Flag Day / National Bourbon Day

Flag Day

June 14

Nineteen-year-old teacher, Bernard J. CiGrand, walked into his one-room schoolhouse in Wisconsin in 1885, stuck a 10-inch flag in an inkwell, and asked his students to write an essay on its meaning. CiGrand spent the next 50-ish years writing in support of making Flag Day a national holiday. He died of a heart attack 17 years before congress sealed the deal in 1949. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson recognized Flag Day. June 14th, 1775 is the date congress formally authorized the enlistment of soldiers into what was then called the Continental Army.

National Bourbon Day

June 14

Kentucky is the epicenter of the bourbon industry. The state produces 95 percent of the bourbon in the USA and in 2015, total bourbon inventory was over 6.7 million barrels. Jim Beam, specifically, produces more than 50 percent of the world’s bourbon supply. And Beam does it at a staggering rate: 300 bottles a minute and about 20,000 bottles a day. During aging, the 53-gallon-barrel that holds the bourbon shrinks in the winter and expands in the summer. This causes the bourbon to go in and out of the wood. As it goes through the layer of caramelized sugars on the barrel’s interior surface, the bourbon extracts those flavors and picks up the oaky flavors from the wood as well.

Today’s Birthdays of Note….

Donald Trump – 45th President of the U.S. – born in Queens, New York

Burl Ives – Singer & Actor – born in Jasper County, Illinois

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