2-13-14


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Flagstaff Almanac:
Week: 07 / Day: 044   
Today: L 19°…H 61°… Ave. humidity: 43%
Wind: ave:   15mph; Gusts:  31mph  
Average Low: 19° Record Low:  -18° (1905)
Average High: 45° Record High:  68° (1977)

Quote of the Day
 
Today’s Historical Highlights
1566 - St Augustine, Florida founded
1692 - Glencoe Massacre : about 78 MacDonalds are killed early in the morning 
     by rival Campbell clan members, allegedly for not promptly pledging allegiance 
     to the new king, William of Orange.
1693 - College of William & Mary opens in Virginia
1795 - 1st state university in US opens, University of North Carolina
1832 - 1st appearance of cholera in London
1866 - Jesse James holds up his 1st bank, Liberty, Missouri ($15,000)
1867 - Johann Strauss' "Blue Danube" waltz premieres in Vienna
1907 - English suffragettes storm British Parliament & 60 women are arrested
1924 - The tomb of King Tutankhamun tomb opened
1955 - Israel acquires 4 of 7 Dead Sea scrolls
1972 - 11th Winter Olympic games close at Sapporo, Japan
1974 - Dissident Nobel writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn expelled from USSR

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


My Free Rambling Thoughts   
A tad windy today and very strange to have such warm temps here at 7000’.  Now the weatherman is saying that we will probably break some warm temp records in the next few weeks. This is not good news for our forest, as not only are there record temps, there is also no moisture in the forecast.
 
Got a call from Mary, of our retirement group. She got a call from a former teacher who lives in Casa Grande. This lady has to be in her late 80’s and lives with her grandson. She seems to be suffering from dementia. She wanted to know if Mary, who retired 5 years ago, was still attending staff meetings and said she didn’t want to call me because she knew how busy I was at school. She and Mary share the same financial advisor and always talk about her when they get together to review Mary’s finances. Seems that the numerous grandkids and great grandkids have just about drained her finances. The finance guy says that he has called the police several times regarding her welfare after he gets a call from her. He also said that when she comes in, it’s always with four or five grand or great grandkids telling her how much money to withdraw from her accounts. None of us has any idea what to do to help this poor lady. I saw some elderly abuse when I was working, with grandkids coming over to grandma’s house on the first or second of the month, taking her to town, and spending her check on themselves. Sad stories abound and there are not that many laws to protect the elderly from abuse. Our local paper even had an article about an elderly woman who fell for a scam and sent over $40,000 to a guy who had called and said she had won an brand new Mercedes and $750,000 but she needed to send processing fees…small at first. When her son noticed that this was happening, he told his mom it was a scam, but she continued to send money. Finally the police were involved but there is no hope of getting her money back.
 
Nobody likes lots of snow, but the storm going through the South right now shows that many are not prepared. Hard for me to understand how people get frostbite when the walk a mile or so from their car to their home…it is a wind chill of 24°. They must be walking with no covering on their hands.
Game  Center (answers at the end of post)
Brain Teasers
The letter S is added to pluralise most words in the English language.
Letter to Letters, Word to Words and Language to Languages
There is a word however that is pluralized with the addition of the letter C. What is it?

Lifestyle  Substance:     
Found on You Tube with some relevance to today

Remembering TV’s great shows:
"The X-Files": The truth is still out there for Chris Carter's cosmically suspenseful thrill ride. Mulder and Scully were ground zero for shippers.
Words Shakespeare invented
it smells to heavenHamlet Act 3 Scene 3CLAUDIUS
Thanks, dear my lord.Oh, my offence is rank. It smells to heaven.It hath the primal eldest curse upon ’t,A brother’s murder. Pray can I not.
OK Then…
 
Harper’s Index 
Minimum annual revenue of Silk Road, an e-commerce site for illegal drugs: $48million
Unusual Fact of the Day
Tom Selleck was tapped to play Indiana Jones, but due to a contracted commitment to Magnum PI, he decided to do the honorable thing and keep the agreement. Ironically, an ensuing writers strike delayed production long enough that he could have acted in Indiana Jones.
Joke-of-the-day
Guy: Haven’t I seen you someplace before? Girl: Yes, that’s why I don’t go there anymore.
+++Bonus+++
A guy walks into a post office one day to see a middle-aged, balding man standing at the counter methodically placing "Love" stamps on bright pink envelopes with hearts all over them. He then takes out a perfume bottle and starts spraying scent all over them.
His curiosity getting the better of him, he goes up to the balding man and asks him what he is doing. The man says, "I'm sending out one thousand Valentine cards signed, 'Guess who?'"
"But why?" asks the man.
"I'm a divorce lawyer," the man replies.
Rules of Thumb:   
Easy shortcuts to make an ‘educated’ guess
USING PUBLIC WASHROOMS
In a public washroom, always use the toilet farthest away from the door. It is normally cleaner and less used than the ones closer to the door.    
Yeah, It Really Happened
NEWARK, Ohio (AP) — A central Ohio woman who loathed being named Sheila and wanted a moniker that reflects her personality has legally changed her first name to Sexy.
A Licking County judge on Tuesday approved the request from the 41-year-old Pataskala (puh-TAS'-kuh-luh) woman formerly named Sheila Ranea Crabtree.
In her application, Crabtree called her given name "the ugliest one out there." She says that if the court didn't allow the switch to Sexy, she'd try to become known legally by her middle name, which she has used for years.
The Columbus Dispatch reports that Crabtree told a judge that her husband and teenage daughters approve of the change. When the judge asked why she chose Sexy, Crabtree said she's fun and free-spirited and thought the change would make her complete.
Somewhat Useless Information   
  • Martin Luther King, the African-American Civil Rights Movement leader, clergyman, and national icon had something in common with Anne Frank, the Jewish Holocaust victim whose diary describes her family’s evasion of the Nazi SS during WWII. Both of them were born in 1929, so if they were still alive today they would be 84 years old. Other famous people in 1929 are also Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, Dick Clark and Arnold Palmer.
  • Dreams are successions of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that occur during sleep. However the purpose of dreams has always been a topic for investigation, as well as a matter of philosophical and religious interest. One theory as to why we sleep is that dreams work hand in hand with sleep to help the brain sort through everything it collects during the waking hours, as humans’ brain collects hundreds of thousands, if not millions of inputs each day. During sleep, the brain works to organize all of this information and decide what to hang on to and what to forget.

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
☼13-19☼
World Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy Awareness Week9 
Today Is                                                                       
·        Employee Legal Awareness Day
·        Get a Different Name Day
·        Madly In Love With Me Day
·        World Radio Day

Today’s Events through History  
1258 - Baghdad falls to the Mongols, and the Abbasid Caliphate is destroyed.
1633 - Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei arrived in Rome for trial before Inquisition 
     for professing belief that earth revolves around the Sun
1826 - American Temperance Society, forms in Boston
1971 - Golfing VP Spiro Agnew hits 2 tee shots into crowd, injuring 2

Today’s Birthdays                                                           
Chuck Yeagar, US test pilot (1st man to break sound barrier) is 91
Kim Novak, [Marilyn], actress (Vertigo, Of Human Bondage) is 81
George Segal, actor/banjo player (Carbon Copy, Fun with Dick & Jane) is 80
Jerry Springer, London England, talk show host (Jerry Springer Show) is 70
Stockard Channing, actress (Grease, Big Bus, Without a Trace) is 70

Remembered for being born today
1766 - Thomas Malthus, UK, economist and demographer (Law of Malthus)
1919 - Eddie Robinson, winningest college football coach (Grambling)

Today’s Historical Obits                                                           
Lillian Bassman, American photographer and painter, 2012, @94
Brooks Adams, US philosopher (New Empire), 1927, @78
Martin Balsam, actor (Archie's Place), stroke, 1996, @76
Cotton Mather, American Puritan minister, 1728, @65 
Waylon Jennings, American musician, diabetes, 2002, @64
David Janssen, [Meyer], actor (Fugitive, Harry O), heart attack, 1980, @49

Brain Teasers
Dice A singular Die becomes Dice when pluralized.
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.