1-13-15

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Almanac: Week: 03 \ Day: 013 
January Averages: 43°\16°
86004 Today: H 45°\L 32°
Ave. humidity: 89%     Average Sky Cover: 95%
Wind ave:   1mph\Gusts:  12mph
Ave. High: 43° Record High:  59° (2000)
Ave. Low: 16° Record Low:  -6° (1963)

Observances Today:
Blame Someone Else Day
Make Your Dream Come True Day
Stephen Foster Memorial Day

Observances This Week:
8-14
Universal Letter Writing Week 
11-17

Cuckoo Dancing Week
National Vocation Awareness Week 
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Quote of the Day



Historical Highlights for Today
1099 - Crusaders set fire to Mara, Syria
1559 - Elizabeth I crowned Queen of England in Westminster Abbey
1695 - Jonathan Swift ordained an Anglican priest in Ireland
1794 - Congress changes US flag to 15 stars & 15 stripes
1830 - Great fire in New Orleans thought to be set by rebel slaves
1874 - Battle between jobless & police in NYC, 100s injured
1888 - National Geographic Society founded (Washington, DC)
1938 - The Church of England accepts the theory of evolution
1939 -  Black Friday bush fires burn 20,000 square KM of land in Australia
1943 - Hitler declares "Total War"
1957 - Wham-O Company produces the 1st Frisbee
1970 - Riots begin in the Ballymurphy area of Belfast
1978 - NASA select its first American women astronauts
1988 - Supreme Court rules (5-3) public school officials have broad powers to censor school newspapers, plays & other expressive activities
1995 - America3 becomes 1st all-female crew to win an America's Cup race
2012 - Cruise ship Costa Concordia runs aground at Isola de Giglio, Italy, with at least 15 deaths
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  Birthdays Today:
How many can you identify? Answers below in Birthday’s Today


My Rambling Thoughts
Sure didn’t start out as a great day, but got better. Went to the eye doctor for a check and he was 30 minutes late. Then checked at the pharmacy for some meds and found that there is a ‘nationwide shortage’ of one of them. Then called the 800# to renew a magazine subscription and found that their computer was down for the whole week so they couldn’t take credit card orders until next week. Then around 11a the pharmacy called and could give me 60 tablets, instead of 90 for my med. I picked them up.
Then I got a phone call from my college roommate, who I haven’t talked to in a couple of years. He retired last week, which I knew from Facebook. He is having a difficult time with all his free time. We talked about an hour and caught up. I reassured him that he just needs to settle in to the new chapter. He agreed and seemed to appreciate my words of wisdom. He’ll be fine. I realize how lucky I was to retire, move to a new town and start the new chapter in a new place. I get his concerns as he really had nothing to new to deal with, except that he didn’t have to commute for almost 3 hours a day for his job. He does have 5 grandkids within a couple of hours of where he lives, so after hearing about some of my drives to town, he saw that it wasn’t so bad. He may be coming to AZ to visit a couple of us sometime. Nice.
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Brain Teasers
(answers at the end of post)
Find an anagram for each word in Group A. Each anagram will answer one of the clues in Group B.

Group A
A. Shale
B. Pique
C. Nixed
D. Greet
E. Lodge

Group B
1. White heron
2. Provide gear
3. Eyed suggestively
4. Dog's lead
5. Alphabetical reference

           
Found on You Tube with some relevance to today
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Paraphernalia 4 the Brain:     
60’s Inventions…
1961
Valium invented.
The nondairy creamer invented.

Education Facts…
Japanese schools do not have proms.
The founder of McDonald's has a Bachelor degree in Hamburgerology.

Flagstaff, AZ History…
75 YEARS AGO
It’s time to put your Christmas tree on the curb. The J.C.’s big truck will call for them and prepare for the big community bonfire. 8 p.m. on Jan. 12 at City Park. The Flagstaff State Teachers College Choir will sing at this free community event.

Flagstaff’s Iconic 50…
Walnut Canyon Cliff Dwellings
Stand at the Walnut Canyon observation point and gaze across these canyon walls and imagine what life was like for the ancient Sinagua Indians that that once lived in the cliff dwellings at Walnut Canyon. For reasons that are a mystery, they left Walnut Canyon about 800 years ago. Take a hike along Rim or Island Trails and enter some of cliff dwellings and see many others nestled into the alcoves of the canyon walls.
Much like the Grand Canyon to the northwest, Walnut Canyon was formed by 60 million years of water flowing first as a gentle creek across the plateau, then etching and carving its way through steep passes. Deep gorges formed in the sandstone, limestone, and other ancient desert rock some 20 miles long and 400 feet deep.

Harper’s Index…
1/3
Estimated portion of the past 100 executed US prisoners who suffered from intellectual disabilities
Rules of Thumb…
CHILDREN AND FOOD
Young children's enjoyment of a home-cooked meal is in inverse proportion to the amount of time spent preparing it.

Unusual Fact of the Day…
Ronald Reagan's first Inauguration Day (Jan. 20th, 1981) was the warmest January inauguration on record, at 55°F. When reelected, his second Inauguration Day (Jan. 21st, 1985) was the coldest on record, at only 7°F.
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Joke-of-the-day
An old man walks into a bar, sits down, and starts crying.
The bartender asks, “What’s wrong?” The old man looks at the bartender through teary eyes and between sobs says, “I married a beautiful woman two days ago. She’s a natural blonde, twenty-five, intelligent, a marvelous cook, a meticulous housekeeper, extremely sensitive to my wants and needs, very giving, my best friend, and intensely passionate in bed.” 
The bartender stares at the old man for a brief moment and says, “But that sounds great! You have what every man wants in a woman, so why are crying?”
The old man looks at the bartender and says, “I can’t remember where I live!”   


Yep, It Really Happened
Life isn't always easy in China. But even if you are working 70 hours a week for 90 cents an hour, things can always get worse. Like it did for this poor construction worker. 
A builder who broke both his arms and legs after falling off a construction site survived for nearly a week by drinking his own urine. 
Friends of Yang Hsieh thought he'd quit his job at the building site in Hunan province, central China, but the 28-year-old had slipped and plunged 65ft, shattering his limbs and breaking his mobile phone.
Unable to move or phone anyone he tried calling out for help but no one heard him.
Builder Fai She, 32, said: "At first we thought he was off sick. We tried calling him but the phone was constantly off and by day four we thought he must have found work somewhere else. We had no idea he was lying on the ground below us."
Yang was eventually found six days later when a passerby heard his cries for help.
He was taken to hospital where doctors say he is now making a full recovery.
           

Somewhat Useless Information
--Pacific Island robber crabs love coconuts so much that they have developed the ability to climb trees to satisfy their cravings.
--The praying mantis is the only insect that can turn its head 360 degrees.
--The electric eel can produce 350 to 550 volts of electricity up to 150 times per hour without any apparent fatigue.
--Spider silk is five times stronger than steel, but it is also highly elastic - a rare combination in materials.
--A large parrot's beak can exert 500 pounds of pressure per square inch, enabling the bird to feast on such delicacies as Brazil nuts with a simple crunch.
--Wasps can make paper by mixing wood pulp with saliva to form a paste, which dries stiff.


Gizmos
HAMPTON, N.Y. (UPI)
Slinging a fast-moving probe into orbit around a faraway planet is hard enough; landing a hefty, astronaut-carrying spacecraft on an alien surface is beyond difficult. 
But doing just that -- on Mars -- is exactly what NASA hopes to do in the coming decade. To do so successfully, NASA engineers are considering employing an inflatable spacecraft that resembles the rainbow-colored, donut-like stacking rings that small children play with. 
Researchers believe a lightweight inflatable structure -- the current prototype is dubbed the Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (HIAD) -- could be deployed in order to slow the spacecraft's as it descends through the thin Martian air. 
"We have been eating, sleeping, dreaming this technology -- in my case for six years," NASA scientist Anthony Calomino said last year at a project meeting. 
"In a real spacecraft, a connected stack of donut rings would be inflated before entering a planet's atmosphere to slow the vehicle for landing," NASA explained in a blog update last summer. "The stacked-cone concept would allow NASA to land heavier payloads to the surface of the planet than is currently possible, and could eventually be used to deliver crews." 
Slowing an alien descent with inflatables would save missions from carrying extra fuel to put on the brakes by using reverse rocket propulsion. 
But one the challenges is building the inflatable technology out of materials that can withstand high temperatures caused by the friction of atmospheric reentry. 
"This idea has actually been around since the 1960s," said Neil Cheatwood, the senior engineer at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. "But now we have materials that can withstand higher temperatures. We've made great strides with this technology." 
Researchers plan to build and test a real life prototype consisting of a titanium frame and an underlining of carbon fire skin. It would be inflated with nitrogen. 
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Today’s Events through History
1610 - Galileo Galilei discovers Callisto, 4th satellite of Jupiter
1849 - Vancouver Island granted to Hudson's Bay Co
1915 - Earthquake in Avezzano Italy kills 29,800
1930 - "Mickey Mouse" comic strip 1st appears
1958 - 9,000 scientists of 43 nations petition UN for nuclear test ban
1986 - NCCA institutes eligibility requirements based on college exams
1994 - Tonya Harding's bodyguard, Shawn Eric Eckardt & Derrick Brian Smith arrested & charged with conspiracy in attack of skater Nancy Kerrigan
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Birthday’s Today
Rip Taylor, actor and comedian (Gong Show) is 80
Billy Gray, actor (Bud-Father Knows Best) is 77
Julia Louis-Dreyfus, comedienne (SNL, Seinfeld,) is 54
Patrick Dempsey, actor (Mike-Fast Times) is 49
Orlando Bloom, English actor (The Lord of the Rings) is 37
William Hung, American Idol contestant is 32
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Remembered for being born today
John Pringle Nichol, Scottish Astronomer and educator 1804-1859@54
Horatio Alger, Jr., American minister and author (1832-1899@67
Sophie Tucker, [Kalish], Russia, singer/last of red hot mammas 1887-1966@79
Ralph Edwards, Merino CO, TV host (This is Your Life) 1913-2005@92
Robert Stack, actor (Eliot Ness-Untouchables, Airplane) 1919-2003@84
s, actor (Match Game, Ghost & Mrs Muir), 1937-2007@76
Brandon Tartikoff, TV exec (NBC) 1949-1977@48
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Historical Obits Today
Wyatt Earp, US marshall (OK Corral), 1929, @80
Patrick McGoohan, American actor (The Prisoner), 2009, @80 
Chiang Ching-huo, president of Taiwan, stroke, 1988, @77
Hubert Humphrey, (Sen-D-Minn, VP), cancer, 1978@66
Teddy Pendergrass, American R&B singer, repertory failure, 2010, @59
James Joyce, novelist (Ulysses), perforated ulcer, 1941, @58
Ernie Kovacs, comedian, car crash, 1962, @42
Stephen Foster, composer (My Old Kentucky Home), fever, 1864, @37
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Brain Teasers Answers
A. Shale = (4) Leash
B. Pique = (2) Equip
C. Nixed = (5) Index
D. Greet = (1) Egret
E. Lodge = (3) Ogled

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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.