8/24/13

FYI: Any blue text is a link. Click to check it out!

Almanac: Flagstaff:  Week: 34/ Day: 236   

Today: H 77°…L 50°

Wind: ave:   4mph; Gusts:  25mph  Ave. humidity:  64%

Average Low Average High Record Low Record High

48°                  79°                    24° (1968)     90° (1985)

Quote of the Day

Today’s Historical Highlights

1st potato chips prepared by Chef George Crum (Saratoga Springs NY)…1853

American Charles Chapman is 1st black to swim English Channel…1981

District Alaska becomes an organized incorporated territory of the United States…1912

Eisenhower signs Communist Control Act, outlawing the Communist Party…1954

International Astronomical Union (IAU) redefines the term "planet" such that Pluto 

     is considered a Dwarf Planet…2006

Job Charnock founds Calcutta India…1690

British forces captured Washington, DC, & burned down many landmarks…1814

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) goes into effect…1949

NYC ticker tape parade for Jim Thorpe & victorious US Olympians…1912

Printing of the Gutenberg Bible is completed…1456

♫  Today’s Birthdays: ♫   

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

My Free Rambling Thoughts   

Was checking the weather today and found out that the casino we went to yesterday was having 50mph winds with quarter-sized hail today. Guess we were luckier than we all thought. The rain is on its way to my place, dark clouds, a little windy and a real cooling. The rain is expected to come and go all weekend.

Did some cleaning, vacuuming, and mopping, just in case somebody stops by this weekend. I have pork ribs in the crock pot, with BBQ sauce…don’t eat them very often, but had a hankerin’ today.

 

What a day for the military. A WWII vet was beaten to death in Washington state; Maj. Nidal Hasan of the Fort Hood massacre was found guilty, the soldier who killed innocent civilians in Afghanistan said he was sorry, and the Marine convicted to stealing secrets has decided he want to live as a female while in prison. I don’t understand why Hasan was not tried as a terrorist, unless it would make the military look bad to have a terrorist within its ranks. It is kind of like saying Egypt was not a coup. I guess our government  believes that it isn’t true until they say it out loud.

 

Thirty-one states allow a rapist to have visitation rights of the child produced through the rape. The rapist has a say in court if the child and the mother want to move out of state. Since many rapists are in prison it is not clear if he has to pay child support while in prison. Really? Many are sure to have an opinion on this matter. It sure was a shock to me. My first reaction was that this is insanity. As an adoptee I have to wonder if the birth mother has to get her rapist’s permission to put the child up for adoption. At what age do you tell your child that the father raped the mother? If the child is adopted, at what age does the child find out the father raped the mother?

  

Game  Center (answers at the end of post)

Brain Teasers

Can you decipher this phrase?

R.P.I. 

Lifestyle  Substance:     

Found on You Tube with some relevance to today

• What's my Line? E.G Marshall

• Duke Kahanamoku Feature Story

• Mason Williams - Classical Gas

Not a Fan of Faux News, but this is crazy.

Harper’s Index    

• Percentage of personal income the average American making more than $200K a year gives to charity: 4.2

• Percentage the average American making between $50K and $100K a year gives: 6

Ok, then?

Unusual Fact of the Day

Telephone cards first took off in Hawaii, since long-distance charges to the far-flung state were higher there than anywhere else in the country.

Joke-of-the-day

A man and a woman who have never met before find themselves in the same sleeping carriage of a train. After the initial embarrassment, they both manage to get to sleep; the woman on the top bunk, the man on the lower. 

In the middle of the night the woman leans over and says, "I'm sorry to bother you, but I'm awfully cold and I was wondering if you could possibly pass me another blanket." 

The man leans out and with a glint in his eye said "I've got a better idea ... let's pretend we're married." 

"Why not," giggles the woman. 

"Good," he replies. "Get your own blanket."   

Rules of Thumb:   

Easy shortcuts to make an ‘educated’ guess

SHARPENING A KNIFE

To get a thirty degree angle on a knife blade (good for many kinds of work) grind it so that the breadth of the exposed diagonal cutting-edge is twice the thickness of the blade.    

Yeah, It Really Happened

ALBUQUERQUE - U.S. engineers say they've completed acceptance testing on an enormous mobile scanner intended to make smuggling radiological materials more difficult. The Mobile Radiation Detection and Identification System, or MRDIS, will enable scanning of containers in transit from one cargo ship to another, scientists at the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque said Wednesday. Typical radiation detectors are fixed at port entrances and exits, so they aren't able to scan containers being transferred from one ship to another within a port, Greg Stihel of Sandia's Systems & Mission Assurance Department said. Such "transshipment" containers are an attractive target for those who might want to smuggle radioactive materials into a country for terrorist activities, such as making dirty bombs, he said. "In 2006, National Nuclear Security Administration recognized the need to also scan cargo that is taken off a ship and, in a short period of time, put on a second ship," Stihel said. Inspectors can move MRDIS to active docks so containers can pass through the MRDIS on the way to another vessel in the port, he said. The latest mobile scanner is the eighth deployed by the Sandia lab. Four went to Panama and four, including the one just completing acceptance testing, to Oman in the Persian Gulf. Nearly 90 percent of imported and exported goods travel the globe in shipping containers, Sandia officials said, with roughly 500 million containers traveling by sea each year.  

Somewhat Useless Information   

• The brain of a sperm whale can weigh up to 20 lbs making it the largest and heaviest brain on the planet.

• A humpback whale can consume up to a ton of food every day.

• Scientists have discovered that each whale population has its own "language" which is understood only by those individuals in the population.

• Spermaceti oil, made from the sperm whale, was used as transmission oil in the Rolls Royce.

• A blue whale's tongue weighs more than a whole elephant, and is large enough for fifty people to stand on it.

• The voice of the blue whale, one of the deepest voices on the planet, is so powerful that it can travel up to 100 miles underwater.  

Calendar Information        

Happening This Week:

18-24

Little League Baseball World Series
Minority Enterprise Development Week

Today Is                                                                      

·        International Bat Night

·        National Waffle Day

·        Pluto Demoted Day

·        William Wilberforce Day British Member of Parliament and leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade.

·        Vesuvius Day buries Pompeii & Herculaneum, 15,000 die

^^^

·        Liberia: Flag Day 1967

·        Ukraine: Independence Day (1991 from USSR)

Today’s Events through History  

6,000 Jews, blamed for the Plague, are killed in Mainz…1349

Hiram L Fong sworn in as 1st Chinese-American senator while Daniel K Inouye 

     sworn in as 1st Japanese-American Rep (Both from Hawaii)…1959

Pete Rose is suspended from baseball for life for gambling…1989

Thomas Edison patents motion picture camera…1891

Windows 95 debuts…1995

Today’s Birthdays                                                           

Dave Chappelle, actor and comedian is 40

Gerry Cooney, heavyweight boxer (US Olympics team 1980) is 58

Rupert Grint, actor (Harry Potter) is 25

Steve Guttenberg, actor (Police Academy, Short Circuit) is 55

Mike Huckabee, American politician, Governor/Presidential candidate is 58

Marlee Matlin, deaf actress (Children of Lesser God-Acad Award) is 48

Vince McMahon, professional wrestling promoter is 68

Reggie Miller, NBA guard (Ind Pacers, Oly-gold-96) is 48

Chad Michael Murray, actor is 32

Cal Ripken, shortstop (Balt Orioles, game streak) is 53

Mason Williams, writer (Smother Brothers Hour) is 75

Remembered for being born today

Yasser Arafat, Paris France, PLO-leader (Achille Lauro, Nobel 1994) [1929-2004]

Richard Cardinal Cushing, archbishop of Boston [1895-1970]

Robert Herrick, England, poet (Gather ye rosebuds) (baptized) [1591-1674]

Duke Kahanamoku, Hawaii, swimmer (Olympics-3 gold/2 silver-12, 20, 24) [1890-1968]

William Wilberforce, British politician, philanthropist, leader to abolish the slave trade 

     [1759-1833]

Today’s Historical Obits                                                           

Gary Crosby, singer/actor (Operation Bikini, Mardi Gras)…cancer…1995…at 61

Henry J. Kaiser, industrialist (Boulder Dam, Liberty ship)…1967…at 85

E.G. Marshall, actor (The Defenders)…1998…at 84

Louis Prima, American singer…stroke…1978…at 67

Getulio D Vargas, President and dictator of Brazil…suicide…1954…at 71

Brain Teasers

A grave error

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  §