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Almanac: Week: 09 \ Day: 058
February
Averages: 45°\19°
86004
Today: H 48°\L 24°
Average Sky Cover: 75%
Wind
ave: 8mph\Gusts: 32mph
Ave. High: 47° Record High: 64°
(1921)
Ave. Low: 20° Record Low:
-12° (1962)
Observances
Today:
Independence Day-Dominican Republic-1844 from Haiti
**
International Polar Bear Day
National Day of Action (Peace Corps)
No Brainer Day
Read Me Day
Observances This
Week:
Feb 21-28
National
Entrepreneurship Week
National Engineers Week
National FFA Week
Bird Health Awareness Week
National Eating Disorders Awareness Week
National Invasive Species Awareness Week
Feb 26-28
National Conference
on Education
Feb 27-28
Texas Cowboy Poetry
Week
« » « »
Quote of
the Day
« »
US Historical
Highlights for Today
1801 - Washington DC placed under Congressional
jurisdiction
1813 - 1st federal vaccination legislation enacted
1827 - 1st Mardi Gras celebration in New Orleans
1877 - US Electoral College declares R Hayes winner
presidential election
1877 - City of Tucson was
incorporated. The population was estimated at 4,500.
1922 - US Commerce Sec Herbert
Hoover convenes 1st National Radio Conference
1922 - Supreme Court unanimously upheld 19th amend
woman's right to vote
1939 - Supreme Court outlaws sit-down strikes
1951 - 22nd amendment ratified, limiting US
Presidents to 2 terms
1970 - NY Times (falsely) reports US army has ended
domestic surveillance
1973 - American Indian Movement occupy Wounded Knee
in South Dakota
1974 - "People" magazine begins sales
1984 - Carl Lewis jumps world record indoor
(8,675 m)
1988 - Bonnie Blair (US) wins Olympic 500m speed
skating in record 39.1
1992 - Tiger Woods, 16, becomes youngest PGA golfer
in 35 years
2014 - AZ Governor
Jan Brewer vetoes a "religious freedom" bill that would have allowed
businesses to turn away gay customers
--
Today’s World
Events through History
1557 - 1st Russian Embassy arrives in London
1907 - Psychiatrists Carl Gustav Jung and Sigmund
Freud meet for the first time
1950 - General Chiang Kai-shek elected president of
Nationalist China
1956 - Female suffrage in Egypt
1957 - Mao's famous speech to the Supreme State
Conference "On Correct Handling of Contradictions Among People"
expounding Maoist ideals
1988 - Katarina Witt (GDR) wins 2nd consecutive
Olympic figure skating
1994 - 17th Winter Olympic games closes in
Lillehammer, Norway
2012 - Wikileaks begins disclosing 5 million emails
from private intelligence company Stratfor
2013 - Pope Benedict XVI presents his
farewell address to Vatican City
« » « »
♫
Birthdays Today: ♫
How many can you identify? Answers below in Birthday’s Today
My
Rambling Thoughts
WOW, sure learned a lot yesterday about the internet. About noon
some ‘vandals’ cut the fiber optic cable that brings the internet and lots of
cell phone access to all of area code 928—all of AZ north of Phoenix. It was
fixed in about 7 hours. Here’s what I learned:
·
The cable is buried about 3 feet in the highway right of way.
Since the internet is not a utility, even though the phone company is, there is
no requirement for a redundancy of fiber optic cable…like there is for electrical
power. I sure hope would be terrorists don’t hear that.
·
Many cell phone companies share this optic cable so lots of cell
phone service was also out.
·
Most retail business in N. AZ were unable to allow debit card
sales during the outage but some could do credit card purchases that don’t
require ‘instant’ notification to the bank. Many businesses in our little
mountain town had signs on their doors that said ‘cash only’.
·
NAU, our local college, was unable to notify its maintenance
workers as they no longer use 2-way radios, but use cell phones.
·
The local hospital, police, and fire also lost most of their
communication ability during the outage. The only way to get in touch with
police or fire was through 911 which was being re-routed through the State
Patrol in Phoenix. I assume that squad cars and fire engines had no connections
with their offices to check backgrounds or report status.
·
While there were lots of problems and a steep learning curve for
many, everyone survived without the internet. Not happily for sure, but
survived.
·
I could only receive and make local land line calls. My landline
could not call a cell phone, even it that cell phone was working. Strange for
sure.
« » « »
Brain
Teasers
(answers at the end of post)
What
grows down while it grows up?
Found on
You Tube with some relevance to today
« » « »
Agriculture
Facts…
-- You can't plow a cotton field with an elephant in North Carolina.
--The most expensive cow in the world was sold $1.3 million.
Book
Facts…
-- Mathematical proof that 1+1=2 takes 162 pages to explain in the
three volume work “Principia Mathematica”.
--More books are written, published and sold per person per year
in Iceland than anywhere else on the planet. One in ten Icelanders will become
a published author in their lifetime.
Flagstaff,
AZ History…
75 years
ago
The Century Fox Movie Company stayed only a week, leaving on
Tuesday by train and motor equipment, being forced by the snow to depart and at
least temporally giving up the making of the movie “Cisco Kid.”
Harper’s
Index…
800
Number of rounds of ammunition found in the car of a man who jumped
the Hite House fence in September
2
Number of hatchets found
Kindness
Facts…
-- After coming across a "very sweet" homeless man from
Jamaica named Michael on a night out, Londoner Jenny Baker took to Twitter, and
within hours, using the hashtag #getmichaelhome, had raised thousands of pounds
so that he could return home to Jamaica where he said he would be "happy
again".
--A young programmer offered a homeless man the choice between
$100 cash or coding lessons. Leo Grand chose the lessons, and now his first
mobile app is available to download for $.99.
Rules of
Thumb…
Returns tomorrow…
Unusual
Fact of the Day…
Kool-Aid was originally marketed as Fruit Smack.
« » « »
Joke-of-the-day
Q: What do you call a line of rabbits walking backwards?
A: A receding hairline!
«
»
A squirrel is living in a pine tree, when one
day it starts to shake and rock.
So he looks outside and he sees a large elephant trying to climb up the tree.
"What the hell!" the squirrel exclaims. "What the hell do you
think you're doing climbing up this tree?!"
The elephant responds. "I'm climbing up here to eat pears."
The squirrel is befuddled. "You moron! This is a pine tree! There are no
pears!"
The elephants stares at him for a moment before replying, "I know. I
brought my own."
Yep, It
Really Happened
RADNOR,
Pa. (UPI)
Four Radnor Township college students who ordered fake IDs from
China made a cringe-worthy blunder. Police said an 18-year-old college student
named Dean ordered a box of fake IDs and had them shipped to his campus
address. What the student probably didn't think about was he shared the same
name with a dean at his school. The package was delivered to the administrator,
who open the box and found eight realistic-looking IDs, one complete with the
student's real name. "You can't make this up," Radnor Police
Superintendent William Colarulo told the Philadelphia Inquirer. Police linked
the fake IDs to four 18-year-old men, but would not identify the men or the
college. Local schools include Villanova University, Cabrini College, Eastern
University and Valley Forge Military Academy and College. Police tracked the
package to Guangzhou, China, and said it is part of a larger problem with
fraudulent identification. The cards are easy to get and can be used for far
more than sneaking into bars. There are many people who use these to commit
forgery or credit card fraud," police Lt. Chris Flanagan said. The
students are not facing criminal charges but have been referred to their
parents and may face school sanctions.
Somewhat
Useless Information
--Although
Yellowstone was the first national park (designated on March 1, 1872), it
wasn't the first area set aside as a park. That honor is shared by the National
Capital Parks, the White House, and the National Mall, all designated on July
16, 1790.
--National park status doesn't last forever. A couple dozen sites have been
turned over to the states, or to other federal departments. For example, the
Park Service transferred New Echota Marker National Memorial (a Cherokee
heritage memorial) to the state of Georgia in 1950.
--The northernmost point in a national park is Inupiat Heritage Center at
Barrow, Alaska, while the southernmost point is the National Park of American
Samoa, below the equator.
--The farthest national park from Washington, D.C., is War in the Pacific
National Historical Park in Guam. It's far closer to the Philippines than to
Hawaii, let alone the continental United States.
--Devil's Tower in Wyoming began its history buried - a tall pillar of magma
that leaked or burned through the other rock in the area, then cooled
underground. Millions of years of erosion laid bare the 1,267-foot tower.
--Death Valley National Park also has a mountain. Telescope Peak, which tops
out at 11,049 feet above sea level. From the top of this mountain to Badwater
Basin it's twice the vertical drop of the Grand Canyon.
« »« »
Birthday’s
Today
Joanne
Woodward, Thomasville Ga, actress (3 Faces of Eve, Rachel) is 85
Ralph
Nader, consumer advocate (Unsafe at Any Speed) is 81
[Navarre] Scott Momaday, US author (House Made of
Dawn, Pulitzer 1969) is 81
Barbara
Babcock, actress (Hill St Blues) is 78
Chelsea
Clinton, daughter of President Clinton and Hillary Clinton is 35
Josh
Groban, American singer (You Raise Me Up) is 34
« »
Remembered
for being born today
Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow, poet (Hiawatha) 1807-1882@75
Hugo L
Black, Sen-Ala)/78th Supreme Court justice 1886-1971@85
Charles
Herbert Best, co-discoverer (Insulin) 1899-1978@79
John
Steinbeck, author (Grapes of Wrath-Nobel 1962) 1902-1968@66
John
Connally, (Gov-Texas), shot in Kennedy motorcade 1917-1993@76
Elizabeth
Taylor, English-American actress (Father of the Bride) 1932-2011@79
« » « »
Historical
Obits Today
Lillian
Gish, US actress (Birth of a Nation), 1993@96
S I
Hayakawa, Sen-California, linguist 1992@85
Henry
Cabot Lodge, (Sen-R)/diplomat, 1985@82
William
F. Buckley, Jr., conservative author\commentator, 2008@82
Van
Cliburn, American pianist, cancer, 2013@78
Fred
Rogers, host of TV's "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood" cancer,
2003@74
Samuel
Pierpont Langley, American astronomer\pioneer aviator, 1906@71
Louis
Vuitton, French luggage maker, 1892@70
Pat Brady, actor
(Roy Rodgers Show), alcohol abuse, 1974@59
Frankie
Lymon, rock and roll/rhythm & blues singer OD, 1968, @25
« » « »
Brain Teasers Answers
A goose! (Down is the type of feathers that geese grow). Also a
duck
« » « »
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…§
