St. Nicholas Day and Put On Your Own Shoes Day

These have got to be related, right?

After all, many kids put out their shoes on the evening of December 5, hoping St. Nicholas might fill them up with candy or other goodies (all thoroughly wrapped, we hope!) for them to find this morning.

Put On Your Own Shoes Day sounds like fair warning to one and all not to swipe what the good saint may have left for someone else, right?

Some of the Usual Suspects also call today Miners Day, perhaps in commemoration of the Monongah Coal Mine Disaster. On this day in 1907, a series of explosions in the Fairmont Coal Company mines in Monongah, West Virginia would kill 361 coal miners, the worst mining disaster in American history.

Today is also National Microwave Oven Day. Our crack research staff could find no particular connection between the now-ubiquitous American kitchen appliance and December 6 but, according to Wikipedia, in 1947, the inventor of the microwave, Percy Spencer, received all of $2 from his employer, Raytheon Corporation, when the patents on Spencer's invention were issued... to Raytheon.

It's not all bad, though. Spencer did rise to become a senior VP of the company and a member of the company's board of directors.