2-28-14

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Flagstaff Almanac: Day: 059   / Week: 08  

Today: L 30°…H 50°… Ave. humidity: 52%

Wind: ave:   35mph; Gusts:  53mph  

Average Low: 20° Record Low:  -16° (1962)

Average High: 47° Record High:  65° (1999)

Quote of the Day

 

Today’s Historical Highlights

1638 - Scottish Presbyterians sign National Convent, Greyfriars, Edinburgh

1646 - Roger Scott was tried in Mass for sleeping in church

1749 - 1st edition of Henry Fieldings' "Tom Jones" published

1827 - 1st commercial railroad in US, Baltimore & Ohio (B&O) chartered

1847 - US defeats Mexico in battle of Sacramento

1854 - Republican Party formally organized at Ripon, WI

1861 - Territories of Nevada & Colorado created

1883 - 1st US vaudeville theater opens (Boston)

1933 - 1st female in cabinet: Francis Perkins appointed Secretary of Labor

1960 - 8th winter Olympic games close at Squaw Valley, Cal

1977 - 1st killer whale born in captivity (Marineland, Los Angeles California)

1983 - Final TV episode of "M*A*S*H" airs (CBS); record 125 million watch

1988 - 15th Winter Olympic games close at Calgary, Canada

1995 - Denver International Airport opens

2012 - Discovery of the largest prehistoric penguin, Kairuku grebneffi, at nearly 5ft tall

♫  Today’s Birthdays: ♫   

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

 

My Free Rambling Thoughts   

Birthday celebrations started early for me, as I enter my new life under Medicare. Our little retirement group had a great Greek lunch at one of our favorite Greek places here in town. Cheryl gave me a really nice pocket sized journal for my trip to Cuba…needed according to the Dept. of Treasury…to keep track of my visit and one that I have to keep for 5 years, in case some bureaucrat wants to ever read what I did on the trip. Mary gave me a really soft big throw for when there is a chill in the air. Great way to start the celebration.

 

My wonderful bank ‘has expedited’ my approval process to my insurance check…have no idea what that means, nor do I have any idea how long it will take. Frustrating for sure. After talking to them, I called my local bank branch and spoke to the bank manager. She is in the process of finding out what is going on. She agreed that I deserved better answers. Waiting for a call from the OFAC on my land line and a call from my local bank manager on my cell phone. So crazy.

Game  Center (answers at the end of post)

Brain Teasers

Fill in the sentence below so that the first two words combine to make the third word. For example, given "The Prime Minister ____ the meeting, even though the ____ was technically the ____ official," you would fill in RAN, KING, and RANKING.

I ___ so ___ to his antics that I am no longer ___ by them.

Lifestyle  Substance:     

Found on You Tube with some relevance to today

• Gavin MacLeod on 'The Love Boat'

• Bernadette Peters - All That Jazz

• What is a policeman - Paul Harvey

• Dave Clark Five - Anyway You Want It

• Zero Mostel " If I Were a Rich Man "

Remembering TV’s great shows:

"Sex and the City"--The cosmopolitan sexploits of ­Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda exemplified the single life for an urbane generation.

Look back at History

Assassination of John F. Kennedy

The jury is still out and probably will be for a very long time, as to why in the world Kennedy had to die. There are loads of conspiracy theories, most centering on the Chicago mafia. Sam Giancana is thought to have rigged the election to get Kennedy into the Office, but why he did this is a long, complicated story. In general, Giancana believed his interests would fare better under Kennedy. The answer is almost always money.

However much the mafia might have thought Kennedy would be on their side, he definitely wasn’t once he took office, appointing his brother Bobby to be Attorney General. Bobby came down very hard on organized crime, especially in the Chicago area, and the conspiracy theory goes that Giancana felt betrayed and resolved to avenge this.

This lister is of the opinion that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone, but whether he knew or not, he was accompanied by at least one other gunman, possibly several. The important thing is what this event did to American morale: devastated it. Except for America’s avowed Cold War enemies, nearly the entire world sent its condolences, not in the least because if the most powerful and protected man in the world could be killed, what about UK’s PM Alec Douglas-Home? What about Charles de Gaulle? What about kings and queens?

And this was worse than the assassination of Lincoln, for the sole reason of modern security. Lincoln’s security was grossly equal to any assailant who might want at him: firearms were evenly matched to the best personal armor of the day. In Kennedy’s time, bulletproof vests were common and getting better all the time. But he made one serious mistake: he rode in a convertible.

The similarities between his and Lincoln’s assassinations are uncanny. Among them are that both spoke prophetic words regarding their deaths. Lincoln dreamed his death not long before it happened. Kennedy once said, “Look, if someone wants to sit up in a window and take potshots at someone as they ride by, there’s not a hell of a lot they can do to stop him.”

OK Then…

 

Harper’s Index 

Percentage of 2012 US law-school grads not currently in full-time jobs requiring membership in the bar: 43

Unusual Fact of the Day

About half the geysers on Earth are located in Yellowstone National Park.

 Joke-of-the-day

A woman who died found herself standing outside the Pearly Gates, being greeted by St. Peter.

She asked him, "Oh, is this place what I really think it is? It's so beautiful.

Did I really make it to heaven?"

To which St. Peter replied, "Yes, my dear, these are the Gates to Heaven. But you must do one more thing before you can enter." The woman was very excited, and asked of St. Peter what she must do to pass through the gates. "Spell a word," St. Peter replied. "What word?" she asked.

"Any word," answered St. Peter. "It's your choice." The woman promptly replied, "Then the word I will spell is love.

L-o-v-e."

St. Peter congratulated her on her good fortune to have made it to Heaven, and asked her if she would mind taking his place at the gates for a few minutes while he went to the bathroom.

"I'd be honored," she said, "but what should I do if someone comes while you are gone?"

St. Peter reassured her, and instructed the woman to simply have any newcomers to the Pearly Gates to spell a word as she had done.

So the woman is left sitting in St. Peter's chair and watching the beautiful angels soaring around her when a man approaches the gates. She realizes it is her loser husband.

"What happened?" she cried, "Why are you here?"

Her husband stared at her for a moment, then said, "I was so drunk when I left your funeral, I was in an accident. And now I am here? Did I really make it to Heaven?"

To which the woman replied, "Not yet. You must spell a word first."

"What word?" he asked.

The woman responded, "Czechoslovakia."  

Rules of Thumb:   

Easy shortcuts to make an ‘educated’ guess

RUNNING A PAWN SHOP

When accepting a pawn, never loan over fifty percent of what you can sell it for.    

Yeah, It Really Happened

-- South Korea is a well-known hub for cosmetic beautification surgery, with a higher rate per capita than the U.S., but the procedures can be expensive, inspiring many young women recently to resort to do-it-yourself procedures for their professional and romantic upgrades. A December Global Post dispatch noted that some might try to force their eyes to stay open without blinking (using a novel $20 pair of glasses for hours on end) as a substitute for costly "double-eyelid" surgery. Also in use: a $6 jaw-squeezing roller device for the face to push the jaw line into a fashionable "oval" form. One teen told the reporter she applies an imaginative contraption to her face for hours a day to pressure her nose into more of a point, which is considered a desirable Western look. [Global Post (Boston) via Denver Post, 12-19-2013]  

Somewhat Useless Information   

• Scientists claim that the most complicated and mysterious thing in the universe is the human brain. Scientists know more about stars exploding billions of light years away than they know about the brain.

• Aristotle (384 BC-322 BC) believed that the center of thought was the heart and that the brain's function was merely to cool the heart. It was an early Greek physician, Alcmaeon of Croton (c. 6th century B.C.), who was the first to claim that the brain, not the heart, is the central organ of sensation and thought.

• In South America, scientist have discovered deliberately made 'skull holes' that may have been made to treat painful headaches, brain disease, or to let 'evil spirits' out of the head. Called 'trepanation,' the process of making those holes was incredibly painful. The high number of trepanized skulls suggests that this brain surgery was commonplace.

• Contrary to the popular belief that humans use just 10 percent of their brain capacity, humans actually use virtually every part of the brain, and most of the brain is active all the time.

Calendar Information        

Happening This Week:
☼22-28☼

National FFA Week
Read Me Week
Bird Health Awareness Week 
National Eating Disorders Awareness Week
National Secondhand Wardrobe Week 
Peace Corps Week 

Today Is                                                                      

·        Floral Design Day

·        National Tooth Fairy Day

·        Read Me Day

·        Rare Disease Day

·        US Snow Shoe Days

Today’s Events through History  

1970 - Bicycles permitted to cross Golden Gate Bridge

2013 - The brains of two rats have been successfully connected so that they share information

Today’s Birthdays                                                           

Gavin MacLeod, actor (Murray-Mary Tyler Moore, Love Boat) is 83

Tommy Tune, dancer/choreographer (Boyfriend) is 75

Mario Andretti, Italian American race-car driver is 74

Bernadette Peters, [Lazzara], Queens, actress (Jerk) is 66

Charles S. Frazier III, me is 65

Paul Krugman, economist and NY Times columnist (Nobel Prize-2008) is 61

Rae Dawn Chong, Edmonton Alberta, actress (Quest for Fire) is 53

Remembered for being born today

1901 - Linus Pauling, chemist/peace activist (Nobel 1954, 1962)

1906 - Bugsy Siegel, gangster created casinos in Las Vegas

1915 - Zero "Samuel" Mostel, Brooklyn, actor (Fiddler on the Roof)

1945 - Charles "Bubba" Smith, Tx, NFLer (Balt Colts)/actor (Police Academy)

Today’s Historical Obits                                                           

Paul Harvey, American radio broadcaster, 2009, @90 

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. historian and political commentator, 2007, @89

Henry James, US/British writer (Bostonians), 1916, @72

Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, comedian (Jack Benny Show), heart disease, 1977,@71

Mike Smith, English musician (The Dave Clark Five), pneumonia, 2008, @64

Brain Teasers

I AM so USED to his antics that I am no longer AMUSED by them.

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  §