3-25-15

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Almanac: Week: 13 \ Day: 084 
March Averages: 50°\23°
86004 Today: H 63°\L 27° Average Sky Cover: 60% 
Wind ave:   4mph\Gusts:  18mph
Ave. High: 52° Record High:  72° (1988) Ave. Low: 24° Record Low:  1° (1913)
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Observances Today:
International Day of Remembrance of The Victims of Slavery
International Day of Solidarity with Detained and Missing Staff Members
Manatee Appreciation Day
National Day of Celebration of Greek & American Democracy
National Medal of Honor Day
Old New Year's Day
Pecan Day
Tolkien Reading Day
Vaffeldagen (Waffle Day)
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Observances This Week:
      22-28
…Week of Solidarity with People's Struggling Against Racism & Discrimination
…Consider Christianity Week
…International Phace Syndrome Awareness Week

…Meat Free Week
…National Cleaning Week
National LGBT Health Awareness Week

…National Youth Violence Prevention Week
…Pediatric Nurse Practioner Week
…Root Canal Awareness Week
...Tsunami Awareness Week
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Quote of the Day 

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US Historical Highlights for Today
1668 - 1st horse race in America takes place
1813 - 1st US flag flown in battle on the Pacific, frigate Essex
1851 - Yosemite Valley discovered in California
1881 - Water appeared in the rich silver mines of Tombstone.
1882 - 1st demonstration of pancake making (Dept store in NYC)
1900 - US Socialist Party forms in Indianapolis
1913 - Great Dayton Flood
1916 - Women are allowed to attend a boxing match
1919 - Woodrow Wilson's dream of a League of Nations becomes a reality
after the League Covenant is adopted at the Paris Peace Conference
1931 - Scottsboro Boys (accused of raping a white woman) arrested in Alabama
1937 - It is revealed Quaker Oats pays Babe Ruth $25,000 per year for ads
1939 - Billboard Magazine introduces hillbilly (country) music chart
1954 - RCA manufactures 1st color TV set (12½" screen at $1,000)
1955 – US Customs seizes copies of Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl" as obscene
1960 - DH Lawrence' "Lady Chatterley's Lover" ruled not obscene (NYC)
1967 - Who & Cream make US debut at Murray the K's Easter Show
1972 - UCLA wins its 6th consecutive national basketball title
1982 - 1st broadcast of "Cagney & Lacey" on CBS-TV
1b996 - US issues newly-redesigned $100 bill
2013 - Golfer Tiger Woods returns to his world number one ranking
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Today’s World Events through History
  421 - City of Venice founded
1199 - Richard I, Lion Heart, King o f England, is wounded by a crossbow
bolt while fighting France which leads to his death on April 6.
1306 - Robert the Bruce crowned Robert I, King of Scots, having killed his
rival John Comyn, Lord of Badenoch
1609 - Henry Hudson embarks on an exploration for Dutch East India Co
1634 - Under charter granted to Lord Baltimore and led by his brother
Leonard Calvert first settlers found Catholic colony of Maryland
1655 - Christiaan Huygens discovers Titan (Saturn's largest satellite)
1669 - Mount Etna in Sicily erupts, destroying Nicolosi, killing 20,000
1811 - Percy Bysshe Shelley is expelled from the University of Oxford
for his publication of the pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism.
1821 - Greece gains independence from Turkey (National Day)
1876 - Glasgow 1st soccer match Scotland-Wales (4-0)
1895 - Italian troops invade Abyssinia (Ethiopia)
1896 - Modern Olympics began in Athens, Greece
1902 - In Russia, 567 students are tried for rioting and 'political disaffection'
are found guilty; 95 are banished to Siberia
1964 - Egypt ends state of siege (1952-64)
1968 - Members of the Derry Housing Action Committee (DHAC) disrupt a meeting of Londonderry Corporation to protest at the lack of housing provision in the city, Northern Ireland
1970 - Concorde makes its 1st supersonic flight (700 MPH/1,127 KPH)
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  Birthdays Today:
How many can you identify? Answers below in Birthday’s Today


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My Rambling Thoughts
Decided that today was the day to gather up paperwork for my taxes and get them to my accountant. That took most of the morning. I don’t know why I hate doing this, but I always have. As stuff comes in the mail, I have a special envelope for the stuff, but somehow it never all makes it into the envelope. Anyway, I’ll drop all the papers off tomorrow and await the final decision. I also had to go through a year’s worth of bank statements and credit card bills to find all the medical expenses…much less thanks to Medicare...no more copay. Also, thanks to Walgreens for giving me a printout of my scripts with totals. My meds cost me less than $500 this year, but would have cost about $6000 if I didn’t have good insurance. That’s nice too. Such a shame that my travel is not tax deductible…LOL.
I don’t mind paying my fair share of taxes. What I hate is having to gather up all the receipts to determine the deductions. I’m one who believes in a flat tax system where we simply pay a fair percentage of our income for the privilege of living here.
As a single, I pay way more than others—percentage wise—just because I choose to be single. That doesn’t seem fair.
Our local paper seldom prints news from the Rez. Today headlines talked about a principal from a Rez school who has been fired, but refuses to leave. It is a school I had been sent to 3 different times when other principals left in the middle of the year. Smiling as I read the article..names change but facts and misfacts continue. So happy to be retired… or I’d be heading out there again.
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Brain Teasers
(answers at the end of post)
Can you figure out which well-known oxymorons these words are?
Ex) Initial facsimile = original copy

1) discovered lost
2) bigger part
3) sugary sour
4) sad humor
5) solitary in company


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Found on You Tube with some relevance to today
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…Average Facts…
-- The average cat sleeps about 2/3 of the day.
--On average, there's 300 billion neurons in the octopus brain.

…Education Facts…
-- American school children rank 25th in math and 21st in science out of the top 30 developed countries, but ranked 1st in confidence that they outperformed everyone else.
--In 2014, a college in upstate New York started offering classes on the sociology of Miley Cyrus.

…Flagstaff, AZ History…
25 YEARS AGO
--The price of gasoline has risen from $ 1.13 due to the extreme cold and the rise in use of heating oil.
--We hear that all the Yellow Front stores are to close.

…Game Facts…
-- In response to the moral panic surrounding violent video games, Penn & Teller released “Desert Bus,” for the Sega Cd. In the game you drive a bus from Tuscon to Las Vegas in a straight line for 8 hours.
--The chocobo in Final Fantasy was based on a real creature called a “Gastornis” that existed 45 million years ago.

…Harper’s Index…
1
Number of homelsspeople in Tokyo for every 10,000 residents
67
In NYC

…Unusual Fact of the Day…
The city of Austin, Texas, was originally named "Waterloo."
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2 jokes for the day
Did you hear about the red ship and the blue ship that collided? 
The survivors were marooned.

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A man and a woman who have never met before find themselves in the same sleeping carriage of a train. 
After the initial embarrassment, they both manage to get to sleep; the woman on the top bunk, the man on the lower. 
In the middle of the night the woman leans over and says, "I'm sorry to bother you, but I'm awfully cold and I was wondering if you could possibly pass me another blanket." 
The man leans out and with a glint in his eye said "I've got a better idea ... let's pretend we're married." 
"Why not," giggles the woman. 
"Good," he replies. "Get your own blanket."     

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Yep, It Really Happened
CAMBRIDGE, England
A new study finds that consciously trying to remember something forces another memory to weaken.
Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom had 24 participants intentionally associate certain words and images while in a brain scanner. By taking count of which associations they were able to recall over several stages of testing, they were able to demonstrate how certain memories remained and others weakened. They found trying to remember certain associations made other associations more difficult to recall.
"People are used to thinking of forgetting as something passive," said Dr. Michael Anderson from the University of Cambridge. "Our research reveals that people are more engaged than they realize in shaping what they remember of their lives. The idea that the very act of remembering can cause forgetting is surprising, and could tell us more about selective memory and even self-deception."
"Forgetting is often viewed as a negative thing, but of course, it can be incredibly useful when trying to overcome a negative memory from our past," said Dr. Maria Wimber from the University of Birmingham. "So there are opportunities for this to be applied in areas to really help people."
The study is published in Nature Neuroscience.          

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Somewhat Useless Information
How many hours of formal music education did Hans Zimmer have?
Hans Florian Zimmer is a successful German film composer and music producer, who has composed music for over 150 films, including award-winning film scores for The Lion King (1994), Crimson Tide (1995), The Thin Red Line (1998), Gladiator (2000), The Last Samurai (2003), The Dark Knight (2008), Inception (2010), and 12 Years a Slave (2013).
However, although he is a music genius having composed more than 150 film soundtracks, he had only two weeks of formal music education, having piano lessons as a child, as he disliked the discipline of formal lessons.
“My father died when I was just a child, and I escaped somehow into the music and music has been my best friend”, he said in an interview with the German television station ZDF in 2006.
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Birthday’s Today
87 - James A Lovell Jr, astronaut (Gemini 7, 12, Apollo 8, 13)
81 - Gloria Steinem, Toledo Ohio, US feminist/publisher (Ms Magazine)
75 - Anita Bryant, singer (George Gobel Show)\anti-homosexuality campaigner
73 - Aretha Franklin, Soul Sister #1/singer (Respect)
72 - Paul Michael Glaser, actor (Starsky-Starsky & Hutch)
68 – Sir Elton John, [Reginald Kenneth Dwight], singer (Rocketman)
62 - Mary Gross, actress/comedian (SNL, Club Paradise, Feds)
55 - Haywood Nelson, actor (Haywood-Grady, Dwayne-What's Happening)
50 - Sarah Jessica Parker, actress (Square Pegs, Sex and the City)
41 - Lark Voorhies, actress (Saved by the Bell)
33 - Danica Patrick, American race car driver
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Remembered for being born today
Eileen Ford, co-founder (Ford Modelling Agency) 1922-2014@92
Bella Spewack, Hungary, playwright (Kiss Me Kate) 1899-1990@91 
Arturo Toscanini, Parma Italy, temperamental conductor (NBC) 1867-1957@89 
Howard Cosell, sportscaster (Monday Night Football) 1918-1995@77 
Béla Bartok, Hungary, composer/pianist 1881-1945@64 
John Winebrenner, US, clergyman, founded Church of God 1797-1860@63 
Hoyt Axton, actor (Black Stallion, Junkman, Rousters) 1938-1999@61 
William Keith Brooks, US marine zoologist (marine animals) 1848-1908@59 
Howard Pyle, (Gov-R-Az, 1951-55) 1906-1911@58
Jack Ruby, killer of Lee Harvey Oswald1911-1967@55
Flannery O'Connor, GA, novelist (A Good Man is Hard to Find) 1925-1964@39
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Historical Obits Today
Anthony Lewis, journalist (Pulitzer Prize 1957,1963) -2013@85
Larry Stevenson [Richard], American skateboard innovator-2012@81
Buck Owens, singer and television personality, heart attack-2006@76
Nancy Walker, actress (Ida Morgenstern-Rhoda), cancer-1992@69
Claude Debussy, French composer (Iberia/La Mer), cancer, 1918@55
Ishi ("the last of his tribe"-Yahi), TB-1916@54
John Drinkwater, English poet/playwright (Bird in Hand)-1937@54
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Brain Teasers Answers
1) found missing
2) larger half
3) sweet tart
4) tragic comedy
5) alone together

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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…§

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Flagstaff, Arizona, United States
I retired in '06--at the ripe old age of 57. I enjoy blogging, photography, traveling, and living life to it's fullest.