2-18-14

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Flagstaff Almanac:

Week: 08 / Day: 049   

Today: L 20°…H 58°… Ave. humidity: 43%

Wind: ave:   14mph; Gusts:  26mph  

Average Low: 19° Record Low:  -11° (1942)

Average High: 46° Record High:  65° (1977)

Quote of the Day

Today’s Historical Highlights

1678 - John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" is published

1688 - Quakers conduct 1st formal protest of slavery in Germantown, Pa

1735 - 1st opera performed in America, "Flora," in Charleston, SC

1745 - Bonnie Prince Charlie’s troops occupy Inverness Scotland

1804 - 1st US land-grant college, Ohio University, Athens Ohio, chartered

1856 - American (Know-Nothing) Party abolishes secrecy

 

1857 - Insurrection of Chinese in Sarawak, Borneo

1885 - Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," published

1908 - 1st US postage stamps in rolls issued

1929 - The first Academy Awards are announced.

1930 – Flagstaff astronomer Clyde Tombaugh discovers Pluto

1954 - The first Church of Scientology is established in Los Angeles

1960 - 8th Winter Olympic games open in Squaw Valley, Cal

1968 - 10th Winter Olympic games close at Grenoble, France

1979 - -52°F (-47°C), Old Forge, New York (state record)

1979 - Snow falls in Sahara Desert

1998 - 2 white separatists arrested in NV plotting a biological attack on NYC subways.

♫  Today’s Birthdays: ♫   

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

 

My Free Rambling Thoughts   

A federal holiday…flag hung…refuse to go to any stores that are open. I must admit that when I was working I would come into town on this holiday to some things that I couldn’t do on weekends…when some stores used to be closed on weekends. I lived 75 miles or more from Flag back in those days and it was difficult to get some things done just on Saturday or Sunday. It isn’t like that anymore…don’t know of any businesses that aren’t open on Saturday or Sunday. Not sure about State offices. Anyway it was a good day to enjoy our spring weather. Windows could be opened a little for most of the day. Fresh air coming inside is always nice.

 

Awaiting yet another form to fill out for the Cuban trip…seems like Cuban travel office wants to be sure we really want to go. Now they are also requiring that we have travel insurance. That is yet another twist to the many requirements to get there.

 

As I was growing up I was taught that everyone has a good side, that might be hard to find. As I got older I learned that cultural differences play a big role in determining ‘right from wrong’… or ‘good from bad’. For example, it is wrong/bad to enter a Navajo home to borrow a cup of sugar without first finding out how everyone is doing. Cutting to the chase is seen as poor etiquette. When I have heard about the repressive regime in North Korea, I have been skeptical figuring it was mostly cultural differences. Then the UN put out a frightening report today about the horrific conditions in political prisons. The report is not the first time the UN has gotten involved in internal matters in a country…one example is the apartheid issue in South Africa. So, now that I have been informed from a reliable source that used many personal accounts, the world needs to stand up and help the people in the N. Korean political prisons.

Game  Center (answers at the end of post)

Brain Teasers

Lovely and round, I shine with pale light, Grown in the darkness, A lady's delight.

Lifestyle  Substance:     

Found on You Tube with some relevance to today

• Dale Earnhardt Tribute Video

• Helen Gurley Brown dispenses advice on how to have an affair

• In alamogordo, new mexico, on july 16, 1945

• Jack Palance - One-armed pushups

• Juice Newton - Angel Of The Morning

• Wendell Willkie 1940 presidential election

Remembering TV’s great shows:

"Sesame Street": This boulevard of sweet dreams has weaned wee ones on the joys of learning — through Muppets magic, animation and music — for more than 40 wondrous years.

Words Shakespeare invented

neither a borrower nor a lender beHamlet: Act 1, Scene 3 LORD POLONIUS: … Neither a borrower nor a lender be;For loan oft loses both itself and friend,And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.This above all: to thine ownself be true,And it must follow, as the night the day,Thou canst not then be false to any man.Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!

Bizarre Punishments

Wearing A Sign

Trying to effectively punish your kid for bad grades is usually quite difficult—unless you’re the Florida parents who forced their son to wear a signbroadcasting his less-than-impressive scholastic achievements. Michael Bell Jr. was given a sign by his parents proclaiming: “Hey, I want to be a class clown. Is it wrong?” The back of the sign read: “I’m in the 7th grade and got three Fs. Blow your horn if there’s something wrong with that.” The teen was then forced to stand on a popular street corner in Miami for several hours.

After failing math, civics, and language art, Bell Jr. spent his whole spring break on the corner with the sign, even inspiring other parents to try out the punishment as well. A second Florida mother decided to punish her son by having him stand on a Tampa street with a sign saying: “I did four questions on my FCAT and said I wasn’t going to do it…GPA 1.22…honk if I need (an) education.” Unsurprisingly, many honked in support of the punishment, although others viewed it as cruel and overly humiliating.

Strange Obsessions of famous people

Immanuel Kant: Rigid Schedule

Obsession was a way of life for Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). While Kant is often noted for his hypochondria, he had an even more intense and prolonged obsession with his daily routine. In 1783, just after purchasing a home, Kant decided that it was necessary to structure his daily schedule. Thus began the rigid routine Kant would follow until his death in 1804.

Timed precisely, Kant would awaken just before 5:00 AM, drink a cup of tea, and smoke exactly one pipe. He would then work on his lectures and writings until his lectures began at 7:00 AM. After his lectures ended at 11:00 AM, Kant worked on his writings again until his 1:00 PM lunchtime.

After lunch, rain or shine, Kant took his legendary one-hour walk in the heart of Konigsberg. The walk was so consistent that it is said his neighbors could set their clocks by it. The path Kant walked was later named the Philosophengang, or “The Philosopher’s Walk.”

After his walk, Kant would sometimes socialize with a friend or two, and then he would head home to work and read until 10:00 PM, at which time he went to bed.

OK Then…

Harper’s Index 

• Percentage change in the S&P 500 since its pre-crisis peak: +8

• In the price of financial stocks: -44

Unusual Fact of the Day

During WWII, Tootsie Rolls were added to soldiers' rations thanks to their durability in all weather conditions.

Joke-of-the-day

Q. How do you know when a man is going to say something smart? A. It will start with "She said..."

Rules of Thumb:   

Easy shortcuts to make an ‘educated’ guess

DESIGNING A SUBMARINE

A submarine will move through the water most efficiently if it has a length-to-beam ratio of between 10 to 1 and 13 to 1.    

Yeah, It Really Happened

-- South Korea is a well-known hub for cosmetic beautification surgery, with a higher rate per capita than the U.S., but the procedures can be expensive, inspiring many young women recently to resort to do-it-yourself procedures for their professional and romantic upgrades. A December Global Post dispatch noted that some might try to force their eyes to stay open without blinking (using a novel $20 pair of glasses for hours on end) as a substitute for costly "double-eyelid" surgery. Also in use: a $6 jaw-squeezing roller device for the face to push the jaw line into a fashionable "oval" form. One teen told the reporter she applies an imaginative contraption to her face for hours a day to pressure her nose into more of a point, which is considered a desirable Western look. [Global Post (Boston) via Denver Post, 12-19-2013]  

Somewhat Useless Information   

1. Friends can help each other. A true friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself – and especially to feel. Or, not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at the moment is fine with them. That’s what real love amounts to – letting a person be what he really is.--Jim Morrison

2. Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.--Bruce Lee

3. Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.--Aristotle

4. Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.--Oscar Wilde

5. Where there is love there is life.--Mahatma Gandhi

6. I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.--Martin Luther King, Jr.

7. I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.--Mother Teresa

8. A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.--Ingrid Bergman

9. Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.--Albert Einstein

10. We love life, not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving.--Friedrich Nietzsche

Calendar Information        

Happening This Week:
☼13-19☼

World Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy Awareness Week9 
☼14-17☼

Great Backyard Bird Count
☼14-21☼

National Condom Week 
National Nestbox Week
NCCDP Alzheimer's & Dementia Staff Education Week
☼16-22☼

Brotherhood / Sisterhood Week 
Build A Better Trade Show Image Week)
Through With The Chew
National Date (fruit) Week
National Justice for Animals Week
National Engineers Week
National Entrepreneurship Week

Today Is                                                                      

·        Battery Day- (Volta's birthday)

·        Cow Milked While Flying In An Airplane Day

·        Great Backyard Bird Count (Feb. 18-21)

·        Pluto  Day (Planet is Discovered by Clyde Tombaugh) 

+++++

·        Independence Day (Gambia-1965-from UK)

·        National Democracy Day (Nepal-1951)

Today’s Events through History  

1797 - Trinidad is surrendered to a British fleet 

1884 - Police seize all copies of Tolstoy's "What I Believe In"

1915 - Germany begins a blockade of Britain

1972 - California Supreme Court abolishes death penalty

2013 - $50 million worth of diamonds stolen--armed robbery at Brussels Airport, Belgium

Today’s Birthdays                                                           

Barbara Hale, actress (Della Street-Perry Mason) is 92

George Kennedy, actor (Cool Hand Luke, Airport, Blue Knight) is 89

Yoko Ono Lennon, [Mrs John Lennon], Tokyo, singer and artist is 81

Cybill Shepherd, actress (Moonlighting, Last Picture Show) is 64

Juice Newton, [Judy Cohen], vocalist (Angel of the Morning) is 62

John Travolta, actor is 60

Vanna White, [Rosich], TV host (Wheel of Fortune) is 57

Matt Dillon, actor (Flamingo Kid, Tex, Kansas) is 50

Dr. Dre, [Andre Romelle Young], rapper and record producer is 49

Molly Ringwald, actress (16 Candles, Pretty in Pink) is 46

Remembered for being born today

Mary I Tudor, [Bloody Mary], queen of England (1553-58)

Nikos Kasandsakis, Greek writer and philosopher (Zorba the Greek, The Last 

     Temptation of Christ)

Wendell Wilkie, Presidential candidate (R-1940)/author (One World)

George "The Gipper" Gipp, football star (Notre Dame)

Enzo Ferrari, racing car manufacturer, Modena

Bill Cullen, TV game show host (over 20 different games)

Jack Palance, [Walter Palanuik], actor (City Slickers)

Helen Gurley Brown, US author/publisher and editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan

Today’s Historical Obits                                                           

Charles Lewis Tiffany, American founder of Tiffany & Co., 1902, @90

Michelangelo Buonarroti, Italian sculptor/painter (David), 1564, @88

Harry Caray, sportscaster (Chicago Cubs), 1998, @83

Kublai Khan, Mongol Emperor, 1294, @78

Andy Devine, [Jeremiah Schwartz], actor, leukemia, 1977, @71

Thomas Hazlehurst, English soap and alkali manufacturer, 1942, @63

Martin Luther, biblical scholar/religious reformer, stroke, 1546, @62

Robert J Oppenheimer, creator of atomic bomb, cancer, 1967, @62

Dale Earnhardt, American race car driver, racing crash, 2001 @49

Brain Teasers

A pearl.

It is pretty and near spherical, usually white, grows in an oyster, and worn by ladies as jewelry.

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  §