5-19-15

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Almanac: Week: 21 \ Day: 139
May Averages: 68°\35°
86004 Today: H 63°\L 31° Average Sky Cover: 45% 
Wind ave:   5mph\Gusts:  24mph
Ave. High: 68° Record High:  81° (1920) Ave. Low: 35° Record Low:  20° (1971)
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Observances Today:
Boys Club Day –founded 1906
Frog Jumping Jubilee Day-1928-Angel’s Camp, CA
HIV/AIDS Awareness Day
May Ray Day
National Asian & Pacific Islander
National Hepatitus Testing Day
National Museum Day
World Autoimmune Arthritis Day
**
Youth and Sports Day (Turkey)
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Observances This Week:
16-22  National Safe Boating Week                   National Heritage Breeds Week     
EMS (Emergency Medical Services) Week          National Stationery Week 
National Dog Bite Prevention Week                  National New Friends, Old Friends Week
National Medical Transcription Week  

17-25  International Coaching Week                 National Backyard Games Week 
Healthy and Safe Swimming Week                   National Educational Bosses' Week

World Trade Week
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Quote of the Day 

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US Historical Highlights for Today
1643 - Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut & New Harbor form
 United Colonies of New England
1749 - George II grants charter to Ohio Company to settle Ohio Valley
1780 - About midday, near-total darkness descends on much of New England,
 only now known to be caused by forest fires in Canada
1796 - Game protection law restricts encroachment on Indian hunting grounds
1848 - 1st department store opens
1848 - Mexico gives Texas to US, ending the war
1856 - Sen Charles Sumner, Mass, spoke out against slavery
1862 - US Homestead Act becomes law - provides cheap land for settlement
 of American West
1865 - President Jefferson Davis is captured by Union Cavalry in Georgia
1884 - Ringling Brothers circus premieres
1885 - 1st mass production of shoes (Jan Matzeliger in Lynn, Massachusetts)
1891 - Rice Institute, which became Rice University, is chartered
1892 - National Society of Colonial Dames of America founded
1892 - Stage coach line was established between Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon.
1898 - Post Office authorizes use of postcards
1921 - Congress sharply curbs immigration, setting a national quota system
1935 - NFL adopts an annual college draft to begin in 1936
1954 - Postmaster General Summerfield approves CIA mail-opening project
1958 - US & Canada form North American Air Defense Command (NORAD)
1965 - Patricia R Harris named 1st US black female ambassador (Luxembourg)
1967 - USSR ratifies treaty with Britain & US banning nuclear weapons in space
1992 - US VP Dan Quayle attacks Murphy Brown for being a single mother
 and as a poor example of family values
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Today’s World Events through History
1568 - English Queen Elizabeth I arrests Scottish Queen Mary
1571 - Miguel Lopez de Lagazpi founded Manilla in the Phillipines
1897 - Oscar Wilde is released from Reading Gaol
1900 - World's longest railroad tunnel (Simplon) links Italy & Switz, opens
1930 - White women win voting rights in South Africa
1941 - New Nazi battleship Bismarck leaves Gdynia, Poland
1981 - 5 British Army soldiers are killed when their armoured vehicle is ripped
 apart by a Provisional Irish Republican Army roadside bomb near
 Bessbrook, County Armagh
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Birthdays Today:
How many can you identify? Answers below in Birthday’s Today 

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My Rambling Thoughts
Another good day here in Flag.
Eye appointment went very well. The laser procedure did a great job and has improved my right eye quite a bit. Now to just wait to June 1 for the left eye and then finally new prescription about 2 weeks after that.
Talked to Ellie today and Cuba is a go and the following year-2016-a river trip in Europe. Cool.
Tomorrow I see my PCP for results of a slew of annual tests I took about 2 months ago. Expecting a good report.
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Brain Teasers
(answers at the end of post)
Six words that contain YO as a letter-pair have had all of their other letters removed and placed into a pool. Put those letters back in their proper places. What are the words?

YO---, YO----, -YO---, --YO--, ---YO-, ----YO

Pool: A, B, B, C, C, D, D, D, E, E, E, E, I, L, M, M, N, N, N, N, P, R, R

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Found on You Tube with some relevance to today
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…Body Facts…
If a vampire bat goes 2 days without drinking blood, they can die. However, well fed female bats will puke up blood and share it with other bats that they like in exchange for grooming.

Your body is creating and killing about 2.4 million red blood cells per second.

…Cool Facts…
In 2011, two men paraglided from the summit of Mt. Everest, arriving at a village in 42 minutes and avoiding the dangerous conventional 3 day descent.

Students at MIT developed a wristband that can regulate your “thermal comfort”, which could possibly eliminate the need for central heating and cooling.

In Czech Republic, women are entitled to up to 4 years of paid maternity leave, increasing to 7 years if the child is disabled.

…Flagstaff, AZ History…
100 YEARS AGO-1915
The May Day weekend cleanup got lost in the snowstorm. It made everything white anyway.

Ice Maan Bob informs patrons that it is now impossible to deliver ice in the morning.
All orders are accepted subject to delivery after 1 p.m.

…Harper’s Index…
$700,000,000 -Amount by which Dollar General outbid Dollar Tree in an attempted August takeover of Family Dollar

…Revisited History…
The first Warner Bros. theater opened in 1903, while The Ottoman Empire was dissolved in 1923 after over 700 years of existence. 

…Unusual Fact of the Day…
While mittens have been around since prehistoric times, the glove (with articulated fingers) dates to ancient Greece, popping up in some translations of Homer’s Odyssey.

…Water Facts…
A healthy person can drink about three gallons (48 cups) of water per day.

Drinking too much water too quickly can lead to water intoxication. Water intoxication occurs when water dilutes the sodium level in the bloodstream and causes an imbalance of water in the brain.

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2 jokes for the day
Q: Why did the boxer date the pretty girl?

A: Because she was a knockout!

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Three old ladies sit in a diner, discussing their health. One lady says, "You know, I'm getting really forgetful. This morning, I was standing at the top of the stairs, and I couldn't remember whether I had just come up or was about to go down."
The second lady says, "You think that's bad? The other day, I was sitting on the edge of my bed, and I couldn't remember whether I was going to sleep or had just woken up!"
The third lady smiles smugly. "Well, my memory is just as good as it's always been, knock on wood," she says as she raps on the table. Then with a startled look on her face, she asks, "Who's there?"          

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Yep, It Really Happened
Over a period of about 18 months Barry Larson stole an estimated $30,000 worth of dog biscuits from the Purina pet food plant he worked for. 
So was he selling dog biscuits on the outside? Is there a black market for 'hot' pet food? And how was he getting all of those dog biscuits out of the plant anyway? 
It turns out he wasn't. He was eating them. 
"We noticed a few months ago that something was wrong with our dog biscuit production," said Purina spokesman, Keith Schopp. "When we checked the quantity of ingredients that were used in the production and the number of biscuits that were produced, the numbers just didn't add up! We began installing more security cameras at various strategic locations throughout the factory, and we were finally able to identify the problem. Mr. Larson, who worked in the quality check sector, was eating almost half of the biscuits that went by him."
To account for the losses Mr. Larson must have ingested nearly 3,000 dog biscuits per day during his work hours. 
But there was a good reason for his voraciousness. 
"Purina has provided us with hours of video evidence in which we see the suspect smoke drugs on his work site, and then eat hundreds of dog biscuits," said Police Captain Brian Tobin. "The images are a little bit disturbing, but very conclusive in terms of evidence. We proceeded with Mr. Larson's arrest this morning for 15 charges of petty theft, and found him to be in possession of 10 grams of cannabis."
Larson's ex-girlfriend, Patricia Nelson, told a reporter that she was aware of his "addictions" to both cannabis and dog biscuits, and that she had actually left him when she had found out.
"Every night, he came back from work with a really horrible breath," she said. "One day, I came back from work earlier than usual, and surprised him with his mouth full of dog biscuits! I was so disgusted, that I packed my things and left."
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Somewhat Useless Information
There are two suborders of whales to which all species of whales belong: toothed whales and baleen whales. Toothed whales include sperm, killer, and beluga whales, and they prey on large fish in deep waters as their main source of food. Baleen whales include blue and humpback whales, and they are filter feeders that feed on small organisms such as krill and plankton by straining large amounts of sea water through a comb-like structure in their mouth called a baleen.

While ancient fishermen used the meat of whales for food, in the modern era whales were primarily hunted for oil and whalebone, a term used for the baleen. Whalebone was used to make corsets, umbrella ribs, handles, and brushes, while the oil was used for cooking, candle wax and, much later, making margarine.

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  Birthday’s Today
80 - David Hartman, Pawtucket RI, TV personality (Good Morning America)
76 - Nancy Kwan, Hong Kong, actress (Flower Drum Song, World of Suzie Wong)
70 - Peter Townshend, England, rock guitarist/vocalist/composer (The Who)
66 - Grace Jones, [Mendoza], Jamaican singer/actress (A View to a Kill)
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Remembered for being born today
Max Perutz, Austrian molecular biologist, Nobel Prize Chemistry 1914-2002@87 
Henry Horatio Dixon, Irish Biologist originated the cohesion-tension theory of water 1869-1953@84
Nancy Astor, US/Eng's feminist/ex of Waldorf Astor 18791964@84 
Ho Chi Minh [Nguyá»…n Sinh Cung], President of North Vietnam 1890-1969@79 
Flo Chadwick, swimmer (1st to swim English Channel both ways) 1918-1995@76 
Pol Pot, Cambodian dictator 1928-1998@72
Joey Ramone, [Jeffrey Hyman], lead singer The Ramones 1951-2001@49 
Malcolm X, [Little], human rights activist- Black Muslims founder 1925-1965@39 
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Historical Obits Today
Henry Morgan, TV panalist (To Tell the Truth), cancer-1994@74
Ogden Nash, poet/TV panelist (Masquerade Party), Crohn's disease-1971@68
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, American 1st lady, cancer-1994@64
Nathaniel Hawthorne, American writer (Scarlet Letter), long illness-1864@59
T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia), motorcycle accident-1935@46
Anne Boleyn, Queen of England and wife of Henry VIII, beheaded-1536@30ish
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Brain Teasers Answers
YODEL, YONDER, MYOPIC, BEYOND, CANYON, EMBRYO
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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.