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Almanac: Week: 03 \ Day: 014
January
Averages: 43°\16°
86004 Today: H 37°\L 30°
Ave. humidity: 94% Average Sky Cover: 80%
Wind ave: 8mph\Gusts: 18mph
Ave. High: 43° Record
High: 65° (1943)
Ave. Low: 16° Record Low: -15° (2007)
Observances
Today:
Caesarean
Section Day
International
Kite Day
National Dress Up Your Pet
Day
Organize
Your Home Day
Orthodox
New Year
Ratification
Day
Observances This
Week:
8-14
Universal
Letter Writing Week
11-17
Cuckoo
Dancing Week
National Vocation Awareness Week
14-18
National
Soccer Coaches of America Week
No Tillage Week
« »
Quote of
the Day
Historical
Highlights for Today
1539 - Spain
annexes Cuba
1690 - Clarinet
invented, in Nurnberg, Germany
1699 - Massachusetts holds
day of fasting for wrongly persecuting "witches"
1794 - Dr Jessee
Bennet performs 1st successful Cesarean section operation in US on his wife
1799 - Eli
Whitney receives government contract for 10,000 muskets
1813 - Gideon
Hawley becomes 1st state school superintendent in US (NY)
1878 - US
Supreme court rules race separation on trains unconstitutional
1914 - Henry
Ford introduces an assembly line for Model T
1963 - George
C Wallace sworn in as governor of Alabama, his address states "segregation
now; segregation tomorrow; segregation forever!"
1979 - President
Jimmy Carter proposes Martin Luther King's birthday be a holiday
1989
- 1,000 muslims burn Salman Rushdies' "Satanic Verses" in
Bradford, England
« »
♫
Birthdays Today: ♫
How many can you identify? Answers below in Birthday’s Today
My
Rambling Thoughts
Nice winter day. Woke up to light snow showers, then some sun, and
in late afternoon more snow. Not a lot of it is sticking, but the moisture is always
welcome.
Mary and I had lunch today at a new authentic Mexican restaurant.
The owner is from Mexico City and everything is made from scratch. Very nice décor
with tables and chairs from Guadalajara and all are handmade. Never sure about
new places, especially since the last 3 restaurants in this location have
failed. This one sure seems like a winner. Mary is headed for Phoenix as her
daughter and her whole family are coming in for the long weekend. She is very
excited, even with having to drive through the snow. Her daughter is in
Chicago, so is looking forward to warm Phoenix weather. Cheryl couldn’t make it
as she didn’t want to drive in the snow.
Tomorrow has to be laundry day as all the hampers are full. It
will be easy if it is snowing, but if the weather is nice, I doubt it will get
done.
« »
Brain
Teasers
(answers at the end of post)
What
am I?
You may praise your good fortune and curse all you hate,
Yet I rule all your chaos and gamble your fate.
By some I'm avoided by others I'm game,
Called by fat or slim, my meaning's the same.
Found on
You Tube with some relevance to today
« »
Paraphernalia
4 the Brain:
60’s
Inventions…
1962
The audio cassette invented.
The fiber-tip pen invented by Yukio
Horie.
Spacewar, the first computer video
game invented.
Dow Corp invents silicone breast
implants.
**NEW**Emotion
Facts…
--Dogs can detect sadness in humans and often attempt to make
their owners happy by initiating cuddling.
--Elephants are among the most emotional creatures in the world -
they have even been known to rescue other animals, such as trapped dogs.
Flagstaff,
AZ History…
75 YEARS
AGO
At the Orpheum this week: “Gentlemen from Arizona” with Joan
Barcly and John King. This is a Monogram picture. Live onstage: Ruthie Reese,
Arizona’s Little Sweetheart in person, plus music, news and cartoons in
Technicolor.
Flagstaff’s
Iconic 50…
Jay
Lively Ice Arena
Rachelle Lively Duncan is in awe of how things have come full
circle for her, her family and hockey in Flagstaff.
That’s the feeling she left with after she and her family were
given a No. 7 jersey in a pregame ceremony before a Northern Arizona University
hockey game to honor Jay Lively, Rachelle’s brother, who died in March of 1984
at the age of 17.
A Flagstaff-based youth hockey player and stick boy for NAU’s
hockey club, Lively was making the trip home to Flagstaff following a hockey
practice in Tempe when his truck was hit by a drunk driver going the wrong way
along a treacherous section of I-17.
The accident left him and six others dead, including a young man
from Prescott who was also killed in the accident when the horse trailer the
drunk driver was hauling went over the top of Jay's car and hit the car behind
him.
Today, in the median of the I-17, on the northbound lanes near the
New River exit 232, just North of Phoenix, a small roadside memorial with a
hockey stick attached to it mark the location of the accident where Jay lost
his life.
The drunk driver survived the crash and served all of her
7-plus-year prison term.
Harper’s
Index…
$25,000
Minimum amount paid by the Museum of Death in Hollywood for Jack
Kevorkian’s Thanatron suicide device.
Rules of
Thumb…
SPOTTING
A BEGINNER
If signers finish mouthing their names
before their hands finish spelling the letters, they've had less than a year's
practice at fingerspelling.
Unusual
Fact of the Day…
Invented in the 1940s in Tennessee, Mountain Dew was meant to be
mixed with whisky. In fact, its bottles were designed to look like moonshine,
and the original Mountain Dew labels featured outhouses, stills, and
hay-chewing yokels.
« »
Joke-of-the-day
Two guys were sitting in a double hole
outhouse doing their business, when #1 gets through and pulling up his pants, a
quarter falls out of his pocket and falls into the depths of the hole. As they
both peer down the hole, #1 pulls out his wallet and throws a 20 dollar into
the hole. "What did you do that for?" inquires #2.
#1 replies "You don't think I'm going to climb down there for a lousy
quarter, do you"
Yep, It
Really Happened
Norwich,
England
People's love for their pets reached a new high in December when a
British man paid a veterinarian the equivalent of $500 to perform delicate
surgery on a sick office goldfish (typical pet store "replacement"
price: $1 to $5). Vet Faye Bethell of North Walsham, England, told the Eastern
Daily Press in December that there was "nothing special" about the
fish, but that the customer "just liked it a lot." In fact, the
goldfish likely did not even have a pet name -- as Bethell in an interview
spoke intimately of another patient by name (Cadbury, the skunk). (Bethell's
procedure involved removing the patient from the bowl, flooding its gills with
anesthetic-fortified water, and using a tiny scalpel to remove lumps that were
causing it constipation, with the surgery guided by a miniature heart-rate
monitor.)
Somewhat
Useless Information
Do
you know the exact age of two global landmarks, that of the Brooklyn Bridge and
Tower Bridge?
Tower
Bridge, the iconic symbol of London, consists of two towers tied together
at the upper level by means of two horizontal walkways. It had been built from
1886 to 1894.
Brooklyn
Bridge is one of the oldest bridges in the United States and it connects
the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn. It was built in 1883.
Gizmos
LAS
VEGAS (UPI)
Toyota
wants to build a hydrogen society. But first, they want the Toyota Mirai -- the
first hydrogen fuel cell vehicle to be released commercially -- to be a hit on
the market. To spur excitement (and to encourage fuel cell innovation, Toyota
officials say), the company is releasing some 5,680 patents related to the
technology that powers the Mirai.
Of the released patents, 1,970 are related to Toyota's stacked fuel cell
technology. Another 290 are related to the company's high-pressure hydrogen
tanks, and 3,350 protect the technology involved in Mirai's fuel cell software
system. Some 70 patents reveal technology related to hydrogen production and
supply.
The mass release of the patents was announced by Toyota officials at the
Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week.
"There will be an application process to ensure what the technology will
be used for, and then a royalty-free license will be issued that will get us
through this initial introductory phase," Bob Carter, senior vice
president of automotive operations at Toyota, told Popular Science.
There are plenty of benefits to fuel cell technology -- chiefly, a hydrogen
fuel cell produces only heat and water vapor, no carbon emissions.
Additionally, hydrogen is plentiful.
"Seventy-five percent of the universe is made out of hydrogen,"
theoretical physicist Michio Kaku told audience members at a presentation on
the Mirai. "You want to see hydrogen? Go outside, take a look at the
stars, the galaxies, the sun.
"Hydrogen is the most plentiful substance in the universe," Kaku
added. "And contrast that now to oil, black gold, one of the rarest of
substances on the planet Earth. Nations will kill to secure supplies of
oil."
But fuel cells need hydrogen. Currently, hydrogen refueling infrastructure is
nearly nonexistent. The company is building refueling stations in California,
where the car will first go on sale in the fall for around $60,000. Economists
estimate a tank of hydrogen fuel will cost about $50. Toyota says that will get
its Mirai drivers a range of 300 miles.
Experts say the patent release isn't really about sharing secrets, but
encouraging collaboration; a variety of other automakers are working on similar
fuel cell cars. But an immature market and the high cost of research is holding
back the industry -- not technology.
In order for the hydrogen fuel cell industry to take off, refueling
infrastructure needs to be built up and fuel cells need to become more
efficient.
"I don't think the technology that Toyota has is that
groundbreaking," David Cole, chairman emeritus of the Center for
Automotive Research, told the Los Angeles Times. "It's not a patent
issue."
"It's historic the amount of collaboration that's occurring," Cole
added. "If automakers don't, we're not going to get down the fuel cell
road as far and as fast as we like."
« »
Today’s
Events through History
1129 - Formal
approval of the Order of Templars at the Council of Troyes
1746 - Bonnie
Prince Charlie's army leaves Glasgow
1967 - Sonny & Cher release "Beat Goes On"
2014 - American
journalist David Satter is expelled from Russia
« »
Birthday’s
Today
Jack
Jones, singer (Love Boat Theme), is 77
Julian
Bond, (D-Ga) civil rights leader is 75
[Dorothy] Faye Dunaway,
actress (Bonnie & Clyde) is 74
Holland
Taylor, actress (Bossom Buddies) is 72
Joseph Henry "T
Bone" Burnett, musician and producer is 67
Carl
Weathers, actor (Apollo Creed-Rocky) is 67
Steven
Soderbergh, producer, director, writer (Ocean's Eleven) is 52
Shepard
Smith, American news anchor is 51
LL Cool J, [James
Todd Smith], St Albans NY, rapper (Bigger & Deffer) is 47
Jason
Bateman, actor, is 46
Pitbull (Armando
Christian Pérez), American rapper is 34
« »
Remembered
for being born today
Mark
Antony [Marcus Antonius], Politician and General 83BC-30 BC@53
Benedict
Arnold, US general turned traitor 1741-1801@60
Alice
Pike Barney, American painter 1857-1931@74
Albert
Schweitzer, doctor/humanitarian/organist (Nobel 1954) 1875-1965@90
Hal Roach, early film
director/producer (1 Million BC) 1892-1992@100
William
Bendix, actor (Life of Riley), 1906-1964@58
Mark
Goodson, game show producer 1915-1992@77
Andy
Rooney, CBS news correspondent (60 Minutes) 1919-2011@92
Guy
Williams, actor (Zorro, Lost in Space), 1924-1989@65
« »
Historical
Obits Today
Conrad
Bain, Canadian-born actor, (Different STrokes) 2013, @89
Ricardo
Montalbán, Mexican actor (Fantasy Island), 2009, @88
Shelley
Winters, actress, (Poseidon Adventure), 2006, @85
Edmond
Halley, English scientist, 1742, @85
Ray Kroc, founder
of McDonalds/owner San Diego Padres, 1984, @81
Blossom
Rock, actress (Grandmamma-Addams Family), 1978, @81
Peter
"Peerke" Donders,
missionary (Father of Melaatsen), 1887, @77
Lewis
Carroll, writer (Alice in Wonderland), influenza, 1898, @65
Donna
Reed, actress (Donna Reed Show, Dallas), cancer, 1986, @64
Jeanette
MacDonald, soprano (When I'm Calling You), heart disease, 1965, @63
Peter
Finch, actor (Network, Nun's Story, Judith), heart attack, 1977, @60
« »
Brain Teasers Answers
Chance ... the luck of the draw in life! We praise it when it goes
our way and curse it when it doesn't, some avoid risk and others gamble at
every chance. There is no difference between a fat chance and a slim chance.
Good luck in life!
« »
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…§
