National Junk Food Day
You have permission to "spoil your dinner" today with junk food. Pick the salty, savory snacks or go for sweet. Our tongue can detect five distinct tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami (although the last is not always acknowledged in the U.S.) The tongue map, as seen in school textbooks, has been widely accepted as showing where taste buds are, including sweet taste buds on the tip of the tongue.
"Only in recent years have taste receptors been identified. One of the first breakthroughs in taste research came in 1974 with the realization that the tongue map was essentially a century-old misunderstanding that no one challenged. Wine glasses are said to cater to this arrangement. The tongue map is easy enough to prove wrong at home. Place salt on the tip of your tongue. You'll taste salt. For reasons unknown, scientists never bothered to dispute this inconvenient truth," wrote Christopher Wanjek in LiveScience.com.
If you love salty foods, including junk foods, you might be a super taster. Some super tasters like more salt because it diminishes the bitter flavor of some foods, which they taste more intensely than other people do.
Ernest Hemingway Birth Anniversary
The old man and the sea live on, in Key West. Each year, Earnest Hemingway look-alike contest in Key West, Fla. The contest is being held July 21-24, 2011 at Sloppy Joe's Bar in Key West. Hemingway himself owned a home on the breezy island, which still stands today and is open to visitors.
The Nobel Prize winner worked as a journalist, served in the armed forces and went on to write short fiction and novels. His fiction writing style, described as sparse by some, is journalistic. He had the ability to hone in on the right one word, whereas other writers would have used more words to convey the same meaning. July 21, 1899 is the birth anniversary of Ernest Hemingway, who took his own life on July 2, 1961.
National Women's Hall of Fame Anniversary
"Well behaved women seldom make history" according to Pulitzer winner, author, historian and Harvard University Professor Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. The quote could be the motto for the National Women's Hall of Fame, founded on July 21, 1979 in Seneca Falls, N.Y. Women in the hall of fame were not wallflowers, meek women and they certainly weren't afraid to buck the system. Women in the hall include:
* Aviator Amelia Earhart who flew solo, bought her own plane, and was not one to turn down an adventure.
* Former slave Harriet Tubman, who became a "conductor" in the underground railroad.
* Feminist Gloria Steinem, founder of MS. Magazine.
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