Rosemarie's 70th Birthday!

In honor of Rosemarie Petitti Annunziata's 70th Birthday, her children have put this website and electronic Guestbook together.  They asked family, friends and colleagues to please send their birthday wishes, email a  picture for the Picture Galleries or share a story or poem.

Dear Mom,

It's not our age that defines us but the manner in which those years are spent.  Daughter, sister, wife, mother, grandmother, teacher, writer, activist, advocate, mediator, artist, musician, traveler, friend.  What greater testament to your accomplishments and the lives you've touched than the words echoed here.  Thank you for being a vibrant example of a life well lived!  Wishing you the Happiest Birthday yet and many, many more to come.  We love you!

Love, your daughters

Elise, Catherine and Christine

70:   It's just a number

·         70 is the natural number following 69 and preceding 71

·         70 is the atomic number of ytterbium, a lanthanide

·         The old testament allots three score and ten (70 years) for a man's life (Psalm 90:10)

·         70 years: Expiration of public domain

·         In Olympic Archery, the targets are 70 meters from the archers

·         The designation of USA Interstate 70, a freeway that goes from Utah to Maryland

·         In miles per hour, the national speed limit in the United Kingdom

·         The French do not have a word for 70, instead using "soixante-dix" (60 + 10). Other French-speaking countries such as Belgium, Switzerland, Aosta Valley and Jersey do have a word for it, using "septante."

·         In years of marriage, the platinum wedding anniversary

·         NASCAR J. D. McDuffie was known for driving car #70

·         According to Jewish tradition, there is a core of 70 nations and 70 world languages

What else happened in 1940?

·         Year 1940 (MCMXL) was a leap year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar.

·         February 7 – RKO release Walt Disney's second full-length animated film, Pinocchio.

·         March 2 – Cartoon character Elmer Fudd makes his debut in the animated short Elmer's Candid Camera.

·         April 7 – Booker T. Washington becomes the first African American to be depicted on a United States postage stamp.

·         May 13 – Winston Churchill, in his first address as Prime Minister, tells the House of Commons, "I have nothing to offer you but blood, toil, tears, and sweat."

·         May 15 – The very first McDonald's restaurant opens in San Bernardino, California.

·         May 16 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, addressing a joint session of Congress, asks for an extraordinary credit of approximately $900 million to finance construction of at least 50,000 airplanes per year.

·         June 28 – General Charles de Gaulle is officially recognized by Britain as the "Leader of all Free Frenchmen, wherever they may be."

·         July 15 – U.S. politics: The Democratic Party begins its national convention in Chicago, and nominates Franklin D. Roosevelt for an unprecedented third term as president.

·         July 27 – Bugs Bunny makes his debut in the Oscar-nominated cartoon short, A Wild Hare.

·         August 24 – Howard Florey and a team including Ernst Chain and Norman Heatley at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford, publish their laboratory results showing the in vivo bactericidal action of penicillin. They have also purified the drug.

·         September 12 – In Lascaux, France, 17,000-year-old cave paintings are discovered by a group of young Frenchmen hiking through Southern France. The paintings depict animals and date to the Stone Age.

·         October 16 – The draft registration of approximately 16 million men begins in the United States.

·         November 5 – U.S. presidential election, 1940: Democrat incumbent Franklin D. Roosevelt defeats Republican challenger Wendell Willkie and becomes the United States' first and only third-term president.

·         November 13 – Walt Disney's Fantasia is released. It is the first box office failure for Disney, though it eventually recoups its cost years later, and becomes one of the most highly regarded of Disney's films.

·         December 8 – The Chicago Bears, in what will become the most one-sided victory in National Football League history, defeat the Washington Redskins 73–0 in the 1940 NFL Championship Game.

·         December 14 – Plutonium is first isolated chemically in the laboratory.

·         December 24 – Mahatma Gandhi, Indian spiritual non-violence leader writes his second letter to Adolf Hitler addressing him "My friend", requesting him to stop the war Germany had begun.

·         December 30 – California's first modern freeway, the future State Route 110, opens to traffic in Pasadena, California, as the Arroyo Seco Parkway (now the Pasadena Freeway).

Who else is 70?

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