February 11, 2016

Feb 12

FYI: Any blue text is a link. Click to check it out!

2.12.16 Week: 06 \ Day: 43
February Averages: 46°\19°
86004 Today: H 57° \ L 18° Average Sky Cover: 2% 
Wind ave:   0mph\Gusts:  4mph
Ave. High: 45° Record High: 62°[1971] Ave. Low: 18° Record Low: -12°[1908]
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Quote of the Day 

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Observances Today                           
Darwin Day
Independence Day-Chile-1818-from Spain

NAACP Day-since 1909
Oglethorpe Day
Paul Bunyan Day2 (Born Feb. 12, 1834 in Bangor, ME) Link   Link  or Link or Link  
Plum Pudding DaySafety Pup Day

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Observances This Week
7-12-Burn Awareness Week Link
Children's Authors & Illustrators Week 
International Coaching Week
Just Say No to PowerPoint Week
Solo Diners Eat Out Weekend

7-13-Celebration of Love Week Link  
Children of Alcoholics WeekLink 
Dump Your Significant Jerk Week

Freelance Writers Appreciation Week
Jell-O Week
National Secondhand Wardrobe Week Link 
7-14-Congenital Heart Defect Awareness Week Link
Have A Heart for A Chained Dog Week Link
Risk Awareness Week

7-15-International Week of Black Women in The Arts Link
8-14-Love Makes the World Go Round; But, Laughter Keeps Us From Getting Dizzy Week
9-11-International Petroleum Week Link

World AG Expo
9-12-American Camp Week
9-15-National Green Week Link
10-14-International Friendship Week Link
12-15-Great Backyard Bird Count

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US Historical Highlights for Today
1599 
Of the seventy Acomas tried for battling with the Spaniards on December 4, 1598, all seventy are found guilty. Today, Juan de Oñate orders their punishment. All men over twenty-five years old have one foot cut off and serve as slaves for twenty years. Everyone from twelve to twenty-five only have a foot cut off.
1733 
Georgia founded by James Oglethorpe, at site of Savannah
1821 
Mercantile Library of City of NY opens
1825 
Creek Indian treaty signed. Tribal chiefs agree to turn over all their land in Georgia to the government & migrate west by Sept 1, 1826
1855 
Michigan State University was established.
1876 
Al Spalding opens his sporting good shop
1879 
1st artificial ice rink in North America (Madison Sq Garden, NYC)
1880 
US National Croquet League organizes (Phila)
1908 
NY to Paris auto race (via Alaska & Siberia) begins in NYC George Schuster wins after 88 days behind the wheel
1914 
"The Squaw Man", 1st feature-length film shot in Hollywood, directed by Cecil B. DeMille and Oscar Apfel, is released in the US
1925 
1st federal arbitration law approved by Congress
1944 
Wendell Wilkie (R) enters presidential race
1949 
"Annie Get Your Gun" closes at Imperial Theater NYC after 1147 performances
1950 
Albert Einstein warns against hydrogen bomb
1955 
President Eisenhower sends 1st US advisors to South Vietnam
1964 
Beatles 1st NYC concert (Carnegie Hall)

1967 

Pirate Radio Free Harlem (NYC) begins transmitting
1984 
Jayne Torvill & Christopher Dean skate "Bolero" at Olympics
1987 
Survivors of a black man murdered by KKK members awarded $7 M damages
1999 
US President Bill Clinton acquitted by the Senate in his impeachment trial
2002 
US Secretary of Energy makes the decision that Yucca Mountain is suitable to be the United States' nuclear waste repository.
2004 
The city of San Francisco, California begins issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples in response to a directive from Mayor Gavin Newsom.
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World Historical Highlights for Today
1502 
Muslims in Granada forced to convert to Catholicism
1541 
Santiago, Chile founded
1554 
Queen of England for nine days, Lady Jane Grey is executed for treason.
1832 
Ecuador annexes Galapagos Islands
1947 
French fashion designer Christian Dior presents his first influential collection, named the "New Look"
1994 
17th Winter Olympic games opens in Lillehammer, Norway
1994 
"The Scream" by Norwegian painter Edvard Munch (1893 pastel version) is stolen in Oslo
2002 
The trial of former President of Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milošević begins at the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague. He eventually dies four years later before its conclusion. 2010 
21st Winter Olympic Games open at Vancouver, Canada
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My Rambling Thoughts
I think the Focus website is finally up to date. If you wish to see it, Focus Travel Club/ . I will not just be doing update to the site. As most of you know I have been traveling with Focus since my retirement. It is a great group of people, the groups are small—usually around 20. There are always great coaches (bus) and local English speaking guides. Check it out. The 2017 itineraries for some interesting trips will be out in March. Enjoy and if you have any suggestions for improvement, let me know.
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Brain Teasers
(answers at the end of post)
Anagram Guru 5
Language brain teasers are those that involve the English language. You need to think about and manipulate words and letters.

The following word pairs are anagrams which can be combined to form the name of an animal.Try to figure it out.

1. Zeal, Gel

2. Neat, Help

3. Boa, Luff

4. Bow, Mat

5. Evil, Owner

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…Business Facts…
There's a café in France which charges €7 for a coffee to rude customers and €1.40 to people who talk politely to staff.

There’s a company that provides private flights for individuals who want to join the “mile high club”. For $425.00 you get a 1 hour flight, chocolates, champagne, and a curtain.
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…Grammar Craziness…
The English language includes an interesting category of words and phrases called contronyms— terms that, depending on context, can have opposite or contradictory meanings.

60. Skinned: Covered with skin, or with the skin removed
61. Splice: To join, or to separate
62. Stakeholder: One who has a stake in an enterprise, or a bystander who holds the stake for those placing a bet
63. Strike: To hit, or to miss in an attempt to hit

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…Hard to Believe…
23. On both Saturn and Jupiter, it rains diamonds.
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…Harper’s Index…
70-Percentage of obese US preschoolers whose parents believe their children are ‘about the right weight’.
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…Instagram Photo of the Day… 

earthporm Villa Treville Italy 📷: Property owners
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2 jokes for the day
A wealthy old lady decides to go on a photo safari in Africa, taking her poodle along for company. One day the poodle starts chasing butterflies and before long, discovers that he's lost. Wandering about, he notices a hungry-looking leopard heading rapidly in his direction. The poodle thinks, "Oh, oh!" Noticing some bones on the ground close by, he immediately settles down to chew on the bones with his back to the approaching cat. Just as the leopard is about to leap, the poodle exclaims loudly, "Boy, that was one delicious leopard! I wonder if there are any more around here?" Hearing this, the leopard halts his attack in mid-strike, a look of terror comes over him and he slinks away into the trees. "Whew!", says the leopard, "That was close! That poodle nearly had me!" 

Meanwhile, a monkey who had been watching the whole scene from a nearby tree, figures he can put this knowledge to good use and trade it for protection from the leopard. So off he goes, but the poodle sees him heading after the leopard with great speed, and figures that something must be up. The monkey soon catches up with the leopard, spills the beans and strikes a deal for himself with the leopard. The leopard is furious at being made a fool of and says, "Here, monkey, hop on my back so you can watch me chew that poodle to bits!" 

Now, the poodle sees the leopard coming with the monkey on his back and thinks, "What am I going to do now?", but instead of running, the dog sits down with his back to his attackers, pretending he hasn't seen them yet, and waits until they get just close enough to hear. "Where's that damn monkey?" the poodle says, "I sent him off an hour ago to bring me another leopard!"

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There's a little old Christian lady living next door to an atheist. Every morning the lady comes out onto her front porch and shouts "Praise the Lord!" 

The atheist yells back, "There is no God." 

She does this every morning with the same result. As time goes on, the lady runs into financial difficulties and has trouble buying food. She goes out onto the porch and asks God for help with groceries, then says "Praise the Lord." 

The next morning she goes out onto the porch and there's the groceries she asked for, and of course, she shouts "Praise the Lord!" 

The atheist jumps out from behind a bush and says, "Ha, I bought those groceries - there is no God." 

The lady looks at him and smiles, she shouts "Praise the Lord, not only did you provide for me Lord, you made Satan pay for the groceries!"    

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Yep, It Really Happened
*------ An Amazing One-In-a-Million Birth ------*
If you're white and your partner is black and you have a baby, that baby will be a mix of black and white. In some very rare circumstances, the baby will have either predominantly black or predominantly white characteristics, making the baby effectively black OR white. But say you had twins. Last year Hannah Yarker gave birth to twin girls. Hannah is white and her partner, Kyle Armstrong, is mixed-race. The twin girls; one black and one white. What are the chances one twin would be black and the other white? About a million to one. The stunned mom claimed, "I can't believe I have one of each."
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Somewhat Useless Information
Some say pancakes actually date back to the Stone Age, when cavemen cooked the batter over a heated rock. But the first written reference to a pancake appeared in the year 1430, when they were made from gruel. 

The first International House of Pancake restaurant opened in Los Angeles in 1958. The IHOP acronym, however, did not make its way into our vernacular until 15 years later as part of a marketing strategy.

To find remnants of the world's largest pancake, travel to the United Kingdom. In 1994, the people of Manchester gathered to watch as the Co-Operative Union created a 49-foot wide flapjack.

On October 16, 2014, chefs John Pijnappels and Humphrey den Otter whipped, flipped, and stacked 242 pancakes to create a tower that measured two feet, 11 inches tall.

The British celebrate the beloved breakfast dish on Shrove Tuesday, or what we in the states know as Mardi Gras. The tradition began in the 1400s as a way for people to use as much milk, fats, and eggs as possible before they began fasting for Lent. 

Today, there are more than 1,600 IHOPs worldwide. The United States is home to the majority of the franchise's locations (1,579 restaurants and counting), there are also locations in Canada, Dubai, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia.

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Birthdays Today
“()” indicates age at death
90- Joe Garagiola,
St Louis Mo, sportscaster/host (Today Show)
(88) Omar Bradley,
General of Army WW II (GI General) (d.1981)
82- Bill Russell,
Monroe La, NBAer (Boston Celtics, Oly-gold-56)
80- Joe Don Baker,
Groesback Tx, actor (Eischied, Walking Tall, Fletch)
78- Judy Blume,
author (Wifey)
(73) Charles Darwin,
Shrewsbury, Shropshire, English naturalist (Origin of the Species) who conceived the theory of evolution by natural selection, (d. 1882)
(72) Ted Mack,
Denver, Colorado TV host (Original Amateur Hour),(d.1976)
(72) Lorne Greene,
Ottawa Canada, actor (Bonanza, Battlestar Galactica) (d.1987)
71- Maud Adams,
Lulea Sweden, actress (Octopussy, Rollerball, Tattoo)
(67) Forrest Tucker,
Plainfield Ind, actor (O'Rourke-F Troop, Dusty Trail)(d.1986)
(65) Cotton Mather,
Boston, American Puritan minister (Salem witchcraft trials), (d.1728)
60- Arsenio Hall,
Los Angeles comedian (Alan Thicke, Arsenio, Coming to America) 48- Chynna Phillips,
vocalist (Wilson Philips-Hold On),
(56) Abraham Lincoln,
Kentucky, (R) 16th US President (d.1865)
48- Josh Brolin,
actor (Johnny-Private Eye, Jimmy Hickok-Young Riders)
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Historical Obits Today
@96-1983 Eubie Blake,
US ragtime-composer/pianist (Memories of You)
@95-1971 James Cash Penney,
US founder (J C Penney)
@91-2014 Isaac Sidney "Sid" Caesar,
American comic actor and writer ("Your Show of Shows")
@84-1979 Jean Renoir,
French writer/director (Human Beast)
@80-2015 Gary Owens,
American disc jockey/TV host (Laugh In, Gong Show)
@79-1804 Immanuel Kant,
German philosopher (Zum ewigen Frieden),
@77-2000 Charles M. Schulz,
American cartoonist, cancer
@75-2000Tom Landry,
American football coach (Dallas Cowboys), leukemia
@72-1947 Sidney Toler,
actor (Charlie Chan, Dark Alibi), cancer
@60-1624 George Heriot,
Scottish goldsmith and philanthropist
@51-1789 Ethan Allen,
American patriot, apoplectic fit
@50-1942 Grant Wood,
US painter (American Gothic), cancer
@37-1976 Sal Mineo,
actor (Exodus, Rebel Without a Cause), stabbed
@17-1554 Jane Grey,
queen of England for 9 days, beheaded
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Brain Teasers Answers
1. Gazelle.
2. Elephant.
3. Buffalo.
4. Wombat.
5. Wolverine.

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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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