Feb 9

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Feb 9, 2019 Week: 06 \ Day: 40

86004 Today: H 38° \ L 16° \ Average Sky Cover: 5% 

Wind:   7mph\Gusts:  11mph Visibility: 10 mi

Record High: 54°[2015]   Record Low: -21°[1929]

FebAverages: 45°\19°

Today’s Quote

The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.

Leo Tolstoy

Random Tidbits

Eating veggies has plenty of health benefits, but it also has cosmetic ones, according to researchers at Leeds University and the University at St. Andrews. They found that those who consumed vegetables with high levels of red and yellow pigments had a healthy yellow glow compared to those who did not. This is due to a process called “carotenoid colorization.”

Observances This Week

African Heritage & Health Week: 3-9
Dump Your Significant Jerk Week: 3-9
Burn Awareness Week: 3-9 Link  
Children's Authors & Illustrators Week: 3-9
Children's Mental Health Week: 4-10 Link
National School Counseling Week: 4-8 Link
International Networking Week: 4-8
Solo Diners Eat Out Weekend: 7-12
Congenital Heart Defect Awareness Week: 7-14 Link
Have A Heart for A Chained Dog Week: 7-14  Link
Risk Awareness Week: 7-14
National Marriage Week: 7-14  Link  Link
Love Makes the World Go Round; But, Laughter Keeps Us From Getting Dizzy Week: 8-14

Observances for Today

Gwyl Mabsant Link
National Bagels and Lox Day

National Pizza Day Link
Read in the Bathtub Day
Toothache Day Link

My Rambling Thoughts

I had a good lunch with our retirement group yesterday. We went to a Mexican restaurant where the cooks are from Guadalajara, Mexico. Food was outstanding.

Headed out and did necessary grocery shopping in our cold weather. It was 22° when I left home. Got what I needed and headed home to a warm house. Snow is melting very slowly.

The oversight hearings of the Acting Attorney General are quite contentious, to say the least. I’m sure happy I’m not sitting in that very hot seat. This is an important hearing with many issues, but for me the most important is the separation of children and the continued practice.

I am reminded, that when I started working for the Feds, we were told that it was a privilege to serve as a civil servant. I didn’t get it back then, I was just happy to have a job. Now, all these years later, I understand. Many of our elected and appointed leaders seem to have forgotten that it is a privilege to serve the people of the United States. Time to bring that basic tenant to the foreground again.

Today’s Significant Historical Events

1800’s

1822 Haiti invades the newly founded Dominican Republic.

1825 House of Representatives elects John Quincy Adams

            6th US president

1861 Jefferson Davis & Alexander Stephens elected

            President & VP of the Confederate States of America

            (US Civil War)

1870 US Army establishes US National Weather Service

1886 US President Grover Cleveland declares a state of

            emergency in Seattle because of anti-Chinese violence

1900’s

1909 1st federal legislation prohibiting narcotics (opium)

1943 FDR orders minimal 48 hour work week in war industry

1950 Senator Joseph McCarthy charges State Department

            infested with 205 communists

1964 GI Joe character created

1995 Irish music and dance show "Riverdance" first opens

            in Dublin, Ireland with lead dancer Michael Flatley

2000’s

2014 Protest erupt in Sarajevo and other cities in Bosnia-

            Herzegovina; the unemployment rate remains at 40%

            (57% for youth)

2016 US primary elections: New Hampshire Primary, In

            Republican race Donald Trump wins (35%), John Kasich

            2nd (16%), and Bernie Sanders (60%) defeats Hillary

            Clinton (38%) in Democratic race

Birthdays Today

1773 William Henry Harrison,

9th President of the United States (Whig: March 4-April 4, 1841),

born in Charles City, Virginia

(d. 1841-@68-spetic shock)

1789 Franz Xaver Gabelsberger,

German inventor of the stenography

(d. 1849-@59)

1909 Carmen Miranda,

Portuguese vocalist and actress (Copacabana, Date With Judy),

born in Marco de Canavezes, Portugal

(d. 1955-@46-heart attack)

1923 Brendan Behan,

Irish author and poet (Borstal Boy, The Hostage),

born in Dublin, Ireland

(d. 1964-@41-alcoholism)

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91- Roger Mudd,

American news anchor (CBS Weekend News, NBC Evening News),

born in Washington, D.C.

76- Joe Pesci,

actor (Half Nelson, Goodfellas), born in Newark, New Jersey

75- Alice Walker,

American novelist (Color Purple, Meridian), born in Putnam

County, Georgia

74- Mia [Maria] Farrow,

actress (Rosemary's Baby, Purple Rose of Cairo)

70- Judith Light,

(Angela-Who's the Boss, 1 Life to Live),

born in Trenton, New Jersey

64- Charles Shaughnessy,

actor (Shane-Days of our Lives, Nanny), born in London, England

56- Travis Tritt,

country vocalist (Country Club)

Historical Obits Today

@98-2015 Ed Sabol,

American filmmaker (NFL Films)

@89-1995 J. William Fulbright,

American senator from Arkansas, known for opposition to the

Vietnam War)

@83-1969 [George] Gabby Hayes,

actor

@81-1995 David Wayne,

American stage and screen actor (Andromeda Strain, Adam's Rib)

@79-1979 Dennis Gabor,

Hungarian-British engineer and physicist (invented holography,

Nobel Prize 1971)

@79-1966 Sophie Tucker [Kalish]

"last of the red hot mammas",

Russian-born American singer/actress (My Yiddish Mama),

 dies of lung cancer

@71-2002 Princess Margaret

of the United Kingdom,

dies of strokes

@69-1984 Yuri Andropov,

General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

(1982-84) and KGB Chief (1967-82),

dies of total renal failure

@59-1881 Fyodor Dostoyevsky,

Russian novelist (Crime and Punishment, The Dream of a

Ridiculous Man) who helped shape literary modernism and

existentialism,

dies from a pulmonary hemorrhage

@55-1981 Bill Haley,

American rock vocalist known as the father of Rock 'n' Roll (Rock

Around the Clock),

dies of a heart attack probably caused by alcoholism

@33-1906 Paul Laurence Dunbar,

African American dialect poet,

dies of TB