11/17/13

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Flagstaff Almanac:

Week: 47/ Day: 321   

Today: L 35°…H 45°… Ave. humidity: 74%

Wind: ave:   18mph; Gusts:  41mph  

Average Low: 22° Record Low:  -10° (1964)

Average High: 50° Record High:  67° (2007)

Quote of the Day

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Today’s Historical Highlights

1st TV condom ad aired (FOX- TV)…1991

1st US dental hygienists course forms, Bridgeport, Ct…1913

62 people are killed by 6 Islamic militants outside the Temple of Hatshepsut, 

     Luxor, Egypt …1997

680 Jews arrested (293 hanged) in England for counterfeiting coins…1278

Church of England organizes in New England…1785

Congress held 1st session in Wash DC in incomplete Capitol building…1800

David Livingstone becomes the first European to see Victoria Falls…1855

Delta Phi fraternity, America's oldest continuous social fraternity, founded…1827

Elizabeth I ascends English throne upon death of her half sister Mary "Bloody Mary”…1558

English explorer, writer and courtier Sir Walter Raleigh goes on trial for treason…1603

Green Bay Packers become 1st NFL team to travel by plane…1940

Kmart Corp. announces it is buying Sears…2004

Lincoln begins 1st draft of his Gettysburg Address…1863

NBC cuts to show "Heidi" and misses Raider's rally to beat Jets, 43-32…1968

Notre Dame finally lost a football game after nearly 25 years…1928

Remaining human inhabitants of the Blasket Islands, Kerry, Ireland are evacuated 

    to the mainland…1953

Russia lands Lunokhod 1 unmanned remote-controlled vehicle on Moon…1970

Suez Canal (Egypt) opens, links Mediterranean & Red seas…1869

US declares Panama Canal Zone neutral…1914

♫  Today’s Birthdays: ♫   

How many can you identify? Answers in Today’s Birthdays

My Free Rambling Thoughts   

It’s mid-November so not expecting great warm weather. The wind and the cold front made this quite a chilly day. There was rain overnight, but for the most part it was a blue sky with a few clouds.

 

Saw an interesting news story on FB today about Goodwill. It was a made by NBC. Seems that while Goodwill offers jobs to many disabled people, many are paid well below the minimum wage for their work…some as little as 22 cents and hour. On top of that many executives at Goodwill are paid half a million or more a year. Sure seems wrong on so many levels. Another story I saw this week was about the Salvation Army who spends hundreds of thousands each year to fight LBGT equality. The Army may be working hard to save souls and helping the needy…but dropping coins or bills in the red bucket does a whole lot more. People should know where their contributions are going in both cases.

Game  Center (answers at the end of post)

Brain Teasers

Below are 3 pairs of words. Find the words that fit in the middle of each pair of words to create two new words, one front-ended and one back-ended.
Example: EVER - ______ - HORN Answer: EVER - GREEN - HORN

1. LENGTH - _______ - CRACK 2. WITH - _______ - OVER 3. MAKE - _______ - LESS

Lifestyle  Substance:     

Found on You Tube with some relevance to today

• Don Gibson Oh, Lonesome Me

• Gordon Lightfoot Sundown

• Slavonic March

• The Blasket Islands Anthony Doheny

Very Strange Laws…

• All new buildings that cost over $100,000 to build must have %1 of funds spent on art work for the building.

• If one is drunk in a mine, he or she could land in jail for up to a year.

• Junk dealers may not make any business transactions with drunk persons.

• It is illegal to wear a hat that obstructs people’s view in a public theater or place of amusement.

• Using a firearm to fish is strictly forbidden.

• Any person who fails to close a fence is subject to a fine of up to seven hundred and fifty dollars.

• It is illegal for women to stand within five feet of a bar while drinking.

• You may not take a picture of a rabbit from January to April without an official permit.

• Skiing under the influence of alcohol is prohibited.

• Cheyenne
--It is illegal to spit on the steps of a school.

OK Then…

 

Harper’s Index 

• Number of European nations among the twenty most populous in the world in 1950: 6 (Germany United Kingdom Italy France Spain Poland)

• Today: 1 (Germany with 80 million is 16th)

Unusual Fact of the Day

The Procrastinators' Club of America newsletter is called “Last Month’s Newsletter.”

Joke-of-the-day

Q: Did you hear about the person who forgot to pay their exorcist? A: They were repossessed.

Rules of Thumb:   

Easy shortcuts to make an ‘educated’ guess

CHOOSING A BARBER

Between two barbers in a shop, choose the one with the worst haircut. They cut each other's hair.   

Yeah, It Really Happened

TRUMPINGTON, England - A 75-year-old British woman was convicted of assault for emptying a bag of dog droppings on a cyclist she accused of riding too close to her. Prosecutors said Susan Currall, 75, of Trumpington, England, swung the bag of her dog's feces at cyclist Michael Ramage Sept. 12 because she was angry at how often cyclists passed too close to her while she was walking, Cambridge News reported Monday. Currall, who said she did not expect the bag to split and spill its contents onto Ramage, was ordered to pay Ramage $40 to cover his dry-cleaning costs as well as $160 to the court for costs. She was given a one-year conditional discharge.

Somewhat Useless Information   

• Hedy Lamarr (9 November 1914 – 19 January 2000) was an Austrian actress in the ‘Golden Age’ and inventor, as well as a very beautiful woman. She was famous for her exotic dark beauty and was called as the ”most beautiful woman in Europe”. Moreover, she was mathematically talented as she invented an early technique for spread spectrum communications and frequency hopping, necessary for wireless communication from the pre-computer age to the present day!

• ‘Valiola’ or ‘Smallpox’ , the infectious disease, which caused numerous deaths around the world, is believed to have emerged in human populations about 10,000 BC. Smallpox localized in small blood vessels of the skin, as well as in the mouth and throat. Regarding skin, it used to raise fluid-filled blisters.

• The last occuring case of  variola was diagnosed in October 26, 1977.

• The discovery of an unknown and strange object in the nearby galaxy m82 was presented at the National Astronomy Meeting in Glasgow. This new object, which doesn’t look like anything seen before and started sending out radio waves, was discovered by Radio astronomers at the University of Manchester.

• Did you know that people of the Mongol empire did not use to wash their clothes or themselves? They believed that washing their clothes or themselves would cause pollution to the water and would make the dragons, who controlled the water cycle, angry.

• Pitkern, usually described as the ‘Atlantic creole’, is mixture of English and Tahitian, based on a 18th century dialect. It was originally spoken in Pincairn Island and has many speakers in Norfolk Island. Although it is described as the Atlantic creole, it is spoken in the Pacific Ocean.

Calendar Information        

Happening This Week:

11-17: National Global Entrepreneurship Week /  World Kindness Week
15-17: National Donor Sabath
17-23: American Education Week / National Book Awareness Week

Today Is                                                                      

·        Great American Smokeout

·        Homemade Bread Day

·        National Unfriend Day

·        Playmobil's National Day of Play

·        World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims

·        World Prematurity Awareness Day

Today’s Events through History  

Daily Racing Form founded…1894

Leonids meteor shower peaks (150,000+ per hour)…1966

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's patriotic Slavonic March made its premiere in Moscow…1876 

Today’s Birthdays                                                           

Gordon Lightfoot, Ontario, folksinger (Sundown) is 75

Martin Scorsese, Queens, New York, director (Raging Bull, The Departed) is 71

Lauren Hutton, [Mary], model/actress (American Gigolo) is 70

Danny DeVito, actor (Taxi, Ruthless People, Twins) is 69

Lorne Michaels, [Lipowitz], comedian (SNL) is 69

Tom Seaver, Met pitcher (300 game winner, Cy Young '69 '73 '75) is 69

RuPaul (Andre Charles), drag queen/model/actor (RuPaul Show) is 53

Daisy Fuentes, model/MTV veejay (America's Funniest Videos) is 47

Brandon Call, actor (Baywatch, Blind Fury, Step by Step) is 36

Justin Cooper, actor (Liar, Liar, General Hospital) is 25

Remembered for being born today

Pierre Gaultier, French-Canadian trader and explorer [1685-1749]

August Ferdinand Möbius, German mathematician [1790-1868]

Lee Strasberg, Austria, acting coach/actor (Somewhere in the Night) [1901-1982]

Rock Hudson, actor (Pillow Talk, A Farewell to Arms) [1925-1985]

Bob Mathias, decathlete (Olympic-gold-1948, 52) [1930-2006]

Today’s Historical Obits                                                           

Margaret Yorke, English crime fiction writer…2012…@88

Gladys Cooper, actress (Margaret-The Rogues)…1971…@82

Esther Rolle, actress (Maude, Good Times)…diabetis…1998…@78

Don Gibson, county singer…natural causes…2003…@75

Catherine the Great [Catherine II], Empress of Russia…stroke…1796…@67

Brain Teasers

1. LENGTH - WISE - CRACK 2. WITH - HOLD - OVER 3. MAKE - SHIFT - LESS

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  §