7-10-14

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Flagstaff Almanac: Day: 191 / Week: 28 

July Averages: 81° \ 51°
Today: Average Sky Cover: 90%
    H 72°… L 55°… Ave. humidity: 56%
    Wind: ave:   7mph; Gusts:  17mph  
    Average High: 82° Record High:  94° (2003)
    Average Low: 50° Record Low:  37° (1926)
    
Quote of the Day

Historical Highlights for Today

  552 - Origin of Armenian calendar

  988 - The city of Dublin is founded on the banks of the river Liffey.
1040 - Lady Godiva rides naked on horseback through Coventry to lower taxes
1746 - Bonnie Prince Charlie flees in disguise to Isle of Skye
1775 - Horatio Gates issues order excluding blacks from Continental Army
1892 - 1st concrete-paved street built (Bellefountaine, Ohio)
1923 - 2-pound hailstones kill 23 & many cattle (Rostov, Russia)
1925 - Jury selection took place in John T Scopes evolution trial
1929 - US issues newer, smaller-sized paper currency
1949 - 1st practical rectangular TV tube announced-Toledo, Ohio
1962 - Telstar, 1st geosynchronous communications satellite, launched
1985 - Coca-Cola Co announces it will resume selling old formula Coke
1991 - Boris Yeltsin sworn in as 1st elected president of Russian Federation

♫  Birthdays Today: ♫  

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

My Rambling Thoughts   

What a day yesterday. I started the blog, then the lightning came, then the power went out. I’ve lived here long enough to know that when there is a big lightning storm, all electronics go off. It was a big storm with about 1.5” of rain in about 30 minutes. Lots of areas near me had hail, but we were thankfully spared. One low income area had 30 homes flooded about a mile from me. Pictures of Route 66 show how all that rain came down the mountain, into the main streets, and headed toward the RR tracks. Lots of clean up all around Flag today.

I must be really dense sometimes. I just heard a reporter on CNN point out that the Republican call for closing the border is out of step. We ARE catching all these children as the cross the border. They wouldn’t be in custody if we didn’t catch them. They are NOT making it across the border and simply moving into the mainstream society. Duh.

from yesterday:

Good day all the way around. My foot pain is at 1% of what it has been. Saw the doc and he says while he still isn’t sure if I had/have gout, he is giving me a daily pill to hopefully ward off future attacks.  I am so glad that I don’t have any Dr. appts or blood draws or medical things for the next few weeks.Turns out several things can give gout symptoms and I have a couple other things going on that could cause the problem…none of them serious…concerning long term problems. Tart Cherry Juice also seems to work.
While waiting to pick up my script, I ran into a former student who I have kept contact with. She is doing OK, living in Tuba, and getting a home-site lease. She is not happy about the hoops that are required, but is jumping through them with a smile. That is good.
Our monsoon has been bringing afternoon and evening showers every day. So nice for most of us. The road to Sedona has been closed on and off daily due to flooding from the recent huge fire. Besides flooding the creek, it is dumping lots of debris into the creek, turning it a dark grey from the soot, burned trees and brush. Not a pleasant summer for the residents in the area.

Game  Center (answers at the end of post)

Brain Teasers

After some relaxing, the Seekers of Knowledge received a gift from an anonymous person. The gift was a magical scroll case that had 12 gemstones on it. The Seekers were a bit shocked at the elegance of the scroll case as they knew it was very expensive.

There was a catch with it. They had no idea how to open it. As they looked over the scroll case with amazement, suddenly a magic mouth appeared before them and said, "The code to open this scroll case is hidden within the stones; you must press each stone in the proper order to open it." The magic faded out.

The stones are in this order on the scroll case: Turquoise, Diamond, Opal, Aquamarine, Topaz, Emerald, Moonstone, Garnet, Sapphire, Amethyst, Ruby, Peridot.

Lifestyle  Substance:     

Found on You Tube with some relevance to today

Eunice Kennedy Shriver: One Woman's Vision

Terry-Thomas and Milton Berle

The Crave - Jelly Roll Morton

The Munsters - Herman sings "It Takes All Kinds Of People"

The Voices of Mel Blanc

Tribute to Arthur Ashe

OK Then…

Harper’s Index 

Portion of British family doctors who are considering early retirement because of increasing workloads: 3/5

Bonus:

Minimum number of Alabama women charged under a ‘chemical endangerment’ law for taking drugs while pregnant: 100

Unusual Fact of the Day

Since octopi have no bones, their bodies are incredibly flexible. They can squeeze through openings not much bigger than their eyeballs.

Trivia about AZ…

The Apache trout is considered a threatened species under the federal Endangered Species Act.

Arizona, among all the states, has the largest percentage of its land set aside and designated as Indian lands.

Interesting facts about Islam…

Muslims do not believe in the concept of "vicarious atonement" but rather believe in the law of personal responsibility. Islam teaches that each person is responsible for his or her own actions. On the Day of Judgment Muslims believe that every person will be resurrected and will have to answer to God for their every word, thought, and deed. Consequently, a practicing Muslim is always striving to be righteous.

Bonus:

If all Qur'ans in the world today were burned and destroyed, the original Arabic would still remain. This is because millions of Muslims, called Hafiz (or "preservers") have memorized the text letter for letter from beginning to end, every word and syllable. Also, chapters from the Qur'an are precisely recited from memory by every Muslim in each of the five daily prayers.

Weather Facts…

Snowiest city in the U.S.: Blue canyon, California.

People Facts…

There's an isolated tribe (Vadoma Tribe) in Zimbabwe where the people have only two toes, dubbed the 'ostrich people'.

Historical Facts…

In 2007, the 5000-year-old skeletal remains of two lovers embracing each other were found at Mantua, northern Italy.

Bonus:

Recently, archaeologists excavating in the old medieval town of Odense in Denmark uncovered 700-year-old barrels of poop - and, to their surprise, they still smelt.

Joke-of-the-day

How did the violin greet the guitar?

Cello!! 

Rules of Thumb:   

PLANNING A DINNER

Inviting more than 25 percent of the guests for a university dinner party from the economics department ruins the conversation.

Yeah, It Really Happened

BUELLTON, Calif. (UPI) - To help NOAA keep more precise tabs on exactly how much carbon is being released into the atmosphere, NASA is launching a satellite dedicated solely to measuring CO2.

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, or OCO-2 for short, will orbit Earth constantly measuring and mapping carbon emissions. But not all the carbon that rises into the atmosphere remains there. About half falls back to Earth and is absorbed. OCO-2 will help scientists study this process and offer climatologists a better understanding of the role oceans, soils and forests play in the release and absorption of carbon dioxide.
"Somewhere on earth, on land, one-quarter of all our carbon emissions released through fossil fuel emissions is disappearing," David Crisp, a researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told The New York Times. "We can't identify the processes responsible for this. Wouldn't it be nice to know where?"
"We really don't have a lot of data right now to understand the uptake of carbon by these terrestrial ecosystems," Paul Wennberg, an OCO-2 scientist and a researcher at the California Institute of Technology, recently told the Los Angeles Times.
Explaining how the OCO-2 will perform its job, Wennberg added: "It measures the average amount of CO2 above a place on Earth, which is different from almost all other measurements of CO2, which are measurements in a small volume of air."
The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, a $465-million mission, is set to launch at 2:56 a.m. on Tuesday from Vandenberg Air Force Base, near Buellton, California. The satellite's name has the number two attached to the end of it because this is NASA's second attempt at launch a carbon-charting spacecraft. Five years ago, the original OCO malfunctioned on takeoff and crashed into the ocean, a devastating $273 million loss.
This time around, the OCO-2 will put into orbit via a Delta 2 rocket, which has an impressive track record of successful launches. This will be the second of five satellites launched by NASA's earth sciences division this year -- all five built to study Earth.

Somewhat Useless Information   

A woman is like a tea bag – you can’t tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water. ~Eleanor Roosevelt

As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot. ~John Lennon

The age of a woman doesn’t mean a thing. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

I don’t know who invented high heels, but all women owe him a lot. ~Marilyn Monroe

Men are April when they woo, December when they wed. Maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives. ~William Shakespeare

A women who doesn’t wear perfume has no future. ~Coco Chanel

Clever and attractive women do not want to vote; they are willing to let men govern as long as they govern men. ~George Bernard Shaw

Being the boss anywhere is lonely. Being a female boss in a world of mostly men is especially so. ~Robert Frost

Most women set out to try to change a man, and when they have changed him they do not like him. ~Marlene Dietrich

Check Your Calendar

Observances This Week:

4-10
Freedom Week

6-12
Be Nice To New Jersey Week; National Farriers Week

7-14
Creative Maladjustment Week; Nude Recreation Weekend

Today Is  

Clerihew Day
Don't Step On A Bee Day
Hot Dog Night
Piña Colada Day  
Teddy Bears' Picnic Day

/\
Admission Day (Wyoming-1890-44th)
Independence Day (Bahamas-1973-from UK)
                                                        
Today’s Events through History  

1866 - Indelible pencil patented by Edson P Clark, Northampton, Mass

1956 - 650,000 US steel workers go on strike
1972 - Democratic convention opens in Miami Beach Florida (McGovern)
1980 - Ayatollah Khomeini releases Iran hostage Richard I Queen
2012 - The American Episcopal Church becomes 1^st to approve a rite for blessing gay marriages 

Birthday’s Today                                                        

Jake LaMotta, Bronx, middleweight boxing champ (Raging Bull) is 93

Ron Glass, actor (Harris-Barney Miller, Frank's Place) is 69
Arlo Guthrie, Brooklyn, singer (Alice's Restaurant) is 66
Sofia Vergara, Colombian actress is 42
Jessica Simpson, singer\popstar ("I Wanna Love You Forever,") is 34

Remembered for being born today

1452-1488 - King James III of Scotland (d. 1488)

1723-1780 - William Blackstone, London jurist (Blackstone's Commentaries)
1856-1943 - Nikola Tesla, Croatian physicist, inventor, Tesla Coil
1871-1922 - Marcel Proust, France, novelist (Remembrance of Things Past)
1897-1931 - Jack "Legs" Diamond", American bootlegger (d. 1931)
1911-1990 - Terry-Thomas, England, actor (It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World)
1917-2007 - Don Herbert, scientist/TV host (Watch Mr Wizard)
1920-2003 - David Brinkley, NBC news anchor (Huntley-Brinkley)
1921-2009 - Eunice Shriver, founder (Special Olympics)
1923-2003 - Jean Kerr, novelist (Please Don't Eat the Daisies)
1926-1993 - Fred Gwynne, NYC, actor (Car 54 Where Are You, Munsters)
1931-1968 - Nick Adams, actor (Johnny Yuma-Rebel)
1941-2012 - Jake Eberts, Montreal, film producer (Chariots of Fire)
1943-1993 - Arthur Ashe, tennis pro (1968 US Open, 1975 Wimbledon)

Historical Obits Today                                                           

Johann G Galle, German discoverer of Neptune by telescope, 1910. @98

Mel Blanc, cartoon voice (Warner Bros cartoons), 1989, @81
Bridget Bishop, 1st person to be hanged in Salem witch trials, 1692, @60
Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton, pioneer jazz pianist, asthma, 1941, @56
El Cid, of Castile. famine, 1099, @45ish

Brain Teasers                         

After some thought, they knew how to open the scroll case.

They pressed the stones in this order: Garnet, Amethyst, Aquamarine, Diamond, Emerald, Moonstone, Ruby, Peridot, Sapphire, Opal, Topaz, Turquoise.

They are all birthstones, and in the order of the months: January, February, March and so on.

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  §