12-17-14

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Almanac: Week: 51 \ Day: 351 
December Averages: 44°\17°
86004 Today: H 44°\L 27°
Ave. humidity: 52%     Average Sky Cover: 80%
Wind ave:   4mph\Gusts:  22mph
Ave. High: 43° Record High:  65° (1980)
Ave. Low: 16° Record Low:  -14° (1928)

Holiday Observances Today:
Saturnalia (17-23-Ancient Roman Festival to deity Saturn)
¤ ¤
National Maple Syrup Day
Take a New Year's Resolution to Stop Smoking (TANYRSS)
Wright Brothers Day

Observances This Week:
10-17
Human Rights Week
14-20

Gluten-free Baking Week
14-28
Halcyon Days
15-31
Christmas Bird Count Week 
16-24

Posadas
17-24
Chanukah
Saturnalia

• • • • • • •
Quote of the Day



Historical Highlights for Today
1538 - Pope Paul III excommunicates England's King Henry VIII
1728 - Congregation Shearith Israel of NY purchases a lot, to build NY's 1st synagogue
1790 - Aztec calendar stone discovered in Mexico City
1821 - Kentucky abolishes debtors' prisons
1852 - 1st Hawaiian cavalry organized
1862 - General Ulysses S. Grant issues order #11, expelling Jews from Tennessee
1865 - Franz Schubert's "Unfinished Symphony" premieres
1903 - At 10:35 AM, 1st sustained motorized aircraft flight (Orville Wright)
1936 - Ventriloquist Edgar Bergen & dummy Charlie McCarthy, appear on TV
1941 - German troops led by Rommel begin retreating in North Africa
1947 - NY struck by a blizzard, resulting with 27" of snow
1965 - Astrodome opens, 1st event is Judy Garland & Supremes concert
1965 - Largest newspaper-Sunday NY Times at 946 pages (50 cents)
1983 - Provisional IRA bombs Harrods in London, killing 6 people and injuring 90
2013 - Angela Merkel is elected Chancellor of Germany for a third term
2013
- Cat Stevens, Hall & Oates, Kiss, Linda Ronstadt, and Nirvana are inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

• • • • • • •
  Birthdays Today:
How many can you identify? Answers below in Birthday’s Today


My Rambling Thoughts
Nice day for awaiting a storm. Got a little shopping done early, then watched the clouds come in. Not any too warm today for sure.
My brother sent me a note today to be sure and bring a sweater to Merida as the nights are a little chilly—I checked the internet machine and found that ‘chilly’ is different for everyone. The evening lows in Merida are in the mid 60’s.  Much warmer than our warmest day in a long time.
I think many Americans are finally realizing that anything done electronically is far from secure…including very old emails. The Sony hack has certainly opened up a lot of questions. And sadly there are no answers to any of the questions. My retirement friend, Mary, got a phone call from someone claiming to be from Microsoft and telling her that her laptop was being used to spread malware across the internet. She asked what I thought were the right questions and got good answers and let the caller onto her computer where he showed her the problems. Then he offered to ‘fix’ the problem for $199. She said no and hung up. She turned off her computer and disconnected the internet connection and is taking the computer to her tech guy today. Can’t wait to find out the answer. We both agree that it is doubtful that Microsoft would call her. Now she is worried that the guy who called and got onto her computer may have left something she doesn’t want.
Every culture has its own definition of ‘humor’. And Americans have some very twisted ideas that fall into the ‘humor’ category. One CNN correspondent just talked about the cyber-attack and Sony and the reaction of other movie studios. Her point was that Sony found humor in a plot that was to assassinate a world leader. That plot should not be funny to anyone. She felt that Sony was wrong to make this less than stellar movie and that other movie companies are not jumping up and down about the cyber-attack, not out of fear but instead that Sony should never have made a movie like this….interesting. During WWII, there were several American movies made that made fun of Hitler, but I don’t recall any that were comedies about assassinating him.
• • • • • • •
Brain Teasers
(answers at the end of post)
Can you tell me what word goes in front of all of these words?

river
belly
stone
pages 

           
Found on You Tube with some relevance to today






OK Then…


• • • • • • •
Paraphernalia 4 the Brain:     
December Holiday Facts
* Christmas Carol videos in Native Languages
Note: Yuchi (Euchee) is the language of the Yuchi people living in the southeastern United States, including eastern Tennessee, western Carolinas, northern Georgia 


*Christmas-Christian
¤ Puritan Oliver Cromwell outlawed Christmas celebrations and carols in England from 1649-1660. The only celebrations allowed were sermons and prayers.
¤ Wassail is from the Old Norse ves heill, meaning “good health.”

*Hanukkah-Jewish
According to Chanukah tradition, the candles on the candelabrum should not blow out until the end of the festival.

*Kwanza-African-American
The Symbols
The candleholder (kinara) should be placed on a table. First, the table should be covered with a piece of African cloth, preferably with the black, red and green colors. Then a straw mat (mkeka) is placed on the table. The candleholder is then placed on the mat. For every child an ear of corn (muhindi) is also placed on the mat. Even if there are no children in the family, there should be two ears of corn. This is because in African culture every adult is meant to be a social parent to all the children in the community. There is also a cup known as the cup of unity (kikombe cha umoja).

Flagstaff, AZ History…
FROM 1889
Mr. N. B. Whitaker brought from California a carload of rams for the eastern market but on account of the severe storms in New Mexico and Colorado they were unloaded here temporarily.
           
Flagstaff’s Iconic 50…
The Pluto Blink Comparator
Historically, when astronomers wanted to make discoveries in the night sky, they would use a blink comparator to look at two photographic plates. It allowed for switching from viewing one photograph to viewing the other, blinking back and forth between two images of the night sky shot at two different times. This allowed astronomers to see the objects that changed position.
And the most famous blink comparator is on display at Lowell Observatory. It discovered the planet Pluto. Clyde Tombaugh used the device to find the ninth named planet of the Solar System on Feb. 18, 1930.

Harper’s Index…
Number of attempted cyber-attack the average global company experienced in 2013: 16,856             
Rules of Thumb…
FOLLOWING BACKFIRES
If a gasoline engine backfires through the carburetor, the mixture is too lean. If it backfires through the tailpipe, it is too rich.          

Unusual Fact of the Day…
The Hudson's Bay Company (now known as "The Bay" or "HBC") is the oldest commercial corporation in North America, having been incorporated on May 2nd, 1670, by British royal charter under King Charles II.
• • • • • • •
Joke-of-the-day
If pro is the opposite of con, what's the opposite of progress?

Congress!

           
Yep, It Really Happened
A Largo, Florida man was hospitalized overnight after being shot just before midnight in what authorities said was a game between two men pointing loaded guns at each other.
Apparently there is not much to do in Largo after ten o'clock.
According to the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office, 23-year-old Tony Roe was rushed to the hospital after being shot in the chest. 
Deputies responded to the home after Roe and 19-year-old Dylan Harvey engaged in a game in which they were playing with a loaded revolver by rolling the chamber then taking turns pointing the gun at each other.
At one point when Harvey had the gun, it fired, striking Roe.
The sheriff's office is calling the shooting accidental - for now. An investigation is ongoing. 
Roe is expected to survive his injuries.  


Somewhat Useless Information
¤ In A.D. 610, while baking bread, an Italian monk decided to create a treat to motivate his distracted catechism students. He rolled out ropes of dough, twisted them to resemble hands crossed on the chest in prayer, and baked them. The monk named his snacks pretiola, Latin for "little reward." Parents who tried them referred to them as brachiola, or "little arms." When pretiola arrived in Germany, they were called bretzels.
¤ The phrase "tying the knot" came from the Swiss, who still incorporate the lucky pretzel in wedding ceremonies. Newlyweds traditionally make a wish and break the pretzel, in the same way people in other cultures break a wishbone or a glass. 
¤ Hard pretzels were "invented" in the late 1600s, when a napping apprentice in a Pennsylvania bakery accidentally overbaked his pretzels. His job was spared when the master baker took a bite out of one and loved it.
¤ Until the 1930s, pretzels were handmade, and the average worker could twist 40 a minute. In 1935, the Reading Pretzel Machinery Company introduced the first automated pretzel machine, which enabled large bakeries to make 245 pretzels per minute, or five tons in a day.
¤ Julius Sturgis opened the first commercial pretzel bakery in Lititz, Pennsylvania, in 1861. He received his original pretzel recipe as a thank you from a down-on-his-luck job seeker after Sturgis gave the man dinner.
¤ Pretzel bakers may have been the first to advertise "We deliver!" Medieval street vendors carried pretzels on a stick and sold them to the locals.          

• • • • • • •
Today’s Events through History
1875 - Violent bread riots in Montreal
1975 - Lynette Fromme sentenced to life for attempt on US President Ford's life
1978 - OPEC raises oil prices 18%
• • • • • • •
Birthday’s Today
Pope Francis [Jorge Mario Bergoglio], 1st Jesuit pope, 1st from the Americas, 1st non-European pope since the Syrian Gregory III in 741 is 78
Wes Studi, full-blood Cherokee actor (Last of the Mohicans) is 67
Barry Livingston, actor (Ernie-My 3 Sons) is 61
Bill Pullman, actor (Sommersby) is 61
Chuck Liddell, American mixed martial artist is 45
Milla Jovovich, Kiev Ukraine, actress (Return to Blue Lagoon, Chaplin) is 38

Remembered for being born today
John Greenleaf Whittier, US, poet (Snow-bound) [1807-1892@84]
Arthur Fiedler, Boston Mass, conductor (Boston Pops) [1894-1979@84]
Willard Frank Libby, Grand Valley Colorado, chemist (carbon-14 "atomic clock" - Nobel 1960) [1908-1980@71]
Richard Long, actor (Prof-Nanny & the Professor) [1927-1974@47]
William Safire, political columnist\speech writer (Nixon), 1929-2009@79]
Bob Guccione, [Robert C J Edwa], publisher (Penthouse), [1930-2010@79)
Bob Mathias, American decathlete and congressman [1935-2006@75]
George Lindsey, American actor (The Andy Griffith Show), [1935-2012@83]
• • • • • • •
Historical Obits Today
Daniel K. Inouye, Hawaii politician, 2012, @88
Jack Anderson, American journalist, 2005, @83
Dana Andrews, US actor (Laura), 1992, @83
Kelvin of Largs, [William Thomson], Br physicist (Kelvin), 1907, @83
Rex Allen, American actor, singer and songwriter, heart attack, 1999, @78 
Kim Jong-il, supreme leader of North Korea (DPRK), heart attack, 2011, @70
Simón Bolívar, S.A. revolutionary\president (Colombia), TB, 1830, @47
• • • • • • •

Brain Teasers Answers
Yellow.
Yellow River, yellow belly means a coward, Yellowstone National Park and of course the good old Yellow Pages.

• • • • • • •
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.