1-9-15

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Almanac: Week: 02 \ Day: 009 
January Averages: 43°\116°
86004 Today: H 54°\L 24°
Ave. humidity: 43%     Average Sky Cover: 0%
Wind ave:   7mph\Gusts:  12mph
Ave. High: 43° Record High:  61° (1996)
Ave. Low: 16° Record Low:  -9° (1937)

Observances Today:
Connecticut: Statehood Day-1788-5th state
Panama: Martyr Day
 --
Play God Day
Balloon Ascension Day
National Cassoulet Day- traditional meaty casserole & its many, many expressions
National Static Electricity Day
Observances This Week:
4-10
Home Office Safety and Security Week
National Folic Acid Awareness Week 
National Lose Weight/Feel Great Week

6-9
International Consumer Electronics Show
7-10

Elvis' Birthday Celebration Week 
8-14
Universal Letter Writing Week 
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Quote of the Day 


Historical Highlights for Today
1493 - 1st sight of manatees (by Christopher Columbus)
1793 - 1st hot-air balloon flight in the US lifts off in Philadelphia
1811 - 1st Women's Golf Tournament held
1839 - Daguerrotype photo process announced at French Academy of Science
1879 - Cheyenne prisoners led by Dull Knife revolt at Ft Robinson
1908 - Muir Woods National Monument, California, established
1959 - "Rawhide" with Clint Eastwood premieres on CBS TV
1980 - 63 beheaded in Mecca, Saudi Arabia
1991 - Baseball officially bans Pete Rose from being elected to Hall of Fame
2001 - Apple announced iTunes at the Macworld Expo
2007 - Apple Inc CEO, Steve Jobs announces the iPhone.
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  Birthdays Today:
How many can you identify? Answers below in Birthday’s Today



My Rambling Thoughts
Hard to believe it is still winter…beautiful day…again.
Had a great lunch with the retirees. Mary had a great time discovering Southern AZ with her hubby and her 2 dogs. Turns out Tombstone, AZ is very dog friendly, with doggie water on the sidewalk at most stores, and doggie pick up bags throughout the town. Who knew?
Cheryl is having a hassle with her mortgage. Seems it has been ‘sold’ for the third time in a year. She paid December to the new holder, but was told they never got it. So she issued a new check, cancelled the old check. Then they sent her a pissy email about how her check was refused. They called all to no avail. She paid the January one to the same company. Neither check has been deducted from her account. It is all done via the internet so she has a big checking account, an overdue mortgage that the company won’t cash her check, and she says she’ll just wait until the try to evict her. Interesting.
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Brain Teasers
(answers at the end of post)
Fill in the answers to the clues by using all the syllables provided. Each syllable will only be used once. The number of syllables that will be used in each clue will be in parentheses.

A AC AD BUT CUP DEM HES I IC IS IS LA LAZ LEG LI MIN TANT TER TION TOR TRA U

1. Yellow flower (3)
2. Director (5)
3. Lapis ___ (3)
4. Lawmaking (4)
5. Undecided (3)
6. Scholar (4)          

Found on You Tube with some relevance to today 

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Paraphernalia 4 the Brain:     
50’s Inventions…
1957
Fortran (computer language) invented.

Education Facts…
--Students at the John Hopkins University collaboratively decided to opt out of their final since the professor set his curve based on the highest score grading it as 100%. They chose to receive a score of zero, making it the highest grade and thereby getting 100%.
--In the U.S. the typical school year is 180 days long. In China, the typical school year is 251 days.

Flagstaff, AZ History…
100 YEARS AGO
On the 24th instant, the Federal Court denied the application against the “Prohibition Amendment;” thus it goes into effect immediately on the First of January 1915. Attorney General Wiley B. Jones.

Flagstaff’s Iconic 50…
The Museum Club
The Museum Club, a Route 66 icon in Flagstaff, Arizona, began its life as the boyhood dream of taxidermist Dean Eldredge in 1931. When Eldredge found a petrified frog as a child in Wisconsin, it spurred a lifetime as a sportsman, adventurer and collector. Dean began his taxidermy business in 1918. In the early 1930s Eldredge saw an opportunity when he purchased a piece of federal land, three miles east of Flagstaff on Route 66. Soon, he hired unemployed lumberjacks to cut trees, haul them to his property and built what he touted as "the biggest log cabin in the world.” Later he would revise his claim to "the biggest log cabin in the nation,” then to "the biggest log cabin in Arizona.” In any case, he finally had a showplace for his lifetime collection of stuffed animals, six-legged sheep, Winchester rifles, Indian artifacts, two-headed calves, and more than 30,000 other items. Operating as a museum, taxidermist shop, and a trading post, scores of Route 66'rs stopped in to visit Dean and his collection during the five years that he operated the museum. Before long, locals dubbed the museum "The Zoo,” a name that has stuck with the building to this day.

Harper’s Index…
13
Percentage by which Americans over report their religious attendance when asked over the telephone rather than online.

Rules of Thumb…
SPOTTING AN INSIDE JOB
All large-scale crimes are inside jobs.

Unusual Fact of the Day…
The Baltimore Ravens football team of the National Football League is the only team in history to be named after the title of a poem: "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe. Poe was not from Baltimore, but he lived there for short periods. In 1849, he died there while visiting the city on business.
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Joke-of-the-day
Q. What do you do when your nose goes on strike? 
A. You picket! 
           

Yep, It Really Happened
ROSWELL, N.M. (UPI)
A New Mexico man said his elation at winning more than $500,000 from a lottery scratch-off ticket turned to disappointment when he learned it was a misprint. John Wines, a recent retiree from Roswell, said he bought the scratch-off in December from a local Shell station and he scratched the ticket to reveal five winning numbers, two of which were each worth $250,000. Wines said he took the ticket -- which has a stated maximum prize of $250,000 -- back to the gas station to show how he had somehow managed to win more than $500,000. "I took it back in and she told me that is not a winner," Wines told KOB-TV. "They told me that it was a misprint and they don't pay off for misprints." Wines contacted officials with the New Mexico Lottery and received a reply via email. "We did find a flaw in that particular pack of tickets and it's been reported to our printer. Thanks for bringing this to our attention. I did complete a reconstruction of your ticket and it was not a winner," the email read. Wines said he was crushed by the news. "If it was $50 or $75, I would not think a thing about it," he said. "But this is $500,000. That's a half million." "It's like I told them, I didn't misprint it. I bought the ticket in good faith thinking if I won I was going to get my money. And they told me no, they absolutely, positively told me no." The New Mexico Lottery offered Wines $100 worth of tickets as compensation. Wines said his wife, Maria, who once won $100,000 from the Indiana Lottery, told him to put the incident behind him. "She told me to forget it," he told Fox News. "She said they're never going to pay me."           

Somewhat Useless Information
January: named after Janus, the god of doors and gates
February: named after Februalia, a time period when sacrifices were made to atone for sins
March: named after Mars, the god of war
April: from aperire, Latin for "to open" (buds)
May: named after Maia, the goddess of growth of plants
June: from junius, Latin for the goddess Juno
July: named after Julius Caesar in 44 B.C.
August: named after Augustus Caesar in 8 B.C.
September: from septem, Latin for "seven"
October: from octo, Latin for "eight"
November: from novem, Latin for "nine"
December: from decem, Latin for "ten"

***
The earliest Latin calendar was a 10-month one, beginning with March; thus, September was the seventh month, October, the eighth, etc. July was originally called Quintilis, meaning fifth; August was originally called Sextilis, meaning sixth.

Gizmos
SALT LAKE CITY (UPI)
New evidence suggests a human protein can build and edit other proteins. It's the first time the process has been observed by scientists. 
If the human system were a bee colony, proteins would be the worker bees -- industrious and versatile, capable of producing the body's vital materials. And if proteins are the worker bees, then DNA is the queen, offering the instructions for where to go and what to build. 
The work orders are delivered via messenger RNA (mRNA) to amino acids inside human cells called ribosomes. The ribosomes spawn the specialized proteins that then venture out into the human body to do their job -- fight disease, rebuild muscle, trigger hormone production. 
Previously, it was assumed only DNA and mRNA could specify the ingredients (amino acids) that form a new protein. But a new study has shown that one unique protein can deliver instructions to form and augment a new protein on its own, without the assistance of messenger RNA. 
"This surprising discovery reflects how incomplete our understanding of biology is," study author Peter Shen, a biochemistry researcher at the University of Utah, said in a recent press release. "Nature is capable of more than we realize." 
The protein-building protein, called Rqc2, doesn't flex its muscles willy-nilly. Its unique abilities are only called into action when there is a mistake in the protein-building assembly line. Occasionally, the ribosome malfunctions and can't process the protein-building instructions delivered by the mRNA. In these instances, Rqc2 steps in and delivers filler instructions, ordering the ribosome to slap on a random sequence of two amino acids (alanine and threonine) -- a stopgap measure until the proper instructions are resumed. 
"In this case, we have a protein playing a role similar to that filled by mRNA," explained study co-author Adam Frost, M.D., a biochemistry professor at both the University of California, San Francisco and the University of Utah. 
Researchers say the unique process is like a quality control mechanism, the uniform insert a possible signal that the faulty protein needs to be destroyed. Because a range of disorders, including Alzheimer's and Huntington's, are believed to -- at least in part -- derive from problems with the body's protein-construction processes, better understanding Rqc2 could eventually lead to improved treatments for such diseases. 
The new study was published this week in the journal Science.      

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Today’s Events through History
1760 - Afghans defeat Marathas in battle of Barari Ghat
1799 - British PM William Pitt introduces income tax to raise funds for the war against Napoleon.
1858 - Anson Jones, the last President of the Republic of Texas, commits suicide
1912 - US Marines invade Honduras
1976 - CW McCall CB song "Convoy" hit #1 on the country music charts
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Birthday’s Today
Judith Krantz, author (Scruples) is 87
Bart Starr, NFL quarterback/coach (Green Bay) is 81
Joan Baez, Staten Island, folk singer/human rights advocate is 74
Jimmy Page, rock guitarist (Led Zeppelin-Stairway to Heaven) is 70
Dave Matthews, singer/musician (Dave Matthews Band) is 48
Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge is 33
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Remembered for being born today
Thomas Warton, poet laureate-England (Pleasures of Melancholy) 1720-1790@62
Joseph B Strauss, civil engineer/builder (Golden Gate Bridge) 1870-1938@68
Chic Young, cartoonist (Blondie) 1901-1973@71
Richard Nixon, 37th President (R) 1913-1994@81
Lee Van Cleef,  actor (For a Few Dollars More) 1925-1989@64
Bob Denver, actor (Gilligan's Island) 1935-2005@70
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Historical Obits Today
Edward W Buck, Dutch/US editor (Ladies Home Journal), 1930, @ 66
Paul Lynde, actor (Bye Bye Birdie, Bewitched), heart attack, 1982, @55
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Brain Teasers Answers
1. Buttercup (but ter cup)
2. Administrator (ad min is tra tor)
3. Lazuli (laz u li)
4. Legislation (leg is la tion)
5. Hesitant (hes i tant)
6. Academic (ac a dem ic)

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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.