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Almanac: Week: 02 \ Day: 009
January
Averages: 43°\116°
86004 Today: H 54°\L 24°
Ave. humidity: 43% Average Sky Cover: 0%
Wind ave: 7mph\Gusts: 12mph
Ave. High: 43° Record
High: 61° (1996)
Ave. Low: 16° Record Low: -9° (1937)
Observances
Today:
Connecticut:
Statehood Day-1788-5th state
Panama:
Martyr Day
--
Play God Day
Balloon
Ascension Day
National
Cassoulet Day- traditional meaty casserole &
its many, many expressions
National
Static Electricity Day
Observances This
Week:
4-10
Home
Office Safety and Security Week
National Folic Acid Awareness Week
National Lose Weight/Feel Great Week
6-9
International
Consumer Electronics Show
7-10
Elvis'
Birthday Celebration Week
8-14
Universal
Letter Writing Week
« »
Quote of
the Day
Historical
Highlights for Today
1493 - 1st
sight of manatees (by Christopher Columbus)
1793 - 1st
hot-air balloon flight in the US lifts off in Philadelphia
1811 - 1st
Women's Golf Tournament held
1839 - Daguerrotype
photo process announced at French Academy of Science
1879 - Cheyenne
prisoners led by Dull Knife revolt at Ft Robinson
1908 - Muir Woods National Monument, California,
established
1959 - "Rawhide"
with Clint Eastwood premieres on CBS TV
1980 - 63
beheaded in Mecca, Saudi Arabia
1991 - Baseball
officially bans Pete Rose from being elected to Hall of Fame
2001 - Apple announced iTunes at the Macworld Expo
2007 - Apple
Inc CEO, Steve Jobs announces the iPhone.
« »
♫
Birthdays Today: ♫
How many can you identify? Answers below in Birthday’s Today
My
Rambling Thoughts
Hard to believe it is still winter…beautiful day…again.
Had a great lunch with the retirees. Mary had a great time
discovering Southern AZ with her hubby and her 2 dogs. Turns out Tombstone, AZ
is very dog friendly, with doggie water on the sidewalk at most stores, and
doggie pick up bags throughout the town. Who knew?
Cheryl is having a hassle with her mortgage. Seems it has been ‘sold’
for the third time in a year. She paid December to the new holder, but was told
they never got it. So she issued a new check, cancelled the old check. Then
they sent her a pissy email about how her check was refused. They called all to
no avail. She paid the January one to the same company. Neither check has been
deducted from her account. It is all done via the internet so she has a big
checking account, an overdue mortgage that the company won’t cash her check,
and she says she’ll just wait until the try to evict her. Interesting.
« »
Brain
Teasers
(answers at the end of post)
Fill
in the answers to the clues by using all the syllables provided. Each syllable
will only be used once. The number of syllables that will be used in each clue
will be in parentheses.
A AC AD BUT CUP DEM HES I IC IS IS LA LAZ LEG LI MIN TANT TER TION TOR TRA U
1. Yellow flower (3)
2. Director (5)
3. Lapis ___ (3)
4. Lawmaking (4)
5. Undecided (3)
6. Scholar (4)
Found on You Tube with some relevance to today
« »
Paraphernalia
4 the Brain:
50’s
Inventions…
1957
Fortran (computer language) invented.
Education
Facts…
--Students at the John Hopkins University collaboratively decided
to opt out of their final since the professor set his curve based on the
highest score grading it as 100%. They chose to receive a score of zero, making
it the highest grade and thereby getting 100%.
--In the U.S. the typical school year is 180 days long. In China,
the typical school year is 251 days.
Flagstaff,
AZ History…
100 YEARS
AGO
On the 24th instant, the Federal Court denied the application
against the “Prohibition Amendment;” thus it goes into effect immediately on
the First of January 1915. Attorney General Wiley B. Jones.
Flagstaff’s
Iconic 50…
The
Museum Club
The Museum Club, a Route 66 icon in Flagstaff, Arizona, began its
life as the boyhood dream of taxidermist Dean Eldredge in 1931. When Eldredge
found a petrified frog as a child in Wisconsin, it spurred a lifetime as a
sportsman, adventurer and collector. Dean began his taxidermy business in 1918.
In the early 1930s Eldredge saw an opportunity when he purchased a piece of
federal land, three miles east of Flagstaff on Route 66. Soon, he hired
unemployed lumberjacks to cut trees, haul them to his property and built what
he touted as "the biggest log cabin in the world.” Later he would revise
his claim to "the biggest log cabin in the nation,” then to "the
biggest log cabin in Arizona.” In any case, he finally had a showplace for his
lifetime collection of stuffed animals, six-legged sheep, Winchester rifles,
Indian artifacts, two-headed calves, and more than 30,000 other items.
Operating as a museum, taxidermist shop, and a trading post, scores of Route
66'rs stopped in to visit Dean and his collection during the five years that he
operated the museum. Before long, locals dubbed the museum "The Zoo,” a
name that has stuck with the building to this day.
Harper’s
Index…
13
Percentage by which Americans over report their religious
attendance when asked over the telephone rather than online.
Rules of
Thumb…
SPOTTING
AN INSIDE JOB
All large-scale crimes are inside jobs.
Unusual
Fact of the Day…
The Baltimore Ravens football team of the National Football League
is the only team in history to be named after the title of a poem: "The
Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe. Poe was not from Baltimore, but he lived there
for short periods. In 1849, he died there while visiting the city on business.
« »
Joke-of-the-day
Q. What do you do when your nose goes on
strike?
A. You picket!
Yep, It
Really Happened
ROSWELL,
N.M. (UPI)
A New Mexico man said his elation at winning more than $500,000
from a lottery scratch-off ticket turned to disappointment when he learned it
was a misprint. John Wines, a recent retiree from Roswell, said he bought the
scratch-off in December from a local Shell station and he scratched the ticket
to reveal five winning numbers, two of which were each worth $250,000. Wines
said he took the ticket -- which has a stated maximum prize of $250,000 -- back
to the gas station to show how he had somehow managed to win more than
$500,000. "I took it back in and she told me that is not a winner,"
Wines told KOB-TV. "They told me that it was a misprint and they don't pay
off for misprints." Wines contacted officials with the New Mexico Lottery
and received a reply via email. "We did find a flaw in that particular
pack of tickets and it's been reported to our printer. Thanks for bringing this
to our attention. I did complete a reconstruction of your ticket and it was not
a winner," the email read. Wines said he was crushed by the news. "If
it was $50 or $75, I would not think a thing about it," he said. "But
this is $500,000. That's a half million." "It's like I told them, I didn't
misprint it. I bought the ticket in good faith thinking if I won I was going to
get my money. And they told me no, they absolutely, positively told me
no." The New Mexico Lottery offered Wines $100 worth of tickets as
compensation. Wines said his wife, Maria, who once won $100,000 from the
Indiana Lottery, told him to put the incident behind him. "She told me to
forget it," he told Fox News. "She said they're never going to pay
me."
Somewhat
Useless Information
January:
named after Janus, the god of doors and gates
February: named after Februalia, a time period when sacrifices were made to
atone for sins
March: named after Mars, the god of war
April: from aperire, Latin for "to open" (buds)
May: named after Maia, the goddess of growth of plants
June: from junius, Latin for the goddess Juno
July: named after Julius Caesar in 44 B.C.
August: named after Augustus Caesar in 8 B.C.
September: from septem, Latin for "seven"
October: from octo, Latin for "eight"
November: from novem, Latin for "nine"
December: from decem, Latin for "ten"
***
The
earliest Latin calendar was a 10-month one, beginning with March; thus,
September was the seventh month, October, the eighth, etc. July was originally
called Quintilis, meaning fifth; August was originally called Sextilis, meaning
sixth.
Gizmos
SALT LAKE CITY (UPI)
New
evidence suggests a human protein can build and edit other proteins. It's the
first time the process has been observed by scientists.
If the human system were a bee colony, proteins would be the worker bees --
industrious and versatile, capable of producing the body's vital materials. And
if proteins are the worker bees, then DNA is the queen, offering the
instructions for where to go and what to build.
The work orders are delivered via messenger RNA (mRNA) to amino acids inside
human cells called ribosomes. The ribosomes spawn the specialized proteins that
then venture out into the human body to do their job -- fight disease, rebuild
muscle, trigger hormone production.
Previously, it was assumed only DNA and mRNA could specify the ingredients
(amino acids) that form a new protein. But a new study has shown that one
unique protein can deliver instructions to form and augment a new protein on
its own, without the assistance of messenger RNA.
"This surprising discovery reflects how incomplete our understanding of
biology is," study author Peter Shen, a biochemistry researcher at the
University of Utah, said in a recent press release. "Nature is capable of
more than we realize."
The protein-building protein, called Rqc2, doesn't flex its muscles
willy-nilly. Its unique abilities are only called into action when there is a
mistake in the protein-building assembly line. Occasionally, the ribosome
malfunctions and can't process the protein-building instructions delivered by
the mRNA. In these instances, Rqc2 steps in and delivers filler instructions,
ordering the ribosome to slap on a random sequence of two amino acids (alanine
and threonine) -- a stopgap measure until the proper instructions are resumed.
"In this case, we have a protein playing a role similar to that filled by
mRNA," explained study co-author Adam Frost, M.D., a biochemistry
professor at both the University of California, San Francisco and the
University of Utah.
Researchers say the unique process is like a quality control mechanism, the
uniform insert a possible signal that the faulty protein needs to be destroyed.
Because a range of disorders, including Alzheimer's and Huntington's, are
believed to -- at least in part -- derive from problems with the body's
protein-construction processes, better understanding Rqc2 could eventually lead
to improved treatments for such diseases.
The new study was published this week in the journal Science.
« »
Today’s
Events through History
1760 - Afghans
defeat Marathas in battle of Barari Ghat
1799 - British PM
William Pitt introduces income tax to raise funds for the war against Napoleon.
1858 - Anson
Jones, the last President of the Republic of Texas, commits suicide
1912 - US
Marines invade Honduras
1976 - CW McCall CB song "Convoy" hit #1
on the country music charts
« »
Birthday’s
Today
Judith
Krantz, author (Scruples) is 87
Bart
Starr, NFL quarterback/coach (Green Bay) is 81
Joan Baez, Staten
Island, folk singer/human rights advocate is 74
Jimmy
Page, rock guitarist (Led Zeppelin-Stairway to Heaven) is 70
Dave
Matthews, singer/musician (Dave Matthews Band) is 48
Kate
Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge is 33
« »
Remembered
for being born today
Thomas
Warton, poet laureate-England (Pleasures of Melancholy) 1720-1790@62
Joseph B
Strauss, civil engineer/builder (Golden Gate Bridge) 1870-1938@68
Chic
Young, cartoonist (Blondie) 1901-1973@71
Richard
Nixon, 37th President (R) 1913-1994@81
Lee Van
Cleef, actor (For a Few Dollars
More) 1925-1989@64
Bob
Denver, actor (Gilligan's Island) 1935-2005@70
« »
Historical
Obits Today
Edward W
Buck, Dutch/US editor (Ladies Home Journal), 1930, @ 66
Paul
Lynde, actor (Bye Bye Birdie, Bewitched), heart attack, 1982, @55
« »
Brain Teasers Answers
1. Buttercup (but ter cup)
2. Administrator (ad min is tra tor)
3. Lazuli (laz u li)
4. Legislation (leg is la tion)
5. Hesitant (hes i tant)
6. Academic (ac a dem ic)
« »
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…§
