Sep 25, 2012

FYI: Click on any blue text for a link to more information!

Flagstaff Almanac…  

Week: 39/ Day 269:   Today: High  73 °…Low 43°

Records: High   85°(1947)…Low 25°(1918)

Averages: High  70°…Low 39°

Wind: average:   4mph;  Gusts:  30mph

Today’s average humidity:  42%

Quote of the Day…

Today’s  Historical  Highlights…

1988 - Florence Griffith Joyner runs Olympic record 100m in 10.54s

1962 - Sonny Liston KOs Floyd Patterson in 1st round for heavyweight title

1954 - Francois "Doc" Duvalier wins Haitian presidential election

1933 - 1st state poorhouse opens in Smyrna, Georgia

1926 - Henry Ford announces 8 hour, 5-day work week

1897 - 1st British bus service opens

1861 - Secretary of US Navy authorizes enlistment of slaves

1789 - Congress proposes Bill of Rights (10 of 12 will ratify)

♪   Happy Birthday To: ♪.. 

How many can you identify?…answers in Today’s Birthdays

Free Rambling Thoughts…   

A day of clear sky and cloudy sky and clear sky. A day of a couple of light rains. A day of some gusty wind to bring in the rain. Most of the day was nice weather, but the rains put a damper on much outside activity. Libya seems to have opened up more problems. The good news is the Libyan people and government are now searching out the militants that killed our ambassador and three other Americans. The bad news is that our government was not listening to the civilian Americans, including the Ambassador that this attack was coming. CNN, a news organization walked around the consulate after the attack and found the Ambassador’s personal diary. They read it, reported the newsworthy items, and returned it to the family. Our government is saying they should have returned it to them and should not have reported its information. Sounds to me like a bunch of bureaucrats, including the FBI, dropped the ball big time. Also sounds like bureaucrats are pointing fingers at CNN to draw attention away from their failures. It’s time to figure out what went wrong and take action to prevent future events of this magnitude.

Game  Center: (answers at the end of post)

What is the rhyming answer?

Answer the following clue in two rhyming words (e.g. an obese feline is a fat cat) If only one number is given, the answer is a word featuring internal rhyme (e.g. voodoo)

Deliberately avoid daylight (4,3)

Rebus…

Can you figure out what this means?

Lifestyle  Substance…     

Do you remember this?

Read This Headline Carefully!!

Something Went Wrong in Jet Crash, Experts Say

Gorilla:

Great Melodies…:

Dawn from Thus Spake Zarathustra…Richard Strauss
Inspired by Nietzsche’s treatise of the same name, Strauss wrote this tone poem in 1896, and it is in 9 parts. Almost no one is familiar with more than the first part, “Dawn” or “Sunrise.” It is world famous because of Stanley Kubrick’s sci-fi classic, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Elvis Presley also used it to open his concerts. It has been used in films, film trailers, and parodied so many times that even Ray Stevens, the country-comedy songwriter, used it once, with chickens “buck buck buck-AWing” the opening chords.

Harper’s Index…         

Amount the average worker spends annually on coffee: $1,092 ($2.90/day)

Unusal Fact of the Day…

The Halifax, Nova Scotia explosion which killed 2,000 people occurred on December 6^th, 1917, and was the largest man-made explosion until the first atomic bomb was dropped in 1945—a ship of explosives.

Found on You Tube… 

• Shel Silverstein on "The Johnny Cash Show"

• The Actual '73 Giving Tree Movie Spoken By Shel Silverstein

Joke-of-the-day…

A man is recovering from surgery when the Surgical Nurse appears and asks him how he is feeling.
"I'm O. K. but I didn't like the four letter-words the doctor used in surgery," he answered.
"What did he say," asked the nurse.
"Oops!"  

Rules of Thumb…   

Easy shortcuts to make an ‘educated’ guess

BUILDING A DOCK…Figure $20 a square foot per deck space plus $750 per piling when building a dock.    

Yeah, It Really Happened…

Everett, Washington - 44-year-old Renee Bishop-McKean is accused of trying to decapitate her sleeping husband with an electric saw in a bizarre revenge plot.
The couple had been living apart but jurors were told the woman invited her husband over and told him to sleep on a mattress that she had wrapped in plastic. That should have been his first hint that something wasn't exactly right.
In the middle of the night the woman attacked her husband with the saw, but the noise woke the victim and he was able to fight her off. But she wasn't finished. Upon realizing the saw wasn't going to work she then attacked him with a hatchet and mallet, striking him on the head.
But she was still unable to kill him.
Bishop-McKean told police an attacker must have entered the home through an open window, found the saw and attacked her husband, however Deputy Prosecutor Paul Stern noted the window was locked. He called the woman's theory the "Tinkerbell did this" defense. Police found evidence that Bishop-McKean had purchased the saw, hatchet and mallet shortly before the attack and stock-piled bleach and a supply of large garbage bags. Jurors needed less than three hours to find her guilty of first-degree assault and attempted murder.  

Somewhat Useless Information…   

• In 1944, the H.W. Lay Company became one of the first snack food makers to advertise on television, with a cartoon character called Oscar, the Happy Potato. It was never explained how Oscar was happy to be sliced wafer-thin and deep-fried in a vat of boiling oil. 

• Sweet potatoes aren't potatoes at all, but vine roots. They're also unrelated to yams.

• After 35 years of puffing, Mr. Potato Head officially gave up his pipe in 1987 in conjunction with the American Cancer Society's Great American Smokeout.

• Ore-Ida, the leading potato processor in the United States, is named for the Oregon/Idaho border, where most potatoes are grown. The company made a miscue in 2002 when they attempted to lure kids with colored Funky Kool French fries to match the colorful ketchup being produced by Heinz.

• NBA star Anthony "Spud" Webb got his nickname because it was short for Sputnik, a nickname his grandmother had given him as a child.

• To further distance themselves from other brands, Pringles began officially referring to its product as "potato crisps" in 1991.  

Calendar Information…        

Happening This Week:

22-29: Banned Books Week / National Dog Week / National Keep Kids Creative Week / Remember to Register to Vote Week / International Women's E-Commerce Days

Today Is…                                                                      

Gold Star Mother's Day [for those who lost a son or daughter in war]
Math Story Telling Day
National Comic Book Day
National One-Hit Wonder Day
National Voter Registration Day
National Woman Road Warrior Day [to honor and recognize the nation's      traveling businesswomen](World) Ataxia Awareness Day [ lack of voluntary coordination of muscle       movements]~Rwanda: Republic Day (1961 abolition of monarchy)

Today’s Events Through History…  

2000’s

2008 - China launches the spacecraft Shenzhou 7

1900’s

1990 - Saddam Hussein warns that US will repeat Vietnam experience

1973 - 3-man crew of Skylab 3 make safe splashdown in Pacific after 59 days

1956 - 1st transatlantic telephone cable goes into operation (Scot-Canada)

1956 - Transatlantic telephone cable (Newfoundland-Oban) is used

1934 - Lou Gehrig plays in his 1,500th consecutive game

1926 - NHL grants franchises to Chicago Black Hawks & Detroit Red Wings

1919 - President Woodrow Wilson is paralyzed by a stroke

1912 - Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism is founded in New York

1906 - In the presence of the king and before a great crowd, Leonardo Torres 

            Quevedo successfully demonstrates the invention of the Telekino in the port 

            of Bilbao, guiding a boat from the shore, in what is considered the birth of 

            the Remote control

1800’s

 1890 - Congress establishes Yosemite National Park (California)

1866 - (Leonard W) Jerome Park opens in Bronx for horse racing

1829 - Failed assassination attempt on Simon Bolívar

1700’s

1793 - Near Knoxville, Tennessee, a group of around 300 Chickamaugas, including 

           Captain Bench, Doublehead and John Watts, attack Alexander Cavett's fort. 

           Cavett, and three other men are guarding ten women and children. After a few 

           Chickamaugas are killed, John Watts calls for a parley. He promises not to kill 

           the settlers, if they surrender. Finding their situation hopeless, the settlers give 

           up and open the fort. Against the wishes of Bench and Watts, Doublehead kills 

           all of the settlers except one boy saved by Watts. The boy meets his own death

           a few days later by another angry Indian.

1780 - Benedict Arnold joins the British

1714 - The five Iroquois Nations send the Governor of New York, a letter. They tell 

             the Governor, that the Tuscaroras join the Iroquois Confederacy. Long ago, 

             they had moved away. Now, they return.

1600’s

1639 - 1st printing press in America

1500’s

1513 - Vasco Nunez de Balboa is 1st European to see Pacific Ocean

1400’s

1493 - Columbus sails with 17 ships on 2nd voyage to America

Before 1000CE

303 - On a voyage preaching the gospel, Saint Fermin of Pamplona is beheaded 

          in Amiens, France

Today’s Birthdays…                                                           

In their 40’s

Scottie Pippen, Hamburg Ak, basket forward (Bulls, Oly-2 gold-92, 96) is 47

Will Smith [The Fresh Prince], actor/rapper (Men in Black, Independence Day) 

     will be 44

In their 50’s

 Heather Locklear, actress (Stacy-T J Hooker, Sammy Jo-Dynasty)   will be 51

In their 60’s

Michael Douglas, actor (Coma, Wall St, Jewel of the Nile) will be 68

Robert Gates, American Secretary of Defense is 69

Cheryl Tiegs, Minnesota, model (Sports Illustrated) is 65

Anson Williams, LA California, actor (Potsie-Happy Days) is 63

In their 80’s

 Barbara Walters, journalist, talk show host will be 83

Remembered for being born today

William Faulkner, New Albany Mississippi, author (Sound & Fury-Nobel 1949) b. 1897

Christopher Reeve, NYC, actor (Superman, Somewhere in Time)  b. 1952

Ethel Rosenberg, American Communist b. 1915

Lope K. Santos, Filipino writer and labor leader, Father of the Philippine National Language and Grammar b. 1879

Shel Silverstein, American humorist and author b. 1930

Today’s Historical Obits…                                                           

Don Adams, American actor and comedian—2005—at 82 

Mary Astor, actress (Cynthia, Meet Me in St Louis, Fiesta)—1987--at 81

Bob Considine, newscaster (Tonight! America After Dark)—stroke—1975--at 68

Wangari Maathai, Kenyan environmentalist, Nobel Peace Prize--ovarian cancer

      —2011-- at 71

Walter Pidgeon, actor (Forbidden Planet, Mrs Miniver)—1984—at 87

George Plimpton, American writer and actor—heart attack—2003—at 76

Coco the Clown, [Nikolai Poliakov]—1974—at 74

John B Watson, US psychologist/behaviorist—1958—at 80

Answers…                                                                                                                                            

What is the rhyming answer?

Shun sun

Rebus

To see red

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 has mistakes and sadly once out 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  §