10/13/13

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Flagstaff Almanac:

Week: 42/ Day: 286   

Today: L 25°…H 58°… Ave. humidity: 69%

Wind: ave:   8mph; Gusts:  25mph  

Average Low: 32° Record Low:  12° (1969)

Average High: 64° Record High:  79° (1950)

Quote of the Day

 

Today’s Historical Highlights

"Old Farmer's Almanac" is 1st published…1792

1st time 7 people in space…1969

B'nai B'rith founded (NY) …1843

Burglar alarm-ultrasonic or radio waves-patented-Samuel Bagno…1953

Greenwich established as universal time meridian of longitude…1884

Gustav Mahler (10) gives his 1st public piano concert…1870

IOC approves reinstatement of Jim Thorpe's s gold medals…1982

Vice President Hosni Mubarak elected president of Egypt…1981

♫  Today’s Birthdays: ♫   

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

My Free Rambling Thoughts   

A nice day for a short walk. Other than that, just a lazy Saturday here in Flag. Always seems to be too many good movies on TV on Friday night. Didn’t get to bed until almost 2a.

 

Happy to see that our Governor and the Feds found away to reopen the Grand Canyon. Lots of local business around here is happy too…river runners, hotels, vendors, it good for all of them. This is such a crazy time. Too bad the others affected by this shutdown can’t be as happy as our locals.

 

Am getting real tired of dealing with meds. Yesterday I called my physician about 8a to renew a couple of ongoing scripts. The office lady promised to take care of it. Went to the Pharmacy this morning only to discover they claim they never received them. Of course it is now the weekend, so I have to wait until Monday to fix it. Not a problem as I always refill early. Just tired of inefficiency.

Game  Center (answers at the end of post)

Brain Teasers

Can you pick the god from the list provided that will complete this group?

Zeus, Hephaestus, Gaea, ?

Choose from: Dionysus, Athena, Hermes, Poseidon, Aphrodite

Lifestyle  Substance:     

Found on You Tube with some relevance to today

• Fidel Castro Interview on Ed Sullivan – 1959

• Margaret Thatcher's Final Speech on Socialism

• Nipsey Russell comedy

• Lenny Bruce: All Alone

• Borat visits nicest university in world, Cambridge

• Paul Simon - Mother and Child Reunion

Hmmmm…Fearsome Phobias

If you have an irrational fear of... Food
You're suffering from... Sitophobia Ancient Greek, σῖτος (sitos) “food”

If you have an irrational fear of... Foreigners (or strangers)
You're suffering from... Xenophobia Greek xeno ‘foreigner or stranger

OK Then…

Harper’s Index 

• Portion of young people attempting suicide without a gun who die from the attempt: 1/10

• Of those attempting suicide with a gun who die: 9/10

Darwin Awards 2013  

AND THE WINNER IS....

Zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt ( Paderborn , Germany ) fed his constipated elephant 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally got relief. Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive 

oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded.

The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked Mr Riesfeldt to the ground where he struck his head on a rock as the elephant continued to evacuate 200 pounds of dung on top of him. It seems to be just one of those freak accidents that proves... '**** happens'

Unusual Fact of the Day

Green colored light is the least used color of light in the process of photosynthesis. Thusly, it is reflected back into our eyes. That is why plants are, for the most part, green.

Joke-of-the-day

This past fall semester, at Duke University, there were two sophomores who were taking Organic Chemistry and who did pretty well on all of the quizzes, midterms, labs, etc. Going into the final exam, they had solid "A's."

These two friends were so confident going into the final that the weekend before finals week (even though the Chem. final was on Monday), they decided to go up to University of Virginia to a party with some friends.

So they did this and had a great time. However, they ended up staying longer than they planned, and they didn't make it back to Duke until early Monday morning. Rather than taking the final then, they found Professor Aldric after the final and explained to him why they missed it. They told him that they went up to Virginia for the weekend, and had planned to come back in time to study, but that they had a flat tire on the way back and didn't have a spare and couldn't get help for a long time. So they were late getting back to campus.

Aldric thought this over and agreed that they could make up the final on the following day. The two guys were elated and relieved. So, they studied that night and went in the next day at the time that Aldric had told them.

He placed them in separate rooms, handed each of them a test booklet and told them to begin. They looked at the first problem, which was something simple about free radical formation and was worth 5 points. "Cool" they thought, "this is going to be easy." They did that problem and then turned the page.

They were unprepared, however, for what they saw on the next page.

It said: (95 points) "Which tire?"  

Rules of Thumb:   

Easy shortcuts to make an ‘educated’ guess

TIME TO SEASON FIREWOOD

For hardwoods, season wood for 1 year if split and for 2 years if not split prior to burning.    

Yeah, It Really Happened

DELAWARE TOWNSHIP, N.J. - A New Jersey man says he has devised a trap made from readily available materials and containing no chemicals that catches stink bugs by the thousands. Jody Williams of Delaware Township told The Hunterdon County Democrat he is applying for a patent on the trap. He has asked anyone who follows his online instructions to respond with comments. The brown marmorated stink bug, to give the insect its formal name, is a native of Taiwan and the Korean Peninsula that first showed up in the Allentown, Pa., area in the late 1990s. While the bugs do not bite, they consume fruit and vegetables, making them an agricultural pest, and give off a foul odor when threatened. As the weather turns cold, the bugs tend to head indoors. But Williams said thanks to his trap his own house has been free of stink bugs this year. "You've seen houses covered with stink bugs," he said. "I'm compelled to share this stuff. My heart goes out to them because I've lived this. Right now, throughout the East Coast, there are homeowners with thousands of stink bugs on their homes."  

Somewhat Useless Information   

• It gets as cold as minus 160 degrees F. ten miles above the ground on earth!

• Raindrops aren’t really shaped like drops; they are perfectly round!

• Antarctica gets less precipitation than any other continent on earth.

• The Atacama Desert in Chile is the driest place on earth, where it has an average of three-hundredths of an inch of rain per year.

• The greatest snowfall recorded in a day was 75.8 inches at Silver Lake, Colorado on April 14-15, 1921. The fastest wind speed ever recorded was 231 miles per hour on Mount Washington, New Hampshire on April 12, 1934.

Calendar Information        

Happening This Week:

10-16

Take Your Medicine Americans Week
13-19

Bullying Bystanders Unite Week
Earth Science Week
Freedom From Bullies Week
Getting The World To Beat A Path To Your Door Week
National Chestnut Week 
National Food Bank Week
Teen Read Week
YWCA Week Without Violence

Today Is                                                                      

·        Clergy Appreciation Day 

·        English Language Day

·        International African Penguin Awareness Day

·        National Chess Day

Today’s Events through History  

"Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" opens on Broadway, with Uta Hagen…1962

15 people are killed by a market suicide bombing in Darra Adam Khel, Pakistan…2012

Battle of Harpers Ferry, WV (Mosby's Raid) …1864

Dutch West Indies Co grants religious freedom in West Indies…1629

Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) is founded in Atlanta…1885

Opponents of Fidel Castro executed in Cuba…1960

Victor Herbert's "Babes in Toyland," premieres in NYC…1903

Whirlpool Galaxy was discovered by Charles Messier…1773

Today’s Birthdays                                                           

Paul Simon, singer/actor (Kodachrome, 1 Trick Pony) is 72

Demond Wilson, actor (Sanford & Son, Baby I'm Back) is 67

Lacy J Dalton, country singer (Crazy Blue Eyes) is 67

Sammy Hagar, rock vocalist (Van Halen-Jump) is 66

Marie Osmond, singer/actress (Paper Roses, Goin' Coconuts) is 54

Rob Schneider, actor (Saturday Night Live, Men Behaving Badly) is 50

Sacha Baron Cohen, London, comedian/actor (Ali G, Borat) is 42

Remembered for being born today

Lenny Bruce, [Leonard Schneider], comedian, arrested on obscenity [1925-1966]

Burr Tillstrom, puppeteer (Kukla, Fran & Ollie) [1917-1985]

Cornel Wilde, actor (High Sierra, 5th Musketeer) [1912-1989]

Yves Montand, France, actor/singer (Z, Napoleon, Grand Prix) [1921-1991]

Nipsey Russell, comedian (Car 54, Barefoot in the Park) [1918-2005]

Margaret Thatcher, Grantham England, (Tory) British PM [1925-2013]

Today’s Historical Obits                                                           

Sydney Webb, England, writer/husband of Beatrice Potter…1947…@88

Milton S. Hershey, chocolate tycoon (Hershey Chocolate Company)…1945…@86

Ed Sullivan, TV host (Ed Sullivan Show, Toast of the Town)…cancer…1974…@73

E.C. Segar, American cartoonist (Popeye)…liver disease…1938…@43

Brain Teasers

Poseidon finishes the group. These Greek gods were associated with the four elements (air, fire, earth and water, respectively).

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  §