▼9-24-15

FYI: This blog is now at a new address.

Sept  24, 2015  Week: 39 \ Day: 267

September Averages: 74°\42°

86004 Today: H 76° \ L 42° Average Sky Cover: 25% 

Wind ave:   9mph\Gusts:  16mph

Ave. High: 72° Record High: 85°[1947] Ave. Low: 39° Record Low: 25°[1918]

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

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Observances Today:                         

AKC Responsible Dog Ownership Day

Family Health and Fitness Day - USA

Fish Amnesty Day

Innergize Day

National Cherries Jubilee Da

National Hunting and Fishing Day

National Public Lands Day

National Punctuation Day

National Teach Ag Day Link 

Punctuation Day Link

R.E.A.D. in America Day

Schwenkfelder Thanksgiving (Pa)

Birthday of Confucius (China)

Constitutional Declaration Day (Cambodia-1994)

Heritage Day (South Africa)

Independence Day (Guinea-Bissau-1973-from Portugal)

Observances This Week:

19-27

International Air Ambulance Week Link

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Quote of the Day 

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US Historical Highlights for Today

1625 - Dutch attack San Juan, Puerto Rico

1657 - First autopsy & coroner's jury verdict is recorded in Maryland

1664 - Dutch Fort Orange (New Netherland) in present day Albany NY surrenders to the English

1789 - US Congress establishes Post Office Department following the new constitution

1819 - Lewis Cass negotiates a treaty (7 stat. 203) for the United States with the Chippewas. For $1000 a year, the services of a blacksmith, and provisions, the Chippewa give up a large section of land. The treaty is signed in Saginaw, Michigan.

1869 - Black Friday; Wall St panic after Gould & Fisk attempt to corner gold

1890 - President of Mormon Church in Salt Lake City issues a manifesto advising members that teaching & practice of polygamy should be abandoned

1924 - Boston, Massachusetts, opens its airport

1931 - Louise Foucar Marshall was acquitted of murder charges in the shooting death of her husband. Marshall, seen in this undated portrait, was the first woman professor at the University of Arizona, a successful businesswoman and the creator of the Marshall Foundation, an organization that supports charitable and educational institutions in Pima County.

1955 - US President Eisenhower suffers a heart attack on vacation in Denver

1958 - 1st welded aluminum girder highway bridge completed, Urbandale, IA

1962 - US Circuit Court of Appeals orders Meredith admitted to University of Miss

1964 - "Munsters" premieres on TV

1968 - "60 Minutes" premieres on CBS-TV

1976 - Newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst sentenced to 7 years for her part in a 1974 bank robbery. Released after 22 months by Pres Carter

1977 - 1st broadcast of "Love Boat" on ABC-TV

1982 - Tennis great Bjorn Borg retires at 26

1988 - Jackie Joyner-Kersee of USA sets heptathlon woman's record (7,291)

1990 - Iraq invades the French and Dutch missions in Kuwait; French President Mitterrand called the action a violation of international law; a U.S. warship boards an Iraqi-flagged tanker bound for the port of Basrah

1996 - President Bill Clinton signed Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty at UN

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World Historical Highlights for Today

1841 - British adventurer James Brooke obtains lands around the Sarawak River from the Sultan of Brunei

1881 - Henry Morton Stanley signs contract with Congo monarch

1948 - The Honda Motor Company is founded.

1975 - OPEC announces a 15% increase in government per barrel revenues

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♫ Birthdays Today: ♫

How many can you identify? Answers below in Birthdays Today 

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My Rambling Thoughts

Beautiful first day of fall. Still warm, so ain’t complaining. The morning sun has moved enough that I no longer need to close my office curtain when I get on the computer around 6am. That too is nice.

While I was running around this morning, got a txt msg that 2 scripts were ready at Walgreens. Stopped by and the nice tech pulls out the scripts and then says ‘I’m sorry we can’t process these as our nationwide computer system is not accepting insurance copays. The same had happened to the two people ahead of me. Now she calls my insurance company, gives here several series of numbers and letters, then tries to re-enter the script. No luck. ‘No problem I say, just text me when you get the computers fixed.’ She says they can’t do that since I already got a txt. She says it should be fixed by tomorrow or Saturday. Not a big deal for me as I still have some meds. So I go home and call the Walgreens phone center. They say there will be a 2 minute wait, as they are very busy assisting other customers. After 6 minutes I talk to a human. I explain my frustration and wonder why they couldn’t have sent me a txt that there was a problem. She didn’t know and said that my script was ready. I agreed it was ready, I just couldn’t pick it up. She agreed to transfer me to corporate. 7 minutes later the supervisor comes on to see if he can help me. He agrees he can’t and transfers me to corporate. I ask why they couldn’t send out a txt that there was a problem and why they can’t txt me when they fix their problem. She listens and says she will forward my complaint to corporate. She just needs the location of my pharmacy and my name and phone number, which I have already given to the other two people. I refuse and tell her it is not my local pharmacies issue, it is the corporate issue for every pharmacy in the corporation. I told her my local pharmacy is great and doesn’t need to get a complaint as they are busy trying to cover corporate’s posterior with this mess. We ended the conversation and I’m sure that since I wouldn’t leave any identifying information, she just hit the delete button.   

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Brain Teasers

(answers at the end of post)

Unscramble the words below, then take the letters from each word as instructed:

EQUEU Take letters 1,4 and 5

YMRRA Take letters 1,2 and 3

IELAN Take letters 1,3 and 5

CBA Take letter 2

Unscramble the letters you collected... what do you get?

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Found on You Tube with some relevance to today

▼ Coca-Cola - "Have a Coke and a Mean Joe Greene"

▼Phil Hartman SNL "Uncle John"

▼Slipknot – Duality

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…Amazing Facts…

In 2005, in Africa, it was reported that three lions rescued a 12-year-old girl from kidnappers and guarded her for half a day until help came.

Every day, plants convert sunlight into energy equivalent to six times the entire power consumption of human civilization.

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…Harper’s Index…

-17 –percentage change since 2009 in the number of Americans who play football.

+72 – who play rugby

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…Instagram Photo of the Day… 

natgeoPhoto by @amivitale. In honor of #WorldRhinoDay, here is a powerful example of the work being done to save these incredible creatures. In 2014, I witnessed a group of Samburu warriors encounter a rhino for the first time in their lives at Lewa Wildlife Conservancy, Kenya (@lewa_wildlife). Only their grandfathers saw rhinos in the wild and these young men had never even seen a photo of one. Based on stories and their own imaginations, they expected the young rhinos to be as big as elephants, as dangerous as lions and for their horns to be flexible, like an elephant's trunk. Much-needed attention has been focused on the plight of wildlife, but very little has been said about the indigenous communities on the frontlines of the poaching wars. The Nature Conservancy in Africa (@nature_africa), the Northern Rangelands Trust (@nrt_kenya) and Lewa are doing incredible work to strengthen these communities, who hold the key to saving Africa's great animals.

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…Foreigners Don’t Understand These American Customs…

6. The joy of drinking out of a red Solo cup.

There's nothing more American than a red Solo cup. Country singer Toby Keith even wrote a song about it. And while most people from abroad may not quite get our love for these ubiquitous party cups, it's catching on with some. There's even a trend of throwing "American" parties where people eat popcorn and hamburgers, and play beer pong. And not only do they drink out of red Solo cups — they wear them!

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…Unusual Fact of the Day…

Leslie Nielsen's father was a Canadian Mountie and his brother was a member of Canadian Parliament.

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2 jokes for the day

The Lone Ranger and Tonto were riding across the desert when a line of mounted Indians appeared to the right of them. They looked to the left and saw another line of mounted Indians. Behind them they saw another line of mounted Indians.

The Lone Ranger said, "Looks like we're in trouble, Tonto."

Tonto replied, "What do you mean WE, white man?"

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A man wrote a letter to a small hotel in a Midwest town he planned to visit on his vacation.

He wrote, "I would very much like to bring my dog with me."

He is well groomed and very well behaved.

"Would you be willing to permit me to keep him in my room with me at night?"

An immediate reply came from the hotel owner, who said, "I've been operating this hotel for many years."

"In all that time I've never had a dog steal towels, bedclothes, silverware or pictures off the walls."

"I've never had to evict a dog in the middle of the night for being drunk and disorderly."

"I've never had a dog run out on a hotel bill."

"Yes indeed, your dog is welcome at my hotel. And if your dog will vouch for you, you're welcome to stay here, too."   

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Yep, It Really Happened

SAN FRANCISCO - Animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals filed a lawsuit in San Francisco seeking to give a monkey ownership of its selfie photo. The group filed a U.S. federal court lawsuit in San Francisco arguing Naruto, a macaque monkey known to researchers in Indonesia, should be the legal owner of pictures he snapped in 2011 using a camera set up by photographer David J. Slater. The lawsuit names Slater; his company, Wildlife Personalities Ltd.; and publisher Blurb, which issued a collection of Slater's photographs that included two of the selfies snapped by Naruto. The suit is seeking to have the monkey declared the "author" and legal owner of the photograph. The picture has been in dispute for more than a year. Website Wikimedia Commons posted some of the pictures snapped by the monkey last year, labeling them public domain, and Slater attempted to have them removed, claiming the copyright he obtained in Britain should be applied globally. "I've told them it's not public domain, they've got no right to say that its public domain. A monkey pressed the button, but I did all the setting up," Slater told the National Post last year. Wikimedia refused to remove the pictures, saying Slater doesn't own the copyright on the image because he didn't shoot the photo himself. "Our argument is simple: U.S. copyright law doesn't prohibit an animal from owning a copyright, and since Naruto took the photo, he owns the copyright, as any human would," PETA said in a press release.

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Somewhat Useless Information

Why is the season called "Fall"? What happens in the natural world during this season? The leaves on many trees die and fall to the ground. About five hundred (500) years ago, when Middle English was spoken, expressions like "fall of the leaf" and "fall of the year" were quite common, and the season name "Fall" comes from them.

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Leaves require sunlight, water, chlorophyll and carbon dioxide to make food for themselves.

When the leaves turn colors in the fall, they actually are returning to their normal colors. During the summer months, the chlorophyll present in the leaves causes the leaves to turn green, blocking the leaves' actual colors.

Once the leaves have turned brown, they are dead and no longer receive any nutrients.

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Birthdays Today

“()” indicates age at death

(86) - Ayatollah Khomeini [Ruhollah Khomeini], Supreme leader of Iran (1979-89), religious figure, political leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution d. 1989

(79) - John Marshall, Germantown Virginia, 4th Supreme Court Chief Justice d.1835

(69) - Howard Florey, Aust, pathologist/phamacologist; purified penicillin (Nobel '45), d. 1968

69 - "Mean" Joe Greene, NFL tackle (Pittsburgh Steelers), Coke spokesman

(53) - Jim Henson, muppeteer (Sesame Street, Muppet Show), d. 1990

(56) - Linda Eastman McCartney, photographer and musician (Wings-Ram) and wife of Paul McCartney d.1998

(49) - Phil Hartman, Brantford Ontario, actor (SNL, Peewee's Playhouse) d.1998

45 - Shawn "Clown" Crahan, American musician (Slipknot)

(44) - Francis Scott Fitzgerald, author (Great Gatsby), d. 1940

41 - Matt McKeon, Florissant MO, soccer midfielder (Olympics-gold-96)

32 - Morgan Hamm, American gymnast

32 - Paul Hamm, American gymnast

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Historical Obits Today

Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss), children's author-1991@87

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Brain Teasers Answers

EQUEU Take letters 1,4 and 5 - QUEUE - take Q,U,E

YMRRA Take letters 1,2 and 3 - MARRY - take M,A,R

IELAN Take letters 1,3 and 5 - ALIEN - take A,I,N

CBA Take letter 2 - CAB, take A

Letters Collected:

Q,U,E

M,A,R

A,I,N

A

Unscramble the above to get 'Aquamarine'.

Aquamarine is a fascinating gemstone, available in varied shades of blue, from where it gets its name. The peaceful and serene look of an aquamarine gemstone further encourages people to treat it as lucky for women who want a happy and peaceful marriage! Many view it as an exotic and lucky gemstone because of the association with water.

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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…▲