10/6/13

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Flagstaff Almanac:

Week: 41/ Day: 279    

Today: L 32°…H 54°… Ave. humidity: 48%

Wind: ave:   15mph; Gusts:  32mph  

Average Low: 35° Record Low:  18° (1912)

Average High: 67° Record High:  81° (1987)

Quote of the Day

Today’s Historical Highlights

"Jazz Singer," 1st movie with a sound track, premieres (NYC) …1927

13 Mennonite families from Germany found Germantown Pa (Phila)…1683

1st train robbery in US (Reno Brothers take $13,000) …1866

American Library Association organized in Philadelphia…1876

Colorado Avalanche (former Que Nordiques) 1st NHL game, beat Detroit…1995

Dr Albert Sabin discovers oral polio vaccine…1956

Haight-Ashbury hippies throw a funeral to mark end of hippies…1967

JFK advises Americans to build fallout shelters…1961

Last battle of Revolutionary War- siege of Cornwallis at Yorktown…1781

LSD made illegal in US…1966

♫  Today’s Birthdays: ♫   

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

My Free Rambling Thoughts   

Windy and cool Saturday. Should be warming up tomorrow. This morning about 5am my furnace came on for the first time this season. Time to replace the ol’ furnace filter. I am so glad I am not in the areas of the country that are having snow. I’m just not ready yet. Pine Ridge Rez had a real blizzard. So hard on people who have so little already. A friend in Idaho posted some blizzard pics from the mountains up there. I know it’s going to get to Flag someday, but please, not yet.

 

While the ‘homeland’ government is in a partial shutdown, obviously the Navy Seals are not. Two major attacks today against Al Qaeda—one on Somalia and one in Libya. Let’s hear from the idiots in DC about why these Seals are in non-pay status.

 

I finally reached my breaking point with Internet Explorer. It has gotten so slow in bringing up sites, while my chrome and safari both do things much faster. To do this blog I have a bunch of sites I ‘borrow’ stuff from. So I just added Firefox and got rid of IE. Things are going much faster.

Game  Center (answers at the end of post)

Brain Teasers

Three brothers share a family sport: A non-stop marathon The oldest one is fat and short And trudges slowly on The middle brother's tall and slim And keeps a steady pace The youngest runs just like the wind, Speeding through the race "He's young in years, we let him run," The other brothers say "'Cause though he's surely number one, He's second, in a way."

Lifestyle  Substance:     

Found on You Tube with some relevance to today

• Fred Travalena - Comedian , impressionist

• What's My Line? Bette Davis (1952)

• A STAR IS BORN 1937 TRAILER

• Living in a Fallout Shelter

• Clip 1: The Jazz Singer, 1927

Hmmmm…Fearsome Phobias

If you have an irrational fear of... Fatigue
You're suffering from... Ponophobia Greek ponos 'toil, fatigue'

If you have an irrational fear of... Fearing
You're suffering from... Phobophobia Greek phóbos ‘fear, panic’

OK Then…

Harper’s Index 

• Average amount a Mississippi bills Medicare for treating pneumonia with no complications: $4,552

• Average amount a Philadelphia hospital does: $79,007

Darwin Awards 2013  

individuals who have contributed to human evolution by self-selecting themselves out of the gene pool via death or sterilization via their own (unnecessarily foolish) actions.

Eighth Place 

In Detroit, a 41-year-old man got stuck and drowned in two feet of water after squeezing head first through an 18-inch-wide sewer grate to retrieve his car keys. 

Unusual Fact of the Day

Since 1930, there have been fewer than 10 left-handed catchers in Major League Baseball.

Joke-of-the-day

A group of doctors were out duck hunting, when a large bird flew overhead.

The family doctor raised his gun to shoot, but then lowered his gun saying "I am not sure that is a duck."

The Psychiatrist raised his gun, but then lowered it again saying “I know it's a duck, but I'm not sure that it knows it's a duck."

The surgeon raises his gun and blasts the bird out of the sky. He turns to the pathologist and says "Go see if that was a duck."

Rules of Thumb:   

Easy shortcuts to make an ‘educated’ guess

THE PSYCHOTHERAPY RULE

It is time to stop psychotherapy when you forget your appointment and don't feel bad about it.    

Yeah, It Really Happened

ASHEVILLE, S.C. - A South Carolina couple who wanted their wedding guests to remember their ceremony as the "most fun" time rode zip lines down the aisle. Lauren and Ben Youngkin, who wed Saturday at the Crown Plaza in Asheville, said they did not warn their wedding guests before they showed up on zip lines, complete with harnesses, helmets and carabineers in addition to their formal attire, WHNS-TV, Greenville, reported Monday.

"Zip-lining isn't omnipresent in our life, but, we have a good time. We like to laugh, and we like for everyone else to laugh, too. At our expense," Ben Youngkin said. The couple said their zip line scheme was aimed at amusing their wedding guests. "The most important thing about the wedding, we wanted people to come away from the wedding and say, 'that was one of the most fun times I've ever had,'" Lauren Youngkin said.  

Somewhat Useless Information   

• The biggest canyons in the world are under water. Beneath the Bering Sea off Alaska there are seven giant canyons: Bering Canyon, 240 miles long; Navarin Canyon, 60 miles wide; Zhemchung Canyon, 9000 feet deep. In comparison, the Grand Canyon in Arizona is only 10 miles wide, one mile deep and 250 miles long.

• The Sahara, one of the world’s largest and driest deserts with sand up to thirty feet deep was once a land with flowing rivers, humid swamps and lush fields. Cave painting, 9,000 years old, found in the heart of the Sahara, show men herding cattle and hunting lions and hippos. About 2,000 years ago the cave painters, herders and animals left because the area that was rapidly becoming the desert we know today.

• Seeds from a wild flower, the Arctic Lupine, found in Alaska, have grown in the lab after being frozen in the ground for 10,000 years.

• The bristle-cone pine, which grows in the deserts of Nevada and California, is the oldest living species in the United States. Some are believed to be 4600 years old and can live to be 5500 years old.

Calendar Information        

Happening This Week:

1-7

Universal Children's Week
World Dairy Expo
3-10

No Salt Week
4-7

Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta
National Storytelling Weekend
4-10

World Space Week
5-6

Fallen Firefighters Memorial Weekend 
6-12

National Physicians Assistant Week
Emergency Nurses Week

Fire Prevention Week
Great Books Week
Mental Illness Awareness Week
Mystery Series Week
National Carry A Tune Week
National Metric Week
National Work From Home Week
Nuclear Medicine Week 
Customer Service Week
Fall Astronomy Week
Financial Planning Week
Kids' Goal Setting Week
Spinning & Weaving Week
World Rainforest Week

Today Is                                                                      

·        Change A Light Day

·        Country Inn Bed & Breakfast Day

·        Ecological Debt Day

·        Intergeneration Day

·        International African Diaspora Day

·        Jackie Mayer Rehab Day former Miss America and stroke survivor

·        Mad Hatter Day

·        National German-American Day

·        World Communion Day

~~~~

·        Egypt: Armed Forces Day (1973 closing of Suez Canal)

·        Ireland: Ivy Day (Lá an Eidhneáin): in memory of the prominent nationalist politician Charles Stewart Parnell

Today’s Events through History  

American Chess Association organized; 1st major US chess tournament (NYC) …1857

Mormon Church outlaws polygamy…1890

Nabisco Foods invents Cream of Wheat…1893

Pope John Paul II is 1st Pope to visit White House…1979

Soviet Luna 3, 1st successful photographic spacecraft, impacts Moon…1959

Thomas Edison shows his 1st motion picture…1889

Zoological Gardens opens in SF…1940

Today’s Birthdays                                                           

Britt Ekland, Swedish actress (Wicker Man, Asylum) is 71

Elisabeth Shue, actress (Cocktail, Adv in Babysitting) is 50

Remembered for being born today

James McGill, Scottish-Canadian businessman and philanthropist [1744-1813]

Jenny Lind, Swedish soprano [1820-1887]

George Westinghouse, entrepreneur and engineer [1846-1914]

Carol Lombard [Jane Alice Peters], actress (My Man Godfrey, In Name Only) [1908-1942]

Janet Gaynor, actress (Sunrise, A Star Is Born) [1906-1984]

Thor Heyerdahl, Norway, anthropologist/explorer (Kon Tiki, Aku-Aku) [1914-2002]

Fred Travalena, comedian/impressionist (Buy & Cell) [1942-2009]

Today’s Historical Obits                                                           

Alfred Lord Tennyson, writer and British Poet Laureate…1892…@83

Bette Davis, US actress (All About Eve, White Mama)…1989…@81

Robert Lynd [YY] [Roibéard Ó Floinn], Irish writer/critic (News Chronicle)…1949…@70

Nelson Riddle, American bandleader…cardiac arrest…1985…@64

 [Mohammed] Anwar al-Sadat [محمد أنور السادا], pres Egypt…assassinated…1981…@62

Brain Teasers

The hands on a clock (hour, minute, and second).

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  §