Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Ahhh...Cinco de Mayo. The day we Americans celebrate Mexican Independence Day by throwing parties, quaffing margaritas, tequila or Modelo beer and enjoying a fun super tasty South of The Border feast.

But that's not entirely correct. There's lots of fun parties and the alcohol does flow freely. The food is always marvelous and super tasty.

Yet Cinco de Mayo is not Mexican independence day. That's September 16th. Cinco de Mayo is in fact, more of an American holiday than a Mexican one. And one that deserves more recognition than it gets.

Cinco de Mayo's roots begin during the French occupation of Mexico. Mexico at the time was in a real mess. They had 15 years of wars (The Mexican-American War, The Mexican Civil War and The Reform War) and everybody was getting tired of it. Finally in 1861, Mexican President Benito Juarez told Britain, Spain and France to hold off on their debt collection for these wars for two years until they can financially reorganize and get the country back on track.

They sent armies to confront Mexico and collect their debts regardless. Britain and Spain negotiated and backed off. But the French, under the rule of Napoleon III would not hear of it and another war began. Napoleon III wanted to turn Mexico into a French territory and since the Americans at the time were in an ugly civil war, he thought he could establish a strong enough foothold in Mexico, which he could then use to invade America (which was still a very small, very rural country at the time.) By using the Confederate South as proxies.

Napoleon sent 8,000 troops to attack Mexico's 4,500 troops at Veracruz. But on May 5, 1862, the much smaller Mexican army sent the French into retreat. The news reached the border communities of America where people celebrated the news.

While there would be more fighting, a major turning point had begun. Had Napoleon III defeated the Mexicans at Veracruz, the Civil War could have ended very differently.

So Cinco de Mayo is very much an American holiday. (More on Cinco de Mayo)

It was the expanding Latino communities that brought the holiday across America. But it was beer companies in the '80s that helped bring Cinco de Mayo into the American mainstream.

Because if there's one thing everyone LOVES, it's to party.

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

....And meanwhile in Sochi....

Sochi is running out of pillows http://www.vocativ.com/02-2014/sochi-running-pillows/

The honey is so fresh, it's still got bees in it!

People like me will never get a break in Sochi.

Yuk!

Every hotel room has these. I think the top left gizmo is a closed circuit radio. In Stalin days, the Soviet Union made them mandatory in every apartment and hotel room and ran a wired feed of the main government radio channel. Over the air radio wasn't made legal in the Soviet Union again until after World War II. North Korea still uses a similar system and as I've heard it from my Russian friends, you could turn them down to a low volume, but you could NEVER completely turn them off.

This is not beer. Or tea. Or apple juice. Or that either. It is water.

Add caption

This picture of Putin is the closest you'll ever get to a TV in some hotel rooms.

Watch for open manholes.

This is not bottled water.

The Canadian team housing: Feels like home?

Doors that lock from the outside.

Helpful....

50 Years Ago Today......

November 22, 1963 12:30 p.m. (Central Time)

Exactly as originally broadcast over the CBS TV Network.........

Take 10 Minutes To Learn The Metric Way!

Ahhh......the metric system. To this day the US, Burma (Myanmar) and Liberia are the only nations in the world who have not formally adopted the metric system.

While the US has authorized the use of the metric system since 1866, outside of science and a few other places, it was largely ignored. In 1975, Congress authorized a ten year plan for national conversion. Which seemed like a good idea.  Canada and Mexico already adopted it

And PSAs like this began appearing. (I remember watching this - my elementary school teachers were (quite reluctantly) trying to teach it and I tried to explain it to my mom and how nearly every country in the world uses it and now the US was changing over. She rolled her eyes and said with deadpan sarcasm "Wow. And all this time, I thought we won the war.....")

Today you find some uses of the metric system. Namely this:

 

And along the borders for our Canadian and Mexican friends

Speed limit sign in Blaine, WA.....just a few meters over the border.......

 

 And virtually all retail food/drink and household products in America have both standard (or imperial) and metric measurements listed on their containers. Wine and spirit bottles are also metrically portioned. And it's ubiquitous in the illegal drug trade. Foreign imported bikes also use metric nuts and bolts (I found this out with my old Peugeot 10 speed.)

So what happened?

Simple, for the most part, we Americans resisted. In fact, the government gave up around 1982 and closed the metric conversion office when then President Reagan made the first sweeping wave of government cutbacks, ending all funding for a national conversion.

However there are still a few hopeful holdouts. But it's doubtful Americans will ever convert.