1-19-14


FYI: Any blue text is a link. Click to check it out!
Flagstaff Almanac:
Week: 03 / Day: 019   
Today: L 16°…H 53°… Ave. humidity: 35%
Wind: ave:   10mph; Gusts:  16mph  
Average Low: 17° Record Low:  -13° (1943)
Average High: 43° Record High:  62° (1986)

Quote of the Day
 
Today’s Historical Highlights
1785 - First manned balloon flight in Ireland
1903 - New bicycle race "Tour de France" announced
1920 - US Senate votes against membership in League of Nations
1929 - Acadia National Park, Maine established
1937 - Cy Young elected to Baseball Hall of Fame
1955 - "Millionaire" TV program premieres on CBS
1955 - "Scrabble" debuts on board game market
1972 - Sandy Koufax, Yogi Berra elected to Hall of Fame
2013 - 4 climbers are killed by an avalanche in Glen Coe, Scotland
2013 - Lance Armstrong admits to doping in all seven of his Tour de France victories

♫  Today’s Birthdays: ♫   
How many can you identify? Answers in Today’s Birthdays
 
My Free Rambling Thoughts   
A really nice Saturday here in our little mountain town…still way too dry, but still nice.
 
Our discussion group meets tonight on Military Technology which should be interesting. The articles talked about the change in history and how the military establishment has met with the many changes from the early 20th century. While I still have a hard time dealing with the many ‘advances’ we have in killing other people while trying not to kill our own, the changes over the last century have been very interesting. Just like with so many changes, the establishment in the military has usually been against most of the changes. First they were happy with the horses and then the tanks most fought and many lost their careers by not accepting the changes. No different today and it seems we have learned little from history. Waiting to hear what the others have to offer.
Game  Center (answers at the end of post)
Brain Teasers
When NASA was considering animals to experiment on in space, they picked birds, because of the low maintenance. Although NASA was aware that most birds require gravity to swallow and would not survive the weightlessness of space, they did manage to find two types of bird that would survive the trip. Which birds were they?
Lifestyle  Substance:     
Found on You Tube with some relevance to today

Actual Complaints… These are actual complaints received from dissatisfied customers by Thomas Cook Vacations (based on a Thomas Cook/ABTA survey):
  • "Although the brochure said that there was a fully equipped kitchen, there was no egg-slicer in the drawers."
  • "We went on holiday to Spain and had a problem with the taxi drivers as they were all Spanish."

Suggested New State Mottos:
  • Arizona: But It's A Dry Heat
  • Connecticut: Like Massachusetts, Only The Kennedy's Don't Own It Yet

Something to Ponder in your free time…
  • Why do we wash bath towels? Aren't we clean when we use them?
  • Why doesn't glue stick to the inside of the bottle?              

Auction Prices
Andy Warhol's unemployment rate drawing.
In 1984, Andy Warhol drew a relatively accurate depiction of the U.S. unemployment rate from 1980 to 1984. Christie's put that picture up for auction this February and the image -- roughly the length and height of two rulers -- sold for $32,500.
OK Then…


Harper’s Index 
  • Percentage of Broadway tickets that are bought by companies and deducted as a business expense: 20 
  • Of tickets for National Hockey League games played in the United States: 62

Unusual Fact of the Day
Sixty miles per hour is the maximum speed limit throughout Hawaii. It's the only U.S. state with a statewide limit under 65.
Joke-of-the-day
Three buddies die in a car crash, and they find themselves at the pearly gates.
They are all asked, "When you are in your casket and friends and family are mourning upon you, what would you like to hear them say about you?
The first guy says, "I would like to hear them say that I was the greates doctor of my time, and a great family man."
The second guy says, "I would like to hear that I was a wonderful husband and school teacher who made a huge difference in our children of tomorrow."
The last guy replies, "I would like to hear them say... LOOK!!! HE'S MOVING!!!!!"
Rules of Thumb:   
Easy shortcuts to make an ‘educated’ guess
MAKING A SCARF JOINT
Two pieces of wood can be attached end to end by tapering each piece and overlapping the tapers. The splice that is formed is called a scarf joint. For planking a boat, the length of the tapers should be 12 times the thickness of the boards being joined.    
Yeah, It Really Happened
WASHINGTON - A NASA space observatory has made the first-ever Gamma-ray measurements of a gravitational lens to observe a distant cosmic object, the space agency reports. A gravitational lens is a kind of natural cosmic telescope formed when a rare alignment allows the gravity of a massive object to bend and amplify light from a more distant source. The accomplishment by astronomers using NASA's Fermi spacecraft opens new avenues for research, including a novel way to probe emission regions near supermassive black holes, a NASA release said Monday. "We began thinking about the possibility of making this observation a couple of years after Fermi launched, and all of the pieces finally came together in late 2012," astrophysicist Teddy Cheung at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington said. In September that year Fermi's Large Area Telescope detected a series of bright Gamma-ray flares from a source known as B0218+357, located 4.35 billion light-years from Earth. Long before light from B0218+357 reaches us, it passes directly through a face-on spiral galaxy -- one very much like our own -- about 4 billion light-years away. These powerful flares, passing through a known gravitational lens system, provided the key to making the lens measurement, the scientists said. Such Gamma-ray observations in this and other lens systems could help provide new insights into the workings of powerful black-hole jets and other cosmic phenomena, they said.
Somewhat Useless Information   
  • America, one of the greatest economies in the world, used to have a day, that it had no debt and it was 178 years ago. That day was January the 8th in 1835 and Andrew Jackson was the President at that time. A senator rose to make the big announcement: ‘Gentlemen … the national debt … is PAID.’ That was the only time that the United States were free of debt and it lasted only one year.
  • Although Europe and most Western countries no longer consider attempted suicide as a criminal offense, it used to be a time when the state would not be very tolerant. In the Christian church people who attempted suicide were excommunicated. During the 19th century in Great Britain people would be punished by hanging in case of attempted suicide, as it was deemed to be equivalent to murder. In the United States the state imposes penalty in the case of an attempted suicide, whereas it remains a criminal offense in many Islamic countries.
  • Singapore is considered to be one of the world’ s high developed countries, despite the income inequalities. It is such a developed country that most millionaires in the world live there! One out of every six Singaporean households have at least one million US dollars in disposable wealth. This calculation excludes property, businesses, and luxury goods. If they had been included they would further increase the number of millionaires, especially as property in Singapore is among the world’s most expensive.
  • Adriano Celentano composed a song with lyrics in American slang meaning nothing and it became a hit in the 70s. His intention was to prove that the Italian audience would be willing to adopt with nthusiasm and popularize any song in English or American irrespective of the level of accuracy. This song was “Prisencolinensinainciusol” performed by Celentano and his wife, singer/actress-turned-record producer Claudia Mori. “Ever since I started singing, I was very influenced by American music and everything Americans did. So at a certain point, because I like American slang — which, for a singer, is much easier to sing than Italian — I thought that I would write a song which would only have as its theme the inability to communicate. And to do this, I had to write a song where the lyrics didn’t mean anything”, Celentano said.


Calendar Information        
Happening This Week:
13-19
National Vocation Awareness Week  
National Soccer Coaches of America Week
16-26
Sundance Film Festival
17-23
National Fresh Squeezed Juice Week
18-19
Bald Eagle Appreciation Days
18-26
International Snowmobile Safety and Awareness Week  
Week of Christian Unity
Clean Out Your Inbox Week
Healthy Weight Week
Hunt For Happiness Week
19-24
National Activity Professionals Week   
National Nurse Anesthetists Week
National Handwriting Analysis Week 

Today Is                                                                      
·        Popcorn Day
·        Tin Can Day
·        World Religion Day
^^^^^^
·        Confederate Heroes Day (Texas)
·        Timket (Ethiopia- Orthodox celebration of Epiphany)

Today’s Events through History  
1746 - Bonnie Prince Charlie’s troops occupy Stirling 
1981 - US & Iran sign agreement to release 52 American hostages
1983 - Klaus Barbie, SS chief of Lyon in Nazi-France, arrested in Bolivia

Today’s Birthdays                                                           
Shelly Fabares, actress (Donna Reed Show, Coach) is 70
Dolly Parton, country singer (Dolly, 9 to 5) is 68
Paula Deen, American chef and restaurateur is 67
Desi Arnaz Jr, actor (Craig-Here's Lucy, Fakeout, Joyride) is 61
Katey Sagal, singer/actress (Married With Children/Sons of Anarchy) is 60
Jodie Sweetin, actress (Stephanie Tanner-Full House) is 32
Felicity Jones, English actress is 30

Remembered for being born today
1736 - James Watt, Scotland, inventor (steam engine)
1807 - Robert E. Lee, Confederate General in Chief, (d. 1870)
1809 - Edgar Allan Poe, Boston, author (Pit & the Pendulum)
1839 - Paul Cézanne, Aix-en-Provence Provence, French painter (d. 1906)
1922 - Guy Madison, [Robert Moseley], California, actor (Wild Bill Hickok)
1923 - Jean Stapleton, NYC, actress (Damn Yankees, Klute, All in the Family)
1938 - Phil Everly, singer (Everly Bros-Wake Up Little Susie)
1943 - Janis Joplin, bluesy rock singer (Down on Me)

Today’s Historical Obits                                                           
Stan Musial, American MLB hall of famer 2013 @92
Hedy Lamarr, Austrian-born actress 2000 @85
Suzanne Pleshette, American actress respiratory failure 2008 @70
Carl Perkins, singer/songwriter cancer 1998 @65
Wilson Pickett, American singer heart attack 2006 @64
Hal March, actor ($64K Question) cancer 1970 @49

Brain Teasers
Doves and Pigeons. 
Since most birds swallow water by tilting their heads back and using gravity to let the water run down their throats, they would dehydrate in space. Doves and Pigeons are the only birds that can drink without tilting their heads back.
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 has mistakes and sadly once out 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  §
Posted by No comments:

1-18-14


FYI: Any blue text is a link. Click to check it out!
Flagstaff Almanac:
Week: 02 / Day:  018 
Today: L 16°…H 52°… Ave. humidity: 47%
Wind: ave:   mph; Gusts:  mph  
Average Low: 17° Record Low:  -8° (1995)
Average High: 43° Record High:  64° (1971)

Quote of the Day
 
Today’s Historical Highlights
1644 - Perplexed Pilgrims in Boston reported America's 1st UFO sighting
1733 - 1st polar bear exhibited in America (Boston)
1788 - 736 convicts from England setup a penal colony
1911 - 1st shipboard landing of a plane 
1958 - The LUMBEE break up a KKK meeting and make national headlines.
1962 - US begins spraying foliage in Vietnam to reveal Viet Cong guerrillas
1983 - IOC restores Jim Thorpe's Olympic medals 70 years after he was paid $25 
             in semipro baseball
1993 - Martin Luther King Jr holiday observed in all 50 states for 1st time

♫  Today’s Birthdays: ♫   
How many can you identify? Answers in Today’s Birthdays
 
My Free Rambling Thoughts   
Still dry here…and we already had our first ‘wildfire’ of the year in Flagstaff. It was small and put out be numerous engines from our local fire dept. Still, very scary…way to dry…with no moisture predicted in the near future.
 
What? Another school shooting today…two wounded in their arms…in Philadelphia. There have been at least 28 SCHOOL SHOOTINGS since Newtown. That is like one shooting every two weeks in the last year. Every interview shows people crying ‘we thought it couldn’t happen here’. While I am not a complete news junkie, the NRA seems to have been very quiet of late. Congress seems to be pretty quiet on gun violence also. This was certainly not the direction I expected education to take during my career and thereafter. We need to find a way to keep guns out of the hands of children and the mentally unbalanced. The conservative side has very little problem to take away the privacy of every American citizen to make us safer from terrorists but is unable to deal with gun violence…saying the 4th amendment protects us. They say that we should not be concerned about losing privacy because if one is not doing anything wrong, then there is nothing to worry about. Well more background checks for gun purchases should be the same…if you haven’t done anything wrong, you shouldn’t worry about it.
 
I did listen to Obama talk about the NSA today. He laid out US history for those who don’t know it, telling us how everyone from Paul Revere until today has spied. He is making some changes in the spying, but is not ending it. What a world we live in.
Game  Center (answers at the end of post)
Brain Teasers
In each sentence below, two words are incomplete. The two words end in the same three letters, so they look like they should rhyme, but they don't. See if you can figure out the missing letters in each sentence.
Example: One symptom of bronchitis is a ro___ co___. (The two words are: rough & cough.)
1. When God speaks, it is a w___ from the L___. 2 After the fl___, Noah disembarked and st___ on Mount Ararat. 3. If it doesn't rain today, I will wa___ the garden la___. 4. He was so___ to wo___ his family by arriving home late.

Lifestyle  Substance:     
Found on You Tube with some relevance to today

Actual Complaints… These are actual complaints received from dissatisfied customers by Thomas Cook Vacations (based on a Thomas Cook/ABTA survey):
  • "They should not allow topless sunbathing on the beach. It was very distracting for my husband who just wanted to relax."
  • "No one told us there would be fish in the water. The children were scared."
Suggested New State Mottos:
  • Kansas: First Of The Rectangle States
  • Maryland: If You Can Dream It, We Can Tax It

Something to Ponder in your free time…
  • Why do we put suits in garment bags and garments in a suitcase?
  • How come abbreviated is such a long word?

Auction Prices
A 65-year-old slice of Royal Wedding cake. A piece of the fruit cake served at the 1947 wedding of Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh was sold by PFC Auctions for $925. Long live the fruit cake.
OK Then…
 
Harper’s Index 
Potholes in the United States: 55,961,000
Unusual Fact of the Day
Born Harold Jenkins, Conway Twitty got his stage name from two cities (Conway, Arkansas, and Twitty, Texas) near his home.
Joke-of-the-day
This guy goes into a doctor's office. The doctor says, "Oh, Mr. Jones! We have the results of your test. Do you want the bad news first or the very bad news?"
The guy shrugs and says, "Well I guess I'll have the bad news first."
"Well the bad news is, you have 24 hours to live," the doctor replies.
The man is distraught, "24 hours to live? That's horrible! What could be worse than that? What's the VERY bad news?"
The doctor folds his hands and sighs, "The very bad news is...I've been trying to contact you since yesterday."  
Rules of Thumb:   
Easy shortcuts to make an ‘educated’ guess
DRINKING VODKA
You need four cans of tomato juice for one bottle of vodka. You need four bottles of vodka and one package of lemons per bottle of hot sauce.    
Yeah, It Really Happened
The stench of manure was in the air outside French parliament Thursday after a protester dumped a truck-full of animal excrement in front of the National Assembly in Paris.
According to local reports, the driver left the odorous present for parliament members and President Francois Hollande. "Out with Hollande and the whole political class!" a statement on the side of the truck read, the Agence France-Presse reports.
Somewhat Useless Information   
  • The kid on the Cracker Jack box is named Robert.
  • The seven Gummi Bears are named Gruffi, Cubbi, Tummi, Zummi, Sunni, Gusto, and Grammi.
  • The double Popsicle stick was introduced during the Depression. It was designed so two people could share it.
  • Five Jell-O flavors that flopped: celery, coffee, cola, apple, and chocolate.
  • Twinkie inventor Jimmy Dewar ate 40,177 Twinkies in his lifetime.
  • Bellysinkers, doorknobs, and burl cakes are all nicknames for doughnuts.

Calendar Information        
Happening This Week:
13-19
National Vocation Awareness Week  
National Soccer Coaches of America Week
16-26
Sundance Film Festival
17-23
National Fresh Squeezed Juice Week
18-19
Bald Eagle Appreciation Days
18-26
International Snowmobile Safety and Awareness Week  
Week of Christian Unity
Clean Out Your Inbox Week
Healthy Weight Week
Hunt For Happiness Week

Today Is                                                                      
·        National Sanctity of Human Life Day (or Pro-Life Day)
·        Polar Bear Swim(Seward, AK) 
·        Rid the World of Fad Diets and Gimmicks Day
·        Thesaurus Day
·        Winnie The Pooh Day

Today’s Events through History  
1777 - San Jose California, founded
1896 - 1st demonstration of an X-ray machine in US (NYC)
1944 - 1st Chinese naturalized US citizen since repeal of exclusion acts
1964 - Beatles 1st appear on Billboard Chart (I Want to Hold Your Hand-#35)
1974 - "$6 Million Man" starring Lee Majors premieres on ABC TV
2002 - Sierra Leone Civil War was finally declared over.
2012 - Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) blackout becomes the largest protest in the 
           history of the internet

Today’s Birthdays                                                           
Kevin Costner, actor (Fandango, Silverado, Bull Durham) is 59
Samantha Mumba, Irish singer and actress is 31

Remembered for being born today
1779 - Peter Roget, thesaurus fame/inventor (slide rule, pocket chessboard)
1782 - Daniel Webster, Salisbury NH, orator/politician/lawyer, (d. 1852)
1892 - Oliver Hardy, comedy team member (Laurel & Hardy)
1904 - Cary Grant (Archibald Alexander Leach), actor (Arsenic & Old Lace,
           North by Northwest)
1913 - Danny Kaye, Brooklyn, UNICEF/comedian/actor (Danny Kaye Show)
1921 - Robert Glaser, educational psychologist (National Assessment of 
            Educational Progress) 
1950 - John Hughes, director (Breakfast Club, 16 Candles, Weird Science)

Today’s Historical Obits                                                           
John Tyler, 10th US pres stroke in 1862 @71
Wallace Reid, actor (Birth of a Nation) morphine in 1923 @31
Rudyard Kipling, author (Gunga Din, Nobel 1907) perforated ulcer 1936 @70
Sydney Greenstreet, actor (Conflict, Maltese Falcon) diabetes 1954 @74
Carl Betz, actor (Alex Stone-Donna Reed Show) cancer in 1978 @56
Nita Krebs, actor (Munchkin-Wizard of Oz) 1991 @85
Minnesota Fats, [Rudolf Wanderone Jr], billiard hustler 1996 @82 or 95
Sargent Shriver, American politician 2011 @95

Brain Teasers
1. word Lord 2. flood stood 3. water later 4. sorry worry
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 has mistakes and sadly once out 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.