FYI: Any blue text is a link. Click to check it out!
Flagstaff
Almanac: Week: 11/ Day: 71 Today: H 53°…L 24°
Averages: H
49° L 23°
Records: H 69°(1990)…L -5°(1940)
Wind: ave: 10mph; Gusts: 11mph Ave. humidity: 61%
Quote of
the Day
Today’s
Historical Highlights
1st US $20 gold piece issued►1850
British Empire celebrates it's 1st British
Empire Day►1945
British Empire Day is renamed
"Commonwealth Day"►1958
Coca-Cola is sold in bottles for the first
time Vicksburg, Mississippi ►1894
Congress abolishes manufacturer's tax►1868
Elizabeth Smart, was found after having been
missing for 9 months►2003
FDR conducts his 1st "fireside chat"►1933
Malcolm X resigns from Nation of Islam►1964
Mohandas Gandhi begins 200m (300km) march
protesting British salt tax►1930
♪ ♪ Happy Birthday To: ♪. ♪
How many can you identify?…answers in Today’s Birthdays
Free
Rambling Thoughts
A good day as most of the snow is quickly melting. I usually wake up around 6am and listen to NPR for while before getting up. This morning, there was constant ‘breaks’ in the feed with static each time. Very frustrating way to start the day. About 7 I got up and checked my other radio. Same thing. Called the station and it was a problem with the satellite feed. One would think that our local NPR station would have said something about the problem over the airwaves. Nope. They knew what was happening but didn’t tell their listeners. Oh Well.I’ve gone over two months without my angioedema, but it returned this afternoon in full force. It reminds me so much of the movie Jaws…just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…Pill is working but this time it’s my tongue and my lower lip. Such a waste of time.
Game Center (answers
at the end of post)
Brain
Teasers
Eliminate all 26 letters of the alphabet in alphabetical order, but not necessarily starting with 'A', to reveal a sentence.
sohmeitjkimlemsnthopeseqtresasteursvwcaxnydrziaveybcoduesifllgy
Lifestyle Substance:
Found on You Tube with some relevance to today
from
Cracked.com
Scottish Hansel and Gretel Make the Monster
Murder His Own Family
The Version You've Heard
Hansel and Gretel are two young siblings who stumble upon a wondrous house made of gingerbread and candy. But inside the house is a flesh-eating witch who uses her gumdrop cottage to lure dumbass children to their doom. Hansel and Gretel manage to trick the witch into crawling into the oven, then slam it shut and roast her alive, because to be perfectly honest, she goddamn deserved it.There are a bunch of stories like this, all probably variations of the same ancient tales of lost/curious children outsmarting and killing monsters ("Jack and the Beanstalk" is another one). These are already pretty gruesome stories -- cautionary tales warning kids about strangers without having to explain to them what pedophilia is. It's going to be hard to make this darker, considering it already involves a cannibalistic witch getting burned alive.
But in the Scottish Version
In the Scottish tale "Molly Whuppie," a family decides that they have too many children and leave three of the daughters out in the middle of the woods to die. The three girls wander around until they discover a house where, instead of a witch, a family of ogres lives. The mother ogre tells them they are welcome to come in, but that her husband will be home soon and will probably kill them all if they stay. The three agree to roll the dice on Ogre Dad, even though the house is not made of candy. And here is where things take a turn for the traumatic.You see, the ogres have three children of their own. Knowing that Ogre Dad is probably going to murder them in the night, the human girls trick the dad into thinking his own children are the visitors. That's right -- Ogre Dad slips into the room in the middle of the night and, due to the human girls' ploy, inadvertently strangles his own daughters to death.Are you picturing your mother reading this story to you at your bedside from a pop-up book? Anyway, now the human kids escape, which you will note they could have done before they sacrificed three innocent children, but Molly herself is recaptured by the ogre. And at this point, you know that you should be more worried for the ogre.He asks his captive what kind of punishment she deserves, and she tells him to put her in a bag and beat her to death with the biggest stick he can find. Ignoring how oddly specific this is, he tosses her into a bag and leaves to find a girl-jellying club. While he's gone, Molly convinces the ogre's wife to get into the bag. When Ogre Dad returns with his giant murder stick, he bludgeons the bag into a soup rag, having once again been tricked into killing a loved one.
The Moral
Where the original stories all seem to be about stranger danger, this one seems to be teaching children that in dangerous situations, mass collateral damage is far better than retreat.
Ok, then?
Harper’s
Index
Minimum number of miniature liquor bottles stolen by employees at JFK International Airport: 117,000
Picture
of the Day: Mammals of the Sea
Unusual
Fact of the Day
Calvin Coolidge's Vice President, Charles Gates Dawes, was also a songwriter. In 1951, a tune he’d composed called “Melody in A Major” became a number one pop hitJoke-of-the-day
A man solves the problem of too many visiting relatives. He borrowed money from the rich ones and loaned it to the poor ones. Now none of them come back.
Rules of
Thumb:
Easy
shortcuts to make an ‘educated’ guess
PLANNING A PARTY FOR CHILDREN
Plan on one hour of party for every three years of age.
Yeah, It
Really Happened
A federal grant which was just given to the University of California San Diego in the amount of $550,000 to research "safer sex intervention for male clients of female sex workers in Tijuana."
Somewhat
Useless Information
- In the U.S., daylight saving time was first used during World War I to conserve resources. It was reinstated again during World War II until Sept. 1945. The Uniform Time Act of 1966 created a standardized system to observe daylight saving time.
- The Department of Energy studied the energy savings in 2008. They found that during daylight saving time, U.S. electricity use decreased by 0.5 percent per day, which added up to 1.3 billion kilowatt-hours, enough to power about 122,000 average U.S. homes for a year.
Calendar Information
Happening This Week:
8-14
Girl Scout Week
National Agriculture Week
Teen Tech Week
Turkey Vultures Return to the Living Sign
Flood Safety Awareness Week
International Brain Awareness Week
National Agriculture Week
Teen Tech Week
Turkey Vultures Return to the Living Sign
Flood Safety Awareness Week
International Brain Awareness Week
Today Is
Genealogy Day
Girl Scout Birthday Day
International Fanny Pack Day
Organize Your Home Office Day
~Mauritius: Independence Day (1968 from UK)
Today’s Events
through History
1st steam engine in America installed, to pump
water from a mine►1755
Bermuda becomes an English colony►1609
Church of England ordains 1st 33 women priests►1994
Communist troops driven out of Seoul►1951
Eric Heiden skates world record 1000m (1:14.99) ►1978
Girl Guides (Girl Scouts) forms in Savannah,
by Juliette Gordon Low►1912
Jews are expelled from Syria►1496
Mississippi establishes 1st US state college
for women►1884
New Jersey becomes a British colony►1664
NY is 1st to prohibit discrimination by race
& creed in employment►1945
PONCAs sign a treaty (12 stat.997) on this date which grants them a
permanent home on the Niobrara River, and protection from their enemies, both
white and Indians. For these privileges, the PONCAs give up a part of their ancestral lands. Unfortunately,
several years later, a mistake by a government bureaucrat will force them to
share land with the SIOUX.
Repeated protestations over this error will go unheard. The PONCAs would live in constant fears of
attacks from the SIOUX►1858
Today’s
Birthdays
In their 80’s
Edward Albee, Washington, DC, playwright
(Virgina Woolfe, Zoo Story) is 84
Barbara Feldon, actress (Agent 99-Get Smart) is
80
In their 60’s
Liza Minnelli, singer/actress (Sterile Cuckoo,
Cabaret) is 67
Jon Provost, actor (Timmy-Lassie) is 63
In their 50’s
Darryl Strawberry, LA California, baseball
right fielder (Mets, Dodgers, Yankees) is 51
In their 40’s
Jake Tapper, American journalist is 44
Remembered
for being born today
Jack Kerouac, Beat writer (On the Road, Mexico
Blues) [1922-1969]
Gordon MacRae, East Orange NJ, singer/actor
(Oklahoma, Carousel) [1921-1986]
George W. Mason, American industrialist [1891-1954]
Walter M Schirra Jr, Hackensack NJ, Capt
USN/ast (Mer 8, Gem 6, Ap 7)[1923-2007]
Clement Studebaker, automobile pioneer
(Studebaker) [1831-1901]
William "Buckwheat" Thomas, actor
(Little Rascals) [1931-1980]
Today’s Historical
Obits
Morton Downey, Jr., American television talk
show host-lung cancer-2001-at 68
Anne Frank, diarist (Diary of Anne Frank)-killed
in Belsen Camp-1945[exact date unknown]
-at 15
Charlie "Bird" Parker, US jazz
saxophonist- cirrhosis-1955-at 34
Sun Yat-Sen, Chinese revolutionary president-liver
cancer-1925-at 58
Answer: Brain
Teasers
Sometimes these teasers can drive you silly.
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 §
