Sep 24

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

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9.24.16 Week: 38 \ Day: 268

September Averages: 74°\42°

86004 Today: H 60° \ L 34° Average Sky Cover: 0% 

Wind ave:   17mph\Gusts:  30mph Visibility: 10 mi

Record High: 85°[1947]   Record Low: 25°[1916]

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Quote of the Day

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

~Winston Churchill

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Observances Today                                                  

Family Health and Fitness Day USA

Fish Amnesty Day

International Lace Day    Link     International Rabbit Day  Link

Kids Day (Kiwanis Clubs)  Link

National Cherries Jubilee Day

National Hunting and Fishing Day

National Familial Hypercholesterolemia Day  Link

National Museum Day Link National Public Lands Day

National Seat Check Saturday Link

Nickelodeon's Worldwide Day of Play  Link

Punctuation Day Link

Schwenkfelder Thanksgiving

R.E.A.D. in America Day

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Observances This Week

Returns tomorrow

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Today’s US Historical Highlights‡‡‡‡

Today’s World Historical Highlights

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

1683 King Louis XIV expels all Jews from French possessions in America

1786 African American slave and poet Jupiter Hammon makes his "Address to the Negroes of the State of New York" speech advocating emancipation at meeting of African Society in NY

1789 US Congress establishes Post Office Department following the new constitution

1789 US Federal Judiciary Act is passed & creates a six-person Supreme Court

1789 President George Washington nominates John Jay the 1st Chief Justice.

1789 US Attorney General Office is created

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

1853 1st round-the-world trip by yacht (Cornelius Vanderbilt)

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

1895 1st round-the-world trip by a woman on a bicycle (took 15 months)

1929 Lt James Doolittle guides a Consolidated N-Y-2 Biplane over Mitchell Field in NY in 1st all-instrument flight

1938 58th U.S. Men's National Championship: Don Budge beats Gene Mako (6-3, 6-8, 6-2, 6-1) and becomes 1st tennis player to win a grand slam

1948 Mildred Gillars (Axis Sally), an American broadcaster employed by the Third Reich in Nazi Germany to proliferate propaganda during World War II, pleads not guilty to eight chargs of treason in Washington, D.C.

1948 The Honda Motor Company is founded.

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

1957 President Eisenhower orders US troops to desegregate Little Rock schools

1957 Camp Nou, the largest stadium in Europe, is opened in Barcelona.

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

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

1976 "Oh! Calcutta!" opens at Edison Theater NYC for 5959 performances

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

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

1979 CompuServe began operation as 1st computer information service

1982 Tennis great Bjorn Borg retires at 26

1988 Carl Lewis runs world record 100m (9.92 sec)

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

1990 Saddam Hussein states his willingness to strike first and his intention to damage oil fields in the region if Iraq does strike

1994 National League for Democracy is formed by Aung San Suu Kyi and various others to help fight against dictatorship in Myanmar.

1996 U.S. President Bill Clinton signed the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty at the United Nations.  2007 Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gives a controversial speech on the campus of Columbia University.

2007 "The Big Bang Theory" created by Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady and starring Johnny Galecki, Jim Parsons and Kaley Cuoco premieres on CBS

2015 Stampede of people during the Hajj kills 717 people during symbolic stoning of the devil at Mina, near Mecca, South Arabia

2015 Pope Francis becomes the 1st pope to address the US Congress. Names Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Thomas Merton and Dorothy Day as his American heroes.

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My Rambling Thoughts

First day of Fall brought a huge wind storm to our fair city. Wind blew hard all night. Woke me several times. Pine needles everywhere. Blew in some much cooler weather. I did go shopping in short pants, but wished I hadn’t. Got stuff bought and paid for and headed home as quickly as possible.

I learned something yesterday. It takes more class hours to get a cosmetology certificate than it does to become a police officer. The US average for cops is 860 hours, for cosmetology it’s 1020. While I certainly want my hair stylist to take the necessary prevention of disease or infection, and know how to cut hair, I really think that a police officer should receive a lot more training before being given a loaded gun.

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Brain Teasers

(answers at the end of post)

Royal Menace

Riddles are little poems or phrases that pose a question that needs answering. Riddles frequently rhyme, but this is not a requirement.

Against your royalty I attack,

Going black to white and white to black

And one by two or two by one,

Until I'm caught or the war is done.

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Today’s Trivia Hive

(answers at the end of post)

What is the name of the mountains between Spain and France?

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…Harper’s Index…

15 – Percentage of fatal car-pedestrian collisions in which the drive is found to be drunk

34 – In which the pedestrian is

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2 jokes for the day

Teacher: "Why are you so late?" 

Student: "Someone told me to go to hell." 

Teacher: "Why did that make you late to class?" 

Student: "I couldn't find it at first, but now here I am."  

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Q: What do you call a lawyer who has gone bad? 

A: Senator.  

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Yep, It Really Happened

* Darth Vader picks up trash alongside adopted Virginia highway *

BLACKSBURG, Va. - A Virginia man who adopted a stretch of highway under the name Darth Vader donned the costume of the Star Wars character while cleaning up roadside trash. Darth Vader, aka Henry Wakley, was spotted Thursday wearing a version of the Sith Lord's costume with an orange reflective vest at the side of Route 460 in Blacksburg. Wakley adopted the stretch of highway last year and a sign at the side of the road states it was adopted by "Darth Vader." Wakley, who spends most of his time in New Zealand on business, said he decided to don Darth Vader's robes and pick up some trash while in town for a couple of weeks. "I like to get out here and dress up because it makes people smile driving by," Wakley told WSBS-TV. "The lack of cleanliness disrupts me." Wakley said he hopes using the Dark Side of the Force for good will inspire others to keep their roads clean. "We need to end this destructive behavior to restore the galaxy," Wakley said. He said he had a humorous run-in with police this week when someone reported "Batman" walking along the side of the highway, but officers arrived to find Darth Vader doing his civic duty. The Virginia Department of Transportation thanked Vader for his service to the community. "VDOT Salem District would like to thank Darth Vader for helping us keep our roadways 'in the galaxy' clean. He took a break on Friday from his busy schedule and used the force to pick up trash along Route 460 in Blacksburg, a highway he adopted as part of the Adopt-a-Highway Program," the department said in a Facebook post.

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Somewhat Useless Information

In the 1960s the Rolling Stones began calling themselves the World's Greatest Rock and Roll Band.

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It has been estimated that Mick Jagger runs the equivalent of five miles on stage during each Rolling Stones concert.

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Sonny Bono is the only member of U.S. Congress to have scored a number one single on the Billboard Hot 100 ("I Got You Babe" in 1965).

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Loretta Lynn became country music's first millionairess in 1965.

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The lyrics to Bill Haley's recording of "Shake, Rattle And Roll" that said I'm like one-eyed cat, peepin' in a seafood store, were ironic because Haley himself was blind in one eye since the age of four.

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Willie Nelson's first gig: playing guitar in a polka band.

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In August, 1984, Ray Parker Jr. asked "Who you gonna call?" on his #1 hit "Ghostbusters". Huey Lewis heard the song and answered, "A lawyer." Lewis sued Parker for plagiarism for copying his song "I Want a New Drug". The two eventually settled out of court. 

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How it was discovered

The secret to discovering the prevailing theory to how the universe was made began with noise, like common radio static. In 1964, while working with the Holmdel antenna in New Jersey, the two astronomers discovered a background noise that left them perplexed. After ruling out possible interference from urban areas, nuclear tests, or pigeons living in the antenna, Wilson and Penzias came across an explanation with Robert Dicke's theory that radiation leftover from a universe-forming big bang would now act as background cosmic radiation.

In fact, only 37 miles from the Holmdel antenna at Princeton University, Dicke and his team had been searching for this background radiation. When he heard the news of Wilson and Penzias' discovery, he famously told his research partners, "well boys, we've been scooped." Penzias and Wilson would go on to receive the Nobel Prize.

"Big things have small beginnings." All right, so that's actually a quote from Michael Fassbender in (Prometheus,) but nothing could be more true for radio astronomer duo Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias.

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Birthdays Today

“[ ]” indicates age at death

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

[79] John Marshall, 4th Chief Justice of the United States (1801-35), born in Germantown, Virginia (d. 1835)

[77] Sir Arthur Guinness, Irish brewer (d. 1803)

73- Lee Aaker, actor (Rusty-Rin Tin Tin), born in Los Angeles

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

[69] Howard Florey, Australian pathologist and pharmacologist who purified penicillin (Nobel 1945), born in Adelaide, South Australia (d. 1968)

[56] Linda Eastman McCartney, photographer and musician (Wings-Ram) and wife of Paul McCartney, born in NYC, [d 1998]

[53] Jim Henson, muppeteer (Sesame Street, Muppet Show), born in Greenville, Mississippi (d. 1990)

[49] Phil Hartman, Canadian-American actor (SNL, Peewee's Playhouse), born in Brantford, Ontario (d. 1998)

[44] F. Scott Fitzgerald, American author (Great Gatsby, Zelda), born in St. Paul, Minnesota (d. 1940)

34- Morgan Hamm, American gymnast

34- Paul Hamm, American gymnast

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Historical Obits Today

@68-1961 Sumner Welles, US diplomat (Good Neighbor Policy)

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

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Brain Teasers Answers

A knight on a chessboard.

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Trivia Hive  Answers

The Pyrenees

In Spanish they are called the Pirineos. In French, they are the Pyrénées. We know them as the place those fluffy white dogs come from. The Pyrenees mountains extend from the Bay of Biscay to the Mediterranean Sea, a distance that runs about 270 miles. We think it's pretty important that the American people know a little bit about these mountains, especially those in Township, Minnesota. They just elected a Great Pyrenees as their mayor! Source: The World Atlas

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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…☼☼☼☼