8-11-15

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Almanac: Week: 33 \ Day: 223
August Averages: 78°\50°
86004 Today: H 78° \ L 52° Average Sky Cover: 35% 
Wind ave:   8mph\Gusts:  20mph
Ave. High: 80° Record High: 91°[1980] Ave. Low: 50° Record Low: 36°[1900]
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Observances Today:
Ingersoll Day

Independence Day (Chad-1960-from Chad)
Heroes' Day (Zimbabwe)
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Observances This Week:
8-15 Gay Games Link
National Motorcycle Week
Feeding Pets of the Homeless Week Link  
National Resurrect Romance Week


10-16 Elvis Week  Link
10-14 Weird Contest Week

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Quote of the Day 

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US Historical Highlights for Today
1802 - Tecumseh has predicted an earthquake. It happen and becomes known as the "New Madrid Earthquake."
1860 - US's 1st successful silver mill (Virginia City, Nev)
1866 - World's 1st roller rink opens (Newport RI)
1874 - Harry S Parmelee patents sprinkler head
1885 - $100,000 raised in US for pedestal for Statue of Liberty
1885 - The San Agustín church had been standing for nearly 20 years facing west on Tucson's Church Plaza. When the new and larger St. Augustine cathedral was constructed in 1896, the old church was converted into a hotel. Subsequently the building was painted yellow and turned into a garage. The old church building was razed in 1936, but its facade and rosette window were saved. Part of the facade and rosette window can now been seen adorning the front of the Arizona Historical Society building in Tucson.
1909 - SOS 1st used by an American ship, Arapahoe, off Cape Hatteras, NC
1919 - Green Bay Packers football club founded by George Calhoun and Curly Lambeau - named after sponser Indian Packing Company
1934 - 1st federal prisoners arrive at Alcatraz in SF Bay
1964 - Race riot in Paterson NJ
1965 - 6 day insurrection starts in Watts section of Los Angeles
1975 - US vetoes proposed admission of North & South Vietnam to UN
1984 - Carl Lewis duplicates Jesse Owens' 1936 feat, wins 4 Olympic track golds
1985 - Nancy Lopez wins LPGA Henredon Golf Classic
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World Historical Highlights for Today
3114 BC - The Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, used by several pre-Columbian Mesoamerican civilizations, notably the Mayans, begins.
1863 - Cambodia becomes French protectorate
1904 - German-ltalian General Von Trotha defeats Herero in SW Africa
1948 - Summer Olympics opens in London
1954 - Formal peace takes place, ending 7+ yrs of fighting in Indochina between French & Communist Vietminh
1970 - Two Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officers are killed by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) when they set off a booby trap bomb planted in a car near Crossmaglen, County Armagh
1971 - 4 people are shot dead in separate incidents in Belfast; three of them by the British Army, as violence continues following the introduction of Internment and Operation Demetrius
1972 - Two IRA members are killed when a bomb they were transporting exploded prematurely
1997 - Benin legalizes Jan 10th as a voodoo holiday
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Birthdays Today:
How many can you identify? Answers below in Birthdays Today 

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My Rambling Thoughts
Monday went well. Monsoon returned late last night and clouds are again rolling in for another evening storm.
I grew up with tension in the world, as did many others before me. First it was the cold war threat of nuclear attack. Then it was racial tension. Then it was the war in Vietnam. Many in my generation believed that we would not be like those from the past…we would have racial harmony, we would find ways to talk and not have wars that killed innocents. Well, we tried, we made some gains, but our goals were not met. I spent decades on the Navajo Nation, as a minority. I was a minority in power, but still a minority. I will always remember the shock of the school board at Navajo Mountain when I said I would be glad to visit several community areas to talk about education and the importance of the school. They said, others would always say the family and community are always welcome at the school, but couldn’t go out into the community. I remember the time in Pine Ridge when I approved OT for aides to stay with kids in the dead of winter because those kid’s homes were not safe during the cold weather. The dorm manager had tears in her eyes when I did that, saying that no principal had ever even considered such a decision. I was always treated well and always treated others well. In those decades I also saw discrimination toward the Navajo by non-Navajo. On a field trip I had 40 8th graders in Flagstaff. Our trip was to visit a radio station, newspaper, TV station and have lunch at a restaurant. We also planned to stop at a store on the way out of town. I had called ahead to all the places to let them know about when we would be there, that these were good kids, and that we had plenty of chaperones. Everything went well, until we got to the store at the end of the day. I went in first to let the manager know we were coming in to let the kids buy treats. It was a large drug store type store. When we came in the manager had one employee standing at each end of each of the five aisles for security. They were way too obvious, standing there. I asked the manager and he said that ‘Indians always steal and he has to protect his merchandise.’ We left without any purchases and the manager still had to pay all those employees. The kids were upset too, but learned a lesson.
I listen to those in the various communities that are having racial problems and I understand what they are talking about. Painting any group…the community members, the police, the business owners… with such a large brush is wrong now, just as it has been wrong for centuries. I wish we had made more strides to racial equality in this country and will still call people out when I see discrimination.
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Brain Teasers
(answers at the end of post)
We're all nuts .. can you name us?

1. Big country in South America.
2. A pod is my pad.
3. This came down in Germany.
4. Confection ingredient.
5. Sneaking a look-on.
6. Gorillas show dominance by beating this.
7. May be found in the company of a witch. 

Scoring:
1-3 right. Sorry, you're normal.
4-5 right. I'm beginning to worry about you!
6-7 right. Definitely certifiable nut expert!

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Found on You Tube with some relevance to today
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…Flagstaff, AZ History…
25 YEARS Ago-1990
City Manager Richard Barrett reports that the 7,000-foot realignment project of Cedar Avenue, beginning at Forest Avenue, has begun. All utilities will be underground, there will 4 lanes for traffic, a bike path and a sidewalk. This project is being funded with BBB tax receipts. Residents have been protesting the confusion that will result from the change in street names.

Gasoline prices are rising fast. Here in Flagstaff, regular is now $1.35 per gallon and unleaded $1.27. The price of crude exploded minutes after the first gun was fired in Kuwait.
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…Harper’s Index…
1/2 – estimated portion of calls to a lesbian-support line in Indian that are made by men
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…Instagram Photo of the Day… 

natgeoPhoto by @stefanounterthiner | Hand of a newborn Hanuman langur (Semnopithecus entellus). Infants spend their first weeks attach themselves to their mothers and mostly just sleeping and suckling. Thar desert, Rajasthan, India.
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…Foreign Laws Tourists Need to Know…
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…Nelson Mandela Inspiring Quote …
·         “For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”
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…USA Facts…
There is a county in California called Yolo.

Teddy bears were named after U.S. President Theodore 'Teddy' Roosevelt.
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…Unusual Fact of the Day…
Aluminum used to be so hard to produce that it was valued higher than gold. Napoleon III even had all of his fine cutlery made of aluminum.
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2 jokes for the day
Isn't it strange how drivers who go slower than you are idiots and those that go faster are maniacs?
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A husband asks: Why do you weep and sniffle over a TV program and the imaginary sadness of people you have never met?
Wife: For the same reason you scream and yell when a man you don’t know makes a touchdown.           

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Yep, It Really Happened
Baltimore – Offensive lineman John Urschel of the Baltimore Ravens added to his curriculum vitae by co-authoring the latest of his several peer-reviewed academic articles-“A Cascadic Multigrid Algorithm for Computing the Fiedler Vector of Graph Laplacians” in the Journal of Computational Mathematics. When asked why he is a football player when he is such a mathematician he answered “There’s a rush you get when you go out on the field…and physically dominate the player across from you.” He added, “I love hitting people.”  
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Somewhat Useless Information-(smithsonianmag.com)
The terrifying Mosasaurus was not a dinosaur but a colossal marine lizard. It is thought to have had poor depth perception and a weak sense of smell. Scientists think that one of its main hunting techniques was lying in wait for prey near the water's surface and attacking when animals came up for air. In 2013, one mosasaur fossil found in Angola held the remains of three other mosasaurs in its stomach, providing evidence that the aquatic beasts might also have been cannibals.

Among several dinosaurs that share traits with ostriches, Gallimimus may have employed an interesting feeding strategy. Because it was unable to physically chew the plants it consumed, Gallimimus also ingested pebbles, which would mash up the food internally during the digestion process.

With its arched back and curved tail, the Ankylosaurus resembles the dinosaur version of a super-sized and much spikier armadillo. Thanks to the sharp, bony plates that line its back, along with a tail shaped like a club, Ankylosaurus has been given the nickname "living tank." Its main Achilles' heel was its soft, exposed underbelly, but predators would have had to flip the armored dinosaur over to get to this weak spot.

The Edmontosaurus was a medium-size duck-billed dinosaur that dined on fruits and veggies. Nicknamed the "cow of the Cretaceous," these dinosaurs moved in herds of thousands that may have traversed thousands of miles during a single migration.

The horns of the Triceratops have long fueled debate among scientists about their purpose. The latest research suggests that they likely served as identification and ornamentation. However, previous findings also uncovered Tyrannosaurs rex bite marks on Triceratops horns, indicating that the features could have been used for defense in certain cases. 

While it had a large body and several spiky plates that served as protection, the Stegosaurus had an exceptionally small brain for its body size-its brain has been compared to a walnut or lime. For some time, scientists believed the dinosaur had an ancillary group of nerves in a cavity above its rear end that helped to supplement its tiny noggin, but this hypothesis was later disproved.

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Birthdays Today
88 - Claus Von Bulow, socialite accused of murdering his wife
69 - Marilyn Vos Savant, St Louis Mo, writer/world's highest IQ (228)
65 - Steve Wozniak, co-founder (Apple Computers)
62 - Hulk Hogan, [Terry Bollea], former WWF heavyweight
50 - Viola Davis, American actress
32 - Chris Hemsworth, Australian actor (Thor, Avengers)
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 Born this day…Died in __@__
Mike Douglas, talk show host (Mike Douglas Show)-2006@86
Hugh MacDiarmid (Christopher Murray Grieve), Scotland, poet (Scots Unbound)-1978@86
Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, founder of turnverein (gymnastics) movement-1852@74
Jerry Falwell, US, TV evangelist (Moral Majority)-2007@73
Christiaan Eijkman, Netherlands, physician (Nobel Prize in Medicine-1929)-1930@72
Enid Blyton, children's writer and fifth most popular author in the world (Famous Five, Secret Seven, The Adventure)-1968@71
Alex Haley, writer (Autobiography of Malcolm X, Roots)-1992@70
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Historical Obits Today
Mike Douglas, singer and talk show host-2006-on birthday@88
Eunice Kennedy Shriver, founder of Special Olympics-2009@88
Andrew Carnegie, US steel industrialist/philanthropist-1919@83
Peter Cushing, actor (Star Wars, Dr Who)-1994@81
Thaddeus Stevens, architect of Radical Reconstruction, dropsy-1868@76
Edith Wharton [-Jones], Pulitzer prize-winning author (House of Mirth), stroke-1937@75
Robin Williams, actor and comedian (Mork & Mindy), suicide-2014@63
Jackson Pollock, abstract artist, auto accident-1956@44
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Brain Teasers Answers
1. Brazil 
2. Peanut
3. Walnut (The Berlin wall)
4. Coconut
5. Pecan (Peek on)
6. Chestnut (Gorillas drum on their chest as a threat)
7. Hazelnut (Witch Hazel)

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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.