The Old Farmer's Almanac has a fun website with interesting weather information that includes 2-month long-range forecasts, weather folklore, and "Today in Weather History."

The Statesman's Yearbook online provides a quick and easy way to find the names of current government officials in every country of the world. Simply choose a country, then click on the topic, 'Current Government.'

TimeandDate.com provides a wealth of fast facts about time and weather including historical temperatures and conditions for the current day.

GIF. Currently, only usage as a noun is recognized and defined by Oxford Dictionaries Online; the verbal use will need to gain sufficient currency to be considered for inclusion in the future.

"Americans are Barmy Over Britishisms," according to a recent story in the New York Times. "Call it Anglocreep. Call it annoying. Snippets of British vernacular...are cropping up in the daily speech of Americans..." Want to join the trend? Take a look at the standard reference title, British English A to Zed or follow the blog, Not One-Off Brtishisms.

The Hennepin County Library now has online access to Canadian residential listings through the database, Reference USA. Link to Reference USA through this subject guide or through the list of Databases A-Z. You will need to enter your library barcode number if you want to access the database outside the library.

All the numbers you need about the Great Minnesota Get Together:

Finance & Commerce has a look at the Fair in terms of money and real estate. R.C.'s Twin Cities Beat provides an interesting list of 'didja know' facts--didja know that almost 200 baby animals are born in the Miracle of Life building during the Fair? As for the nutrition numbers on all that Fair food, thank DiabetesMN for compiling an enlightening list.

The world's first "talking" English-Ojibwe dictionary contains photographs and around 60,000 audio clips of Ojibwe words and sentences. The online project is the result of extensive work by faculty and students in the U of M's Department of American Indian Studies in collaboration with tribal elders and other partners, including the Minnesota Historical Society and the U of M Libraries.

According to an infographic from Mother Nature Network, the number of Americans growing food and the size of food gardens has increased.  The National Gardening Association's report, The Impact of Home and Community Gardening in America, also indicates that food gardening is on the rise.  

If this inspires you to join the ranks, take a look at this chart from The Cheap Vegetable Gardener to help determine the Most Profitable Plants in Your Vegetable Garden.

The multi-volume project will be complete in March with the publication of volume five (Sl - Z).  The 50-year endeavor known as DARE starts with 'Adam's housecat' and ends with 'Zydeco'.  The New York Times provides the interesting story behind the making of this landmark resource and why it took so long to complete.

Are we celebrating Washington's Birthday, both Washington's and Lincoln's Birthdays, or all U.S. presidents? The legal federal holiday on the third Monday in Feb. is Washington's Birthday. Presidents' Day has never had official legal designation as a federal holiday. Rather, it is an attempt to unify a conglomeration of the legally designated Washington's Birthday with an assortment of state observances on Lincoln's Birthday and U.S. presidents in general. For more details see Snopes.com and Miller-McCune's article, President's Day: Just another Presidential Fable.

Several organizations pick a word or words of the year.  Merriam-Webster makes a top-10 list determined by the volume of user look-ups on its website; 2011's number one word was pragmatic.  Members of the American Dialect Society take a vote for the word of the year, and the 2011 winner is occupy.  Visual Thesaurus does an annual overview of words that defined the year; 2011's list includes occupy, Arab spring, tiger mom, and FOMO.