11-18-14

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Almanac: Week: 47 \ Day:  322
November Averages: 51° \ 22°                  



Holiday Observances Today:
Independence Day (Latvia-1918 from Russia)
National Holiday (Oman)
+++
European Antibiotic Awareness Day
Married To A Scorpio Support Day
Mickey Mouse Day
National Entrepreneurship Day
Occult Day
Push-button Phone Day

Observances This Week:
National Hunger & Homeless Awareness Week; International Fraud Awareness Week: 15-23 
American Education Week; National Book Awards Week; National Global Entrepreneurship Week: 17-23   
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Quote of the Day



Historical Highlights for Today
   326 - Old St. Peter's Basilica is consecrated. Stood 4th - 16th century
1307 - William Tell reputedly shoots apple off his son's head
1497 - Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama reaches the Cape of Good Hope
1626 - St. Peter's Basilica is consecrated. Replaces an earlier basilica
1745 - Bonnie Prince Charlie's troops occupy Carlisle
1787 - First Unitarian minister in US ordained, Boston
1865 - Mark Twain publishes "Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County"
1872 - Susan B Anthony is arrested after voting on the 5th November  
1894 - 1st newspaper Sunday color comic section published (NY World)
1902 - Brooklyn toymaker Morris Michton names teddy bear after Teddy Roosevelt
1920 - Apollo Theater (Academy, Bryant) opens at 221 W 42nd St NYC
1928 - Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse appears in NY in "Steamboat Willie"
1936 - Main span of Golden Gate Bridge joined
1941 - Mussolini's forces leave Abyssinia/Ethiopia
1961 - JFK sends 18,000 military advisors to South Vietnam
1963 - Bell Telephone introduces push button telephone
1964 - J. Edgar Hoover describes Martin Luther King as "most notorious liar"
1978 - Jonestown Guyana-918 members of Peoples Temple commit- Jim Jones
1999 - In College Station, Texas, 12 are killed and 27 injured at Texas A&M University when a massive bonfire under construction collapses.
• • • •
  Birthdays Today:
How many can you identify? Answers below in Birthday’s Today



My Rambling Thoughts
Cold has arrived in Flagstaff. Got up this morning to 11° with a wind chill of 3°. It did warm up to a sweltering 41°.
Made a quick trip to have some blood drawn for my upcoming appointment. Not my favorite exercise. And I got to pee in the cup. Dr. wants to be sure that I don’t have gout. I know I don’t, but he went to med school for something.
Another story about Liberia. As with many African countries, transportation is always difficult—bad roads, few affordable cars—and so many use the taxi. In Liberia, it is mostly sedans and until recently there were no limits on the number of passengers. A few years ago they changed the law to allow only one person in the front. With the Ebola concerns, there is now a limit of two to the back seat. Assume that it takes an average of $5/ride for the driver to break even. With 10 passengers that is only 50 cents/person. Now with a limit of 3 passengers, that break even cost becomes $1.70/person. Now many poor can no longer afford a taxi ride. Now that the outside world has abandoned the country, gas prices have risen steadily. Now a taxi ride might cost $5+/person. So few are taking the taxi, and taxi drivers are now unemployed too.
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Brain Teasers
(answers at the end of post)
I walk, but have no legs. I sleep, but never dream. You can
rock me in a cradle, but I am not a baby and I can go around
the world faster than you can cross a room. What am I?
           
Found on You Tube with some relevance to today


           
OK Then…


• • • •
Paraphernalia 4 the Brain:     
England Facts…
—The Canadian province of New Brunswick (which was part of the UK at the time) had a bloodless war with the US state of Maine in 1839
—The Queen of England, who once enjoyed extensive powers and authority over almost the whole world, and despite all her present majesty and glory, is not allowed to enter the House of Commons simply because she is not its member!

Flagstaff, AZ History…
75 YEARS AGO
—A total of 41 bucks in the first 10 days of the season breaks the previous record by 5. They are being weighed at Wid’s Sporting Goods this week.
—The new minimum wage of 30 cents per hour set in Washington D. C. affects an estimated 10,000 workers in Arizona.
           
Hair Facts…
—A human being loses an average of 40 to 100 strands of hair a day.
—In the 1800's, rum was considered excellent for cleaning hair and keeping it healthy. Brandy was believed to strengthen hair roots.

Harper’s Index…
—Chance that a US public school had at least one security camera in 1999: 1 in 5
—Chance today: 2 in 3      

Internet Facts…
—It would take 76 work days (8 hours a day) for the average person to read the Terms and Conditions they agree to in a year.
—CAPTCHA stands for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart". CAPTCHA are those graphics where one has to type in a code of crazy shaped numbers and letters that is on the screen

That’s Outrageous from Reader’s Digest…
A man illegally brought a gun into a bar, got injured in a fight, and then sued the bar for not searching him for a weapon. A convict sued a couple he had kidnapped for not helping him evade police. A mom sued Chuck E. Cheese’s, arguing that the restaurant’s video games encouraged gambling in children.

Pilgrim Fact…
Corn by Any Other Name
Thanks to Squanto, the Pilgrims were successfully able to plant corn and it became an extremely important crop for the settlers. However, they probably called it "Indian corn" or "turkey wheat." In the English of the period, the word corn meant, rye, barley, oats, or other grains.

Rules of Thumb…
SAGGING HOUSES
There is cause for concern if the ridge of a house sags more than 1/2 inch per year.
           
Unusual Fact of the Day…
Johnny Carson’s first three wives were named, in order, Joan, Joanne, and Joanna. (His first wife went by "Jody.")
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Joke-of-the-day
Q. Why did Mrs. Smokey the Bear divorce Smokey the Bear?
A. Because every time she got hot, he'd beat her with a shovel!
                                                           
Yep, It Really Happened
LUBARTOW, Poland (UPI)
 A 91-year-old Polish woman who was declared dead was found to be alive inside her body bag in a morgue's cold storage area 11 hours later. Janina Kolkiewicz's niece, Bogumila Kolkiewicz, said she called her family's physician, Dr. Wieslawa Czyz, when she found her aunt was not breathing and did not seem to have a pulse at their Lubartow home. Czyz confirmed the elder Kolkiewicz was deceased and wrote out a death certificate for the woman. However, the death certificate had to be invalidated when morgue staff found Kolkiewicz moving inside of her body bag. Kolkiewicz returned home, where her family helped her warm up with soup and pancakes, her niece said. "I was sure she was dead," Czyz told television station TVP. "I'm stunned, I don't understand what happened. Her heart had stopped beating, she was no longer breathing." Bogumila Kolkiewicz said her aunt reported feeling "normal, fine" following her ordeal. She said the older woman has no comprehension of what took place. "My aunt has no inkling of what happened since she has late-stage dementia," she told the Dziennik Wschodni newspaper. Police are investigating the incident and the Lublin District Prosecutor's Office said it has instituted criminal proceedings against the doctor.
           
Somewhat Useless Information
—Stilts were invented by French shepherds who herded sheep in marshes near the Bay of Biscay.
—In about 250 B.C., Ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes invented the screw.
—Leonardo da Vinci figured out that the rings of a tree reveal its age.
—The filaments for the first electric lamp were made of bamboo.
—The first person to use an elevator: King Louis XV, whose "flying chair" went between floors at Versailles in 1743.
—Mark Twain invented a Trivial Pursuit-like game called Mark Twain's Memory-Builder.

Somewhat Useful Information from fivethrityeight.com
State Lottery
Most of the $59.5 billion dollars that was spent on state lotteries in 2012 ended up being used as prize money. That’s a whole lot of money that we know for sure didn’t go toward public education, even though that’s where state lotteries emphasize the money goes, Most of the $59.5 billion dollars that was spent on state lotteries in 2012 ended up being used as prize money. That’s a whole lot of money that we know for sure didn’t go toward public education, even though that’s where state lotteries emphasize the money goes,
++
In the states for which we have data, $59.5 billion dollars was collected in revenue from state lottery tickets and games in 2012, which averages to $200 spent on the lottery per resident. But that figure varies considerably — it’s highest in Massachusetts, where residents spent on average $671.46 on the state lottery in 2012, and lowest in North Dakota, where the average amount spent was just $36.12.
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• • • •
Today’s Events through History
1477  1st English dated printed book "Dictes & Sayengis of the Phylosophers"
1979 - Ayatollah Khomeini charges US ambassador/embassy espionage
1982 - Duk Koo Kim dies unexpectedly from injuries sustained fight against Ray Mancini
1992 - "Malcolm X" with Denzel Washington premieres in US
1997 - Arizona Diamondbacks & Tampa Bay Devil Rays expansion draft





Birthday’s Today
Brenda Vaccaro, Brooklyn, actress (Cactus Flower) is 76
Linda Evans, actress (Big Valley) is 73
Jameson Parker, actor (American Justice, Simon & Simon) is 68
Owen Wilson, actor (Zoolander) is 47

Remembered for being born today
Sojourner Truth [Isabella Baumfree], abolitionist/feminist (1787-1883)
Dorothy Dix, pseudonym of journalist Elizabeth Gilmer (1861-1951)
James E Sullivan, founder (Amateur Athletic Union) (1862-1914)
George Gallup, public opinion pollster (Gallup Poll) (1901-1994)
Jean Paul Lemieux, Quebec painter (1904-1990)
Imogene Coca, comedienne (Your Show of Shows, Grindl) (1908-2001)
Johnny Mercer, lyricist (Moon River, Old Black Magic) (1909-1976)
Alan B Shepard Jr, Rear Adm USN/astro (Merc 3, Ap 14) (1923-1998)
• • • •



Historical Obits Today
Cab[ell] Calloway, US band leader/actor (Missourians), 1994, @86
Joseph P Kennedy, JFK/RFK/TMK father, 1969, @81
Niels Bohr, Danish physicist (atom, Nobel 1922), heart failure, 1962, @77
James Coburn, actor (Magnificent 7), heart attack, 2002, @74
Chester A. Arthur, 21st US president (1881-85), stroke, 1886, @56
Jim Jones, US pastor, leader of Jonestown Cult, suicide 1978, @47
• • • •

Brain Teasers Answers
A yo-yo
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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 contains mistakes and sadly once 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.