FYI: Any blue
text is a link. Click to check it out!
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April 12,
2017 Week: 14 \ Day: 102
86004 Today: H 65° \
L 23° Average Sky Cover: 80%
Wind ave: 17mph\Gusts: -mph Visibility: 10 mi
April Averages: 58°\27°
April Records: H: 80° (1992)
L: -2 (1975)
Record High: 75°[1904] Record Low: 7°[1953]
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‡‡Quote
of the Day‡‡
Ingrid
Bergman
Happiness
is good health and a bad memory.
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‡‡Observances
Today‡‡
Belmont-Paul
Women's Equality Monument Day Link
D.E.A.R. Day (aka Drop Everything And Read) Link
International Day of Human Space Flight
International Day for Street Children Link
National Bookmobile Day Link
National Licorice Day Link
Walk on Your Wild
Side Day
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‡‡Observances
This Week‡‡
8-16
Animal Control
Officer Appreciation Week
Holy Week
International Dark
Sky Week
National Animal
Control Appreciation Week Link
National Dental
Hygienist Week Link
National Library
Week
National Public
Safety Telecommunicators (911 Operators) Week Link
National Robotics
Week Link
National Student
Employment Week Link
Pan American
Week
15-22
International
Wildlife Film Week Link
National Park Week Link
Coin Week
National Karaoke Week
National Paperboard Packaging Week
Animal Cruelty/Human Violence Awareness Week Link
National Occupational Health Nursing Week Link
Safe Kids Week Link
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‡‡Today’s
Significant US Historical Events‡‡
≈ Today’s Significant
International Historical Events
≈1204 4th
Crusade occupies & plunders Constantinople
<§><§>
≈1606 England
adopts the Union Flag, replaced in 1801 by current Union Flag/Union Jack
<§><§>
1869 North
Carolina legislature passes anti-Klan Law
1877 Catcher's
mask 1st used in a baseball game
<§><§>
≈1911 1st
non-stop London-Paris flight (Pierre Prier in 3h56m)
1945 US
President Franklin Roosevelt dies in office and Vice-President Harry
Truman is sworn in as 33rd US President
≈1945 Richard
Strauss completes his "Metamorphosis"
≈1946 Syria
gains independence from France
≈1961 Russian
cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first person to orbit Earth
(Vostok 1)
1976 Anne
Rice's debut novel "Interview with a Vampire" is published by Knopf.
1980 US
Olympic Committee endorses a boycott of the Moscow Olympic games
1987 Texaco
files for bankruptcy
1988 Sonny
Bono elected mayor of Palm Springs Calif
1990 H.
J. Heinz, Chicken of the Sea and Bumble Bee Seafood say they wouldn't buy tuna
caught in nets that trap dolphins
≈1990 1st
meeting of East German democratically elected parliament, acknowledges
responsibility for Nazi holocaust & asks for forgiveness
≈1992 Euro
Disney (Disneyland Paris) opens in Marne-la-Vallee, France
1999 US
President Bill Clinton is cited for contempt of court for giving
"intentionally false statements" in a sexual harassment civil lawsuit.
<§><§>
≈2013 A
man-made 32-foot and 60 tonne monument that is dates around 2000 BC is discovered
in the Sea of Galilee
2014 The
new drug, ABT-450, with a 90-95% success rate for treating Hepatitis C, is
announced
2016 Breakthrough
Starshot: scientists and internet entrepreneurs, including Yuri Milner, Stephen
Hawking and Mark Zuckerburg, announce interstellar project to send robot
spacecraft to Alpha Centauri
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‡‡My
Rambling Thoughts‡‡
Taxes
won’t be ready until later in the week. Turns out SS is busy screwing with me.
I was getting a measly $65/mo. I don’t really check to be sure the check was
deposited. So the tax guy said he needed my SS income statement, that I never
got. Called SS at 5:30p and had to wait over 30 minutes to talk to a human. I
went to the website during this wait time…nada, even though it says that
statements are posted. Finally a very nice lady checks and first says ‘You
received a check for $2006.40 in December. I asked her where that check went.
About 5 minutes later she says, ‘well you didn’t get a check because your Medicare
cost was higher than your usual payments. This ‘magic’ $2006.40 amount is based
on my total income based on my tax filing. Somehow, through some kind of magic,
they credited my account that much to cover the Medicare payments. And thanks
to the magic of the Feds, that counts as ‘income’ when I file 2016 taxes. She
is mailing me a copy of the income statement. She said I didn’t get one because
of ‘special circumstances’ and therefore it is now, nor ever will be available
on line. Never have enjoyed being labeled ‘Special’ and certainly not in this
case. Sure glad I have Civil Service retirement to pay the bills, and investments
to make travel possible.
THIS IS NOT NORMAL
United
Airlines…WOW. We flew on United, which I renamed ‘Untied” after our fight home.
In the Hong Kong to SF flight, we had the world’s crappiest food and in the
very old plane the only entertainment was the system that had a large screen
about 5 rows ahead, and there was no choice of movie…and the system kept
stopping and starting over. Now that I know they will physically remove paid
passengers who won’t give their seat to airline personnel, I doubt I will fly
them again until they apologize and change their practice.
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‡‡Today’s
Trivia Hive‡‡
(answers
at the end of post)
How
many MTV Video Music Awards did the music video for Peter Gabriel's song
"Sledgehammer" win in 1987?
9
5
0
2
21.1% taking the internet quiz got it correct.
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‡‡Harper’s
Index‡‡
0→Number of US states in which the poverty rate increased
in 2016
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‡‡ Joke
For The Day‡‡
Just
before Easter, I remarked to my husband that with the children grown and away
from home, this was the first year that we hadn’t dyed eggs and had an
Easter-egg hunt.
“That’s all right, honey,” he said. “We can just hide each other’s vitamin
pills.”
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‡‡Yep,
It Really Happened‡‡
A
little girl was just discovered in a forest in northern India living with a
troop of monkeys.
The girl is estimated to be between eight and 10-years-old. Doctors said she
could not communicate and displayed "monkey-like" traits.
The little girl was spotted by villagers in the Katarniaghat wildlife
sanctuary, on the Indian border with Nepal. A senior police official told BBC
Hindi she had been playing with a pack of monkeys and imitating their behaviour
when police went to rescue her. The police official, Suresh Yadav, said the
monkeys attacked his squad when they arrived to take her away.
Doctors said she was malnourished when she was brought in, with long hair and
nails, and wounds on her body. She was also unable to communicate but would
screech and initially walked on all fours.
Her condition is said to be much better now, however, and in the long term she
is expected to be handed over to child welfare agencies and other medical
specialists to slowly reintroduce her to the world.
It is not clear, however, how long the little girl has been living in the
forest.
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‡‡Somewhat
Useless Information‡‡
On
this day in 1860, the first Pony Express mail, traveling by horse and rider
relay teams, simultaneously leaves St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento,
California. Ten days later, on April 13, the westbound rider and mail packet
completed the approximately 1,800-mile journey and arrived in Sacramento,
beating the eastbound packet's arrival in St. Joseph by two days and setting a
new standard for speedy mail delivery.
***
The Pony Express debuted at a time before radios and telephones, when California,
which achieved statehood in 1850, was still largely cut off from the eastern
part of the country. Letters sent from New York to the West Coast traveled by
ship, which typically took at least a month, or by stagecoach, which could take
from three weeks to many months to arrive. Compared to the snail's pace of the
existing delivery methods, the Pony Express' average delivery time of 10 days
seemed like lightning speed.
***
The Pony Express Company, the brainchild of William H. Russell, William Bradford
Waddell and Alexander Majors, owners of a freight business, was set up over 150
relay stations along a pioneer trail across the present-day states of Missouri,
Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Nevada and California.
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‡‡How
our states were named‡‡
Oregon
The
origin of Oregon may be the most hotly debated of the state
names. Here’s a few of the competing explanations (and I may have even missed a
few):
-
Derived from the French ouragan (“hurricane”) and the state
named so because French explorers called the Columbia River le fleuve
aux ouragans (“Hurricane River”) due to the strong winds in the
Columbia Gorge.
-
Derived from oolighan, a Chinook name for the eulachon (Thaleichthys
pacificus), a smelt found along the Pacific coast and prized as a source of
food for Native Americans in the area.
-
Derived from the Spanish orejón (“big ears”), which early
Spanish explorers reportedly used to refer to local natives.
-
Derived from Ouragon, a word used by Major Robert Rogers in a 1765
petition asking the British government to finance and supply an overland search
for the Northwest Passage. As to where Rogers got the word, it could have come
from an error on a French-made map from the early 1700s, where the Ouisiconsink (“Wisconsin
River”) is misspelled “Ouaricon-sint,” and broken so “Ouaricon” sits on a line
by itself or it might have been derived from the Algonquian wauregan or olighin,
which both mean “good and beautiful” (and were both used in reference to the
Ohio River at the time).
-
Derived from the Shoshone words Ogwa (river) and Pe-On (west)
and picked up from the Sioux, who referred to the Columbia as the “River of the
West,” by American explorer Jonathan Carver.
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‡‡Birthdays
Today‡‡
@ indicates age at death
101- Beverly Cleary,
American writer of children’s and young adult novels
<§><§>
<§><§>
@75- Henry Clay, American politician known as "the Great
Compromiser", born in Hanover County, Virginia (d. 1852)
71- Ed O'Neill, actor
(Al Bundy-Married with Children)
70- David Letterman, comedian (Late Night), born in Indianapolis, Indiana
<§><§>
67- David Cassidy,
American singer/actor (Keith-Partridge Family), born in NYC, New York
@66- Tom Clancy,
Baltmore Maryland, American author (d 2013)
@64- Tiny Tim [
Herbert Khaury], New York, musician, (d. 1996)
61- Andy Garcia,
Cuba, actor (Stand & Deliver, 8 Million Ways to Die)
60- Vince Gill,
country singer (When I Call Your Name), born in Norman, Oklahoma
<§><§>
46- Shannen Doherty, actress (Little House, Bev Hills 90210), born in Memphis,
Tennessee
<§><§>
38- Claire Danes, American actress (Angela-My So Called Life, Romeo &
Juliet), born in NYC, New York
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‡‡Historical
Obits Today‡‡
@90-1997 George
Wald, scientist, (Nobel Prize, vitamin A in retina)
@90-1987 Ewan
Calague, economist/statistician (Social Security)
@90-1912 Clara
Barton, organizer (American Red Cross)
<§><§>
@84-2013 Robert
Byrne, American grand chess master
<§><§>
@67-1999 Boxcar
Willie, American singer, leukemia
@67-1991 James
Schuyler, US poet (Pulitzer 1980), stroke
@67-1989 Sugar
Ray Robinson, heavyweight boxing champ, Alzheimer
@66-1981 Joe
Louis, [Brown bomber], US heavyweight boxing champion (1937-49), cardiac arrest
@63-1945 Franklin
Roosevelt, 32nd US President (D) (1933-1945), in office—stroke
<§><§>
@58-2008 Jerry
Zucker, Israeli-born American businessman (Hudson's Bay Company of Canada)/philanthropist
@55-1878 William
Magear Tweed "Boss Tweed", New York corrupt politician, pneumonia
in prison
@52-1989 Abbie
Hoffman, yippie peace activist of the 60's, suicide
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‡‡Trivia
Hive Answers‡‡
9
Featuring
a number of close-up shots and an array of animation techniques, Peter Gabriel
would win big at the 1987 MTV VMAs. His accolades that night included
"Video of the Year," "Best Male Video," "Most
Experimental Video" and "Best Overall Performance." Reportedly,
this level of experimentation wasn't without its trials, as stop-motion
animation wasn't as sophisticated as it is today. Gabriel is said to have spent
16 hours lying beneath a glass sheet to make the video for
"Sledgehammer" a possibility. Hopefully, all those awards made the
neck strain and dreams of dancing raw chickens worth the effort. Sources: MTV,
Time magazine
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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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