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Almanac: Week: 45 \ Day: 307
November
Averages: 51° \ 22°
Holiday Observances
Today:
King Tut Day
Mischief Night
National Chicken Lady
Day
National Medical
Science Liaison (MSL) Awareness and Appreciation Day
U.S. General Election
Day
Use Your Common Sense
Day
**
Flag Day (Panama)
Victory Day (Italy-1918-over
Austria-Hungary)
Quote of
the Day
Historical
Highlights for Today
1856 - James
Buchanan elected 15th US president
1884 - Grover
Cleveland (D) beats James G Blaine (R) for his 1st presidential term
1924
- US President Calvin Coolidge re-elected
1952 - General Dwight Eisenhower (R) elected 34th
pres beats Adlai Stevenson (D)
1980
- Ronald Reagan (R) defeats President Jimmy Carter (D) by a landslide
2008 - Barack
Obama becomes the 1st African-American elected US President
**
1646 - Massachusetts
uses death penalty for denying that Holy Bible is God's word
1841 - First
wagon train arrives in California
1845 - First
nationally observed uniform Election Day in US
1846 - Benjamin
Palmer patents artificial leg
1854 - Lighthouse
built on Alcatraz Island
1879 - James Ritty patents first cash register, to
combat stealing by bartenders
1908 - Brooklyn
Academy of Music opens in NYC
1922 - Howard
Carter discovers tomb of Tutankhamen in Egypt
1924 - Nellie Tayloe Ross elected 1st US female governor
(Wyoming)
1939 - 1st air conditioned automobile (Packard)
exhibited, Chicago, Ill
1958 - Angelo
G Roncalli crowned as pope John XXIII
1966 - Flooding
of Arno River (Italy) destroys countless art works, kills 113
1979 - 500
Iranian "students" seize US embassy, take 90 hostages (444 days)
1994 - San Francisco: 1st conference to focus
exclusively on commercial potential of the World Wide Web
·
• •
♫
Birthdays Today: ♫
How many can you identify? Answers below in Birthday’s Today
My
Rambling Thoughts
Ah…Fall has arrived. Woke up this morning to a very cool 22°…cars
covered with frost. It remained cool all day…fall is certainly in the air. Nice to see snow on the Peaks.
Tomorrow is Election Day, and I think I am ready. My mom worked at
the polls for decades, even back when the machine had those closing curtains
and the voter pushed down a lever and when they were finished the pulled a big
handle, the votes were cast and the curtain opened. I kinda long for those
voting days. I will also be glad that the phone calls will stop. Last night I
got a call from someone who sounded like Darth Vader for someone on the
corporation commission. Darth warned me that APS, our electricity provider, has
the other candidates in their pocket. Crazy and little creepy.
So happy to see that Last
Week Tonight with John Oliver is always willing to tackle news with humor.
This week he was on the case of state legislators. As he said, this is where the real business of
passing bills is taking place. He showed a lot of crazy comments by state
legislators, including one that Islam is cancer. Insane. Another interesting
fact he pointed out was that about 1000 local races have already been
determined because they have only one name on the ballot. Hardly sounds like democracy
in action to me.
I have always voted ON Election Day and don’t plan on changing in
my older age. Something can always happen at the last minute in any campaign. Even
when there is a mail-only election, I don’t fill out my ballot until Election
Day and then deliver it to one of the drop off places.
Happy Voting.
·
• •
Game Center (answers
at the end of post)
Brain
Teasers
Each
statement describes two words that when fused together create a new unrelated
word (not a compound word). The clues do not necessarily indicate in which
order the two words are attached. Example: This is the oldness of a tablet
(pill + age = pillage).
1) This is a royal golf score.
2) This is what you get from a bovine tongue.
3) This is a distant object.
4) This is a country of water barriers.
Found on
You Tube with some relevance to today
OK Then…
·
• •
Paraphernalia
4 the Brain:
Brief
History…
Invasion
of Japan Would Have Cost 1 Million American Lives.
This overstatement is often heard in the debate over whether or
not the US should have dropped the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Winston Churchill himself said that the US would suffer a million dead and that
the United Kingdom would suffer another quarter million dead. The real
estimates at the time were 250,000 to 1 million total casualties (dead and
wounded) with a maximum estimate of 380,000 dead. More realistic estimates
were 40,000 US dead and 150,000 US wounded. On the other hand, estimates
of Japanese casualties ranged from a few hundred thousand deaths to as many as
10 million, in either case more than the number killed by the atom bombs.
Dog Facts
In the movie 'The Wizard Of Oz', Toto the dog's salary was $125 a
week, while Judy Garland’s was $500 a week.
Baks, the blind boxer, has a seeing eye goose named Buttons; a
four-year-old goose who leads the pup around everywhere either by hanging onto
him with her neck, or by honking to tell him which way to go.
Educator’s
Answers…
“Why are you so strict? They’re just kids.”
We make plenty of time for laughter and fun in my classroom. But
rules and routine are not only necessary, they help children to feel safe,
secure, and valued in the classroom community.
Flagstaff,
AZ History…
From 1889
Mr. Humphrey purchased this week a band of 2,500 sheep from Daggs
Bros. at $3 a head. He will drive them to his range in Williams. This is a
pretty fair price to pay for sheep and shows that they are in demand.
Arizona Lumber and Timber #2 mill in Flagstaff has shut down
and the force at that mill has been taken out to #3, which will operate all
winter.
Gender
Facts…
-Women average seven farts a day and men about 12, experts say.
-When flatworms mate, two "males" use their bifurcated
penises to fence one another. The winner, or the flatworm who stabs the other
with its penis, remains a male while the loser becomes female.
Harper’s
Index…
Chance that a Republican voter has thought about the midterm
elections “only a little”: 1 in 3
That a Democratic voter has: 1 in 2
Percentage of midterm campaign advertisements that have mentioned
health care: 43
That have mentioned women’s rights: 4
That’s
Outrageous from Reader’s Digest…
1,089,920—the amount in dollars lost when a member of the cleaning
staff at a German museum mistook a piece of art for garbage and threw it out.
Religious
Facts…
-Identity crisis? About 10% of Jewish households have Christmas
Trees.
-In the year 2000, Pope John Paul II was named an 'Honorary Harlem
Globetrotter.'"
Rules of
Thumb…
DEFENDING
YOURSELF
If you are attacked
by several people at once, go for the largest and put one or both of his or her
eyes out. This will produce sufficient consternation in the others to give you
time to flee.
Unusual
Fact of the Day…
Plastic
bags take up less landfill space than paper bags. According to one study, two
plastic bags take up 72% less landfill space than one paper bag.
·
• •
Joke-of-the-day
A three-year-old had been told several times
to get ready for bed. The last time his mom told him, she was every insistent.
His response was, "Yes, Sir!" Since he was talking to his mother (and
she is a woman), it was not expected of him to call her "Sir".
"You would say, 'yes sir,' to a man, I am a lady, and you would say 'Yes
Ma'am,' to a lady," Mom said. To quiz him on is lesson; she then asked
him, "What would you say to Daddy?"
"Yes Sir!" was the reply
"Then what would you say to Mama?"
"Yes, Ma'am!" he proudly answered.
"Good boy! Now what would you say to Grandma?"
He lit up and said, "Can I have a cookie?"
Yep, It
Really Happened
Sometimes you have an itch you just have to scratch. And that is not always a
euphemism. Unfortunately for this man, the itch he had was on his testicles. It
was unfortunate not just because it is never good to have itchy testicles, but
because when you are in your car and trying to scratch them it looks a lot like
you are masturbating.
That is what prompted a woman in the same parking lot with this man to call the
police.
The woman told Port St. Lucie, Florida police she saw a man in his vehicle
"making an up and down motion in the area of his crotch."
The woman didn't see his genitals but believed the man was masturbating.
Now here is where things get bizarre. When police spoke to the man, he
explained that he got the urge to scratch his testicles because he has a rash
there. When they were disinclined to believe him he pulled up his shorts and
popped the boys out, showing the officers the, uhh, affected area.
Police determined the man, who has no criminal history, did not expose himself
and found no proof that he was performing lewd acts in public.
Somewhat
Useless Information
-Often
used as symbols of bad luck, black cats grace many Halloween decorations. The
black cat's bad reputation dates back to the Dark Ages, when witch hunts were
commonplace. Elderly, solitary women were often accused of witchcraft, and
their pet cats were said to be their "familiars," or demonic animals
that had been given to them by the devil.
-Medieval folklore also described bats as witches' familiars, and seeing a bat
on Halloween was considered to be quite an ominous sign. One myth was that if a
bat was spotted flying around one's house three times, it meant that someone in
that house would soon die.
-One superstition held that if a spider falls into a candle-lit lamp and is
consumed by the flame, witches are nearby. And if you spot a spider on
Halloween, goes another superstition, it means that the spirit of a deceased
loved one is watching over you.
-The stereotypical image of the haggard witch with a pointy black hat and warty
nose stems from a pagan goddess known as "the crone," who was honored
during Samhain. The crone was also known as "the old one" and the
"Earth mother," who symbolized wisdom, change, and the turning of the
seasons.
-The pagan Celts believed that after death, all souls went into the crone's
cauldron, which symbolized the Earth mother's womb. There, the souls awaited
reincarnation, as the goddess' stirring allowed for new souls to enter the
cauldron and old souls to be reborn.
-Candy corn was invented in the late 1880s and began to be mass-produced in the
early 1900s. The original process for making candy corn was cumbersome and
time-consuming, as each color of syrup had to be heated up in large vats and
carefully poured by hand into specially shaped molds.
·
• •
Check
Your Calendar
Observances
This Week:
National
Fig Week; National Patient Accessibility Week ;World Communication Week:: 1-7
National Radiologic Technology Week: 2-8
Drowsy Driving Prevention Week: 2-9
·
• •
Today’s
Events through History
1873 - Dentist
John Beers of SF patents gold crown
1904 - First
stadium built specifically for football (Harvard Stadium)
1914 - Vogue
holds 1st model show ("Fashion Fete", NYC)
1958 - Democrats win US congressional election
1970 - Russian
nuclear physicist Sacharov forms Human Rights Committee
1973 - Kathy
Whitworth wins LPGA Lady Errol Golf Classic
1977 - UN
Security council proclaims weapon embargo against South Africa
·
• •
Birthday’s
Today
Doris
Roberts, actress (Everybody Loves Raymond) is 89
Loretta
Swit, actress (Hotlips Houlihan-M*A*S*H) is 77
Laura
Bush, U.S. First Lady is 68
Markie
Post, [Marjorie], actor (Christine-Night Court) is 64
Charles
Frazier, American author is 64
Kathy
Griffin, comedienne (My Life on the D-List) is 54
Ralph
Macchio, actor (Karate Kid) is 53
Jeff
Probst, American television host is 53
Matthew
McConaughey, actor (A Time to Kill) is 45
Sean
Combs [Puff Daddy], New York City, rapper/record producer is 45
Remembered
for being born today
William
III of Orange, king of England (1650-1702)
James Earle
Fraser, designed buffalo nickel (1876-1953)
Will
Rogers, Cherokee humorist and actor (1879-1935)
Evelyn
Johnson, female pilot (most flying hours - 57,685), (1909-2012)
Gig Young, actor
(They Shoot Horses Don't They) (1913-1978)
Walter
Cronkite, news anchor (19116-2009)
Art
Carney, actor (Ed Norton-Honeymooners) (1918-2003)
Cameron
Mitchell, actor (Buck-High Chaparral) (1918-1994)
Martin
Balsam, actor (Catch 22) (1919-1996)
• •
Historical
Obits Today
Andy
Rooney, American radio and television writer, 2011, @92
Cy Young, pitcher
and MLB all-time wins leader, 1955, @88
George
Peabody, entrepreneur\philanthropist Peabody Trust, 1869, @74
Sheree
North, American actress and singer, cancer, 2005, @73
Michael
Crichton, American author, cancer, 2008, @66
Dominique
Dunne, actress (Poltergeist), murdered by boyfriend, 1982, @23
·
• •
Brain Teasers Answers
1) par + king = parking
2) cow + lick = cowlick
3) far + thing = farthing
4) dam + nation = damnation
·
• •
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 contains mistakes and sadly once 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…§
