12-5-14

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Almanac: Week: 49 \ Day: 339 
December Averages: 44°\17°
86004 Today: H 49°\L 37°
Ave. humidity: 90%     Average Sky Cover: 85%
Wind ave:   3mph\Gusts:  20mph
Ave. High: 45° Record High:  67° (1965)
Ave. Low: 18° Record Low:  -4° (1955)

Holiday Observances Today:
Discovery Day (Haiti-1492-by Columbus)
King's Birthday and National Day (Thailand-1927)
Krampuslauf (Austria-Demonic beast takes all the ‘naughty’ children)
¤ ¤
AFL-CIO Day-mergd-1955
Bathtub Party Day
Columbian International Day of The Reef-celebrates Columbia’s Reef
Faux Fur Friday
International Ninja Day
International Volunteer Day for Economic & Social Development
National Salesperson Day
Repeal Day - The 21st Amendment ends Prohibition-1933
Sachertorte Day-a special Austrian Chocolate Cake
World Soil Day
Observances This Week:
1-7
Cookie Cutter Week 
International Coelenterate Biology Week 
Older Driver Safety Awareness Week 
3-9

Clerc-Gallaudet Week
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Quote of the Day
 

Historical Highlights for Today
1360 - The French Franc is created
1456 - Earthquake strikes Naples; about 35,000 die
1766 - London auctioneers Christie's hold their first sale
1835 - Georgia Guard arrest CHEROKEE Principal Chief John Ross at his home. Also arrested is historian John Howard Payne. Payne, the author of the song "Home, Sweet Home", was writing a history of the CHEROKEE people. They are arrested so they will not be able to attend the "New Echota Treaty" conference
1840 - Napoleon Bonaparte receives a state funeral in Paris 19 years after his death
1848 - President Polk triggers Gold Rush by confirming gold discovery in CA
1879 - 1st automatic telephone switching system patented
1893 - 1st electric car (built in Toronto) could go 15 miles between charges
1929 - 1st US nudist organization (American League for Physical Culture, NYC)

1932 - German physicist Albert Einstein granted a visa to enter America
1935 - 1st commercial hydroponics operation established (Montebello, California)
1955 - Historic bus boycott begins in Montgomery Alabama by Rosa Parks
1957 - NYC is 1st city to legislate against racial or religious discrimination in housing market (Fair Housing Practices Law)
1971 - Libya nationalizes British Petroleum concession
1974 - Monty Python's Flying Circus final episode airs on BBC
2005 - The Lake Tanganyika earthquake causes significant damage, mostly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
• • • • • • •
  Birthdays Today:
How many can you identify? Answers below in Birthday’s Today


My Rambling Thoughts
Great lunch with time to catch up on Thanksgiving experiences. Cheryl had a great time in CA with her son and his family. Mary had a good time in Phx with her son and the grandkids. Usual family tension in Phx but will work out just fine.
Flag had rain all day yesterday and up until about 2pm this afternoon. Totals are around 1.5” from this storm. That is a lot of rain in 2 days for a high desert. While everyone I saw was wet and the streets had puddles, no one was complaining. It was always a nice gentle rain with no thunder or lightning. It was badly needed and much appreciated.
• • • • • • •
Brain Teasers
(answers at the end of post)
Which abbreviation from Group A should be in Group B?

GROUP A      GROUP B
adj.                           a
B.C.                         A.D.
etc.                           c
No.                          e.g.
pl.                            i.e.


Found on You Tube with some relevance to today



           
OK Then…


• • • • • • •
Paraphernalia 4 the Brain:     
Actor Facts…
¤ Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) has more money than Prince Harry, the Prince of Wales.
¤ As a child, Jim Carrey wore tap shoes to bed just in case his parents needed cheering up in the middle of the night.

December Holiday Facts
*Christmas-Christian
¤ According to data analyzed from Facebook posts, two weeks before Christmas is one of the two most popular times for couples to break up. However, Christmas Day is the least favorite day for breakups.
¤ Contrary to popular belief, suicide rates during the Christmas holiday are low. The highest rates are during the spring.

*Hanukkah-Jewish
Dreidels
During Hanukkah, Jewish children enjoying playing with a toy called a dreidel, which is similar to a top. The dreidel has four sides and features the Hebrew letters nun, gimel, hay, and shin. These letters stand for the Hebrew phrase Nes Gadol Hayah Sham, "A great miracle happened there." The game is played with candy. The player who has all the candy in the end is the winner.

*Kwanza-African-American
Stamp That!
The first US postage stamp to commemorate Kwanzaa was issued in 1997. There have been 4 designs released since then, the most recent being in 2013.

*12 Days of Christmas
Three French Hens
The Three Theological Virtues: 1) Faith, 2) Hope, and 3) Love (1 Corinthians 13:13)

Flagstaff, AZ History…
100 YEARS AGO
¤ Horses to pasture will leave Calloway's at Camp Verde with horses to winter about November 25. See, A. W. Kinsey.
¤ As they were driving home on Sunday evening, J. L. Daughtery's auto turned over near Doney Park when the lights on his machine gave out and he ran into a bridge. The top was ruined. Neither he nor his Mrs. were injured.
           
Flagstaff’s Iconic 50…
Navajo Rugs
 In the 16th century, when the Spanish arrived and subsequently conquered the peaceful pueblo Indian cultures of what is now New Mexico and the American Southwest, the Navajo or Dine peoples which then lived north of the pueblos were seldom if ever seen by the Spanish and known mostly through the Pueblo Indian stories and encounters (often stories of raids by the Navajo on the pueblos) related by the Pueblo tribes.
The Navajo--who may have come together as an amalgamation of several tribal and clan cultures of the Southern Plains to form their own distinctive culture less than one hundred years before the Spanish Conquest-- are linguistic relatives (Athapascan) of the Apache and are generally considered to have had, in the16th century, a culture more similar to Plains nomadic hunter-raiders than to the Pueblo sedentary-agrarian cultures.
The Pueblo tribes grew cotton and wove blankets and garments on a distinctive pueblo loom hundreds of years before the Spanish arrived (these weaving skills perhaps brought up by Indians from what is now Mexico and Central America), yet it was the Spanish who first introduced sheep to the Southwest.

Harper’s Index…
Percentage of roads in sub-Saharan Africa that are passable year-round: 16
           
Rules of Thumb…
MAKING APPLE CIDER
A bushel of apples will make slightly more than three gallons of cider.     

Unusual Fact of the Day…
The Rockola jukebox wasn't named for rock music, but rather for its inventor, David Rockola.
• • • • • • •
Joke-of-the-day
A preacher was walking down the street when he notices a little boy trying to ring the doorbell but it's just out of his reach. He watches his efforts for some time and walks over to press the bell.
After he pressed it he leveled down to the boy and asked' "Now what?" to which the boy turned and shouted, "NOW WE RUN!!"  

Yep, It Really Happened
WINDSOR LOCKS, Conn. (UPI)
 A woman and her pot-bellied pig were booted off a Washington, D.C.-bound plane after passengers complained the pig was disruptive and stinky. The pig, thought to be about 70 pounds, had been brought aboard the US Airways plane at Bradley International Airport in Connecticut as an emotional-support animal. Crew members determined the animal was too disruptive and asked the woman to leave with the pig before the flight departed. Some people aboard the plane thought the woman was carrying a large duffle bag over her shoulder. "But it turns out it wasn't a duffel bag. We could smell it and it was a pig on a leash," Passenger Jonathan Skolnik told ABC News. "She tethered it to the arm rest next to me and started to deal with her stuff, but the pig was walking back and forth."
           
Somewhat Useless Information
Did you know that there’s a man in the world, who dived 253.2 meters (831 feet) deep surpassing his own ‘No Limits’ record?
Herbert Nitsch from Austria, is the ‘deepest man on Earth’, and has held world records in all of the eight freediving disciplines recognised by AIDA International, the Worldwide Federation for breath-hold diving.
First he set the current world record in the “No Limits” discipline at the depth of 214 meters (702 feet) and till today he has achieved 31 official World Records, one world record in the traditional Greek discipline of Skandalopetra 107 m (351 ft), as well as the 253,2 diving in June 2012.
¤ ¤
Have you ever wondered why the voices of announcers and commentators back in 1950 were so oddly and have nothing to do with today’s broadcasting techniques?
Back then they used to speak in “Transatlantic speech”, which is a specific style of speaking, or dialect and as O’Berski said:  “It’s an effort to neutralize regional dialects and consciousness of a particular class”.
Moreover, the audio receivers of the day couldn’t pick up bass tones!
• • • • • • •
Today’s Events through History

  771 - Charlemagne becomes the sole King of the Franks after the death of his brother Carloman
1847 - Jefferson Davis is elected to the US senate, his first political post
1876 - Daniel Stillson (Mass) patents 1st practical pipe wrench
1951 - "Dragnet" premieres
1967 - Benjamin Spock & Allen Ginsberg arrested protesting against Vietnam war
1982 - Herschel Walker of Georgia wins Heisman Trophy
1990 - Salman Rushdie, author, ordered to death by Iran for blasphemy, appears in public for 1st time in 2 years
1991 - Charles Keating Jr (Lincoln Savings & Loan fraud), found guilty
• • • • • • •
Birthday’s Today
Little Richard [Wayne Penniman], singer-songwriter (Tutti Frutti) is 82
Jim Messina, rocker (Loggins & Messina-Your Mamma Don't Dance) is 67
Doctor Dre (Andre Romelle Young), radio personality is 49
Margaret Cho, actress/comedienne (Face/Off) is 46
Frankie Muniz, actor (Malcom in the Middle) is 29

Remembered for being born today
Martin Van Buren, 8th US president [1782-1862]


George Armstrong Custer, General (Union volunteers), [1839-1876]
Bill Pickett, American rodeo performer [1870-1932]

Walter Elias Disney, Chicago, animator (Mickey Mouse), [1901-1966]
[Steve James] Strom Thurmond, (Sen-SC) [1902-2003]
Otto Preminger, Austria, director/producer (Exodus) [1905-1986]
• • • • • • •
Historical Obits Today
Nelson Mandela, anti-apartheid activist, political prisoner, South African President, 2013, @95
Joseph Erlanger, American physiologist, Nobel laureate for shock therapy, 1965, @91
Dave Brubeck, American jazz pianist, 2012, @91
Claude Monet, French impressionist, 1926, @86
Nina Foch, Dutch-born American actress, 2008, @84
James Stirling, Scot mathematician (Formula of Stirling), 1770, @78
Don Meredith, American football player and broadcaster, stroke, 2010, @72
Roone Arledge, sports broadcasting pioneer, cancer, 2002, @71
Alexandre Dumas, French writer ('The Three Musketeers', 'The Count of Monte Cristo') 1870, @68
"Shoeless" Joe Jackson, of baseball's black sox scandal, heart attack, 1951, @64
Richard Speck, mass murderer, heart attack in prison, 1991, @49
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, composer, fever, 1791, @35
• • • • • • •

Brain Teasers Answers
etc.

All the words from GROUP B are all Latin abbreviations used commonly in the English language, whereas GROUP A, with the exception of "etc." are all abbreviations from the English language.

a = ante (before)
A.D. = Anno Domini (in the year of the lord, however commonly incorrectly translated as "after death")
c = circa (about)
e.g. = exempli gratia (for example)
i.e. = id est (that is)
etc. = et cetera (and the rest)

• • • • • • •
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 contains mistakes and sadly once 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.