A food item
A dull, boring, slow-witted, or uninteresting person.
A stupid person

What can one really say about meatballs, excepting, of course, all of those we elect to public office. It's a ball of ground meat(s) mixed with other stuff that can be eaten as is, with or on pasta, in a sandwich, in certain soups, etc. I don't think I've ever followed the same "recipe' twice.

Today is also Bang-Clang Day to commemorate this day in 1862, when battle between the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia began. The two ships fought to a draw in Hampton Roads Virginia on the 9th after the Virginia hammered the Union fleet on the 8th. The two ironclad warships bounced shot and shell off of each other and that was the first naval combat in the world between 2 ironclads.

On this day in history:

1500 – The fleet of Pedro Álvares Cabral left Lisbon for the Indies. The discovered Brazil

1776 – Scottish philosopher Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations,

1815 – Francis Ronalds described the first battery-operated clock in the Philosophical Magazine.

1841 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in US v. The Amistad that captive Africans who had seized control of the ship carrying them had been taken into slavery illegally.

1842 – Giuseppe Verdi's third opera, Nabucco, premièred

1933 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt submitted the Emergency Banking Act to Congress

1945 – A coup d'état by Japanese forces in French Indochina removed the French from power.

1945 – Allied forces carried out a firebombing of Tokyo, destroying most of the capital and killing over 100,000 civilians.

1957 – The 8.6 Mw  Andreanof Islands earthquake shook the Aleutian Islands, causing over $5 million in damage from ground movement and a destructive tsunami.

1959 – The Barbie doll made its debut at the American International Toy Fair in New York.

1960 – Dr. Belding Hibbard Scribner first implanted a shunt he invented into a patient, allowing the patient to receive hemodialysis on a regular basis.

1961 – Sputnik 9 successfully launched carrying a dog and a human dummy [No, it wasm't him}

2020 – Giuseppe Conte, Prime Minister of Italy, announced a decree imposing the first nationwide COVID-19 lockdown in the world.

Some people who were born on this day:

Small pleasures must correct great tragedies, therefore of gardens in the midst of war I bold tell.

~~ Vita Sackville-West
1451 – Amerigo Vespucci, Italian cartographer and explorer,
1737 – Josef Mysliveček, violinist and composer
1749 – Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau, journalist and politician
1758 – Franz Joseph Gall, neuroanatomist and physiologist
1847 – Martin Pierre Marsick, violinist, composer, and educator
1863 – Mary Harris Armor, suffragist
1892 – Vita Sackville-West, author, poet, and gardener
1904 – Paul Wilbur Klipsch, soldier and engineer, founded Klipsch Audio Technologies
1910 – Samuel Barber, pianist and composer
1911 – Clara Rockmore, classical violin prodigy and theremin player
1918 – Mickey Spillane, crime novelist
1923 – Walter Kohn, physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
1928 – Keely Smith, singer and actress
1930 – Ornette Coleman, saxophonist, violinist, trumpet player, and composer
1933 – Lloyd Price, R&B singer-songwriter
1933 – David Weatherall,physician, geneticist, and academic
1933 – Artt Frank, jazz drummer and biographer
1934 – Yuri Gagarin, colonel, pilot, and cosmonaut, first human in space
1936 – Mickey Gilley, singer, songwriter, and pianist
1942 – John Cale, musician, composer, singer, songwriter and record producer
1942 – Mark Lindsay, singer, songwriter, saxophonist, and producer
1945 – Robert Calvert, singer, songwriter, and playwright
1945 – Robin Trower, guitarist and vocalist
1948 – Jeffrey Osborne, singer and drummer
1949 – Tapani Kansa, singer
1950 – Howard Shelley, pianist and conductor
1959 – Takaaki Kajita, physicist and academic
1966 – Brendan Canty, drummer and songwriter
1970 – Shannon Leto, musician and songwriter
1981 – Chad Gilbert, musician, songwriter, and producer

Some people who died on this day:

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

~~ C. Northcote Parkinson

1444 - Leonardo Bruni, Italian humanist historian
1825 – Anna Laetitia Barbauld, poet, author, and critic
1847 – Mary Anning, paleontologist
1851 – Hans Christian Ørsted, physicist and chemist
1974 – Earl Wilbur Sutherland, Jr., pharmacologist and biochemist
1974 – Harry Womack, singer
1983 – Ulf von Euler, physiologist and pharmacologist,
1993 – C. Northcote Parkinson, historian and author
1994 – Charles Bukowski, poet, novelist, and short story writer
1995 – Edward Bernays, propagandist , PR, Advertising & Propaganda wallah(
1999 – Harry Somers, pianist and composer
2006 – Tom Fox, peace activist
2007 – Brad Delp, singer, songwriter, and guitarist
2010 – Doris Haddock, activist and politician
2021 – James Levine, conductor and pianist

Some Holidays, Holy Days, Festivals, Feast Days, Days of Recognition, and such:

National Meatball Day
Bang-Clang Day

Today's Tunes

Meatball Day

Josef Mysliveček

Martin Pierre Marsick

Clara Rockmore

Keely Smith

Ornette Coleman

Lloyd Price

Artt Frank

Mickey Gilley

John Cale

Mark Lindsay

Robin Trower

Harry Womack

Brad Delp

BONUS:

Ok, it's an open thread, so it's up to you folks now. What's on your mind?

Cross posted from http://caucus99percent.com

open thread, Meatball Day, Adam Smith, Clara Rockmore, Keely Smith, Ornette Coleman, Lloyd Price, Mickey Gilley, Robin Trower, The Valentinos