3-15-14

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Flagstaff Almanac: Day: 074   / Week: 11  

Today: L 35°…H 49°… Ave. humidity: 51%

     Wind: ave:   11mph; Gusts:  16mph  

     Average Low: 23° Record Low:  -3° (1962)

    Average High: 50° Record High:  72° (2007)

Quote of the Day

 

Today’s Historical Highlights

44BC - Julius Caesar, Dictator of the Roman Republic, is stabbed to death by Marcus 

     Junius Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus, Decimus Junius Brutus and several other 

     Roman senators on the Ides of March.

1545 - First meeting of the Council of Trent.

1867 - Michigan becomes 1st state to tax property to support a university

1887 - 1st salaried fish & game warden (William Alden Smith in Michigan)

1892 - 1st escalator patented by inventor Jesse W Reno (NYC)

1913 - 1st US presidential press conference (Woodrow Wilson)

1937 - 1st blood bank forms (Chicago IL)

1937 - 1st state contraceptive clinic opens (Raleigh NC)

1960 - Key Largo Coral Reef Preserve established (1st underwater park)

1960 - National Observatory at Kitt Peak, Arizona dedicated

1964 - LBJ asks for a War on Poverty

1968 - LIFE mag calls Jimi Hendrix "most spectacular guitarist in the world"

1989 - Dept of Veterans Affairs officially established as a Cabinet position

♫  Today’s Birthdays: ♫   

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

 

My Free Rambling Thoughts   

A cloudy day for much of the day. Woke up to wet sidewalks with light rain until about 7am. Decided that was my clue that this would be laundry day.

 

Our discussion group meets tomorrow night to discuss Turkey…the country, not the bird. Should be a good group as a couple of people have visited there in years past.

Game  Center (answers at the end of post)

Brain Teasers

What common saying is represented by the following?

Thought: $19.95 Idea: $29.95 Speech: $1.95

Lifestyle  Substance:     

Found on You Tube with some relevance to today

• Bret Michaels – Fallen

• Joe E Ross - Ooh Ooh

• Park Overall "Can you hold on a minute Loralene?"

• Sly and the Family Stone "Hot Fun in the Summertime"

• will.i.am - Bang Bang (Official Video)

Remembering TV’s great shows

"Homicide: Life on the Street"--A proto-"Wire," this Baltimore cop drama explored Charm City's less enchanting side with an invigorating creativity.

Bizarre Facts about World’s Dictators

Colonel Gadhafi: Bullet Proof Tents, Deer’s Blood, And Male Beauty

Moammar Gadhafi was known as one bad dictator. Gadhafi also carried out actions that cross traditional Arab culture with oddity on par with a B-movie. In love with tradition but afraid of drive-by shootings, the Colonel had a large, bulletproof tent that would be flown ahead and dropped off for him during his desert forays and political travels. In this bizarre merger of high tech and centuries-old tradition, Gadhafi would often keep two camels tethered outside his tent.Ever superstitious yet shrewd, Gadhafi washed his hands in deer’s blood, but retained his image of “sex appeal” and focused heavily on his image in the eyes of the west. Moammar Gadfhafi was very into male beauty and had plastic surgery in 1994. A South American doctor once called him vain. Gadhafi wasn’t the

Misconceptions of Medieval Figures

Dracula Wasn’t Associated With Vampirism Until Bram Stoker’s Dracula

Dracula is the supernatural villain in Bram Stoker’s novel of the same name, a menacing threat to a group of hapless Brits and their elderly Dutch advisor, Van Helsing. The novel and its derivatives popularized the vampire with modern Western audiences. Stoker took inspiration for his novel from the folktales of southeastern Europe, but he also drew heavily from the historical character of Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia, also known as Vlad the Impaler or Vlad Dracula. Despite being the central villain of Stoker’s vampiric tale, the Hungarian noble was not associated with vampirism until the novel was published. Vlad was born in Transylvania—now part of Romania—in the Kingdom of Hungary in 1431. His father, Vlad II, was the ruler of Wallachia and fought with the Christian Order of the Dragon (“Dracul”) against the Ottoman Turks. Wallachia was a deadly stomping ground, a bloody barrier between the antagonistic forces of Christianity and Islam. A diplomatic meeting between Vlad II, his sons Radu and Vlad III, and Sultan Murad II resulted in Vlad II’s imprisonment. He was released under the condition that he leave his sons behind, but he was later killed by local warlords. Vlad III was eventually released and became the ruler of Wallachia. He may not have been a vampire, but he was out for blood. He had all of the disloyal warlords killed by inviting them to a banquet and stabbing them. He also repelled several major Turkish invasions. He earned his nickname by impaling his enemies upon a sharpened pole through their rectum and out their neck, shoulder, or mouth. The pole would then be placed in the ground and the victim put on display. Vlad reportedly killed around 80,000 people, around 20,000 of whom were impaled and displayed. Vlad was heralded as a Christian hero for his efforts against the Turks, even receiving commendations from Pope Pius II, but it was not to last. Vlad was ambushed and killed in 1476, much to the delight of Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II, who had conquered Constantinople in 1453. He was not the only member of his family who was a bit eccentric—his sons went on a cruise with on-board shark pools.

OK Then…

 

Harper’s Index 

Percentage change from 2002 to 2012 in the amount the US spent on ‘security assistance’ to other countries: +227

Unusual Fact of the Day

Jerry Lynn Ross (7 Space Shuttle missions) and Franklin Chang-Diaz, Costa Rican-American mechanical engineer, physicist, hold the record for most spaceflights by an astronaut.

Joke-of-the-day

This man comes through a door to the bar and slipped on a pile of crap, he mumbles and brushes himself off. He orders a drink and sits down. A few minutes later a younger man walks through the door yelling and screaming, and he slips on the pile of crap. He gets up and looks around, and then he sits down next to the older guy. The older man says, "I did that!" The younger man punches the old man and leaves.

Rules of Thumb:   

Easy shortcuts to make an ‘educated’ guess

GROWING CHRISTMAS TREES

You can plan on eventually harvesting 400 to 500 Christmas trees for every 1,000 seedlings you plant.   

Yeah, It Really Happened

The Drug Users Resource Center in Vancouver, British Columbia (heralded previously in News of the Weird for a vending machine dispensing 25-cent crack-cocaine pipes to discourage addicts from committing crimes to fund their habit), launched a program in August to supply alcoholics with beer-brewing and wine-making ingredients to discourage them from drinking rubbing alcohol, hand-sanitizer and mouthwash. The DURC "co-op" sells, for $10 monthly, brewing mix in a pre-hopped beer kit, but eventually, an official said, co-op members will brew from scratch, including boiling, mashing and milling. A civic leader told Canada's National Post that the program has already begun to reduce crime in areas frequented by alcoholics. [National Post, 2-19-2014]

Somewhat Useless Information   

• Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, the nephew and heir of Napoleon I, was the first President of the French Republic and, as Napoleon III, the ruler of the Second French Empire. Napoleon III suffered from ailurophobia, which is the persistent, irrational fear of cats. His fear of cats was widely known and once he ever entered a room, he would jump up on the footstool until the cat was removed from his sight.

• Have you ever wondered why when eating a pineapple it leaves your tongue feeling like you just took to it with sandpaper? “Bromelain” is an enzyme found only in pineapples and it actually digest proteins. This is why when we eat pineapples, it’s essentially eating us back! The good news is that once you swallow the pineapple the acids in our stomach destroy the enzymes.

Calendar Information        

Happening This Week:
1-16

Iditarod Race
9-15

Teen Tech Week
Girl Scout Week

International Brain Awareness Week
Stand Up! LGBT Awareness Week
11-17

Turkey Vultures Return to the Living Sign

Today Is                                                                      

·        Brutus Day

·        Buzzards Day

·        Ides of March

·        International Sports Car Racing Day

·        International Day of Action Against Canadian Seal Slaughter

·        National Quilting Day

·        True Confessions Day

·        World Consumer Rights Day

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·        Admission Day (Maine-1820-23rd)

·        Constitution Day (Belarus-1994)

Today’s Events through History  

1493 - Christopher Columbus returns to Spain after his 1st New World voyage

1875 - 1st US cardinal (John McCloskey) invested

1917 - Nicholas II, the last Russian Tsar abdicates

1945 - Billboard publishes its 1st album chart (King Cole Trio is #1)

1965 - T.G.I. Friday's 1st restaurant opens in NYC

2004 - Announcement of the discovery of 90377 Sedna, the farthest natural object in the Solar system so far observed.

Today’s Birthdays                                                           

Alan Lavern Bean, Capt USN/astronaut (Ap 12, Skylab 3) is 81

Jimmy Lee Swaggart, evangelist is 79

Judd Hirsch, Bronx, actor (Alex-Taxi, Dear John, Ordinary People) is 79

Sly Stone, rocker (Sly & the Family Stone-Everyday People) is 71

Park Overall, actress (Empty Nest, Mississippi Burning) is 57

Bret Michaels, guitarist (Poison-Talk Dirty to Me) is 51

Eva Longoria, actress (Desperate Housewives) is 39

Will.i.am (William Adams), musician (Black Eyed Peas) is 39

Remembered for being born today

1767 - Andrew Jackson, Carolinas, General/(D) 7th US President  

1904 - George Brent, Dublin Ireland, actor (42nd St, Jezebel)

1905 - Joe E Ross, comedian (Gunther Toody-Car 54)

Today’s Historical Obits                                                           

Benjamin Spock, pediatrician and writer, 1998, @94

Ann Sothern, actress, 2001, @92 

Bowie Kuhn, commissioner of baseball, 2007, @80

Gail Davis, ( Annie Oakley), cancer, 1997, @72

Tom Harmon, NFL tail back (Heisman Trophy), heart attack, 1990, @70

Ron Silver, actor, cancer, 2009, @62

Julius Caesar, Roman military and political figure, stabbed, 44BC, @55

Brain Teasers

Talk is cheap.

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  §