March 14, 2017

Mar 15 Ides of March

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March  15, 2017 Week: 11 \ Day: 74
86004 Today: H 66° \ L 27° Average Sky Cover: 2% 
Wind ave:   4mph\Gusts:  -mph Visibility: 10 mi
March Averages: 50°\23°
March Records: H: 73° (2007) L: -16 (1966)
Record High: 72°[2007]   Record Low: -3°[1962]
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❆❆Quote of the Day❆❆
Mark Twain
Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.
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❆❆Observances Today❆❆
Brain Injury Awareness Day Link  
Brutus Day
Buzzards Day Link

International Day of Action Against Canadian Seal Slaughter  Link
Kick Butts Day Link  
National Shoe The World Day
True Confessions Day
World Consumer Rights Day Link

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❆❆Observances This Week❆❆
3-15
National Days of Action Link
11-17

Turkey Vultures Return to the Living Sign
12-18

Campfire USA Birthday Week
Girl Scout Week Link 
Termite Awareness Week
National Agriculture Week
13-19

International Brain Awareness Week
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❆❆Today’s Significant US Historical Events❆❆
  Today’s Significant International Historical Events 
44 BC Julius Caesar is stabbed to death by Brutus, Cassius and several other Roman senators on the Ides of March in Rome
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1783 In an emotional speech in Newburgh, New York, George Washington asks his officers not to support the Newburgh Conspiracy. The plea is successful and the threatened coup d'etat never takes place.
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1820 Maine admitted as 23rd state of the Union
1827 University of Toronto is chartered
1855 Louisiana establishes 1st health board to regulate quarantine
1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings become the 1st pro baseball team
1887 1st salaried fish & game warden (William Alden Smith in Michigan)
1892 1st escalator patented by inventor Jesse W Reno (NYC)
1892 NY State unveils automatic ballot booth (voting machine)
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1907 Finland is 1st European country to give women the right to vote
1913 1st US presidential press conference (Woodrow Wilson)
1913 Cleveland establishes 1st small claims court
1916 University of Gent goes under Dutch control

1919 American Legion forms (Paris)

1934 US Information Service opens
1937 1st blood bank forms (Chicago IL)
1937 1st state contraceptive clinic opens (Raleigh NC)
1950 NYC hires Dr Wallace E Howell as its official "rainmaker"

1951 Persia nationalizes Anglo-Iranian Oil Company
1955 US Air Force unveils self-guided missile
1960 Key Largo Coral Reef Preserve established (1st underwater park)
1960 National Observatory at Kitt Peak, Arizona dedicated
1962 Wilt Chamberlain is 1st to score 4,000 pts in an NBA season
1965 T.G.I. Friday's 1st restaurant opens in NYC
1968 LIFE mag calls Jimi Hendrix "most spectacular guitarist in the world"
1968 Diocese of Rome announces that it "deplored the concept", but wouldn't prohibit rock & roll masses at Church of San Lessio Falconieri
1969 Violent Chinese-Russian border dispute leaves 100s dead
1970 Expo '70 opens in Osaka, Japan
1971 Chatrooms make their debut on ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet
1972 "The Godfather", based on the book by Mario Puzo, directed by Francis Ford Coppola and starring Marlon Brando and Al Pacino, premieres in NYC (Best Picture 1973)
1982 Nicaragua suspends their citizen’s rights for 30 days
1989 US Department of Veterans Affairs officially established as a Cabinet position
1999 Pluto again becomes outermost planet
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2013 16 people are killed by a fireworks accident in Tlaxcala, Mexico
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❆❆My Rambling Thoughts❆❆
With all this talk about Healthcare in the US, I am so glad I have a good insurance policy as a supplement to my Medicare…and also glad I had a good insurance policy before Medicare. Today I had two annual eye tests…one checks my field of vision, the other my optic nerve. The visit, without insurance would be about $200 and each test probably over $200 each. My cost, thanks to insurance is $0. I don’t know how people without insurance survive. I also wonder why everyone can’t get the insurance I have? I get that younger people don’t think they need insurance. I was a sick child, with lots of strep and finally got a series of shots that prevent me from getting strep…nice. My parents always had insurance so I continued to have insurance when I was on my own. Each year I would see how much I had paid and wonder why I had the insurance. Then I used it and sure glad I had it. I am still using it, and still glad I have it. I’m really tired of hearing all the babble about how bad Obama care is and how the unknown will be better. It’s time to tell the public what Phase II and Phase III will give us. Time to have affordable choice of many plans for all Americans. Each company with good policies could have them available to everyone. Those without good policies would fail and the good policies would survive. In the Federal system, I could choose from at least a dozen policies each year. It works.
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❆❆Today’s Trivia Hive❆❆
(answers at the end of post)
When was Myspace founded?
2001
2002
2003
2000

 45.1%  taking the internet quiz got it correct.
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❆❆Harper’s Index❆❆
6→Years by which life expectancy has fallen for Syrian men since 2011
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❆❆ Joke For The Day❆❆
What do you call a snowman in Florida?

Water.

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❆❆Yep, It Really Happened❆❆
A Chinese martial artist shared video of him and his students taking repeated blows to the groin as means of promoting his unusual form of kung fu.

Master Wei Yaobin, known as the "Iron Crotch Kung Fu Master," appeared in a video alongside some of his students taking strong kicks to the groin, as well as being hit in the privates with objects including bricks and a battering ram.

Wei claims his form of kung fu can help men overcome erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation.

The master said he previously only taught his form of kung fu, which he has been practicing for 10 years in the city of Luoyang, to family members, but he is now seeking to make his "Iron Crotch" methods more widespread.

"We want it to be more popular and accepted by public," Wei told AsiaOne.    

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❆❆Somewhat Useless Information❆❆
Roman tragedian Seneca is said to have read "all the books in Rome" by peering through a glass globe of water. A thousand years later, presbyopic monks used segments of glass spheres that could be laid against reading material to magnify the letters, basically a magnifying glass, called a "reading stone." They based their invention on the theories of the Arabic mathematician Alhazen (roughly 1000 AD). Yet, Greek philosopher Aristophanes (c. 448 BC-380 BC) knew that glass could be used as a magnifying glass. Nevertheless it was not until roughly 150 AD that Ptolemy discovered the basic rules of light diffraction and wrote extensively on the subject.
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Venetian glass blowers, who had learned how to produce glass for reading stones, later constructed lenses that could be held in a frame in front of the eye instead of directly on the reading material. It was intended for use by one eye; the idea to frame two ground glasses using wood or horn, making them into a single unit was born in the 13th century.

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In 1268 Roger Bacon made the first known scientific commentary on lenses for vision correction. Salvino D'Armate of Pisa and Alessandro Spina of Florence are often credited with the invention of spectacles around 1284 but there is no evidence to conclude this. The first mention of actual glasses is found in a 1289 manuscript when a member of the Popozo family wrote: "I am so debilitated by age that without the glasses known as spectacles, I would no longer be able to read or write." In 1306, a monk of Pisa mentioned in a sermon: "It is not yet 20 years since the art of making spectacles, one of the most useful arts on earth, was discovered." But nobody mentioned the inventor.
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❆❆How our states were named❆❆
Florida
Six days after Easter in 1513, the Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León landed near what is now the city of Saint Augustine. In honor of the holiday and the area's plant life, he named the land Florida for the Spanish phrase for the Easter season, pascua florida (“feast of flowers”). The name is the oldest surviving European place-name in the U.S.
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❆❆Birthdays Today❆❆
@  indicates age at death
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82- Judd Hirsch, actor (Alex-Taxi, Dear John, Ordinary People), born in The Bronx, New York
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@ 78- Andrew Jackson, General and 7th US President (1829-37), born in Waxhaws in the border area between North and South Carolina (d. 1845)
76- Mike Love, California, rock saxophonist/vocalist (Beachboys-In My Room)
74- Sly Stone, Dallas, rocker (Sly & the Family Stone-Everyday People)
@ 73- Saint Nicholas [Nikolaos of Myra], Greek Bishop who became the model for Santa Claus, born in Patara, Asia Minor (d. 343)
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@ 68- Joe E Ross, comedian (Gunther Toody-Car 54, Ritzik-Phil Silvers Show) (D 1982)
60- Park Overall, American actress (Empty Nest, Mississippi Burning), born in Nashville, Tennessee
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58- Fabio Lanzoni, romance novels model (Fabio After Dark), born in Milan, Italy
54- Bret Michaels, Harrisburg Pa, guitarist (Poison-Talk Dirty to Me)
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42- Eva Longoria, American actress (Gabrielle Solis-Desperate Housewives), born in Corpus Christi, Texas
42- Will.i.am ( William Adams),  American musician-Black Eyed Peas
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❆❆Historical Obits Today❆❆
@94-1998 Benjamin Spock, American pediatrician and writer
@92-2001 Ann Sothern, American actress
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@86-1995 Florence Chadwick, American swimmer
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@70-1990 Tom Harmon, American football player and broadcaster, heart attack
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@69-1975 Aristotle S Onassis, Greek shipping magnate, myasthenia gravis
@62-2009 Ron Silver, American actor (Reversal of Fortune, Timecop), esophageal cancer
@61-1993 Anthony Bowles, music writer (Jesus Christ Superstar), AIDS
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@55-44 BC Julius Caesar, Roman military and political figure, stabbed to death
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❆❆Trivia Hive  Answers❆❆
2003    
Myspace was launched by Brad Greenspan, Chris DeWolfe, Josh Berman and Tom Anderson in 2003, growing to be the biggest social media platform in the world before being aquired by News Corporation in July 2005 for $580 million. Following what could be described as a rough few years - due to dwindling user base and a high profile hack - in 2012, News Corp sold it to Specifoc Media for $35 million. Source: BBC News
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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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