10/9/13

FYI: Any blue text is a link. Click to check it out!

Flagstaff Almanac:

Week: 41/ Day: 282    

Today: L 36°…H 63°… Ave. humidity: 40%

Wind: ave:   12mph; Gusts:  39mph  

Average Low: 33° Record Low:  20° (1970)

Average High: 66° Record High:  81° (1996)

Quote of the Day

Today’s Historical Highlights

11" (28.4 cm) rainfall in 24 hrs (NYC)…1903

1st consumer use of home banking by computer (Knoxville Tn)…1980

1st US underground pipeline for carrying oil is laid in Pennsylvania…1865

Collegiate School of Ct (Yale U), chartered in New Haven…1701

Hoover Dam begins transmitting electricity to Los Angeles…1936
Last of 16,000 English Jews expelled by King Edward I…1290

Meteorite seen from Kentucky to NY lands in the driveway in Peekskill, New York, destroying Chevrolet Malibu…1992

NBC (National Broadcasting Corporation) forms…1926

Saddam Hussein threatens to hit Israel with a new missile…1990

US members of communist party obliged to report themselves to Police…1961

Washington Monument opens for public admittance…1888

Woodrow Wilson becomes 1st pres to attend a World Series game…1915

♫  Today’s Birthdays: ♫   

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

My Free Rambling Thoughts   

We did our weekly lunch early this week. Cheryl was not excited about coming into town in the expected snow on Thursday. We had a great lunch at a local restaurant that is well known. They have a great Rueben sandwich. Last year Cheryl bought a new furnace, and now that the temps are dropping she discovered it won’t come on. The guys are coming tomorrow to fix it….hopefully. Mary just finished another quilt and her talent is improving greatly with each one she does. She really should start looking at quilting fairs to show off her talent.

 

Our state senator who referred to Obama as der Fuhrer on Facebook is an embarrassment to all AZians, and she represents our area. So much for gerrymandering. The story just keeps growing on the internet machine. Hopefully this will wake up her constituents and end her political career.

 

A Phoenix food bank is sending food boxes to the hundreds of employees ‘stuck’ at the Grand Canyon.  These are peak season minimum wage people who work for the vendors. They live from paycheck to paycheck and knew there last paycheck would be used to get them somewhere else for work. The problem, the last paycheck ain’t comin so they are stuck. I guess the Congress doesn’t care about these people…and I’m sure there has to be similar stories at every national park across the country. This shutdown is so stupid.

Game  Center (answers at the end of post)

Brain Teasers

In this teaser you have been given two (2) clues in each line. Each answer to the clue comprises six (6) letters. Each 6-letter word differs by only one (1) letter, which I have given you. Your task is to discover the answers to the clues provided. The order of the letters do not change.
Example:
Remove _ _ _ I _ _ / _ _ _ U _ _ Justify
Answer:
E X C (I) S E / E X C (U) S E
~~~~~

1. Confuse R _ _ _ _ _ / C _ _ _ _ _ Bovines
2. Invent _ _ _ _ T _ / _ _ _ _ S _ Furrow
3. Endured _ A _ _ _ _ / _ I _ _ _ _ Tilted
4. Joking _ _ N _ _ _ / _ _ R _ _ _ Bargain

Lifestyle  Substance:     

Found on You Tube with some relevance to today

• Opening of Angelus Temple and Early Religious Radio in L.A.

• Che Guevara speech at UN 1964

• Louis Nye on IGaS

• Jackson Browne 1977 Running on Empty

Hmmmm…Fearsome Phobias

If you have an irrational fear of... Fish
You're suffering from... Ichthyophobia Greek ichtyo ‘fish’

If you have an irrational fear of... Flashes
You're suffering from... Selaphobia Greek selas 'light'

OK Then…

Harper’s Index 

• Number of times New Zealand’s Registrar of Births, Deaths, and Marriages has rejected a baby name since 2001: 311

• Number of times it has rejected the name Justice: 62

Darwin Awards 2013  

Fifth Place

Santiago Alvarado, 24, was killed as he fell through the ceiling of a bicycle shop he was burglarizing. Death was caused when the long flashlight he had placed in his mouth to keep his hands free rammed into the base of his skull as he hit the floor.

Unusual Fact of the Day

The Chinese used black pepper to cure cholera, Europeans used it as currency, and Attila the Hun demanded 3,000 pounds of the stuff in exchange for discontinuing his sacking of Rome.

Joke-of-the-day

A deer was trying to cross a busy road but the traffic was very heavy. After waiting unsuccessfully for a few minutes, a bear walked past and said: “Excuse me, there’s a zebra crossing a bit further along the road.”

The deer said, “Well, I hope he’s having better luck than I am!  

Rules of Thumb:   

Easy shortcuts to make an ‘educated’ guess

FINDING A JOB

It takes 15 interviews to get one job offer.    

Yeah, It Really Happened

PASADENA, Calif. - The Cassini spacecraft has detected propylene, an ingredient in household plastics, on Saturn's moon, Titan, the U.S. space said Monday. The detection of the chemical used to make food-storage containers, car bumpers and other products is the first discovery of the plastic ingredient on any moon or planet other than Earth, NASA said in a release. Cassini's Composite Infrared Spectrometer identified a small amount of propylene in Titan's lower atmosphere, NASA said. The instrument measures the infrared light emitted from Saturn and its moons much the same way human hands feel the warmth of a fire. Propylene is the first molecule to be discovered on Titan using the spectrometer. "This chemical is all around us in everyday life, strung together in long chains to form a plastic called polypropylene," said Conor Nixon, a planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "That plastic container at the grocery store with the recycling code 5 on the bottom -- that's polypropylene." Cassini's mass spectrometer had suggested earlier that propylene may be present in the upper atmosphere but a positive identification wasn't made until now, NASA said. "This new piece of the puzzle will provide an additional test of how well we understand the chemical zoo that makes up Titan's atmosphere," said Scott Edgington, Cassini's deputy project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.  

Somewhat Useless Information   

• On February 20, 1943 in a cornfield near the village of Paricutin, Mexico, the ground cracked open and began to spew red-hot rocks. A volcano was born. It grew to 35 feet the first day. By 1952, it had soared to 1,352 feet and had buried two towns.

• A two-mile thick dome of glacial ice covers most of Greenland. The weight of the ice is so great that if it suddenly melted the bedrock of the island would rise 2500 feet!

• Iceland is a 39, 000 square mile island that is built of lava from volcanoes. Major eruptions occur every 6 or 7 years. Almost 1/3 of the world’s lava output since 1500 has poured out onto Iceland.

• There are giant waterfalls under the ocean! The largest is between Greenland and Iceland. This submarine waterfall drops 11,500 feet; three times the height of any land waterfall.

• The loudest sound in history was recorded in July 1883 when a volcano on the tiny Indian Ocean island of Krakatau erupted. The explosion was heard 3,000 miles away in Madagascar. Ash clouds shot 25 miles into the sky. The eruption also created giant tsunami, sea waves, that reached heights of 175 feet, speeding across the ocean at 400 miles an hour and destroyed over 300 towns.

Calendar Information        

Happening This Week:

3-10

No Salt Week
4-10

World Space Week
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                                                                       

·        Emergency Nurses Day

·        International African Diaspora Day (communities throughout the world that are of African slaves in Europe and Asia have survived to the modern day)

·        International Top Spinning Day

·        National Bring Your Teddy Bear To Work & School Day

·        National Chess Day

·        National Pro-Life Cupcake Day

·        S.A.V.E. (Stop America's Violence Everywhere)

·        Stop Bullying Day

·        Walk To School Day

·        World Post Day

~~~~

·        Finland: Grandmother's Day  

·        Iceland: Leif Erikson Day

·        Korea: Alphabet Day

·        Peru: Day of National Honor (nationalization of the oil fields in 1968)

·        Uganda: Independence Day (1962-from UK)

Today’s Events through History  

1st electric blanket manufactured; sold for $39.50…1946

Hurricane kills 123 in Acapulco Mexico…1997

Leif Ericson discovers "Vinland" (possibly New England)…1000

Lewis & Clark council with Ricara chiefs…1804

Nobel prize for literature awarded to Poet Czeslaw Milosz…1980

Today’s Birthdays                                                           

Jackson Browne, rock voclaist (Lawyers in Love) is 65

Sharon Osbourne, music manager, wife of Ozzy Osbourne (X-Factor, The Talk) is 61

Tony Shalhoub, actor (Antonio Scarpacci-Wings, Big Night) is 60

Scott Bakula, actor (Quantum Leap, Gung Ho, Murphy Brown) is 59

Sean Ono Lennon, John & Yoko's Son is 38

Zachery Ty Bryan, Denver CO, actor (Brad-Home Improvement) is 32

Remembered for being born today

Aimee Semple McPherson, evangelist (Pentecostal)/radio preacher [1890-1944]

John Winston Ono Lennon, The Beatles (Imagine)[1940-1980]

Today’s Historical Obits                                                           

Joseph F Glidden, inventor (barbed wire)…1906…@93

Louis Nye, comedian and actor…2005…@92

Akhtar Hameed Khan, pioneer of Microcredit in developing countries…1999…@85

Clare A Booth Luce, US diplomat/journalist…1987…@84

Pope Pius XII, [Eugenio Pacelli], Pope (1939-58)…1958…@82

Georg-Friederich Fuchs, composer…1821…@68

Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Argentine revolutionary and physician…executed…1967…@39

Brain Teasers

1. Rattle Cattle 2. Create Crease 3. Lasted Listed 4. Banter Barter

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  §