5-14-15

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Almanac: Week: 20 \ Day: 134
May Averages: 68°\35°
86004 Today: H 70°\L 42° Average Sky Cover: 25% 
Wind ave:   11mph\Gusts:  25mph
Ave. High: 67° Record High:  82° (1938) Ave. Low: 34° Record Low:  21° (1942)
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Observances Today:
Buddah Day
Dance Like a Chicken Day
International Migratory Bird Day
Jamestown Founding Day-1607
National Chicken Dance Day
National Train Day
National Windmill Day (Netherlands)
Stay Up All Night Night
The Stars and Stripes Forever Day
Underground America Day –since 1964
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Observances This Week:
10-16
American Craft Beer Week           National Transportation Week
Food Allergy Awareness Week               National Women's Health Week
National Bike to Work Week                   Neuropathy Awareness Week

National Hospital Week                Reading is Fun Week 
National Etiquette Week               Salute to Moms 35+ Week

National Nursing Home Week                 Salvation Army Week
National Police Week                            Universal Family Week

National Return To Work Week               Work At Home Moms Week
National Stuttering Awareness Week
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Quote of the Day 

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US Historical Highlights for Today
1767 - British government disbands Americans import duty on tea
1787 -Delegates gather in Philadelphia to draw up US constitution
1804 - Meriwether Lewis & William Clark's expedition commissioned
  by Thomas Jefferson sets out from St Louis for Pacific Coast
1878 - Vaseline is first sold (registered trademark for petroleum jelly)
1894 - Fire in Boston bleachers spreads to 170 adjoining buildings
1933 - University of Arizona Board of Regents dropped 66 teachers
  and cut salaries of others from 5 to 15 percent in a cost-saving move.
  Tempe dropped 11, gave leave to three more, and saw its president resign.
1949 - Harry Truman signs bill establishing a rocket test range at Cape Canaveral
1973 - Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, last airs on NBC-TV
1974 - Symbionese Liberation Army destroyed in shoot-out, 6 killed
1976 - Lowell Thomas ends 46 years as radio network reporter
1980 - Dept of Health & Human Services begins operation
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Today’s World Events through History
1643 - Louis XIV becomes King of France age 4
1811 - Paraguay gains independence from Spain (National Day)
1889 - The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children
  (NSPCC) is launched in London.
1907 - Sweden adopts universal suffrage for elections to its lower
  house and proportional representation for both houses
1908 - 1st passenger flight in an airplane
1940 - Nazis bomb Rotterdam (600-900 dead), Netherlands surrenders to Germany
1955 - Warsaw Pact is signed by the Soviet Union, Albania, Bulgaria,
  Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland & Romania
1989 - Demonstration for democratic reforms in Beijing's Tiananmen square
2013 - Brazil becomes the 15th country to legalize same-sex marriage
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Birthdays Today:
How many can you identify? Answers below in Birthday’s Today 

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My Rambling Thoughts
Nice, but windy day. It is Palindrome Week—5-11-15 through 5-19-15 is the same date forwards or backwards…Cool!
I met with two former teachers and as it turns out two former students last night. The two former students were in one of my 3rd grade classes back at Shonto in the early 1970’s. One lady is a retired Marine and now the top auditor for tax collection on the Navajo Nation; the other lady has a Master’s in Environmental Science & an MBA and owns her own business consulting firm. Both have equally successful kids. Both grew up in hogans…no running water, no electricity, hauling wood. They wanted to let the three of us know how much their early education meant. Very cool to say the least.
Ran some weekly errands, including Sam’s Club. Usually get there just as they open but today I was about an hour late. Never again. Parking lot was filled, registers had lots of people. Good for Sam’s, but takes a long time to get in and out.
I was late because just as I was leaving my former financial advisor called with an update. Her former business manager really just keeps screwing her. Turns out my advisor just got a letter from an insurance company about her account. While she also sold long term care insurance policies while in Flag, she never did it for this company. Yet she has clients and somebody has been making money on those accounts for years—using her SS#, business license #, just having money deposited into an account she doesn’t have. Crazy!
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Brain Teasers
(answers at the end of post)
This list of words reveals a person. Can you figure out who it is?

Ptarmigan
Aisle
Dossier
Depot
Column
Lime
February

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Found on You Tube with some relevance to today
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**NEW**…Body Facts…
When you wake up with a jolt, it's called a Hypnic Jerk. This usually happens during the lightest stages of sleep, and can happen as a natural reaction when you fall asleep in a car or airplane.

Singing exercises your heart, lungs, and releases endorphins which make you feel good.

…Cat Facts…
A cat rubs against people not only to be affectionate but also to mark out its territory with scent glands around its face. The tail area and paws also carry the cat's scent.

The costliest cat ever is named Little Nicky, who cost his owner $50,000. He is a clone of an older cat.

…Cool Facts…
Scientists have been able to recreate conversations that were held behind a soundproof glass wall by recording the vibrations seen on a potato chip bag.

China is building an ultra-modern car-free city that'll house 80,000 people in "high-rise core housing". It's entirely walkable and surrounded by green space. It's designed to use less water, create less waste, and generate less carbon dioxide than a normal city.

…Flagstaff, AZ History…
100 YEARS AGO-1915
A club for the study of Esperanto, the universal language, is being held at the parsonage on Monday evenings. Esperanto is fast becoming the language medium of exchange among the various nations.

Charles Stenmer clumped in over the road from Sedona on Tuesday, saying the road is badly wrinkled since it has begun to dry out.

Standard Oil is now offering a new Perfection Oil or Gas Cook Stove. It burns either oil or kerosene, the clean, cheap fuel. It’s ready to go with the touch of a match.

…Harper’s Index…
5,200-Estimated number of Puerto Ricans who retire to the mainland US each year

…Revisited History…
Jeralean Talley was born in 1899, nearly 116 years ago. The Constitution was signed in 1787, which makes her birth closer to the Constitutional Convention than today. 

…Unusual Fact of the Day…
Dr. James Naismith, the progenitor of basketball, was Canadian.

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2 jokes for the day
After a lady's car had leaked motor oil on her cement driveway, she bought a large bag of cat litter to soak it up.

It worked so well, that she went back to the store to get another bag to finish the job.

The clerk remembered her. Looking thoughtfully at her purchase, he said, "Lady, if that were my cat, I'd put him outside!"

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A tourist in Vienna goes through a graveyard and all of a sudden he hears some music. No one is around, so he starts searching for the source.
He finally locates the origin and finds it is coming from a grave with a headstone that reads: "Ludwig van Beethoven, 1770-1827."
Then he realizes that the music is the Ninth Symphony, and it is being played backward! Puzzled, he leaves the graveyard and persuades a friend to return with him. By the time they arrive back at the grave, the music has changed. This time it is the Seventh Symphony, but like the previous piece, it is being played backward. Curious, the men agree to consult a music scholar.
When they return with the expert, the Fifth Symphony is playing, again backward. The expert notices that the symphonies are being played in the reverse order in which they were composed, the 9th, then the 7th, then the 5th.
By the next day the word has spread and a throng has gathered around the grave. They are all listening to the Second Symphony being played backward.
Just then the graveyard's caretaker ambles up to the group. Someone in the group asks him if he has an explanation for the music.
"Don't you get it?" the caretaker says incredulously. "He's decomposing."           

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Yep, It Really Happened
CAMBERLEY, England (UPI) - An English man says a piece of a rubber toy that was lost 40 years ago came out of his nose during a sneezing fit. Steve Easton, 51, claims he was playing an Internet game at his home in Camberley when a sneezing fit prompted the emergence of the object from his nostril. Unsure of what he had found, Easton called his mother, 77-year-old Pat Easton, who told him what the object was -- the end sucker piece on a toy rubber dart. Pat Easton said she had decades previously taken Steve, then 7 or 8 years old, to the hospital after he swallowed the toy, but X-rays were inconclusive. "All these years later, it suddenly shot out," she told the BBC. Steve Easton said his ability to breathe and blow his nose feels no different from before. "It's the length of time," he told the BBC. "I'm not the first person this has happened to, but 43 years -- it's quite out there isn't it?" Easton said he carried the object around to show people who were interested in the story, but he has since disposed of it. In a somewhat similar episode in 2011, a man who was shot in the head during New Year's Eve festivities in Naples, Italy, sneezed out a .22 caliber bullet as he waited to be seen by doctors.         
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Somewhat Useless Information
Legend has it that noodles were first made by 13th century German bakers who fashioned dough into symbolic shapes, such as swords, birds and stars, which were baked and served as bread. In the 13th century, the Pope set quality standards for pasta.

Thomas Jefferson is credited with introducing macaroni to the United States. It seems that he fell in love with a certain dish he sampled in Naples, while serving as the U.S. Ambassador to France. In fact, he promptly ordered crates of "macaroni," along with a pasta-making machine, sent back to the States.

The first American pasta factory was opened in Brooklyn, New York, in 1848, by a Frenchman named Antoine Zerega. Mr. Zerega managed the entire operation with just one horse in his basement to power the machinery. To dry his spaghetti, he placed strands of the pasta on the roof to dry in the sunshine.

During the 1980s, macaroni, which was traditionally considered a "blue-collar" down-home meal, was transformed into the more upscale "pasta." As more and more people began to have fun with it and romanticize it throughout the '60s and '70s, its image began to change along with its name.

The Spanish explorer Cortez brought tomatoes back to Europe from Mexico in 1519. Even then, almost 200 years passed before spaghetti with tomato sauce made its way into Italian kitchens.

The Italians only ate meat a few times a month. So, when they came to America, where meat was so plentiful, they incorporated meat into their cooking more often, making meatballs an American invention.

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Birthday’s Today
71 - George Lucas, Modesto CA, director (Star Wars, Indiana Jones)
70 - Robert Jarvik, surgeon/inventor (Jarvik 7 artificial heart)
54 - Tim Roth, actor (Reservoir Dogs, Vincent & Theo)
46 - Cate Blanchett, Australian actress (-The Lord of the Rings)
31 - Mark Zuckerberg, White Plains, New York, founder of Facebook
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Remembered for being born today
John Charles Fields, Canadian founder Fields Medal 1863-1932@69 
Richard Deacon, actor (Mel Cooley-Dick Van Dyke Show) 1922-1984@63
Thomas Gainsborough, English painter (Blue Boy), baptized 1727-1788@61 
- Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, Prussia, inventor (thermometer) 1686-1736@50 
Bobby Darin, [Walden Waldo Cassotto], singer (Mack the Knife) 1936-1973@37 
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Historical Obits Today
Billie Burke, actress (Gilda- The Wizard of Oz)-1970@85
Robert Stack, American actor-2003@84
Frank Sinatra, American singer\actor-1998@ 82
Jiang Qing, widow of Chinese leader Mao Zedong, suicide-1991@77
Henry John Heinz, founder of the H. J. Heinz Company, pneumonia-1919@74
Hugh Beaumont, actor (Ward-Leave it to Beaver), stroke-1982@73
Emma Goldman, US anarchists/feminist/author (Living My Life), stroke-1940@70
Rita Hayworth, actress, Alzheimer's-1987@68
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Brain Teasers Answers
Each word has a silent letter:

Ptarmigan has a silent P.
Aisle has a silent A.
Dossier has a silent R.
Depot has a silent T.
Column has a silent N.
Lime has a silent E.
February has one silent R.

Put the silent letters together, and they spell PARTNER.

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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.