7-19-15

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Almanac: Week: 30 \ Day: 200
July Averages: 82°\50°
86004 Today: H 76° \ L 56° Average Sky Cover: 85% 
Wind ave:  9mph\Gusts: 22mph
Ave. High: 82° Record High: 92° (1989) Ave. Low: 51° Record Low: 34° (1987)
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Observances Today:
Anne Hutchinson Memorial Day
Celebration of The Horse Day
Flitch Day
Lake Superior Day
National Ice Cream Day
National Ice Cream Day
National Raspberry Cake Day

National Liberation Day (Nicaragua-1979- Sandinista National Liberation Front) 
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Observances This Week:
Rabbit Week: 15-21
National Moth Week: 18-26 
Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS) Education & Awareness Week: 18-25
Everybody Deserves A Massage Week: 19-25 
National Parenting Gifted Children Week: 19-26   
Captive Nations Week: 19-25 
National Independent Retailers Week: 19-25   
National Zoo Keeper Week: 19-25   

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Quote of the Day 

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US Historical Highlights for Today
1848 - 1st US women's rights convention held in Seneca Falls NY, organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Lucretia Mott
1866 - Tennessee is 1st to ratify 14th Amendment, guaranteeing civil rights
1899 - National Brotherhood of Electrical Workers forms
1912 - A meteorite of estimated 190kg mass explodes over Holbrook in Navajo County, Arizona, causing approximately 16,000 pieces of debris to rain down on the town.
1913 - Billboard publishes earliest known "Last Week's 10 Best Sellers among Popular Songs" Malinda's Wedding Day is #1
1932 - Governor Hunt asked Congress for $45,000,000 in federal aid under a federal relief bill to help build more highways and employ more unemployed workers.

1956 - US refuse to lend Egypt money to build Aswan Dam
1961 - 1st in-flight movie shown (TWA)
1967 - 1st air conditioned NYC subway car (R-38 on the F line)
1969 - Apollo 11 goes into Moon orbit
1987 - Jane Geddes wins LPGA Boston Five Golf Classic
1991 - Cal Ripken plays in his 1,500th consecutive game
1996 - XXVI Olympic games open in Atlanta Georgia
2007 - The first episode of "Mad Men" debuts. Jon Hamm stars as Don Draper
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Today’s World Events through History
  695 - Maya King Waxaklahun Ubah K’awil ascends to the throne at Copán, Honduras.
1595 - Astronomer Johannes Kepler has an epiphany and develops his theory of the geometrical basis of the universe
1877 - 1st Wimbledon Men's Tennis: Spencer W Gore beats Marshall (61 62 64)
1952 - 15th modern Olympic games opens in Helsinki, Finland
1979 - 2 supertankers collide off Tobago-260,000 TONS of oil spill
1980 - 22nd modern Olympic games opens in Moscow; US & others boycott
2001 - Michael Brunet discovers the skull of Sahelanthropus tchadensis, thought to be the oldest known species in the human family tree, in the Djurab Desert, Chad. It lived 6-7 million years ago, about the same time as the last common ancestor to apes and humans.
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Birthdays Today:
How many can you identify? Answers below in Birthdays Today 

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My Rambling Thoughts
We remain under a flash flood advisory as the monsoon drops more rain on our little mountain town. I am in no danger, but have friends who have been flooded before and are in danger yet again as the result of a careless fire from several years ago.
Computer began acting up yesterday. Called my tech people and it turns out that some Windows updates didn’t completely load or somehow became corrupted. After about 2 hours he called me and said the new download would take several more hours…so much for ‘high speed’ internet. Will know tomorrow if all worked out.
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Brain Teasers
(answers at the end of post)
Discovered in Africa, I spread like a tide
To become a hot staple known the world wide.
A necessity to some, a treasure to many,
I'm best enjoyed among pleasant company.

Some like me hot and some like me cold.
Some prefer mild, others only bold.
Some take me straight, while some like to savor
My essence to which has been added a flavor.

So put down your cares and sit awhile with me;
I'll send you back refreshed and full of energy.

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Found on You Tube with some relevance to today
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…Cool Facts…
Paul McCartney dreamed the melody of "Yesterday" one night and immediately wrote the music the next morning. He then looked around for a month to make sure that he didn't subconsciously plagiarize it from somebody else.

Scientists have developed a 'hangover-free' beer that has electrolytes, making it more hydrating and refreshing.
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…Flagstaff, AZ History…
25 YEARS AGO-1990
Bookman’s Used Books opened its doors on Saturday with free Pepsi, live music and giveaways. Credit is offered for books brought in. They carry records and video games as well as books.

The Sky Ride at Fairfield Snow Bowl is up and running for sightseers up the mountain to see the views. Ride both ways or opt to hike down.
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…Harper’s Index…
2 – factor by which a placebo for Parkinson’s disease is more effective when the patient is told its costs $1500 rather than $100
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… USA Facts…
The pink cherry blossoms in Washington D.C. were a gift from Imperial Japan in 1912. They sent more than 3,000 seeds to be planted near the Potomac River as a symbol of friendship between the two nations.

The US Air Force researched a “Gay Bomb”: A non-lethal bomb containing really strong pheromones that will make the enemy forces attracted to each other. It won the 2007 Ig Nobel Prize.
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…Unusual Fact of the Day…
Habitual singing causes the lungs to release leptin, a protein manufactured by the body’s fat cells that is involved in the regulation of appetite. This may partially explain why opera stars tend to lean toward the heavy end of the scale.
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2 jokes for the day
Q: What do you call a cow jumping over a barbed-wire fence?

A: An "utter" disaster!

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Four best friends met at the hospital since their wives were giving births to their babies.
The nurse comes up to the first man and says, "Congratulations, you got twins."
The man said "How strange, I'm the manager of Minnesota Twins."
After awhile the nurse comes up to the second man and says, "Congratulations, you got triplets."
The man was like "Hmmm, strange I worked as a director for the "3 musketeers."
Finally, the nurse comes up to the third man and says "Congratulations, you got twins x2."
The man is happy and says, "Ironic, I work for the hotel "4 Seasons."
All three of them are happy until they see their last buddy jumping all over the place, cursing God and banging his head on the wall.
They asked him what's wrong and he answered, "What's wrong? I work for 7up"!         

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Yep, It Really Happened
CAMPBELL RIVER, British Columbia (UPI) - Residents of a British Columbia town said they are afraid to let their cats wander the neighborhood because someone keeps shaving them. Jo-Jo Yarjau of Campbell River said her 12-year-old cat, Tabby, came home with a square-shaped patch shaved into her belly in January and the feline has since come back with patches of hair missing four more times. "The first time it was the base of her tail as well, and under her belly," Yarjau told CTV News. "It looks like a razor did it because it looks like her nipples were cut, and that's a pretty defining factor of what's going on." Neighbor Vance Assu told the Campbell River Mirror he started noticing patches of fur missing from his 4-year-old cat, Twilight, "in February or March" and the incidents became a regular occurrence. Assu said his family has tried keeping Twilight in the house, but the feline refuses to cooperate. "He doesn't want anything to do with being in here, other than to eat and have a nap," he said, "but even that is very rare. We've tried keeping the litter box inside, but he simply won't use it." Yarjau said Tabby is too old to change her behavior to become a strictly indoor cat. "She'll go crazy. She's 12. You can't just do that all of a sudden," she said. Yarjau said her family only lets Tabby out at night to avoid the shaving, which thus far has only occurred during the day. She said she fears for the feline's life. "We only let her out at night now," she said, "because it's never happened at night. She's not allowed to wander during the day anymore, because one day she just might not come back."
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Somewhat Useless Information
While people in both Belgium and northern France claim to have first created the french fry, the "french" part of the term may have been coined by American soldiers who tasted locally made fries in Belgium during World War I. French was the official language of the Belgium army then; hence, "french" fries.

Food historian Karen Hess says Thomas Jefferson is believed to have served French-fried potatoes to White House dinner guests at the turn of the 19th century.

Around seven per cent of the potatoes grown in the U.S. end up being sold by McDonald's. They sell more than one-third of all the French fries sold in restaurants in the U.S. each year.

The earliest known reference to French fries in English literature is in A Tale of Two Cities. Charles Dickens refers to "Husky chips of potato, fried with some reluctant drops of oil."

The average American eats 30 pounds of French fries per year.

The slang term for potato, "spud", comes from the spade-like tool that is used to harvest the potatoes.

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Birthdays Today
74 - Vikki Carr [Florencia Vicenta de Casillas Martinez Cardona)], El Paso Texas, singer (Let it Be Him)
71 - Commander Cody (George Frayne IV), singer/pianist
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Born this day…Died in __@__
George McGovern, (Sen-D-SD)/pres candidate (D-1972)-2012@90
Max Fleischer, Austrian animator and film producer-1972@89
Pat Hingle [Martin Patterson], American actor (Batman Returns)-2009@84
Charles Horace Mayo, surgeon/co-founder (Mayo Clinic)-1939@73
Charles Edward Pickering, pioneered American spectroscopist-1919@72
Lizzie Borden, American woman acquitted of the murder of her parents (gave her mother forty whacks)-1927@66
Samuel Colt, US inventor/industrialist (Colt 6 shot revolver), 1862@47
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Historical Obits Today
James Garner, American actor (Rockford Files, Bret Maverick)2014@86
Jack Warden, American actor (Shampoo)-2006@85
Frank McCourt, Irish-American author, cancer-2009@78
Joe Flynn, actor (McHale's Navy), drowned/heart attack-1974@59
Lefty Frizzell, American country music singer and songwriter-stroke-1975@47
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Brain Teasers Answers
Coffee. It was first discovered in the area of Africa now called Ethiopia. Legend has it that a goat herder observed his goats acting unusually frisky after eating berries from a bush. When he tried them himself, his energy was renewed. And the rest is history.
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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.