1-14-13


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Flagstaff Almanac:
Week: 02 / Day: 014   
Today: L 15°…H 52°… Ave. humidity: 45%
Wind: ave:   7mph; Gusts:  9mph  
Average Low: 16° Record Low:  -15 (2007)
Average High: 43° Record High:  65° (1943)

Quote of the Day
 
Today’s Historical Highlights
1539 - Spain annexes Cuba.
1690 - Clarinet invented, in Nurnberg, Germany
1699 - Massachusetts holds day of fasting for wrongly persecuting "witches"
1746 - Bonnie Prince Charlie's army leaves Glasgow
1799 - Eli Whitney receives government contract for 10,000 muskets
1813 - Gideon Hawley becomes 1st state school superintendent in US (NY)
1878 - US Supreme court rules race separation on trains unconstitutional
1914 - Henry Ford introduces an assembly line for Model T
1938 - National Society for Legalization of Euthanasia forms (NY)
1953 - Yugoslavia elects its 1st president (Marshal Tito)
1963 - George C Wallace sworn in as governor of Alabama, his address 
             states "segregation now; segregation tomorrow; segregation forever!"
1967 - Sonny & Cher release "Beat Goes On"
1979 - Pres Carter proposes Martin Luther King's birthday be a holiday
1981 - FCC frees stations to air as many commercials an hour as they wish

♫  Today’s Birthdays: ♫   
How many can you identify? Answers in Today’s Birthdays
 
My Free Rambling Thoughts   
A fine day in Flag.

I was fortunate enough to visit Africa on several occasions. While I enjoyed all the game drives, the drive in South Africa where we saw rhinos is still stuck in my head. We had several sightings and on one of them I swear the rhino, about 30 yards away was staring into my soul. Rhinos have very poor eyesight, but I was frozen in the jeep, almost unable to take any pictures. It will always be a few minutes I will never forget. Our guide had told us earlier that each guide has ‘a species’ that enthrall him/her. He said his was the lion. After our encounter with the rhino, he asked me why I was quiet. I told him the feelings I had experience, and he said ‘that’s your species’. I have been reading about the horrific poaching of rhinos in Africa; I have seen young rangers training to stop poachers; I have seen several programs that are working to protect the rhino. Now there is some guy in Texas who is auctioning off an African Rhino Hunt. His claim is that the proceeds from the auction will go to education to stop poaching. He claims that the hunt will take the hunter to a place where an old male rhino can be killed. This, he claims this will help the population, since the old male is no longer to help reproduce and is unable to help fend off predators of the younger rhinos.  I am very much against this ‘hunt’ on many levels. Africa is a place where ‘nature takes its course’. There is no need for any man to interfere. It will certainly be interesting to see how much of the $350K bid actually makes it to Africa to stop poaching. While this hunt is legal it certainly is not moral.
 
Christie is in trouble for using Fed money for making a series of commercials to let the world know that Jersey was open for tourism after Sandy. Another bid came in for half the price that did not feature Christie and his family. As he was up for reelection he took the one with his family for a cost to taxpayers of $4.7 million. Whatever the results, it shows that the $350K for the rhino hunt is only a drop in the bucket for education on poaching.
Game  Center (answers at the end of post)
Brain Teasers
A name of a musical instrument is hidden in each of these phrases or sentences. 
1. Which arm on Icarus held this instrument? 2. Man wearing kepi a novice player. 3. Orpheus carefully replaced ancient instrument. 4. Educator Gandhi played Bach. 5. No car in Asia has instrument aboard. 6. Instrument played in Olympic colorful parade. 7. Cancel long concert for stringed instrument. 8. Urban joke played on instrument. 9. Angelic playing with arpeggios. 10. Absolutely beautiful playing of stringed instrument.

Lifestyle  Substance:     
Found on You Tube with some relevance to today

Actual Complaints… These are actual complaints received from dissatisfied customers by Thomas Cook Vacations (based on a Thomas Cook/ABTA survey):
"On my holiday to Goa in India , I was disgusted to find that almost every restaurant served curry. I don't like spicy food."
Suggested New State Mottos:
Indiana: 2 Billion Years Tidal Wave Free
Something to Ponder in your free time…
Why is phonics not spelled the way it sounds?
Auction Prices
Lee Harvey Oswald's wedding ring.
Just a month shy of the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's assassination, the wedding ring of shooter Lee Harvey Oswald hit the auction block in Boston. It sold for $118,000 to an anonymous Texas buyer.
OK Then…
 
Harper’s Index 
  • Total acres in the United States occupied by shopping centers and malls: 59,129
  • By vegetable gardens: 1,300,000

Unusual Fact of the Day
Actress Uma Thurman's father was the first known Westerner to become a Tibetan Buddhist monk.
Joke-of-the-day
A Saudi Prince went to Germany to study.
A month later, he sends a letter to his dad saying:"Berlin is wonderful, people are nice and I really like it here, but I'm a bit ashamed to arrive to school with my gold Mercedes when all my teachers travel by train."
Sometime later he gets a letter from his dad with a ten million dollar check saying:"Stop embarrassing us, go and get yourself a train too”!
Rules of Thumb:   
Easy shortcuts to make an ‘educated’ guess
TAKING A LIE DETECTOR TEST
If you are innocent, do not take a lie detector test. If you're guilty, take it, because it may exonerate you.    
Yeah, It Really Happened
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. - Supernovas are thought to be a primary source of dust in galaxies, and U.S. astronomers say the remains of a recent supernova are full of freshly formed dust. Direct evidence of a supernova's dust-making capabilities has up to now been slim and cannot account for the copious amount of dust detected in young, distant galaxies, they said, but data from radio telescopes in Chile could explain how many galaxies acquire their dusty, dusky appearance. "We have found a remarkably large dust mass concentrated in the central part of the ejecta from a relatively young and nearby supernova," Remy Indebetouw with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and the University of Virginia said. "This is the first time we've been able to really image where the dust has formed, which is important in understanding the evolution of galaxies." An international team of astronomers used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array to observe the glowing remains of supernova 1987A, which is in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy orbiting the Milky Way about 168,000 light-years from Earth. They estimate the remnant now contains about 25 percent the mass of our sun in newly formed dust. "1987A is a special place since it hasn't mixed with the surrounding environment, so what we see there was made there," Indebetouw said. "The new ALMA results, which are the first of their kind, reveal a supernova remnant chock full of material that simply did not exist a few decades ago" from an Earth-observation standpoint, which saw the light from the exploding supernova reach the Earth in 1987. Such processes could account for the large amount of dust astronomers detect in the early universe, the researchers said. "Really early galaxies are incredibly dusty and this dust plays a major role in the evolution of galaxies," Mikako Matsuura of University College London said. "Today we know dust can be created in several ways, but in the early universe most of it must have come from supernovas. We finally have direct evidence to support that theory."  
Somewhat Useless Information   
  • A rooster, duck and sheep were the first living creatures to fly in a hot-air balloon in 1783. The balloon flew on a tether, rising to 1,500 feet and traveling two miles before being brought back to the ground. The animals survived, though the rooster suffered a broken wing.
  • The tradition of serving champagne after a hot-air balloon flight originated in the 18th century as a way of appeasing French farmers who didn't much like balloons landing in their fields and crushing their crops.
  • In 1991 Per Lindstrand and Richard Branson become the first people to pilot a balloon across the Pacific. Traveling 6,700 miles in 46 hours at speeds of up to 245mph, they flew from Japan to Arctic Canada.
  • The first successful circumnavigation of the world in a balloon took place in 1999. Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones left from Switzerland and landed in Egypt just shy of 20 days later.
  • It was January 7, 1785 when the first English Channel balloon crossing took place. Frenchman Jean-Pierre Francois Blanchard and American John Jeffries completed the trip in a hydrogen balloon in two-and-a-half hours.
  • Vijaypat Singhania set the world altitude record for highest hot-air balloon flight in November when he reached 69,850ft.

Calendar Information        
Happening This Week:
8-14
Universal Letter Writing Week  
11-17
Cuckoo Dancing Week
13-19
National Vocation Awareness Week  
National Soccer Coaches of America Week

Today Is                                                                      
·        Caesarean Section Day
·        Dress Up Your Pet Day
·        National Poetry at Work Day
·        Organize Your Home Day
·        Ratification Day-Treaty Of Paris-1784-recognizes US sovereignty  

Today’s Events through History  
1900 - Giacomo Puccini's opera "Tosca," premieres in Rome
1956 - Little Richard releases "Tutti Frutti"
1972 - "Sanford & Son" starring Redd Foxx premieres on NBC TV
 1990 - "Simpsons" premiered on Fox-TV

Today’s Birthdays                                                           
Jack Jones, singer (Love Boat Theme) is 76
Julian Bond, Nashville Tenn, (D-Ga) civil rights leader is 74
[Dorothy] Faye Dunaway, Bascom Fl, actress (Chinatown, Bonnie & Clyde) is 73
Holland Taylor, actress (Bossom Buddies, Two & Half Men) is 71
Carl Weathers, actor (Apollo Creed-Rocky) is 66
Steven Soderbergh, producer, director, writer (Ocean's Eleven, Traffic) is 50
Shepard Smith, Fox news anchor is 50
LL Cool J, [James Todd Smith], rapper, actor is 46
Jason Bateman, actor (Silver Spoons) is 45

Remembered for being born today
1741 - Benedict Arnold, US general turned traitor (Revolutionary War)
1875 - Albert Schweitzer, doctor/humanitarian/organist (Nobel 1954)
1892 - Hal Roach, early film director/producer (Our Gang, Laurel & Hardy)
1908 - William Bendix, actor (Lifeboat, Babe Ruth Story, Life of Riley)
1915 - Mark Goodson, American game show producer
1919 - Andy Rooney, CBS news correspondent (60 Minutes)
1924 - Guy Williams, actor (Zorro, Lost in Space)

Today’s Historical Obits                                                           
Conrad Bain, Canadian-born actor, (Maude) in 2013 @89
Ricardo Montalbán, Mexican actor (How the West Was Won) in 2009 @88
Edmond Halley, English scientist in 1742 @85
Ray Kroc, founder of McDonalds/owner San Diego Padres in 1984 @81
Lewis Carroll, writer (Alice in Wonderland) flu in 1898 @65
Donna Reed, actress (Donna Reed Show, Dallas) cancer in 1986 @64
Thomas Coventry, 1st Baron Coventry, English lawyer and judge in 1640 @62
Peter Finch, actor (Network, Nun's Story, Judith) heart attack in 1977 @60
Humphrey Bogart, actor (Casablanca, Caine Mutiny) cancer in 1957 @57
John Francis Dodge, American automobile pioneer flu in 1920 @55

Brain Teasers
1. harmonica 2. piano 3. lyre 4. organ 5. ocarina- a wind instrument in the category of vessel flutes
6. piccolo
7. cello
8. banjo
9. harp
10. lute
 6. piccolo 7. cello 8. banjo 9. harp 10. lute
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  §
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Flagstaff, Arizona, United States
I retired in '06--at the ripe old age of 57. I enjoy blogging, photography, traveling, and living life to it's fullest.