4-22-14

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Flagstaff Almanac: Day: 112  / Week: 17 
Today: L 41°…H 68°… Ave. humidity: 58%
     Wind: ave:   3mph; Gusts:  8mph  
     Average Low: 30° Record Low:  11° (1963)
    Average High: 60° Record High:  78° (1989)
   
Quote of the Day

 

Today’s Historical Highlights

1526 - 1st slave revolt occurs in SC

1793 - Pres Washington attends opening of Rickett's, 1st circus in US

1864 - US mints 2 cent coin (1st appearance of "In God We Trust")

1897 - NYC Jewish newspaper "Forward" begins publishing (still active)

1898 - US President McKinley orders blockade of Cuban harbors

1964 - World's Fair (Flushing Meadow, Corona Park, NY) opens

1970 - 1st Earth Day held internationally to conserve natural resources

1976 - Barbara Walters becomes 1st female nightly network news anchor

1981 - Largest US bank robbery (Tucson AZ), more than $3.3 million stolen

2000 – Federal agents seize six-year-old Elián González from his relatives' home in Miami, Florida.

♫  Today’s Birthdays: ♫  

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

My Free Rambling Thoughts   

I have to say, Windows8.1 really sucks…and there is nothing to do about it. It won’t remember the zoom I set on pages, I pay my bills on line and every time I log into my bank the damn site says we don’t recognize this computer. That adds about 5 steps and a phone call and typing in some damn secret code I get from the phone call. Other sites are exactly the same…I have to log in to almost every site every time I go to the site. And then, many times it doesn’t recognize my password the first time. It is a real pain in the butt. Oh, and I have a friend who still is using Works…the free program that has always been free on Windows since the 3.1 days. Now it isn’t included and has to be added. Also, every time I use ‘help and tips’ on 8.1 I get a few pop ups that say I have to update drivers or update software, or something. Of course when I try to do that, like a good computer geek, I get some commercial program that is loaded with junk. And then the program to fix the damn problem I am researching has a cost. Then my security program pops up saying that I am being infected, so I stop the infection and have to wait for the security program to run a scan to be sure that everything has been erased or quarantined or whatever. That takes about a minute. Not a big deal, but as I add more stuff, it takes longer and longer. What a pain.

I do have a solution for all this…Computer stores need to not have a Geek Squad, but they have to have a Geezer Squad area where we old-er folks can buy things that we already know how to use.

Earth Day was a big deal when I was in college. I remember that while I was doing my student teaching in a small farming town outside Boulder, I taught the 6^th graders about Earth Day and we had a contest to bring in recyclable trash.

Game  Center (answers at the end of post)

Brain Teasers
These are quotes from George Carlin, one of America's most popular wise guys. Can you decode them?
Both puzzles use the same code. Q=M; A=U; R=O

"DPKLSUQ SU D ORO-TYRTKLP RYMDOSEDPSRO."

"'S DQ' SU YLTRYPLJWB PKL UKRYPLUP ULOPLOHL SO PKL LOMWSUK WDOMADML. HRAWJ SP FL PKDP 'S JR' SU PKL WROMLUP ULOPLOHL?"

Lifestyle  Substance:     

Found on You Tube with some relevance to today

Ansel Adams

Mini Bio: Cesar Chavez

R.I.P. - Steve Fossett Tribute

Richie Havens - Here Comes The Sun

OK Then…

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.

Mark Twain

Harper’s Index 

Percentage change in the wealth of the average Libyan household in the past year: +61

On the average Egyptian household: -11

Unusual Fact of the Day

The first football helmet was constructed by an Annapolis shoemaker at the request of cadet Joseph Mason Reeves, who'd been told that one more blow to the head would end his naval career.              

Joke-of-the-day

Once there was an Antartian that was down on his luck. In order to get some money he decided to kidnap a kid and hold him for ransom.

He went to the playground, grabbed a kid, took him behind a tree and told him "I've kidnapped you."

The Antartian wrote a note saying "I've kidnapped your kid. Tomorrow morning put $10,000 in a paper bag and put it beneath the pecan tree next to the slide on the north side of the city playground. Signed, An Antartian."

The Antartian then pinned the note to the kid's shirt and sent him home to show it to his parents.

The next morning the Antartian checked, and sure enough a paper bag was sitting beneath that pecan tree. The Antartian opened up the bag and found the $10,000 with a note. The note said, "How could one Antartian do this to another Antartian?!"

Rules of Thumb:   

TEACHING

To teach effectively, a teacher should limit a class to 25 students. A class of 25 to 32 students should have a teacher's aide. A group with more than 32 students should be split into two classes.

Yeah, It Really Happened

Portland officials are preparing to flush millions of gallons of treated water because someone urinated at a city reservoir.

Water Bureau Administrator David Shaff said 38 million gallons will be discarded after a 19-year-old was videotaped in the act. The open reservoirs hold water that's already been treated and goes directly into mains for distribution to customers.

The water will be drained into the sewage system that eventually dumps into the Columbia River. In the meantime, Shaff said the city has plenty of water to meet demand.

"It's easy to replace those 38 million gallons of water," Shaff said. "We're not in drought-stricken parts of Texas or Oklahoma."

The incident occurred shortly after 1 a.m., when Water Bureau security personnel noticed three men on camera at Mount Tabor Reservoir No. 5. One was seen on video urinating through an iron fence, officials said. Minutes later, two other young men attempted to scale the fence.

The three men, whose names have not been released, were cited for trespassing and excluded from Mount Tabor Park. A 19-year-old was cited for public urination.

If you're thinking that it seems to be pretty easy to piss into a reservoir that is ready to be distributed to customers, you'd be right. This isn't even the first time something like this has happened. Three years ago, the city drained a 7.5 million-gallon reservoir at the same Mount Tabor location.

In fact, animals routinely deposit waste without creating a public health crisis, but Shaff said he doesn't want to serve water that was deliberately tainted.

"There is at least a perceived difference from my perspective," Shaff said. "I could be wrong on that, but the reality is our customers don't anticipate drinking water that's been contaminated by some yahoo who decided to pee into a reservoir."

Somewhat Useless Information   

Howard Helmer, former American Egg Board representative, is the Omelet King. Helmer holds three Guinness World Records for omelet making – fastest omelet-maker (427 omelets in 30 minutes); fastest single omelet (42 seconds from whole egg to omelet); and omelet flipping (30 flips in 34 seconds).

The name meringue came from a pastry chef named Gasparini in the Swiss town of Merhrinyghen. In 1720, Gasparini created a small pastry of dried egg foam and sugar from which the simplified meringue evolved. Its fame spread and Marie Antoinette is said to have prepared the sweet with her own hands at the Trianon in France.

It is said that an egg will stand on its end during the spring (vernal) equinox (about March 21), one of the two times of the year when the sun crosses the equator and day and night are of equal length everywhere.

To tell if an egg is raw or hard-boiled, spin it. Because the liquids have set into a solid, a hard-boiled egg will easily spin. The moving liquids in a raw egg will cause it to wobble.

Long before the days of refrigeration, the ancient Chinese stored eggs up to several years by immersing them in a variety of such imaginative mixtures as salt and wet clay; cooked rice, salt and lime; or salt and wood ashes mixed with a tea infusion. The treated eggs bore little similarity to fresh eggs, some exhibiting greenish-gray yolks and albumen resembling brown jelly.

Double-yolked eggs are often produced by young hens whose egg production cycles are not yet completely synchronized. They're often produced too, by hens which are old enough to produce Extra Large-sized eggs.

Calendar Information        

Today Is                                                                      
Chemists Celebrate Earth Day
Earth Day
Good Friday
National Jelly Bean Day
UN International Mother Earth Day
Oklahoma Day (Oklahoma-1889—Dawes Act opened land to Whites)

Today’s Events through History  

1915 - 1st military use of poison gas (chlorine, by Germany) 

1962 - Marilynn Smith wins LPGA Sunshine Golf Open

1974 - Barbara Walters becomes news co-anchor of Today Show

1988 - Women are allowed to compete in Little 500 bicycle race (Indiana)

 

Today’s Birthdays                                                           

Charlotte Rae, actress (Edna-Facts of Life) is 89

John A Llewellyn, Cardiff Wales, astronaut is 81

Glen Campbell, actor/singer (Time I Get to Phoenix) is 79

Jack Nicholson, actor (One Flew Over Cuckoo's Nest, Shining) is 77

Peter Frampton, guitarist/vocalist (Frampton Comes Alive) is 64

Ryan Stiles, actor (Lewis-Drew Carey Show) is 56

Sherri Shepherd, American comedian and actress is 48

 

Remembered for being born today

1724-1804 - Immanuel Kant, Konigsberg Germ, philosopher

1870-1924 - Nikolai Lenin, [Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov], Premier of Russia

1904-1967 - J[ulius] Robert Oppenheimer, NY, head of Manhattan (A-bomb) Project

1906-2005 - Eddie Albert, [Heimberger], actor (Green Acres)

1912-1953 - Kathleen Mary Ferrier, England, contralto (Orfeo Ed Evridice)

1920-1970 - Hal March, actor/TV host ($64,000 Question, Outrage)

1923-2006 - Aaron Spelling, television producer (Charlie's Angels)

1944-2007 - Steve Fossett, American adventurer

 

Today’s Historical Obits                                                           

Ansel Adams, US photographer, 1984, @82

Cesar Chavez, US farm worker (United Farm Workers), 1993, @66

Richard Nixon, 37th President (1969-75), 1994, @ 81

Will Geer, actor (Grandpa Walton-Waltons), 1978, @76

Jane Froman, singer (Jane Froman's USA Canteen), cardiac arrest, 1980, @72

Richie Havens, singer-songwriter and guitarist, heart attack, 2013, @72

Erma Bombeck, humorist (Grass is Greener), kidney failure, 1996, @69 

John Crome, [Old Crome], English landscape painter/etcher, 1821, @59

Pat Tillman, football player\U.S. Army Ranger (killed in action), 2004, @27

 

Brain Teasers                                         

"ATHEISM IS A NON-PROPHET ORGANIZATION."

"'I AM' IS REPORTEDLY THE SHORTEST SENTENCE IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. COULD IT BE THAT 'I DO' IS THE LONGEST SENTENCE?"

KEY:
A=U
B=Y
D=A
E=Z
F=B
H=C
J=D
K=H
L=E
M=G
O=N
P=T
Q=M
R=O
S=I
T=P
U=S
W=L
Y=R
Z=K

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  §