6-21-14


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Flagstaff Almanac: Day:172 / Week: 25 
June Averages: 78° \ 42°
Today: Average Sky Cover: 0%
    H 82° L 52° Ave. humidity: 31%
    Wind: ave:   9mph; Gusts:  21mph  
    Average High: 79° Record High:  93° (1936)
    Average Low: 43° Record Low:  28° (1975)
        
Quote of the Day
Today’s Historical Highlights

1547 - Great fire in Moscow
1607 - 1st Protestant Episcopal parish in America established, Jamestown
1633 - Galileo Galilei is forced by Inquisition to "abjure, curse, & detest" his Copernican heliocentric views
1749 - Halifax, Nova Scotia, is founded.
1879 - F W Woolworth opens 1st store (failed almost immediately)
1893 - 1st Ferris wheel premieres (Chicago's Columbian Exposition)
1898 - Guam becomes a territory of US
1907 - E W Scripps founded United Press
1948 - 33 1/3 RPM LP record introduced and 78's planned to be phased out
1952 - Betsy Rawls wins LPGA Women's Western Golf Open
1964 - Three civil rights workers, Michael H Schwerner, Andrew Goodman & James E Chaney, disappeared after release from a Mississippi jail
1975 - "Jaws" by Steven Spielberg opens
1982 - John Hinckley found not guilty attempted assassination of Reagan by reason of insanity
1989 - Supreme Court rules ok to burn US flag as a political expression

  Today’s Birthdays:   

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

While watching a FIFA match, my TV suddenly went black. It wouldn’t turn back on. I did see a flashing red light. Searched the internet machine and found many articles about the ‘dreaded blinking red light’ on Toshiba TVs. The TV is 8 years old and putting in a new motherboard is no guarantee to make the TV work. Rather than waste time trying to get it fixed, just so something else can go wrong I went to Best Buy and found a larger TV on sale and they will deliver and set it up tomorrow. If my wrist wasn’t so sore, I would do it myself but that is impossible at this point.

Game  Center (answers at the end of post)

Brain Teasers

Your task is to find words that, after taking their first letters away, have related meanings.
Example: Behead an animal and leave an animal (FOX, OX).

1. Behead a musical instrument and leave a musical instrument.
2. Behead a margin and leave a margin.
3. Behead to liquefy and leave to liquefy.
4. Behead to ascend and leave to ascend.
5. Behead a proper name and leave a proper name.

Lifestyle  Substance:     

Found on You Tube with some relevance to today






OK Then…
Harper’s Index 

Cost to Canada of a worldwide poll on superhero powers to help its military win ‘hearts and minds’: $12,500

Unusual Fact of the Day

Dogs who bark continuously can get laryngitis, just like humans, but not as quickly. Canine vocal cords are thicker and take longer to get irritated.

Presidential Fun Facts…

Ulysses Simpson Grant: Graduated U.S. Military Academy West Point, New York. Witness to some of the bloodiest battles in history, Grant could not stomach the sight of animal blood. Rare steak nauseated him. While president, he was arrested for driving his horse too fast and was fined $ 20. Grant said he knew only two songs. "One was Yankee Doodle and the other wasn't." He smoked 20 cigars a day, which probably caused the throat cancer that resulted in his death.

Pen Names of famous authors…

Benjamin Franklin -- Pen names: Mrs. Silence Dogood
When Benjamin Franklin was a teenager living in Boston, his older brother James founded the The New-England Courantas the colonies' first independent newspaper. Franklin had been dying to write letters for publication in the paper, and when those letters were rejected, he adopted the persona of a middle-aged widow and his letters were gladly accepted and printed, and are said to have been widely read. The ruse ended when Franklin's brother discovered Dogood's true identity, and young Franklin was forced to leave town for Philadelphia.

Facts about SPACE…

Uranus The original name of Uranus was George’s star. This name was given by the person who discovered it for the first time. So in honor of his discovery he was given a chance to name it. The name of the person was Sir William Herschel.

Joke-of-the-day

A man was well inebriated, but he got behind the wheel of his car anyway and began to drive home. Of course, he couldn't exactly drive straight or stay below the speed limit. Two policemen pulled him over and demanded a sobriety test. They asked him to walk a straight line, and he failed. They began to take him with them, but suddenly they received a call on their walkie-talkies, asking them to go to another part of town. They asked the man to be patient while they called someone else to cover for them. But the man grew tired of waiting and, after a few minutes, drove home.
He got in bed and said to his wife, who had been waiting for him, "If any policemen come looking for me, tell them I'm not home yet."
The wife agreed, somewhat confused and a little embarrassed. No sooner than her husband fell asleep did she hear a knock at the door. Sure enough, it was the two policemen. They asked about her husband, and she replied that he wasn't home. Then they asked to check her garage. Puzzled, she agreed. She opened up the garage for them--and there sat the policemen's squad car, lights still flashing. 

Rules of Thumb:   

RULES OF ROMANCE
You can have a hot job, a hot lover, or a hot apartment. But you can't have all three at the same time.

Yeah, It Really Happened

A teen in India is being worshiped because of his seven-inch tail. It wouldn't be the first time a guy has been worshiped because of his "tail", but what makes this story bizarre is that his tail is actually growing out of his back!

Locals have hailed the wheelchair-bound 13-year-old as an incarnation of the Hindu monkey god Hanuman - and refer to him as Balaji. His home was converted into a temple where worshipers gather to receive his blessings and touch his tail.

"A lot of people's wishes come true," says his grandfather, who lives with the boy. According to one woman, she was in a coma until family members asked Balaji to pray for her, and when he did, she came out of her coma.

Balaji's health has been deteriorating, and it is unclear if the tail has anything to do with it, but family members are hoping it makes a difference.

"Doctors may remove my tail but people will continue to have an unshakable faith in me," the boy said.

If it weren't a stipulation that the tail has to be in the back, I could move to India and become one hell of a god.

Somewhat Useless Information   

An interesting report with data on sharks deaths was published in the journal Marine Policy revealing that the number of sharks killed by people is bigger than the number of people killed by sharks.
The number of sharks killed varies between 63 and 273 million, whereas only 12 humans were killed worldwide by sharks in 2011, according to National Geographic.
Chernov and Richards  said that 11,417 sharks are killed per hour.
~~
Have you ever been in a situation where you were trying to remember a specific word  and you couldn’t?
Scientists describe this disorder as ‘lethologica’. ‘Lethologica’ blocks a person from articulating his or her thoughts by temporarily forgetting words, phrases or names when in a conversation.
Possible factors may be stress, physical fitness, social interaction or base memory capacity.
~~
Vic Muniz, a successful artist, travelled to Brazil and saw mountains of rubbish, as well as poor people trying to pick things that could be recycled.
He then decided to photograph the garbage pickers and offer the money raised to help them improve their lives.
The whole project was filmed by a documentary film-maker and the movie was called “Waste Land” winning many awards.
~~
Did you know that there’s a story of 50,000 words and no letter ‘E’? This story is ‘Gadsby’ and was written in 1939 by Ernest Vincent Wright.
The plot is about the dying fictional city of Branton Hills, which is revitalized by John Gadsby and a youth group he organizes.
Some interesting questions may have been how did he form past tenses since he didn’t use -ed or even connectives like ‘consequently’ or ‘furthermore’.
This might have been really difficult, as ‘E’ is the most common letter in English!

Calendar Information        

This Week’s Observances:

14-22
Worldwide Knit (and crotchet) in Public Week

15-21
Animal Rights Awareness Week
Universal Father's Week
Meet A Mate Week
Old Time Fiddlers Week

Today Is  

Ann & Samantha Day- (Anne Franks and Samantha Smiths)
Atheists Solidarity Day 
Baby Boomers Recognition Day
Cuckoo Warning Day- if you hear a cuckoo you will have a wet summer.
Global Orgasm Day
Go Skateboarding Day

Midsummer (Wiccan)
National Daylight Appreciation Day
Polar Bear Swim (Nome, AK)
Summer Solstice in N. Hemisphere
Winter Solstice in S. Hemisphere

World Handshake Day 
World Humanist Day
~~
National Day (Greenland—self rule--2009)
  
Today’s Events through History  

1768 - 1st US bachelor of medicine degree (Dr John Archer)
1821 - African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AMEZ) Church organizes (NYC)
1834 - Cyrus Hall McCormick patents reaping machine
1917 - Hawaiian Red Cross forms
1942 - 129°F (54°C), Tirat Zevi, Israel (Asian record)
1942 - Rommel takes Tobruk in North Africa
1957 - Ellen Louks Fairclough is sworn in as Canada's first woman Cabinet Minister.
1986 - Bo Jackson, Heisman Trophy winner, singns with KC Royals
1994 - Steffi Graf becomes 1st defending tennis champ to lose in 1st round of a major tournament (Wimbledon to Lorrie McNeal)
2000 - Section 28 (outlawing the 'promotion' of homosexuality in the United Kingdom) is repealed in Scotland with a 99 to 17 vote.

Today’s Birthdays                                                           

Lalo [Boris] Schifrin, Buenos Aires Argentina, composer is 82
Bernie Kopell, actor (Love Boat, Get Smart, That Girl) is 81
Ron Ely, actor (Tarzan, Doc Savage) is 77
Mariette Hartley, actress (Poloroid spokesperson, Marooned) is 74
Meredith Baxter, actress, is 67
Michael Gross, actor (Family Ties, FBI murders) is 67
Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, , son of Charles & Diana is 32

Remembered for being born today

1639-1723 - Increase Mather, New England Puritan minister
1805-1880 - Charles Thomas Jackson, American scientist, polymath
1851-1941 - Daniel Carter Beard, organized 1st US  Boy Scout troop
1921-2011 - Jane Russell, full-figured actress (Outlaw)
1922-1965 - Judy Holliday, comedienne/actress (Born Yesterday, Adam's Rib)
1925-2006 - Maureen Stapleton, actress (Airport, Coccoon, Plaza Suite)
1953-2007 - Benazir Bhutto, 1st female leader of a Moslem nation (Pakistan)
1954-2004 - Robert Pastorelli, actor (Eldin-Murphy Brown)

Today’s Historical Obits                                                           

John Lee Hooker, American musician, 2001, @83
Leon Uris, writer (Exodus), renal failure, 2003, @78
Nikolai A Rimski-Korssakov, Russian composer (Sheherazade), 1908, @64
Niccolo Machiavelli, Florentine statesman/author, 1527, @57
Maureen "Little Mo" Connolly, 1st woman grand slam (1953), cancer, 1969, @34

Brain Teasers                                         

1. FLUTE-LUTE
2. BRIM-RIM
3. SMELT-MELT
4. ARISE-RISE
5. MABEL-ABEL

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.