when the Battle of Gettysburg began (1863), when SOS was adapted as the international distress signal (1908), when The Communist Party in China was founded (1921), when ZIP codes were introduced for U.S. mail (1963), when Sony introduced the Walkman, when the MPAA introduced the PG-13 rating (1984), when Sydney Pollack (1934) and Missy Elliott (1971) were born, and when Harriet Beecher Stowe (1896) and Argentina’s 29th and 41st president Juan Perón (1974) died. So let’s hear it for The Way We Were, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and obsolete technology:

June 22, when the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity was founded at Yale, (1844), when Congress created the Department of Justice (1870), when FDR signed into law the G.I. Bill (1944), when Nixon signed a measure lowering the voting age to 18 (1970), when Checkpoint Charlie was dismantled in Berlin (1990), when Eastman Kodak Company announced the discontinuation of all Kodachrome Color film, (2009), and most importantly, when Jon and Kate (+8) announced plan to divorce (2009). It’s Louisiana’s own chess master Paul Morphy’s birthday (1837), along with Meryl Streep (1949), Cyndi Lauper (1953), and Erin Brockovich (1960), while the voice of Judy Garland (1969), the moves of Fred Astaire (1987) and the jokes of George Carlin (2008) came to an end. So do what one should on the 173rd day of the year: 

June 19, when English colonists left Roanoke Island after a failed attempt to establish England’s first permanent settlement in America (1586), when the first organized baseball match was played in Hoboken, NJ’s Elysian Fields (1846), when Congress prohibited slavery in the U.S., nullifying the Dred Scott Case (1862), when Confederate States were formally readmitted to the U.S. (1870), when Father’s Day was first celebrated in Spokane, Washington (1910), when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was finally approved after surviving an 830day filibuster in the Senate (1964), and when Garfield appeared in his first comic strip (1978). It’s when Salman Rushdie (1947) and Paula Abdul (1962) were born, when Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed (1953), and Juneteenth (day), a national holiday honoring African American Heritage by commemorating the announcement of the complete abolition of slavery in 1865. Speaking of holidays, Happy Father’s Day: