Check out the new site “The Famous Daily” for a daily dose of history in the form of articles about events that happened on a particular day in history.  Today’s Famous Daily for January 15th covers three big historical events on this date: the dedication of the Pentagon, The Democratic Donkey symbol, and the founding of the University of Notre Dame.

Check out the articles at the Famous Daily and join their email list to get daily updates on history and other topics.

1943 - The world’s largest office building, The Pentagon, is dedicated (Arlington, Virginia).

1870 - Thomas Nast creates the symbol of the democratic party, the donkey 

1844 - The University of Notre Dame is founded

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Originally uploaded by MadinahVision.com

Over at Flickr “MadinahVision.com” has posted an amazing set of photos from Saudi Arabia that showcase Ramadan, the 9th month of the Islamic Calender and a time when Muslims pray more than usual and fast from dawn until dusk every day. This is a time for Muslims to ask for forgiveness, do good deeds, pray, read the Koran, and more:

Ramadan at Wikipedia

Although I’d expected some high prices in Europe, there was still some vacation sticker shock when we got into Norway to find small waters at $3, hamburgers for $10, and buffets topping $60 per person.  Twitter pal @Brochner cleared this up a bit with this recent article about Europe’s most expensive cities.     We managed to visit 4 of the top 13 most expensive on this trip:    Oslo, Copenhagen, Munich, and Paris.     Luckily our budget stayed intact thanks to buying at grocery stores more than eating out, and staying in reasonably priced hotels and hostels (or in the case of Copenhagen and Munich, only visiting for part of the day).

I’ll need to do more research to figure out what’s up with the remarkable price disparity between Norway and Italy, where prices seemed fairly close to what we’d expect here in the USA, though I think the US is still cheaper for food than almost anywhere given the amazing selection and quality we have here.

I’m assuming that countries like Norway, which provide benefits Americans can only dream of like free health care and free universities, skew their economies towards those needs and this boosts the costs of hot dogs and beers, but I’m still not clear how that shakes out.