October almanac
I watched October
Flare today
The Flames spread across the highway
Across the ridges, along the creek banks
Where sycamores marched naked
— Sam Ragan, I Watched October
The light and temperature plunges this month, but expect a little reminder from nature, that we are still a southern place. Indian Summer, typically takes place in late October here in the Piedmont after the first frost. For what its worth, a study of frost dates from 1951 to 1980 has the Chapel Hill frost date as October 23.
Please note that we don’t do the daylight savings time thing until the first week in November.
Sunrise, October 1: 7:11 a.m. Sunset: 7 p.m.
Sunrise, October 30: 7:37 a.m. Sunset: 6:21 p.m.
First Quarter – October 3; Full Moon – October 11; Last Quarter – October 19; New Moon — October 26
The Full Moon in October is the Hunter’s Moon, Travel Moon, and Blood Moon. Some people insist that the Harvest Moon is in October rather than September.
Planets & Stars: Earth passes through the dust of Halley’s Comet late in October and that means the Orionids meteor display. The radiant for meteors is a little left of Orion and run from roughly October 17-25 with peak viewing on October 21.
October is Adopt a Shelter Dog Month, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Cookie Month, Diabetes Awareness Month and, yeah, Sarcastic Month. The first week is get Organized Week.
Significant Dates
• October 1 is Homemade Cookies Day and World Vegetarian Day;
• Child Health Day is October 3;
• National Denim Day is October 7;
• Columbus Day is October 10;
• University Day and Farmers’ Day are on October 12;
• October 17 is Black Poetry Day;
• Mother-in-Law Day is October 23;
• United Nations Day is October 24
• Halloween is October 31
Comments are closed.
Ross's on Flickr
Become a Founding Subscriber
DigitalNC- Applying to College in 1960Featured Institution(s): St. Andrews University I found this application for admission in the Flora Macdonald College catalog for 1959-60. Looks like applying to college used to be a whole lot easier than it is today. […]
- Valentines at Elon College in the 1920sFeatured Institution(s): Elon University These valentines are from scrapbooks kept by Elon College students in the 1920s, from the collections of the Belk Library Archives and Special Collections. Click on each image to see the full scrapbook. […]
- 1911 Charlotte News Available OnlineFeatured Institution(s): University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Issues of the Charlotte News from 1911 are now available through the North Carolina Newspapers project. The Charlotte News was a daily paper published throughout most of the 20th century. It's the first urban daily papers we've worked on, and the amount and variety of stories c […]
- Groundhog Day 100 Years AgoThis morning I looked through the North Carolina Newspapers collection to see how early I could find a mention of Groundhog Day. The oldest piece I found is this one, from the Sylvan Valley News in Brevard, published on February 5, 1904: I also liked this piece, from the Winston Sentinel, reprinted in the Mebane Leader on February 9, 1911, with a great refer […]
- Applying to College in 1960
- NC Miscellany
- Celebrating Mardi Gras in the GalleryFor our friends on the Gulf coast, celebrating Mardi Gras means wild revelry in the streets. For us at the NCC Gallery, it means highlighting a few of our lesser-known holdings. These aluminum doubloons are throws from the annual Mardi Gras celebration in New Orleans. Throws, of course, are the trinkets thrown from Mardi Gras […]
- Brits awed by giant mutant peanuts from N.C.“In March 1959, scientists, government officials and lesser worthies assembled for a dinner party at the Royal Commonwealth Society, London. “Unbeknownst to them, one course was a strange strain of American peanuts: ‘NC 4x… North Carolina 4th generation X-rayed’ peanuts, produced from seeds that had been exposed to 18,500 roentgen units. “The irradiated pean […]
- ‘Destroyed by the white citizens of Wilmington….’I’ve seen a lot of remarkable North Caroliniana on eBay but nothing as breathtaking as this supposed artifact from Wilmington 1898 offered by a dealer in Oreland, Pa. Here’s a reaction from historian Tim Tyson, who has written extensively about the black-owned Daily Record’s role in the nation’s only coup d’etat: “If it is the […]
- Celebrating Mardi Gras in the Gallery
- Hugh Morton Photo Collection
- TimelinesBack on Veteran’s Day, I hinted that I would be writing more about timelines in a future post. That time has arrived with today’s post. During the past year or so, I’ve been using a software product called Timeline 3D … Continue reading → […]
- It’s that time of the year once moreTonight, the University of North Carolina and Duke University will take to the hardwood for the 233rd time. Their first contests took place in 1920, so its remarkable to think that when Hugh Morton photographed these two teams playing during … Continue reading → […]
- Timelines