5-14-14

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Flagstaff Almanac: Day: 134  / Week: 20 

May Averages: 68° \ 34°
Today: Average Sky Cover: 10%
    H 55°… L 34°… Ave. humidity: 40%
    Wind: ave:   7mph; Gusts:  36mph  
    Average High: 67° Record High:  83° (1938)
    Average Low: 34° Record Low:  21° (1942)
     
Quote of the Day

Today’s Historical Highlights

1796 - 1st smallpox inoculation administered, by Edward Jenner

1804 - Lewis & Clark set out from St Louis for Pacific Coast
1878 - Vaseline is first sold (registered trademark for petroleum jelly)
1942 - US Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) forms
1949 - Harry Truman signs bill establishing a rocket test range at Cape Canaveral
1969 - Abortion & contraception legalized in Canada
1973 - Skylab launched, 1st Space Station
1974 - Symbionese Liberation Army destroyed in shoot-out, 6 killed
1980 - Dept of Health & Human Services begins operation
2013 - Brazil becomes the 15th country to legalize same-sex marriage

♫  Today’s Birthdays: ♫  

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

My Free Rambling Thoughts   

Another fairly windy day, even though the weatherman said the wind would die down in the afternoon…it didn’t. And it was not a warm wind.

I am proud of myself…a little. I finally figured out how to get all my email accounts onto Microsoft Mail on my Windows 8.1. Over the years and years since I set up my first AOL account on a dial up in Tuba, I have added new ones. One because I needed on at the Boarding School…on Hotmail before the days of a BIA email system. That one has been my go-to registration email…so it usually gets lots of junk. Then when I had to have a google account for my first Android phone, I had to get another one. Then in a crazy time, I wanted an email account that I could use without anyone knowing who I was. I never really did much with it, but used it to send anonymous emails…nothing bad…to businesses I thought should know my opinion without knowing who I was. Over the years I have tried to close some of the accounts, but some of my contacts still haven’t figured out how to change my email address in their contact list, so I still get emails from them on the old accounts. The good news is that now I can actually see all the emails in one place.

Game  Center (answers at the end of post)

Brain Teasers

Each group of three definitions describes three words that are spelled the same, except for one letter (each group describes a different set of words). Example: king, ring, wing.
1a) a bone in the leg
1b) arboreal mammal, common to Madagascar
1c) to take exception or object
2a) a mixture of liquids, as for medicine
2b) a liquid preparation for cosmetic use
2c) an opinion or view
3a) something having a spiral or twisted form
3b) to hold back or restrain
3c) the thick part of coagulated milk
4a) to beat or damage with repeated blows
4b) to trade by exchange of goods
4c) good-natured witty joking

Lifestyle  Substance:     

Found on You Tube with some relevance to today

Bobby Darin-Mack the Knife

George Lucas

 

Harry Blackstone, Jr. Magic

Mark Z on the internet

OK Then…

Harper’s Index 
Portion of US students who started college in 2007 who have not completed their degrees: 1/2

Unusual Fact of the Day

Japanese golfers take out insurance policies against scoring an ace while golfing, since a player "lucky" enough to get a hole-in-one is obligated to buy gifts for all his friends.

Largest Animals in the world…

The Largest Bony Fish in the World: The Ocean Sunfish

Osteichthyes, also called bony fish, are a taxonomic group of fish that have bony, as opposed to cartilaginous, skeletons. The vast majority of fish are osteichthyes, which is an extremely diverse and abundant group consisting of over 29,000 species. It is the largest class of vertebrates in existence today.
The largest living bony fish is the widely distributed ocean sunfish (Mola mola). It resembles a fish head with a tail, and its main body is flattened laterally. The mature ocean sunfish has an average length of 1.8 m (5.9 ft), a fin-to-fin length of 2.5 m (8.2 ft) and an average weight of 1,000 kg (2,200 lb), although individuals up to 3.3 m (10.8 ft) in length 4.2 m (14 ft) across the fins and weighing up to 2,300 kg (5,100 lb) have been observed.

Oldest Trees in the World…

Alerce

The Alerce is a common name for Fitzroya cupressoides, a towering tree species native to the Andes Mountains. There's almost no telling how old these trees can get, since most of the larger specimens were heavily logged in the 19th and 20th centuries. Many botanists believe they are the second-longest living trees on Earth aside from the bristlecone pine of North America. To date, the oldest known living specimen is 3,640 years old.

Travel Destination Info… #2 United States

Tourism expenditure 2010: $75.5 Billion

Change from 2009: +1.9% 
Market Share: 8.2%
Per Capita expenditure: $244

Joke-of-the-day

Lady, this vacuum cleaner will cut your work in half.

Good. I’ll take two of them.

Rules of Thumb:   

LISTENING TO ‘STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN’

"Stairway to Heaven" lasts exactly as long as it takes to smoke a regular Marlboro (box not soft pack.)

Yeah, It Really Happened

CHICOPEE, Mass. (UPI) - During the arrest of a Massachusetts man, a police officer classified a piece of hot pizza as a "dangerous weapon" after it caused first- and second-degree burns. James Vincent Grass allegedly shoved a piece of freshly-microwaved pizza into a 6-year-old girl's face and was charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon and reckless endangerment of a child. The 21-year-old denied the charges against him during his arraignment. In his incident report, Officer Terry Dec wrote the girl said Grass "threw a piece of pizza in her face" when she stopped the microwave because it was steaming. When she tried to explain, Grass grabbed the pizza and asked "Do you think this is done?" before allegedly shoving the slice in her face and saying "Is that hot enough?" According to Grass the girl asked to smell the pizza and he then "pushed her face into it." When her mother picked her up, the girl had already popped a blister on her chin and was holding a wet towel to her face.

Somewhat Useless Information   

Have you ever experienced a strange light, an unpleasant smell, confusing thoughts or experiences before a migraine?

If yes, then you may have experienced ‘aura’. An aura is a perceptual disturbance experienced by some migraine sufferers before a migraine headache.
‘Aura’ can occur from a few seconds up to an hour before the migraine and it can stay with a migraine sufferer for the duration of the migraine; depending on the type of aura, this can leave the person disoriented and confused.

Black Friday is the beginning of the Christmas shopping season, following Thanksgiving Day in the United States. But why do we call this Friday as ‘black’?

‘Black Friday’ comes from an accounting term, as in accounting, the colors used to represent profit and lost are black and red. Red means the company is losing money, whereas black means it’s making a profit.
Black Friday represents the day that retail businesses stop losing money and start making profit.
To prove that December is the most profitable month, retail analyst Dana Telsey of Telsey Advisory Group said that the Thanksgiving weekend can make up as much as 10 percent of all holiday sales, while the 10 days before Christmas can account for 40 percent of the total.

Did you know that kitchen knives are responsible for as many as half of all stabbings, according to West Middlesex University Hospital?

This raised British doctors’ concern and they called for a ban on long pointed kitchen knives to reduce deaths from stabbing.
They said that there have been many impulsive assaults, prompted by alcohol and drugs in many cases and a kitchen knife often makes an all too available weapon.

Calendar Information        

This Week’s Observances:

11-17

Universal Family Week
Food Allergy Awareness Week 
National Hospital Week 
National Nursing Home Week
National Police Week 
National Return To Work Week 
National Transportation Week 
National Women's Health Week 
Reading is Fun Week
Salute to Moms 35+ Week

12-18
American Craft Beer Week 
Children's Book Week
National Bike to Work Week
National Dog Bite Prevention Week  
National Etiquette Week
Work At Home Moms Week

13-17
Neuropathy Awareness Week

13-19
Salvation Army Week  
Neuropathy Awareness Week
National Stuttering Awareness Week

Today Is  

Donate A Day's Wages To Charity
Jamestown Founding Day--1607

Migratory Bird Day
National Dance Like A Chicken Day
National International Train Day
National Night Shift Workers Day
National Third Shift Workers Day
Receptionists Day
"The Stars and Stripes Forever" Day (1897-1^st public performance)
Stay Up All Night Night
Underground America Day
[]
National Windmill Day (Netherlands)
National Day (Paraguay-1811-from Spain)
                                                    
Today’s Events through History  

1842 - Illustrated London News; world's 1st illustrated weekly newspaper, begins publication

1905 - 2nd official international soccer match, Netherlands beats Belgium 4-0
1976 - Lowell Thomas ends 46 years as radio network reporter
1998 - Last episode of Seinfeld on NBC 
2012 - 1,500 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons agree to end mass hunger strike

Today’s Birthdays                                                           

George Lucas, director (Star Wars, Indiana Jones) is 70

Tim Roth, actor (Reservoir Dogs) is 53
Cate Blanchett, Australian actress (Lord of the Rings) is 45
Mark Zuckerberg, internet entrepreneur \ founder of Facebook is 30
Miranda Cosgrove, actress and singer is 21

Remembered for being born today

1727-1788 - Thomas Gainsborough, English painter (Blue Boy), baptized

1885-1973 - Otto Klemperer, conductor/composer (Das Ziel)
1922-1984 - Richard Deacon, actor (Mel Cooley-Dick Van Dyke Show)
1936-1973 - Bobby Darin, [Walden Waldo Cassotto], Bronx, singer

Today’s Historical Obits                                                           

Billie Burke, actress (Glinda-Wizard of Oz), 1970, @85

Robert Stack, American actor, 2003, @84
Frank Sinatra, singer and actor, 1998, @82
Henry John Heinz, founder of the H. J. Heinz Company, 1919, @74
Hugh Beaumont, actor (Ward-Leave it to Beaver), heart attack, 1982, @73
Emma Goldman, US anarchists/feminist/author, stroke, 1940, @70  
Harry Blackstone Jr, magician, cancer, 1997, @62

Brain Teasers                                         

1) femur, lemur, demur
2) potion, lotion, notion
3) curl, curb, curd
4) batter, barter, banter

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  §