12-19-14

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Almanac: Week: 51 \ Day:  353
December Averages: 44°\17°
86004 Today: H 35°\L 29°
Ave. humidity: 88%     Average Sky Cover: 50%
Wind ave:   6mph\Gusts:  10mph
Ave. High: 43° Record High:  62° (1958)
Ave. Low: 16° Record Low:  -14° (1924)

Holiday Observances Today:
Look for an Evergreen Day
Oatmeal Muffin Day
UN Day For South-South Cooperation
Underdog Day
Observances This 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
1732 - Benjamin Franklin under the name Richard Saunders begins publication of "Poor Richard's Almanack"
1776 - Thomas Paine published his 1st "American Crisis" essay, in which he wrote, "These are the times that try men's souls"
1777 - Washington settles his troops at Valley Forge, Pa for winter
1823 - Georgia passes 1st US state birth registration law in US
1854 - Allen Wilson of Conn patents sewing machine to sew curving seams
1903 - Williamsburg suspension bridge opens between Brooklyn & Manhattan
1910 - 1st US city ordinance requiring white & black residential areas (Balt)
1917 - 1st NHL game played on artificial ice (Toronto)
1919 - American Meteorological Society found
1948 - 8th largest snowfall in NYC history (15.3")
1971 - Stanley Kubrick's X-rated "A Clockwork Orange" premieres
1974 - Nelson A Rockefeller sworn-in as 41st VP
1975 - John Paul Stevens becomes a US Supreme Court Justice
1984 - China PR Premier Zhao Ziyang & British PM Margaret Thatcher sign Hong Kong Treaty
1986 - USSR frees dissident Andrei Sakharov from internal exile
1998 - Lewinsky scandal: US House forwards articles of impeachment to Senate.
2007 - The Lakotah people, a Native American tribe, proclaim independence and withdraw all their treaties with the United States. 
• • • • • • •
  Birthdays Today:
How many can you identify? Answers below in Birthday’s Today


My Rambling Thoughts
We had lunch at our favorite local Bistro, Josephines. A great lunch of carrot soup with hot spices, chicken-lime sandwich, and Italian donuts. Pretty awesome. Both the ladies liked my gift—a local Flagstaff calendar, a cute spoon holder that hooks onto the pot, and a highly scented candle. I got a very cool handmade bookmark with a blue stone and a humidifier that is a stone in a bowl of water…no noise. I’ll see if it really works.
Mary is headed to Phoenix tomorrow and will be down there until the 2nd of Jan. She and Mike are taking a 2 week run around sourthern AZ. Cheryl is leaving Monday for California and will be back the 28th. We are all excited about spending Christmas with family.
• • • • • • •
Brain Teasers
(answers at the end of post)
What word has the letters "spb", next to each other, in that order?
           
Found on You Tube with some relevance to today



           
OK Then…


• • • • • • •
Paraphernalia 4 the Brain:     
December Holiday Facts
* Christmas Carol videos in Native Languages


*Christmas-Christian
¤ President Teddy Roosevelt, an environmentalist, banned Christmas trees from the White House in 1912.
¤ It is estimated that the single “White Christmas” by Irving Berlin is the bestselling single of all time, with over 100 million sales worldwide.

*Hanukkah-Jewish
Gifts are also exchanged during the festival of Hanukkah. This tradition is probably adapted from the Christmas tradition of gift giving.

*Kwanza-African-American
The Celebration
There is a feast, usually held on December 31. It is called the Karumu. At the feast there is dancing, story telling a talk about Kwanzaa and plenty of fun. At the feast everyone drinks from the Cup of Unity. Gifts may also be exchanged. Although gifts are not necessary to the celebration, they are often given, mainly to children. They should include a book and heritage symbol. The most treasured gifts are the homemade crafts. The food that is eaten at the feast should be authentic African recipes, no hot dogs and hamburgers!

Flagstaff, AZ History…
100 YEARS AGO
County Treasurer W. H. Swartz received the sum of $33,164.07 on Monday from the government, the amount being Coconino County's share of the National Forest receipts for the year ending June 30, 1914.
           
Flagstaff’s Iconic 50…
The Apollo lunar rover prototype
In the 1960s and 1970s, northern Arizona likely earned a de facto Emmy for its part in the Space Race. Its volcanic terrain and geologic composition put it near the center of the lunar training program for the United States Apollo Missions. Apollo astronauts, including Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, imagined the northern Arizona landscape as the Moon. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) established their Astrogeology Science Center in Flagstaff, and the area became a blueprint for the Apollo Missions. Special Collections helps patrons re-imagine the glory days of American space exploration.

Harper’s Index…
Chance that a US newspaper has a statehouse reporter: 1 in 3
           
Rules of Thumb…
CHOOSING RHUBARB
With rhubarb, the redder the stalk, the sweeter the pie.        

Unusual Fact of the Day…
"Sternutation" is a fancy word for the act of sneezing.
• • • • • • •
Joke-of-the-day
Did you hear about the elephant who was always left out of things and thus felt irrelephant?
           
Yep, It Really Happened
SZCZECIN, Poland (UPI) - A Polish Rubik's cube master beat his own record by solving a puzzle in 21.17 seconds while blindfolded. Marcin Kowalczyk, who held the previous record for blindfolded Rubik's cube solving with a 23.19-second finish, memorized the cube and completed the puzzle in 21.17 seconds at a Speed Cube competition in Szczecin, Poland. Kowalczyk, a veteran of 33 official Rubik's cube competitions, has a list of accomplishments to his name that also include memorizing the patterns of 41 Rubik's cubes and donning a blindfold to solve them in a total 54 minutes, 14 seconds.
           
Somewhat Useless Information
Did you know that newborn babies cry without tears until they are several weeks old?
According to pediatrician Tanya Remer Altmann, most babies start crying tears around 2 weeks of age, but some can take longer.
Quite rarely, babies are born without the gland that makes tears and in this case babies need to see a pediatric ophthalmologist.
+++
Where did waiters poison customers’ drinks back in 1900s?
There’s a place in the world where one hundred waiters were taken into custody for poisoning the drinks of people who tipped them poorly.
This place is Chicago and chemical analysis showed that it contained antimony potassium tartrate, well known emetic drug that besides vomiting can cause headaches, dizziness, depression and can be lethal in large quantities.
• • • • • • •
Today’s Events through History
1688 - King James II's wife & son flee to France
1891 - 1st Negro Catholic priest ordained in US, Charles Uncles, Baltimore
1910 - Rayon 1st commercially produced, Marcus Hook, Penn
1918 - Robert Ripley began his "Believe It or Not" column (NY Globe)
1955 - Carl Perkins records "Blue Suede Shoes"
1957 - "Music Man" opens at Majestic Theater NYC for 1375 performances
1983 - Original FIFA World Cup trophy, the Jules Rimet Trophy, is stolen from the headquarters of the Brazilian Football Confederation in Rio de Janeiro.
• • • • • • •
Birthday’s Today
Little Jimmy Dickens, American country singer is 93
Cicely Tyson, actress (Roots, Miss Jane Pittman) is 81
Barbara Bostock, American actress is 79
Tim Reid, actor and comedian (Venus Flytrap-WKRP) is 70
Marianne Faithfull, singer (As Tears Go By) is 68
Criss Angel [Christopher Nicholas Sarantakos], magician\illusionist is 47
Alyssa Milano, TV actress is 42
Jake Plummer, quarterback (Cardinals\Broncos) is 40
Jake Gyllenhaal, actor (Jarhead) is 34
• • •
Remembered for being born today
Maria L Sanford, pioneer educator (PTA) [1836-1920@83]
Ralph Richardson, actor (Dr Zhivago), [1902-1983@81]
Leonid I Brezhnev, Ukraine, 1st Secretary of USSR [1906-1982@75]
Edith Piaf, [E Giovanna Gassion], chanteuse, [1915-1963@45)
David Susskind, TV host (David Susskind Show) [1920-1987@66]
Phil Ochs, anti-war folk singer (Joe Hill, War is Over) [1940-1976@35]
Jeanne Kirkpatrick, US ambassador to UN [1926-2006@79]
• • • • • • •
Historical Obits Today
Robert Bork, American legal scholar/jurist, 2012, @85
Desmond Llewelyn, Welsh actor (Q in Bond movies), 1999, @85
Robert A. Millikan, American physicist (Nobel 1923), 1953, @85
Norman Thomas, founder Socialist Party, 1968,@84
Marcello Mastroiani, actor (8½), cancer, 1996, @72
Hope Lange, American actress, colitis, 2003, @70
James McGill, Scottish-Canadian businessman and philanthropist, 1813, @69
Alois Alzheimer, psychiatrist/neurologist (Alzheimer), rheumatic fever, 1915, @51
Emily Jane Bronte, English novelist, TB, 1848, @30
• • • • • • •

Brain Teasers Answers
Raspberries or raspberry
• • • • • • •
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.