February 16 is National Caregivers Day.

National Caregivers Day is observed annually on the third Friday in February.
Dedicated health care professionals across America serve those who require long-term or hospice care.  National Caregivers Day honors those men and women who’s selfless dedication provides these vital services.


Caregivers deliver a variety of services from personal care to medical services with compassion and professionalism.  Their days are often long and arduous, but through it all they are there to lend support to those who need it most.

National Caregivers Day recognizes caregivers providing quality, compassionate care every day, often placing the needs of others over their own. Today, take time to thank a caregiver for their dedication and care of our loved ones. 


Today in history: February 16, 1804, Decatur Burns Philadelphia!

In October of 1803 during the First Barbary War the USS Philadelphia was cruising off the coast of Tripoli. She engaged a pirate vessel and pursued it as it tried to escape along the North African coastline. Philadelphia ran aground on a sandbar and became trapped.

The crew made several attempts to float the ship free. It threw cargo and stores overboard, cast anchors overboard and eventually it’s entire complement of 30 cannon, but it still was not enough to sufficiently lighten the ship to float free. Captain William Bainbridge decided to scuttle the ship, and ordered the crew to drill holes in the hull, and dampen the gunpowder. Sails and linens were set afire and all weapons thrown overboard. The foremast had already been sawn off in the attempts to lighten her. They then abandoned ship as it settled deep onto the sandbar.

The pirates occupied the wreck and managed to refloat her after a few months of work. The Navy determined the Philadelphia was too valuable to remain in their hands, and planned a mission to either seize her or destroy her. A small ship was outfitted to appear as a local vessel that had been damaged in a storm. Under cover of darkness, a volunteer group led by Lieutenant Stephen Decatur, Jr. sailed the craft to the Philadelphia and tied up alongside.

The raiders boarded the ship and quickly made an assessment, and after determining Philadelphia was no longer seaworthy, set her afire. She burned and sank where she lay in tripoli harbor as Decatur and his men made their escape.
Lord Horatio Nelson, known as a man of action and bravery, is said to have called this “the most bold and daring act of the Age.”

Weird History: The Curse of the Pharaohs

In November of 1922 archaeologist Howard Carter was running out of time. Since 1914, English archaeologists and explorers had been granted access by Egyptian authorities to excavate in the Valley of Kings, with hopes to uncover lost tombs of pharaohs and kings of the past.  Unfortunately, World War I interrupted the work and put a severe damper on the funding available, so by 1922 the benefactors paying for the excavations were growing impatient with the lack of significant results.

But on November 4, Carter discovered a set of stairs that led to what he hoped was the legendary tomb of the teenage King Tutankhamun. He chiselled a small corner and by the light of a candle could see that the treasures of the tomb were still intact.

On this day, Feb. 16, 1923, Carter cracked the seal on the door to the tomb. The treasures he found inside have been world famous eversince. Carter catalogued more than 5.300 items. According to some, he also unleashed a curse.

It began when Egyptologist James Breasted reported how Carter had sent a messenger on an errand to his house. The messenger reported as he neared the home he heard a “faint near human cry”, and upon entering saw a birdcage with a coiled cobra inside, the family canary dead in its mouth. Immediately locals assigned it to the Curse of the Pharaohs, indicating the cobra is the symbol of Egyptian royalty, and they had surely incurred the wrath of the kings of old for disturbing the tomb.

The first mysterious death connected with the curse was George Herbert, the 5th Earl of Carnarvon, and the chief financier of Carter’s expeditions. He was bitten by a mosquito, and later accidentally slashed the bite while shaving. It became infected, and blood poisoning resulted in his death.

Marie Corelli, a popular author of the time, wrote an imaginative letter to the New York World magazine, in which she quoted an obscure book that confidently asserted that “dire punishment” would follow any intrusion into a sealed tomb. A media frenzy followed, with reports that a curse had been found in the King’s tomb.

In 1925, the anthropologist Henry Field visited the tomb. He reported how a paperweight given to Carter’s friend Sir Bruce Ingram was composed of a mummified hand with its wrist adorned with a scarab bracelet marked with, “Cursed be he who moves my body. To him shall come fire, water and pestilence.” Soon after receiving the gift, Ingram’s house burned down, followed by a flood when it was rebuilt.

Howard Carter was entirely skeptical of such curses. However, he did report in his diary a “strange” account in May 1926, when he saw jackals of the same type as Anubis, the Egyptian god who serves as the guardian of the dead, for the first time in over thirty-five years of working in the desert.

In all, 11 people connected with entering the tomb died over the next 10 years. Several others, including Howard himself, did not. Howard died at age 64 of lymphoma in  1939, and several others lived long lives.

Those who died and are said to be victims of the curse besides Lord Carnarvon are
George Jay Gould I, a visitor to the tomb, died in the French Riviera in  May of 1923 after he developed a fever following his visit.
Prince Ali Kamel Fahmy Bey of Egypt died in July of 1923: shot dead by his wife Marguerite Alibert.

Colonel The Hon. Aubrey Herbert, Lord Carnarvon’s half-brother, became nearly blind and died in September 1923 from blood poisoning related to a dental procedure intended to restore his eyesight.

Sir Archibald Douglas-Reid, a radiologist who x-rayed Tutankhamun’s mummy, died in January 1924 from a mysterious illness.

Sir Lee Stack, Governor-General of Sudan, died on 19 November 1924: assassinated while driving through Cairo.

A. C. Mace, a member of Carter’s excavation team, died in 1928 from arsenic poisoning The Hon. Mervyn Herbert, Carnarvon’s half brother and the aforementioned Aubrey Herbert’s full brother, died in May 1929, reportedly from “malarial pneumonia”.

Captain The Hon. Richard Bethell, Carter’s personal secretary, died in November 1929: murdered in bed in a Mayfair club, the victim of a suspected smothering.
Richard Luttrell Pilkington Bethell, 3rd Baron Westbury, father of the above, died in February 1930; when he supposedly threw himself off his seventh floor apartment.

Did Carter unleash the Curse of the Pharaohs?