11-19-14

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Almanac: Week: 47 \ Day: 323 
November Averages: 51° \ 22°



Holiday Observances Today:
Discovery Day (Puerto Rico-1493-Columbis 2nd voyage)
National Holiday (Monaco)
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American Made Matters Day
Equal Opportunity Day 
Family Volunteer Day
Gettysburg Address Day
GIS Day (Geographic Information Systems) 
‘Have a Bad Day’ Day
International Men's Day
National Day of Play
National Educational Support Professionals Day
Rocky and Bullwinkle Day-premier 1959
Women's Entrepreneurship Day
World Toilet 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 

• • • •
Quote of the Day



Historical Highlights for Today
1620 - Mayflower reaches Cape Cod & explores the coast
1805 - Lewis & Clark reach Pacific Ocean, first European Americans to cross continent
1816 - Warsaw University is established
1824 - Storm causes St Petersburg flood, killing 10,000
1850 - Alfred Tennyson becomes British Poet Laureate, succeeding Wm Wordsworth
1863 - Lincoln delivers his Gettysburg address
1903 - Carrie Nation attempts to address Senate
1919 - US Senate rejects (55-39) Treaty of Versailles & League of Nations
1933 - Women allowed to vote in Spain (helps right wing)
1950 - US General Eisenhower becomes supreme commander of NATO-Europe
1959 - Ford cancels Edsel
1962 - Fidel Castro accepts removal of Soviet weapons
1965 - Kellogg's Pop Tarts pastries created
1972 - Leader of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) Seán MacStiofáin arrested in Dublin
1975 - "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" starring Jack Nicholson released
1980 - CBS TV bans Calvin Klein's jean ad featuring Brooke Shields  
• • • •
  Birthdays Today:
How many can you identify? Answers below in Birthday’s Today



My Rambling Thoughts
Another very cold morning…only 10° when I got up. Brrr. Didn’t really warm up very much and the breeze kept things unpleasant to be outside.
My mother was a ‘Hoover’ mom. She strayed from Hoover once with a Kirby, but returned as soon as possible. She bought a top of the line green Hoover back in the 1980’s. When she moved from her independent living to her care facility I got the Hoover. I’ve used it since then. I finally broke down and got a Shark Rotator. I was amazed at how much dirt it picked up even after using the Hoover the day before. I’m keeping the Hoover for the upstairs cleaning, but am happy with the Shark downstairs. Best part, no bags with an easy to empty container and lots of attachments.
The Keystone Pipeline is back in the news. While I do have investments in gas/oil, I don’t see how this Pipeline is going to help Americans. Interestingly, the pipeline must cross several native reservations. The Rosebud Sioux council has passed a resolution that the pipeline should not cross their land, as proposed, and if it does, it will be seen as ‘an act of war’ against the Rosebud people. Not sure what that will mean, but it is certainly an interesting development in the ongoing debate. Certainly something worth following.
• • • •
Brain Teasers
(answers at the end of post)
What word/phrase is described by the following rebus?

Julio Iglesias
Lana Turner
Dinah Shore
John Wayne
Robert Redford
John Ireland
Elizabeth Taylor
John Travolta
Barbara Eden
Jack Nicholson        


Found on You Tube with some relevance to today



           
OK Then…

• • • •
Paraphernalia 4 the Brain:     
England Facts…
—The sun sets on 24 December at 3.55pm in the UK, and rises the following morning at 8.05am.
—Hoover vacuum cleaners were so popular in the UK that many people now refer to vacuuming as hoovering.

Flagstaff, AZ History…
75 YEARS AGO
This week the Mars movies taken by Dr. Earl Slipher during his recent rip to South Africa to study the Canals of Mars were shown to the students of the Flagstaff State Teachers College in the library of the Observatory. Dr. Slipher himself has been detained in New York City by an illness contracted while in Africa.
           
Hair Facts…
—A man's beard grows fastest when he anticipates sex.
—Most of us have microscopic worm like mites named Demodex that live in our eyelashes and have claws and a mouth.

Harper’s Index…
—Percentage of Black public high school studnets who sa they carry a weapon: 14
—Of white high school students: 17       
Internet Facts…
—The cat featured in the popular internet meme "grumpy cat" has a permanently grumpy face is due to feline dwarfism. Her real name is Tardar Sauce.
—There is a county in California called Yolo.

That’s Outrageous from Reader’s Digest…
Our responses are getting bigger and bigger to smaller and smaller threats. Did you ever flee from a spinning barbershop pole, fearing for life and limb? No? Well, the town of Thornton, Colorado, just banned them. One town official explained to the Denver Post, “We don’t want signs to be distracting, especially to motorists.”
 

Pilgrim Fact…
Dinner Time
It’s interesting to note that in a Pilgrim household, while the adults sat down to dinner, the children waited on them. We are sure parents would love to go back to that arrangement.

Rules of Thumb…
MAKING A PERFECT MERINGUE
When beating egg whites, the point where you have the meringue perfect is when you just lose the shine from the egg whites.
           
Unusual Fact of the Day…
Prohibition made it a crime to produce, sell, or transport alcoholic beverages. But anyone who already had bottles of old liquor stocked away was free to consume it at his or her leisure within the confines of their home.
• • • •
Joke-of-the-day
Knock Knock
Who's there?
Alex
Alex who?
Alexplain later now let me in.     


Yep, It Really Happened
Here is a fun consequence of the recent trend toward conservatism in this country; new and more stringent anti-abortion laws are being passed, many of which advance the "personhood" rights of fertilized eggs, embryos and fetuses. 
You might be thinking, 'Good! Way too many women are getting abortions to the point where it has become a form of birth control,' and I would agree with you, but an interesting side-effect of this legal interpretation is that it is being used to deprive some women of their human, constitutionally protected rights. 
Such laws are increasingly being used as the basis for actually arresting women who have no intention of ending a pregnancy and for preventing women from making their own decisions about how they will give birth.

Here are a few illustrative anecdotes:
1. In Iowa, a pregnant woman who fell down a flight of stairs was reported to the police after seeking help at a hospital. She was arrested for "attempted fetal homicide."
2. In Utah, a woman gave birth to twins; one was stillborn. Health care providers believed that the stillbirth was the result of the woman's decision to delay having a cesarean. She was arrested on charges of fetal homicide.
3. In another case, a woman who had been in labor at home was picked up by a sheriff, strapped down in the back of an ambulance, taken to a hospital, and forced to have a cesarean she did not want. When this mother later protested what had happened, a court concluded that the woman's personal constitutional rights 'clearly did not outweigh the interests of the State of Florida in preserving the life of the unborn child.'
And it's getting more and more common. Last year, The New York Times published a peer-reviewed study documenting 413 arrests or equivalent actions depriving pregnant women of their physical liberty. 
Even in these few examples you might notice a trend; it is the health care providers who frequently involve the law in what, under normal circumstances, should be a personal vent. 


Somewhat Useless Information
The only McDonald’s in the world with no golden arches
All those golden ‘Ms’ of the McDonalds’ arches remind us of the juicy burgers, greasy fries, and gallons of soda pop.
However, there’s a place in the world that the ‘M’ of the restaurant is blue and this place is in Sedona, Arizona.
The explanation is that the arches are blue so that they don’t mess with the beautiful landscape surrounding the city.
+++
To what depth can an emperor penguin dive?
Emperor penguins are the largest of all penguins being about 115 centimeters tall ana they live in the frigid surrounding waters on the Antarctic ice.
Did you know that emperor penguins can dive deeper than any other bird, and deeper than the operational range of most naval submarines?
They can dive to a depth of 1,850 ft or 565 meters!
           
Somewhat Useful Information from fivethrityeight.com
—One company has transformed the Chinese holiday “Singles Day” from a small celebration thought to have been started by university students in the early 1990s into the biggest online sales days of the year: Alibaba
1.35 billion people, 11 percent of women and 20 percent of men in China were single at age 30, according to the country’s 2010 census
—Biggest country of bachelors and bachelorettes is Denmark, where 24 percent of the population age 20 and older is single and living alone. By contrast, that figure is just 4 percent in Turkey. The US is at 13.4, between Bulgaria and Hungary.
• • • •

Today’s Events through History
1794 - Jay Treaty, first US extradition treaty, signed with Great Britain
1879 - Natl Association of Trotting Horse Breeders determines what "is" a trotter
1893 - 1st newspaper color supplement (NY World)
1911 - NY receives first Marconi wireless transmission from Italy
1916 - Samuel Goldwyn and Edgar Selwyn establish Goldwyn Pictures
1947 - 200" mirror arrives at Mt Palomar
1976 - Patty Hearst is freed on $15 million bail
1979 - Chuck Berry released from prison on income tax evasion
1985 - US President Reagan & Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev meet for 1st time
1995 - CNET launches www.shareware.com
Birthday’s Today
Alan Young, England, actor (Wilbur Post-Mr Ed) is 94
Larry King, radio/TV host is 81
Allison Janney, Tony and Emmy winning actress is 55
Meg Ryan, actress, is  53
Jodie Foster, actress, director is 52

Remembered for being born today
Charles I, King of England; executed by Parliament (1600-1649)
James A Garfield, Ohio, Gen/20th Pres (1831-1881)
Clifton Webb [Webb Parmelee Hollenbeck], actor (Laura) (1889-1966)
Tommy Dorsey, orchestra leader (1905-1956)
Indira Gandhi, Indian PM (1917-1984)
Gene Tierney, Brooklyn, actress (Laura) (1920-1991)
Roy Campanella, Dodger catcher (1921-1993)
Jeane J Kirkpatrick, US ambassador to UN (1926-2006)
• • • •
Historical Obits Today
Dick Wilson, actor (Mr. Wipple-Charmin), 2007, @91
William Seymour Tyler, American educator and historian, 1897, @86
Michael Hastings, British playwright, 2011, @74
Emma Lazarus, US poet ("Give us your tired & poor"), lymphoma, 1887, @38
Joe Hill, Labor leader/songwriter, executed, 1915, @36
Christine Onassis, heiress, heart failure, 1988, @37
Franz Schubert, Austrian composer (Die schöne Müllerin), typhoid, 1828, @31  
• • • •

Brain Teasers Answers
It's written in the stars (using each star's last name, the initials spell "itswritten").
• • • •
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.