9/12/13

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Almanac: Flagstaff:  Week: 37/ Day: 355   

Today: H 66°…L 53°…Ave. humidity:  86%

Wind: ave:   5mph; Gusts:  11mph  

Average Low: 44°

Average High: 75°

Record Low: 30° (1986)

Record High: 88° (1990)

Quote of the Day

Today’s Historical Highlights

"Bonanza" premieres on NBC-TV…1959

1st submarine tested (London)…1624

4 teens, following their dog down a hole near Lascaux France discover 17,000-year-old

     drawings now known as Lascaux Cave Paintings …1940

7th Olympic games close in Antwerp Belgium…1920

Battle of Harpers Ferry VA…1862

Canyonlands National Park is designated as a National Park…1964

Charles Messier observes Crab Nebula & begins catalog…1758

Coup overthrows Emperor Haile Selassie in Ethiopia (National Day)…1974

Gilbert, strongest hurricane ever (160 mph), devastates Jamaica…1988

NY Jews petition Governor Dongan for religious liberties…1695

US forces mistakenly shoot and kill eight Iraqi police officers in Fallujah …2003

♫  Today’s Birthdays: ♫   

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

My Free Rambling Thoughts   

Surprise, Surprise…another day with rain.  Getting real hard to believe this is the high desert. Everything is so wet, green, and nice. The weatherman keeps saying that all this moisture is no way related to our winter weather expectations. One can hope. The wild birds are really filling up, if that is any indication. The daily rain is not really that bad, but daily snow will be less than enjoyable.

 

I have read the memorials being posted and decided not to post anything on FB regarding 9-11. It changed our country, thousands died for no real reason. Since 9-11 hundreds of thousands around the world have died as the US does the old eye-for-an-eye thing. In my naive little world. It would have been better to capture the people who planned the bombing and try them in our courts. I get that the terrorists are not going to play by the rules, but our military attacks since 9-11 have not only killed terrorists, many too many innocent civilians have died. Sadly the drones and the military are unable to determine the good guys from the bad guys. In the heat of the battle, women and children have been killed. We are not seen around the world as little more that the terrorists we hate so much. During my time as a school administrator at several schools I was asked by the local police if they could come into the classrooms and talk about their jobs. Sadly many of the children had only seen cops when they were arresting someone at their homes. Some of those kids were fearful of the cops and some others hated the cops. It is a long tough road for everyone when a child’s only contact with a cop is in a situation where someone has to be arrested and handcuffed. The cops were always welcome and really tried to explain that they were really the good guys. I know that many children growing up in so many countries are fearful of Americans because their house, or their friend’s house was bombed or they saw the Americans kill someone, shoot someone, or haul someone off…and usually not even speaking a language the children understood. I don’t have answers, but if we continue to bomb and kill we are only developing another generation that will hate us. Soapbox now closed.

 

Today would have been my mom’s 94^th birthday. She was here for 89 years and taught my brother and I so much. She is still greatly missed.

Game  Center (answers at the end of post)

Brain Teasers

"She" is a word that contains two personal pronouns: she and he. What five-letter word beginning with "U" contains four personal pronouns?

Lifestyle  Substance:     

Found on You Tube with some relevance to today

• Johnny Cash - Ring of Fire - Grand Ole Opry

• Hopalong Cassidy Tribute (William Boyd)

• Barry White - Can't get enough of your Love, Babe

• What's My Line? - Maurice Chevalier

• Canyonlands National Park, Utah (in HD)

• The Dordogne, France: Lascaux's Prehistoric Cave Paintings

Hmmmm…Fearsome Phobias

If you have an irrational fear of... Chins
You're suffering from... Geniophobia: ancient Greek: geneias = beard, chin

If you have an irrational fear of... Choking (or smothering)
You're suffering from... Pnigophobia: Greek: Pnigos, choking

It is Illegal…

Flushing the toilet after 10 PM where the person lives in an apartment is illegal In Sweden

Privileges granted to people in the U.S. (and many western nations) for being Christian…

Your faith is accepted/supported at your workplace.

Ok, then?

Harper’s Index    

Portion of the Sytrian population that will require humanitarian aid by the end of the year: 1/2

Unusual Fact of the Day

We know it best for its unforgettable roles in flameproof insulation and class-action lawsuits, but asbestos got its official start in the first century, when Roman author Pliny the Elder noted the natural mineral fiber’s resistance to fire. Though he slightly discredited himself by also lauding asbestos for being impermeable to attacks by dark wizards, he did point out one trait that modern researchers should have paid more attention to: slaves who worked with asbestos tended to develop lung problems.

Animals with the strongest jaws…

Gorilla 1300 psi

This one might surprise some because of their vegetarian nature. But the gorilla is a formidable candidate in this list. They have jaws primarily adapted to chew strong hard plants like bamboo, which have given them incredibly strong jaw and neck muscles capable of punching a 1300 psi bite. The gorilla has been traditionally seen as a big scary monster but in recent years its image has changed to that of a “gentle giant.” They are our closest relatives after the chimpanzee, and their numbers are shrinking rapidly, with only 700 mountain gorillas left in the wild. Gorillas can climb trees but are usually found on the ground in communities of up to 30 individuals led by a dominant older male. Gorillas tend to be gentle creatures and do not pose a threat to humans.

Joke-of-the-day

A woman walked up to a little old man rocking in a chair on his porch. "I couldn't help noticing how happy you look," she said. "What's your secret for a long happy life?"

"I smoke three packs of cigarettes a day," he said. "I also drink a case of whiskey a week, eat fatty foods, and never exercise."

"That's amazing," said the woman, "how old are you?"

"Twenty-six," he said.  

Rules of Thumb:   

Easy shortcuts to make an ‘educated’ guess

WORD OF MOUTH

A happy customer will tell a few friends how great you are. An unhappy customer will tell everyone they know to not ever do business with you.    

Yeah, It Really Happened

PASADENA, Calif. - Soot from a rapidly industrializing Europe may have caused mountain glaciers in the European Alps to retreat beginning in the 1860s, a NASA-led study suggests. In the decades following the 1850s, industrialization of Western Europe saw the use of coal to heat homes and power transportation and manufacturing, spewing huge quantities of black carbon and other dark particles into the atmosphere, the researchers said. It came at the end of the Little Ice Age, loosely defined as a cooler period between the 14th and 19th centuries, when temperatures dropped and glaciers expanded. But glacier records show that between 1860 and 1930, as temperatures continued to drop and snowfall remained adequate, large valley glaciers in the Alps abruptly retreated by an average of nearly 0.6 mile. Glaciologists and climatologists have struggled to reconcile this apparent conflict between climate and glacier records. "Something was missing from the equation," study leader Thomas Painter, a snow and ice scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said. "Before now, most glaciologists believed the end of the Little Ice Age came in the mid-1800s when these glaciers retreated, and that the retreat was due to a natural climatic shift, distinct from the carbon dioxide-induced warming that came later in the 20th century. Analyzing the levels of carbon particles trapped in ice core layers, the researchers were able to estimate how much black carbon -- soot -- was deposited on glacial surfaces. Black carbon is the strongest sunlight-absorbing atmospheric particle that, when it settles on the snow blanketing glaciers, darkens the snow surface, speeding its melting and exposing the underlying glacier ice to sunlight and warmer spring and summer air earlier in the year. The industrial soot was sufficient to cause glacier retreat despite cooling temperatures, the researchers said. "This [study] result suggests that human influence on glaciers extends back to well before the industrial temperature increases," Painter said.  

Somewhat Useless Information   

• Coca-Cola inventor John Pemberton was the founding father of coupons. He offered certificates try the new fangled soda pop for free in 1887.

• C.W. Post offered the ‘a penny-off’ coupon on Grape Nuts cereal in 1895.

• The most frugal cities are Atlanta, Orlando, Tampa, Nashville and Charlotte. 

• So far in 2013, 305 billion coupons circulated and 2.9 billion have been redeemed.

• The top coupon retailers are Walmart, Kroger, Target, Walgreens, and Pulbix.

• Coupon-using celebs include Kristen Bell, Jay Leno and Lady Gaga, who tweets about using coupons at the grocery store. Bell says she's been known to steal coupons out of neighbors' mailboxes.

Calendar Information        

Happening This Week:

8th-15th

International Housekeepers Week
National Assisted Living Week 
National Historically Black Colleges & Universities Week
Substitute Teacher Appreciation Week 

Suicide Prevention Week

9th-14^th

Line Dance Week

12th-15th

Hummingbird Celebration

Today Is                                                                      

·        International Day for South-South Cooperation

·        National Boss/Employee Exchange Day

·        National Chocolate Milkshake Day

·        National Pet Memorial Day

·        Video Games Day

Today’s Events through History  

"Monkees" premieres on NBC-TV…1966

Apple unveils its iPhone 5 and iOS 6…2012

Country singer George Jones undergoes triple bypass surgery…1994

Ethiopia forms socialist republic…1984

Hurricane in Florida, kills 6,000…1928

Luna 2 launched by USSR; 1st spacecraft to impact on Moon…1959

Start of Sherlock Holmes adventure "Greek Interpreter" (BG)…1888

US LSD professor Timothy Leary escapes from California jail…1970

US Supreme Court orders Little Rock Ark high school to integrate…1958

Today’s Birthdays                                                           

Linda Gray, actress (Sue Ellen Ewing-Dallas) is 73

Maria Muldaur, singer (Midnight at the Oasis) is 70

Peter Scolari, actor (Newhart, Bosom Buddies) is 58

Yao Ming, Chinese basketball player (Rockets) is 33

Jennifer Hudson, actress and singer (Dreamgirls, Jennifer Hudson) is 32

Remembered for being born today

Maurice Chevalier, Paris, thanked heaven for little girls (Gigi) [1888-1972]

Irene Joliot-Curie, Paris, physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry [1897-1956]

Beryl L. Frazier, my mom [1919-2008]

Richard Jordan Gatling, US, inventor (hand-cranked machine gun) [1818-1903]

George Jones, singer (Golden Rings, Oh Lonesome Me), [1931-2013]

Desmond Llewelyn, Welsh actor (Q in Bond films) [1914-1999]

Frank McGee, American journalist [1921-1974]

Jesse Owens, track star, spoiled Hitler's 1936 Olympics with 4 gold [1913-1980]

Gunther Gebel-Williams, lion tamer (Ringling Bros Circus) [1934-2001]

Barry White, singer (Love's Theme), [1944-2003]

Today’s Historical Obits                                                           

Friedrich August von Alberti, geologist (Triasic Age)…1878…@ 83

William Boyd, cowboy (Hopalong Cassidy)…1972…at 77

Raymond Burr, actor (Perry Mason)…liver cancer…1993…@ 76

Johnny Cash, American singer and guitarist…diabetes…2003…@ 71

Robert Lowell, US poet/pacifist (Near the Ocean)…heart attack…1977…at 60

Anthony Perkins, actor (Psycho)…AIDs…1992…@ 60

Jules Violle, French physicist and inventor (radiation)…1923…@ 82  

Brain Teasers

usher: us, she, he, and her

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  §