The Monitor's Weekly News Quiz for July 30-August 4, 2011

These comments are not screened before publication. Constructive debate about the above story is welcome, but personal attacks are not. Please do not post comments that are commercial in nature or that violate any copyright[s]. Comments that we regard as obscene, defamatory, or intended to incite violence will be removed. If you find a comment offensive, you may flag it.

Celebrating: Bad Poetry & Soft Ice Cream

Not everyone can be a Frost or a Dickinson or a Whitman or Hawk. Bad poetry day encourages you to give it a go anyway, by putting pen to paper and writing some terrible verse. If you’re feeling particularly cruel, you could read your bad poetry to friends, family and colleagues, and ask them what they think about your poem.

I wonder why we live, why we die, why we eat.

What would your number one complaint be about ice cream? Scooping it right? This might have become a world problem if  J.F. ‘Granpda’ McCullough and his son Alex, founders of Dairy Queen, hadn’t created soft ice cream, which is much easier to serve, back in 1938.

Soft Serve ice cream can be served on a sugar cone, in a waffle cone, as a part of a a banana split. It may be dipped in chocolate, or covered with a topping like sprinkles or crushed cookies.  The best place to celebrate soft serve ice cream is Dairy Queen, of-course

1587 – Virginia Dare – An expedition led by Sir Walter Raleigh landed at what is now Roanoke Island, North Carolina. Seven days later, on this day in 1587, Virginia Dare became the first child of English parentage to be born in America.

Ellinor and Ananias Dare were Baby Virginia’s parents; her grandfather, John White, was the governor of the Roanoke Colony.

As far as anyone knows, all was well with the little colony. That is, until four years later when a ship bringing supplies arrived only to find no colony. The settlers, including Virginia Dare, had vanished. No trace was ever found of the lost colony.

Legend has it that sometime in the 1600s a white doe was frequently seen in the area where the Dare family once lived. It is said that Virginia Dare returned to the colony as the doe.