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Almanac: Week: 47 \ Day: 322
November
Averages: 51° \ 22°
Holiday Observances
Today:
Independence Day (Latvia-1918 from Russia)
National Holiday (Oman)
+++
European
Antibiotic Awareness Day
Married
To A Scorpio Support Day
Mickey
Mouse Day
National
Entrepreneurship Day
Occult Day
Push-button
Phone Day
Observances This
Week:
National
Hunger & Homeless Awareness Week; International Fraud Awareness Week:
15-23
American Education Week; National Book Awards Week; National Global Entrepreneurship Week: 17-23
American Education Week; National Book Awards Week; National Global Entrepreneurship Week: 17-23
• • • •
Quote of
the Day
Historical
Highlights for Today
326 - Old St. Peter's
Basilica is consecrated. Stood 4th - 16th century
1307 - William Tell
reputedly shoots apple off his son's head
1497 - Portuguese navigator
Vasco da Gama reaches the Cape of Good Hope
1626 - St. Peter's Basilica
is consecrated. Replaces an earlier basilica
1745 - Bonnie Prince
Charlie's troops occupy Carlisle
1787 - First Unitarian
minister in US ordained, Boston
1865 - Mark Twain publishes "Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras
County"
1872 - Susan B Anthony is
arrested after voting on the 5th November
1894 - 1st newspaper Sunday
color comic section published (NY World)
1902 - Brooklyn toymaker
Morris Michton names teddy bear after Teddy Roosevelt
1920 - Apollo Theater
(Academy, Bryant) opens at 221 W 42nd St NYC
1928 - Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse appears in NY in "Steamboat
Willie"
1936 - Main span of Golden Gate Bridge joined
1941 - Mussolini's forces leave
Abyssinia/Ethiopia
1961 - JFK sends 18,000 military advisors to South Vietnam
1963 - Bell Telephone
introduces push button telephone
1964 - J. Edgar Hoover describes
Martin Luther King as "most notorious liar"
1978 - Jonestown Guyana-918 members of Peoples Temple
commit- Jim Jones
1999 - In College Station,
Texas, 12 are killed and 27 injured at Texas A&M University when a massive
bonfire under construction collapses.
• • • •
♫
Birthdays Today: ♫
How many can you identify? Answers below in Birthday’s Today
My
Rambling Thoughts
Cold has arrived in Flagstaff. Got up this morning to 11° with a
wind chill of 3°. It did warm up to a sweltering 41°.
Made a quick trip to have some blood drawn for my upcoming
appointment. Not my favorite exercise. And I got to pee in the cup. Dr. wants
to be sure that I don’t have gout. I know I don’t, but he went to med school
for something.
Another story about Liberia. As with many African countries,
transportation is always difficult—bad roads, few affordable cars—and so many
use the taxi. In Liberia, it is mostly sedans and until recently there were no
limits on the number of passengers. A few years ago they changed the law to
allow only one person in the front. With the Ebola concerns, there is now a
limit of two to the back seat. Assume that it takes an average of $5/ride for
the driver to break even. With 10 passengers that is only 50 cents/person. Now
with a limit of 3 passengers, that break even cost becomes $1.70/person. Now
many poor can no longer afford a taxi ride. Now that the outside world has
abandoned the country, gas prices have risen steadily. Now a taxi ride might
cost $5+/person. So few are taking the taxi, and taxi drivers are now
unemployed too.
• • • •
Brain
Teasers
(answers at the end of post)
I
walk, but have no legs. I sleep, but never dream. You can
rock me in a cradle, but I am not a baby and I can go around
the world faster than you can cross a room. What am I?
rock me in a cradle, but I am not a baby and I can go around
the world faster than you can cross a room. What am I?
Found on
You Tube with some relevance to today
OK Then…
• • • •
Paraphernalia
4 the Brain:
England
Facts…
—The Canadian province of New Brunswick (which was part of the UK
at the time) had a bloodless war with the US state of Maine in 1839
—The Queen of England, who once enjoyed extensive powers and
authority over almost the whole world, and despite all her present majesty and
glory, is not allowed to enter the House of Commons simply because she is not
its member!
Flagstaff,
AZ History…
75 YEARS
AGO
—A total of 41 bucks in the first 10 days of the season breaks the
previous record by 5. They are being weighed at Wid’s Sporting Goods this week.
—The new minimum wage of 30 cents per hour set in Washington D. C.
affects an estimated 10,000 workers in Arizona.
Hair
Facts…
—A human being loses an average of 40 to 100 strands of hair a
day.
—In the 1800's, rum was considered excellent for cleaning hair and
keeping it healthy. Brandy was believed to strengthen hair roots.
Harper’s
Index…
—Chance that a US public school had at least one security camera
in 1999: 1 in 5
—Chance today: 2 in 3
Internet
Facts…
—It would take 76 work days (8 hours a day) for the average person
to read the Terms and Conditions they agree to in a year.
—CAPTCHA stands for "Completely Automated Public Turing test
to tell Computers and Humans Apart". CAPTCHA are those graphics where one
has to type in a code of crazy shaped numbers and letters that is on the screen
That’s
Outrageous from Reader’s Digest…
A man illegally brought a gun into a bar, got injured in a fight,
and then sued the bar for not searching him for a weapon. A convict sued a
couple he had kidnapped for not helping him evade police. A mom sued Chuck E.
Cheese’s, arguing that the restaurant’s video games encouraged gambling in
children.
Pilgrim
Fact…
Corn by Any Other Name
Thanks to Squanto, the Pilgrims were successfully able to plant
corn and it became an extremely important crop for the settlers. However, they
probably called it "Indian corn" or "turkey wheat." In the
English of the period, the word corn meant, rye, barley, oats, or other grains.
Rules of
Thumb…
SAGGING
HOUSES
There is cause for
concern if the ridge of a house sags more than 1/2 inch per year.
Unusual
Fact of the Day…
Johnny
Carson’s first three wives were named, in order, Joan, Joanne, and Joanna. (His
first wife went by "Jody.")
• • • •
Joke-of-the-day
Q. Why did Mrs.
Smokey the Bear divorce Smokey the Bear?
A. Because every time she got hot, he'd beat her with a shovel!
A. Because every time she got hot, he'd beat her with a shovel!
Yep, It
Really Happened
LUBARTOW,
Poland (UPI)
A 91-year-old Polish woman
who was declared dead was found to be alive inside her body bag in a morgue's
cold storage area 11 hours later. Janina Kolkiewicz's niece, Bogumila
Kolkiewicz, said she called her family's physician, Dr. Wieslawa Czyz, when she
found her aunt was not breathing and did not seem to have a pulse at their
Lubartow home. Czyz confirmed the elder Kolkiewicz was deceased and wrote out a
death certificate for the woman. However, the death certificate had to be
invalidated when morgue staff found Kolkiewicz moving inside of her body bag.
Kolkiewicz returned home, where her family helped her warm up with soup and
pancakes, her niece said. "I was sure she was dead," Czyz told
television station TVP. "I'm stunned, I don't understand what happened.
Her heart had stopped beating, she was no longer breathing." Bogumila
Kolkiewicz said her aunt reported feeling "normal, fine" following
her ordeal. She said the older woman has no comprehension of what took place.
"My aunt has no inkling of what happened since she has late-stage
dementia," she told the Dziennik Wschodni newspaper. Police are
investigating the incident and the Lublin District Prosecutor's Office said it has
instituted criminal proceedings against the doctor.
Somewhat
Useless Information
—Stilts
were invented by French shepherds who herded sheep in marshes near the Bay of
Biscay.
—In about 250 B.C., Ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes invented the screw.
—Leonardo da Vinci figured out that the rings of a tree reveal its age.
—The filaments for the first electric lamp were made of bamboo.
—The first person to use an elevator: King Louis XV, whose "flying chair" went between floors at Versailles in 1743.
—Mark Twain invented a Trivial Pursuit-like game called Mark Twain's Memory-Builder.
—In about 250 B.C., Ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes invented the screw.
—Leonardo da Vinci figured out that the rings of a tree reveal its age.
—The filaments for the first electric lamp were made of bamboo.
—The first person to use an elevator: King Louis XV, whose "flying chair" went between floors at Versailles in 1743.
—Mark Twain invented a Trivial Pursuit-like game called Mark Twain's Memory-Builder.
Somewhat Useful
Information from fivethrityeight.com
State Lottery
Most
of the $59.5 billion dollars that was spent on state lotteries in 2012 ended up
being used as prize money. That’s a whole lot of money that we know for sure
didn’t go toward public education, even though that’s where state lotteries
emphasize the money goes, Most of the $59.5 billion dollars that
was spent on state lotteries in 2012 ended up being used as prize money. That’s
a whole lot of money that we know for sure didn’t go toward public education,
even though that’s where state lotteries emphasize the money goes,
++
In
the states for which we have data, $59.5 billion dollars was collected in
revenue from state lottery tickets and games in 2012, which averages to $200
spent on the lottery per resident. But that figure varies considerably — it’s
highest in Massachusetts, where residents spent on average $671.46 on the state
lottery in 2012, and lowest in North Dakota, where the average amount spent was
just $36.12.
•
• • •
• • • •
Today’s
Events through History
1477 – 1st English dated
printed book "Dictes & Sayengis of the Phylosophers"
1979 - Ayatollah Khomeini
charges US ambassador/embassy espionage
1982 - Duk Koo Kim dies unexpectedly from injuries
sustained fight against Ray Mancini
1992 - "Malcolm X"
with Denzel
Washington premieres in US
1997 - Arizona Diamondbacks
& Tampa Bay Devil Rays expansion draft
Birthday’s
Today
Brenda Vaccaro, Brooklyn, actress
(Cactus Flower) is 76
Linda Evans, actress (Big Valley) is
73
Jameson Parker, actor (American
Justice, Simon & Simon) is 68
Owen Wilson, actor (Zoolander) is 47
Remembered
for being born today
Sojourner Truth [Isabella
Baumfree], abolitionist/feminist (1787-1883)
Dorothy Dix, pseudonym of journalist
Elizabeth Gilmer (1861-1951)
James E Sullivan, founder (Amateur
Athletic Union) (1862-1914)
George Gallup, public opinion pollster
(Gallup Poll) (1901-1994)
Jean Paul Lemieux, Quebec painter (1904-1990)
Imogene Coca, comedienne (Your Show of
Shows, Grindl) (1908-2001)
Johnny Mercer, lyricist (Moon River,
Old Black Magic) (1909-1976)
Alan B Shepard Jr, Rear Adm USN/astro
(Merc 3, Ap 14) (1923-1998)
• • • •
Historical
Obits Today
Cab[ell] Calloway, US band leader/actor (Missourians), 1994, @86
Joseph P Kennedy, JFK/RFK/TMK father, 1969, @81
Niels Bohr, Danish physicist (atom, Nobel 1922), heart failure,
1962, @77
James Coburn, actor (Magnificent 7), heart attack, 2002, @74
Chester A. Arthur, 21st US president (1881-85), stroke, 1886, @56
Jim Jones, US pastor, leader of Jonestown Cult, suicide 1978, @47
•
• • •
Brain Teasers Answers
A yo-yo
• • • •
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…§
