FYI:
Any blue text is a link. Click to check it out!
Almanac: Week: 51 \ Day: 351
December
Averages: 44°\17°
86004 Today: H 44°\L 27°
Ave. humidity: 52% Average Sky Cover: 80%
Wind ave: 4mph\Gusts: 22mph
Ave. High: 43° Record
High: 65° (1980)
Ave. Low: 16° Record
Low: -14° (1928)
Holiday Observances
Today:
Saturnalia (17-23-Ancient Roman Festival to deity
Saturn)
¤ ¤
National Maple Syrup Day
Take a New Year's Resolution to Stop Smoking
(TANYRSS)
Wright
Brothers Day
Observances This
Week:
10-17
Human
Rights Week
14-20
Gluten-free
Baking Week
14-28
Halcyon
Days
15-31
Christmas Bird Count Week
16-24
Posadas
17-24
Chanukah
Saturnalia
• • • • • • •
Quote of
the Day
Historical
Highlights for Today
1538 - Pope Paul III excommunicates England's
King Henry VIII
1728 - Congregation Shearith Israel of NY purchases
a lot, to build NY's 1st synagogue
1790 - Aztec calendar stone discovered in Mexico
City
1821 - Kentucky abolishes debtors' prisons
1852 - 1st Hawaiian cavalry organized
1862 - General Ulysses S. Grant issues order
#11, expelling Jews from Tennessee
1865 - Franz Schubert's "Unfinished
Symphony" premieres
1903 - At 10:35 AM, 1st sustained motorized
aircraft flight (Orville Wright)
1936 - Ventriloquist Edgar Bergen & dummy
Charlie McCarthy, appear on TV
1941 - German troops led by Rommel begin
retreating in North Africa
1947 - NY struck by a blizzard, resulting with
27" of snow
1965 - Astrodome opens, 1st event is Judy
Garland & Supremes concert
1965 - Largest newspaper-Sunday NY Times at 946
pages (50 cents)
1983 - Provisional IRA bombs Harrods in London,
killing 6 people and injuring 90
2013 - Angela Merkel is elected Chancellor of
Germany for a third term
2013
- Cat Stevens, Hall & Oates, Kiss, Linda Ronstadt,
and Nirvana are inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
• • • • • • •
♫
Birthdays Today: ♫
How many can you identify? Answers below in Birthday’s Today
My
Rambling Thoughts
Nice day for awaiting a storm. Got a little shopping done early,
then watched the clouds come in. Not any too warm today for sure.
My brother sent me a note today to be sure and bring a sweater to
Merida as the nights are a little chilly—I checked the internet machine and
found that ‘chilly’ is different for everyone. The evening lows in Merida are
in the mid 60’s. Much warmer than our
warmest day in a long time.
I think many Americans are finally realizing that anything done
electronically is far from secure…including very old emails. The Sony hack has
certainly opened up a lot of questions. And sadly there are no answers to any
of the questions. My retirement friend, Mary, got a phone call from someone
claiming to be from Microsoft and telling her that her laptop was being used to
spread malware across the internet. She asked what I thought were the right
questions and got good answers and let the caller onto her computer where he
showed her the problems. Then he offered to ‘fix’ the problem for $199. She
said no and hung up. She turned off her computer and disconnected the internet
connection and is taking the computer to her tech guy today. Can’t wait to find
out the answer. We both agree that it is doubtful that Microsoft would call
her. Now she is worried that the guy who called and got onto her computer may
have left something she doesn’t want.
Every culture has its own definition of ‘humor’. And Americans
have some very twisted ideas that fall into the ‘humor’ category. One CNN
correspondent just talked about the cyber-attack and Sony and the reaction of
other movie studios. Her point was that Sony found humor in a plot that was to assassinate
a world leader. That plot should not be funny to anyone. She felt that Sony was
wrong to make this less than stellar movie and that other movie companies are
not jumping up and down about the cyber-attack, not out of fear but instead
that Sony should never have made a movie like this….interesting. During WWII,
there were several American movies made that made fun of Hitler, but I don’t
recall any that were comedies about assassinating him.
• • • • • • •
Brain
Teasers
(answers at the end of post)
Can
you tell me what word goes in front of all of these words?
river
belly
stone
pages
Found on
You Tube with some relevance to today
OK Then…
• • • • • • •
Paraphernalia
4 the Brain:
December
Holiday Facts
* Christmas Carol videos in Native Languages
Note: Yuchi (Euchee) is the language of the Yuchi people living in the
southeastern United States, including eastern Tennessee, western Carolinas,
northern Georgia
*Christmas-Christian
¤ Puritan Oliver Cromwell outlawed Christmas celebrations and
carols in England from 1649-1660. The only celebrations allowed were sermons
and prayers.
¤ Wassail is from the Old Norse ves heill, meaning
“good health.”
*Hanukkah-Jewish
According to Chanukah tradition, the candles on the candelabrum
should not blow out until the end of the festival.
*Kwanza-African-American
The
Symbols
The candleholder (kinara) should be placed on a table. First, the
table should be covered with a piece of African cloth, preferably with the
black, red and green colors. Then a straw mat (mkeka)
is placed on the table. The candleholder is then placed on the mat. For every
child an ear of corn (muhindi) is also placed on the mat. Even if there are no children
in the family, there should be two ears of corn. This is because in African
culture every adult is meant to be a social parent to all the children in the
community. There is also a cup known as the cup of unity (kikombe cha umoja).
Flagstaff,
AZ History…
FROM 1889
Mr. N. B. Whitaker brought from California a carload of rams for
the eastern market but on account of the severe storms in New Mexico and
Colorado they were unloaded here temporarily.
Flagstaff’s
Iconic 50…
The Pluto
Blink Comparator
Historically, when astronomers wanted to make discoveries in the
night sky, they would use a blink comparator to look at two photographic
plates. It allowed for switching from viewing one photograph to viewing the
other, blinking back and forth between two images of the night sky shot at two
different times. This allowed astronomers to see the objects that changed
position.
And the most famous blink comparator is on display at Lowell
Observatory. It discovered the planet Pluto. Clyde Tombaugh used the device to
find the ninth named planet of the Solar System on Feb. 18, 1930.
Harper’s
Index…
Number of attempted cyber-attack the average global company
experienced in 2013: 16,856
Rules of
Thumb…
FOLLOWING
BACKFIRES
If a gasoline engine
backfires through the carburetor, the mixture is too lean. If it backfires
through the tailpipe, it is too rich.
Unusual Fact of the
Day…
The
Hudson's Bay Company (now known as "The Bay" or "HBC") is
the oldest commercial corporation in North America, having been incorporated on
May 2nd, 1670, by British royal charter under King Charles II.
• • • • • • •
Joke-of-the-day
If pro is the opposite of con, what's the
opposite of progress?
Congress!
Yep, It
Really Happened
A Largo, Florida man was hospitalized overnight after being shot
just before midnight in what authorities said was a game between two men
pointing loaded guns at each other.
Apparently there is not much to do in Largo after ten o'clock.
According to the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office, 23-year-old Tony Roe was
rushed to the hospital after being shot in the chest.
Deputies responded to the home after Roe and 19-year-old Dylan Harvey engaged
in a game in which they were playing with a loaded revolver by rolling the
chamber then taking turns pointing the gun at each other.
At one point when Harvey had the gun, it fired, striking Roe.
The sheriff's office is calling the shooting accidental - for now. An
investigation is ongoing.
Roe is expected to survive his injuries.
Somewhat
Useless Information
¤
In A.D. 610, while baking bread, an Italian monk decided to create a treat to
motivate his distracted catechism students. He rolled out ropes of dough,
twisted them to resemble hands crossed on the chest in prayer, and baked them. The
monk named his snacks pretiola, Latin for "little reward." Parents
who tried them referred to them as brachiola, or "little arms." When
pretiola arrived in Germany, they were called bretzels.
¤ The phrase "tying the knot" came from the Swiss, who still incorporate
the lucky pretzel in wedding ceremonies. Newlyweds traditionally make a wish
and break the pretzel, in the same way people in other cultures break a
wishbone or a glass.
¤ Hard pretzels were "invented" in the late 1600s, when a napping
apprentice in a Pennsylvania bakery accidentally overbaked his pretzels. His
job was spared when the master baker took a bite out of one and loved it.
¤ Until the 1930s, pretzels were handmade, and the average worker could twist
40 a minute. In 1935, the Reading Pretzel Machinery Company introduced the
first automated pretzel machine, which enabled large bakeries to make 245
pretzels per minute, or five tons in a day.
¤ Julius Sturgis opened the first commercial pretzel bakery in Lititz,
Pennsylvania, in 1861. He received his original pretzel recipe as a thank you
from a down-on-his-luck job seeker after Sturgis gave the man dinner.
¤ Pretzel bakers may have been the first to advertise "We deliver!"
Medieval street vendors carried pretzels on a stick and sold them to the
locals.
• • • • • • •
Today’s
Events through History
1875 - Violent bread riots in Montreal
1975 - Lynette Fromme sentenced to life for attempt
on US President Ford's life
1978 - OPEC raises oil prices 18%
• • • • • • •
Birthday’s
Today
Pope
Francis [Jorge Mario Bergoglio], 1st Jesuit pope, 1st from the Americas, 1st
non-European pope since the Syrian Gregory III in 741 is 78
Wes Studi, full-blood
Cherokee actor (Last of the Mohicans) is 67
Barry
Livingston, actor (Ernie-My 3 Sons) is 61
Bill
Pullman, actor (Sommersby) is 61
Chuck
Liddell, American mixed martial artist is 45
Milla
Jovovich, Kiev Ukraine, actress (Return to Blue Lagoon, Chaplin) is
38
Remembered
for being born today
John
Greenleaf Whittier, US, poet (Snow-bound) [1807-1892@84]
Arthur
Fiedler, Boston Mass, conductor (Boston Pops) [1894-1979@84]
Willard
Frank Libby, Grand Valley Colorado, chemist (carbon-14 "atomic
clock" - Nobel 1960) [1908-1980@71]
Richard
Long, actor (Prof-Nanny & the Professor) [1927-1974@47]
William
Safire, political columnist\speech writer (Nixon), 1929-2009@79]
Bob
Guccione, [Robert C J Edwa], publisher (Penthouse), [1930-2010@79)
Bob
Mathias, American decathlete and congressman [1935-2006@75]
George
Lindsey, American actor (The Andy Griffith Show), [1935-2012@83]
• • • • • • •
Historical
Obits Today
Daniel K. Inouye, Hawaii politician,
2012, @88
Jack
Anderson, American journalist, 2005, @83
Dana
Andrews, US actor (Laura), 1992, @83
Kelvin of
Largs, [William Thomson], Br physicist (Kelvin), 1907, @83
Rex Allen,
American actor, singer and songwriter, heart attack, 1999, @78
Kim
Jong-il, supreme leader of North Korea (DPRK), heart attack, 2011, @70
Simón
BolÃvar, S.A. revolutionary\president (Colombia), TB, 1830, @47
• • • • • • •
Brain Teasers Answers
Yellow.
Yellow River, yellow belly means a coward, Yellowstone National Park and of
course the good old Yellow Pages.
• • • • • • •
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…§
