RERUNNING SINCE 1837.
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If you have an excellent memory you will recognize some of today's missive. I have been having some skin problems on my lower legs and feet that are best solved by spending as much time with my legs elevated as possible. Now while I can run a laptop from an articulated bed, it is not efficient or easy, so I am recycling Tuesday from 2009 and Wednesday through Friday from 2008. It turns out that I never did the 19th of April before so you get one new day.
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Laying in bed with your feet up is a good thing. I lost 10 pounds in two days (water). The places that the skin was seeping is down to a couple of square inches instead of the major area that seemed to forget that skin is supposed to keep fluid in and not let it out. It is a fight but I seem to be winning and the way that I can tell that is that Debbie my wife of 32 years, you remember?) has not freaked out and commanded me to go to the doctor.

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Now to the reasons to be happy this week
(or at least civil).
Here goes:

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monday 19 april
***The Official NoButtonButton*************
***
*** Never have children, only grandchildren.
***
*** - Gore Vidal
*******************************************
birthdays:
1721 - Roger Sherman - He was the first mayor of New Haven, Connecticut, and was on the Committee of Five that drafted the Declaration of Independence, and was also a representative and senator in the new republic.

He was the only person to sign the Continental Association, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution.

1787 – Deaf Smith, American frontiersman and Texas revolutionary. After fighting with the Texan Army he led a company of Texas Rangers.

1903 – Eliot Ness, American lawman. You have seen the movie. You should know the story.

1921 - Anna Lee Aldred was the first woman in the United States to receive a jockey's license.

After officials at Agua Caliente Racetrack in Mexico were unable to find a rule that would bar women jockeys, she was given a license in 1939. She lost her first professional race by a nose, but went on to win many races in state and country fairs. Six years later, having grown too tall at 5'5" and weighing in at 118 pounds, she retired from horse-racing and began a second career as a trick rider in rodeos. She married cattleman Wayne Aldred; that marriage later ended in divorce. Aldred was inducted into the Cowgirl Hall of Fame in Fort Worth, Texas in 1983. She continued riding until breaking her hip in 2001 and died in June 2006 in Montrose at the age of 85.

events:
1770 – Captain James Cook sights Australia.

1770 – Marie Antoinette marries Louis XVI by Proxy marriage. He was 16 and she was 14. They did not actually 'Do It' for three years and then did not have children for 5 years after that. I mention this because it was a hot button topic in France at the time. Crowds would sometimes gather and chant 'Can the King do it? Can't the King do it?'. No performance anxiety there. There are a few theories as to why this happened.
1. Louis was Gay and none of the four children are his.
2. He had a medical condition which would have required surgery.
3. He was shy and distrusting of Marie, it was an arranged marriage.
4. They had no idea what they were doing and who does the King ask for sexual advice?
Who knows, I surely do not. I am just sure that during the French Revolution Marie and Louis wish they they could have been beheaded by Proxy.

1892 – Charles Duryea claims to have driven the first automobile in the United States, in Springfield, Massachusetts.

1919 – Leslie Irvin makes the first successful voluntary free-fall parachute jump using a new kind of self-contained parachute. You have to believe in your product to test it like that.

1927 – Mae West is sentenced to 10 days in jail for obscenity for her play Sex. They play was written by and starred Mae. The police did not bust her right away. It played for about a year before the New York PD raided West and her company, charging them with obscenity. 325,000 people had watched it, including members of the police department and their wives, judges of the criminal courts, and seven members of the district attorney’s staff. I guess you could say that Sex was popular.

West was sentenced to 10 days in jail, getting out two days early for good behavior. The resulting publicity increased her national renown.

holidays:
Garlic Day - Eat enough of it and nobody will bother you.

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tuesday 20 april
***The Official NoButtonButton*************
***
*** I couldn't wait for success,
*** so I went ahead without it.
***
*** - Jonathan Winters
*******************************************
birthdays:
1818 - Heinrich Göbel born in Germany, was a precision mechanic and inventor who may have created the first practiacl incandescent light bulb, 25 years before Edison. He definately built a light bulb before Edison, many people did (when Edison developed his the light bulb was 50 years old). If is the question of practicality that is at issue. Edison made a bulb that would last more that a few minutes or hours or even days (one of his bulbs has been burning for over a hudred years). The practicallity of Göbel's bulb has never been clearly established so currently (no pun) Edison retains his title. There is also the fact that Edison invented the means make the electricity, on a large scale and get it to where the light bulbs were. The first commercial Generating plant was built only 127 years ago.

1850 – Daniel Chester French - Who is this guy? He was a sculptor and everybody in the US and millions from other countries have seen images of his work. He created the sculpture of Abraham Lincoln that sits in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. If you have never seen it, for real, I think it is a good reason to go to D.C. Even if that is all that you see, it is that good.

1851 – 'Young' Tom Morris - Basically he was the Tiger Woods of his era. His father, Old Tom Morris, was the greenskeeper of the St Andrews Links and had won four of the first eight Open Championships. He won 4 consecutive championships at the Prestwick Golf Club in St. Andrews, Scotland. He was called Young Tom to destiguish him from his father 'Old' Tom Morris (who won 4 of the first 8 championships at St. Andrews Links). Young Tom once scored an Albatross (what??). The term does not seem to be in use any more. A Birdie is one under par, an Eagle is two under and an Albatross was three under par. It is now refered to as a double Eagle.

1896 – Wop May - Another person you never heard of but you know his legacy. He was Canadian and he learned to fly during WWI. During his second combat mission he was told not to engage but to circle above and observe. When his Group discovered some Germans he circled. There was a German plane doing the same thing and May decided to attack it. May's target was Wolfram von Richthofen, cousin of Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron. Like May, Wolfram was also new to flying, and had also been told to simply sit it out above the fight and watch. May attacked and chased Wolfram through the dogfight below. When his guns jammed he left the area. The Red Baron saw what had happened and gave chase. May's squadron leader (Roy Brown) flew in from above and behind the Baron and shot him down.
Wop survived the war and started the first Barnstorming company. After a couple of years that folded and he moved from Western Canada to Dayton, Ohio to work for NCR. He quit there after an injury and moved back to Canada were he started the first Bush Pilot sevice, carrying medicene to wilderness locations and helping the RCMP hunt criminals. During WWII he ferried plane to the Soviet Union and helped set up airfields in Canada that trained pilots. He thought of the idea to have Emergency personnel parachute from airplane into remote disaster areas and the idea blossomed into the Smoke Jumpers and Para-Rescue services of today. Wop - There it is.

events:
1534 – Jacques Cartier begins his voyage, in which he will discover Canada and Labrador (both the land area and the sea). Labrador is the name of a dog. It started as a Newfoundland but the Canadians wanted a smaller, smarter, soft mouth, water dog and they bred for those traits. Even though they were in Newfoundland they could not call the dog that so they named it after the sea that it spent so much time in.

1657 – Freedom of religion is granted to the Jews of New Amsterdam (later New York City). New York became one of the very few metropolitan areas in the world that has not had any major persecution of Jews in the last 450 years. This is a major reason for the large Jewish presence in New York City. They have suffered varying degrees of discrimination but there was no government plot to kill them. That has to make you sleep better at night.

1828 – René Caillié is first non-Muslim to enter Timbuktu. Not true. He was the first non-Muslim European. There were non-Muslims living in the city before Islam got there and there were many living in the area that continued their traditional beliefs after Islam arrived. Islamic West Africans (not Arabs) did run the city. It was a rich and cultured place with a huge gold and salt trade. A close second to the trade business was the sale of scholarly books written by the teachers of Sankore University (one of, if not the, oldest continually operating universities anywhere) and other schools in the area. Timbuktu was the major center of Islam and trade in Saharan Africa. It is still a place of learning and boasts a huge number of old manuscripts, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, dating as far back as the 12th century. This makes it the greatest collection of written African history (excluding Egypt which did not cover this part of the continent very well). A small problem, the whole city is primarily made of mud (abode, rammed earth, etc) and the desert wants it back. Desertification is seriously threatening the city. UNESCO and the Mali government are working to restore and digitize as many manuscripts as they can before they are lost.

1926 – Western Electric and Warner Brothers announce Vitaphone, a process to add sound to film. Talkies are here to stay. Many people thought it was a passing fad that would die out. Some people thought it was racist (what??). A silent film could be sent anywhere in the world and by splicing in the local text you had local entertainment. The talkies radically reduced the films available for foreign distribution for years. It did create and increase film making, in other countries. It also limited the penetration of foreign films in the US.

For a number of years, some US film makers would run two shifts. The day shift made the movie for release in the US and at night Spanish speaking actors would use the same sets to shoot the same scenes to make the movie for Mexican markets. If there were sets that were supposed to be destroyed they would try to do it such a way that both films could use the same footage.

holidays:
International Cannabis Day - Careful DEA agents could be lurking.

Cucko Day - To much Cannabis

National Pot Smoking Day - Careful DEA agents could be lurking.

Festival of Fabulous Wildwomen - They have had too much Pot.

National Pineapple Upside-Down Cake Day - Random Munchies Day

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wednesday 21 april
***The Official NoButtonButton*************
***
*** If at first you don't succeed,
*** failure may be your style.
***
*** - Quentin Crisp
*******************************************
birthdays:
1930 - Don Tyson founder, Tyson Foods) He may contain up to 12% natural juices to enhance flavor.

1951 - Tony Danza - He played Tony Banta on TV's Taxi and Tony Micelli on TV's Who's the Boss. He likes long walks on the beach, fine music and punching out people who try to take his picture. Since in real life he was a boxer before becoming an actor, I have heard that he hits pretty hard. And I think they always call him Tony in all his roles because he was a boxer and got hit in the head a lot.

1978 - Aimee Delatte Miss Teen Arkansas (1996) - All I want is world peace.

1978 - Melissa Coish Miss Teen New Hampshire(1996) - All I want is whirled peas.

events:
753BCE - Traditional date of the founding of Rome.

1878 - New York installs 1st firehouse pole - It was a long drop through that hole before they put the poles in.

1913 - Gideon Sundback of Sweden patents the zipper - After installing them on their swim suits, the Swedish Bikini Team became even more popular.

1963 - The Beatles meet The Rolling Stones for 1st time - Can't get no satifaction, Yeah, yeah, yeah.

holidays:
National Chocolate-Covered Cashews Day - A delightful random food day

Alfred G. Packer Day (Colorado) - This is really a bit a dark humor. Alfred Packer is well known for.... Well I will let you read what the trial judge alledgedly said at the sentenceing (this may or may not be the actual words, there is a lack of clear proof for the judges words.) "Packer, you depraved Republican son of a bitch! There were only five Democrats in Hinsdale County and you ate them all!".

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thursday 22 april
***The Official NoButtonButton*************
***
*** The truth is more important than the facts.
***
*** - Frank Lloyd Wright
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birthdays:
1923 - Betty Page - Kingsport TN, Playboy playmate (January 1955) - One of the most well known pin-up models (usually nude) ever. Her trademark black hair with bangs cut of across her forehead has been imitated many times.There are look-a-like contests and comix about her. Her haircut is a popular goth style. She has been a popular tatoo pattern for years. Pretty close to the height of her popularity she disappeared and stayed out of the public eye except for a couple of telephone interviews for many years. She was close to broke and had no idea that she had a cult following until around her 80th birthday. She has picked up some cash from a few business deals and has engaged legal help to try and get some of the money made from her photos and likeness.

1929 - Margaret Pereira CBE - (Commander of the British Empire) She was a forensic scientist, a Past President of the British Academy of Forensic Sciences and she worked at Scotland Yard. First woman controller of the Home Office Forensic Science service. She acquired her honours degree at night school but it was seven years before she was allowed to give evidence in court whereas male university graduates could get into court in one year. She is considered on of the people that made modern forensic science possible.

1950 - Peter Frampton Kent England, guitarist/vocalist. 'Frampton Comes Alive' double album is one of the largest selling live albums there is. What is really interesting is that after 30 some odd years they still only play one song off the album, 'Do You Feel Like I Do'.

events:
1793 - President George Washington attends the opening of Rickett's, 1st circus in US - George threw out the first clown.

1937 - NYC college students stage 4th annual peace strike - I don't think we were at war with anyone at the time.

1970 - First Earth Day held internationally to conserve natural resources.

1970 - Flat Earth celebrated - I suppose we could sweep the garbage off the edge.

2010 - Avatar is released on DVD and Blue Ray.

holidays:
Nebraska : Arbor Day, where they created it (1872)

USSR : Lenin's Birthday (1870) - Whether you hate him or love him or just don't care you have to admit that he and his minions made a lot of great action spy novels and movies possible.

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friday 23 april
***The Official NoButtonButton*************
***
*** A witty saying proves nothing.
***
*** - Voltaire
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birthdays:
1936 Roy Orbison - One of the least good looking guys to ever become a rock star. When he was younger he was in a movie called 'The Fastest Guitar in the West' and it is bad. Roy is part of a group of Confederate raiders that are supposed to steel Union gold during the Civil War. He is heavily made up to look like other people (enough make up that they actually use other actors) and during gun fights he used a guitar that had a has a rifle barrel pop out of it. He shoots the guitargun by strumming it. He also sang that great song ' Pretty Woman' and 'Only The Lonely'. I think the best work he did was when he was with the supergroup 'The Traveling Wilburys' (George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, and Bob Dylan.) The two years they were together produced 2 albums.

The Traveling Wilburys of Volume 1 were:
Nelson Wilbury - George Harrison
Otis Wilbury - Jeff Lynne
Lefty Wilbury - Roy Orbison
Charlie T. Jr. - Tom Petty
Lucky Wilbury - Bob Dylan

There is no The Traveling Wilburys of Volume 2

The Traveling Wilburys of Volume 3 were:
Spike Wilbury - George Harrison
Clayton Wilbury - Jeff Lynne
Muddy Wilbury - Tom Petty
Boo Wilbury - Bob Dylan

Additional named Traveling Wilburys on the 2007 Collection (a re-issue of Vol1 &3 and a video) were:
Buster Sidebury - Jim Keltner
Ayrton Wilbury - Dhani Harrison

1952 - Tony Maselli - The fictional character played be Tony Danza (see Wednesday) on the TV show "Who's the Boss".

events:
1900 - First known occurrence of the word "hillbillie" (New York Journal) - Before that you had to be more polite (HillWilliam) and you could only do that if you were out of rifle shot range.

1985 - Coca-Cola announced it is changing its secret flavor formula - The day after New Coke was debuted, Pepsi was so happy that they gave their entire staff a paid day off. Really.

1997 - "Titanic", opens at Lunt-Fontanne Theater NYC- When the ship was built it cost $3 million, the movie cost over $100 million. The season opener of the 4th season of the new Doctor Who took place on a luxury cruise spaceship that, for purely artistic reasons looked a lot like the Titanic and The Doctor kept it from crashing into Buckingham Palace. Queen Elizabeth and a flock of Corgies were running around the palace as the Titanic was diving it.

holidays:
National Cherry Cheesecake Day - It is days like today that make me hate Diabetes, I love Cherry Cheesecake and Debbie and I have a recipe that makes a great cheesecake. I has two and one half pounds of cream cheese in it. You could drop it on somebody's head and kill them. It is great and I am sad.

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****joe722****

FULL OF BIOMASS SINCE 1837.
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Wikipedia has everything you can think of (almost). The question is how to find what you want. The following link will help. It has descriptions of 10 search engines that work in Wikipedia and in some cases, other Wikis, as well. Check out the article (which has links to each individual search engine).
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/10-wikipedia-search-engines/

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I have ranted about cell phones and texting before but this takes the cake. A friend's 5 month old daughter called her Dad on Mom's cell phone. Mom showed her the phone because the daughter was very interested in it. She was pushing the buttons and trying to eat it when a voice came on, "Honey why did you call". To which she replied "Goo". My friend figures she just hit redial, but it is still too funny.

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If you need to know about the following subject then I have just the place for you. They have a lot of military manuals and they are available as Print, CDROM, PDF files and just look at them on line. Now it costs money if you want the first three options but there is not cost for looking. I am skimming the Bradley Fighting Vehicle Intro manual and after that I am going to peruse some of the nine volume maintenance manual for the Apache Attack helicopter.
They have over 58,000 manuals.
Administration
Advancement
Army-Training
Automotive
Aviation
Construction
Diving
Drafting
Electronics
Engineering
Food_And_Cooking
Individual_Equipment
Legal
Mathematics
Medical
Meteorology
Music
Nuclear-Fundamentals
Photography_Journalism
Religion

Integrated Publishing's Educational Archive
http://www.tpub.com/

If you need to know the amount of 5.56mm rounds available for immediate use or that is stowed on a Bradley Fighting Vehicle then this is the place for you (2200 rounds stowed, 4200 rounds immediately available).

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If you are a Conspiracy Nut... I mean Theorist then you really need to now about "Above Top Secret". You will be sleeping under your bed with one eye open and covering the entire inside of your house with aluminum foil. Find out who is running your life at:
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/

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Now to the reasons to be happy this week
(or at least civil).
Here goes:

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monday 12 april
***The Official NoButtonButton*************
***
*** That is the saving grace of humor,
*** if you fail no one is laughing at you.
***
*** - A. Whitney Brown
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birthdays:
1932 - Herbert Khaury - WHO? Well you may know him by his stage name Tiny Tim. He was most famous for his rendition of "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" sung in a distinctive high falsetto/vibrato voice (though other performances reveal a broader vocal range). He was generally regarded as a novelty act, though his records indicate his wide knowledge of American songs.

1947 – Tom Clancy, American author. After 9-11, 'W' said "Who would have ever thought someone you use airliners as weapons." The answer, Tom Clancy. In his series of books about Jack Ryan (CIA analyst), Jack keeps becoming more and more important. Jack takes down a corrupt President and then runs for Vice President in the next election. During a State of the Union address, a Japanese JAL pilot crashes his 747 airliner into the US Capital building, killing most of Congress and the President. That is how Jack Ryan becomes President.

1947 – David Letterman, American talk show host. Patron Saint of white socks. Yep that is what you will see him wear with his thousand dollar suits.

2000 – Suzanna von Nathusius, Polish child actress. She has made several commercials and over 160 episodes of a popular soap opera and she is just 10. It took me until I was 25 to end up on TV and that was the news. A news crew filmed me and a friend when the police stopped us because they thought he did not have a rear view mirror on his motorcycle. Police will often arrest Bikers for minor offenses, they impound the bike and then let you go at the Police station. You have to find the impound lot and pay a bunch of money to get your ride back. It turned out that my friend did have a mirror, just a small one that was hard to see and we got to see ourselves on TV.

events:
1606 – The Union Flag is adopted as the flag of Great Britain. Well of the Crown really. No law has ever made the Union Jack the official national flag of Britain. It has become one through precedent. Its first recorded recognition as a national flag came in 1908, when it was stated in Parliament that "the Union Jack should be regarded as the National flag". A more categorical statement was made by the Home Secretary, Sir John Gilmour, in 1933 when he stated that "the Union Jack is the National Flag". But it is still officially a flag of the monarch, rather than the country.

The flag consists of The Cross of Saint George (Red cross with a White background) over the Cross of Saint Andrew (White X on a Blue background) . This represented the Union of Scotland and England (and Wales). In the early 1800s the third (and currently final) device was placed on the flag, The Cross of Saint Andrew (a Red X on a White background). There is nothing to actually represent Wales although the last few years there has been discussion about adding a device that would directly reflect Wales.

1934 – The US Auto-Lite Strike begins. The strike is notable for a five-day running battle between 6,000 strikers and 1,300 members of the Ohio National Guard. Known as the "Battle of Toledo," the clash left two strikers dead and more than 200 injured. The strike is regarded by many labor historians as one of the three most important strikes in U.S. history.

US Auto-Lite refused to recognize the Union. When forced to do so they refused to accede to union demands and refused further negotiation. When this strike was called they hired 1,500 replacements, then unemployed people and strikers ringed the plant and shut everybody in. Then the fighting broke out.

We are not talking about wimpy fighting either. There were strike beakers in the plant and armed Police, guards and National Guards standing between the crowd and their jobs. When fire hoses were turned on the strikers, they charged the security, took them away and turned them on the security. The strikers took inner tubes out of car tires and used them to sling shot rocks and bricks into the factory. Security fired into the crowds. Luckily few people were hit or hurt. Security threw tear gas and vomit gas into the crowds and they were returned (the US Auto-Lite company bought the gas, not the police). So much gas was used that additional police would not go into the area.

Over the next two months tempers raised to the boiling point. Almost all of the labor unions in Toledo were supporting a plan to have a city wide General Strike and 20,000 Union men and women marched in the streets of Toledo. Finally the Union and US Auto-Lite reached an agreement. The Union was recognized and the company organized 'union' was thrown out and all workers were rehired. All that to get a guarantee of a minimum wage of 35 cents an hour.

28 years later the company was bought out, the plant closed and the land was deeded to Toledo. After some prodding Toledo made a park out of the land, in 1999. The park has two life-sized bronze statues of picketers, which were placed on a plaza made of bricks salvaged from the Auto-Lite plant.

The Soledad Brothers' song "Mean Ol' Toledo" recounts the story of the Electric Auto-Lite strike of 1934.

1937 – Sir Frank Whittle ground-tests the first jet engine designed to power an aircraft at Rugby, England.

1961 – Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human to travel into outer space in Vostok 3KA-2 (Vostok 1). I don't care that he was a Commie, what he did was heroic and we should remember this as a feat brought about by Humans and not worry about the politics of it.

holidays:
Yuri's Night (International)

Cosmonautics Day (Russia)

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tuesday 13 april
***The Official NoButtonButton*************
***
*** What's the point of havin' a rapier wit
*** if I can't use it to stab people?
***
*** - Jeph Jacques
*******************************************
birthdays:
1570 – Guy Fawkes, English Catholic conspirator.

1743 – Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States

1866 – Butch Cassidy, American outlaw. You know the Western outlaw played by Paul Neuman. Although the Movie would have you believe that the Wild Bunch AKA The Hole in the Wall gang were fairly nonviolent, this was not the case. They did kill people and were not the romantic misunderstood bad guys of the film.

1892 - Sir Robert Alexander Watson-Watt, is considered by many to be the "inventor of radar".

events:
1796 – The first elephant ever seen in the United States arrives from India.

1902 – James C. Penney opens his first store in Kemmerer, Wyoming.

1943 – The Jefferson Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C., on the 200th anniversary of Thomas Jefferson's birth.

1953 – CIA director Allen Dulles launches the mind-control program MKULTRA.

1970 – An oxygen tank aboard Apollo 13 explodes, putting the crew in great danger and causing major damage to the spacecraft while en route to the Moon.

1976 – The United States Treasury Department reintroduced the two-dollar bill as a Federal Reserve Note on Thomas Jefferson's 233rd birthday as part of the United States Bicentennial celebration. Two dollar bills are not well known and have caused some wild craziness when some people try to use them.

In February 2005, a patron of Best Buy attempted to pay for an electronics installation with 57 $2 bills. The cashier refused to accept them and marked them as counterfeit. The cashier then called the police, and the patron was handcuffed and transported to the county lockup. The Secret Service agent that was sent to the jail cleared up the issue. The suspicion was supposedly caused by ink smearing on the bill and the officer noting that the serial numbers were in sequential order.

Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computers had problems at the Hard Rock Casino in Las Vegas. Wozniak's would legally purchase $2 bills in uncut sheets, then have the sheets perforated and adhered into pads, similar to a stationery notepad. Wozniak recounts how he had tipped a casino waitress using some $2 bills torn from his custom-made bill pads, only to be questioned by casino security, and eventually the Secret Service, regarding the irregular perforated edges on the otherwise genuine bills.

holidays:



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wednesday 14 april
***The Official NoButtonButton*************
***
*** Comedy is simply a funny way of
*** being serious.
***
*** - Peter Ustinov
*******************************************
birthdays:
1901 - Alfred West - The greatest hair splitting feat ever was done by Alfred West. He split a human hair 17 times (lengthwise) into 18 parts and he did this 8 different occasions.
During WWI, he made wood parts for aircraft and learned how to "set" a razor (honing a blade to get it really sharp). West had exhibits of his razor work shown around the world, including New York and Australia. Examples of his work included: crossed swords, a boa constrictor, Epping Forest and a monarch’s crown – all made from split hair. He is the patron saint of Lawyers and Tax Accountants.

1940 - George Takei actor (Hikaru Sulu-Star Trek)- He just revealed, this last month, that his secret talent is singing Country and Western songs while showering. A naked, singing George Takei.... I just don't know how to finish that sentence.

1945 - Steve Martin Waco TX, writer/actor (Jerk, Housesitter, SNL) You ever notice all the strange things that come from Waco, Texas? Dr.Pepper, Big Red (cream soda), The Branch Davidian Church, Baylor University, Steve Martin. Waco was named for the Hueco Indians which were forced out (not by White Eyes) by the Cherokee. For every 100 females age 18 and over, in Waco, there are 87.3 males. So girls, don't go to Waco looking for a good time.

events:
966 – Christianisation of Poland. The "Baptism of Poland" refers to the baptism of Mieszko I, the first ruler of a united Polish state. His baptism was followed by the building of churches and the establishment of an ecclesiastical hierarchy. Mieszko saw baptism as a way of strengthening his hold on power, with the active support he could expect from the bishops, as well as a unifying force for the Polish people. Mieszko's action proved highly successful; by the 13th century, Roman Catholicism had become the dominant religion in Poland and still is even though Poland was under Atheistic Communist rule for over 40 years. On Sunday, as high as 60% of the population goes to mass and over 88% claim to be Catholic and 72% don't mind Catholicism being taught in Public schools. Poland is one of the most devout countries in Europe.

1775 – The first abolition society in North America is established. The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage is organized in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush. That Benjamin Franklin thought of or invented damn near everything, but he was not the super Nerd that we would consider a person like that to be now. He was a stud and I am sure that in The US, England and France there is a lot of Ben Franklin DNA running around today.

1831 – Soldiers marching on a bridge in Manchester, England cause it to collapse. Supposedly the alternating Left, Right, Left, Right causes a bridge to shake then fail. There is a lot of controversy about this, but the Military in most countries ,pragmatically, took the lesson to heart and do not allow their troops to 'March' across bridges. In the US troops are told to Route March

holidays:
National Pecan Day - PECAN PIE - I don't want to hear anything else. I love that stuff and a big slice of it would probably put me into a diabetic comma.


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thursday 15 april
***The Official NoButtonButton*************
***
*** Where humor is concerned there are
*** no standards - no one can say what is
*** good or bad, although you can be sure
*** that everyone will.
***
*** - John Kenneth Galbraith
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birthdays:
1452 - Leonardo da Vinci Italy, painter/sculptor/scientist/visionary - I think he was a time traveler stuck centuries behind his own time. It would explain a lot.

1897 - Marian Jordan actress (Molly-Fibber McGee & Molly)

1915 - Ernest Borneman - He was a "sexual researcher, psychotherapist and musicologist". Hmmm that sounds like a very scholarly and sneaky way of saying "Sex, drugs and Rock n Roll". Party on Ernest! Party on Garth!

1917 - Hans Conried acted on stage, screen and the radio but what I remember him most for was doing the voice of Captain Hook in Walt Disney's animated feature Peter Pan, and the voice of Snidely Whiplash (the quintessential villain) on The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. He also was the inspiration for the voice of the Robot Devil on Futurama.

events:
1755 – Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language published in London. In nine years Johnson, with only a couple of copy clerks, single handedly wrote the best most comprehensive English dictionary ever (up to that time). It was the flagship dictionary of English 173 years when the Oxford English Dictionary was first released. The OED followed Johnson's style and often took his definitions directly. Sam was congratulated by many and his feat of single handedly writing such a splendid work of scholarship was seen as super human.

1802 – William Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy see a "long belt" of daffodils, inspiring the former to pen I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.

I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud by William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling leaves in glee;
A poet could not be but gay,
In such a jocund company!
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

1923 – Insulin becomes generally available for use by people with diabetes. Before that you just ate as little as you could and exercised as much as you could and then died young.

1924 – Rand McNally publishes its first road atlas. Some people suddenly realize that they are in the middle of nowhere.

holidays:
Tax Resistor's Day - Celebrated in courts and prisons around the country.

Rubber Eraser Day - I don't like it. Rubber is a crappy thing to make an eraser out of. They dry out, they tear holes in the paper and they promote smudging. If you have to use rubber erasers, look for a Pink Pearl or Gum eraser. The Red Ruby is a little Paper Piranha. Plastic or Vinyl erasers are better for virtually everything. They do not dry out and since they don't abrade the paper the way that rubber does, they tear less. I think I have a valid reason for my opinions. I was a draftsman for years and I have erased pencil, waxed lead and ink from paper, bristol board, mylar and starch coated linen and silk. I also know how to repair all of those media if you screw up. Imperial cloth (starch coated silk) was the worst. The ink did not soak into the material because of the starch coat. If you had to change something you carefully erased the ink off of the starch. If you went to far the next inking would wick into the cloth and make a blob that would never come out. That is when you had to cut out the bad piece and put in a good piece. I the late 60's Mylar was becoming the big thing and already Imperial Cloth was getting scarce. When you had to repair 30 or 40 year old drawings, you had to use cloth from an ever shrinking supply. I don't think anybody has made the stuff for years.

===========================================
friday 16 april
***The Official NoButtonButton*************
***
*** Humor is a rubber sword - it allows you
*** to make a point without drawing blood.
***
*** - Mary Hirsch
*******************************************
birthdays:
1900 - Polly Adler - Madam and author - This New York City Madam wrote the autobiography "A House is not a Home" in 1953. Polly Adler was notorious in the 1920s - 1940 as the best-known "madam" in New York City. This book is her autobiography. It reached number 2 for 13 weeks on the "New York Times" nonfiction bestseller list. It was among the top ten nonfiction bestsellers of the year, and went on to sell over two million copies.

The book is clever and humorous but also sad. Polly just kind of fell in to this kind of work. She did learn how to mingle with the right people and some of her customers were very well known (probably Charlie Sheen was one). The book does not glamorize prostitution. Many of the girls became drug addicts and alcoholics. The customers appear to be the only ones to have had a good time.

Still available at Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/House-Not-Home-Polly-Adler/dp/1558495592

1906 - Pigmeat Markham - This African American comedian started a short craze, in the late 60's, after several appearances on the TV show Laugh In. Suddenly everybody was repeating his tag line: "Here come da Judge".

1924 - Henry Mancini Cleveland OH, composer/conductor Everybody knows about the 'Pink Panther Theme', the songs 'Moon River' and of course 'Days of Wine and Roses' but did you know that early in his career he contributed music to 'The Creature from the Black Lagoon', 'It Came from Outer Space', 'Tarantula' and 'This Island Earth'. 'This Island Earth' was my favorite Sci-fi flic for a couple of years when I was eight. He has won 4 of 18 Oscars he was nominated for and 20 of the 72 Grammys, a Golden Globe and two Emmy nominations. Pretty good for an Ohio boy.

events:
1881 – In Dodge City, Kansas, Bat Masterson fights his last gun battle. Bat got his nickname because he preferred to whack somebody over the head with his cane or a club, than he was to shoot them. He shot at only 6 men and two of those survived. This is pretty good for a man who made a living as lawman in the wild west off and on for 30 years. Then he was made a U.S. Marshal for the southern district of New York for 4 years. He shared his legal duties with his writing. He started in 1883 and after he left the law he became a sports writer, editor and a columnist.

1912 – Harriet Quimby becomes the first woman to fly an airplane across the English Channel. She was the first woman to gain a pilot license in the United States. In 1911 she earned the first U.S. pilot's certificate issued to a woman by the Aero Club of America. Less than a year later, she became the first woman to fly across the English Channel. Less than 3 month later she died in an aviation accident. Both her and her passenger were thrown from the plane they were in. The plane glided back to earth and got stuck in a big mud hole. If anybody had thought to put seat belts in aircraft she would have survived. In those days few people thought of airplanes as object that could fly upside down so they just did not think about it.

She was also quite attractive as you can see in the following two photographs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Harriet_quimby.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/Harriet_Quimby_2.jpg

Also Harriet Quimby is the name of an organization that is trying to preserve aviation history. Well the organization appears to be a forum for Giacinta Bradley Koontz who is a writer of Aviation history. But she does have some interesting bits of aviation history goto:
http://www.harrietquimby.org/#

1943 – Dr. Albert Hofmann discovers the psychedelic effects of LSD and he liked it. For a time he was the highest Swiss citizen.

holidays:
National Stress Awareness Day - A leisure activity of the companies that brought you Thorazine, Miltown, Zoloft and Prozac.

National Eggs Benedict Day - A toasted split English Muffin, butter, with a poached egg set on each half along with ham or bacon and the entire thing covered with hollandaise sauce or any of a couple of dozen variations.

===========================================

****joe722****

GETTING DOWN WITH MY BAD SELF SINCE 1837.
===========================================
You interested in the April Fool's day fallout? Well the following website will help hook you up.
http://techcrunch.com/april-fools-shenanigans/
The only thing is that some jokes are so specific that you have to do research find out what s funny.

http://techcrunch.com/april-fools-shenanigans/

Here is a partial list of some of the weirdness inflicted on the world, last Thursday:
YouTube: who cares about HD when you can watch your videos in text. You can opt to watch a video in TEXTp or text only mode. Pretty neat.

Google Goes Nuclear
Techcrunch reports that Google is getting serious about nuclear research, and is building a uranium enrichment plant. Some experts say it’s for energy, other say it’s a nuclear deterrent against the China threat.

Google Search
Google has renamed itself as Topeka.

Starbucks
Starbucks is now offering the "Micra" (very tiny) and the “Plenty” (128 fl. oz – think popcorn bucket) sizes. “Whether customers are looking for a large or small size, the Plenta and the Micra satisfy all U.S. and Canada customers’ needs for more and less coffee,” said Hugh Mungis, Starbucks VP of Volume. “Our size selection is now plentiful.”

Google UK
Google UK is offering an app for the Android that will translate animal speech. As the site explains: “Translate for Animals is an application for Android phones that recognises and transcribes words and phrases that are common to a species, like cats for example. To develop Translate for Animals, we worked closely with many of the world’s top language synthesis teams, and with leaders in the field of animal cognitive linguistics, including senior fellows at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.”

Hulu
Secret documentary: “Hulu Confidential For Internal Use Only.” Exposes their “alien plot” conspiracy to turn everybody's brains into mush which they will eat..

Kodak
Introducing smelly photographs. Kodak’s aromaphotography will let you smell the image you’re looking at, all thanks to the latest breakthroughs in “Neuro-Optic-Nasal-Sense Imaging.”

CollegeHumor
Initially redirects you to a screen that says “Attention your IP address “XXX” has been logged by the US Department of Information….the website you were trying to access, www.collegehumor.com, is currently under investigation for harboring un-American sentiment and will remain offline until an official review can be conducted….”

TripAdvisor
Announcing their first reviewer from space!

ThinkGeek.com
If you’ve always wanted a plush bacon doll or canned unicorn meat (with recipes), well today is you lucky day. They also had the Screaming Chef's Knife, the Programmable Tattoo (you can change it using a computer), the 2001 A Space Odyssey 'Monolith' action figure and for all you Star Trek fans 'Tribles n Bits' breakfast cereal. The nice thing about the Tribles n Bits is that you never have to buy another box.

Auto Windscreens
First Prescription Windscreen Launches!

Ben & Jerry’s
Virtual ice cream! (just lick your screen)

OnWindows
Microsoft, Apple and Jay-Z are partnering.

Google Mobile Search
“Well, I’m happy to announce that for those of you who turn to Google in search of, “where am I,” we finally have a better result. Starting today, just go to Google.com on your phone in the US, search for “where am I”, and wonder about your own whereabouts no more.”

Hull York Medical School
The Hull York Medical School has been selected to pilot a new course for trainee doctors — preparing them for the challenges of the next generation of medical practice. Its focus will be on diagnosing and treating disease in extraterrestrial life forms.

iFart
“The makers of iFart Mobile, one of the most popular iphone applications of all time have announced a major technological breakthrough in the iPhone platform. iFart’s developers created an “olfactic framework” which works inside Apple’s SDK and enables them to release digital scents via the iPhone speaker.”

Info-Tech
Info-Tech Research Group is offering IT professionals some advice on surviving the inevitable zombie apocalypse.

Gmail
Google’s webmail service suffered a vowel outage.

Zurb
Startup Zurb has launched the Sharpiener, which is a sharpener for your Sharpie markers, in case they go dull.

Shipwire
Shipwire launches “Second Day Before Yesterday,” your packages will ship before you ordered them.

Toshiba
“Oh Buoy!” The incredible inflatable laptop. Only seconds to inflate! Press release: “We are thrilled to be first to market, propelling our customers into the future of aquatic computing.”

Red Tricycle
A pregnancy test app: iPeed. “After downloading the application, you simply aim your urine stream at the bullseye in the center of the screen. A complex algorithm analyzes the level of HCG (pregnancy hormone) in your urine. Sensitivity is > 12.5 mIU/mL, comparable to most tests available at the supermarket.” If it’s positive, you get a picture of a baby, if negative, you get a picture of a Martini.
===========================================
The music today is some 'The Runaways' some 'Suzi Quatro' a little 'The Donnas' and a lot of 'Joan Jett & the Blackhearts'. Women can KICK it.

I Hate Myself For Loving You:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry9ppgHPzks&feature=related

I Love Rock N Roll (Live NY)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRN9egfj978&feature=related

Devil Gate Drive:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vFTksaposs
===========================================
Having a bad day? Do you need to vent? Would you like to write something (anonymously) that the whole world can read? Welcome to the Internet. The following websites give you the ability to CARP about what is bugging you.

What bad thing happened to you today? Tell it to BADHAP:
http://www.badhap.com/

MEGAGRIPE lets you air it out:
http://www.megagripe.com/

POSTSECRET is a little different. They want you to physically send them a home made postcard with you dirty little secret. If they like your card they post it.
http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

FRUSTER is the place to go if you want to complain but have a short attention span. 140 characters only. Twitter for pissed off people.
http://www.fruster.com/

I LOVE TO COMPLAIN is just that, a place to put it all out there.
http://www.ilovetocomplain.com/

HE DID WHAT? and SHE DID WHAT? Are both sites to complain about your significant other. As you can see they are for women commiserating with other women and men doing whatever the short man version of the word commiserating is with other men. I am sure the posts at HE DID WHAT? are much longer.

HE DID WHAT?
http://www.hedidwhat.com/

SHE DID WHAT?
http://www.shedidwhat.com/

===========================================
Now to the reasons to be happy this week
(or at least civil).
Here goes:

===========================================
monday 5 april
***The Official NoButtonButton*************
***
*** The science gets more fun
*** when I get a bigger gun.
***
*** - Kari Byron (Mythbuster)
*******************************************
birthdays:
1649 - Elihu Yale was a British merchant, philanthropist, governor of the British East India Company, and a benefactor of Collegiate School of Connecticut, which in 1718 was named Yale University in his honor. If you check out his first name you will see where the term 'Eli' (Yale students nickname) can from. Elihu was born in Boston and his parents returned to England when he was three. He never came to North America again. In 1718 he was contacted with a request to help out the struggling Collegiate School. His £800 pounds sterling bequest (a huge amount then) caused the school to first name a building and then the entire school after Yale.

1900 – Spencer Tracy, American actor

1908 – Bette Davis, American actress

1909 – Albert R. Broccoli, American film producer

1916 – Gregory Peck, American actor

events:
1792 – U.S. President George Washington exercises his authority to veto a bill, the first time this power is used in the United States.

1804 – High Possil Meteorite: The first recorded meteorite in Scotland falls in Possil.

1874 – Birkenhead Park, the first publicly financed public park, in Britain, is opened in Birkenhead.

1923 – Firestone Tire and Rubber Company begins production of balloon-tires.

1930 – In an act of civil disobedience, Mohandas Gandhi breaks British law after marching to the sea and making salt.

1958 – Ripple Rock, - Ripple Rock is a bad ass rock that was in the Discovery Passage between British Columbia and Vancouver Island. The first known large ship to fall prey to Ripple Rock was the steamer Saranac in 1875. At least 20 large and 100 smaller vessels were badly damaged or sunk between then and 1958. So they blew it up. The Canadians spent $3,000,000 and used 1,270 metric tons (yes tons) of Nitramex 2H to displace over 600,000 cubic meters of rock and water. It was one of the largest planned, non-nuclear explosions ever. There was debris thrown 1000 feet in the air. No more wrecked boats.

holidays:
Go For Broke Day - If you are so inclined, Go For It. Just remember that Dragons think are crunchy and have a tasty soft middle.

National Raisin and Spice Bar Day - Random food stuff.

===========================================
tuesday 6 april
***The Official NoButtonButton*************
***
*** If you think something small can't make
*** a difference, try going to sleep with
*** a mosquito in the room."
***
*** -Unknown
*******************************************
birthdays:
1719 – Axel von Fersen the Elder, Swedish statesman, soldier and father of Axel von Fersen the Younger. I am glad they got the names in the right order.

1752 - Sébastien Érard was a French instrument maker of German origin who specialized in making pianos and harps. He developed many features for both and most of his improvements for pianos are still found on the modern instruments. The modern piano would be a different beastie without his additions. Érard was the first maker in Paris to fit pedals on the piano. There was the usual sustaining pedal, an action shift, a celeste, and a bassoon pedal (which put leather against the strings to make them buzz). A knee lever moved the action further than the action-shift pedal, making the hammers strike only one string. Other Érard piano patents deal mainly with technicalities of the keyboard action, soundboard, and tuning mechanism; virtually all of these innovations are retained in modern piano design.

1872 - Samuel Cate Prescott was an American food scientist and microbiologist who was involved in the development of food safety, food science, public health, and industrial microbiology. He was a MIT trained chemist. A year or so after he graduated he was asked back to teach at MIT. A canning company was having a bad time trying to keep their canned clams from exploding. Prescott discover the time and temperature needed to kill they bad things in the clams and he was off. He added greatly to our knowledge of correct canning and probably responsible for saving many people from bad clams.

Even as a kid I remember that every once in a while a can would puff up in the kitchen. I received sever warnings about not opening those cans under any circumstances. It has been 40 years since I last saw a 'bad can'.

events:
1808 – John Jacob Astor incorporates the American Fur Company. Astor, was the first prominent member of the Astor family and the first multi-millionaire in the United States. He was the creator of the first trust in America. He made his fortune in fur trading, real estate, and opium.

He built a fur-trading empire that extended to the Great Lakes region and Canada, and later expanded into the American West and Pacific coast. In the early 1800s he diversified into New York City real estate and later became a famed patron of the arts.

At the time of his death in 1848, Astor was the wealthiest person in the United States. His estate was estimated to be $20 million. According to a Forbes article, his estimated net worth as a fraction of the U.S. gross domestic product at the time would be equivalent to $110.1 billion in 2006 U.S. dollars, making him the fourth wealthiest person in American history.

1866 – The Grand Army of the Republic, an American patriotic organization composed of Union veterans of the American Civil War, is founded. It lasts until 1956. It was succeeded by the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War (SUVCW). Both organizations placed markers on Civil War veteran's graves, for Memorial Day.

1869 – Celluloid is patented. Generally regarded to be the first thermoplastic, it was first created as Parkesine (sometime between 1856 & 1862) (he made a shoddy product and when out of bussiness) in 1869 it was reintroduce as Xylonite before being registered as Celluloid in 1870. Eventually the 1869 Celluloid patent was over turned in favor of Alexander Parkes, the inventor of Parkesine.

Celluloid was developed to make billiard and pool balls. At the time they were almost always made of Ivory and they were expensive. The Celluloid balls were made of nitrocellulose and camphor. For you non-chemists nitrocellulose is also known as gun cotton, a low grade explosive. Yes, sometimes the new billiard balls would go boom. Not the entire ball but part of the surface. This little feature caused serious difficulties in the Western States where the sound of a small explosion had everybody pulling their guns.

About the only things still made from Celluloid today are Ping Pong balls and guitar picks. Gun cotton is alive and well. It is used as lacquer on electric guitars and cars, solid rocket fuel, liquid skin, flash paper, photographic film, wart remover, Radon tests and aircraft dope.

holidays:
Old Lady Day - For those of you who think they are old.

Plan Your Epitaph Day - A good one especially if you are a little old lady.

Jump Over Things Day - Better than tripping.

National Caramel Popcorn Day - Random food day.

===========================================
wednesday 7 april
***The Official NoButtonButton*************
***
*** Some people are alive only because
*** it is illegal to kill them."
***
*** -Unknown
*******************************************
birthdays:
1859 – Walter Camp, sports authority known as the "Father of American Football". He is credited with innovations such as the snap-back from center, the system of downs, and the points system, as well the introduction of the long-standard offensive arrangement of players (a seven-man offensive line and a four-man backfield consisting of a quarterback, two halfbacks, and a fullback). Camp was also responsible for introducing the "safety", awarding two points to the defensive side for tackling a ball carrier in his own end zone.

1917 - Ramón "Mongo" Santamaría was an Afro-Cuban Latin jazz percussionist. He is most famous for being the composer of the jazz standard "Afro Blue," recorded by John Coltrane among others.

That is not the reason that he is on the list today but rather the movie "Blazing Saddles" is the reason. Mongo Santamaria was one of the jokes. When the big, dumb Mongo enters the scene, a Spanish-speaking peasant cries "Mongo! Santa Maria!" before fleeing in terror. I hate to burst your bubble but sometimes I like puns.

1951 – Janis Ian, American singer and songwriter. At the age of thirteen, Ian wrote and sang her first hit single, "Society's Child (Baby I've Been Thinking)". Janis is dead set against RIAA going medieval on people caught down loading music off the Internet. She is one of the first artist to give away some of her songs on her website, so far it appears that some free music increases the exposure of the artist and actually increases their sales. She currently has seven songs available for free MP3 download and a rant against RIAA. The RIAA (petty organization that they are) has never certified Ian's signature tune "At Seventeen" as gold or platinum even though it has sold more than two million copies.
Score free music and read about Janis.
http://www.janisian.com/

events:
1788 – American Pioneers to the Northwest Territory arrive at the confluence of the Ohio and Muskingum rivers, establishing Marietta, Ohio as the first permanent American settlement of the new United States in the Northwest Territory, and opening the westward expansion of the new country.

1795 – France adopts the metre as the basic measure of length. How long is a metre? 39.37 inches is the easy answer. Never let a scientist or worse a committee of scientists ever define something because the latest definition of a metre is the distance traveled by light in free space in 1⁄299,792,458 of a second. I do not even know how you would measure that. I know the clock on my cell phone ain't getting it.

As for spelling the unit 'metre', that is how they do it all over most of the world. We just had to be different so we spell it 'meter'.

1827 – John Walker, an English chemist, sells the first friction match that he had invented the previous year. These were the interesting matches which could be struck just about anywhere. Mostly those are not too common, if there are a few in your pocket you can accidentally set them off. They did lead to a lot of crazy tricks like lighting them by pulling them across your jeans or flicking them with a thumb nail or against a tooth or on your zipper or across somebody's chest. Don't try the tooth thing unless you are prepared to get burnt.

This was not the first match which early versions go back hundreds of years. Those early matches were usually small sticks that were treated so they would catch fire easily and then could be used to light other things. It is not even the first self igniting match. The first modern, self-igniting match was invented in 1805. The head of the match consisted of a mixture of potassium chlorate, sulfur, sugar, and rubber. They were ignited by dipping the tip of the match in a small asbestos bottle filled with sulfuric acid. I can see more than one way to hurt yourself before you ever got any flame. So the friction match was the first practical match.

holidays:
No Housework Day - I can do that.

National Coffee Cake Day - Random food day

===========================================
thursday 8 april
***The Official NoButtonButton*************
***
*** You've reached middle age when all
*** you exercise is caution."
***
*** -Unknown
*******************************************
birthdays:

1732 - David Rittenhouse was a renowned American astronomer, inventor, clockmaker, mathematician, surveyor, scientific instrument craftsman and public official. Rittenhouse was the first director of the United States Mint. In 1781 Rittenhouse became the first American to sight Uranus. In 1784 Rittenhouse, surveyor Andrew Ellicott and their crew completed the unfinished survey of the Mason Dixon line to the southwest corner of Pennsylvania.

1918 – Betty Ford, First Lady of the United States and rehab to the stars.

1926 - Henry N. Cobb is an American architect and founding partner with I.M. Pei of 'Pei Cobb, Freed & Partners', an international architectural firm based in New York City. We ain't talking row houses, people. These are the guys you go to when you have scads of money and you want a sky scrapper that shouts that fact.

events:
1895 – The Supreme Court of the United States declares unapportioned income tax to be unconstitutional in Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co.

1904 – Longacre Square in Midtown Manhattan is renamed Times Square after The New York Times. So they had naming rights a long time before the Schottenstein Arena.

1908 – Harvard University votes to establish the Harvard Business School.

1942 – Siege of Leningrad – Soviet forces open a much-needed railway link to Leningrad. We have heard many times about the siege of Stalingrad but not so much about the siege of Leningrad. Curious since the siege of Leningrad had more casualties than any other siege ever in history. The 872 day siege cost 1,500,000 civilian and military casualties. Part of the reason the city survived was 'The Road of Life' where thousands of soldiers drove trucks across the frozen Lake Ladoga (during the winter) and in boats (obviously during the not-winter). Even so they barely brought enough supplies to continue the fighting and not enough to stop the starvation.

But why such a depressing item? Lake Ladoga! 10,000 to 12,000 years ago the Baltic Sea was not a saltwater sea connected to the North Sea and the Atlantic but rather a land locked freshwater lake. One huge lake. Lake Ladoga is the only freshwater part of that lake that is left. When the land bridges fell the Baltic Lake became the Baltic Sea. Lake Ladoga was a deeper part and as the Baltic Lake's elevation dropped it was cut off from the rest. The Baltic Lake was huge with over 146,000 square miles of surface area and 5,000 miles of coast line. For comparison that is 50% more surface area than all five of the great lakes combined.

holidays:
Grand Ivy Day - Not lesser Ivy.

International Bird Day - Find some one international to give the... er... A bird to.

===========================================
friday 9 april
***The Official NoButtonButton*************
***
*** Experience is what you get when
*** you don't get what you want.
***
*** -Tori Filler
*******************************************
birthdays:
1794 - Theobald Böhm was a Bavarian inventor and musician, who perfected the modern Western concert flute and its improved fingering system.

1806 - Isambard Kingdom Brunel, British engineer who assisted in building the first tunnel under a navigable river and developed the SS Great Britain, the first propeller-driven ocean-going iron ship, which was at the time also the largest ship ever built. His steamship the SS Great Eastern laid the first lasting telegraph cable across the Atlantic Ocean.
Brunel suffered several years of ill health, with kidney problems, before succumbing to a stroke at the age of 53 years. Brunel was said to smoke up to 40 cigars a day and to sleep as little as four hours each night. Do you think he probalbly should have quit smoking and gotten more rest?

1897 - John Bradley Gambling was the oringinal host of WOR Radio's (New York City, 710 AM) morning show "Rambling With Gambling" (now known as "The John Gambling Show"). The show ran from 1925 until 2000. John B. was the first host then his son John A. took over in 1959 until the show ended in in 2000 but wait, since 30 April 2008 John R. (the grandson) is back on the air on "The John Gambling Show". The Grand Ole Opry is the only show that has run longer and the only reason is WOR took it off the air for 8 years.


events:
1860 – The oldest audible sound recording of a human voice is recorded. There is just one problem... there was no way to play it back. They did not figure out a way to recover the sound until 2008 and of course computers were required. 148 years that recording waited. Well I listened to it and except for the novelty of it, I could have waited another 148 years. Dolby noise reduction? What's that? But what do you expect from a device that had a Plaster barrel, with a membrane stretched over one end, and a hog bristle stuck in the membrane and the bristle was making marks on a soot covered plate. But if you want to listen there are links to it on this page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonautogram

1959 – Mercury program: NASA announces the selection of the United States' first seven astronauts, whom the news media quickly dub the "Mercury Seven".

There were women who met the criteria (both physically, educationally and flying experience) that were being considered (at least that is what they were told). They were allowed to go through the tests and training because NASA thought they would all wash out and save them the trouble of just saying 'No Women Allowed'. The only problem is that most of them succeeded. Nineteen female pilots were selected for training; thirteen passed, and four scored as highly as any of the Mercury Seven. None ever flew in a Mercury spacecraft because the program added a requirement for a certain amount of military flight experience. The Air Force did not admit women, all of the thirteen candidates were disqualified. None of them ever flew is space.

2010 - ****The following item is biased because I am totally a fan.****
********And before you ask, yes I bought all the records.*******
Today the movie 'The Runaways' goes into wide release. So what, you say. Let me paint you a picture. It is the 70s, teenage girls, rock, punk, loud and dirty and I present you with 'The Runaways' AKA 'The Queens of Noise'. Many say they were the first Riot Grrrl band. This is not a Biopic but a Rock n Roll movie. With a soundtrack that includes:

Nick Gilder
Suzi Quatro
MC5
David Bowie
Dakota Fanning & Kristen Stewart
The Runaways
The Stooges
Sex Pistols
Joan Jett and the Black Hearts

The film is based on Cherie Currie's memoir, 'Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway'.

The five member band at one time or another had the following members:
Joan Jett
Sandy West
Micki Steele
Peggy Foster
Cherie Currie
Lita Ford
Jackie Fox
Vicki Blue aka Victory Tischler-Blue
Laurie McAllister

And they went on to start or play in these bands:
Joan Jett & the Blackhearts
Lita Ford
The Bangles
Sandy West Band
Currie-Blue Band

ROCK N ROLL - see the movie. The trailer is at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHpEJ749TRM

Some of the lyrics to the first song they had on the air.

CHERRY BOMB

Can't stay at home, can't stay at school
Old folks say, ya poor little fool
Down the street I'm the girl next door
I'm the fox you've been waiting for

Hello Daddy, hello Mom
I'm your ch ch ch ch ch cherry bomb
Hello world I'm your wild girl
I'm your ch ch ch ch ch cherry bomb

Hey street boy what's your style
Your dead end dreams don't make you smile
I'll give ya something to live for
Have ya, grab ya til your sore

THE RUNAWAYS LIVE IN CLEVELAND 7/19/76 :
This was The Runaways first show in Ohio. Sandy West, Cherie Currie and Jackie Fox were 17, Joan Jett and Lita Ford were 18, Micki Steele was 22.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9kUvoc6sf8

holidays:
Wild Turkey Drive begins - Give Wild Turkey to the needy. No Beam, no Walker, no Cutty just Wild Turkey.

National Chinese Almond Cookie Day - Random food day.

===========================================

****joe722****

GETTING PUNKED SINCE 1837.
===========================================
Remember your history. There was a little thing that happened in San Fransisco a hundred years ago called The Great Earthquake. 4 days before the quake struck somebody put one of the first (maybe the first) 35mm movie camera on a cable car and shot film for seven minutes straight down Market Street toward The clock tower at the Embarcadero wharf. It is stunning. There are lots of cable cars, horses, horse drawn wagons, automobiles, bicycles, men, women and children going in all directions with next to no evidence of organization. There are no traffic control devices or police directing traffic. Every once in a while you see people dodging cars. Cars cut in front of trolleys, people cut in front of everything, kids running back and forth in front of the trolleys and hanging from the backs of cars. The cable cars of course never stop, you just step up and get on. If you are really in hurry running will get you there about as fast as anything else on the street. The film was sent by rail to New York City for processing so it survived the Earthquake. Absolutely amazing. You are looking back in time over 100 years. A friend of mine sent this and I am grateful for him thinking of me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=NINOxRxze9k
===========================================
Beware my pretties. April Fool's Day is near. While more kids than adults will actually prank someone but adults can really pull off the great ones. Several Radio and TV stations have pulled some doozies over the years and the following is just a small part of the list.

* In 1962, Swedish TV did a short special on how one could get color TV by placing a nylon stocking in front of the TV.

* In 1957 BBC reported a bumper spaghetti harvest from Italy's Spaghetti trees.

* In 2008, the BBC reported on a newly discovered colony of flying penguins.

* In 1998, local WAAF shock jocks reported that Boston mayor Thomas Menino had been killed in a car accident. Menino was on a flight at the time and could not be reached. They got fired.

* In New Zealand a radio station enlisted the help of the Prime Minister to inform the entire country that cellphones were to be banned in New Zealand.

* In 1998, Burger King ran an ad saying that people could get a Whopper for left-handed people whose condiments were designed to drip out of the right side.

* In 1996, Taco Bell announced that they had purchased the Liberty Bell to "reduce the country's debt" and renamed it the "Taco Liberty Bell." When asked about the sale the White House press secretary replied tongue-in-cheek that the Lincoln Memorial had also been sold and would henceforth be known as the Lincoln Mercury Memorial.

* The Dutch TV news reported that the Tower of Pisa had fallen over.

* Every year NPR does a news story on April 1. In 2008 it reported that the IRS, to assure rebate checks were actually spent, was shipping consumer products instead of checks. It also runs false sponsor mentions, such as "Support for NPR comes from the Soylent Corporation, manufacturing protein-rich food products in a variety of colors. Soylent Green is People."

* Wikipedia claimed President George Washington invented instant coffee.

* Bill Gates has been assassinated

* The mummified remains of a fairy were found (and sold for over $200 on Ebay).

* Sports Illustrated said a Mets pitcher had a 168 MPH fast ball (100 MPH is blazing).

* The Space Shuttle was diverted from Edwards AFB to a small California airport.

* MIT was sold to Disney for $6.9 Billion dollars.

* In Copenhagen the news showed a subway car sticking up through the street.

* A UFO landed in London.

Wacky, wacky, wacky!

There is a list of the top 100 (no I do not know who picked them) April Fool's Jokes of all time at:
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/aprilfool/

Here is a list of 24 songs with the word 'FOOL' in the title:
http://www.minnpost.com/listingslightly/2010/03/26/16920/a_foolish_endeavor_check_out_24_hours_of_april_fools_songs

About 60% of all management has a stick up their collective butts and do not like April Fool's jokes. So if you are planning something, be careful or have a good alibi (i.e. it was a reaction to some medication).

If you are into visual trickery there is a form of art called trompe l'oeil. This is where the artist creates a painting so perfect that the viewer will think it is a 3 dimensional object instead of the flat painting that it is. Some of the greatest examples of modern and hundreds of years old trompe l'oeil are at:
http://mediagallery.usatoday.com/A-trick-of-the-eye/Mana-Nalu-Mural-Project/S91649

This stuff is wicked, cool. Make sure you read the captions so you realize what is going on.

===========================================
Alska's ex-capital Sitka claims its own “pet” volcano. The dormant, Mount Edgecumbe rises 3,200 feet above Sitka.

One day terrified Sitka residents spilled out of their homes to gaze up at Mount Edgecumbe — the crater was spewing thick black smoke. Phones at the radio and police stations were ringing off the hook.

The smoke turned out to be the work of Porky Bickar, Sitka’s legendary prankster. Bickar had arranged for a local chopper to drop 210 old tires and assorted smoke bombs into the crater. Porky soaked the pile with diesel fuel and lit it up.

Alaska Airlines Vice President heard about Mount Edgecumbe’s activity, and instructed his pilots to fly over the crater to give passengers a bird’s eye view. The Associated Press carried the news worldwide.

Porky had notified the FAA and local police ahead of time, but forgot to alert the Coast Guard. The regional Coast Guard commander sent a cutter to investigate, and then ordered a helicopter to take a closer look. The chopper pilot radioed back that all he saw was burning tires … and “April Fool” painted in the snow.

The Legal Stuff - Lone Pine Productions grants blanket permission to reproduce, in part or whole, the content of this press release, subject only to minimal mention of the source, which is the new book Strange But True America (Lone Pine Productions), available in many bookstores and online at www.StrangeTrueUS.com
===========================================
Do you need a special ICON so you can create the prefect desktop? Well basically you have 4 options. You can:

1. Google the web for collections or check your Internet temporary files for icons and download them. I did and I have a collection of almost 30,000 icons. The number of icons out there is insane.

2. Draw them yourself. I have a collection of 400 icons I drew, about 300 butterflies and a bunch of other stuff. Of course if you can't draw this option sucks.

3. Pay somebody to draw it for you. Yeah on my budget.

4. Goto the following website and let the eight sites it describes find you an icon.
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/8-icon-search-engines-perfect-graphic-symbol/
===========================================
Since the infamous Watergate Scandal the suffice 'gate' has been applied to many, many scandals. If you want to torture yourself with a really big list of them goto:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scandals_with_%22-gate%22_suffix
===========================================
Now to the reasons to be happy this week
(or at least civil).
Here goes:

===========================================
monday 29 march
***The Official NoButtonButton*************
***
*** It is a very sad thing that nowadays
*** there is so little useless information.
***
*** - Oscar Wilde
*******************************************
birthdays:
1668 - Captain Thomas Coram was a philanthropist who created the London Foundling Hospital to look after unwanted children in Lamb's Conduit Fields, Bloomsbury. It is said to be the world's first incorporated charity. It lives on today.

1888 - Enea Bossi was an Italian-American aerospace engineer and aviation pioneer. He is best-known for designing the Budd BB-1 Pioneer, the first stainless steel aircraft.

The Budd BB-1 Pioneer was an experimental 1930s US flying boat. Its framework was constructed entirely of stainless steel, showcasing Budd's patented method of welding stainless steel. The plane was built by Budd (a large metal fabricator) as a research project led by Enea Bossi.

1917 – Man o' War, American thoroughbred racehorse.

1918 – Sam Walton, American businessman. Remember when Sam was alive? All Walmart's ads boasted about made in the USA. Now all they care about is price. I do not think Sam would be happy.

1937 – Billy Carter, brother of Jimmy Carter. Proof that no matter how good part of the family is there is always room for a goof ball. Billy Beer was not that good either.

events:
1638 – Swedish colonists establish the first settlement in Delaware, naming it New Sweden.

1806 – Construction is authorized of the Great National Pike, A.K.A. the Cumberland Road, the National Road or US Route 40, becoming the first US federal highway. Today it goes from Washington DC to St. Louis.

1867 – Queen Victoria gives Royal Assent to the British North America Act which establishes the Dominion of Canada on July 1.

1882 – The Knights of Columbus are established by a Irish American Priest.

In the late 19th century, Catholics were often excluded from labor unions and other organizations that provided social services (in particular Life Insurance). In addition, Catholics were either barred from many of the popular fraternal organizations, or, as in the case of Freemasonry, forbidden from joining by the Catholic Church itself. Father McGivney wished to provide them an alternative. He also believed that Catholicism and fraternalism were not incompatible and wished to found a society that would encourage men to be proud of their American-Catholic heritage. The organization has since helped protect families and raised the image of Irish American Catholics and later of all Catholics.

In 2008, the Order gave over $144,000,000 USD directly to charity ($1.1 billion in contributions over the last 10 years), performed over 68,600,000 man hours of voluntary service and gave over 393,000 pints of blood. Good job guys.

1886 – Dr. John Pemberton brews the first batch of Coca-Cola in a backyard in Atlanta, Georgia. The USDA and FDA and local Health Inspectors would have him shot through the lungs if he tried to sell something he stirred up in his back yard today. He used a wash tub and a wooden paddle. Luckily it seems that Coke's acidity kills just about all bad stuff that it comes in contact with.

1911 – The M1911 .45 ACP pistol became the official U.S. Army side arm. And they are still around today. Old ones, brand new ones and very expensive custom built ones. Over 2,000,000 have been built so far and who knows about the number of knock offs there are.

If you became a General in the US Army(1972-1984). You could ask to be issued a variant of the M1911. It is basically a polished (inside and out) and partially brass finished M1911 but it is called "General Officer Model". Oh and there is a brass plate inlaid in the wood grips that will have your name engraved on it. When you retire you can buy your weapon for $497. Since there were only 650 of these (that I have heard of) and most of those are in family collections or museums these things cost over $5,000 if you can even find one.

holidays:
Alchemy Day - You manage to make something out of the nothing your boss gives you each day so you should be able to figure out how to turn lead into gold.



Swedish Colonial Day (Delaware) - They have been here for 372 years.



National Lemon Chiffon Cake Day - Put your yellow Chiffon dress on and eat your Lemon Chiffon Cake?? How are a cake and an almost transparent material related? You sure can't see through the cake.

===========================================
tuesday 30 march
***The Official NoButtonButton*************
***
*** You can keep the dining room clean
*** by eating in the kitchen.
***
*** - P.J. O'Rourke
*******************************************
birthdays:
1853 - Vincent van Gogh, Dutch painter. Brilliant Artist and a loon.

1905 - Albert Pierrepoint - He killed about 600 people (well technically they were executed but I am sure they don't care what I call it now). He was the chief English executioner for many years. How much do you get for an execution? £15. His day job was working in his wife's Sweet Shop until they saved enough money to buy a Pub. You can't even make a living killing people. When I was in the Army I got paid $200 a month whether I killed anyone or not. (The following remark was made in a stage whisper) I have to wear a hard hat to keep big chunks of Irony from falling on my head.

1937 - Warren Beatty, American actor, director, writer and producer. Oh yes he had sex with so many women that the Weekly World News was offering $50 each for women to tell her story and they got so many they went out of business, in 2007. He is the only person to be nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director and Best Writing, for the same movie and he 'has done that twice, for 'Reds' and 'Heaven Can Wait'.

I hear all the women that Warren Beatty has had sex with are forming an organization and the New York City chapter is going to carry a Giant Inflated Balloon (labeled EGO) in the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade.

events:
1822 - Florida Territory created in the United States. A month later the Bergmanns sold their deli in New York and got a condo in South Beach (You do understand sarcasm, don't you?).

1842 - Anesthesia is used for the first time in an operation by Dr. Crawford Long. And I don't mean a mallet up side the head. Now one of the common uses of anesthesia is recreational. Buuuuzzzzzzz I want to get sedated.

1858 - Hymen Lipman patents a pencil with an attached eraser. He needed to make the eraser bigger and the pencil shorter so you would run out of lead and eraser at the same time. Oh course for some people no amount of eraser is enough.

1867 - Alaska is purchased for $7.2 million, about 2 cent/acre, by Secretary of State William H. Seward. The news media call this Seward's Folly. In 2005 Alaska's Gross State Product was just shy of 40 BILLION dollars (7th highest in the US). Their median income is over 64 THOUSAND dollars a year (4th highest in the US). Finally the population density is about 1 person per square mile (lowest in the US). Because of the odd shape, if you laid Alaska on a map of the 48 states, the extreme eastern point would be a couple of miles from Savannah, Georgia and the extreme western end (the Aleutian Islands) would be about 100 miles from San Fransisco. Point Barrow would be about 50 miles from Canada (in Wisconsin) and the Aleutians would sweep down across the Texas Pan Handle and follow the Southern border of New Mexico, Arizona and California.

holidays:
Doctor's Day - Do your doctor a favor and don't eat an apple today.

Festival of Reality Fabrication - Reminds me of a Sisters of Mercy song that goes: "I don't exist when you don't see me, I not here when you are gone."

National Badminton Day - Badminton is good exercise and the racquet can also be used on bats.

"I Am in Control" Day - If you have to say this you probably are not.

Limited Liability Day - It isn't my fault even though my hand is in your pocket and your pocket is in your kitchen where you are standing and you have money missing.

National Hot Dog Day - Random food day.

Take A Walk In the Park Day - Watch out where the Huskies go... Yeah and geese.

===========================================
wednesday 31 march
***The Official NoButtonButton*************
***
*** Every Picture Smurfs a Story
***
*** - Papa Smurf
*******************************************
birthdays:
1916 - Lucille Bliss - Who? Well she is now 94 and still around. You don't know who she is but you have almost certainly heard her. She had voice parts in Disney's Cinderella and 101 Dalmatians. She was the voice of Crusader Rabbit and even more well known as Smurfette, which she did for 8 years. She also had a part in Nickelodeon's Invader ZIM (Ms. Bitters). I find it amazing that she started doing the voice of the coquettish Smurfette when she was 66. Heck I won't be 60 until July and I think it is hard to talk to anyone under 25 let alone talk to entertain children.

There is a Smurf movie in the works and Smurfette is rumored to played by Katy Perry. The same Katy Perry that sang 'I Kissed a Girl'and 'Waking Up in Vegas'. There is an irony about those songs, both of her parents are pastors and she was not allowed to listen to anything but gospel music. Now she is singing about liking to kiss girls and waking up hung over in Las Vegas (well she runs men down a lot as well). This should be a lesson to parents. Kids are going to find their own way and there is not much you can do about it. Some will stay, some will go and sometimes girls kiss girls and boys kiss boys, sometimes they mean it, sometimes they are just trying to find out who they are. Don't panic, deal with it, it happens.

The songs are actually pretty good.

I Kissed a Girl
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLt5n0auPwM

Waking Up in Vegas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-pUaogoX5o

Hot N Cold
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X75mry1LcFg

1943 – Christopher Walken - one of the truly unusual actors. He has played every part from psycho killer to buffoon. From 'The Deer Hunter' and 'Pulp Fiction' to 'Wayne's World 2' and 'Hairspray'. His films have grossed almost two billion dollars in the US alone. One of my favorites is his early movie called 'Dogs of War'. He plays a Mercenary who is paid to organize a coup in a small African nation. It is a bit slow in the beginning but the pace picks up to a frantic pace at the end. As the mercs are getting out of town Christopher Walken has a thousand yard stare that makes it look like his soul has been sucked out.

1948 – Rhea Perlman, American actress. Most notable for the 4 Emmys she won (nominated 10 times) for playing Carla Tortelli on Taxi. If you want to see more of her vast array of acting parts then goto:
http://www.filmreference.com/film/76/Rhea-Perlman.html

events:
1889 – The Eiffel Tower is inaugurated.

1906 – The Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (later National Collegiate Athletic Association) is established to set rules for amateur sports in the United States. Everybody wants to make rules.

1909 – Construction begins on the RMS Titanic.

1912 – Construction is completed on the RMS Titanic. The ship sinks just 15 days later.

1917 – The United States takes possession of the Danish West Indies after paying $25 million to Denmark, and renames the territory the United States Virgin Islands.

1951 – Remington Rand delivers the first UNIVAC I computer to the United States Census Bureau. At the time one expert thought there would only be a demand for about 10 computers, world wide. Today I am sitting within 6 feet of 6 computers, well 7 if you count my smart phone, which with all its apps, you really should. It is probably more capable than the UNIVAC was, 59 years ago.

1985 – The first WrestleMania, the biggest wrestling event from the WWE, takes place in Madison Square Garden in New York. SHUDDER - The world series of 'fixed' sports.

holidays:
Tater Day - I think you are just supposed to eat today.

Oranges and Lemons Day - ditto

Pennsylvania Maple Festival - ditto

National Clams on the Half Shell Day - ditto

===========================================
thursday 1 april
***The Official NoButtonButton*************
***
*** Nobody said anything on this day.
***
*** - Nobody
*******************************************
birthdays:
Nobody was ever born on this day.

events:
Nothing ever happened this day.

holidays:
Random nothing day.

===========================================
friday 2 april
***The Official NoButtonButton*************
***
*** Marco
***
*** Polo
*******************************************
birthdays:
1527 - Abraham Ortels was a Flemish cartographer and geographer, generally recognized as the creator of the first modern atlas. Why he didn't name it an 'Ortels' I will never know.

1814 - Erastus Brigham Bigelow - Big name and who is he? You ever hear of Bigelow Carpet. He invented the machine looms and then he started the company. You ever hear of Massachusetts Institute of Technology? He is a co-founder.

1945 - Linda Hunt, US actress of stage, screen and TV. She one an Oscar as best supporting actress in the movie 'Year of Living Dangerously'. The curious thing about that award (and the reason she got it) was she played a Chinese/Australian Man (and she has never been any of the three). That was the only Oscar ever awarded for a person playing the opposite gender and the only Oscar awarded for someone playing an Australian character. Linda is 4 feet 9 inches tall. Linda is currently a character on 'NCIS Los Angles'. She plays the boss of the local NCIS office and has a mysterious past. A very cute character, she is the main reason I watch the series.

events:
1755 - Commodore William James captures the pirate fortress of Suvarnadurg on west coast of India. Well the British called them pirates but I think I will call them the Maratha Empire Navy. They sort of took exception to the British taking over their land by force so they raided British Ships. Some people are so picky about whose boot is on their neck.

1962 - The first official PANDA crossing is opened outside Waterloo station, London. Why did the Brit cross the road? Well to get to the other side of course the real question is why are they having such a hard time of it. At first people just walked across the street when there was little or no traffic. Anarchy. Governments around the world just could not abide by that and set out to regulate... er... protect us against our will. The US came up with the cross walk and between that and a billion (seems like) jay walking tickets we all bought cars and nobody walks anymore. Case closed. Not in Britain.

They also came up with the cross walk but they had to give it a cute name. ZEBRA crossing. Now I am positive that there is very little call for Zebras to stroll the sidewalks of the UK but if they did they would find that there were no 'Don't Walk' signs at the ZEBRA crossings (not that Zebras are avid readers). It seems that due to British Right of Way laws and customs it was not allowed to put up 'Don't Walk' signs. Hmmm... Traffic is getting worse, but not everybody is buying a car so the street crossing problem is getting worse. Solution, another style of crossing and lets name it after another cute fuzzy animal, PANDA.

All PANDA crossings did was confuse and irritate people and in about six years they were gone only to be replaced by the PELICAN crossing. The official name is PELICON (short for PEdestrian LIght CONtrolled crossing)(nobody uses the official name). But wait that's not enough to cover all circumstance so let us add the PUFFIN crossing and if we have bicycles along with those pesky pedestrians we will add the TOUCAN crossing. What about horses you say? That's right all those horses charging all over the country side hunting fox so let us design a PEGASUS crossing for horse riders. Yes they are all real. BUY SOME CARS ALREADY!

holidays:
Green Day - Not the band.

===========================================

****joe722****

WATCHING RERUNS OF 'LAW AND ORDER' SINCE 1837.

I found so much stuff last week that this week I am a little burnt out. I did find a few things.
===========================================
How To Completely & Securely Erase Your Hard Drive [Windows]
So you have classified material on your computer and the government is closing in.  What will you do?  Simply erasing your hard drive is just going to slow the government a little and probably piss them off for causing them the five extra minutes it takes to recover the data.  No you need to do a Low Level Format and make multiple passes.  Not that that will do you any good, the government has probably been mirroring your hard drive for months.  Oh well it is good enough to really delete all that excess Internet porn you have.  The following address will tell you how to do it:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/completely-securely-erase-hard-drive-windows/
===========================================
So your boss finally realized that you are a slacker and you are afraid that he is going to can you.  You want to try and find a new job before he does that. Resumes and CVs are being prepared (on company time of course).  It may not be quite that simple.  Like everything else in life Resumes and CVs are subject to fads. 

Twenty years ago a Resume was supposed to be limited to a single page, now you will often see two or three page Resumes.  Of course if you are applying for an academic or research job you might have a very lengthy Resume (you should list all your publications and conference presentations).

Europe is big on CVs which are used less in the US.  To learn the ins and outs of CVs (and a little about Resumes) goto:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curriculum_vitae

If you just need something for free and NOW. For free Resumes goto:
http://www.thepcmanwebsite.com/free_resume_creator/resume_creator.php

For CV builders try:
http://ceevee.com/edit/cv/
or:
https://www.cvbuilder-advice-resources.co.uk/
===========================================
If you are interested in British Culture/History there is a quite nice website at:
http://www.culture24.org.uk/home
It looks like it is a good place to find news stories on Britain's culture and history.
===========================================
As of February 23, 2010, the Falcon 9 is upright on its launch pad at Launch Complex 40 in preparation for its maiden launch. Current launch date is April or May of this year, delayed from Nov. 29, Feb. 9, March 3 and March 8.   SpaceX's Falcon 9 will be the first new rocket to launch from Cape Canaveral since 2002.

Do you realize that there are 15 countries that have either launched satellites or have tried or are within months of trying.  Right now these countries have launched satellites:

China
European Space Agency
France
India
Iran
Israel
Japan
Russia
Ukraine
United Kingdom
United States

Tried and failed:
North Korea

Close to trying:
Brazil
Italy
South Korea
===========================================
The visible WEB has about 167 terabytes, but you can't see all the WEB.  You can't even see most of it.  The part the web we see is less than 2 thousands of what is on line.  The rest is private or you have have permission or its business or government.  So are you curious?  There are ways to dip your toe in the giant pool of data and that would require you to go to the following website and check out the 10 web search engines they have.  Goto:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/10-search-engines-explore-deep-invisible-web/
===========================================
Now to the reasons to be happy this week
(or at least civil).
Here goes:

This is American Chocolate Week - Tasty random food week.

===========================================
monday 22 march
***The Official NoButtonButton*************
***
*** When you're in jail, a good friend will
*** be trying to bail you out. A best friend
*** will be in the cell next to you saying,
*** 'Damn, that was fun.'
***
*** -Unknown
*******************************************
birthdays:
1901 – Greta Kempton, American artist.  She painted many things that I did not particularly care for but her portrait work was wonderful.  President Harry S. Truman posed for her 5 times and he made her the official White House Artist.  She won awards and her paintings are in many fine gallery collections.

1907 – James Gavin, American general and ambassador.  He was called the Jumping General since he parachuted into battle with his men.  He participated in the 82nd Air Bourne's D-Day jump into France and was portrayed int the WWII movie "The Longest Day" by Robert Ryan.  Also there is an AEP power plant, on the Ohio River, in one of the poorer spots in Ohio that is named after General Gavin.  The smoke stacks are 1100 feet tall and the plant has a roof access at the 300 foot level.  When I worked for AEP I got to tour that plant and go out on that 300 foot roof.  Going back inside was scary though since all the floors were steel grating and you could see straight down 300 feet to the floor.

1913 - Sabiha Gökçen Who is this?  During WWII the US had a number of unsung heroes.  A bunch woman ferried planes around the country and even overseas.  They were highly trained and motivated as well as underpaid and undervalued and never considered as actual military.  Finally they are being recognized and now women can fly combat missions as well as ferrying. 
Sabiha Gökçen did not have to wait as long for her recognition.  in 1936 this woman became the first female combat pilot in the world and the first Turkish aviatrix at the ripe old age of 23.  Her Turkish Air Force career included 8000 flying hours in 22 types of aircraft.  32 of those hours were actual combat missions.  Anybody that says that women should not be flying is so full of it.

events:
1630 – Massachusetts Bay Colony outlaws the possession of cards, dice, and gaming tables.  So I guess a Casino is out of the question.

1638 – Anne Hutchinson is expelled from Massachusetts Bay Colony for religious dissent.  Remember I have said this before.  The Puritans did not come to the new world because they believed in Religious freedom but because they wanted to set up their own religion and persecute anyone that did not share their beliefs.  Anne preached at a time when women were supposed to listen only.  She preached to men and women at the same time (another no-no) and she preached that it was a blessing to be a woman and not the curse that Puritans believed.  Her and her followers ended up in Rhode Island, which was founded by another Puritan religious exile, and Rhode Island is based on freedom to practice all religions.

1894 – The first playoff game for the Stanley Cup starts.  It used to be for Canadian Amateurs only.  Now it is NHL only.  The trophy has an insane history that includes being lost, found, used for dog food, used as a baptismal bowl, thrown up in, drunk out of (let us hope there was a suitable interval there) and it grows.  Each winning team has the names of the winning players, coaches, management, and club staff engraved on the trophy.  So when the Cup fills up :> they add another ring to it.  The cup is over 4 times as tall, today, as it was in 1894.

Unlike most other major sports, there is only one Cup.  Each winning team gets to keep the trophy for a year and then pass it on to the next winner.  The cup did two tours of duty in Afghanistan (really) in 2004 and 2008.  It was only there for a few days each time but it did under go a missile attack (it survived).

Fun fact: 6 of the 9 team members of the first winning Stanley Cup team and the coach had Mustaches. 

1933 – President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signs into law a bill legalizing the sale of beer and wine.  The Great Depression was a double whammy.  Couldn't  find work and you weren't allowed to drown your sorrows. The first keg of beer was delivered to the White House.

1960 – Arthur Leonard Schawlow & Charles Hard Townes receive the first patent for a laser.  If every laser disappeared, all of the ‏First World Countries would collapse.  No CDs, no DVDs, no High Def, no fiber optic communications, no new projection TVs, no LEDs, no cat toys, your X Box and Play Station would not work, many traffic lights would have not lights as would many trucks would have no brake lights.  It would be a mess.

Also Star Wars and Star Trek would be in trouble.  To see a description (and some drawings/photos) of Star Trek weapons goto:

http://www.angelfire.com/scifi/phaserfire/SecTac.htm
or try:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapons_of_Star_Trek

Star Wars weapons are described at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Star_Wars_weapons

If you just want to read about SciFi weapons in general try:
1806 – After traveling through the Louisiana Purchase and reaching the Pacific Ocean, explorers Lewis and Clark and their "Corps of Discovery" begin their arduous journey home.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_fiction_weapon

holidays:
First day of Spring - I know it was yesterday but I am so to be rid of the snow and have 60 degree days that I am making the first day, two days long.

National Goof-Off Day - So just do what you normally do.

Banned in Boston Day - The following comments have been edited out for your protection.

National Bavarian Crepes Day - I did not know they made crepes in Bavaria.  I thought all they made there were BMWs, beer, pretzels and creme filled pastries.  When you are driving down the road, drinking beer eating your pretzels and pastries, what in the heck are you going to do with a crepe.

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tuesday 23 march
***The Official NoButtonButton*************
***
*** Life was so much easier when your clothes
*** didn't match and boys had cooties!"
***
*** ---Unknown
*******************************************
birthdays:
1645 – William Kidd, Scottish sailor.  Better known as Captain Kidd, pirate.  Remember Talk Like a Pirate day is still September 19th.

1823 – Schuyler Colfax.  Don't lie you know you have no idea who this guy is.  He was the 17th Vice President of the US.  He entered office under Ulysses S. Grant.

1904 – H. Beam Piper, US science fiction author.  Best known for his "Little Fuzzy" novels.  No they are not just cute little things, they are a species on a Planet we start to colonize.  We do not recognize that they are thinking being with an order structured society.  The Fuzzies do not like that and decide to change our minds.

Most of his short stories and the novel "Little Fuzzy" are available at Project Gutenberg:
http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/p#a8301

events:
1806 – After traveling through the Louisiana Purchase and reaching the Pacific Ocean, explorers Lewis and Clark and their "Corps of Discovery" begin their arduous journey home.  This is the part of exploring that can really suck.  You have gone through all kinds of hardships, fought with nature, almost starved and you achieve your goals.  Now you have to do it all again just to get back.  This really is the kind of thing that requires dedication, strength and just plain bloody-minded stubbornness.  Being young and not fully understanding the problem ahead of time helps as well.

1857 – Elisha Otis's first elevator is installed at 488 Broadway New York City.  Bless you Mr. Otis.

1903 – The Wright Brothers apply for a patent for their first airplane.  The 'areoplane' will fly later the same year (December).

1962 – NS Savannah, the first (and only) nuclear-powered cargo-passenger ship, is launched.  It actually carries cargo (and very few passengers) for ten years.  She was kept in storage close to Galveston, Texas until 1981 when she sailed to to South Carolina and became a museum ship.  Periodic radiation inspections in 1994 indicated a problem, so the ship was moved to Baltimore and the fuel was removed.  Again the ship sat in storage.  In 2006 actual reactor was removed and the ship is being refurbished to once again be used as a museum.

There have only been 13 nuclear powered civilian ships.  9 of those are Russian ice breakers.  Considering that Russia has no ports that are free of ice in the winter, this is no surprise.  The remaining 4 include:

NS Mutsu, Japan, 1970 - 1992. It never carried any commercial cargo.
NS Otto Hahn, Germany, 1968 - 1979 (re-powered with diesel engine in 1979)
NS Savannah, United States, 1962 - 1972
NS Sevmorput, Russia (former Soviet Union), 1988 - (still in operation).

One could argue that the Russian are the best at building nuclear ships and I would say they are not that good.  They were very good at controlling the press during the Soviet days so we never heard how their first icebreaker had a partial meltdown (60% of the fuel rods were fused) and the same ship had another emergency that required the reactors to be replace.  We did not find out about that until the collapse of the USSR.  With Russia's bad safety record in their nuclear subs and this story, I am surprised that they don't have an ice free port from the heat generated by a sunken icebreaker's melted down reactor.

holidays:
First day of Spring - I just said "What the hell" and extended it to a third day.

Toast Day - I do not know if you are putting butter on bread or buttering someone up.  Just do not be rude and enjoy yourself.

National Chip and Dip Day - I saw this and at first I thought that it was Chip and Dale day.  You know, the chipmunks.  Even though it says dip the title still fits.  Dale never was the brilliant one.  

Near-Miss Day - Just be glad whatever it was went by and not through.

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wednesday 24 march
***The Official NoButtonButton*************
***
*** A man may be a fool and not know it,
*** but not if he is married.
***
*** ---H.L. Mencken
*******************************************
birthdays:
1623 - John Harrison  was a self-educated English clockmaker. He invented the marine chronometer, a long-sought and critically-needed key piece in solving the problem of accurately establishing the East-West position, or longitude, of a ship at sea, thus revolutionizing and extending the possibility of safe long distance sea travel in the Age of Sail. The problem was so difficult that the British Parliament offered a prize of £20,000 (equivalent of about four and a half million dollars today) for the solution.  Now there are ten dollar electronic watches that keep time that good and expensive clocks that are accurate to tiny fractions of a second over many years time.  We still need the clocks to figure out where we are since even GPS depends on measuring how long satellite signals take to get to the GPS unit.

1820 - Fanny Crosby - She wrote the words to hymns - over 8,000 of them.  If you are a church goer you are probably going be singing one of her songs.  You may not know it thought since publishers don't like to put a lot of songs by the same author in any one collection, she used dozens of pen name.  She wrote a few secular songs as well.  Oh yes she was blind and would work on as many as twelve songs in her head before she dictated them to someone else to write down.

1829 - Ignacio Zaragoza.  Every year Cinco de Mayo is celebrated in Mexico and more and more it is spreading North to the US.  General Ignacio Zaragoza is the reason there is something to celebrate.  He was in command of the Mexican Army, which against longs odds, defeated the invading French forces at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862.  The Larger French forces lost somewhere between 500 and 1000 men.  Zaragoza's Mexican Army lost 86.  The defeat of the French inspired the young republic and the day was made a national holiday.  The rest of the war did not go so well and over the next 30 months Mexico was militarily defeated and Maximilian (puppet Emperor) was installed.  Mexico was still jazzed about Cinco de Mayo and the revolution started at once. 

At the end of the US Civil War Lincoln sent General Philip Sheridan and 50,000 troops the the US/Mexican border, blockaded the ports and demanded that the French leave and return Mexico to the Republic it had been.  Oh and we sort of gave a bunch of guns and... you know... army stuff to the Mexican rebels.  Then we threatened to invade.

In 1866 the French leave.  Now there are parts of Mexico that are controlled by the Conservatives that backed Maximilian.  They are armed and losing their cash cow so they fight.  They lose.  By mid 1867 the revolution is won for the Republican Mexicans and Maximilian was captured and ordered to be executed. 

Now old Maximilian was stone cold royalty.  His title (from birth) was:  His Imperial and Royal Highness Prince Imperial & Archduke Maximilian of Austria, Prince of Hungary and Bohemia.  The Crown Princes, Kings and Queens of Europe begged for his life.  I do not think that they really cared about old Max I just think they did not want their rabble.... I mean their subject to know that large numbers of people could rise up and kill the King.  It had happen a couple of times now in France and England and it was leaving a bad taste in their rich, entitled mouths.  Off with their heads.

Ignacio really belongs to the US as well as Mexico since while he was born in Mexico (then) his birth site is now in the US (Goliad, Texas). 

events:
1832 – In Hiram, Ohio a group of men beat, tar and feather Mormon leader Joseph Smith, Jr.  More religious intolerance.  Joseph Smith was the founder of the Mormon church.  The Mormons got 'invited' to leave just about everywhere they went, so they move to Utah.

1837 – Canada gives African men the right to vote. 

1900 – New York City Mayor Robert Anderson Van Wyck breaks ground for a new underground "Rapid Transit Railroad" that would link Manhattan and Brooklyn.  And a fast food restaurant is that much closer to getting its name.  The public has plenty of time to adopt the slang word 'subway' before the 1965 opening of the first Subway sandwich shop.  By the way the are over 32,400 stores open. Fred De Luca borrowed $1,000 to start his first sandwich shop in 1965, when he was only 17 years old. He was trying to raise money to pay for college. He never made it to college but in 2007, Forbes magazine named De Luca number 242 of the 400 richest Americans.  He could probably buy a college now.

1944 – In an event later dramatized in the movie 'The Great Escape', 76 prisoners begin breaking out of Stalag Luft III.  It was supposed

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Model_Stalag_Luft_III.jpg
holidays:
No more first day of spring, I don't want to push too hard.

National Chocolate Covered Raisins Day - Never put an inadequately closed bag of Chocolate Covered Raisins in a briefcase.  It takes months to get them out. 

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thursday 25 march
***The Official NoButtonButton*************
***
*** I sometimes wonder if the manufacturers
*** of foolproof items keep a fool or two
*** on their payroll to test things."
***
*** ---Alan Coren
*******************************************
birthdays:
1538 - Christopher Clavius was a German Jesuit mathematician and astronomer who was the main architect of the modern Gregorian calendar.  The one used today, around the world.

1901 – Ed Begley, American actor.  I am sure that many of you have enjoyed the acting and antics of Ed Begley Jr.  Well you have to have the first before you can have the second and here is the first.

1906 - Alan John Percival Taylor, FBA was a renowned English historian of the 20th century.  Renown and controversial.  I was going to explain some of his ideas but after reading the short versions (rather long, short versions) I am not sure they can be shortened any more and they were too long to just drop in whole.  So if you want to know more goto:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.J.P._Taylor#Books

events:
1894 - The first significant US protest march.  Coxey's army (as the press and public called them) of 100 unemployed men depart Massillon, Ohio bound for Washington DC. Their ranks grow and when they reach Washington they present their grievances and are taken care.  In another universe maybe.  They were arrested for walking on the Capitol Building lawn.  But they left us with the saying "I made enough food for Coxey's Army" (some people says Cox's Army). 

1955 - United States Customs seizes copies of Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl" as obscene.  If we still had those levels of censorship, half of all modern TV, movies, books and songs would banned.  Rappers would be rounded up and shot.  Well more often then they are now.

1979 - The first fully functional space shuttle orbiter, The Columbia, is delivered to the Kennedy Space Center to be prepared for its first launch.  The first shuttle, The Enterprise, was never a space rated vehicle and was built strictly for realistic, atmospheric flight testing (can you fly and land this brick?) and to see if the 747 designed to carry the ship across country would actually fly. 

holidays:
Pecan Day - I am sure Paula Dean is baking a pie.

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friday 26 march
***The Official NoButtonButton*************
***
*** The trouble with jogging is that by the
*** time you realize you're not in shape
*** for it, it's too far to walk back.
***
*** ---Franklin Jones
*******************************************
birthdays:
1516 - Konrad Gessner was a Swiss naturalist. His five-volume Historiae animalium (1551-1558) is considered the beginning of modern zoology.  You can look through the book at:  http://archive.nlm.nih.gov/proj/ttp/flash/gesner/gesner.html
This site has photos of each page of the actual book and you can flip through them (very cool).  Each page has a color drawing of an animal and then information about it.  It differs from modern field guide because modern guidews usually don't include Unicorns, meremen and sea monsters.  I don't know what language the book was written in so if you are like me you will just enjoy the pictures.

1773 - Nathaniel Bowditch was a US mathematician remembered for his work on ocean navigation. He is often credited as the founder of modern maritime navigation; his book The New American Practical Navigator, first published in 1802, is still carried onboard every commissioned U.S. Naval vessel.  He was offered professorship at Harvard, West Point and the University of Virginia but turned them all down because the Insurance company he founded paid him better.

1886 - Hugh Mulzac was the first African-American to earn his Master rating.  Due to discrimination he was not offered a command until 1942 when he became the Captain of the SS Booker T Washington.  If you are part of an oppressed group you have to remember that your struggle is not just for your personal advancement but also that of your entire group, all of which will benefit by your success.

events:
1934 - Driving test introduced in the United Kingdom.  It is tough.  Only 43% pass the written test.  If you pass that then you have to drive for up to 48 minutes and 25% fail it.  Only about a third of the people that apply for a license get one on the first time through.  All that trouble and they still can't figure out the 'right' side of the road to drive on.

1958 - Explorer 3 is launched.  Its orbit ranged from an altitude of 110 miles to 1700 miles.  Explorer 3 was launched to confirm the finding of Explorer 1.  Explorer 1 discovered the Van Allen Belt.  There have been 92 Explorers and most reached orbit.  In fact 48 of them are still in orbit, including Explorer 7 launched in 1959.  The latest Explorer (92) Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) is basically a junior Hubble that is taking extremely details photos of all the Infrared in the sky.

1976 - Queen Elizabeth II sent out the first royal email, from the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment.  If she wishes to really get modern she should FREE ALL THE BUTLERS. 

1999 - Melissa a computer worm was unleashed.  It originally was supposed to email the first 50 people in your address book a list of passwords to get you into Porn websites.  The author claimed he thought he was doing people a favor.  But since we are talking about a massive exponential increase in email it shut down Internet mail systems that got clogged with infected e-mails. 
Melissa was written by David L. Smith and named after a lap dancer he encountered.  Smith was sentenced to 20 months in a federal prison and fined $5,000 United States dollars.  Hack, Hack.

2006 - In Scotland, the prohibition of smoking in all substantially enclosed public places comes into force.  Single Malt is still legal and Nessie is still hiding in the Loch so Scotland will survive.

holidays:
Tichborne Dole - a gallon of flour is given to every adult resident (and half a gallon to every child) of Alresford, Hampshire, UK by the Tichborne family head.  There is a curse that the family would fall if the dole ever stopped.  The dole started in 1150 and continued until 1796 when local official stopped it because of disturbances during the distribution.  By the 1830s the details of the curse were happening and the family was crumbling.  The dole was reinstituted and continues to this day.

For more information goto:
http://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/TichborneDole.htm
or:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tichborne_Dole

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****joe722****