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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…§
