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Almanac: Week: 03 \ Day: 017
January
Averages: 43°\16°
86004 Today: H 57°\L 16°
Ave. humidity: 18% Average Sky Cover: 25%
Wind ave: 6mph\Gusts: 16mph
Ave. High: 43° Record
High: 62° (1971)
Ave. Low: 17° Record Low: -13° (1987)
Observances
Today:
Polar
Bear Swim (Seward, AK)
<>
Blessing of the Animals at
the Cathedral Day
Cable
Car Day
Hot
Heads Chili Days
Judgment
Day Kid
Inventors'
Day
Popeye
Day
Observances This
Week:
Cuckoo
Dancing Week
National Vocation Awareness Week
14-18
National
Soccer Coaches of America Week
No Tillage Week
17-23
National Fresh Squeezed
Juice Week
17-18
Bald
Eagle Appreciation Days
« »
Quote of
the Day
Historical
Highlights for Today
1773 - Capt James Cook becomes 1st to
cross Antarctic Circle (66° 33' S)
1899 - US takes possession of Wake Island in Pacific
1904 - Anton Chekhov's "Cherry Orchard"
opens at Moscow Art Theater
1916 - Professional Golfer Association (PGA) forms
in NYC
1946 - United Nations Security Council holds its
1st meeting
1950 - The Great Brinks Robbery - 11 men rob $1.2M
cash & $1.5M securities from armored car company Brink's offices in Boston
1954 - Jacques Cousteau's 1st network telecast airs
on "Omnibus" (CBS)
1961 - President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivers a
televised farewell address to the nation three days before leaving office, in
which he warns against the accumulation of power by the
"military-industrial complex"
1980 - A Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb
prematurely detonates on a passenger train near Belfast, killing three and
injuring five (including the bombers)
1987 - US President Reagan signs secret
order permitting covert sale of arms to Iran
2001 - President Bill Clinton posthumously raises
Meriwether Lewis' rank from Lieutenant to Captain.
« »
♫
Birthdays Today: ♫
How many can you identify? Answers below in Birthday’s Today
My
Rambling Thoughts
Ahhh, Friday. Picked up my Great Decisions book and have some
reading to do before tomorrow night’s Syria discussion. It will be nice to get
back together with the group for another year. Our presenter did her Peace
Corps work in Syria about a decade ago. Should be interesting.
A nice day, warm with some clouds coming in this afternoon. After
a quick trip to Target, I finally did my laundry. Clean clothes are all put
away. Had to do about 4 loads but went well.
« »
Brain
Teasers
(answers at the end of post)
Two
people come to a river. There is a boat, however it can carry one person only.
How can they each get to the other side of the river using the boat?
Found on
You Tube with some relevance to today
« »
Paraphernalia
4 the Brain:
60’s
Inventions…
1965
Astroturf invented.
Soft contact lenses invented.
NutraSweet invented.
The compact disk invented by James
Russell.
Kevlar invented by Stephanie Louise
Kwolek.
Emotion
Facts…
-- The left ear is more responsive to words of love and emotion
whispered into it than the right.
--Research has determined that most people are happiest at 7:26pm
on a Saturday night.
Flagstaff,
AZ History…
50 YEARS
AGO
--Beginning on Monday, there will be an IRS Office in the Arizona
Bank Building. W.P. “Pat” Morse is the designated representative.
--“The Secret Invasion” with Stewart Granger and Mickey Rooney is
playing at the Orpheum.
Flagstaff’s
Iconic 50…
Old Main
Flagstaff’s commitment to education has been around since long
before Northern Arizona University became one of the state’s three major public
institutions of higher learning. There is no stronger reminder of that history
than Old Main on NAU’s North Campus.
Old Main is the oldest building on the roughly 14-acre Northern
Arizona Normal School Historic District — the largest preserved collection of
historic sandstone buildings in the Southwest. Los Angeles architects Brown and
Fisher designed the building in the Richardsonian Romanesque style and crafted
it out of out of locally quarried Moenkopi sandstone between 1894 and 1899,
setting the aesthetic standard for campus. The original proposed purposes for
the building included a reform school for wayward youth and an insane asylum,
but a committee in Flagstaff convinced the Arizona Territory Legislature to
open a teaching college, instead. Northern Arizona Normal School was born.
The first class was held inside Old Main on Sept. 11, 1899. At the
time, there were 23 students, one professor and two copies of Webster’s
International Dictionary. Two years later, Northern Arizona Normal School
graduated its first class of four women who had earned their credentials to
teach in the Arizona Territory. From 1899 to 1905, Old Main was the only
building on campus, which had fewer than 60 students. Fences soon had to be
installed to prevent grazing horses and cattle from wandering in.
As enrollment continued to grow, the school went through several
name changes and eventually came to be known as the Arizona State Teacher’s
College in 1929. Old Main was converted to a dormitory in 1961, just five years
before Arizona State College become Northern Arizona University. It was finally
restored to classroom and office space in 1984. In many rooms, the original
pressed metal ceilings, cast iron columns, wooden floors and wainscoting remain
to this day.
Today, Old Main holds NAU’s Alumni Relations and University Advancement
departments. It is also home to the NAU Art Museum. The museum is open to the
public Tuesday through Saturday from noon to 5 p.m.
Harper’s
Index…
1 in 3
Chance that a Republican voter has thought about the midterm
elections ‘only a little’
1 in 2
That a Democratic voter has
Rules of
Thumb…
ESTIMATING
YOUR RING SIZE
At least for men, ring size equals glove
size equals shoe size.
Unusual
Fact of the Day…
The sailfish (the fastest swimming fish, clocked at 68 mph) is
faster than the cheetah (the fastest land animal, clocked at 62 mph).
« »
Joke-of-the-day
A Doctor was addressing a large audience in
Tampa.. 'The material we put into our stomachs is enough to have killed most of
us sitting here, years ago. Red meat is awful. Soft drinks corrode your stomach
lining. Chinese food is loaded with MSG. High fat diets can be disastrous, and
none of us realizes the long-term harm caused by the germs in our drinking
water. However, there is one thing that is the most dangerous of all and we all
have eaten, or will eat it. Can anyone here tell me what food it is that causes
the most grief and suffering for years after eating it?'
After several seconds of quiet, a 75-year-old
man in the front row raised his hand, and softly said, 'Wedding Cake.'
Yep, It
Really Happened
Icicles are dangerous. Anybody can tell you that. They can damage
your house. They can drop down from the edge of your roof and puncture your
skull! They can throw exciting parties when you're not around and drink all of
your booze. Okay, that last one is unlikely, but nobody hates icicles more than
one Kentucky man who risked everything in his crusade against the clinging,
frozen menace.
Not content to simply knock them down with a broom or a shovel, this unnamed
homeowner terminated the icicle menace threatening his house with extreme
prejudice. Extreme prejudice and a blow torch.
I think you can guess how this story turns out. Firefighters were called to the
home to find smoke pouring from the roof of the home. They were able to
extinguished the blaze, but not before the roof and attic, as well as a new
addition to the home, were heavily damaged.
The homeowner told fire officials he was worried family members might be
injured by icicles hanging from the roof of his home, so he used a blowtorch to
melt them...and then promptly left home to run errands.
"He was concerned about the icicles and the ice causing damage to his home
and/or anybody walking under it - his kids or anyone - if they fall," said
the fire chief. "Obviously, you want to remove them as safely as you can.
Breaking them off is what most people do. Choosing to use a torch to melt them,
in hindsight, he probably agrees is not the best idea."
Somewhat
Useless Information
--Since
they were introduced in 1787, more than 300 billion pennies have been produced.
--The princess on the Indian Head penny was neither an American Indian nor a
princess. She was the sculptor's daughter, Sarah Longacre.
--If you have a strong magnifying glass, you can see the initials of the
sculptors who designed the pennies. Since 1959, the initials of Frank Gasparro
have been near the shrubbery to the right of the Lincoln Memorial. Pennies
dated 1918 to 1958 have the initials VDB (Victor David Brenner) under Lincoln's
shoulder.
--Pennies haven't been made of pure copper since 1864. During World War II, the
U.S. Mint helped the war effort by recycling: It melted shell casings to make
pennies.
--When the penny was introduced in 1787, it was about twice the size of today's
version. The penny didn't reach its current size until 1857.
--The nickname for a U.S. cent in 1839 was "Silly Head," because
people thought the image of Miss Liberty on the front looked strange.
« »
Today’s
Events through History
1718 - Avalanche destroys every building in
Leukerbad, Switz; kills 53
1873 - A group of Modoc warriors defeat the US Army
in the First Battle of the Stronghold, a part of the Modoc War
2002 - Mount Nyiragongo erupts in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo, displacing an estimated 400,000 people.
« »
Birthday’s
Today
Betty
White, actress (Mary Tyler Moore Show, Golden Girls) is 93
James
Earl Jones, actor (Darth Vader) is 84
Maury Povich
,
TV host (Current Affair, Maury)/Mr Connie Chung is 76
Muhammad
Ali [Cassius Clay], heavyweight boxing champion is 73
Robert F
Kennedy Jr, attorney (Natural Resources Defense Council) is 61
Steve
Earle, country singer (Guitar Town) is 60
David
Caruso, actor (NYPD Blue) is 60
Steve
Harvey, actor, comedian and radio personality is 58
Jim
Carrey, actor (Dumb & Dumber) is 53
Kid Rock,
American singer is 44
Freddy
Rodriguez, Puerto Rican-American actor (6 Feet Under) is 40
Zooey
Deschanel, actress (Almost Famous) is 35
« »
Remembered
for being born today
Leonhard
Fuchs, Germany, botanist (History of Plants) 1501-1566@65
Archibald
Bower, Scottish historian 1686-1766@80
Benjamin Franklin
,
kite flyer/statesman/wit/inventor, 1706-1790@84
Charles
Brockden Brown, father of American novel (Wieland) 1771-1810@39
Anne
Bronte, English novelist/poet (Tenant of Wildfell Hall) 1820-1849@29
Al Capone,
Brooklyn, gangster (Chicago bootlegging) 1899-1947@48
Eartha
Kitt, singer/actress (Catwoman-Batman) 1927-2008@81
Vidal
Sassoon, hair stylist/CEO (Vidal Sasson), 1928-2012@84
Sheree
North, [Dawn Bethel], actress (Mary Tyler Moore Show) 1932-2005@73
Shari
Lewis, Bronx, ventriloquist/puppeteer (Lamb Chop) 1933-1998@65
Andy
Kaufman, comedian/actor (Latka Gravas-Taxi), 1949-1984@35
« »
Historical
Obits Today
Clyde
William Tombaugh, discoverer (Pluto), 1997, @90
Zhao
Ziyang, Premier of the People's Republic of China, 2005, @85
Art
Buchwald, American humorist, 2007, @81
Richard
Crenna, actor (Real McCoys), cancer, 2003, @76
Rutherford
B. Hayes, 19th US Pres
(1877-81), heart attack, 1893, @70
Juliette
Gordon Low, founder of the Girl Scouts of the USA, cancer, 1927, @66
Bobby
Fischer, American chess player, renal failure, 2008,@64
Chang
& Eng Bunker, Chinese/Thai Siamese twins, 3 hrs apart, 1874, @62
« »
Brain Teasers Answers
They are on opposite sides of the river (nowhere does it say that
they come to the river together!).
One simply uses the boat to cross the river and the other person gets into the
boat and takes it back to where it started.
« »
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…§
