4-28-14

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Flagstaff Almanac: Day: 118  / Week: 18 

Today: L 30°…H 52°… Ave. humidity: 69%
    Wind: ave:   9mph; Gusts:  24mph  
    Average High: 62° Record High:  80° (1982)
    Average Low: 31° Record Low:  10° (1984)
     
Quote of the Day

Today’s Historical Highlights

1253 - Nichiren, a Japanese Buddhist monk, propounds Nam Myoho Renge Kyo for the first time and declares it to be the essence of Buddhism, in effect founding Nichiren Buddhism.

1932 - Yellow fever vaccine for humans announced
1937 - 1st commercial flight across Pacific, Pan Am
1947 - Thor Heyerdahl & "Kon-Tiki" sail from Peru to Polynesia
1967 - Muhammad Ali refuses induction into army & stripped of boxing title

♫  Today’s Birthdays: ♫  

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

My Free Rambling Thoughts   

Our quickie snowstorm is all gone. Beautiful day with a few clouds melted all the snow by noon. Thankfully, we needed the moisture and a whole lot more. Hopefully next time even more moisture will come from the sky.

Racism certainly is alive and well in the world, even if the Supreme Court believes it is gone in the US. We are in the middle of the NBA playoffs, and now all the attention is turned to the LA Clippers owner who made some very bad comments about Blacks and how he doesn’t want them at his games. Then today more tapes were released where he is talking about Black Jews. So we have learned that a crazy man can own an NBA team. Then on VICE, the HBO series, they were looking at N. Koreans (mostly women) who have escaped to S. Korea. A few weeks ago they ran a story on an actual escape, with some very scary footage. This week, it turns out, many S. Koreans are not happy about the N. Koreans who are entering their country. The N. Koreans are having trouble assimilating into the S. Korean culture. They speak a slightly different dialect and because of years of malnutrition are physically shorter. Because of their isolation, they are not familiar with any of the changes that have taken place of the past half plus century. Many N. Korean women become prostitutes because they can’t get any jobs.  Sad commentary on what goes on around the world.

Game  Center (answers at the end of post)

Brain Teasers

Fill in the words that are empty by using words that will connect with the previous one.

EXAMPLE: Towel, Rack. (You have the words Towel and Rack, but when put together it becomes "Towel rack".)

Try to connect candy to washer.

Candy

B_ _
S _ _ _
D_ _ _
Washer

Lifestyle  Substance:     

Found on You Tube with some relevance to today

In Loving Memory of "Reverend Alden"

Masochism Tango (The Addams Family)

Movie Legends - Rory Calhoun

Person of the Week -- Harper Lee

OK Then…

Harper’s Index 

Percentage of American Jews who believe that following Jewish law is essential to Jewish identity: 19

Who believe that having a sense of humor is: 42

Unusual Fact of the Day

Nintendo, the popular video game company, was actually founded in 1889 as a playing card company.

Number One Country in the world…  

Afghanistan: Drugs-- Anyone who’s seen the Rambo movies think Afghanistan is full of nothing but people playing sheep ball. However, the country is actually one of the drug capitals of the world. Cannabis, hashish, opium and heroin are all shipped by the metric ton from a place that 30% of the people in the world can’t locate on a map.

Joke-of-the-day

Joe had asked Bob to help him out with the deck after work, so Bob just went straight over to Joe's place. When they got to the door, Joe went straight to his wife, gave her a hug and told her how beautiful she was and how much he had missed her at work. When it was time for supper, he complimented his wife on her cooking, kissed her and told her how much he loved her.

Once they were working on the deck, Bob told Joe that he was surprised that he fussed so much over his wife. Joe said that he'd started this about six months ago, it had revived their marriage, and things couldn't be better. Bob thought he'd give it a go. When he got home, he gave his wife a massive hug, kissed her and told her that he loved her. His wife burst into tears.

Bob was confused and asked why she was crying. She said, "This is the worst day of my life. First, little Billy fell off his bike and twisted his ankle. Then, the washing machine broke and flooded the basement. And now, you come home drunk!" 

Rules of Thumb:   

MANUFACTURING OXYGEN

A lawn 50 by 50 feet in size supplies the complete oxygen needs of a family of four.

Yeah, It Really Happened

FORISTELL, Mo. (UPI) - A Missouri dad is facing charges after police pulled over his 13-year-old son on Saturday night after they observed a pickup truck swerving on Interstate 70 eastbound. David Mooneyham, who was in the passenger seat, had asked the boy to act as his designated driver because he was drunk. It was the teen's first time driving. "He thought he had a drunk driver," Police Chief Douglas G. Johnson told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "When the officer asked the driver for his license, he said, 'I don't have one.' Instead the passenger handed over his license and registration." The 46-year-old drank too much at his son's baseball game, so he asked him to drive. Mooneyham refused to do field sobriety tests, but he did register a BAC of 0.139 percent during a breath sample, nearly double the legal limit. He was charged with misdemeanor child endangerment and permitting an underage person to drive. "His closing comment was: 'I guess this makes me a bad father,'" Johnson said.

Somewhat Useless Information   

Since 1898 there was a numbering error on the front page of the New York Times every day and it was discovered by a news assistant named Aaron Donovan in 1999.

The New York Times published in January  of 2000:
“On Feb. 6, 1898, it seems, someone preparing the next day’s front page tried to add 1 to the issue number in the upper left corner (14,499) and came up with 15,000. Apparently no one noticed, because the 500-issue error persisted until yesterday (No. 51,753). Today The Times turns back the clock to correct the sequence: this issue is No. 51,254. Thus an article on March 14, 1995, celebrating the arrival of No. 50,000 was 500 days premature. It should have appeared on July 26, 1996.”

Bermuda Triangle or the “The Triangle of Death”, as it is known,  is an area of the western north Atlantic approximately bounded by imaginary lines drawn between Bermuda, Puerto Rico, and the tip of Florida.

Several disappearances have been reported in this area including airplanes and ships, as well as two nuclear submarines, achieving legendary status.
However, there is nothing mysterious in this particular section of the ocean, as many researchers point out and many disappearances have been caused by weather conditions, equipment failure, and human error.
Lawrence David Kusche, a research librarian from Arizona State University and author of The Bermuda Triangle Mystery: Solved (1975), said that the number of ships and aircraft reported missing in the area was not significantly greater, proportionally speaking, than in any other part of the ocean.
Moreover, he said that in an area frequented by tropical storms, the number of disappearances that did occur were, for the most part, neither disproportionate, unlikely, nor mysterious.

There’ s a state in the world where bartenders prepare customers’ drinks behind partitions made out of frosted glass, called ‘Zion curtains’.

This state is Utah and customers cannot see the making of process of the cocktail they order.
This rule was derived from hopes of combating excessive drinking by keeping alcohol out of sight of restaurant patrons who choose not to consume alcohol.

Calendar Information        

Today Is

Biological Clock Day
Poem in Your Pocket Day
Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day

Workers Memorial Day
World Day for Safety and Health at Work
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National Day of Mourning (Canada)                                                                      

Today’s Events through History  

1611 - Establishment of the Pontifical and Royal University of Santo Tomas, The Catholic University of the Philippines, the oldest existing university in Asia and the largest Catholic university in the world.

1686 - 1st volume of Isaac Newton's "Principia" published
1892 - 1st performance of Antonin Dvorák's overture "Carneval"
1965 - US marines invade Dominican Republic, stay until October 1966

Today’s Birthdays                                                           

Harper Lee, author (To Kill a Mockingbird) is 88

Ann-Margret, Swedish actress (Bye Bye Birdie, Tommy) is 73
Jay Leno, comedian/talk show host (Tonight Show) is 64
Penélope Cruz, actress (Vanilla Sky) is 40
Jessica Alba, American actress/ model is 33

Remembered for being born today

1758-1831 - James Monroe, 5th president  

1874-1947 - Sidney Toler, actor (Madame X, Charlie Chan)
1878-1954 - Lionel Barrymore, [Blythe], actor (Free Soul)
1908-1974 - Oskar Schindler, Zwittau, , Austrian businessman; film Schindler's List.
1916-1993 - Ferruccio Lamborghini, Italian automobile manufacturer
1917-2009 - Robert Woodruff Anderson, writer (Tea & Sympathy)
1928-1997 - Eugene M. Shoemaker, American planetary scientist
1930-1983 - Carolyn Jones, actress (Morticia-Addams Family)
1937-2006 - Saddam Hussein, [At-Takriti], Al-Awja, President of Iraq

Today’s Historical Obits                                                           

Dabbs Greer, actor (Little House), 2007, @90

Rory Calhoun, American actor, emphysema, 1999, @76 
William Wallace, Scottish mathematician (rights of Wallace), 1843, @74
Benito Mussolini, Fascist leader (Italy), shot after trial, 1945, @61
Jim Valvano, basketball coach (NC State), cancer, 1993, @47

Brain Teasers                                         

Candy, Bar, Soap, Dish, Washer.

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  §