1-8-13

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Flagstaff Almanac:

Week: 01 / Day: 008   

Today: L 16°…H 52°… Ave. humidity: 37%

Wind: ave:   8mph; Gusts:  18mph  

Average Low: 16° Record Low:  -12° (1989)

Average High: 42° Record High:  62° (2002)

Quote of the Day

 

Today’s Historical Highlights

1656 - Oldest surviving commercial newspaper begins (Haarlem, Netherlands)

1790 - 1st US President George Washington delivers 1st state of the union address 

1806 - Lewis & Clark find skeleton of 105' blue whale in Oregon

1815 - Battle of New Orleans-War of 1812 ended 12/24/1814 but nobody knew

1856 - Dr John A Veatch discovers borax, Tuscan Springs, Calif

1877 - Crazy Horse and his warriors fight their last battle @ Wolf Mountain (Montana Territory).

1918 - Mississippi becomes 1st state to ratify 18th amendment (prohibition)

1964 - President Lyndon B Johnson declares "War on Poverty"

1974 - Loch Ness Monster photographed

2002 - President George W. Bush signs into law the No Child Left Behind Act.

2011 - Attempted assassination of Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords kills 6 and wounds 13

♫  Today’s Birthdays: ♫   

How many can you identify? Answers in Today’s Birthdays

 

My Free Rambling Thoughts   

What a great day…with fairly warm weather. Got to spend some time outside. A quick beautiful sunrise, followed by some overcast skies, the finally warmth and only a few high clouds. Enjoying it to the fullest.

 

So Dennis Rodman is back in N. Korea sponsoring a basketball game. Saw an interview on CNN. He continues to be difficult to understand. Many are saying it’s not early diplomacy, but just a way for these retired players to make a fistful of money. Whatever it is that led to this game, it certainly is not appearing to improve either Rodman’s image or N. Korea’s image, other than their leader likes basketball.

Game  Center (answers at the end of post)

Brain Teasers

The following clues each form a unique word by themselves, add them together to get the name of a country. Example: blue and yellow mixed + solid ground = ? Answer: green + land = Greenland 

1. frozen water + solid ground of the earth = ? 2. used to refer to oneself + competed in a race = ? 3. anger or wrath + to lower an airplane from sky to ground = ? 4. a relaxing resort + not out = ? bonus: never used + enthusiastic devotion + in addition to = ? ?

Lifestyle  Substance:     

Found on You Tube with some relevance to today

• 10 Questions for Stephen Hawking

• Judy Garland & Terry-Thomas - Funny London Story

• Little Anthony & The Imperials - Going Out Of My Head

• Return of the Ghost Bird

• Soupy Sales with Pookie and White Fang

• Voyageurs National Park

Odd Lawsuits…

PETA Problems

In 2001, two PETA members hit a deer on the highway while driving home from an anti-hunt protest. The members wrote a letter to the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife, suing for damages and injuries. In their letter, they said that the Division was responsible for their damages "as a result of their deer management program, which includes, in certain circumstances, an affirmative effort to increase deer population."

Suggested New State Mottos:

Alaska: 11,623 Eskimos Can't Be Wrong!

Something to Ponder in your free time…

• If a word is misspelled in the dictionary, how would we ever know?

• If Webster wrote the first dictionary, where did he find the words?

OK Then…

 

Harper’s Index 

Percentage of all coronary-artery bypasses in the United States that are performed on whites: 97

Unusual Fact of the Day

Some species of birds, like the robin, can only lay one egg a day. To ensure that all the eggs in the clutch hatch around the same time, the female will let the earlier eggs "cool" in the nest between layings so as to let the "fresher" eggs catch up.

Joke-of-the-day

A man was walking along a California beach and stumbled across an old lamp. He picked it up and rubbed it and out popped a genie. The genie said, "OK. You released me from the lamp, blah blah blah. This is the fourth time this month and I'm getting a little sick of these wishes so you can forget about three. You only get one wish!" The man sat and thought about it for a while and said, "I've always wanted to go to Hawaii but I'm scared to fly and I get very seasick. Could you build me a bridge to Hawaii so I can drive over there to visit?" The genie laughed and said, "That's impossible. Think of the logistics of that! How would the supports ever reach the bottom of the Pacific? Think of how much concrete...how much steel!! No, think of another wish." The man said OK and tried to think of a really good wish. Finally, he said, "I've been married and divorced four times. My wives always said that I don't care and that I'm insensitive. So, I wish that I could understand women....know how they feel inside and what they're thinking when they give me the silent treatment....know why they're crying, know what they really want when they say 'nothing'....know how to make them truly happy...."

The genie asked, "Do you want that bridge two lanes or four?"  

Rules of Thumb:   

Easy shortcuts to make an ‘educated’ guess

CATCHING BANK ROBBERS

Bank robbers when escaping by car will more often turn right than left.    

Yeah, It Really Happened

ARLINGTON, Texas - A study of GPS satellite orbits suggests the Earth is heavier than thought, perhaps due to a halo of dark matter, a U.S. researcher says. Dark matter is thought to make up about 80 per cent of the universe's matter, but scientists have been unable to determine much else about it, including its presence in the solar system. In 2009, researchers at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Princeton, N.J., theorized that observed changes in the speeds of space probes as they flew past the Earth could be explained by dark matter bound by Earth's gravity. Now Ben Harris at the University of Texas at Arlington used orbiting satellites to see if dark matter might be affecting them. Using data on the satellites in the U.S. GPS, Russian GLONASS and European Galileo groups, he calculated Earth's mass as "felt" by each satellite. "The nice thing about GPS satellites is that we know their orbits really, really well," he told NewScientist.com. His research yielded an average figure for the weight of the Earth between 0.005 and 0.008 per cent greater than the value for Earth's mass established by the International Astronomical Union. This could be explained in there were a disk of otherwise undetectable dark matter around the Earth's equator 120 miles thick and 45,000 miles wide, Harris said.  

Somewhat Useless Information   

•  
Satoshi Tajiri, the creator of Pokemon and currently the CEO of the Game Freak had a great interest in studying and collecting insects and he earned the nickname “Mr. Bug” by his friends. But what is the remarkable thing about him? In 1999, in an interview with Time Magazine, Tajiri said that he sleeps for 12 hours, and then works on his games for 24 hours straight. Why does he follow such an irregular schedule? He said that the irregular schedule helps him think of new ideas for games.

• After the shooting of President James A. Garfield by Charles J. Guiteau in Washington in 1881, one bullet remained lodged in his body, but doctors could not find it. Garfield used to suffer a lot for about two months before his death. In the meantime, while trying to relieve the sick man from the heat of a Washington summer, engineers invented an early version of the modern air conditioner.  Moreover, Alexander Graham Bell devised a metal detector so as to find the bullet inside Garfield.

• Eyebrows are a very special part of our face which plays an important role in expressing ourselves. However, they also have a protective role. So why do we have eyebrows? The main reason is that eyebrows help us to keep moisture out of our eyes when we sweat or walk around the rain. If we didn’t have eyebrows, our ability to see would be limited. Moreover, diverting the sweat away is also beneficial as the salt in sweat irritates the eyes, making them sting a little.

Calendar Information        

Happening This Week:

5-11

Home Office Safety and Security Week
National Folic Acid Awareness Week
National Lose Weight/Feel Great Week
7-10

International 3-D Week
8-11

Elvis' Birthday Celebration Week
8-14

Universal Letter Writing Week  

Today Is                                                                      

·        Argyle Day

·        Bubble Bath Day

·        Earth's Rotation Day

·        National English Toffee Day

·        Midwife's Day or Women's Day

·        National Joy Germ Day

·        Show and Tell Day at Work

·        War on Poverty Day

Today’s Events through History  

1675 - 1st American commercial corporation chartered (NY Fishing Co)

1798 - 11th Amendment ratified, judicial powers construed

1838 - 1st telegraph message sent using dots & dashes (NJ)

1894 - Columbus World's fair in Chicago destroyed by fire

1951 - Thought extinct since 1615, a Cahow, earth-burrowing, nocturnal bird rediscovered 

      in Bermuda

1963 - "Mona Lisa," on loan, unveiled in America's National Gallery of Art

1971 - Voyageurs National Park, Minn established

1996: The last native speaker of the CATAWBA language, Red Thunder cloud, dies @76 

Today’s Birthdays                                                           

Larry Storch, NYC, comedian (F Troop, Larry Storch Show) is 91

Charles Osgood, NYC, news anchor (CBS Weekend News) is 81

Shirley Bassey, Cardiff Wales, singer (Goldfinger, Moonraker) is 77

Bob Eubanks, TV host (Newlywed Game) is 76

Little Anthony [Gourdine], rocker (& Imperials) is 73

Stephen Hawking, English physicist (Black Holes & Baby Universes) is 72

David Bowie, [Jones], singer/actor (Major Tom, Ziggy Stardust) is 67

R. Kelly [Robert Sylvester Kelly], American Rapper (I Wish I Could Fly) is 47

Remembered for being born today

1862 - Frank Nelson Doubleday, publisher/founder (Doubleday & Co)

1909 - Evelyn Wood, American educator (d. 1995)

1912 - José Ferrer, San Juan Puerto Rico, actor/director (Blood Tide, Dune)

1926 - Soupy Sales, [Milton Hines], NC, comedian (Soupy Sales Show)

1935 - Elvis Aaron Presley, singer (Blue Suede Shoes, Hound Dog)

Today’s Historical Obits                                                           

Yvonne De Carlo, Canadian-born actress (The Munsters) in 2007 @84

Robert Baden-Powell, founder (Boy Scout movement) in 1941 @83

Zhou Enlai (Chou En-lai), China's PM (1949-76) of cancer @78

Terry Thomas, Engl comic (Heroes) of Parkinson's disease in 1990 @78

Galileo Galilei, Italian physicist/astronomer of fever in 1642 @77 

Marco Polo, Venetian explorer in 1324 @69

Kenneth Patchen, US writer (See You in the Morning) of long illness in 1972 @60

Eli Whitney, American inventor of cancer in 1825 @59

Brain Teasers

1. ice + land = Iceland 2. I + ran = Iran 3. ire + land = Ireland 4. spa + in = Spain bonus: new + zeal + and = New Zealand

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 has mistakes and sadly once out 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  §