Donut Day and Running Day

Today is National Donut Day in the USA. It occurs two days after National Running Day. Coincidence?

Perhaps they could work together and you could do a really long run to a donut shop?

Sticky doughy donuts

So what about Donut Day in the USA? It started almost 100 years ago with a group of female volunteers with the Salvation Army giving doughnuts to World War I veterans.

It’s morphed into a global celebration of the doughy delicacy that is marked each year with free treats for everyone.

The following facts are courtesy of Lamar’s Donuts, a chain based in Kansas City, Missouri.

* In the USA alone, more than 10 billion donuts are made every year.

* The US donut industry is worth 3.6 billion dollars.

* The largest donut ever made was an American-style jelly donut weighing 1.7 tons, which was 16 feet in diameter and 16 inches high in the center.

* Per capita, Canada has more donuts shops than any other country.

* The hole in the donut’s center appeared in the first half of the 19th Century and allows the donut to cook more evenly.

* The Dutch are often credited with bringing donuts to the US with their olykoeks, or oily cakes in the 1800s.

* Adolph Levitt invented the first donut machine in 1920.

* The Guinness World record for donut eating is held by John Haight, who consumed 29 donuts in just over 6 minutes.

Is it doughnut or donut? You may have noticed a little of both above. Yeah, that was on purpose. It doesn’t matter. They both work. It really kind of depends on where you’re buying them and what they call them.

Martin for President!

Marvellous Martin O’Malley is going to make a bid for President! Oh my! (Faints, swoons.)

If I could vote, which I can’t, I would vote on buffness alone.

UK / USA things we do

There’s a load of fun stuff going round about things the USA should do that the UK does or has and vice versa.

Suggestions about what could improve our countries include:

* The USA should have Greggs the bakery, it says. Yes, really. I disagree. The UK can keep Greggs, because I can devour four of those sausages rolls in two minutes flat.

* The UK should have graduations for kids every year at school. We know what I think about that….

In the UK we need more of this….

….but the USA does not need this (Greggs, not Adele 🙂 )

Rainy days

Today is a very wet, crappy day. It feel like the UK in October.

But rain here is different. This rain isn’t just rain. This rain is the tail end of Hurricane Andrea, which swirled and whirled its way up from Florida.

That makes it storm rain, which isn’t just any old rain.

In the UK rain is just rain and we are used to rain because we have it a lot.

An adult asked me last month if we had storms in the UK. Yes, I replied, a little indignantly (and also concerned at what I believed to be a statement of ignorance).

But now I know what she means. We do have storms in the UK (I remember that storm of 1987 well!), but here…..well, storms really are different. And wet.

The UK storm of 1987

This one’s tropical….