Dec 15, 2012


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Flagstaff Almanac:  Week: 50/ Day:    
Today: H   34°L 26° Averages: H  ° L °
Records: H   66°(1946)L -14°(1972, 1945)
Wind: ave:   21mph; Gusts:  40mph Today’s ave. humidity:  61%

Quote of the Day:

Today’s Historical Highlights:
"Gone With the Wind" premieres in Atlanta—1939
1st Irish magazine in US, Shamrock, is published—1810
1st reigning king to visit US (of Hawaii) received by Pres Grant—1874
1st time 4 people in space—1964
AFofL adopts a no-strike policy in war industries—1941
American Psychiatric Association declares homosexuality is not mental illness—1973
Arthur Ashe is named Sports Illustrated Sportman of Year—1992
Atlantic Power Outage began—2005
Groundbreaking begins for Jefferson Memorial in Wash DC—1938
Hizbu'allah (Arm forces for Allah) forms—1944
Leaning Tower of Pisa reopens after 11 years and $27,000,000 to fortify it—2001
Thomas Edison patents phonograph—1877
US Congress gives General Eisenhower his 5th star—1944
Vaughn Meader's "1st Family," album goes #1 & stays #1 for 12 wks—1962

     Happy Birthday To: ♪. ♪   
How many can you identify?…answers in Today’s Birthdays

Free Rambling Thoughts:   
What a day…snow came during the night and kept snowing on and off most of the day. Not a lot of accumulation, with about 3”. It is thankfully a very wet snow. So glad to be retired and not have to go anywhere.
 
The horror of the shootings in Connecticut is eye-opening. I have had lots of memories of my years of working with students that age. So senseless. Seeing my President tear up was more than I could handle. He is a dad and a leader of the free world. There needs to be action from our dysfunctional Congress and it needs to start now. First there needs to be a total stop to all assault weapon sales and a turn in policy for all that are out there. Second there needs to be registration process that first allows law abiding citizens to own hunting guns and target practice guns. Through registration, the owner of the weapon can be held accountable when the gun is used to commit a crime. I am a gun owner, for protection and for hunting. I haven’t used the protection gun and it really isn’t much protection, since it is locked up. The hunting rifles are kept in one place, the ammo in another place. Those NRA people need to be ignored. We used to lock up crazy people, before they harmed anyone. We don’t do that anymore. We do not have a way to determine which people will take a weapon and kill innocents, and we may never be able to do that. We do have a way to make guns less available. This is not just about the ‘mass’ killings we have seen in the past week, but also the daily murders of people on the streets of our major cities. Our little town has had two homicides in the last week, one for sure from gun violence.
 
On another front, someone posted on FB that Drones are killing children too. We have been at war for more than a decade and many innocents have been killed during that war, as in any war. It is time the media to show America the real war going on in Afghanistan. When we saw the violence of Viet Nam on the nightly news, the American people demanded that the war end. If we were shown wall-to-wall coverage of the horrors in Afghanistan, that war would end too. The media seems to believe that if the American public doesn’t see all the violence, we won’t care. I’m reminded of a 60’s song War What is it Good For? We live in a violent society and it doesn’t need to be that way.
Game  Center: (answers at the end of post)
Duplicate Letter Puzzles
Find common words with certain letters duplicated in the given positions. V stands for a duplicated vowel, C stands for a duplicated consonant, L stands for any duplicated letter, and _ stands for any letter
L _ L _ _ L L
Lifestyle  Substance:     
Old Saying Explained:
LET THE CAT OUT OF THE BAG
This old saying is probably derived from the days when people who sold piglets in bags sometimes put a cat in the bag instead. If you let the cat out of the bag you exposed the trick.
Ok, then?

Movie Theme Songs you may remember:
Barbra Streisand, ''The Way We Were''
Read This Headline Carefully!!
In a Cemetery:
PERSONS ARE PROHIBITED FROM PICKING FLOWERS, FROM ANY BUT THEIR OWN GRAVES
Coptic Christian Art:

Bet You Didn’t Know…from History Channel
The largest and oldest of the pyramids at Giza, the Great Pyramid was built for the pharaoh Khufu in the 25th century B.C.
Harper’s Index:         
  • Average number eggs a bed bug will lay after feeding on ‘clean’ human blood: 44
  • After feeding on blood with an alcohol of 0.1: 12
Ruminations:
We can put laser-equipped robots on mars, but wrinkled dollar bills still don’t work in vending machines.
Unusual Fact of the Day:
A ten-gallon hat actually holds a little less than one gallon of water.
Found on You Tube: 

Joke-of-the-day:
An Antartian woman came into a bar and asked the bartender for a drink. Then she started to yell, "Yeah!" "Yeah!"
Then five more Antartians came in and started to do the same thing.
Then three more Antartians came in and one of them had a Barney puzzle.
The bartender asked one of them, "Why are you yelling 'yeah yeah!'?"
Then one responded, "We did this puzzle in three hours and it says 2-3 years."  
Rules of Thumb:   
Easy shortcuts to make an ‘educated’ guess
ROBINSON'S RULE OF RESIDENCY
Always live East of where you work. That way when you drive to work in the morning the sun will be at your back; same in the evening when you drive home.    
Yeah, It Really Happened
MOSCOW -- Circus trainers claim two of their elephants were saved from the deadly Siberian cold by vodka.
Emergency ministry spokesman Alexander Davydov said Friday that the elephants were in a trailer that caught fire Thursday outside the city of Novosibirsk, forcing trainers to take them out into the bitter cold before another truck arrived to deliver them to a warm gym at a local community college.
The Komsomolskaya Pravda daily reported that trainer Leonid Labo had the animals, aged 45 and 48, drink 10 liters (2.6 gallons) of vodka diluted in warm water – and a veterinarian said later that only the tips of their ears were frostbitten.
Although scientists say that alcohol can make humans feel warmer but actually lowers their core body temperature, Novosibisk zoo director Rostislav Shilo told the daily that the vodka saved the animals from frostbite and pneumonia, without harming or even intoxicating them.
Somewhat Useless Information   
  • The word "trivia" comes from the latin trivium, meaning the intersection of three roads. In the Middle Ages, local towns would post their news on billboards nearby that were at the intersection of three or more roads, so as to maximize the number of travelers who would see it. Random, obscure facts that were picked up while traveling then became known as "trivia."
  • A sunset is usually more brilliant than a sunrise because of the dust and particles that are kicked up by the sun heating the ground creating ther-mals. The dust then refracts the light and creates colors in the sky.
  • The mirror image of 3.14 looks like the word pie.
  • If you ask someone a question, and they look up to their left they are accessing memory, and are probably telling the truth, if they look up to their right they are being creative and potentially lying.
  • Ants don't have enough mass to die on impact, no matter the height.
  • Goats have horizontal slit-shaped pupils which increases their peripheral depth perception which is very important when climbing cliffs.

Calendar Information        
Happening This Week:
10-17> Human Rights Week
14-18> Halcyon Days
Today Is                                                                      
Bill of Rights Day 1791
Cat Herders Day
National Lemon Cupcake Day
Today’s Events through History  
1st commercial manufacture of nylon yarn—1939
1st hockey game at Madison Sq Garden—1925
1st street-cleaning machine in US 1st used in Philadelphia—1854
1st US law school established at University of Pennsylvania—1791
Adolf Eichmann convicted of crimes against humanity in Israel—1961
Bandleader, Major Glenn Miller, lost over English Channel—1944
Dvoráks "From the New World" premieres at Carnegie Hall NYC—1893
English colonizing Connecticut—1664
Holland grants patent on windmill with crankshaft—1593
James Naismith invents basketball (Canada) —1891
John Bruton becomes Ireland's premier—1994
NYC's Port Authority opens—1950

Today’s Birthdays                                                           
In their 70’s
Tim Conway, Willoughby Oh, comic (McHale's Navy, Carol Burnett Show) is 79
Dave Clark, London England, rock drummer (Dave Clark 5-Glad All Over) is 70
In their 60’s
Don Johnson, actor (Miami Vice, Harrad Experiment) is 63
In their 50’s
Don Franklin, actor (Seaquest 2032, Noah Dixon-The Young Riders) is 52
In their 30’s
Adam Brody, film and television actor is 33
Remembered for being born today
Jeff Chandler, [Ira Grossel], Bkln, actor (Broken Arrow) (1918- malpractice-1961)
Charles Edgar Duryea, inventor (1st auto built & operated in US) (1861-1938)
Gustave Eiffel [Alexandre], French engineer (Eiffel tower), (1832-1923)
Alan Freed, Penn, DJ, accepted payola/introduced term "rock-n-roll" (1922- alcoholism-1965)
J Paul Getty, Minneapolis Mn, oil magnate (Getty Oil), (1892-1976)
Betty Smith, novelist (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn) (1896-1972)

Today’s Historical Obits                                                           
Alfonso de Albuquerque, viceroy of Portuguese Indies—stabbed—1515—at 62
Walt Disney, animator—cancer—cremated in 1966—at 65
Blake Edwards, film director (Pink Panther)—2010—at 88
Sitting Bull [Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake], Hunkpapa-Sioux chief 
     (Little Big Horn)—killed by US—1890—at 56ish
Charles Laughton, English actor (Hunchback of Notre Dame)—kidney 
     cancer—1962—at 63
Glenn Miller, US band leader/jazz composer—MIA—1944—at 40
William Proxmire, U.S. Senator from Wisconsin—2005—at 90
Oral Roberts, American television evangelist and author—2009—at 91
Thomas W "Fats" Waller, jazz pianist (Hot Chocolate)— pneumonia—1943—at 39 
Chill Wills, actor (Frontier Circus, Rounders)—cancer—1978—at 75

Answer: Duplicate Letter Puzzles
 ELECTEE
Disclaimer: All opinions are mine…feel free to agree or disagree.
All ‘data’ info is from the internet sites and is usually checked with at least one other source, but I have learned that every site has mistakes and sadly once out the information is out there, many sites simply copy it and is therefore difficult to verify. Also for events occurring before the Gregorian calendar was adopted [1582] the dates may not be totally accurate.
§    And That Is All for Now  §

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Flagstaff, Arizona, United States
I retired in '06--at the ripe old age of 57. I enjoy blogging, photography, traveling, and living life to it's fullest.