January 22, 2016

Jan 23

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1.23.16 Week: 03 \ Day: 23
January Averages: 43°\16°
86004 Today: H 52° \ L 16° Average Sky Cover: 30% 
Wind ave:   2mph\Gusts:  8mph
Ave. High: 43° Record High: 62°[1970] Ave. Low: 16° 
Record Low: -30°[1937]
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Quote of the Day 
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Observances Today                           
AFRMA Fancy Rat & Mouse Day
Snowplow Mailbox Hockey Day
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Observances This Week
Internat’l Snowmobile Safety & Awareness Week: 16-24 Link
Hunt For Happiness Week: 17-23 
National Activity Professionals Week: 17-23  Link
National Fresh Squeezed Juice Week: 17-23
National Handwriting Analysis Week: 17-23 
National Bible Week: 18-24  Link
Week of Christian Unity: 18-25
No Name Calling Week: 18-22 Link
Sugar Awareness Week: 18-22 
Kid Film Festival: 22-27

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US Historical Highlights for Today
1789 - Georgetown, 1st US Catholic college, founded
1845 - Uniform US election day for president & VP authorized
1849 - Mrs Elizabeth Blackwell becomes 1st woman physician in US
1855 - The first bridge over the Mississippi River opens in what is now Minneapolis, Minnesota, a crossing made today by the Father Louis Hennepin Bridge.
1859 - Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii begins an eruption; lasts 300 days
1897 - Elva Zona Heaster is found dead in Greenbrier County, West Virginia. The resulting murder trial of her husband is perhaps the only case in United States history where the alleged testimony of a ghost helped secure a conviction.
1930 - Clyde Tombaugh photographs planet Pluto
1933 - 20th amendment ratified changed date of US presidential inaugurations to 20th January
1943 - Duke Ellington plays at Carnegie Hall in New York City for the first time.
1955 - Babe Didrikson-Zaharias wins LPGA Tampa Golf Open
1961 - Supreme Court rules cities & states have right to censor films
1964 - 24th Amendment to the United States Constitution ratified, barring poll tax in federal elections
1973 - US President Nixon announces an accord has been reached to end Vietnam War
1996 - The first version of the Java programming language was released.
2002 - Reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped in Karachi, Pakistan. He was subsequently murdered .
2013 - US armed forces overturns 1994 ban on women serving in combat
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World Historical Highlights for Today
971 - In China, the war elephant corps of the Southern Han are soundly defeated at Shao by crossbow fire from Song Dynasty troops. The Southern Han state is forced to submit to the Song Dynasty, ending Southern Han rule, also first regular war elephant corps employed in Chinese army
1490 - 1st printing of Ramban's Sha'ar ha-Gemul
1552 - 2nd version of Book of Common Prayer becomes mandatory in England
1656 - Blaise Pascal publishes the first of his Lettres provinciales.
1972 - Entire population of Istanbul under 24 hour house arrest
1983 - Bjorn Borg announces his retirement from tennis
2013 - 23 people are killed in a mosque suicide bombing in Tuz Khormato, Iraq
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Birthdays Today
How many can you identify? Answers below in Birthdays Today 

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My Rambling Thoughts
Listening to CNN about the upcoming storm. They mentioned Boone, NC so I called a former colleague. Not as bad as they say, but still quite a storm. Caught up on lots of stuff. Always good to talk to former colleagues.
Also listened to a lot about the Flint Michigan water crisis. Reminded me of my time on the Rez. No matter what school, no matter how isolated, we all had deep water wells to provide water for the school, dorms, and housing. Every month, a guy from the Agency would come to the school, take several water samples from various places on the compound and send them in for analysis. If all was OK, he would back next month. If anything was amiss, he would be back in a couple of days and retake those water samples, plus an equal number at other sites on the compound. If everything was OK, he would be keep coming back every week for the rest of the month to test. If any test had two results that were out of the norm, another guy would come from Albuquerque and test the water. Not sure what happened after that, as the Albuquerque guy never got bad results. But the weekly testing continued until the next month. I find it frightening and despicable that money would ever be an issue in providing safe drinking water to any community. Many need to lose their employment and some need to have jail time. This can’t be spinned by anyone.
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Brain Teasers
(answers at the end of post)
Pairs
Place the same pair of letters onto both sets of blanks to complete a common word. Each answer will have a different pair of letters.

1. F __ __ G __ __ N T
2. P A __ __ T __ __ G
3. __ __ C K L I __ __
4. B __ __ D S T __ __ D
5. __ __ A F __ __ T

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Business Facts
IRS: Criminals legally required to declare illegal income on tax return
According to the IRS, self-employed criminals are required to declare the source of their illegal income (like selling drugs) - and they can't prosecute for it!
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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.

21. Fix: To repair, or to castrate
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Hard to Believe
6. France last used a guillotine to execute someone after Star Wars premiered.
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Harper’s Index
32-Length, in feet, of a motorized killer whale use to scare sea lions away from a dock in Oregon
20-minutes after its first launch that the whale capsized
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Instagram Photo of the Day 

natgeotravelPhoto by @alisonwrightphoto // Girl from Hamer tribe holding a gourd in Omo Valley, Ethiopia Note: I visited a village of the Hamer during my trip with Focus Travel Club to Ethiopia.
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2 jokes for the day

A man has a curse, he is only able to say a single word every year. But if he doesn't say a word that year he can say two the next year, then three, and so on. 

One day he meets a beautiful woman and wants to ask her to marry him, but he has no words saved up so he must wait four years. 

So he waits four years and he is finally able to ask her the question. He looks her in the eyes and says "Will you marry me?" 

She looks back at him with a smile and twinkle in her eye and replies "Come again?"

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A man went to a pet shop looking to buy a parrot. The shop had several parrots but one was priced much lower than the others. When the man asked why one was so much cheaper than the others, the pet shop owner assured the man that he did not want the cheaper one because it had a very foul mouth. 

"I've tried everything, but I can't get him to stop cussing", he explained. 

Eager to save some money, the man bought the parrot, sure he could teach the bird not to cuss. He too tried everything to stop the parrot's foul mouth. 

Finally, in frustration, he put the bird in the freezer to cool off. After a few minutes, he opened the freezer to find the parrot with a totally changed attitude. 

"Please, I'll NEVER cuss again! Please let me out! By the way, what did the chicken do?"

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Yep, It Really Happened
Lexington, Ky. -- Police in Monticello, Kentucky, charged Rodney Brown, 25, with stealing farm animals and equipment from a home in December -- but offering to return everything if the victim (a man) had sex with him. Brown allegedly took 25 roosters, a goat and some rooster pens and other rooster-care equipment. (Because Brown also supposedly said he'd beat the man up if he called police, a "terroristic threatening" count was added to "promoting prostitution.")       
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Somewhat Useless Information
John F. Kennedy was the last president to attend his inauguration ceremony in a stovepipe hat. 

John Quincy Adams was the first president to wear long trousers to his inauguration ceremony (breaking a tradition of colonial breeches).

During his Inaugural Parade, President Eisenhower was lassoed by a cowboy.

The Constitution does not require the president to swear on a bible, but it's been tradition from the beginning, thanks to George Washington. 

Washington also holds the record for shortest speech at just 135 words. In 1841, William Henry Harrison gave the longest speech. It lasted almost two hours in freezing temperatures. As a result, Harrison would last about another month before dying of pneumonia.

In 1921, Warren Harding became the first president to use an automobile to get to and from the ceremony.

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Birthdays Today
“()” indicates age at death
83 - Chita Rivera, actress (West Side Story, Sweet Charity), born in Washington, D.C.
73 - Gil Gerard, Little Rock Ark, actor (Buck Rogers in 25th Century)
(70) - Potter Stewart, Mich, 94th Supreme Court justice (d.1985)
66 - Richard Dean Anderson, Minneapolis, actor (MacGyver, Emerald Pt NAS)
(56) - John Hancock, merchant/statesman, (1st to sign Declaration of Independence), (d. 1793)
52 - Mariska Hargitay, American actress (Law and Order: Special Victims Unit), born in Santa Monica, California
(51) - Edouard Manet, Paris, French impressionist painter (Olympia, The Luncheon on the Grass), (d. 1883)
(42) - Ernie Kovacs, Trenton NJ, comedian (Ernie Kovacs' Show) (d.1962)
42 - Tiffani-Amber Theissen, actress (Saved by Bell, White Collar), born in Long Beach, California
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Historical Obits Today
@96-2011 - Jack LaLanne, American fitness and nutritional expert (b. 1914)
@84-1989 - Salvador Dalí, Catalan artist (b. 1904)
@80-1944 - Edvard Munch, Norwegian painter (The Scream), bequeathing all of his work to the city of Oslo
@79-2005 - Johnny Carson, American television host (b. 1925)
@77-1976 - Paul Robeson, athlete/lawyer/singer, stroke
@76-2004 - Bob Keeshan, American actor (Capt. Kangaroo)
@54-2003 - Nell Carter, American singer and actress, heart disease
@49-1931 - Anna Pavlova, Russian ballerina (Diaghilew, Dying Swan), pneumonia
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Brain Teasers Answers
1. RA = FRAGRANT
2. IN = PAINTING
3. NE = NECKLINE
4. AN = BANDSTAND
5. LE = LEAFLET

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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.

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