Halloween 2014

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Almanac: Day: 304 / Week: 44 
October Averages: 63° \ 31°
  


Holiday Observances Today:
Books for Treats Day
Carve a Pumpkin Day 
Day of the Seven Billion - 2011
Girl Scout Founder's Day
Halloween
International Bandanna Day
National Breadstix (Bread Sticks) Day
National Caramel Apple Day
National Knock-Knock Jokes Day
National Magic Day National UNICEF Day
Reformation Day-1517
Your Psychic Powers Day
++
Admission Day (Nevada-1864-36th)

Quote of the Day



Historical Highlights for Today
1517 - Martin Luther posts 95 theses-precipitates the Protestant Reformation
1541 - Michelangelo finishes painting The Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel
1815 - Sir Humphrey Davy of London patents miner's safety lamp
1846 - Donner party, unable to cross the Donner Pass, construct a winter camp
1863 - The Maori Wars resumed--Invasion of the Waikato
1868 - Standard uniform approved for US postal carriers
1763: Pontiac ends the siege of Detroit
1888 - Scottish vet John Boyd Dunlop patents pneumatic bicycle tire
1892 - Arthur Conan Doyle publishes The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
1908 - 4th Olympic Games ends in London
1913 - 1st US paved coast-to-coast highway, the Lincoln Highway is dedicated
1918 - Spanish flu-virus kills 21,000 in US in 1 week
1922 - Benito Mussolini (Il Duce) becomes premier of Italy
1941 - Mount Rushmore Monument is completed

1956 - Brooklyn, NY ends streetcar service
1973 - 3 Provisional Irish Republican Army volunteers escape from Mountjoy Prison in Dublin using a hijacked helicopter
1982 - Pope John Paul II becomes first pontiff to visit Spain
1984 - Indian PM Indira Gandhi is assassinated by her bodyguards 
1992 - Roman Catholic church reinstates Galileo Galilei after 359 years
2012 - The New York stock exchange opens after being closed for two days after Hurricane Sandy

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


My Rambling Thoughts
It is still like summer here…NICE!
Our group had a great lunch today…I had fish and chips and they were really good…Malt vinegar and all.
Had my teeth cleaned this morning. There was a new hygienist...new to the office, not new to cleaning. I really hate it when a new one comes in. She wants to show the dentist how good she is, but not knowing me and not reading my chart, she made it sound like I had a rotting tooth and a cracked cavity. The dentist made it all better because he had marked the two teeth previously as ‘something we need to watch.’ Oh well, teeth are clean and she did a good job with no pain of any kind.
This afternoon I cleaned out my front closet under the stairs where I have my jackets, vacuum cleaner and car washing supplies. It had just become real messy, but now it is all neat and clean. Nice.
·        •  •
Game  Center (answers at the end of post)
Brain Teasers
Which noun, from group B, belongs in group A? Why?
Group A

Man,
Foot,
Child,
Tooth,
Mouse.

Group B

Girl,
Hand,
Adult,
Toe,
Goose.

Found on You Tube with some relevance to today



           
OK Then…


·        •  •
Paraphernalia 4 the Brain:     
Brief History…
Zulus and Indians Used Primitive Weapons Against Whites.
At first they did, but rather quickly Native Africans and Native Americans armed themselves with firearms captured from white people or traded for.  Movies erroneously show these aboriginal people resisting white invaders strictly with spears and arrows, but in reality both groups were quick to grasp the importance of firearms for combat and took to them readily.  When George Custer got himself and his men wiped out, the Native Americans were largely armed with repeating rifles while Custer and the 7th Cavalry were armed with single shot rifles.

Educator’s Answers…
“You’ll never be a truly great teacher until you have your own kids.”
Actually, yes I will. The relationship between teacher and student is quite different from that of parent and child.

Flagstaff, AZ History…
75 YEARS AGO
New snow gauges have been placed in Fort Valley and at Mormon Lake by G. K. Greening, meteorologist in charge of the Weather Bureau in Phoenix. These gauges contain a chemical so the snow will melt, be retained and kept from freezing.
           
Harper’s Index…
Chances that the word ‘pushy’ when used in US media, is used to describe a woman: 2 in 3     
Halloween Facts…
-Boston, Massachusetts, holds the record for the most Jack O’Lanterns lit at once (30,128).
-The Village Halloween parade in New York City is the largest Halloween parade in the United States. The parade includes 50,000 participants and draws over 2 million spectators.
-In many countries, such as France and Australia, Halloween is seen as an unwanted and overly commercial American influence.
-Children are more than twice as likely to be killed in a pedestrian/car accident on Halloween than on any other night.

Law Facts…
-In 1386, a pig in France was executed by public hanging for the murder of a child.
-In Quitman, Georgia, US, it is illegal for a chicken to cross the road.
           
That’s Outrageous from Reader’s Digest…
29,305--The number of texts--containing the entire works of William Shakespeare—sent by a British man to a video game seller who had ripped him off. The thief’s phone beeped nonstop for a week.

Religious Facts…
-There is no mention of Adam and Eve eating an apple in the Bible.
-The Bible has been translated into Klingon.

Rules of Thumb…
PLAYING TENNIS
If you're nervous, the first thing that goes is your footwork.
           
Unusual Fact of the Day…
Chicago is America's skyscraper capital. The city has more 1,000-foot tall buildings than any other U.S. city.
·        •  •
Joke-of-the-day
Three engineers and three accountants were traveling by train to a conference. At the station, the three accountants each bought tickets and watched as the three engineers bought only one ticket. 
"How are three people going to travel on only one ticket?" asked an accountant. 
"Watch and you'll see", answered an engineer. 
They all boarded the train. The accountants took their respective seats, but the three engineers all crammed into a rest room and closed the door behind them. Shortly after the train departed, the conductor came around collecting tickets. He knocked on the restroom door and said, "Ticket, please". 
The door opened just a crack and a single arm emerged with a ticket in hand. 
The conductor took it and moved on. 
The accountants saw this and agreed it was a quite clever idea. So, after the conference, the accountants decide to copy the engineers on the return trip and save some money (being clever with money, and all that). When they got to the station, they bought a single ticket for the return trip. To their astonishment, the engineers didn't buy a ticket at all. 
"How are you going to ride without a ticket"? said one perplexed accountant. 
"Watch and you'll see", answered an engineer. 
When they boarded the train, the three accountants crammed into a restroom and the three engineers crammed into another one nearby. The train departed. Shortly afterward, one of the engineers left his restroom and walked over to the restroom where the accountants were hiding. He knocked on the door and said, "Ticket, please."     


Yep, It Really Happened
WARSOP, England (UPI) - Contractors painting the road outside a British supermarket's parking lot mistakenly spelled "right" as "rihgt." The mistake in spelling "right turn" next to the Co-op store in Warsop, England, was first spotted Friday afternoon and photographed by resident Eric Hill before being painted over by the contractors. A spokesman for the Co-op supermarket said the contractors were made aware of the mistake shortly after they finished painting and it was corrected "as quickly as possible." "You would have thought getting a right turn road sign right wouldn't be too difficult," one resident said. "But I guess spelling isn't the road workers' strongpoint."
           
Somewhat Useless Information
-Leslie Scott, game designer and author, developed the original JENGA Classic game from a wood block stacking game her family had created in Ghana in the 1970s. 
Introduced to the public at the famous Harrod's department store in London in 1982, JENGA was launched in North America in 1986, and has since become an international game icon.
The record for the highest known JENGA tower is 40 complete stories with two blocks into the 41st, claimed in 1985 by Robert Grebler (US).
The name "jenga" derives from a Swahili word meaning "to build."
The V&A Museum of Childhood in London has exhibited one of the original sets of Jenga since 1982.
Today, according to Leslie Scott, over 50 million Jenga games, equivalent to more than 2.7 billion Jenga blocks, have been sold worldwide.

- The US Mint began putting notches on the edges of coins containing gold and silver to discourage holders from shaving off small quantities of the precious metals. Dimes, quarters and half dollars are notched because they used to contain silver. Pennies and nickels aren't notched because the metals they contain are not valuable enough to shave.
-In France, where tennis first became popular, a big, round zero on scoreboard looked like an egg and was called 'l'oeuf,' which is French for 'egg.' When tennis was introduced in the U.S., Americans pronounced it 'love.' 
·        •  •
Check Your Calendar
Observances This Week:
Nada.
           
·        •  •
Today’s Events through History
1953 - TV broadcasting begins in Belgium
1954 - Betsy Rawls wins LPGA Texas Golf Open
1969 - Race riot in Jacksonville Florida
2002 - Federal grand jury in Houston, indicts former Enron Corp. CFO
·        •  •
Birthday’s Today
Lee Grant [Lyova Haskell Rosenthal], actress (Shampoo) is 89
Anita Kerr, singer\composer\producer (The Anita Kerr Singers) is 88
Dan Rather, journalist\news anchor (CBS Evening News, 60 Minutes) is 84
Tom Paxton, folk singer/songwriter is 78
David Ogden Stiers, actor (Winchester-M*A*S*H) is 73
Deidre Hall, actress (Days of our Lives) is 68
Frank Shorter, US marathoner (Oly-gold/silver-72, 76) is 68
Jane Pauley, newscaster (Today, NBC Weekend) is 64
Peter Jackson, film director (Lord of the Rings) is 54
Dermot Mulroney, actor (Young Guns) is 52
Rob Schneider, actor (SNL) is 52
Vanilla Ice (Robert Matthew Van Winkle), rapper (Ice Ice Baby) is 48
Piper Perabo, American actress is 39
Willow Smith, American actress is 15

Remembered for being born today
Ferdinand I, the wise one, king of Portugal (built navy) (1345-1383)
Jan Vermeer, Holland, painter (Procuress, Astronomer), (1632-1675)
John Keats, London, romantic poet (Ode to a Grecian Urn), (1795-1821)
Georg A Erman, German Egyptologist (Grammar of Ancient Egypt) (1954-1937)
Chiang Kai-shek, Pres of Nationalist China (1897-1975)
Ethel Waters, actress (Beulah)/singer (Stormy Weather) (1896-1977)
Dale Evans, [Frances Butts], cowgirl (Roy Rogers Show) (1912-2001)
Barbara Bel Geddes, actress (Vertigo, Miss Ellie-Dallas, Caught) (1922-2005)
Michael Landon, actor (Bonanza, Highway to Heaven) (1936-1991)
John Candy, Canadian actor and comedian (1950-1994)
·        •  •
Historical Obits Today
John Houseman, actor (Paper Chase), 1988, @86
Jacob Abbott, American author, 1879, @ 75
Federico Fellini, director (La Dolce Vita), stroke1993, @73
Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India, assassinated, 1986, @66
Rosalind Cash, actress (Emma-Go Tell It on the Mountain), cancer, 1995, @56
Harry Houdini, [Erich Weisz], magician, gangrene, 1926, @52
George Washington De Long, American Arctic Explorer, expedition, 1881, @37
River Phoenix, actor (Stand By Me), OD, 1993, @23
·        •  •
Brain Teasers Answers
Goose. The others in group B, can be pluralized by adding an S.
The nouns in group A have the word changed to a different word to make a plural.       

·        •  •
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.