2-10-14

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Flagstaff Almanac:

Week: 07 / Day: 041   

Today: L 27°…H 54°… Ave. humidity: 67%

Wind: ave:   13mph; Gusts:  33mph  

Average Low: 18° Record Low: -17° (1933)

Average High: 45° Record High:  65° (1951)

Quote of the Day

 

Today’s Historical Highlights

1855 - US citizenship laws amended; all children of US parents born abroad 

     granted US citizenship

1870 - City of Anaheim incorporates (1st time)

1870 - YWCA (Young Women's Christian Association) forms (NYC)

1890 - Around 11 million acres ceded to US by Sioux Indians opens for settlement

1897 - NY Times begins using slogan "All the News That's Fit to Print"

1931 - New Delhi becomes capital of India

1940 - Tom & Jerry created by Hanna & Barbera debut by MGM

1947 - WW II peace treaties signed

1949 - Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" opens at Morosco Theater, NYC

1951 - "John & Marsha" by Stan Freberg peaks at #21

1956 - "My Friend Flicka" premieres on CBS (later NBC) TV

1957 - Southern Christian Leadership Conference forms

1962 - USSR swaps spy Francis Gary Power to US for Rudolph Abel

1967 - 25th Amendment (Presidential Disability & Succession) in effect

1968 - Peggy Fleming wins Olympic figure skating gold medal, Grenoble, France

1989 - Miami Vice's 100th episode seen on TV

1992 - Bonnie Blair wins 1992 Olympics 1st gold medal for USA

1997 - O J Simpson jury reaches decision on $25M in punitive damages

1998 - Olympic figure skater Peggy Fleming undergoes breast cancer surgery

♫  Today’s Birthdays: ♫   

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

 

My Free Rambling Thoughts   

Not my best Sunday…but much better now. My foot pain returned with a vengeance late last night. Soaking helped a little, but still very painful to walk. Finally, I called a friend to take me to the Urgent Care. I was not the only one there, so the whole visit took 2 hours…but found out the problem, and better yet a solution. Some fancy Latin name for a ligament that runs along the sole of the foot is inflamed. The actual provider time was about 10 minutes. Turns out it is a common thing for people who run…which isn’t me, but also for walkers…me. Take the two meds, keep off the foot, keep it elevated, and no major walking for a week, but things are already better. Vicodin took about 20 minutes to kick in, so am all good now. I have a pretty high pain threshold, and I know when something is wrong. Since the pain came back hard last night I knew something was wrong. Hopping has never been my strong suit, and doing it in the dark to get to the toilet…about 10 feet, was not pleasant in the middle of the night. I made it down the stairs late this morning, using both walls and the hand rail. Now on the road to recovery…and not a big deal. I know I would have had a much more difficult time if my friend had not lent me her cane…those things really do work well.

 

I enjoyed watching more Olympics and am very happy that the only time I had any pain in my foot was when I put weight on it…so watching TV was easy. Unfortunately, as a super multi-tasker, I did have a little problem just sitting and watching TV. It also took about 15 minutes to get this morning’s newspaper, a task that usually takes less than 2 minutes.

Game  Center (answers at the end of post)

Brain Teasers

This one is a "mental" exercise - don't use paper and scissors - just imagine in your mind: 

Take a sheet of paper - any size that you happened to have (remember, just imagine this paper). Now fold this sheet of paper in half and now fold it in half again, at right angles to the first fold. Now you have four thicknesses of paper. Now imagine you use scissors and cut through all four thicknesses, right down the middle of the paper, parallel to the first fold you made. Now, imagine, how many pieces of paper do you have now? Don't get paper and scissors to solve this one - try to picture this in your mind!

Lifestyle  Substance:     

Found on You Tube with some relevance to today

• Inka Dinka Do

• Jerry Goldsmith - Chinatown Interview

• Peggy Fleming - 1968 Olympics LP

• Roberta Flack - The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

• Stan Freberg - John and Marcia

• The Ventures - Walk Don't Run [Live]

Remembering TV’s great shows:

"The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" Heeere's...the guy who made it look oh-so-easy. Late-night TV would never be such a delicious communal experience again.

Words Shakespeare invented

give the devil his due Henry IV Part 1 (Act 1 Scene 2If he fight longer than he sees reason,  I'll forswear arms.
He will give the devil his due.
If all the year were playing holidays, To sport would be as tedious as to work; But when they seldom come, they wished for come.

OK Then…

Harper’s Index 

Chance that a transgendered person has experienced homelessness at some point in his or her life: 1 in 5

Unusual Fact of the Day

Winona Ryder was cast to play Michael Corleone's daughter in Godfather III. When she dropped out, Sofia Coppola got the part.

Joke-of-the-day

A police officer in a small town stopped a motorist who was speeding down Main Street. 

"But officer." the man began, "I can explain,". 

"Just be quiet," snapped the officer. "I'm going to let you cool your heels in jail until the chief gets back..." 

"But officer, I just wanted to say...." 

"And I said to keep quiet! You're going to jail!" 

A few hours later the officer looked in on his prisoner and said, "Lucky for you that the chief is at his daughter's wedding. He'll be in a good mood when he gets back." 

"Don't count on it," answered the fellow in the cell. "I'm the groom."   

Rules of Thumb:   

Easy shortcuts to make an ‘educated’ guess

FLYING AN AIRPLANE

Birds dive to avoid oncoming airplanes. To avoid them, climb and reduce your speed to give them more time to get out of the way.    

Yeah, It Really Happened

ROCHESTER, N.Y. - A Rochester, N. Y., man allegedly bit off part of his brother's ear following a Super Bowl party Sunday, City Court documents said. Sean Fallon-Nebbia, 27, was charged with felony first-degree assault after he and his brother Frank, 26, fought in Fallon-Nebbia's apartment late Sunday. He is also accused of punching Frank Fallon-Nebbia in the face and rendering him unconscious when emergency responders arrived, the (Rochester, N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle reported Tuesday. Court documents allege the brothers shared a bottle of whiskey and more at a party, and were roughhousing after the game when the incident occurred. Another unidentified resident of the apartment said the brothers were drunk and "play wrestling" before they "turned violent and aggressive." Sean Fallon-Nebbia pleaded not guilty Monday in City Court and was remanded to the Monroe County Jail. Frank Fallon-Nebbia received a court order of protection from his brother, and a doctor at Rochester's Strong Memorial Hospital said the ear was permanently disfigured. Sean Fallon-Nebbia is scheduled to return to court Friday.  

Somewhat Useless Information   

• A few hundred meters below the ocean's surface it is dark because light cannot penetrate to those depths. Blue light penetrates water farther than red or violet light, and because more blue light is returned to the surface without being absorbed, the open ocean usually looks blue in color.

• Seawater may look blue-green when it contains a large amount of phytoplankton - tiny plant-like organisms that contain chlorophyll. The yellow-brown sea found in coastal regions probably gets its coloring from mud, sand or pollution.

•  
Sound - particularly high-frequency sound -penetrates much farther than light does in the ocean. This property has led to the development of echo-sounders which are used to construct pic­tures of the ocean floor.

• Sound can also be used to locate shoals of fish. At a depth of between about 500m and 1,500m a sound channel exists where sound waves can be trapped and along which they travel for large distances.  Whales have been known to use the sound channel to commu­nicate with each other when they are thousands of kilometers apart; zoologists believe that their long-distance "songs" may attract others to new hunting or breeding grounds.

• The sound channel has also been used by submarines when hiding in the ocean. A submarine floating in or below the sound channel is difficult to detect because most of the noise it makes travels horizontally, and cannot be picked up by ships at the surface.

Calendar Information        

Happening This Week:
☼7-14☼

Congenital Heart Defect Awareness Week 
Have A Heart for A Chained Dog Week  
Risk Awareness Week
Winter Olympics
Love Makes the World Go Round; But, Laughter Keeps Us From Getting Dizzy Week
☼9-15☼

Celebration of Love Week
Children of Alcoholics Week
Jell-O Week
Freelance Writers Appreciation Week
Random Acts of Kindness Week 
International Flirting Week
Love a Mench Week
National Green Week

Today Is                                                                       

·        Clean Out Your Computer Day

·        Plimsoll Day:  to remember Samuel Plimsoll, of English Parliament: championed sailors' safety

·        Westminster Dog Show

Today’s Events through History  

1863 - 1st US fire extinguisher patent granted

1934 - 1st Jewish immigrant ship to break the English blockade in Palestine

1942 - Glenn Miller awarded 1st ever gold record selling 1 million "Chattanooga Choo Choo"

1996 - IBM computer Deep Blue becomes the first computer to win a game of chess against a reigning (human) chess champion, Gary Kasparov

Today’s Birthdays                                                           

Jim Whittacker, mountain climber (1st American to climb Mt Everest) is 85

Robert Wagner, actor (It Takes a Thief, Hart to Hart) is 84

Roberta Flack, vocalist (If Ever I Saw Your Face) is 77

Mark Spitz, swimmer (Oly-9 gold/silver/bronze-68, 72) is 64

Greg Norman, Queensland, Australia, PGA golfer (1984 Kemper) is 59

Jim Cramer, American television personality is 59

George Stephanopoulos, presidential adviser, newsman is 53

Glenn Beck, conservative radio and television host is 50

Laura Dern, actress (Jurassic Park, Mask) is 47

Emma Roberts, American actress is 23

Remembered for being born today

1890 - Boris Pasternak, Moscow, Russian novelist/poet (Dr Zhivago, Nobel 1958)

1893 - Jimmy Durante, long-nosed comedian (and goodnight Mrs Calabash)

1906 - Lon Chaney Jr, actor (Hawkeye, Pistols, Petticoats)

1929 - Jerry Goldsmith, pianist/composer (Twilight Zone)

1937 - Don Wilson, rock guitarist (Ventures-Walk Don't Run, Batman Theme)

1939 - Boris Pickett, vocalist (Monster Mash)

Today’s Historical Obits                                                           

Laura Ingalls Wilder, US author (Little House on Prairie), 1957, @90

Arthur Miller, American playwright, 2005, @89

Joseph Lister, 1st Baron Lister, surgeon (pioneer of antiseptic), 1912, @84

Roy Scheider, Actor (All That Jazz), myeloma, 2008, @75

Ellen Wood, English author (Pomeroy Abbey), 1887, @73

Alex Haley, US writer (Autobiography of Malcolm X, Roots), heart attack, 1992, @70

Jim Varney, American actor, cancer, 2000, @50

Bartholomew Roberts, Welsh pirate, in battle, 1722, @39

Brain Teasers

You will have 3 pieces of paper after the cut. It won't matter which direction you make the cut with the scissors - you'll end up with 3 pieces of paper. Don't believe it? Now go get the paper and scissors and actually do this - you'll see!

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  §