3-6-14

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Flagstaff Almanac: Day: 0   / Week: 10  

Today: L 27°…H 54°… Ave. humidity: 64%

     Wind: ave:   6mph; Gusts:  14mph  

     Average Low: 21° Record Low:  -2° (1935)

    Average High: 48° Record High:  68° (1910)

Quote of the Day

 

Today’s Historical Highlights

1521 - Magellan discovers Guam

1808 - 1st college orchestra in US founded, at Harvard

1831 - Edgar Allen Poe removed from West Point military academy

1857 - Dred Scott Decision: Supreme Court rules slaves cannot be citizens

1918 - US naval boat "Cyclops" disappears in Bermuda Triangle

1930 - Clarence Birdseye develops a method for quick freezing food

1964 - Cassius Clay joins Nation of Islam and Elijah Muhammad renames him Muhammad Ali

1966 - Barry Sadlers' "Ballad of the Green Berets" becomes #1 (13 weeks)

1970 - Beatles release "Let it Be" in UK

1981 - Walter Cronkite signs-off as anchorman of "CBS Evening News"

♫  Today’s Birthdays: ♫   

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

 

My Free Rambling Thoughts   

Beautiful day here in Flag. Sun shining. Good day to take a walk. Nice!

 

Tomorrow I may or may not have jury duty. Our little town has me calling after 5:00p to see if the trial is still on. If it is, I have to be at the city court at 8:00, if not I call back next week to see if there is a trial. Don’t mind doing my civic duty, but would prefer that a jury duty call is for a specific day and not have to call in week after week…wondering what is going to happen. Well, good news sort of, the person took the plea deal and this trial was cancelled. Now we’ll see what happens.

 

Got an email this morning from my Congressional reps office that Chase had received their request and was escalating it for a quick reply. Hmmm.

 

My brother is enjoying a couple of days of art museums and antiquing in Mexico City before heading to Merida…lots of cool pics.

 

Social networking took a giant leap today…in a good way. I was contacted by nine former students. I was their 3^rd grade teacher, back around 1971 and really haven’t heard from them since I left Shonto in 1975…yet one of them ‘found’ me and the others contacted me after seeing her post. Amazing! Even more amazing, they all had nice things to say about me. Some were probably surprised I was still kicking around.

Game  Center (answers at the end of post)

Brain Teasers

See if you can figure out the words in this "pyramid" using the hints given below. Each new word contains the same letters as the previous word, plus a new letter. 

1) First letter of the English alphabet 2) Present; attending 3) Loves picnics 4) A small biter 5) Pro ballplayers have one 6) An attracting object 7) An article of clothing 8) A heated debate

Lifestyle  Substance:     

Found on You Tube with some relevance to today

• Beatles- Let It Be

• Dick Fosbury flop

• Shaq Memories: Highlights After 19 years as a dominant force

• The Thunderer March - John Philip Sousa 1890 recording

Remembering TV’s great shows

"Barney Miller"--A wry slice of life in a police station full of world-weary detectives, this felt more real than most cop dramas.

Lexiophiles Delights

. Police were called to a Day Care Center where a three-year-old was resisting a rest.
 . Did you hear about the fellow whose whole left side was cut off? He's all right now.

Ancient Sports

He’e Hölua--Culture: Hawaiian

One of the more dangerous entries on this list, he’e hölua (Hawaiian for “sled surfing”) is a sport which originated on the Hawaiian Islands over 2,000 years ago. It consists of a dangerous trek up the side of a volcano, with a large sled made of wood and coconut fibers. Once at the top, the rider, or team of riders, would race down the slope, either on their stomachs or in a typical surfing pose.

Speeds of up to 80 kilometers per hour (50 mph) were common, and the races were seen as tributes to Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of fire and volcanoes. Brought to a stop by 19th century Christian missionaries, who saw the sport as dangerous and a waste of time, it has been recently revived by native Hawaiians trying to reconnect with their heritage.

OK Then…

 

Harper’s Index 

Estimated chances that a recent crack cocaine or methamphetamine user is not physically addicted the drug: 4 in 5

Unusual Fact of the Day

Pythagoras, the philosopher and mathematician, did not discover the Pythagorean Theorem. Many math historians now believe that the Egyptians used the same theorem in their construction projects a hundred years before Pythagoras was born.

Joke-of-the-day

An Israeli doctor says: "Medicine in my country is so advanced that we can take a kidney out of one man, put it in another, and have him looking for work in 6 weeks."

A British doctor says: "That is nothing; we can take a lung out of one person, put it in another, and have him looking for work in 4 weeks."

A Canadian doctor says: "In my country, medicine is so advanced that we can take half a heart out of one person, put it in another, and have them both looking for work in 2 weeks."

A Nigerian doctor, not to be outdone, says: "You guys are way behind...... We just took a man with NO brain, made him President, and now the whole country is looking for work.  

Rules of Thumb:   

Easy shortcuts to make an ‘educated’ guess

COOKING SPAGHETTI

Your thumb and index finger will encircle four modest servings of uncooked spaghetti.    

Yeah, It Really Happened

LIVERMORE, Calif. - Scientists in California say they're one step closer to fusion energy, generating a reaction in which more energy came out of the fuel core than went into it. In what they're calling an incremental advance, the researchers report using 192 lasers to compress a pellet of fuel as a step toward creating a controlled fusion-energy reaction by mimicking the interior of the sun inside a laboratory. There's a long way to go before a functioning fusion reactor can run on a common form of hydrogen found in seawater, creating massive amounts of energy while emitting minimal nuclear waste, they said. What was achieved was not fusion "ignition," scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory said, since their experiment required much more energy on the front end from all the laser shots than came out the back end. Still, when briefly compressed by the laser pulses, the isotopes in the fuel pellet fused, generating new particles and heating up the fuel further and generating still more nuclear reactions, particles and heat, they reported in the journal Nature. The effect -- known as "alpha heating" -- is an important goal in fusion research, researchers not involved in the Livermore work said. "It's the first sign that they're getting what we call self-heating," Stewart Prager of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory in New Jersey told the Washington Post. He said he's optimistic about achieving fusion energy in the long run. "In 30 years, we'll have electricity on the grid produced by fusion energy -- absolutely," Prager said. "I think the open questions now are how complicated a system will it be, how expensive it will be, how economically attractive it will be."  

Somewhat Useless Information   

• The ideal dimension for ship stability is a length six times that of the width.

• Female mosquitoes are non- vegetarian in nature and continue their existence by taking the blood of human-beings and other animals.

• Only in the last century have we discovered that there are towering mountains and deep trenches in the depths of the sea.

• Female mosquitoes are responsible for the spreading of the infectious diseases like Malaria, Dengue fever and Chikungunia etc.

• Washing soda: chemically it is Hydrated Sodium Carbonate.

• Chemically Cooking soda is Sodium Bicarbonate.

• If  ornaments prepared with pure gold (24 carrots) does not give much brightness and also not so attractive, that is why, copper is added to the gold to prepare the ornaments (making it to 22 carrots), which are very shinning. These are more popular in India.

• There are 29 bones present in our head.

• Those who are pregnant after 35 years will have the 1 in 27 chance of giving delivery of twins.

• Carbon Dioxide is used in fire-extinguish devices.

Calendar Information        

Happening This Week:
1-16

Iditarod Race
1-7

National Cheerleading Week
National Ghostwriters Week
National Write A Letter of Appreciation Week
Universal Human Beings Week 
Will Eisner Week
2-8

Celebrate Your Name Week
National Consumer Protection Week
National Invasive Species Awareness Week
National Pancake Week
National Pet Sitters Week
National Schools Social Work Week
National Severe Storm Preparedness Week
National Sleep Awareness Week
National Words Matter Week
Professional Pet Sitters Week
Read an E-Book Week
Return The Borrowed Books Week
Save Your Vision Week
Severe Weather Preparedness Week:
Telecommuter Appreciation Week

Women in Construction Week

3-7
Newspaper in Education Week
National School Breakfast Week
Share A Story - Shape A Future Week

3-9
Women of Aviation Worldwide Week

Today Is                                                                      

·        Day of The Dude

·        Nametag Day

·        Oreo Cookie Day

·        World Book Day

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·        Independence Day (Ghana-1957-from UK)

Today’s Events through History  

1899 - "Asprin" patented by Felix Hoffmann at German company Bayer 

1961 - 1st London minicabs introduced

Today’s Birthdays                                                           

Alan Greenspan, economist/presidential advisor (FRB) is 88

Martin Kove, Brooklyn, American actor (Victor-Cagney & Lacey) is 68

Richard "Dick" Fosbury, high jumper (Olympics-gold-1968) is 67

Tom Arnold, [Mr Roseanne Barr Arnold], actor (Tom, True Lies) is 55

D.L. Hughley, American comedian and actor is 51

Shaquille O'Neal, NBA center (Magic, Lakers, Oly-gold-96) is 42

Remembered for being born today

1475 - Michelangelo, Italian painter (David) 

1619 - Cyrano de Bergerac, famous nose, playwright (Voyage to the Moon)

1806 - Elizabeth Barrett-Browning, poet (Sonnets from the Portuguese)

1906 - Bob Wills, actor (Lone Prairie, Tornado in the Saddle)

1906 - Lou Costello (Abbott & Costello)

1923 - Ed McMahon, TV host (Johnny  Carson Show, Star Search)

1929 - Thomas S Foley, (Rep-D-WA)/majority whip/speaker of house

Today’s Historical Obits                                                           

Georgia O'Keefe, US painter (Flowers), 1986, @98

Margaret Dumont [Daisy Baker], actress (Animal Crackers), 1965, @82

Pearl S[ydenstricker] Buck, author (Good Earth-Nobel 1938), 1973, @80

Ayn Rand, Russian-born author-philosopher (Atlas Shrugged), heart failure, 1982,@77

John Philip Sousa, US composer (Stars & Stripes Forever), 1932, @77

Nelson Eddy, US baritone/actor (Phantom of the Opera), stroke, 1967, @65

William Hopper, actor (Paul Drake-Perry Mason), stroke, 1970, @55

Davy Crockett, US pioneer, @Alamo, 1836, @49

Jim Bowie, American pioneer and soldier, @Alamo, 1836, @40  

Brain Teasers

1) A 2) At 3) Ant 4) Gnat 5) Agent 6) Magnet 7) Garment 8) Argument

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  §