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The first Memorial Day was celebrated celebrated by former slaves and Union troops.

The first Memorial Day isn’t something Americans talk about much. If we knew our history, we’d all know that Memorial Day is far more than an opportunity to fire up the barbecue or get to the lake for the first time.
The holiday is an extraordinary celebration of America’s values, history, and traditions.

First Memorial Day Fun Facts

Heres a few surprising things you probably didn’t know about Memorial Day:

1. It commemorates the end of the Civil War. Freed slaves and Union troops held the earliest Memorial Day celebrations in May 1865 – just a few weeks after the fighting ended.

2. Memorial Day was first celebrated on May 1 or May Day. The first recorded Memorial Day observance occurred on May 1, 1865, when U.S. Troops and freed slaves celebrated in Charleston, South Carolina. Charleston was the city where the Civil War started with the bombardment of Fort Sumter in 1861.

3. Memorial Day is also about prisoners of war (POWs). The first Memorial Day celebration in Charleston on May 1, 1865, was held to consecrate the graves of 250 Union prisoners who died while in prison. The prisoners were called the “Martyrs of the Race Course” because the camp where the prisoners were kept was constructed at the site of a former horserace track.

4. Memorial Day is a Christian holiday. The original Memorial Day in 1865 was marked by the singing of hymns, and readings from the Bible.

5. Memorial Day has been celebrated historically May 30, not the last Monday in May.

6. Memorial Day became an official holiday in 1868. Union war hero General John A. Logan organized the first Memorial Day and designated May 30, 1868, as the first official celebration.

7. Logan chose the date because no Civil War battles were fought on the day. He was hoping to promote peace by not reviving wartime hatreds.

8. General Logan was the head of the first modern veterans’ organization; the Grand Army of the Republic, which represented Union veterans. Logan Street in Denver and Logan Circle in Washington D.C. have been named after the General.

9. Memorial Day was first celebrated by African Americans. Most of the participants in the first Memorial Day celebration in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1865 were freed slaves. They wanted to thank the Union soldiers who had liberated them as well as celebrate their freedom.

10. Memorial Day is a celebration of freedom. The first Memorial Day was organized by former slaves who also wanted to give thanks to God and to the fallen Union soldiers for their freedom.

11. Memorial Day was originally called “Declaration Day” by General Logan. The term Memorial Day was adopted by ex-Confederates in the South who did not want to celebrate a holiday they felt was confined to the Union.

12. Memorial Day did not become a federal holiday until 1971. An act of Congress in that year created the modern Memorial Day by designating the last Monday in May as a national holiday.

13. Southerners did not start celebrating Memorial Day until 1886 when the Ladies Memorial Association of Columbus, Georgia, held a service to commemorate the Confederate War Dead.

14. Some states hold separate “Memorial Days,” nine Southern States still recognize Confederate Memorial Day; which falls either on the birthday of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, or the day General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson died.

15. Ironically enough, Stonewall Jackson was shot by his own Confederate troops. On May 2, 1863, Confederate infantry mistook Jackson and his staff for Union Calvary and opened fire on them after the battle of Chancellorsville. Jackson was hit and died eight days later from the wounds and other complications.

16. Even though the first celebration was held in 1865 in Charleston, South Carolina. Waterloo, New York, was recognized as the official birthplace of Memorial Day by federal legislation in 1966. Waterloo was one of the first towns to close businesses to honor the war dead in 1866.

17. Over 20 towns around the United States claim to be the “birthplace of Memorial Day.” Communities that claim to have held the first Memorial Day festivities include; Boalsburg, Pennsylvania, Columbus, Georgia, Columbus, Mississippi, and Carbondale Illinois.

18. Americans are supposed to pause for a “National Moment of Remembrance” at 3 p.m. on Memorial Day. Congress passed a resolution encouraging such a moment in 2000.

19. The Lincoln Memorial was dedicated on Memorial Day (May 30) 1922.

If you want to celebrate the real Memorial Day, it will take place on Wednesday, May 30, 2018. Not Monday as most people believe.

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The current real estate bubble has kept many home buyers out of the market.

Due to the emergence of an ominous real estate bubble, the typical American family no longer makes enough money to pay for the average home.

Property prices are so high that the typical household lacks the income to buy most homes. This fact applies to houses with a 30-year old mortgage in 25 of the 50 states. The website How Much made that conclusion by analyzing data from all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

The average annual household income in the United States was $59,039 in 2016, the U.S. Census Bureau calculated. There are now 25 states where the earnings needed to purchase the average home exceed that amount.

Average Resident Cannot Afford To Buy A Home In Most States

If How Much’s data is correct, the American dream of universal home ownership is dead. Most Americans live in areas where they cannot afford to buy the average home with an ordinary mortgage.

Even worse, there are 31 states where the amount of take-home pay needed to buy the average home exceeded the average income. Another website called SimplePost calculated this surprising information. SimplePost listed the salary required to buy a house in all 50 states.

Some highlights of this list include:

• There is one state where the income needed to buy a home is double the take-home pay: Hawaii. The income required to purchase the average house in Hawaii is $153,520 a year, but the average Hawaiian makes $74,511 a year.
• Home ownership is impossible for most Californians. An income of $120,120 a year is required to buy the average home in California. The median take-home pay in the Golden State is $67,739 a year.
• High property prices are a problem in some low-income states. The median income in Idaho is $54,807 a year, but it would take $70,360 a year to buy the average home in that state.
• The median household income in Montana is $50,027 a year, but it would take $75,720 to buy the average home in Big Sky Country.
• There are still many affordable places to live in America. An income of just $38,400 a year is required to buy the average home in Ohio. Only $50,080 a year is needed to buy a typical house in Wisconsin.

It looks as if America is experiencing a new real estate bubble that is making a house beyond the reach of most families. Common sense would indicate that this situation cannot last.

How To Survive America’s New Real Estate Bubble

There are a few smart survival tips for America’s new real estate bubble. The most obvious is to move to a state where the amount of income needed to buy a home is well below the median income.

Such states include Iowa, where it takes just $44,360 a year to buy the average home. Yet, the median household income in the state is $56,247 a year. This difference will give the average Iowa family several thousand more dollars a year in spending money because their mortgage payment will be lower.

Moving to the Heartland or the Midwest is also a great idea. You need to make just $42,560 a year to afford the average home in Indiana. Additionally, you only need $51,520 a year to purchase the typical house in Nebraska.

Staying away from the coasts is a smart move because the highest property values are close to the oceans. A smart move for coastal dwellers might be to rent and invest their extra cash on a house in the heartland. Selling properties in places like California might be the smartest strategy because it would give you a lot of extra money.

Finding a job or business that you can do anywhere is the smartest survival strategy of all. That means you can live in the areas where housing is cheap, and give yourself a lot more spending money.

Waiting for the real estate bubble to end can be a very dumb move. Australia’s real estate bubble has been going on for 18 years, since the beginning of the 21st Century, and there is no end in sight. Americans need to consider the possibility that the real estate bubble could burden the United States for the foreseeable future.

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Summer colds are often harder to get over.

Sneezes, coughs, and handshakes send germs jumping from person to person. While a cold may not be life-threatening, it’s one of the leading reasons people call in sick for work. Unlike bacterial infections that go away when you take antibiotics, colds are more challenging to treat since viruses cause them. There are no drugs to cure colds, though they usually go away on their own in about a week to ten days. Nevertheless, summer colds possess some characteristics that significantly differ from their more famous winter cousins.

Typically speaking, summer colds often have a longer duration than their winter counterparts. Additionally, summer colds are more capable of flaring up again instead of being finished in one miserable cycle. Furthermore, enterovirus is a notable virus that exists only in the summertime version of the cold. This unpleasant bug brings with it a unique set of ailments not found in the winter cold. These maladies include diarrhea, sore throats, and rashes, as well as other afflictions.

There are a bunch of steps that you can take to help prevent summer colds or to help your body recover faster if you catch one.

Be aware of increased interaction with others. It’s not hard to realize that the change in season brings about a change in the number of people that are “out and about.” People are far more likely to be socializing, working outdoors, and going on trips with one another during the summer months. Because of this, there’s obviously a much greater risk of spreading germs from person to person due to constant physical contact. With this fact in mind, always take great care to avoid coming into close contact with people that are sick. Along with this, make sure that you show an equal courtesy to others when you get the same bug yourself so that you don’t spread the virus around.

Chill out. People under stress tend to be more vulnerable to catching a cold. Try to relax!

Ventilate your house. The cold virus prefers stagnant, cool air. Keep your air conditioning going to circulate air around in your house or consider a humidifier. This step is vital since germs don’t like moist air.

Keep it clean. Scrub all surfaces in your house, especially doorknobs, staircase railings, and counters. Use hot water and soap to get rid of germs. You might even consider using a solution of water with a little bleach on counters.

Breathe hot, moist air. A vaporizer or similar device for inhaling hot, humid air may help you to breathe more comfortably if your chest is tight. Hot showers can also help your airways open.

Don’t smoke. Smoking can lower your body’s resistance to infection. It can also irritate your airways and make your cold more likely to turn into something serious, like bronchitis.

Use disposable tissues instead of handkerchiefs. Cold germs can live for hours in your handkerchief.

Wash your hands. You touch hundreds of surfaces each day, and each one harbors germs. If you are an ordinary individual, you feel your mouth or nose many times each day, creating an interstate highway for germs right into your body. Washing your hands puts a roadblock in the way of those germs. Washing with regular soap and water is just as productive as antibacterial soaps.

Get plenty of rest. Stay at home and rest. Your body will appreciate it, and your family and friends will thank you for not spreading your cold.

Take advantage of medicine. You won’t find a cure, but you will find a variety of medications that can help ease the symptoms of a cold. Many over-the-counter drugs have side effects such as drowsiness. Always read the label before taking any medicine.

Wash out your nostrils. Utilize nasal irrigation, a therapy using water and salt, to flush out your nasal passages. This process helps prevent sinuses from becoming infected. The Neti pot is gaining popularity, and you can find it at your local pharmacy.

Gargle with warm, salty water. Soothe your sore throat with this time-tested remedy.

Drink lots of fluids. A good guideline involves drinking eight to ten glasses of liquid each day. Hot drinks are better than cold. Use the color of your urine as an indicator. If your urine is dark yellow, you need to drink more. If you have clear urine, then you are drinking in sufficient quantities. It’s crucial to drink so your body has the strength to fight the illness

Be careful with outdoor exercise. When the weather gets nicer, it’s only a natural tendency to feel the urge to get outside and engage in more physical activity. Nonetheless, it’s important to realize that enterovirus is most likely to be a strong presence during times of intense exercise. Also, it’s worth noting that the likelihood of being vulnerable to this bug increases if you’ve stayed put all winter and are just warming back up into your summer workout routine.

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Image source: Jenifer Jost

Learning how to make a funnel trap is an important skill, because you can use it on land and water, and in almost any terrain in the world. You can turn plastic bottles into funnel traps for minnows, rodents, toads, crayfish, and other small animals. You can also make larger funnels for muskrats and big fish.

In this article, I will specifically explain how I made a funnel trap out of an old tomato cage and discarded grapevine. This project inspired two recon missions into my husband’s garage and (oddly) a trip to Hobby Lobby to satisfy a hunch.

First, let’s go over the concepts.

The Basics Of Funnel Traps

A basic funnel trap is made of two cones. First, one large cone that holds prey until you remove it. Second, a smaller, open-ended cone that allows animals to enter the trap. The opening should be just a bit larger than the animal you plan to trap. Traps also must include a door you can open to remove the prey. Usually, the smaller cone is detachable from the larger cone, and serves as the door.

Some types of funnel traps are designed so animals physically cannot escape. A rodent cannot escape a bottle trap, for instance, because the plastic is too slippery for it to climb the inverted cone. Fish can physically escape a funnel trap, but their hard-wired behavior almost always prevents them from doing so. They follow a scent trail (bait) into the trap, but the shape of the funnel discourages them from finding the way back out. While a few fish luck their way out of it, they usually do not.

Materials To Use

As I was preparing my yard for spring, I came across an old wire tomato cage and a pile of discarded grapevine. Those are a great combination for a funnel trap. The cage provides a framework, while the grapevine can be wrapped (not woven), around the cage, in very little time. The wrapping process took me about two hours, but weaving would have taken an entire day.

Because grapevine is so prolific, I cut it all the way to the ground every fall. It would have been much easier to manage had I used it when freshly cut. Because it had dried over the winter, the canes thicker than one quarter of an inch had to be wrangled, even after I soaked them in water for 30 hours.

Wrapping The Grapevine Around The Tomato Cage

I started at the small end of the cage with the thinnest, most flexible, and least brittle canes. I used them as ties to bind the lower spokes of the tomato cage, then continued to wrap the vine until I reached the first rib.

At that point, I switched to the thicker vine, which was so unruly that I performed embarrassing wrestling moves in my yard before going on the first recon mission to my husband’s garage. After scoring a fistful of zip ties, I was able to twist and secure the grapevine around the cage.

Next, I bent the protruding wires from the small end of the basket over, and tucked them into the grapevine. Most of the vine was neatly wrapped, but there were a number of loose ends on the inside and outside, which I crudely wove into the erratic pattern.

At this point, my project looked like something sold at Hobby Lobby. I checked, and there are, indeed, small grapevine cones sold at Hobby Lobby for under $10 dollars per piece. Unfortunately, they are a bit too small for my purposes, or I’d be making one each for my besties.

Making The Funnel

The smaller cone, which is both a funnel and a door, takes three times as long to make as the larger cone, because you must create a framework for it. Start by making three rings of graduated diameters with vines. The first ring should be the same diameter as the opening of the larger cone. Make the second ring just a little bit larger than the animal you’re baiting, and the third ring in between the sizes of the first two.

Image source: Jenifer Jost

The vine ring in my hand in the photograph is the smallest ring. My trap is large enough to hold small-sized fish such as perch, bullheads, and brook trout, so I made the smallest ring accordingly.

Use sticks to create the spokes of the funnel. I was able to secure the sticks to the largest and smallest rings. However, I had to use temporary cloth ties to secure the middle ring. Once the framework was in place, I made the funnel by crudely weaving and wrapping the vines around the framework. Then I wove twine perpendicular to the spokes to help the funnel hold its shape in water.

The Finishing Touches

Most basket-type traps will not be heavy enough to sink in water. You can weigh it down with rocks, or, as I did, take another recon mission to your husband’s garage. This time, I found old fishing weights that I tied to the inside of the basket.

Attach the cones with whatever you have on hand. I’m using twine, but I have seen traps of this type that are secured with several small sticks.

Finally, you must bait the trap. I’m certain I will catch crayfish if I hang bacon on the inside. Otherwise, I might try a general approach by filling a small muslin bag with scraps and letting it float around on the inside.

Of course, you can make funnel traps without tomato cages, using only supplies found in the woods – vines, sticks and willow bark cordage, for instance. The result, though, is the same: a trapped animal, and sometimes, lunch.

(Editor’s note: the video below shows how to make a funnel trap in the woods.)

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