2-24-14

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Flagstaff Almanac: Day: 055   / Week: 09  

Today: L 22°…H 55°… Ave. humidity: 43%

Wind: ave:   13mph; Gusts:  27mph  

Average Low: 20° Record Low:  -4° (1909)

Average High: 47° Record High:  66° (1904)

Quote of the Day

 

Today’s Historical Highlights

1208 - St Francis of Assisi, 26, received his vocation in Portiuncula Italy

1541 - Santiago, Chile founded by Pedro de Valvidia (or 2/12)

1863 - Arizona Territory created

1868 - 1st US parade with floats (Mardi Gras-Mobile Alabama)

1868 - House of Reps vote 126 to 47, to impeach President Andrew Johnson

1895 - Cuban war for independence begins

1909 - The Hudson Motor Car Company is founded.

1924 - Johnny Weissmuller, swims 100m record (57 2/5 secs)
1924 - Mahatma Gandhi released from jail

1965 - Beatles begin filming "Help" in Bahamas

1989 - 150-million-year-old fossil egg (oldest dinosaur embryo) found

2002 - XIX Winter Olympics closes in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States

2008 - Fidel Castro retires as the President of Cuba after nearly fifty years.

2013 - Raúl Castro is elected to a second term as the President of Cuba

♫  Today’s Birthdays: ♫   

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

 

My Free Rambling Thoughts   

A nice lazy Sunday. Enjoyed watching the last day of Olympic competition. Tonight I’ll be watching the Closing Ceremony as another successful Olympics draws to a close.

 

Our discussion group last night was very well presented. Depressing, but very well presented. One of this earth’s greatest concerns should be how climate change is changing climate, changing growing seasons, and changing the availability of water throughout the world. It seems that since the developed nations have no answers, it is just ignored. Developed nations have no idea what life is like with minimal food and water each day. We drifted off a little into GMO’s but none of us had any real depth of knowledge so that will be for another day. Two of our regulars were off in Liberia where Margaret is teaching nursing skills at the university and her husband is enjoying the culture.

Game  Center (answers at the end of post)

Brain Teasers

The following are alternate definitions for words, based on how the words sound. For example, "To drive by the docks: P _ _ _ _ _ _ _." would result in "PASSPORT (Pass Port)". Can you guess the words described below?

1. What white bears see with: P _ _ _ _ _ _ _.  2. A car's memoirs: A _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _.  3. How judges get to a small island: C _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _.  4. To live long: D _ _ _ _ _.  5. How good a fibber one is: L _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _.  6. In favor of young men and women: P _ _ _ _ _ _.

Lifestyle  Substance:     

Found on You Tube with some relevance to today

• Barney Fife and the Preamble to the Constitution

• George Gobel – comedian

• GEORGE THOROGOOD "Bad To The Bone"

• Gunsmoke-Chester and Doc

Remembering TV’s great shows:

"Lost": Flashbacks, flash-­forwards, flash-sideways: The innovative castaway serial kept us deliriously off-balance as we teetered on the edge of our seats.

Bizarre Punishments

Organizing A Fake Prom

In an unbelievably petty act of revenge, a Mississippi school district held a fake prom for a lesbian student after she sued them for not allowing her to wear a tuxedo and bring her girlfriend to the event. Constance McMillen and her girlfriend were initially told they had caused their school prom to be cancelled after asking to go as a couple. Outraged by the school’s bizarrely over-the-top response to her simple request, McMillen proceeded to sue the district for discrimination. After a court ruled that she was legally allowed to attend, the school informed her that she would be invited to the replacement prom already arranged by her classmates’ parents. Little did she know that the school had no intention of inviting her to the actual parent prom, insteadhosting a fake event for her, her girlfriend, and five students with mental disabilities.

It was only when McMillen showed up at a country club with her date that she realized they had been set up as a punishment. As she attended her prom with six other students, everyone else was attending the actual event just down the road. The school district was forced to pay McMillen $35,000 for the bizarre humiliation they put her through. But while the settlement was helpful, it couldn’t repair the trauma of being set up by both school administrators and her classmates.

Strange Obsessions of famous people

Jean-Paul Sartre--Fear Of Sea Creatures

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) was a prolific writer and political activist who, during the course of his life, defended such notable figures as Karl Marx, Fidel Castro, and Che Guevara. Like Camus, Sartre won the Nobel Prize and he was none too pleased about the award; but Sartre flatly refused to accept the prize along with the award money. For Sartre, it was a deeply philosophical act: Human-made institutions like the Nobel Prize only worsened the conditions of men, all of whom were “condemned to be free.”

For all of his intellectual confidence, however, Sartre had one enduring weakness: crustaceans. As a child, Sartre was scarred by a painting of a claw coming up out of the ocean, attempting to grab a person. Thereafter, Sartre had an obsessive fear of crustaceans and other sea creatures. His fear was so intense that he once had a panic attack after getting into the water of the Riviera with his long-time love, Simone de Beauvoir. He believed that a giant octopus would rise up from the dark depth of the water and drag him to his death. On another occasion, after consuming a mind-altering drug, Sartre had visions of lobsters following him everywhere he went. This obsession with sea creatures can also be seen in the imagery he uses in many of his literary works, such as The Condemned of Altona, “Erostratus,” and Nausea.

Look back at History

Louisiana Purchase

It’s been mentioned more than once before on Listverse, and you’re probably familiar with it anyway, but let us not forget that with one shrewd business deal, Thomas Jefferson doubled the United States of America’s area. The U. S. paid 60 million francs, and canceled French debts totaling another 18 million, for a grand total of 78 million francs, or about $15 million. Today, that would be worth about $220 million, which is an extraordinarily good sale price for 828,800 square miles.

Today that area comprises some 15 states, including all of Oklahoma, Nebraska, Iowa, Arkansas, Kansas and Missouri. Jefferson couldn’t pass up a deal. It should be noted that France’s illustrious leader at the time, Napoleon Bonaparte, made this deal mostly for the money, but also to give “England a maritime rival that will sooner or later humble her pride.” Not that America ever did conquer Britain on the high seas (no one ever did), but Napoleon thought it would take a bit of the oceanic strain off his aspirations for global conquest. Two years later, his and Spain’s navies met England’s under Lord Horatio Nelson off Cape Trafalgar, Spain, and his sale of the Louisiana territory wasn’t such a sale anymore.

Jefferson immediately ordered the territory explored, and commissioned Meriwether Lewis and William Clark for the job. His purpose was multifold, with both scientific and commercial goals, especially “to find direct and practicable water communication across this continent, for the purposes of commerce with Asia.” At the time, no one on Earth, except for the thousand or so tribes of Indians, knew what sort of environs Lewis and Clark were to go through. They were still looking for the Northwest Passage, but the Pacific Ocean said, “No.” This single business transaction left only about a third of the modern United States to be explored, acquired, and founded.

OK Then…

 

• Harper’s Index 

• Estimated amount spent globally on fertility drugs and devices this year: $4,054,984,000

• Percentage of first-time fertility treatments that fail: 75

Unusual Fact of the Day

The country with the most feral camels is Australia.

Joke-of-the-day

A drunk was staggering down the main street of town. Somehow, he managed to make it up the stairs to the cathedral and into the building, where he crashed from pew to pew. He finally made his way to a side aisle and into a confessional. A priest had been observing the man's sorry progress. Figuring the fellow was in need of some assistance, he proceeded to enter his side of the confessional. His attention was rewarded only by a lengthy silence. Finally he asked, "May I help you, my son?"

"I dunno." came the drunk's voice from behind the partition. "You got any toilet paper on your side?"  

Rules of Thumb:   

Easy shortcuts to make an ‘educated’ guess

BUYING A DIGITAL CAMERA

A 6 megapixel digital camera offers plenty of resolution for snapshots, web publishing, and even 8x10 prints, and is adequate for 16x20 prints. For 20x30 posters, full-page magazine photography, and the like, 10 megapixels would be a better idea. Generally speaking, a top-notch 6MP camera takes better pictures than a cheapo 10MP camera.    

Yeah, It Really Happened

-- Saved by the Blimps: Americans who have grown accustomed to hearing that the U.S. is militarily without peer might have been shocked to learn in January (as CBS News reported from a Pentagon interview) that America has "practically zero capability" either to detect enemy cruise missiles fired at Washington, D.C., from offshore, or even worse, to "defend against (them)." The Pentagon's interim makeshift solution to protect the U.S. capital, said an official, is to launch two blimps, soon, to float two miles up over a base in Maryland to try to spot any such missiles. [CBS News, 1-23-2014]  

Somewhat Useless Information   

• To minimize any foreseeable delay in launching a nuclear missile during the height of the Cold War, the US military  intentionally set the launch codes at every silo in the US to 8 zeroes for nearly two decades. Every nuclear weapon the US had be fitted with a Permissive Action Link (PAL), basically a small device that ensured that the missile could only be launched with the right code and with the right authority, according to the the National Security Action Memorandum 160, which JFK signed in 1962.

• Bruce Lee was a Hong Kong American martial artist, as well as a Hong Kong action film actor, martial arts instructor, filmmaker and the founder of Jeet Kune Do. He is considered to be one of the most influential martial artists of all time although he died at the age of 32. Bruce Lee was so fast, that the film producers had to slow a film down so that people could see his moves.

• Why does hair turn grey as we get older? Is there anything we can do to prevent ‘greying’? 

• There are several factors than cause greying of hair, smoking is one of them, as well as anemia, poor nutrition and untreated thyroid conditions. However, what causes hair’s color to change has also to do with the process controlling the production of the pigment called melanin, the same pigment that tans skin in response to sunlight.

Calendar Information        

Happening This Week:
☼22-28☼

National FFA Week
Read Me Week
Bird Health Awareness Week 
National Eating Disorders Awareness Week
National Secondhand Wardrobe Week 
Peace Corps Week 

Today Is                                                                      

·        Museum Advocacy Day

·        National Chili Day

·        National Personal Chef Day

·        World Bartender Day

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·        Flag Day (Mexico-1937)

·        Independence Day (Estonia-1918-from Russia/Germany)

·        National Cupcake Day (Canada)

Today’s Events through History  

1821 - Mexico gains independence from Spain

1923 - Mass arrests in US of mafia

1938 - Du Pont begins commercial production of nylon toothbrush bristles

1968 - Discovery of 1st pulsar announced

Today’s Birthdays                                                           

Abe Vigoda, actor (Barney Miller, Fish) is 93

Barry Bostwick, Tony winning actor is 69

Edward James Olmos, actor (Miami Vice, Stand & Deliver) is 67

George Thorogood, singer and guitarist (Bad to the Bone) is 64

Paula Zahn, news anchor (ABC, CBS This Morning) is 58

Billy Zane, actor (Orlando, Memphis Belle, Millions, Titanic) is 48

Remembered for being born today

1786 - Wilhelm Karl Grimm, Hanau Germany, story teller (Grimm's Fairy Tales)

1836 - Winslow Homer, US, painter (Gulfstream)

1885 - Chester Nimitz, US admiral (commanded Pacific fleet in WW II)

1955 - Steve Jobs, computer entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple

Today’s Historical Obits                                                           

Henny Youngman, comedian (Take my wife please), 92

Don Knotts, actor (Barney Fife), 2006, @81

Dennis Weaver, actor (Chester-Gunsmoke), 2006, @81

Dinah Shore, singer (Chevrolet), cancer, 1994, @76

George Gobel, comedian (George Gobel Show), after heart surgery, 1991, @71

Malcolm Forbes, CEO (Forbes Publishing), heart attack, 1990. @70

Robert Fulton, steamboat pioneer, TB, 1815, @49

Brain Teasers

1. Polarize (polar eyes) 2. Autobiography (auto biography) 3. Courtship (court ship) 4. Dilate (die late) 5. Liability (lie ability) 6. Protein (pro-teen)

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  §