4-17-15

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Almanac: Week: 16 \ Day:  107 
April Averages: 58°\27°
86004 Today: H 43°\L 19° Average Sky Cover: 95% 
Wind ave:   6mph\Gusts:  23mph
Ave. High: 59° Record High:  77° (1946) Ave. Low: 27° Record Low:  16° (1924)
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Observances Today:
Bat Appreciation Day
Blah, Blah, Blah Day
Ellis Island Family History Day
Ford Mustang Day
National Cheeseball Day    
National Day of Silence
National High Five Day
Nothing Like A Dame Day
Pet Owners Independence Day
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Observances This Week:
12-18
American Indian Awareness Week  
Animal Control Officer Appreciation Week
Health Information Privacy and Security Week
International Dark Sky Week
National Animal Control Appreciation Week
National Library Week
National Public Safety Telecommunicators (911 Operators) Week
National Student Employment Week
National Volunteer Week
Pan American Week
Undergraduate Research Week
Week of The Young Child
 
17-19

Cleaning For A Reason Week
Consumer Awareness Week
Global Youth Service Days
International Home Furnishings Market
International Wildlife Film Week
Money Smart Week 

National Infant Immunization Week
National Park Week
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Quote of the Day 

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US Historical Highlights for Today
1492 - Christopher Columbus signs contract with Spain to find Indies
1524 - Giovanni Verrazano, a Florentine navigator, discovers New York Bay
1629 - 1st commercial fishery established
1704 - 1st successful US newspaper; published in Boston by John Campbell
1758 - Francis Williams, 1st US black college graduate, publishes poems
1797 - Sir Ralph Abercromby attacks San Juan, Puerto Rico, in what would be
  one of the largest invasions of Spanish territories in America
1817 - 1st US school for deaf (Hartford, Conn)
1853 - US Marine Hospital at Presidio (SF) forms
1861 - Virginia secedes from the Union (US Civil War)
1865 - Mary Surratt is arrested as a conspirator in Lincoln's assassination
1900 - 7 high chiefs of American Samoa sign Instrument of Cession
1905 - US Supreme Court judges maximum work day unconstitutional
1907 - Ellis Island, NY-11,745 immigrants arrive
1912 - 1st unofficial gold record (Al Jolson's "Ragging The Baby To Sleep")
1920 - American Professional Football Association forms (NFL)
1924 - Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures & Louis B Mayer Co merged to form
  Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM)
1937 - Debut of cartoon characters Daffy Duck, Elmer J Fudd & Petunia Pig
1937 - Project to widen the approach to Oracle Road in Tucson begins.
1951 - NY Yankee Mickey Mantle's 1st game, he goes 1 for 4
1960 - American Samoa sets up a constitutional government
1961 - 1,400 Cuban exiles land in Bay of Pigs-doomed attempt to overthrow Castro
1964 - Ford Mustang formally introduced ($2,368 base)
1969 - Sirhan Sirhan is convicted of assassinating Sen Robert F Kennedy
1970 - Apollo 13 limps back safely, Beech-built oxygen tank no help
1972 - 1st Boston Women's Marathon won by Nina Kuscsik of NY in 3:10:26
1986 - IBM produces 1st megabit-chip
1986 - Pulitzer prize awarded to Larry McMurtry for "Lonesome Dove"
1987 - Julius Erving becomes 3rd NBA player to score 30,000 points
2002 - Four Canadian Forces soldiers are killed in Afghanistan by friendly
  fire from two US Air Force F-16s
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Today’s World Events through History
1397 - Geoffrey Chaucer tells the Canterbury Tales for the first time at the
  court of Richard II. Chaucer scholars have also identified this date
  (in 1387) as when the book's pilgrimage to Canterbury starts
1534 - Sir Thomas More confined in Tower of London
1824 - Russia abandons all North American claims south of 54° 40'N
1875 - Snooker invented by Sir Neville Chamberlain
1975 - Khmer Rouge captures Phnom Penh, Cambodia (Kampuchea Natl Day)
1984 - During Libyan Embassy demonstration in London, British police
  officer Yvonne Fletcher shot dead
2013 - Same-sex marriage is legalized in New Zealand
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Birthdays Today:
How many can you identify? Answers below in Birthday’s Today 

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My Rambling Thoughts
Interesting day. Mary texted me a picture of her brand new Honda. Very nice…bright red. Her first new car in over a decade.
I emailed a letter to the head of AZ CenturyLink. I spent some time thinking about it yesterday, wrote it this morning, waited a little while, re-read it then emailed it to him. Don’t know if it will change CenturyLink, but I sure felt better.  Summary was that I should have been able to get faster internet with a 5 minute call, not 10 calls over 15 days with no solution available. Explained that as a shareholder and a longtime customer, he needed to know how his people were dealing with this customer and probably others. I’ll see.
I had a little problem with my internet. Occasionally a site wouldn’t load and I’d get a message that I was not connected to the internet. Then in a few seconds, the message would disappear and everything was fine. I called repair service to see if I needed to change a setting on my computer with this superfast internet. A very nice lady reset my modem and changed the channel for my wifi. She said it was a common problem with new modems. The rest of today it has worked much faster than before and no messages. Happy camper here.
While technology has taken over so much of our lives, I am still stunned when something doesn’t work. Yesterday a guy flew a gyrocopter onto the Capitol lawn in DC. Really?!? Lots of ‘what if’s’ in the news. I see it as another wakeup call that things don’t always go as planned.
It was overcast most of the day as another cold front moves through. We even had a little light frozen rain.
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Brain Teasers
(answers at the end of post)
Complete the series by making a selection from the pool.

Series: Hermes, Aphrodite, Gaea, Ares, Zeus, Cronus, Uranus, Poseidon, ?

Pool: Athena, Dionysus, Eros, Hades, Hephaestus, Hera

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Found on You Tube with some relevance to today
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…Flagstaff, AZ History…
50 YEARS AGO-1965
~ Cross country skiing on a 20-inch packed base can be found at Bill William’s Mountain. The Snow Bowl has 3 feet of new snow at the Lodge and 10-12 inches up top. Chains are required for the road and night skiing is available on Friday and Saturday  from 6 to 10 p.m.
~  A record-breaking 25 inches of heavy, wet snow fell in town last week giving us 3.21 inches of moisture. Lake Mary is filling. -- H. 46 Tues. L. 25 Wed.
~ The heavy snowfall has put the lumber mills in difficulties as the logging trails are quagmires. Some 240 men are temporarily out of work.

…Harper’s Index…
1.2: number of prison inmates per 1000 people in China
4.8: in Russia
13.4: in Louisiana, US

…Language Facts…
~ There are only four words in the English language which end in “dous”:
tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.
~ The Bible has been translated into Klingon.

… Sea Facts…
~ Sea otters hold hands while sleeping so they don’t drift away from each other.
~ It's impossible to sink in the Dead Sea without equipment!

…Unusual Fact of the Day…
Florence Nightingale is not only known as a founder of modern nursing, but also as a statistician, having developed the polar area diagram.

…Water Facts..,.
~ Hot water can freeze faster than cold water.
~ Pure water (H2O) does not conduct electricity on its own.

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2 jokes for the day
A speeding driver was pulled over by a policeman.
He asked, "Why was I pulled over when I wasn't the only one speeding."
The police replied, "Have you ever been fishing?"
The man then said, "yes".
"Have you ever caught all the fish?" asked the policeman
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One night a police officer was staking out a particularly rowdy bar for possible DUI violations. 
At closing time, he saw a fellow tumble out of the bar, trip on the curb, and try his keys in five different cars before he found his. 
Then he sat in the front seat fumbling around with his keys for several minutes. Everyone else left the bar and drove off. 
Finally he started his engine and began to pull away. The police officer was waiting for him. He stopped the driver, read him his rights and administered the Breathalyzer test. 
The results showed a reading of 0.0. The puzzled officer demanded to know how that could be. 
The driver replied, "Tonight I'm the designated decoy.”        

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Yep, It Really Happened
LEESBURG, Ga. (UPI) - Police in Georgia said a bullet fired at an armadillo ricocheted off the animal's armored hide and struck the shooter's mother-in-law. The Lee County Sheriff's Office said Larry McElroy, 54, fired his 9 mm pistol at an armadillo Sunday night and the bullet bounced off the animal's armored skin and went through a fence, a door and a chair to strike mother-in-law Carol Johnson, 74, in the back.
Investigators said McElroy was about 100 yards away from Johnson's home when he fired the shot, which killed the armadillo. Bill Smith, an investigator with the sheriff's office, said Johnson was not severely injured.
"She was walking around on her own power and talking," Smith told WALB-TV. "It didn't appear to be too severe. They took her to Phoebe North [hospital]."
He described the case, which did not lead to any arrests or citations, as bizarre. "Just the circumstances, just all the way around, the whole situation was unusual," Smith said. Smith said shooting at nuisance armadillos is not against the law, but McElroy might want to use a different gun next time. "I really think if they're going to shoot at varmints and whatnot, maybe use a shotgun... with a spread pattern with a lot less range," Smith said. Armadillos are often seen as a nuisance by those whose lawns and gardens have been targeted by the skilled diggers.
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Somewhat Useless Information
1. The logo of the popular American TV series “Friends” has an -unnoticeable at first glance- connection with the 6 umbrellas used by the actors in the title song.
What’s their connection?
The color of the dots between the F.R.I.E.N.D.S logo is the same with the one of the 6 umbrellas used by the characters in the title song.
2. The “Friend” that is credited first is Jennifer Aniston (aka. Rachel).
And then they follow her in credits (listed by their character name): Monica, Phoebe, Joey, Chandler, and finally, Ross.
3. The “Friend” that turns off the lights at the end of credits is Monica.
4. The theme song, entitled “I’ll be there for you” was recorded specifically for the needs of the show by the band “The Rembrandts”.
+++
There is a programming language called ‘Whitespace’
‘Whitespace’ is an esoteric programming language developed by Edwin Brady and Chris Morris at the University of Durham and was released on 1 April 2003.
The remarkable characteristic of this language is that unlike most programming languages, which ignore or assign little meaning to most whitespace characters, the Whitespace interpreter ignores any non-whitespace characters.
Only spaces, tabs and linefeeds have meaning!
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Birthday’s Today
64 - Olivia Hussey, Buenos Aires, actress (Romeo & Juliet, Death on Nile)
56 - Sean Bean, English actor (The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, A Game of Thrones)
54 - Boomer Esiason, NFL quarterback (Jets, Bengals)\commentator
43 - Jennifer Garner [Affleck], actress (Sydney Bristow-Alias)
41 - Victoria Beckham [Adams], English singer (Posh Spice-Spice Girls)
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Remembered for being born today
Marguerite Bourgeoys, founder-1st Canadian saint 1620-1700@79 
Thornton N Wilder, US, novelist/playwright (Our Town) 1897-1975@78
– Karen Blixen (pseudo:Isak Dinesen), Dane, writer (Out of Africa) 1885-1962@77
Don Kirshner, rock & roll producer (invented bubblegum music) 1934-2011@76 
J. P. Morgan, banker/CEO (US Steel Corporation) 1837-1913@75 
William R. Day, American diplomat and Justice-Supreme Court 1849-1923@74 
Harry Reasoner, newscaster (60 Minutes, ABC, CBS) 1923-1991@68 
Robert Blair, Scottish poet (Grave) 1699-1746@47 
- [Lee] Alexander McQueen, fashion designer1969-2010@40 
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Historical Obits Today
Kateri Tekakwitha, Algonquin–Mohawk-1st Native American to receive
  beatification-1680@23ish
Benjamin Franklin, US, US Founding Father-1790@84
Eddie Cochran, rocker, car crash-1960@21
Frank McGee, Today show host, cancer-1974@52
Dick Shawn, comedian (Producers), heart attack on stage-1987@57
Ralph David Abernathy, US civil rights leader, blood clots-1990@64
Linda McCartney, American photographer\wife of Paul McCartney,
  cancer-1998@57
Kitty Carlisle, American actress and television personality-2007@97
Gabriel García Márquez, Colombian novelist, (1982 Nobel Prize)
 pneumonia-2014@87
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Brain Teasers Answers
The series is the equivalent Greek names for the planets, which are Roman. When the Romans assimilated Greek mythology, they renamed many of the Greek gods.

Mercury = Hermes
Venus = Aphrodite
Earth = Gaea *
Mars = Ares
Jupiter = Zeus
Saturn = Cronus
Uranus = Uranus **
Neptune = Poseidon

thus

Pluto = Hades

* Although earth is not a Roman god, Gaea is Mother Earth in Greek mythology.
** The Romans did not change the name of the Greek Uranus.

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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.