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Almanac: Week: 17 \ Day: 112
April
Averages: 58°\27°
86004
Today: H 68°\L 32° Average Sky Cover: 80%
Wind
ave: 7mph\Gusts: 25mph
Ave. High: 60° Record High: 76°
(1949) Ave. Low: 28° Record
Low: 11° (1963)
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Observances Today:
"In
God We Trust Day" Day--coins
Administrative
Professionals Day or Secretary's Day
Chemists
Celebrate The Earth Day
Earth
Day
Girl
Scout Leaders Day
Global
Selfie Earth Day (NASA)
Mother
Earth Day
National
Jelly Bean Day
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Observances This Week:
18-23
National Toddler Immunization Week
Police Officers Who Gave Their Lives In
The Line of Duty Week
19-25
Animal Cruelty/Human Violence Awareness
Week
Bedbug Awareness Week
Coin Week
Fibroid Awareness Week
Medical Laboratory Professionals Week
Oral, Head and Neck Cancer
Awareness Week
National Crime Victims’ Rights Week
National Environmental Education Week
National Occupational Health Nursing Week
National Infertility
Awareness Week
National Karaoke Week
National Pet ID Week
National Princess Week
Sky Awareness Week
20-24
National Paperboard Packaging Week
National Playground Safety
Week
National Work Zone Safety Awareness Week
Safe Kids Week
Spring Astronomy Week
22-27
National Tattoo Week
US Film Festival
Fiddler's Frolic
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Quote of the Day
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US Historical Highlights for Today
1526 - 1st slave revolt occurs in SC
1793 - Pres Washington attends opening of
Rickett's, 1st circus in US
1864 - US mints 2 cent coin (1st appearance of
"In God We Trust")
1889 - Oklahoma land rush officially started; some
were "sooner"
1898 - Congress passes Volunteer Army Act calling
for a Volunteer Cavalry
1898 - US President McKinley orders blockade of
Cuban harbors
1900 - Fashionable female
residents of Tucson could choose from a wide
range of corsets designed to help them
achieve the desired
"wasp-waisted" silhouette of the
day.
1951 - Ticker-tape parade for
General MacArthur in NYC
1964 - World's Fair (Flushing Meadow, Corona Park,
NY) opens
1970 - 1st Earth Day held internationally to
conserve natural resources
1972 - Apollo astronauts John Young & Charles
Duke ride on Moon
1976 - Barbara Walters becomes 1st female nightly
network news anchor
1981 - Largest US bank robbery (Tucson Ariz), more
than $3.3 million stolen
1998 - Disney's Animal Kingdom opens at Walt Disney
World near Orlando, Florida
2000 - In a pre-dawn raid, federal agents seize
six-year-old Elián González
from his relatives' home in Miami, Florida.
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Today’s World Events through History
1056 - Supernova Crab nebula last seen by the naked
eye
1370 - Building begins of Bastille fortress in Paris
1529 - Treaty of Saragosa: Spain & Portugal
divide eastern hemisphere
1915 - 1st military use of poison gas (chlorine, by
Germany) in WW I
1916 - Chief of Staff of the Irish Volunteers Eóin
MacNeill issues the
Countermanding order in Dublin to try to stop
what would become the
Easter Rising
1972 - An 11-year-old boy killed by a rubber bullet
fired by the British
Army in Belfast; he was the first to die from
a rubber bullet impact
1994 - In Denmark the largest lollipop, weighing
3,011 pounds, made
2006 - 243 people are injured in pro-democracy
protest in Nepal after
Nepali security forces open fire on protesters
against King Gyanendra.
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♫ Birthdays Today: ♫
How many can you identify? Answers below in Birthday’s Today
« » « »
My Rambling Thoughts
Decent day with clouds most of the day, but still nice weather. Hoping
for rain, but no such luck.
Our little mountain town school district has been hit with a
series of ‘threatening computer generated calls’ that have led to ‘lockdowns’
at several elementary school and middle schools. I can sympathize with the
administrators. While I was at Pine Ridge, we got calls almost weekly during
the spring threatening a bomb. What to do? We emptied the buildings, sent the
kids to the community center, had the police dogs search the buildings. Each
call took several hours to reopen the classes. If we ignored it, and something
happened chaos would have occurred and innocent children and staff could have
been harmed. At times we just hoped that school would soon be out for the
summer. We did meetings with the high school students, we did community
meetings, we brought in the FBI, had the BIA cops and the tribal cops on call.
Never figured out who was doing it. With today’s technology, it is surprising that
they can’t trace the call…but that’s what I thought over a decade ago. Times
have changed and now it is not a bomb, but a gunman on campus. While a lockdown
is really a pain it sure beats moving kids and staff ½ mile to a community
center.
« » « »
Brain Teasers
(answers at the end of post)
The
answers to the two clues in each line below are six letter words that differ by
only one letter. Example, if you trade off the p from stripe with the letter k
in the same position you get strike. (chevron=stripe, hit=strike)
1. sew___swap____
2. ravine__mounted gun____
3. grumble___green club___
4. short doze___Tabby's treat___
5. stronghold ___ranch animals___
« » « »
Found on You Tube with some
relevance to today
« » « »
…Flagstaff,
AZ History…
75 YEARS AGO - 1940
~ City Cleanup week is underway. There
will be extra trucks operating on the regular refuse pickup schedule. Garbage
and trash of all kinds will be collected. All citizens are urged to help by
collecting and disposing of everything cluttering yards, alleys and streets and
parkways. This includes old tires, tree limbs, ashes boxes, cans and other
unsightly items.
~ Seventeen freight cars were loaded
with the dismantled pieces of the old CCC camp and taken to a new location.
Work on the new camp north of Flagstaff has begun with a crew from Washington
State at work.
…Harper’s
Index…
7:
percentage of US women who work in the restaurant industry
37:
percentage of US workplace sexual harassment claims that originate in the
industry
…Language
Facts…
~ There are around 41,806 different spoken languages in the world
today.
~ "Stewardesses" is the longest word that is typed with
only the left hand.
…Unusual
Fact of the Day…
~ Canada has more lakes than all the other countries combined.
…Water
Facts..,.
~ It would take 17,000 McDonalds strawfuls of water to fill a
standard bathtub.
~ If you get water flowing fast enough, it can cut metal.
…World Record
Facts…
~ A cauliflower that weighs almost 72.5kg has broken the world
record by almost 3kg.
~ The record for most passengers on an airplane was set in 1991
when 1086 Ethiopian Jews were evacuated on a Boeing 747 to Jerusalem. The plane
landed with 1088 passengers as two babies were born during the flight.
« » « »
2 jokes
for the day
A large woman put on a dress and asked her
husband if the dress made her look different.
Her husband said, "You're asking the wrong person, I saw you before you
put it on."
« »
Q: What do you get when you cross Bambi with a
ghost?
A: Bamboo.
Q: What's a haunted chicken?
A: Poultry-geist.
Q: Why did the monster eat a light bulb?
A: Because he was in need of a light snack.
Q: Why are most monsters covered in wrinkles?
A: Have you ever tried to iron a monster?
Q: What kind of mistakes do ghosts make?
A: Boo boos.
Q: Why couldn't Dracula's wife get to sleep?
A: Because of his coffin.
Q: Why do mummies make excellent spies?
A: They're good at keeping things under wraps.
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Yep, It
Really Happened
COLUMBUS,
Ohio (UPI) - Environmental cleanups could become a lot easier, cheaper and
more effective if researchers at Ohio State University can find a way to scale
their newly developed stainless steel mesh technology.
Designing steel mesh doesn't sound all that impressive, but this isn't an
ordinary sheet of metal with holes in it. This mesh can separate water and oil.
Pour a solution of oil and water through the mesh and the magic can be
witnessed firsthand. The oil collects on top, while the water filters through
and collects in a beaker below.
"If you scale this up, you could potentially catch an oil spill with a
net," Bharat Bhushan, a professor of mechanical engineering at Ohio State,
said in a press release.
By layering a series of materials atop the mesh -- including silica, surfactant
and polymer -- researchers created a nanostructure that binds to oil but not
water. Tiny pieces of glass, or silica, were sprayed atop the mesh to mimic the
texture of lotus leaves, which have been proven to repel oil and attract water.
Surfactant, a compound that lowers surface tension, was then embedded in a
polymer layer and laid atop the mesh.
Together, the layers create a half-smooth, half-rough surface that performs the
opposite function of the lotus leaf, attracting oil and repelling water.
Bhushan says his latest work is the product of ten years of testing differing
combinations of materials.
"We've studied so many natural surfaces, from leaves to butterfly wings
and shark skin, to understand how nature solves certain problems," Bhushan
said. "Now we want to go beyond what nature does, in order to solve new
problems."
"Nature reaches a limit of what it can do," added research partner
Philip Brown. "To repel synthetic materials like oils, we need to bring in
another level of chemistry that nature doesn't have access to."
Bhushan is working on variations of the new technology for use on automotive
glass like car mirrors, and also as an additive for liquid lubricants.
The research is detailed in two new papers published in Nature Scientific
Reports.
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Somewhat
Useless Information
On
average, children between the ages of two and seven color 28 minutes every day.
The average child in the United States will wear down 730 crayons by his or her
tenth birthday.
The scent of Crayola crayons is among the twenty most recognizable to American
adults.
Washington Irving used the pseudonym Geoffrey Crayon when he published The
Sketch-Book, a collection of short stories and essays, including "The Legend
of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle."
Alice Binney, wife of company co-owner Edwin Binney, coined the word Crayola by
joining craie, from the French word meaning chalk, with ola, from oleaginous,
meaning oily.
In 1903, the Binney & Smith company made the first box of Crayola crayons
costing a nickel and containing eight colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue,
violet, brown, and black.
« »« »
Birthday’s Today
89 - Charlotte Rae, Milwaukee Wisc, actress
(Edna-Facts of Life)
79 - Glen Campbell, Delight Ark,
actor/singer (Time I Get to Phoenix)
78 - Jack Nicholson, NJ, actor (One Flew
Over Cuckoo's Nest, Shining)
69 - John Waters, director (Hairspray)
65 - Peter Frampton, Kent England,
guitarist/vocalist (Frampton Comes Alive)
61 - Joseph Bottoms, Santa Barbara Cal,
actor (Surfacing, Blind Date)
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Remembered for being born today
- Eddie
Albert, [Heimberger], actor (Roman Holiday, Green Acres) 1906-2005@99
- Bettie
Page, Nashville Tennessee, American pin-up model 1923-2008@85
- John
A Llewellyn, Cardiff Wales, astronaut 1933-2013@80
- Immanuel
Kant, Konigsberg Germ, philosopher 1724-1804@79
- Julius
Sterling Morton, Nebraska, (Gov-Neb), started Arbor Day 1832-1902@70
- Steve
Fossett, American adventurer 1944-2007@63
- [Julius] Robert Oppenheimer, Manhattan
(A-bomb) Project 1904-1967@62
- Isabella
I, of Castile, Queen of Spain, patron of Columbus 1451-1504@53
- Nikolai Lenin[Vladimir
Ilich Ulyanov], Bolshevik/Premier-Russia 1870-1924@53
- Hal
March, actor/TV host ($64,000 Question) 1920-1970@49
- Henry
Fielding, English novelist (Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones) 1707-1754@47
« » « »
Historical Obits Today
Magnus
Huss, Swedish Physician coined the word alcoholism
and was
the first to define it as a disease, 1890@82
Richard
Nixon, 37th President (1969-75)-1994@81
Anne
Bonny, Irish pirate, in prison-1782@82
Will Geer, actor
(Grandpa Walton-Waltons), respiratory disease-1978@75
Jane
Froman, singer (Jane Froman's USA Canteen), heart disease-1980@72
Richie
Havens, American singer-songwriter and guitarist, heart attack-2013@72
Erma
Bombeck, humorist (Grass is Greener), kidney complications-1996@69
Cesar
Chavez, US farm worker (United Farm Workers)-1993@66
James
Hargreaves, inventor (spinning jenny)-1778@58
Huey
Newton, US, Black Panther leader, shot-1989@47
Pat
Tillman, Pro football player\U.S. Army Ranger, killed in action-2004@27
« » « »
Brain Teasers Answers
1. Stitch, Switch
2. Canyon, Cannon
3. Mutter, Putter
4. Catnap, Catnip
5. Castle, Cattle
« » « »
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…§
