3-27-15

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Almanac: Week: 13 \ Day: 086 
March Averages: 50°\23°
86004 Today: H 63°\L 32° Average Sky Cover: 10% 
Wind ave:   4mph\Gusts:  26mph
Ave. High: 53° Record High:  70° (1986) Ave. Low: 24° Record Low:  -1° (1975)
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Observances Today:
Celebrate Exchange Day
International Sister Cities Day
National "Joe" Day
Quirky Country Music Song Titles Day
Viagra 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
      26-28

…American Crossword Puzzle Days
…International Listening Weekend
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Quote of the Day 

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US Historical Highlights for Today
1513 - Spaniard Juan Ponce de Leon and his expedition 1st sight Florida
1794 - US establishes a permanent navy\authorizes the building of six frigates
1814 - Battle at Horseshoe Bend: General Andrew Jackson defeats Red Sticks,
part of the Creek Indian tribe near Dadeville, Alabama
1836 - 1st Mormon temple dedicated (Kirtland, Ohio)
1841 - 1st US steam fire engine tested, NYC
1855 - Abraham Gesner patents kerosene
1860 - M L Byrn patents "covered gimlet screw with a 'T' handle" (corkscrew)
1866 - Andrew Rankin patents the urinal
1866 - President Johnson vetoes civil rights bill; it later becomes 14th amendment
1884 - 1st long-distance telephone call, Boston-NY
1912 - 1st Japanese cherry blossom trees planted in Wash DC
1915 - Typhoid Mary [Mary Mallon] is arrested and returned to quarantine
on North Brother Island, New York after spending five years evading
health authorities and causing several further outbreaks of typhoid
1939 - 1st NCAA Men's Basketball Championship: U of Oregon beats OH State 46-33
1941 - Britain leases defense bases in Trinidad to US for 99 years
1948 - Just 11 days after being released from prison, Billie Holiday plays
in front of a sold-out crowd at Carnegie Hall
1952 - "Singin' in the Rain", a musical comedy starring Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor and Debbie Reynolds, is released
1958 - CBS Labs announce new stereophonic records
1958 - Havana Hilton opens
1964 - Earthquake strikes Alaska, 8.4 on Richter scale, 118 die
1973 - 45th Academy Awards - "Godfather", Marlon Brando & Liza Minnelli
win Marlon Brando turns down Oscar for best actor in support of Indians
1976 - Washington DC underground Metro opens
1980 - Mount St Helens becomes active after 123 years
1990 - US begins broadcasting TV Martí to Cuba in an effort to bridge the
information blackout imposed by the Castro regime
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Today’s World Events through History
196 BC - Ptolemy V ascends to the throne of Egypt
1599 - Robert Devereux becomes lt-general of Ireland
1625 - Charles I, King of England, Scotland & Ireland, ascends English throne
1708 - Pretender to the English throne James III flees to Dunkirk
1713 - Spain loses Menorca and Gibraltar to Britain under the Treaty of Utrecht
1790 - The modern shoestring (string and shoe holes) invented in England
1871 - 1st international rugby game-Scotland 1, England 0
1914 - 1st successful blood transfusion (in Brussels)
1931 - Charlie Chaplin receives France's distinguished Legion of Honor
1958 - Nikita Khrushchev becomes Soviet Premier as well as First Secretary
of the Communist Party
1971 - The Alliance Party of Northern Ireland (APNI) holds its first
Annual Conference in the Ulster Hall in Belfast
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  Birthdays Today:
How many can you identify? Answers below in Birthday’s Today


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My Rambling Thoughts
Another nice weather day…spring has sprung. More and more daffodils on my deck with each passing day…tulips are up but no flowers yet. Soon I hope.
Sad news last night that a friend in hospice passed last night with his family in Michigan. He will be missed.
Had a nice lunch with our retirement group. Cheryl is seriously thinking about a trip to Ireland. Mary is still trying to figure out how to travel now that she has 2 little dogs. Not real sure that is the only reason for not traveling.
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Brain Teasers
(answers at the end of post)
Beginning with the word "in," add one letter from the given pool to create a new word until you get a seven-letter word meaning "being in a state of suppressed agitation, worry, or resentment."

Pool: T G E S W

1) IN
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)

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Found on You Tube with some relevance to today
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***NEW***…Education Facts…
-- The University of Victoria offers a course in the science of Batman.
--Before making Finding Nemo, the animation gurus at Pixar Studios had to
take a graduate class in fish biology and oceanography.

…Flagstaff, AZ History…
100 YEARS AGO--1915
Despite the inclement weather, 15 businessmen attended the first meeting of the Flagstaff Businessmen’s Association held in the Director’s Room at Citizens Bank. Ray Babbitt was elected president and the other directors appointed.
With all the snow lying about 3 feet deep, skiing has become popular. Some of the boys have built a ski jump on Observatory Hill, where they are having a jumping good time mostly missing the trees.
Monday morning, Railroad Avenue became a river of booze as Sandy Donahue poured 31 kegs of beer out in front of the Senate Bar. It drew citizens like cabbage stew draws flies as contents of the gurgling kegs stained the snow.

…Harper’s Index…
157
Number of days an Iranian woman spent in prison last year for attending a men’s volleyball game

***NEW***…Memory Facts…
-- Falling in love raises levels of nerve growth in a person's brain for about
a year and can improve their memory.
--In 2010, Gary Richmond was beaten into a coma. He woke up with amnesia
and no memory of his wife of 20 years. Subsequently, he ended up falling in love with her all over again!

***NEW***…Strange State Laws…
--In Los Angeles, you cannot bathe two babies in the same tub at the same time. 
--In Zion, Ill., it is illegal for anyone to give lighted cigars to dogs, cats, and other domesticated animals kept as pets.


…Unusual Fact of the Day…
Picky linguists will tell you that the feminine version of "dude" is
"dudine," not "dudette."
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2 jokes for the day
Why does a chicken coop only have two doors? 
Because if it had four doors it'd be a chicken sedan.

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For a couple years I've been blaming it on lack of sleep and too much pressure from my job, but now I found out the real reason: I'm tired because I'm overworked. 
The population of this country is 237 million. 104 million are retired. That leaves 133 million to do the work. 
There are 85 million in school, which leaves 48 million to do the work. 
Of this there are 29 million employed by the federal government, leaving 19 million to do the work. 
2.8 million are in the Armed Forces, which leaves 16.2 million to do the work. 
Take from the total the 14,800,000 people who work for State and City Governments and that leaves 1.4 million to do the work. 
At any given time there are 188,000 people in hospitals, leaving 1,212,000 to do the work. 
Now, there are 1,211,998 people in prisons. That leaves just two people to do the work. 
You and me. 
And you're sitting at your computer reading jokes.    

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Yep, It Really Happened
NEW YORK (UPI)
A former Home Depot employee says the company fired him over a tattoo of his ex-girlfriend's name -- "Isis," a name derived from a fabled Egyptian goddess. The letters of the inner-lip tattoo are written in capitalized form -- "ISIS" -- giving it the exact spelling of an acronym used to reference the Islamic State, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, a terrorist army of Sunni Muslim extremists who seized large swaths of land last year and publicized several beheadings of Westerners. "I honestly didn't know what the acronym meant until just recently," Kirk Soccorsco told CNN affiliate News 12 Long Island. While working as a Home Depot tool demonstrator in Patchogue, N.Y., Soccorsco said, he overheard the term during a conversation and showed his tattoo to a co-worker. Home Depot and the Florida marketing firm that paid Soccorsco fired him soon after. Soccorsco said both entities told him not to return to the store. Home Depot spokesman Stephen Holmes told News 12 that the termination was "a personnel matter and the decision wasn't just based on the tattoo." Soccorsco contends that he is not a terrorist and that he got the tattoo four years ago. He said he is no longer with the woman whose name is depicted. "I feel a little lost," he said. "It was a good-paying job." Soccorsco is reportedly considering legal action against Home Depot. 
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Somewhat Useless Information
Ten trivia facts about “Infinite Jest”
It is said that ‘Infinite Jest’ by David Foster Wallace is the defining work of the 1990s. The second novel of the author is set in an absurd near-future, and addiction, entertainment, pleasure, commerce, technology, and tennis are some of the themes explored.
Here are ten facts you may ignore about the novel:
– Wallace said “I wanted to do something sad” after his publication in 1996.
– He began writing ‘Infinite Jest’ in earnest in 1991.
– Pietsch suggested that the novel should be cut as it was too long and people would find excuse not to read it.
– By March the book was already in its sixth printing.
– It is said that Wallace used a vocabulary of 20,584 unique words to write the 577,608-word ‘Infinite Jest’.
– ‘But and so and but so’ is considered to be  the longest unbroken series of conjunctions in the text.
– Wallace  hated ‘Infinite Jest’s’ original cover and he said that it looked like the safety booklet on an American Airlines flight.
– Wallace wanted a specific photograph of Fritz Lang directing the cast of ‘Metropolis’ to be used as Infinite Jest‘s cover.
– Michael Pietsch, Wallace’s editor at Little, Brown, told Wallace’s agent, “I want to do this book more than I want to breathe.” after reading 200 pages of ‘Infinite Jest’.
– Wallace said in 1996: “I’ve never been on the Internet,” although ‘Infinite Jest’ can be seen as prophetic regarding the Internet.
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Birthday’s Today
76 - Cale Yarborough, auto racer (Daytona 500-1968, 77, 83, 84)
76 - Judy Carne, comedienne (Laugh-In, Love on a Rooftop)
73 - Michael York, England, actor (Cabaret, Logan's Run, 3 Musketeers)
68 - Tom Sullivan, blind actor (If You Could See What I Hear)
52 - Quentin Tarantino, director/screenwriter (Pulp Fiction)
46 - Pauley Perrette, actress (NCIS), photographer, poet, writer
45 - Mariah Carey, singer (Love Takes Time, Hero)
40 - Fergie Duhamel, pop singer (The Black Eyed Peas)
27 - Brenda Song, Disney actress« »
Remembered for being born today
Claude Bourgelat, French veterinary surgeon 1712-1779@67 
Wilhelm Röntgen, German physicist; discovered X-rays (Nobel) 1845-1923@77 
Thorne Smith, author (Topper, Rain in the Doorway) 1892-1934@42
Gloria Swanson, actress (Sunset Boulevard, Queen Kelly) 1899-1983@84 
Budd Schulberg, novelist (On the Waterfront) 1914-2009@95 
Cyrus R Vance, US Secretary of State (1977-80) 1917-2002@84 
Anthony Lewis, columnist author (Gideon's Trumpet) 1927-2013@85 
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Historical Obits Today
Billy Wilder, American director-2002@95
Milton Berle, American actor and comedian-2002@93
Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, Indian Muslim\ founding father of Pakistan 1898-@ 80
Maurits C Escher, Dutch lithograph carver (Praedestinatie)-1972@73
Dudley Moore, British actor, pneumonia-2002@66
Aldo Ray, western actor (Battle Cry), cancer-1991@64
James VI\I, Scottish born King of Scotland King of England and Ireland-1625@58
Diana Hyland, actress (Peyton Place, 8 is Enough), breast cancer-1977@41
Yuri Gagarin, 1st man to orbit Earth, plane crash-1968@34
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Brain Teasers Answers
1) IN
2) WIN
3) WING
4) SWING
5) SEWING
6) STEWING

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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.