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Almanac: Week: 49 \ Day: 339
December
Averages: 44°\17°
86004 Today: H 49°\L 37°
Ave. humidity: 90% Average Sky Cover: 85%
Wind ave: 3mph\Gusts: 20mph
Ave. High: 45° Record
High: 67° (1965)
Ave. Low: 18° Record
Low: -4° (1955)
Holiday Observances
Today:
Discovery Day (Haiti-1492-by Columbus)
King's Birthday and National Day (Thailand-1927)
Krampuslauf (Austria-Demonic beast takes all
the ‘naughty’ children)
¤ ¤
AFL-CIO
Day-mergd-1955
Bathtub
Party Day
Columbian
International Day of The Reef-celebrates Columbia’s
Reef
Faux Fur
Friday
International
Ninja Day
International
Volunteer Day for Economic & Social Development
National
Salesperson Day
Repeal Day - The 21st
Amendment ends Prohibition-1933
Sachertorte
Day-a special Austrian Chocolate Cake
World
Soil Day
Observances This
Week:
1-7
Cookie
Cutter Week
International Coelenterate Biology
Week
3-9
Clerc-Gallaudet
Week
• • • • • • •
Quote of
the Day
Historical
Highlights for Today
1360 - The French Franc is created
1456 - Earthquake strikes Naples; about 35,000 die
1766 - London auctioneers Christie's hold their
first sale
1835 - Georgia Guard
arrest CHEROKEE Principal Chief John Ross at his home. Also arrested is
historian John Howard Payne. Payne, the author of the song "Home, Sweet
Home", was writing a history of the CHEROKEE people. They are arrested so
they will not be able to attend the "New Echota Treaty" conference
1840 - Napoleon Bonaparte receives a state
funeral in Paris 19 years after his death
1848 - President Polk triggers Gold Rush by
confirming gold discovery in CA
1879 - 1st automatic telephone switching system
patented
1893 - 1st electric car (built in Toronto) could go
15 miles between charges
1929 - 1st US nudist organization (American League
for Physical Culture, NYC)
1932 - German physicist Albert
Einstein granted a visa to enter America
1935 - 1st commercial hydroponics operation
established (Montebello, California)
1955 - Historic bus
boycott begins in Montgomery Alabama by Rosa Parks
1957 - NYC is 1st city to legislate against racial
or religious discrimination in housing market (Fair Housing Practices Law)
1971 - Libya nationalizes British Petroleum
concession
1974 - Monty Python's Flying Circus final episode
airs on BBC
2005 - The Lake Tanganyika earthquake causes
significant damage, mostly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
• • • • • • •
♫
Birthdays Today: ♫
How many can you identify? Answers below in Birthday’s Today
My
Rambling Thoughts
Great lunch with time to catch up on Thanksgiving experiences.
Cheryl had a great time in CA with her son and his family. Mary had a good time
in Phx with her son and the grandkids. Usual family tension in Phx but will
work out just fine.
Flag had rain all day yesterday and up until about 2pm this
afternoon. Totals are around 1.5” from this storm. That is a lot of rain in 2 days
for a high desert. While everyone I saw was wet and the streets had puddles, no
one was complaining. It was always a nice gentle rain with no thunder or lightning.
It was badly needed and much appreciated.
• • • • • • •
Brain
Teasers
(answers at the end of post)
Which
abbreviation from Group A should be in Group B?
GROUP A GROUP B
adj. a
B.C. A.D.
etc. c
No. e.g.
pl. i.e.
Found on
You Tube with some relevance to today
OK Then…
• • • • • • •
Paraphernalia
4 the Brain:
Actor
Facts…
¤ Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) has more money than Prince
Harry, the Prince of Wales.
¤ As a child, Jim Carrey wore tap shoes to bed just in case his
parents needed cheering up in the middle of the night.
December
Holiday Facts
*Christmas-Christian
¤ According to data analyzed from Facebook posts, two weeks before
Christmas is one of the two most popular times for couples to break up.
However, Christmas Day is the least favorite day for breakups.
¤ Contrary to popular belief, suicide rates during the Christmas
holiday are low. The highest rates are during the spring.
*Hanukkah-Jewish
Dreidels
During Hanukkah, Jewish children enjoying playing with a toy
called a dreidel, which is similar to a top. The dreidel has four sides and
features the Hebrew letters nun, gimel, hay, and shin. These letters stand for
the Hebrew phrase Nes Gadol Hayah Sham, "A great miracle happened
there." The game is played with candy. The player who has all the candy in
the end is the winner.
*Kwanza-African-American
Stamp
That!
The first US postage stamp to commemorate Kwanzaa was issued in
1997. There have been 4 designs released since then, the most recent being in
2013.
*12 Days of Christmas
Three
French Hens
The Three Theological Virtues: 1) Faith, 2) Hope, and 3) Love (1
Corinthians 13:13)
Flagstaff,
AZ History…
100 YEARS
AGO
¤ Horses to pasture will leave Calloway's at Camp Verde with
horses to winter about November 25. See, A. W. Kinsey.
¤ As they were driving home on Sunday evening, J. L. Daughtery's
auto turned over near Doney Park when the lights on his machine gave out and he
ran into a bridge. The top was ruined. Neither he nor his Mrs. were injured.
Flagstaff’s
Iconic 50…
Navajo
Rugs
In the 16th century, when the Spanish arrived and
subsequently conquered the peaceful pueblo Indian cultures of what is now New
Mexico and the American Southwest, the Navajo or Dine peoples which then lived
north of the pueblos were seldom if ever seen by the Spanish and known mostly
through the Pueblo Indian stories and encounters (often stories of raids by the
Navajo on the pueblos) related by the Pueblo tribes.
The Navajo--who may have come together as an amalgamation of
several tribal and clan cultures of the Southern Plains to form their own
distinctive culture less than one hundred years before the Spanish Conquest--
are linguistic relatives (Athapascan) of the Apache and are generally
considered to have had, in the16th century, a culture more similar to Plains
nomadic hunter-raiders than to the Pueblo sedentary-agrarian cultures.
The Pueblo tribes grew cotton and wove blankets and garments on a
distinctive pueblo loom hundreds of years before the Spanish arrived (these
weaving skills perhaps brought up by Indians from what is now Mexico and
Central America), yet it was the Spanish who first introduced sheep to the
Southwest.
Harper’s
Index…
Percentage of roads in sub-Saharan Africa that are passable
year-round: 16
Rules of
Thumb…
MAKING
APPLE CIDER
A bushel of apples
will make slightly more than three gallons of cider.
Unusual
Fact of the Day…
The
Rockola jukebox wasn't named for rock music, but rather for its inventor, David
Rockola.
• • • • • • •
Joke-of-the-day
A preacher was walking down the street when he
notices a little boy trying to ring the doorbell but it's just out of his
reach. He watches his efforts for some time and walks over to press the bell.
After he pressed it he leveled down to the boy
and asked' "Now what?" to which the boy turned and shouted, "NOW
WE RUN!!"
Yep, It
Really Happened
WINDSOR
LOCKS, Conn. (UPI)
A woman and her pot-bellied
pig were booted off a Washington, D.C.-bound plane after passengers complained
the pig was disruptive and stinky. The pig, thought to be about 70 pounds, had
been brought aboard the US Airways plane at Bradley International Airport in
Connecticut as an emotional-support animal. Crew members determined the animal
was too disruptive and asked the woman to leave with the pig before the flight
departed. Some people aboard the plane thought the woman was carrying a large
duffle bag over her shoulder. "But it turns out it wasn't a duffel bag. We
could smell it and it was a pig on a leash," Passenger Jonathan Skolnik
told ABC News. "She tethered it to the arm rest next to me and started to
deal with her stuff, but the pig was walking back and forth."
Somewhat
Useless Information
Did
you know that there’s a man in the world, who dived 253.2 meters (831 feet)
deep surpassing his own ‘No Limits’ record?
Herbert
Nitsch from Austria, is the ‘deepest man on Earth’, and has held world records
in all of the eight freediving disciplines recognised by AIDA International,
the Worldwide Federation for breath-hold diving.
First
he set the current world record in the “No Limits” discipline at the depth of
214 meters (702 feet) and till today he has achieved 31 official World Records,
one world record in the traditional Greek discipline of Skandalopetra 107 m
(351 ft), as well as the 253,2 diving in June 2012.
¤
¤
Have
you ever wondered why the voices of announcers and commentators back in 1950
were so oddly and have nothing to do with today’s broadcasting techniques?
Back
then they used to speak in “Transatlantic speech”, which is a specific style of
speaking, or dialect and as O’Berski said:
“It’s an effort to neutralize regional dialects and consciousness of a
particular class”.
Moreover,
the audio receivers of the day couldn’t pick up bass tones!
• • • • • • •
Today’s
Events through History
771 - Charlemagne becomes the sole King of
the Franks after the death of his brother Carloman
1847 - Jefferson Davis is elected to the US
senate, his first political post
1876 - Daniel Stillson (Mass) patents 1st practical
pipe wrench
1951 - "Dragnet" premieres
1967 - Benjamin Spock & Allen Ginsberg
arrested protesting against Vietnam war
1982 - Herschel Walker of Georgia wins Heisman
Trophy
1990 - Salman Rushdie, author, ordered to death by
Iran for blasphemy, appears in public for 1st time in 2 years
1991 - Charles Keating Jr (Lincoln Savings &
Loan fraud), found guilty
• • • • • • •
Birthday’s
Today
Little
Richard [Wayne Penniman], singer-songwriter (Tutti Frutti) is 82
Jim
Messina, rocker (Loggins & Messina-Your Mamma Don't Dance) is
67
Doctor
Dre (Andre Romelle Young), radio personality is 49
Margaret
Cho, actress/comedienne (Face/Off) is 46
Frankie
Muniz, actor (Malcom in the Middle) is 29
Remembered
for being born today
Martin
Van Buren, 8th US president [1782-1862]
George Armstrong Custer, General (Union volunteers), [1839-1876]
Bill Pickett, American rodeo performer [1870-1932]
Walter Elias Disney, Chicago, animator
(Mickey Mouse), [1901-1966]
[Steve James] Strom
Thurmond, (Sen-SC) [1902-2003]
Otto
Preminger, Austria, director/producer (Exodus) [1905-1986]
• • • • • • •
Historical
Obits Today
Nelson
Mandela, anti-apartheid activist, political prisoner, South African
President, 2013, @95
Joseph
Erlanger, American physiologist, Nobel laureate for shock therapy, 1965,
@91
Dave
Brubeck, American jazz pianist, 2012, @91
Claude
Monet, French impressionist, 1926, @86
Nina Foch,
Dutch-born American actress, 2008, @84
James
Stirling, Scot mathematician (Formula of Stirling), 1770, @78
Don
Meredith, American football player and broadcaster, stroke, 2010, @72
Roone
Arledge, sports broadcasting pioneer, cancer, 2002, @71
Alexandre
Dumas, French writer ('The Three Musketeers', 'The Count of Monte
Cristo') 1870, @68
"Shoeless" Joe
Jackson, of baseball's black sox scandal, heart attack, 1951, @64
Richard
Speck, mass murderer, heart attack in prison, 1991, @49
Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart, composer, fever, 1791, @35
• • • • • • •
Brain Teasers Answers
etc.
All the words from GROUP B are all Latin abbreviations used commonly in the
English language, whereas GROUP A, with the exception of "etc." are
all abbreviations from the English language.
a = ante (before)
A.D. = Anno Domini (in the year of the lord, however commonly incorrectly
translated as "after death")
c = circa (about)
e.g. = exempli gratia (for example)
i.e. = id est (that is)
etc. = et cetera (and the rest)
• • • • • • •
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…§
