6-30-15

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Almanac: Week: 27 \ Day: 181
June Averages: 79°\41°
86004 Today: H 88°\L 56° Average Sky Cover: 45% 
Wind ave:   8mph\Gusts:  19mph
Ave. High: 82° Record High:  92° (1990) Ave. Low: 46° Record Low:  31° (1913)
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Observances Today:
Leap Second Time Adjustment Day
NOW (National Organization For Women) Day
Meteor Day
National Bomp Pop Day
National Handshake Day

Armed Forces Day (Guatemala)
Independence Day (Congo-1960 from Belgium)
Ramadan- Islam
Revolution Day (Sudan-1989-bloodless coup)
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Observances This Week:
World Police and Fire Games:26-7/5
National Prevention of Eye Injuries Awareness:27 -7/4

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Quote of the Day 

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US Historical Highlights for Today
1521 - Spanish Captains Francisco Gordillo, and Pedro de Quexos, land in, and claim, Florida for the King of Spain.
1815 - US naval hero Stephen Decatur ends attacks by Algerian pirates
1834 - Congress creates Indian Territory (now Oklahoma)
1906 - US Congress passes the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act; these laws owe much to the expose journalism of the period (Upton Sinclair's 'The Jungle' in particular)
1910 - It was announced that the 21,938 acre abandoned military reservation of Camp Bowie would be sold at auction by the U.S. Government.
1936 - Margaret Mitchell's novel "Gone with the Wind" published
1938 - Superman 1st appears in DC Comics' Action Comics Series issue #1
1940 - US Fish & Wildlife Service forms
1945 - 17-day newspaper strike in NY begins
1953 - 1st Chevrolet Corvette manufactured
1982 - Federal Equal Rights Amendment fails 3 states short of ratification
1986 - Georgia sodomy law upheld by US Supreme Court (5-4)
1992 - 1st pay bathrooms in US open: 25 cents (NYC)
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Today’s World Events through History
1294 - Jews are expelled from Berne, Switzerland
1520 - Spanish conquistadors under Hernán Cortés take gold from Aztecs
1520 - The Spaniards are expelled from Tenochtitlan.
1862 - Gustave Flaubert completes "Salammbo"
1893 - Excelsior diamond (blue-white 995 carats) discovered
1894 - Korea declares independence from China, asks for Japanese aid
1894 - London's Tower Bridge opens
1914 - Mahatma Gandhi's 1st arrest after campaigning for Indian rights in South Africa
1934 - French Equatorial Africa constituted a single administrative unit
1936 - Haile Selassie asks League of Nations for sanctions against Italy
1958 - Dutch government of Drees ends obligatory dismissal of married teachers
1972 - Ulster Defence Association (UDA) begin to organise its own 'no-go' areas (this is a response to the continuation of Republican 'no-go' areas and fears about concessions to the IRA)
1990 - East & West Germany merge their economies
2007 - A car crashes into Glasgow International Airport in Scotland, believed to be a terrorist attack.
2012 - Mohamed Morsi is sworn in as President of Egypt
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Birthdays Today:
How many can you identify? Answers below in Birthday’s Today 

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My Rambling Thoughts
Every so often, one has a day where one should have just stayed in bed, or at the very least, done absolutely nothing. Today was that day for me.
At 7a I got on line and signed up for the monitoring of the data stolen by the Chinese. It only took about 10 minutes, but one had to log in after registering to read about what they were going to do. I tried to log in and a popup said I had been locked out and to all a number. Called the number. Listened to a novel on what they were going to be doing, then they said they would connect me to an agent. The wait time was 28 minutes. I put the phone on speaker and went about my business. After 30 minutes a lady answers. I start my questions and she says, ‘I know you are there but I can’t hear you. Try another extension.’ So I did, still nothing was heard by her. About 2 hours later I called back on my cell phone. Same novel is read to me, the wait time now was 25 minutes. Put my cell on speaker, and waited. After 30 minutes I hung up. I called right back on my land line. The wait time was 10 minutes. Then almost immediately the phone was ringing in some office somewhere. After about 10 rings a message came on and said ‘We cannot connect your call, please try again later.’
I headed for Target to get some stuff. I like Target, always have. I had been using cash to pay for stuff for the last year or so, after their credit card breech. I started using my card a few months ago. Among other things, I picked up a 6 pack of Guinness. At the checkout the lady rings up the beer and says ‘I need to scan your ID’. Why? It’s the law. I told her the law is ‘if the customer looks under 30’. She called the front end manager, who told me it was state law. They are not going to scan my driver’s license for any reason as it contains lots of private information the police get when one is stopped. By now there is a line, so I say ‘forget the beer and get me the store manager. I pay and move over and wait for the store manager. I tell her I don’t appreciate being lied to about their policy and she says it is Target Corporate Policy. She gives me the number for customer relations. I leave with my stuff, except the beer, and finish my errands. I get home and call their office. The guy says he understands my concerns, but Target is protecting itself, in case I have a fake ID when I am buying alcohol. At 66, I don’t think that is an issue. I told everyone involved that if they had asked to see my ID I would have laughed, said ‘thanks for thinking I’m not 21, and shown it to them. But to scan my ID is another whole story. He claims that the information is only on that computer and is deleted as soon as the transaction is complete. To be honest, I don’t believe that, so I talk to the supervisor. He gives me the same song and dance so I tell him I won’t be shopping there anymore until their policy changes. With all the personal data being stolen, Target does not need any ID except my credit card or cash. I also told them it is sad that the high ups don’t trust their employees to check ID’s like every other store in America.
Then I called the credit monitors again. This time I waited 30 minutes, told them how long I had waited each call, got my questions answered and moved on. One interesting thing…all their checks are based on SS#, and I was told that if a person who is one number off my SS# applies for credit or loan or anything, I will probably get a notification. Really? My brother and I had our information sent in the same day, back in the day, and our numbers are 2 numbers off. Mine ends in 5, his ends in 3 or 7…I never remember which. So I won’t get his, but I will get some other poor person I don’t know. Also, if I apply for something, some stranger who using one of those services will get an alert about my purchase. Better safe than sorry, I guess.
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Brain Teasers
(answers at the end of post)
An anagram is a word or phrase formed by rearranging the letters of another word or phrase. For example, rearrange "none" to get "neon".
It is not considered an anagram if you exchange a letter with the same letter. For example, switching the n's with each other in "noun" does not give an anagram.
Even though a word is not considered an anagram of itself, your task is to find a word that is an anagram of itself. If you can do the seemingly impossible once, you might as well find a second word that is an anagram of itself.

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Found on You Tube with some relevance to today
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…Cool Facts…
Leonardo da Vinci could write with one hand and draw with the other at the same time.

In Georgia, there is an airtight room called the Crypt of Civilization that was sealed in 1940. It contains numerous artefacts documenting what life was like at the time of sealing, and is scheduled to be opened in the year 8113 to show people of the future exactly what life was like.

…Flagstaff, AZ History…
50 YEARS AGO-1965
There’s more and more going on at Buffalo Park. A new carriage barn has been built by the Stagecoach Depot and more wildlife brought in.

The 29 slot machines seized last month in a police raid have been returned to their rightful owner, Fred Nackard, having been found to be permanently inoperable.

…Harper’s Index…
Returns tomorrow

*NEW*… Relationship Facts…
In 2013, a man bought a house next to his ex-wife just to install a giant middle finger statue for her to see every day.

In 2012, a running partner took his runner girlfriend on a run that ended at the place where they first met. When he showed her his GPS tracker, the tracked route read "MARRY ME".

…Unusual Fact of the Day…
Uganda is the youth capital of the world. More than half the people living there are under 15 years of age.
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2 jokes for the day
Q. Why didn't the skeleton cross the road?

A. He didn't have the guts too

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There once was an old man who was about to die.
He told his wife to put a bag of money in the attic "When I die I'll get it on my way up." chuckled the old man.
Well when the old man died the wife went up to the attic and found that the bag of money was still there.
"I knew I should have put that money in the cellar!" said the old woman.

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Yep, It Really Happened
Sure, kids can be demanding. What parent hasn't had a child threaten to hold their breath unless they get the toy they want? But the teen in today's story is having a tough time letting go of the apron strings. 

This Alabama teenager was arrested after authorities say he followed through on a bizarre threat to kill his mother's chickens unless she mended the relationship between him and his girlfriend.

Haden Smith, 18, was charged with domestic violence third degree and criminal mischief. Deputies say the situation started when Smith texted his mother, threatening to kill one of her chickens every 15 minutes until she contacted his girlfriend's parents and attempted to mend their broken relationship.

Although I don't think this would be the first time Haden has choked the chicken. 

Deputies claim Smith gave his mother a deadline of noon before he started to kill the chickens. They also say he threatened to burn his mother's house down, kill any deputies that arrived on the scene, and kill himself.

Odd that his girlfriend should have left him. 

He then began sending his mother picture messages of each chicken he killed at 15-minute intervals, killing six in total before he was arrested, deputies say.

There's no word on Smith's current relationship status. A barbecue is scheduled for the day after tomorrow.    

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Somewhat Useless Information
Swimming as an organized activity goes back as far as 2500 B.C. in ancient Egypt and later in ancient Greece, Rome, and Assyria. In Rome and Greece, swimming was part of the education of elementary age boys and the Romans built the first swimming pools (separate from bathing pools). The first heated swimming pool was built by Gaius Maecenas of Rome in the first century BC. 

Ancient civilizations left ample evidence of their swimming abilities. Bas-relief artwork in an Egyptian tomb from around 2,000 B.C. shows an overarm stroke like the front crawl. The Assyrians showed an early breaststroke in their stone carvings. The Hittites, the Minoans, and other early civilizations left drawings of swimming and diving skills.

The first municipal pool in the U.S. was built in Brookline, Mass., in 1887. Soon after that, New York City built public facilities, then called "baths."

In 1928, David Armbruster first filmed swimmers under water to study strokes. The Japanese also photographed and studied world-class athletes, using their research to produce a swim team that dominated the 1932 Olympic Games. This marked the beginning of research into stroke mechanics.

During the Middle Ages, people feared water because they thought it contained diseases. Swimming was not again appreciated until the nineteenth century when it became popular in England. People felt they could finally trust the water to be free of disease.

In 1946 war rationing of material inspired the invention of the two piece bathing suite, called a "bikini." It was named for a U.S. nuclear testing site in the South Pacific.

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Birthday’s Today
90 - Dorothy Malone, actress (Peyton Place)
77 - Billy Mills, Pine Ridge SD, 10k (Olympics-gold-64)
73 - Robert Ballard, explorer/geologist/author/discoverer (Titanic in 1985)
59 - David Alan Grier, comedian (In Living Color, Boomerang)
56 - Vincent D'Onofrio, American actor
49 - "Iron" Mike Tyson, NY, youngest heavyweight boxing champ (1986-90)
30 - Michael Phelps, American swimmer (16 Olympic medals)
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Born this day…Died in __@__
Jacques D "comte" Cassini, French astronomer-1845@96
Harry Blackstone Jr, magician (Blackstone Book of Magic & Illusion)-1997@62
Florence Ballard, rocker (Supremes) – 1976@32
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Historical Obits Today
Gale Gordon, comedian (Our Miss Brooks, Here's Lucy)-1995@89
James Oglethorpe, English general and founder of the state of Georgia-1785@88
Buddy Hackett, American comic-stroke-2003@78
Mary Livingstone, [Sadye Marks] Comedienne, (Jack Benny), heart disease-1983@77
George "Spanky" McFarland, child actor (Our Gang), heart attack-1993@65
Moctezuma II, Aztec emperor (1502-20), killed either by the Spanish or stoned by his own people-1520@53ish
Charles J. Guiteau, assassin (President Garfield), hanged-1882@40
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Brain Teasers Answers
Both "stifle" and "filets" are anagrams of "itself".
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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.