Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

I Love Horses Day

Horses are such fascinating creatures. Even if you never learned to ride one, you could spend your whole life studying them and still have plenty to explore.

Horses sleep standing up! They sleep laying down too, but only for short times.

Horses can’t burp, at least not the way humans do. They can’t vomit or breathe through their mouths like humans do either. A horse’s digestive system is a one-way street, unlike cattle and other ruminants who regurgitate food to re-chew it. Although they have a pretty efficient way of processing the tough fibrous foods that make up their forage, this long, one-directional system can cause problems that result in colic.

While you can’t tell the exact age of a horse by its teeth, you can estimate its age.

Appreciated by beginner riders and professional horsemen alike, the American quarter horse is the world’s most popular breed.

**

Nobody denies the importance of the Meriwether Lewis–William Clark expeditions in the Western frontier, but Zebulon Pike, an explorer and mapmaker, is—except for the people who are familiar with “Pike’s Peak”—obscure.

 

On July 15, 1806, he departed for the faraway Southwest; according to History.com:

 

“The information he provided about the U.S. territory in Kansas and Colorado was a great impetus for future U.S. settlement, and his reports about the weakness of Spanish authority in the Southwest stirred talk of future U.S. annexation. Pike later served as a brigadier general during the War of 1812, and in April 1813 he was killed by a British gunpowder bomb after leading a successful attack on York, Canada.”

 

But historical evidence also indicates he colluded with Aaron Burr, to wangle possession of the Western territories, and form a separate nation.

 

The Grateful American Book Prize Recommends Zebulon Pike, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West by Matthew L. Harris.

**

Soft heart, big wallet

So, this guy walks into a bar in Londonderry, NH and runs up a tab of nearly $40. But he doesn’t leave a 15% tip, nor a 20% tip; he’s a big splendor with a heart of gold and so he left a 40,000% gratuity [40 thousand percent], reports the Association of Mature American Citizens [AMAC]. Michelle McCudden was the bartender that day when her unidentified “mystery man” stumbled into the Stumble Inn Bar & Grill, shocking her and making her day at the same time. Thinking that the patron may have made a mistake, the staff felt compelled to get him to confirm the generous amount of the tip. The owner of the establishment, Mike Zarella, told WMUR-TV: “I thought it was a mistake, it could have been maybe a $160 tip and he added extra zeros.  The bar manager talked to the gentleman, and he said, ‘No, it’s $16,000.'”

 

**