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Flagstaff Almanac: Day: 157 / Week: 23
June Averages: 78° \ 42°Today: Average Sky Cover: 0%
H 81°… L 41°… Ave. humidity: 13%
Wind: ave: 3mph; Gusts: 12mph
Average High: 75° Record High: 90° (2010)
Average Low: 39° Record Low: 28° (1971)
Quote of the Day
Today’s
Historical Highlights
1242 - 24
wagonloads of Talmudic books burned in Paris
1536 - Mexico
begins its inquisition 1716 - 1st slaves arrive in Louisiana
1752 - 3rd great fire in Moscow in 2 weeks; 1/3 of city destroyed
1795 - Fire destroy 1/3 of Copenhagen; 18,000 injured
1844 - Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) forms in London
1850 - Levi Strauss make his 1st pair of blue jeans
1885 - Sitting Bull signs contract today to work in Buffalo Bill"s Wild West Show
1889 - Great Fire in Seattle destroys 25 downtown blocks
1892 - Chicago South Side Elevated Railroad opens (1st 3.6 miles)
1914 - 1st air flight out of sight of land (Scotland to Norway)
1933 - 1st drive-in theater opens (Camden NJ)
1934 - Securities & Exchange Commission established
1966 - NFL & AFL announce their merger
1966 - Stokely Carmichael launches "Black Power" movement
1968 - Senator Robert Kennedy dies from his wounds
1971 - "Ed Sullivan Show" last broadcasts on CBS-TV
1981 - Maya Yang Lin wins competition to design the Vietnam War Memorial
♫
Today’s Birthdays: ♫
How many can you identify? Answers in Today’s Birthdays below
My Free
Rambling Thoughts
Very happy that I have a new security door at my place. And the
stairwell window is closed and locked. I went to our weekly lunch, and when I
came home they were working on the unit next to me. About 30 minutes later it
was my turn. Took about a 90 minutes…after waiting 9 months. They also locked
the stairwell window. All they did was push on it from the outside and lock it
from the inside. Not sure why that didn’t work 7 years ago, but it worked
today. I never open that window anyway. The guy said he put up 4 doors today in
our complex and not one door was plumb. He also said that I had ‘cheap window
frames’, with which I answered…that’s why I rent and don’t own. It is so nice
to be able to open the front door and let the breeze come flowing through the
house.
We had a great lunch at our favorite Greek place. They have a
flaming cheese appetizer that is fantastic. Mary was at her niece’s wedding
last week, so we got caught up on all her travel. Cheryl has beautiful French doors
that open to the patio. Yesterday, she mowed the lawn and somehow shot a rock
onto the patio and into the door. It is one of those double glass doors with
blinds in-between the glass. The rock shattered the outside glass, which is
like windshield glass so it just crackled, and then some pieces fell out. Won’t
be any cheap fix for this disaster. She also has to get a few drips fixed in
her house. Turns out the local plumber, who charges $95/hr was the one who did
the plumbing when the house was built. It is about 40 years old and the guy
told her, she is not alone in needing work done on the original construction.
Game Center (answers at the
end of post)
Brain
Teasers
Each
pair of definitions is for two words, where the second word is the first word
with an extra letter added somewhere (example: band & brand). The length of
the short word in each pair is provided.
1)
a female relative & to challenge in a mocking manner (4 letters)
2)
the point where two edges meet & a person who investigates the causes of
deaths (6 letters)3) a person of low social or cultural status & a long-tailed game bird (7 letters)
4) nimble or agile & a jet of fine vapor, as from an atomizer (4 letters)
Lifestyle Substance:
Found on
You Tube with some relevance to today
OK Then…
Harper’s
Index
Portioni
of US jobs held by humans today that are at high risk of being automated by
2024: 1/2
Unusual
Fact of the Day
The sum of all the numbers on a
roulette wheel is 666
Heard by
Flight Attendants…
We point to where the bathroom is and the passenger just stands
there. I’ll point to it again and they will say “it’s vacant.” They have no
idea what the word vacant means, I guess we really shouldn’t use such fancy
words like vacant.
Presidential
Fun Facts…
Thomas Jefferson: Graduated College of William and Mary (1762)
Secretary of State under Washington, Vice-President under Adams. Jefferson was
the first president to shake hands with guests. Previously people bowed to
Presidents. Jefferson's library of 6,000 books was purchased for $ 23.950 and
formed the basis of the Library of Congress. Principal author of the
Declaration of Independence. First president to take his oath in Washington,
D.C. Jefferson and Adams were the only presidents to sign the Declaration of
Independence, and they both died on its 50th anniversary, July 4, 1826. He
designed his own tombstone and wrote his own epitaph, omitting the fact that he
was President of the United States.
Common
misused words...
Elicit
and illicit
Elicit means to draw out or coax. Think of elicit as the mildest
form of extract or, even worse, extort. So if one lucky survey respondent will
win a trip to the Bahamas, the prize is designed to elicit responses.
Illicit means illegal or unlawful. I suppose you could
"illicit" a response at gunpoint... but best not.
Things
you might not know about games…
They
sharpen doctors’ skills
Doctors who perform laparoscopic surgery – which involves
inserting a tiny camera into a patient’s body through a small incision – have
better coordination if they play video games at least three hours per week.
According to a 2007 study, gamer surgeons made 37% fewer errors and worked 27%
faster than those whose only “video game” experience was the surgery itself.
The World
as 100 people…
Religion:
Christian-33; Muslim- 22; Hindi-14; Buddhist- 7; Other-12; no religion-12
Joke-of-the-day
A student comes
to a young professor's office hours. She glances down the hall, closes his
door, and kneels pleadingly." I would do anything to pass this exam,"
she says.
She leans closer
to him, flips back her hair, and gazes meaningfully into his eyes. "I
mean," she whispers, "I would do anything..."He returns her gaze, "Anything?"
"Anything."
His voice softens, "Anything?"
"Anything," she repeats again.
His voice turns to a whisper. "Would you ... study?"
Rules of
Thumb:
EATING IN A RESTAURANT
If the price of the
veal is equal to or only slightly above the price of the chicken, order the
chicken.
Yeah, It
Really Happened
POTSDAM, Germany (UPI) - A single ant isn't all that smart. But a
new study suggests an amalgamation of the diminutive insects -- or ant colonies
-- can create intelligent networks that gather, spread and respond to a variety
of information.
"While the single ant is certainly not smart, the collective
acts in a way that I'm tempted to call intelligent," explained Jurgen
Kurths, researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and
co-author of the new ant study. "The ants collectively form a highly
efficient complex network." Of course, the intelligence of ant colonies isn't channeled toward producing reality TV shows or selling mortgage derivatives. Their information networks are primarily concerned with finding and gathering food.
Their intelligence lies not in the ants' strategy for finding food but in the colony's efficiency in honing in on a food source and leveraging its workforce toward a specific goal -- bringing the food back to home base.
When a single ant finds a piece of food, it heads back to the center of the ant colony, releasing a pheromone scent to mark the route. Because the pheromones quickly dissipate, the growing barrage of ants still look a bit chaotic as they track down the recently discovered morsel. But as more and more ants find the food, the line of ants from home to food and back becomes straighter and more efficient.
The study also found that as ants get older they get better at foraging, having acquired more information about their surroundings than younger colony members.
Kurths argues that the chaos-to-precision find and collect transition is quite similar to how Google's search engine works -- only he says ants are better at it.
"I'd go so far as to say that the learning strategy involved in that, is more accurate and complex than a Google search," Kurths told The Independent. "These insects are, without doubt, more efficient than Google in processing information about their surroundings."
Kurths' study was published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Somewhat
Useless Information
Coin-operated
gaming devices in the late 1800s included games with large revolving wheels
divided into color segments. Players wagered on which color the wheel would
stop. They're considered the forerunners of modern slot machines, even though
they didn't have reels. The first recognizably modern three-reel slot was the
Liberty Bell, invented by Charles Fey in San Francisco in 1899. The machine was
so popular that for many years all slot machines were referred to as bell
machines.
The
bar symbol used on modern slot machines is derived from a Bell Fruit Gum logo.
The gum was dispensed in slots designed by Herbert Mills in Chicago in 1910,
and other fruit symbols on slots were derived from the gum flavors.
Among
the most popular early slots were poker games, although the machines did not
usually pay out coins. Payoffs had to come from the operator. After the introduction
of the Liberty Bell, poker-based slots waned in popularity, until the invention
of video poker in the 1970s.
The
game of 21 got its common nickname, blackjack, from a practice in illegal
casinos in the early 1900s. Some casinos paid a bonus if a two-card 21 was made
up of an ace and jack of spades. Others paid bonuses if an ace of spades was
accompanied by a jack of either clubs or spades. The black jack was the key to
the bonus, and became the name of the game.
Horizontal
gaming wheels, such as those used in roulette, were invented in England in 1720
for a game called roly-poly. Roly-poly was similar to roulette, except there
were no numbers on the wheel. There were alternating white spaces and black
spaces, along with a "bar black" space and a "bar white"
space. The "bar" spaces were the equivalents of zero and double-zero
-- if the ball landed in either space, bets on black or white lost. Roly-poly
was banned in England in 1745, but the horizontal wheel traveled well. By 1796,
modern roulette was being played in France.
The
kings in decks of playing cards represent real leaders and conquerors from
history, although not all had the title of king. The deck we use today is based
on cards designed in 15th-century France. The king of spades represents the
Biblical King David, the king of clubs represents Alexander the Great, the king
of hearts represents Charlemagne and the king of diamonds represents Julius
Caesar.
Calendar
Information
This
Week’s Observances:
1-7Black Single Parents Week
End Mountain Top Removal Week
National Business Etiquette Week
National Headache Awareness Week
National Sun Safety Week
National Tire Safety Week
Pet Appreciation Week
Rip Current Awareness Week
6-8
Great American Brass Band Week
Today
Is
Teacher's Day
Atheists Pride Day D-Day
Doughnut Day or Donut Day
Drive-in Movie Day
Horseradish Days
National Applesauce Cake Day
National Lemonade Days
Positive Power of Humor and Creativity Days
Russian Language Day
Yo-Yo Day
**
Dragon Boat Festival (China- commemorates the life and death of Chinese scholar Qu Yuan (Chu Yuan).)
Flag Day (Sweden)
Memorial Day (Korea-since 1956)
Today’s Events through History
1890 - United States Polo Association forms, NYC
1925 - Walter Percy Chrysler founded Chrysler Corp (Iacocca is 8 months old)
1942 - 1st nylon parachute jump (Hartford Ct-Adeline Gray)
1955 - Bill Haley & Comets' "Rock Around the Clock" hits #1
1966 - Activist James Meredith wounded by white sniper in Mississippi
Today’s
Birthdays
Gary
"US" Bonds, [Anderson], singer/songwriter is 75
Robert
Englund, actor (A Nightmare on Elm Street) is 67Sandra Bernhard, actress (Nancy-Roseanne) is 59
Bjorn Borg, tennis champ (Wimbledon 1976-79) is 58
Colin Quinn, American comedian is 55
Daniel Logan, actor (Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones) is 27
Remembered
for being born today
1436-1476 - Regiomontanus
(Johannes Muller), prepares astronomical tables
1606-1684 - Pierre
Corneille, France, dramatist (El Cid, Horace) 1755-1776 - Nathan Hale, hanged patriot, had but one life to give for his country
1867-1931 - David Abercrombie, Abercrombie & Fitch founder
1901-1970 - Achmed Sukarno, Java, PM of Indonesia (1945-67)
Today’s
Historical Obits
Esther Williams, swimmer and actress, 2013, @91
Robert Stirling, Scottish inventor, 1878, @87 J. Paul Getty, oil magnate/billionaire, 1976, @83
Jack Haley, American actor (The Wizard of Oz), 1979, @80
Anne Bancroft, American actress, cancer, 2005, @73
Stan Getz, jazz saxophonist (Girl from Impanima), cancer, 1991, @64
Patrick Henry, American revolutionary, cancer, 1799, @63
Guinn Williams, actor (Big Boy-Circus Boy), uremic poisoning, 1962, @63
Lillian Russell, entertainer, 1922, @61
Billy Preston, American musician, pericarditis, 2006, @59
Robert Kennedy, (Sn-D-NY), assassinated, 1968, @42
Brain Teasers
) aunt & taunt
2) corner & coroner3) peasant & pheasant
4) spry & spray
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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