11/6/13

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Flagstaff Almanac:

Week: 45/ Day: 310   

Today: L 24°…H 45°… Ave. humidity: 58%

Wind: ave:  9 mph; Gusts:  21mph  

Average Low: 24° Record Low:  7° (1935)

Average High: 54° Record High:  72° (1934)

Quote of the Day

 

Today’s Historical Highlights

1st entire lineup televised in color (NBC)…1966

1st Hawaiian fire engine…1850

Australians vote to keep the British monarch as their head of state in the Australian 

     republic referendum…1999

Ayatolla Khomeini takes over in Iran…1979

Canada celebrates 1st Thanksgiving Day…1879

Colonel Kit Carson, and his troops, leave Fort Bascom, in western New Mexico, 

     en route for the Texas panhandle to "punish" the "hostile" Comanches, and Kiowas…1864

Fire destroys some of Universal Studio's stages…1990

Military junta of Myanmar (Burma) begins moving its government ministries from Yangon 

     to Pyinmana…2005

Mohandas K Gandhi arrested for leading Indian miners march in South Africa…1913

Saudi Arabia proclaims abolition of slavery…1962

US government issues a stamp honoring 100th birthday of James Naismith…1961

♫  Today’s Birthdays: ♫   

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

My Free Rambling Thoughts   

What? I emailed yesterday’s blog but the link didn’t go through. Sorry. Today will have blog links with the date each.

 

Today was very chilly Election Day. Here in Flag we only had one issue on the ballot…raising the tax on property owners for support of our local community college. I debated for a long time on whether or not to vote. In AZ everyone can vote to raise taxes on property owners. I do not agree with that premise. For years on the Rez where there are very few property owners, we could vote to raise their taxes. This hardly seems fair. When it was on a multiple ballot, I just left it blank. This is the first time I remember it being the only vote on an election. As a former educator in AZ I have seen the amount of money education receives decrease over the past few years. So, in the end I voted.

 

I have never been a Rand Paul fan. And all this plagiarism news has me concerned. First I don’t want a politician using Wikipedia as a source for information, let alone copying almost verbatim from an article without telling the voters he is copying Wikipedia. So many assume that a speaker’s words are either his/her own or those of a speech writer. When they are not, the speaker should tell everyone.

Game  Center (answers at the end of post)

Brain Teasers

I can be quick and then I'm deadly,  I am a rock, shell and bone medley.  If I was made into a man, I'd make people dream,  I gather in my millions by ocean, sea and stream.

Lifestyle  Substance:     

Found on You Tube with some relevance to today

• Emma Stone's Best Moments

• Pat Tillman Story (Pat Tillman Foundation)

• Tribute to Jonathan Harris

• The Stars and Stripes Forever - Official [HD]

• The Eagles Perform "Take It Easy"

Very Strange Laws…NV

• It  is illegal to drive a camel on the highway.
• It’s still “legal” to hang someone for shooting your dog on your property.
• Clark County: An ordinance makes bringing a concealable fire arm into the county illegal unless it is registered with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. Elko
• Elko: Everyone walking the streets is required to wear a mask. Nyala
• Nyala: A man is forbidden from buying drinks for more than three people other than himself at any one period during the day. Reno
• Reno: It is illegal to lie down on the sidewalk. Benches may not be placed in the middle of any street. Sex toys are outlawed.

OK Then…

Harper’s Index 

• Minimum number of prescriptions paid for by Medicare in 2009 written by people not allowed to prescribe drugs: 417,000

• Number that were written by a single Florida dietian: 2,600

Unusual Fact of the Day

The sailfish (the fastest swimming fish, clocked at 68 mph) is faster than the cheetah (the fastest land animal, clocked at 62 mph).

Joke-of-the-day

A man goes into a pub, takes a seat at the bar, and orders five shots. The bartender gives him an odd look since he’s all by himself, but he serves up the five shots and lines them up on the bar. The man downs them all quickly. He finishes the last one and calls out, 

"Four shots, please!" The bartender serves up four shots and lines them on the bar. The man downs them all. Then he belches loudly, sways slightly on the stool, and orders three. And one after the other, he knocks them back. 

"Two shots!" he calls, and the bartender places two shots in front of him. Down they go. As the man slams the last one down on the bar, he says, 

"One shot bartender." So the bartender fills the glass. The man sits there, staring at it for a moment, trying to focus. Then he looks at the barman and says, "You know, it's a funny thing, but the less I drink, the drunker I get."  

Rules of Thumb:   

Easy shortcuts to make an ‘educated’ guess

COLUMNS OF TYPE

For magazines and similar publications, the columns should be the width required to set one and a half alphabets of lower-case letters in the typeface you are using.    

Yeah, It Really Happened

MISSISSAUGA, Ontario - Canadian entertainment innovator IMAX said Tuesday it would team up with a Chinese television manufacturer to create home entertainment systems. IMAX said it had formed a joint venture with TCL Multimedia Technology Holdings Limited and it was aiming to create "a best-in-class home entertainment experience" that would be ready for select markets in 2015. "As one of the fastest-growing and most innovative players in the global entertainment technology marketplace, with a strong expertise in display and manufacturing, TCL is an ideal partner to help us change the way people around the world experience their favorite content in the home environment," IMAX Chief Executive Officer Richard Gelfond said in a statement. "We wanted to stake out an entirely new position in the premium home theater market," TCL Chairman Li Dongsheng said. "There is no company better-equipped and more knowledgeable than IMAX to deliver that premium experience." The companies said they had formed a 50-50 joint venture that would have operations in Hong Kong and mainland China. The venture will be run by a board made up of representatives from both companies that is led by IMAX Chief Business Development Officer Robert Lister.  

Somewhat Useless Information   

• The Eiffel Tower, taken its name by Gustave Eiffel, was originally planned to be built in Barcelona  for the Universal Exposition in 1888.  The building was turned down for being “expensive and strange” and then Gustave Eiffer started building it in Paris for the Universal Exposition in 1889.

• The largest Embassy in the world is, the one which cost $750 million to be built is the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq. Around 16,000 people work in the mammouth building and costs $6 billion a year to run.

• The phrase ‘Pandora’s Box’ has been accepted due to a bad translation by the humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam. ‘Pandora’ s Box’ was originally ‘Pandora’s Jar’, ‘pithos’ in  Greek. Back in the 16th century Erasmus, mistranslated ‘pithos’ to ‘pyxis’ which means box.

• The tallest tree in the world is a coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) and it is 115.72 metres tall. It was discovered in Redwood National Park, California by the naturalists Chris Atkins and Michael Taylor. It is named Hyperion, taken its name from one of the 12 Titans of the Greek mythology.

Calendar Information        

Happening This Week:

1-7: National Fig Week / National Patient Accessibility Week / World Communication Week
3-9:  Health Information and Technology Week / International Fraud Awareness Week / National Animal Shelter Appreciation Week / National Nurse Practioner's Week / National Radiologic Technology Week / Give Wildlife A Brake! Week / Intimate Apparel Week

Today Is                                                                      

·        International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict

·        Saxophone Day

~~~~~~~

·        Eid-Al-Adha (Feast of the Sacrifice - Islamic)

Today’s Events through History  

1860 - Abraham Lincoln (Rep-R-Ill) elected 16th American President

1861 - Jefferson Davis elected to 6 year term as Confederate president

1888 - Benjamin Harrison (R-Sen-Ind) beats Pres Grover Cleveland (D), 

            233 electoral votes to 168, Cleveland received slightly more votes

1900 - Pres William McKinley (R) 25th President re-elected, beating William Jennings Bryan.

1928 - Herbert Hoover (R) beats Alfred E Smith (D) for pres

1940 - Franklin Roosevelt re-elected US President

1956 - Pres Eisenhower (R) re-elected defeating Adlai E Stevenson (D)

1968 - Nixon elected 37th pres of US, defeating Hubert Humphrey

1984 - President Reagan (R) landslide (won 49 states) re-election over Mondale (D)

~~~~~~~~~~

Pope Pius VI appoints Father John Carroll as the first Catholic bishop in the US…1789

President Reagan signs landmark immigration reform bill…1986

Shipwrecked Spanish conquistador Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca becomes the 

     1st known European to set foot in Texas…1528

USA lends Soviet Union $1 million…1941

Today’s Birthdays                                                           

Sally Field, actress (Gidget, Flying Nun) is 67

Glenn Frey, rock vocalist (Eagles-Take it Easy) is 65

Maria Shriver, newscaster/ex-wife of Arnold Schwarzenegger is 58

Peter DeLuise, actor (21 Jump Street, seaQuest DSV) is 47

Ethan Hawke, actor (Dad, Dead Poets Society, Explorers) is 43

Emma Stone, actress (The Help) is 25

Remembered for being born today

Adolphe Sax, Belgium musician/inventor (saxophone) [1814-1894]

Charles Dow, journalist/economist (co-founded Dow Jones/1st editor Wall St Journal) [1851-1902)

John Philip Sousa, march king (Stars & Stripes Forever) [1854-1932]

James Naismith, inventor (basketball, football helmet) [1861-1939]

James Jones, novelist (From Here to Eternity) [1921-1977]

Rebecca Schaeffer, actress (Patti-My Sister Sam) [1967-1989]

Jonathan Harris, actor (Dr Zachary Smith-Lost in Space) [1914-2002]

Pat Tillman, Cardinal’s player, killed by friendly fire [1967-2004]

Ray Conniff, chorus director (Ray Conniff Singers) [1916-2012]

Today’s Historical Obits                                                           

George Osmond, Osmond family patriarch…2007…@90

Gene Tierney, actress (Laura, Whirlpool)…emphysema…1991…@70

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Russian composer (Swan Lake)… cholera…1893…@53

Brain Teasers

Sand

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  §