11-25-14

FYI: Any blue text is a link. Click to check it out!
Almanac: Week: 48 \ Day:  329
November Averages: 51° \ 22°



Holiday Observances Today:
Independence Day (Suriname)
National Day (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
¤ ¤
Blase´Day
International Day For the Elimination of Violence Against Women Day
International Hat Day
National Flossing Day
National Parfait Day 
Shopping Reminder Day

Observances This Week:
21-27 
National Farm-City Week: 
24-30

GERD Awareness Week; National Bible Week; National Game & Puzzle Week; Better Conversation Week; Church/State Separation Week; National Family Week
• • • •
Quote of the Day



Historical Highlights for Today
1491 - The siege of Granada, last Moorish stronghold in Spain, begins
1667 - A deadly earthquake rocks Shemakha, in the Caucasus, killing 80,000 people
1715 – 1st English patent granted to an American, for processing corn
1792 - Farmer's Almanac 1st published
1817 - 1st sword swallower in US performs (NYC)
1841 - 35 survivors of the mutiny on the slave ship Amistad return to Africa
1864 - Confederate plot to burn NYC, fails
1867 - Alfred Nobel patents dynamite
1876 - Retaliation for defeat at Battle of the Little Bighorn, Army troops sack Chief Dull Knife's sleeping Cheyenne village at the headwaters of the Powder River
1894 - Group of 19 Hopi "hostiles" are placed under arrest by the army for interfering with "friendly" Hopi Indian activities
1913 -  Irish Volunteers founded in Dublin to "secure the rights and liberties common to all the people of Ireland"
1920 - 1st Thanksgiving Parade (Phila)
1930 - 690 earthquake shocks recorded in 1 day (Ito, Japan)
1937 - World's Fair of Paris closes (31.2 million visitors)
1940 - Woody Woodpecker debuts with release of Walter Lantz's "Knock Knock"
1955 - Race segregation forbidden on trains & buses between US states
1957 - President Dwight Eisenhower suffers a mild stroke, impairing his speech
1963 - JFK laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery
1974 - Irish Republican Army is outlawed in Britain following deaths of 21
1986 - Iran-Contra affair erupts, President Reagan reveals secret arm deal
1990 - Lech Walesa wins in Poland's first popular election
• • • •
  Birthdays Today:
How many can you identify? Answers below in Birthday’s Today


My Rambling Thoughts
Yesterday was very chilly with all the wind. Today should have been better, according to the weatherman, but it was still pretty windy and none too warm.
I did head out today, for a quick trip. When I moved to Flag I went to Kohl’s on Black Friday to get a Christmas tree. It was nice, but too big for my living room without stowing stuff somewhere else. Last year I didn’t even set it up…just too much work. So I decided it was time to get a smaller tree. I’ve been looking around, which is not a problem, since everyone had their Christmas stuff out before Halloween. Turns out, there are very few trees that are pre-lit, look nice, and are less than 6-1/2’ high. I found one today, at Big Lots no less. It is only 5-1/2’ high and much narrower than the one I had. Good deal. I came home, put the old tree in 3 trash bags along with the cheap vacuum I had for upstairs and  headed for Savers—a division of Big Brothers/Big Sisters that takes donations and resells them. The guy at the drop-off door was very nice, and commented on what good shape both items were in. So now someone else can have a clean house and someone can have a big tree. Cool! And I can have a decorated house without having to stow things away.
CNN is saying that the Grand Jury has reached a decision in the Ferguson case. Media has done so much hype about this case and the aftermath and lately the guessing about the decision, I will be glad when it is over. I sure hope that those involved can take the decision, and move forward through the judicial process without causing harm or injury. There sure is a lot of frustration with some of the people. The father of the victim has pleaded for days that there be peace. I know Missouri is the ‘show me state’—but how can anyone believe that the best idea is to release the Grand Jury results after dark…knowing the result hours before the sun set?
• • • •
Brain Teasers
(answers at the end of post)
Thirty men with ladies, two, 
Standing around with nothing to do, 
Dressed in formal, black and white, 
Yet when they move it begins a fight. 

What happened?     


Found on You Tube with some relevance to today




           
OK Then…


• • • •
Paraphernalia 4 the Brain:     
Actor Facts…
¤ Keanu Reeves has a private cancer foundation to help children’s hospitals and cancer research, but he does not attach his name to it. He also has spent over 5 million dollars to help his sister in her fight against leukemia.
¤ Keanu Reeves gave $75 million of his matrix sequels paycheck to the film’s SFX team and bought the entire stunt crew Harley Davidson motorcycles.

Flagstaff, AZ History…
NOTE: All these Flagstaff posts are from the local newspaper at the time of the event. I enjoy the way news used to be reported in our small town. When I first started coming to Flag, back in the early 1970’s the paper published all the names of people who had been admitted to or released from the local hospital. Real small town.
100 YEARS AGO
¤ Sharp Fellows big outfit is now being hauled though town and our new reservoir is ready to be filled.
¤ Nick Baca is wearing his hand in a sling, the result of an accident on Wednesday at the Flagstaff Lumber Mill.
¤ Frank Smith came in from the mountains with a Cactus Buck had grown a curious set of antlers. It is partly grown into points and partly clustered about this head. It's been sent to Los Angeles for be mounted.
¤ Wanted: 2 head of horses to winter at $4 a head. Address: C. C. Calloway, Camp Verde.
           
Harper’s Index…
Number of firefighters required to free an American student trapped in a 32-ton sculpture of a vagina in German: 33        

Pilgrim Fact…
Old Comers
Even though we know the Plymouth settlers now as Pilgrims, they were not called that. At first they were called “Old Comers.” This terminology changed after a manuscript written by William Bradford, Plymouth Colony governor, was discovered. There, he called his fellow settlers who left Holland “saints” and “pilgrimes.” Two hundred years later, at a bicentennial celebration of the colony’s founding, orator Daniel Webster referred to them as “Pilgrim Fathers.” The term stuck.

Rules of Thumb…
RULES OF ROMANCE
To stay married, patch up your arguments before you go to bed.    

Unusual Fact of the Day…
Though dragonflies possess 6 legs like any other insect, they cannot walk.
• • • •
Joke-of-the-day
A panda bear walks into a restaurant and orders a meal. After eating he pulls out a gun, shoots the place to the ground, and runs away.
Quickly the bartender runs after him yelling, "HEY YOU CAN'T DO THIS!!!"
The panda turns around and yells "Yes I can. Look me up in the encyclopedia!"
So, the bartender looks up "Panda" in the encyclopedia, and it reads "Panda: increasingly rare species of bear that can be found in the eastern part of Asia. It eats shoots and leaves.”

Yep, It Really Happened
I have heard of worse reasons to eat a species to extinction. Suffering from stress? Not feeling sexy? High in the Andean mountains of Peru, some locals believe putting frogs in a blender is the answer.
Unfortunately, there is no scientific evidence confirming any medicinal benefits from frog juice. And the frogs that Peruvians use are from the Telmatobius culeus species, a water frog from remote Lake Titicaca that is listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Entire frogs are the main ingredient in a juice blend some people in Peru and Bolivia believe can cure asthma, bronchitis, sluggishness and a low sex drive. To make the mix at her food stand in Peru's capital, vendor Maria Elena Cruz grabs a frog from a small aquarium, and whacks its head on the countertop until it's dead.
Then she peels off its skin and drops the frog into a blender with carrots, the Peruvian maca root and honey.
The juice comes out light green in color. Cruz serves it in glasses to her customers.
"Frog juice is good for anemia, bronchitis, bones, the brain, fatigue, stress and it is mostly children, adults, persons with anemia, respiratory issues and sometimes tuberculosis" who come to her stand, Cruz claims.
Customer Cecilia Cahuana, 35, believes this.
"I always come here to drink frog juice because it's good for the children, for anemia, bronchitis and also for older persons, it's extremely good," she said.
Dr. Tomy Villanueva, dean of the Medical College of Lima, says there is "no scientific evidence" that frog juice is a cure for anything, even though it has a place in Andean culture.       


Somewhat Useless Information
¤ Wishing on eyelashes was common folklore in the mid-19th century. A fallen eyelash is placed on the back of the hand before the wisher throws it over their shoulder. If the eyelash gets stuck, the wish does not come true. A Cornish schoolgirl version dictates that the eyelash should be placed on the tip of the nose; if she blows it off, she'll get her wish.
¤ Ptolemy, Greco-Egyptian writer and astronomer, believed that shooting stars were a sign that the gods were looking down and listening to wishes.
¤ The origin of society's fascination with the number sequence 11:11 is murky at best, but it's safe to say it has to do with its satisfying symmetry. Numerologists like Uri Geller believe that the number follows people and occurs too frequently to be coincidence.
¤ In the mid-19th century, many British children believed that if you crossed paths with a white horse, you could make a wish. Others would count the white horses they saw and would make a wish after reaching a hundred.
¤ Young girls commonly used dandelions in the 1800s for romantic and oracular purposes. It was believed that if you blew on a dandelion and all the seeds flew away, your loved one returned the feelings; if any seeds remained, they might have reservations or no feelings at all. 
¤ According to European folklore, wishing wells were homes for deities, or gifts from gods. Water is a valuable commodity; many early European tribes treated wells as shrines and often placed small statues of gods nearby. People would come to the wells to pray and ask for assistance from the gods.       

• • • •
Today’s Events through History
1834 - Delmonico's, one of NY's finest restaurants, provides a meal of soup, steak, coffee & half a pie for 12 cents
1839 - A cyclone slams India with high winds and a 40 foot storm surge, destroyss port city of Coringa (never to be entirely rebuilt again), sweeps inland, taking with it 20,000 ships,estimated 300,000 deaths result from the disaster
1867 - US Congress looks into "impeachment" of President Andrew Johnson
1971 - Leader of the British Labour Party Harold Wilson proposes that Britain should work towards a withdrawal from Northern Ireland, with the consent of Protestants, after a period of 15 years; as part of the proposal the Republic of Ireland would rejoin the British Commonwealth
1975 - A loyalist gang nicknamed the "Shankill Butchers" undertakes its first "cut-throat killing"; the gang was named for its late-night kidnapping, torture and murder (by throat slashing) of random Catholic civilians in Belfast
Birthday’s Today
Percy Sledge, soul singer (When A Man Loves A Woman) is 74
Joe Gibbs, football coach (Washington Redskins) is 74
Ben Stein, writer, lawyer, actor is 70
John Larroquette, actor (Dan Fielding-Night Court) is 67
Amy Grant, gospel/rock singer (Glory of Love, Baby Baby) is 54
Dougray Scott, Scottish television and film actor is 49
Christina Applegate, actress (Kelly-Married With Children) is 43
Barbara and Jenna Bush, twin daughters of George W. Bush are 33

Remembered for being born today
Andrew Carnegie, Scottish/American industrialist/philanthropist(1835-1919)
Carrie Nation, temperance advocate (1846-1911)
Pope John XXIII [Angelo Roncalli], Bergamo Italy, 261st pope (1881-1963)
Rudolf Höß (Höss), commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp (1901-1947)
"Joltin'" Joe DiMaggio, Yankee Clipper (56 game hitting streak), (1914-1999)
Ricardo Montalban, Mexican actor (Fantasy Island) (1920-2009)
Rene Enriquez, actor (Ray Calletano-Hill Street Blues) (1933-1990)
John F. Kennedy Jr, lawyer, magazine publisher (George) (1960-1999)
• • • •
Historical Obits Today
Upton Beall Sinclair, US author (Jungle), 1968, @90
Tom Wicker, American journalist and author, 2011, @85
Jack Albertson, actor (Chico & the Man), cancer, 1981, @74
Isaac Watts, British hymn writer (Joy to the World), 1748, @74
Luther "Bill" Robinson, "Bojangles" famed tap dancer, heart failure, 1949, @71
[Sithu] U Thant, UN Sec-General (1961-72), cancer, 1974, @65
Gaston Chevrolet, French-born American race car driver\automobile pioneer, racing accident, 1920, @28
• • • •
Brain Teasers Answers
A chess match
• • • •
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…§


No comments:

Post a Comment

Followers

Total Pageviews

Blog Archive

About Me

My photo
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.