13-31-13

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Flagstaff Almanac:

Week: 01 / Day: 365   

Today: L 46°…H 11°… Ave. humidity: 61%

Wind: ave:   8mph; Gusts:  12mph  

Average Low: 16° Record Low:  -16° (1911)

Average High: 42° Record High:  62° (1945)

Quote of the Day

 

Today’s Historical Highlights

1492 - 100,000 Jews expelled from Sicily

1600 - British East India Company chartered

1695 - Window tax imposed in England, shopkeepers brick up their windows to avoid the tax.

1783 - Import of African slaves banned by all of the Northern states

1831 - Gramercy Park is deeded to New York City.

1857 - Queen Victoria chooses Ottawa as new capital of Canada

1890 - Ellis Island (NYC) opens as a US immigration depot

1897 - Brooklyn's last day as a city, it incorporates into NYC (1/1/1898)

1904 – 1st New Year's Eve celebration is held in Times Square, (Longacre Square) 

1907 - For 1st time a ball drops at Times Square to signal new year

1911 - Marie Curie receives her 2nd Nobel Prize

1953 - Willie Shoemaker shatters record, riding 485 winners in a year

1955 - General Motors becomes the 1st U.S. corporation to make over $1 billion in a year.

1961 - 1st performance of Beach Boys

1962 - "Match Game" debuts on NBC with host Gene Rayburn

1970 - Congress authorizes Eisenhower dollar coin

1991 - USSR, last day of existence

1999 - Control of Panama Canal reverts to Panama
2004 - The official opening of Taipei 101, standing at a height of 509 meters (1,670 feet).

♫  Today’s Birthdays: ♫   

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

 

My Free Rambling Thoughts   

Did some major shopping for food today, cupboards were bare. Nice day and was able to spend some time outside. I was also able to finally pick up my new glasses. So much easier to read the newspaper. Also stopped by the PO to pick up my held mail. I was not the only one to do so today. The line went way out into the lobby. They were helping those with non-monetary requests but that line had 6 people ahead of me. Guess I wasn’t the only one holding mail over the holidays as all those in front of me were picking up held mail. One lady who lives in Doney Park outside of town had to remind the guy that there are two streets in Flagstaff with the same name, hers and one inside the city limits. Her search took a lot longer than mine.

 

Had a nice talk with my travel friend and former neighbor Bob this afternoon. I had tried calling him since Christmas Eve, since we had spent over 50 years of Christmas Eve’s together. He and his two daughters and son-in-law just got back from a trip to Reno to see his great grandbaby girl, who is 9 months old. They drove and had some dicey weather in Wyoming, but otherwise an easy trip. He had a great time, everyone in his family are doing well. We are both getting excited about our upcoming trip to Cuba.

 

Before my trip I will be glued to the TV for the Olympics. Sad to see the terrorists are alive and well in a little over 3 hours from the Olympic Games in Sochi.  I sure hope the games go off without any terrorist attacks. This should be a time to see the world’s best athletes.

Game  Center (answers at the end of post)

Brain Teasers

Find all ten words described below.
-------------------
The first word you'll need
is a tool used to snare.
Reverse and add one:
a dwelling filled with fresh air.

Append the letter H
to find a metric sort of part.
Now change N to E to get
a smile, at its heart.

Tack on an 'I N G'
to make a baby's cross to bear.
Remove the center two
and find a golfer's action there.

Add an S and drop the E's:
A painful bite you'll see.
Add one to the end: you will make
penny-pinching, miserly.

Put first 2 and last 2 out the door,
What's left is really cool.
Only keep the first half of that
And now you find the fool.

Lifestyle  Substance:     

Found on You Tube with some relevance to today

• Flagstaff Pine Cone Drop

• New Years Eve Popcorn Ball Drop in Marion, Ohio

• Henri Matisse

• The History of The Beach Boys

Odd Lawsuits…

Crazy Neighbor

In the summer of 2005, two teenage girls appeared on their neighbor's doorstep with freshly baked cookies. It seems innocent enough, but the neighbor was so shocked to see people at her door, that she had an anxiety attack and sued for the medical damages. She won $930 for her trip to the emergency room.

New Years Eve Drops

• Eastport, Maine: A sardine is dropped in a nod to the area’s history in the herring fishing and canning industry

• Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania: A giant M&M is dropped at midnight

• Elmore, Ohio: A sausage is dropped

• Flagstaff, Arizona: A pine cone is dropped 

• Frogtown, Pennsylvania: A frog is dropped

• Gainesville, Georgia: The "Chuck the Chicken" Drop 

• Hershey, Pennsylvania: A Hershey Kiss replica is raised

• Hilton Head Island, South Carolina: A giant, lighted golf ball is lowered

• Ickesburg, Pennsylvania: A french fry is dropped

• Key West, Florida (801 Saloon): drops a ruby slipper with drag queen Gary "Sushi" Marion

• Marion, Ohio: A ball of popcorn 

OK Then… 

Harper’s Index 

• Dollars spent on health care in the United States in 1983: $354,600,000,000

• Percentage of that amount paid by the government: 43

• Number of abortions per every 100 live births in the United States: 42.6

• In Japan: 155

Unusual Fact of the Day

Crayola means "oily chalk." The name is derived from the French words craie, or "chalk," and ola, an abbreviation for "oleaginous," or "oily."

Joke-of-the-day

A Cajun named, Jean Paul, moved to Texas and bought a donkey from an old farmer named Ben for $100. The farmer agreed to deliver the donkey the next day.

The next day, Ben drove up and said, "Sorry, but I have some bad news. The donkey died."

"Well, then, just give me the money back," said Jean Paul

"Can't do that. I went and spent it already." Replied Ben

"OK, then. Just unload the donkey," said Jean Paul.

"What ya going to do with him?" asked Ben.

"I'm going to raffle him off," said Jean Paul.

"You can't raffle off a dead donkey!" uttered Ben.

"Sure can. Watch me. I just won't tell that he's dead," said Jean Paul.

A month later Ben met up with the Cajun and asked, "What happened with that dead donkey?"

"I raffled him off, I did. I sold 500-hunderd tickets at two dollars apiece and made a profit of $898," said Jean Paul.

"Didn't anyone complain?" inquired Ben.

"Just the guy who won. So I gave him his two dollars back,” said Jean Paul.

Rules of Thumb:   

Easy shortcuts to make an ‘educated’ guess

OVERCOME JETLAG

On average, it will take one day per hour difference to get over your jetlag    

Yeah, It Really Happened

MIAMI - A Florida man who tried to trade a live alligator for beer at a convenience store said he didn't know trapping the gator was illegal. Police said Fernando Caignet Aguilera, 64, brought the 4-foot alligator in a cardboard box to the Santa Ana Market in Miami's Allapattah neighborhood Dec. 10 and asked clerk Javier Herrera to accept the reptile in exchange for a 12-pack of beer, CNN reported Wednesday. Herrera told WFOR-TV, Miami, he told Aguilera to leave, and the man attempted to make the same trade with a customer. Aguilera said he found the alligator shortly before the incident and didn't know it was illegal to trap the animal. "I just picked it up here," Aguilera said. "I seen it here in the grass and I tied it up." He said he wasn't going to accept just any beer in exchange for the gator. "I wanted a Corona, because if he brings me a Natural Light or something like that I don't want it. I want a Corona, because the alligator is so beautiful," he said. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission cited Aguilera for three charges related to the illegal capture of the alligator. He faces as much as six months in jail or a $500 fine if convicted. The FWC said the alligator was released into the wild.  

Somewhat Useless Information   

• Spiderwort flowers have a very short life - only a single morning - after which the petals wilt and turn to a jelly-like fluid. However, each plant will produce 20 or more flowers per stem.

• The False Hallebore or Indian Poke is a plant which grows in eastern and western America but not central. Native American tribes used it to determine their chiefs. If one was able to survive eating the very toxic plant (the roots and foliage are poisonous), they were worthy. 

• Low-pollen sunflowers have been developed in recent years which not only help asthma sufferers, but also extend the flower's life. Before the advent of modern materials, sunflower stems were used to fill life-jackets.

• Pliny the Elder, a Roman scientist of the first century AD named the Gladioli flower. Struck by the resemblance between the sheath of the flower and the weapon that was carried by Roman soldiers, he called the flower "gladiolus" from the Latin word "gladius" which means sword.

• The Rafflesia arnoldii, which can be found in the rainforests of Indonesia, is the flower with the world's largest bloom; it can grow three feet across and can weigh up to 15 pounds.

• The Amorphophallus titanium has also been called the "corpse flower" for its unpleasant odor, which smells of rotting flesh to attract pollinators. The "corpse flower" is not a single flower but a cluster of many tiny flowers, called an inflorescence. The plant can reach heights of seven to 12 ft and can weigh as much as 170 lbs.

Calendar Information        

Happening This Week:

25-31 It's About Time Week
26-1/1: Kwanzaa

Today Is                                                                      

·        First Night Celebrations

·        Leap Second Time Adjustment Day

·        Make Up Your Mind Day

·        New Years Eve

·        No Interruptions Day

·        Universal Hour of Peace Day

·        World Peace Meditation Day

·        Unlucky Day

Today’s Events through History  

  406 - Vandals, Alans and Suebians cross the Rhine, beginning an invasion of Gallia.

1744 - James Bradley announces discovery of Earth's nutation motion (wobble)

1781 - Bank of North America, 1st US bank opens

1935 - Charles Darrow patents Monopoly

1990 - Iraq begins a military draft of 17 year olds

1995 - Cartoonist Bill Watterson ends his "Calvin & Hobbes" comic strip

1997 - Microsoft buys Hotmail E-mail service

Today’s Birthdays                                                           

Anthony Hopkins, actor (Elephant Man, QB VII, Magic, Bounty) ia 76

Ben Kingsley, Scarborough England, actor (Gandhi, Betrayal, Maurice) is 70

Tim Matheson, actor (Animal House, Fletch, Up the Creek) is 66

Bebe Neuwirth, actress (Lilith-Cheers, Damn Yankees) is 55

Val Kilmer, actor (Top Secret, Top Gun, Willow) is 54

Remembered for being born today

Jacques Cartier, French explorer b. 1491

[Bonnie Prince] Charles Edward Stuart, English pretender to throne b. 1720

Henri Matisse, impressionist painter (Odalisque) b. 1869

George Marshall, authored Marshall Plan (Nobel 1953) b. 1880  

Simon Wiesenthal, Polish/Austrian nazi hunter (Wiesenthal Center) b. 1908

Pat Brady, actor (Roy Rodgers Show) b. 1914

Rex Allen, American actor, singer, and songwriter b. 1920

Odetta, [Holmes], Birmingham Ala, folk singer (Sanctuary) b.1930

Donna Summer, singer (Love to Love You Baby, On the Radio) b.1948

John Denver, NM, singer (Rocky Mt High), thank God he's a country boy b. 1943

Rosalind Cash, actress (Omega Man, Wrong is Right) b. 1938

Today’s Historical Obits                                                           

José Greco, Italian-born American flamenco dancer and choreographer in 2000 @82           

Woody Strode, actor (Posse, Cotton Club, Vigilante) in 1994 @80

Chief Nipo Strongheart, Yakima actor (Pony Soldier) in 1966 @75

Floyd Cramer, pianist (Nashville Sound) of cancer in 1997 @64

Rick Nelson, singer/actor (Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet) in plane crash in 1985 @45

Roberto Clemente, slugger (Pitts Pirate)in a plane crash in 1972 @38

Brain Teasers

NET (a tool used to snare) TENT (a dwelling filled with fresh air) TENTH (a metric sort of part) TEETH (a smile, at its heart) TEETHING (what a baby suffers from -- its "cross to bear") TEEING (a golfer's action) STING (A painful bite) STINGY (penny-pinching, miserly) IN (really cool -- i.e. the "in" thing) I (I am the fool, after all. Or does it refer to you? :D )

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  §