3-24-15

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Almanac: Week: 13 \ Day: 083 
March Averages: 50°\23°
86004 Today: H 61°\L 35° Average Sky Cover: 95% 
Wind ave:   11mph\Gusts:  29mph
Ave. High: 52° Record High:  70° (1956) Ave. Low: 24° Record Low:  0° (1904)
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Observances Today:
National Chocolate Covered Raisins Day
American Diabetes Association Alert Day
International Day for the Right to the Truth Concerning Gross
Human Rights Violations and for Dignity of Victims
World Tuberculosis Day
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Observances This Week:
      22-28
…Week of Solidarity with People's Struggling Against Racism & Discrimination
…Consider Christianity Week
…International Phace Syndrome Awareness Week

…Meat Free Week
…National Cleaning Week
National LGBT Health Awareness Week

…National Youth Violence Prevention Week
…Pediatric Nurse Practioner Week
…Root Canal Awareness Week
...Tsunami Awareness Week
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Quote of the Day 

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US Historical Highlights for Today
 1617 - King James I, of England, decides the Indians of Virginia must be
educated-- directs the Anglican church to collect funds to build churches and schools
1629 - 1st game law passed in American colonies, by Virginia
1664 - Roger Williams is granted a charter to colonize Rhode Island
1765 - Britain enacts Quartering Act, required colonists to provide temporary
housing to British soldiers
1792 - Benjamin West (US) becomes president of Royal Academy of London
1828 - Philadelphia & Columbia Railway (1st state owned) authorized
1832 - Mormon Joseph Smith beaten, tarred & feathered in Ohio
1855 - Manhattan Kansas founded as New Boston Kansas
1868 - Metropolitan Life Insurance Co forms
1877 - University boat race between Oxford & Cambridge ends in a dead heat
1883 - 1st telephone call between NY & Chicago
1898 - 1st automobile sold
1900 - New York City Mayor Robert Anderson Van Wyck breaks ground
for a new underground "Rapid Transit Railroad" that would link Manhattan and Brooklyn
1913 - Palace Theater opens at 1564 Broadway NYC
1926 - The Clifton-Springerville highway through Apache National Forest
opened, paving the way for growth in Arizona's lumber industry.
1930 - 1st religious services telecast in US (W2XBS NYC)
1930 - Planet Pluto named
1935 - Major Bowes' Original Amateur Hour goes national on NBC Radio Network
1937 - National Gallery of Art established by Congress
1947 - Congress proposes 2-term limitation on the presidency
1947 - John D. Rockefeller Jr donates NYC East River site to the UN
1980 - ABC's nightly Iran Hostage crisis program renamed "Nightline"
1989 - Worst US oil spill, Exxon's Valdez spills 11.3 mil gallons off Alaska
1998 - Two students, ages 11 and 13, fire upon teachers and students at
Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Arkansas; 5 dead\10wounded
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Today’s World Events through History
1603 - Scottish King James VI son of Mary Queen of Scots, becomes King James I
of England in succession to Elizabeth I, thus joining the English and Scottish crowns
1837 - Canada gives black citizens the right to vote
1882 - German scientist Robert Koch discovers bacillus cause of TB
1906 - "Census of the British Empire" shows Britain rules 1/5 of the world
1924 - Greece becomes a republic
1927 - Cuban chess champion Jose Capablanca wins 33-day Grand Chess Tourney
2012 - African Union deploys 5,000 strong force with the aim of catching or killing warlord Joseph Kony
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  Birthdays Today:
How many can you identify? Answers below in Birthday’s Today


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My Rambling Thoughts
Nice Monday…for a Monday.
Lots of wind today, woke me several times last night. Ran a few errands.
So Rafael Edward "Ted" Cruz is running for President. Hoping his super conservative ideas will unite the Far Right and then when he doesn’t get the nomination that the Far Right of the Republican Party will quietly fade into history. It will be interesting to hear how the Far Right handles his Canadian birth to an American mom and the idea that he withdrew his dual citizenship in 2014.
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Brain Teasers
(answers at the end of post)
Can you figure out the logic I used to decide the order of the following words: 
gun, shoe, spree, door, hive, kicks, heaven, gate, line, den

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Found on You Tube with some relevance to today
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…Average Facts…
-- On average there are 180 sesame seeds on a bun of a BigMac.
--The average person eats almost 1500 pounds of food a year.

…Education Facts…
--There’s a Swedish power metal band called “Sabaton” who teach history through their music, including an album devoted to teaching about World War Two.
--In 1987, an 18 year old freshmen named Mike Hayes funded his education by asking 2.8 million people for one penny.

…Flagstaff, AZ History…
50 YEARS AGO-1965
--The National Park Service has awarded a contract to construct an 8-inch waterline across the heart of the Grand Canyon to the Ellling Halvorsen Construction Co. of Seattle at $2,277,557. The line will stretch for over 10 miles from Roaring Springs on the North Rim down Bright Angel Canyon, across the Colorado River then up to Indian Gardens, where it will tie into the existing line to the South Rim.
--The roads in the Mountainaire subdivision were not originally built up to standard and have become essentially impassable. The school buses are unable to get in to pick up the children. The subdivision, which opened in 1960, has been plagued with many problems. The waterline leaks have not been repaired since last summer and the booster tank has run dry on many occasions. Further, the construction of substandard shacks and the placement of substandard trailers has been going on as well as improperly located septic tanks and outhouses.
--The low bid for repair of the city garage that was damaged by fire earlier was offered by a Flagstaff firm and includes a skylight that will improve the light in the garage.

…Game Facts…
-- In the wake of Goat Simulator's popularity, 'Rock Simulator 2014' was developed and released. Gameplay simulates life as a rock.
--As of 2011, gamers have collectively spent over 6 million years playing World of Warcraft. That's almost as long as the existence of the human species!

…Harper’s Index…
$238
Amount the beverage industry spent lobby against the CA soda tax for every vote cast against the initiative
…Unusual Fact of the Day…
The first rhinoplasty was performed in India around the 5th century CE. It involved a creeper vine leaf, a hunk of flesh sliced off of the patient’s cheek, and two small pipes to serve as nostrils. The procedure was wildly popular—albeit involuntary. At the time, Hindu law decreed that the schnozzes be sliced off all adulterers and—human nature being what it is—that turned out to include an awful lot of people.
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2 jokes for the day
"I’m getting a divorce," said Jack to his mate, Bill. "The wife hasn't spoken with me for six months." 
Bill thought for a moment and then replied, "Just make sure you know what you’re doing, Jack. Wives like that are hard to find."

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A little silver-haired lady calls her neighbor and says: 
"Please come over here and help me. I have a killer jigsaw puzzle, and I can't figure out how to get started." 
Her neighbor asks, "What is it supposed to be when it's finished?" 
The little silver haired lady says, "According to the picture on the box, it's a rooster." 
Her neighbor decides to go over and help with the puzzle. 
She lets him in and shows him where she has the puzzle spread all over the table. 
He studies the pieces for a moment, then looks at the box, then turns to her and says: 
"First of all, no matter what we do, we're not going to be able to assemble these pieces into anything resembling a rooster." 
He takes her hand and says, "Secondly, I want you to relax. Let's have a nice cup of tea, and then," he said with a deep sigh ... 
"Let's put all the Corn Flakes back in the box."

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Yep, It Really Happened
South Dakota
Remember the scare film from 1939; Reefer Madness? It was propaganda designed to show parents that if they let their kids smoke 'Mary-Jane' they would turn into sex-addicted, violent sociopaths. Even back then the movie was laughable to all but the most naive audiences, and now we are able to look back on it as the ignorant paranoia that it is... except that it totally isn't! A recent incident in South Dakota makes the mayhem depicted in Reefer Madness look like mischievous hijinks. 
The story starts with a teenager smoking pot with two friends in the basement of his father's house. Mistake no. 1; don't smoke pot indoors if there is a risk of being detected. That smell is impossible to hide. 
So the father discovered them and ordered the two friends to leave, but when his son wanted to leave with his friends his father refused to let him go. That's when a scuffle broke out. 
Dad was able to hold both of them while he called the police, but no arrests or report was made because he just wanted his son's friends to leave. 
You would think that narrowly avoiding arrest for possession and consumption of marijuana would be enough adventure for a couple of teens for one night, but these two, cranked up on the sticky-icky, immediately went to round up 20 of their watery-eyed friends and laid in wait for the dad. 
When he went outside to move a car parked in his driveway, the mob surrounded the car and started beating on it and smashing the windows. 
Finding himself in a scene out of a horror movie, the victim threw that hooptie in gear and took off across the lawn. 
One neighbor said, "All of a sudden, I saw a car going 30 to 40 mph hit the curb. All you could see is headlights and kids running all over, then I saw a kid get hit while he was coming off the curb. That's when they switched to start chasing each other in their cars."
The neighbor called police to report the incident. He tried to get the plates of the vehicles the teens were in but was unsuccessful.
"Then it was just constant cars flying down these roads. They were hitting and swerving at each other. You don't even see this stuff on TV."
Eventually, the mob dispersed. The victim was able to identify a few of the teens but didn't know most of them.
One witness said he thinks both the teens and the victim should be arrested. He said the victim was trying to run the teens over and could have handled the situation better.    

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Somewhat Useless Information
--Although human nature suggests that the first kiss would have been shared much earlier, anthropologists have traced the first recorded kiss to India in approximately 1500 B.C. Early Vedic documents report people "sniffing" with their mouths and describe how lovers join "mouth to mouth."
--The tradition that inspired the phrase "You may kiss the bride" probably originated in ancient Rome. To seal their marriage contract, couples kissed in front of a large group of people. The Romans had three different categories of kisses: osculum, a kiss on the cheek; basium, a kiss on the lips; and savolium, a deep kiss.
--The strange but sweet butterfly kiss is named for its similarity to a butterfly's fluttering wings. Simply put your eye a whisper away from your partner's eye or cheek, and bat your leashes repeatedly.
--The adrenaline rush you get when you jump out of a plane or run a marathon is essentially the same rush you get from kissing. The neurotransmitters that fire when you're kissing cause the heart to beat faster and the breath to become deeper.
--Sideshows at the Olympic games of ancient Greece included kissing competitions. How one would have judged such a thing is hard to know, but similar competitions still crop up from time to time, usually for fund-raising purposes or simply for spectacle's sake.
--The first on-film kiss occurred between John C. Rice and May Irwin in the movie The Kiss (1896).

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Birthday’s Today
75 - Bob Mackie, designer (Streisand, Cher)
64 - Pat Bradley, LPGA golfer (1981 US Women's Open)
53 - Star Jones, attorney/TV hostess (NBC, Inside Edition)
42 - Jim Parsons, actor, The Big Bang Theory
39 - Peyton Manning, American football player
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Remembered for being born today
1733-1804@71 - Joseph Priestley, clergyman/scientist (discovered oxygen)
1814-1910@95 - Galen Clark, US, naturalist/discovered Mariposa Grove, Yosemite
1834-1902@68 - John Wesley Powell, US, geologist/explorer/ethnologist
1855-1937@82 - Andrew W. Mellon, banker (Mellon Bank), Secretary of Treasury
1874-1926@52 - Harry Houdini, [Erich Weiss], Budapest, magician/escape artist
1887-1933@46 - Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, actor (Keystone comedies)
189- 2006@107- Dorothy Stratton, organizer (SPARS-women's US Coast Guard)
1902-1971@68 - Thomas E. Dewey, Governor\Republican presidential candidate
1907-1986@88 - Lucia Chase, US ballerina/co-founder (American Ballet Theater)
1910-1934@23 - Clyde Barrow, bank robber (of Bonnie & Clyde fame)
1915-1963@48 - Gorgeous George (George Wagner), professional wrestler
1924-1998@74 - Norman Fell, actor (Mr Roper-3's Company)
1930-1980@50 - Steve McQueen, actor (The Magnificent Seven)
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Historical Obits Today
Sam Jaffe, actor (Dr Zorba-Ben Casey)-1984@93
Richard Widmark, American actor-2008@93
Mary, [Victoria Mary] of Teck, Queen of GB and consort of George V-1953@85
Robert Culp, American actor (I Spy), heart attack-2010@79
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, US poet (Song of Hiawatha), peritonitis-1882@75
Elizabeth I Tudor, [Virgin Queen], of England and Ireland,depression-1603@69
Peter Lorre, Hungarian/US actor (Maltese Falcon, Raven), stroke-1964@59
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Brain Teasers Answers
Each word rhymes with its numeric position in the list. (e.g. "gun" rhymes with "one", etc.)
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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.