6-10-14


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Flagstaff Almanac: Day: 161 / Week: 24 
June Averages: 78° \ 42°
Today: Average Sky Cover: 0%
    H 82° L 48° Ave. humidity: 16%
    Wind: ave:   7mph; Gusts:  28mph  
    Average High: 78° Record High:  87° (1910)
    Average Low: 40° Record Low:  28° (1998)
        
Quote of the Day
Today’s Historical Highlights

1639 - 1st American log cabin at Fort Christina (Wilmington Delaware)
1719 - Jacobite Rising: Battle of Glen Shiel.
1793 - Washington supersedes Philadelphia as US capital
1801 - Tripoli declares war on US for refusing tribute
1854 - The first class of the United States Naval Academy students graduate
1898 - US Marines land in Cuba during Spanish-American War
1902 - Patent for window envelope granted to H F Callahan
1905 - 1st forest fire lookout tower placed in operation, Greenville, Me
1943 - FDR becomes 1st US president to visit a foreign country during wartime
1947 - Saab produces its first automobile.
1963 - US President JFK signs law for equal pay for equal work for men & women
1977 - Apple Computer ships its first Apple II computers
1977 - James Earl Ray (Martin Luther King's killer) escapes from prison
1981 - Sebastian Coe of England sets 800m record (1:41.73) in Florence

  Today’s Birthdays:   

How many can you identify? Answers in Today’s Birthdays below
My Free Rambling Thoughts   

Monday started off very well. My unexpected check finally arrived. Even a little more than I thought it would be. No big plans, just into my savings account till something really interesting comes along.

The grounds crew was around this morning.. still not happy with their lack of ability to clean up all of the pine needles in the rock piles in front of our units. They did do a good job on the parking lot which is now much cleaner.

Also came a jury duty notice for the county. I just ended my city jury duty a couple of weeks ago, now it’s county jury duty. Doesn’t start until July 1 and is ‘good’ for 90 days. Don’t have to do anything until a summons arrives.

News was talking about an American who was detained in North Korea for spreading Christianity, by leaving a Bible in a hotel room. What? Americans can travel to North Korea? Really. So I looked it up on the internet machine and there are many tours for Americans to visit N. Korea, with no state department issues. A one week tour costs about $3000 from Beijing. Not quite ready for such a tour, but certainly interesting to know that Americans can travel there.

Today would have been my parent’s 75th anniversary. They had a great 55 years together and raised two sons. Still miss both of them.

Game  Center (answers at the end of post)

Brain Teasers

Which country, from group A, belongs in group B?

GROUP A
Australia
Cyprus
France
Great Britain
Hong Kong
Japan

GROUP B
United States
China
Egypt
Kuwait
Norway

Lifestyle  Substance:     

Found on You Tube with some relevance to today







OK Then…
Harper’s Index 

Percentage change since 2012 in the number of books US schools considering banning: +53

Unusual Fact of the Day

Baseball anthem "Take Me Out To the Ball Game" actually has two main verses. During the 7th-inning stretch, fans traditionally sing just the refrain. Jack Norworth had never been to an actual baseball game when he wrote the song.

Presidential Fun Facts…

Andrew Jackson: No formal education. Was first man elected from Tennessee to the House of Representatives, and he served briefly in the Senate. Placed 2,000 of his political supporters in government jobs and established a "kitchen cabinet" of informal advisors. In 1835 he made the final installment of national debt making Jackson the only president of a debt free United States. He was the only president to serve in both the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. He was the only president to have been a prisoner of war. He was the first president to have been born in a log cabin. First president to ride a railroad train. Wounded in a duel at the age of 39, Jackson carried the bullet, lodged near his heart, to his grave.

Ben Franklin on Character…

Order. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.

Common misused words...

Number and amount
I goof these up all the time. Use number when you can count what you refer to; "The number of subscribers who opted out increased last month." Amount refers to a quantity of something you can't count; "The amount of alcohol consumed at our last company picnic was staggering."
Of course it can still be confusing: "I can't believe the number of beers I drank," is correct, but so is, "I can't believe the amount of beer I drank." The difference is I can count beers, but beer, especially if I was way too drunk to keep track, is an uncountable total—so amount is the correct usage.

Pen Names of famous authors…

Stanley Martin Lieber--Pen name: Stan Lee
If everything had gone according to plan, Stan Lee would have been known for writing classic American novels, not comic book series like Spider-Man, X-Men, and the Fantastic Four. Born Stanley Martin Lieber, he became an assistant at Timely Comics in 1939, and, according to his autobiography, he used use the pen name Stan Lee because he wanted to save his real name for more serious, literary work, later in life. As it happened, that serious, literary work never came. Lee adopted his pseudonym officially and became the most famous comic book author of all time.

The World as 100 people…

PHONES: 75 have cell phones; 25 do not

Joke-of-the-day

What is stress?
Stress is to refuse to accept a circumstance in your life for which you have no control, stress is measure by the amount of energy that you invest resisting those circumstances. Stress is to waste energy attempting with your thoughts and feelings to change a person, an event or a circumstance surrounding you. The trick to avoid stress is to realize that no amount of effort can ever change the circumstances while they are happening to you, no matter how bad, do not oppose the moment instead, accept and feel what is occurring.

Rules of Thumb:   

FINDING A FULL MOON
Full moons will be in the south around midnight. Before midnight, they will be more and more in the direction of sunrise; after midnight, they'll be more and more in the direction of sunset - true for both hemispheres.

Yeah, It Really Happened

Frantic zoo keepers rushed to call an ambulance after a vet shot a tranquillizer dart at a man dressed as a gorilla.
Police on the Spanish island of Tenerife received a call from a panicked member of the public, who said that a gorilla had escaped from its pen in Loro Park zoo, and was seen running around the theme park.
A vet was called, and on spotting the creature fired a tranquillizer dart at its leg with enough sedative to fell a 200 kilo beast.
But to his horror, the vet - who had only been in the job for two months - realized that the creature was in fact an employee of the zoo, dressed in a gorilla suit, who was staging a mock escape to practice their emergency routines.
The 35-year-old man was taken to the island's University Hospital after the shooting. He was said to be in a serious condition, having suffered an allergic reaction to the tranquillizer, but was expected to make a full recovery.

Somewhat Useless Information   

"National Doughnut Day" (the original spelling) began on the first Friday in June in 1938 as a fundraiser for the Salvation Army, and it still is today. National Donut Day as it is now known commemorates Salvation Army female volunteers known as "donut lassies," who provided writing supplies, stamps, clothes-mending and home-cooked meals, and of course, donuts, for soldiers on the front lines of World War I.
Those lassies had limited resources, so they could fry only seven at a time until the Salvation Army's Ensign Margaret Sheldon and Adjutant Helen Purviance cleverly thought of frying donuts in soldiers' helmets.
**
American prisoners of war at Son Tay prison camp tricked their North Vietnamese captors into giving out donuts by telling them that the birthday of the United States Marine Corps was once referred to as National Donut Day.
**
In the early '50s, Frank Sinatra used to call the Bay Shore bakery to place weekly orders from Entenmann's.
The largest donut ever made was a 1.7 ton American-style jelly donut measuring 16 feet in diameter and 16 inches high in the center.
Doughnut vs. donut: The now-accepted spelling of "donut" did not overtake the more traditional "doughnut" until Dunkin Donuts stores dotted the nation a few decades ago, according to Grammarist.com. One-third of Americans use "donut," with most preferring "doughnut."

Calendar Information        

This Week’s Observances:

8-14
International Clothesline Week
National Body Piercing Week
National Flag Week
Jim Thorpe Native American Games

Men's Health Week
National Automotive Service Professionals Week


Today Is  

National Yo-Yo Day
Alcoholics Anonymous (Founders) Day
Ball Point Pen Day
Iced Tea Day
World Pet Memorial Day
**
Day of Portugal (Portugal- commemorates the death of national literary icon Luís de Camões in 1580.)
                                                        
Today’s Events through History  

1966 - Mamas & Papas win gold record for "Monday, Monday"
2001 - Pope John Paul II canonizes Lebanon's first female saint Saint Rafqa

Today’s Birthdays                                                           

Philip Mountbatten, Duke of Edinburgh/Prince, Mr Elizabeth II is 93
F Lee Bailey, attorney (Sam Shepard case, OJ case) is 81
Jeff Greenfield, media commentator (Firing Line, Nightline) is 71
Ron Glass, actor (Ron-Barney Miller) is 69
Dan Fouts, NFL QB (San Diego Chargers) is 63
Elizabeth Hurley, actress (Christabel) is 49
(Piyush) Bobby Jindal, politician; Louisiana Congressman, Governor is 43
Tara Lipinski, figure skater (1997 World Champ) is 32

Remembered for being born today

1688-1766 - James Francis Edward Stuart 'The old Pretender', claimed thrones of England and Scotland as James III/James VIII (d. 1766)
1710-1768 - James Short, Scottish mathematician
1895-1952 - Hattie McDaniel, 1st African American actress to win Oscar (Gone With The Wind)
1914-2005 - Saul Bellow, author (Mr Sammler's Planet, Nobel 1976)
1922-1969 - Judy Garland, [Frances Gumm], actress/singer (Wizard of Oz)
1928-2012 - Maurice Sendak, author/illustrator (Where The Wild Things Are)

Today’s Historical Obits                                                           

Richard Webb, actor (Captain Midnight), suicide, 1993, @77
Ray Charles, Grammy winning gospel and blues, liver disease, 2004, @73
Spencer Tracy, actor (Father of Bride), heart attack, 1967, @67
John Gotti, American gangster, cancer, 2002, @61
Michael Rennie, actor (Day the Earth Stood Still), stroke, 1971, @61
Nathaniel Pryor, Sgt of Lewis & Clark Expedition, 1839, @59
Alexander the Great, Macedonian king, fever or excessive wine323BC, @32

Brain Teasers                                         

France.
The countries in group A all drive on the left hand side of the road, France belongs in group B, as they drive on the right.

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.