1 September
Chicken Boy Appreciation Day
This unofficial national day celebrates a well-known landmark on Route 66 that has been described as "the Statue of Liberty of Los Angeles". Chicken Boy is a fibreglass statue of a chicken-headed boy grasping a bucket of chicken.
He stands 6.7 metres (22 feet) tall and is named after the 1960s restaurant he first graced. When the restaurant closed, he went into storage until a Los Angeles art director found a suitable location. In 2010, California's then-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recognised him with a Governor's Historic Preservation Award. Today, let's salute him with a bittersweet, fruity sipper, the Salty Bird.
photo Chicken Boy by Marilyn Nix
The Day Hitler Invaded Poland
World War II began on this day in 1939, when German troops invaded Poland, claiming that Polish soldiers had attacked a German radio station.
They hadn't. The body found at the scene, dressed in Polish army uniform, complete with forged identification, was a prisoner from a concentration camp who had been dressed up, shot and killed to create a pretext for invasion.
What was a European war would grow to encompass much of the world, kill tens of millions of soldiers and civilians, and traumatize the planet on a scale previously unimaginable. Which makes today very much worth remembering. We are honouring those who died with an appropriately named drink, the Warsaw Pact.
