HICCUPING SINCE 1837.
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If you are interested in International TV and do not want to pay outrageous prices for it check out:
http://wwitv.com/
They do not have the shows stored there but point you to them.  North Korea to Greece to South America.  Strange and wonderful stuff.
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Music is nothing spectacular today but I am using Sound Canceling Headphones.  They almost cancel the sound of the hiccups and they sure as hell cancel everything else.  It takes out the phone sounds, traffic, the wife.  I can hear myself think and since I seem to really think I am smart (ego out of control, I know), I like that.  I can not hear my feet or hands tap out the beat of the music and sometimes that is annoying.  I deal with it.
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If you use FaceBook then you need to know how to protect yourself and your data.  Here is a website that has some info you need:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/prevent-remove-facebook-malware-or-virus/
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Now to the reasons to be happy this week
(or at least civil).
Here goes:

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monday 15 february
***The Official NoButtonButton*************
***
*** The thing that takes up the least amount
*** of time and causes th most amount of
*** trouble is Sex.
***
***  - John Barrymore
*******************************************
birthdays:
1458 – Ivan the Young, Ruler of Tver.  Tver was a micro country that is now a city in Russia.  They have a population of about 400,000 packed into about 58 square miles.

1734 – William Stacy, Continental Army officer, and pioneer to the Ohio Country.  Interesting thing is that settling in the Ohio Country was one of the root causes of the French and Indian war and one of the many causes of the Revolution.  At the time the William would have been wandering around Ohio, Pittsburgh was part of Ohio as was the West Virginia Panhandle.  If the Revolution had not happened we would have had a different state south of us.  Vandalia was the name of a proposed British colony. It was to be located south of the Ohio River, mostly in West Virginia and eastern Kentucky.  I wonder how their onions would have been?

1898 - Totò - no not the little dog in 'The Wizard of Oz' but a celebrated Italian comedian, film and theater actor, writer, singer and songwriter. In Italy today he is widely considered to be the greatest, most popular and most beloved Italian artist of screen and stage of all time.
Speaking of the movie 'The Wizard of Oz', Toto was played by a female black Cairn Terrier whose real name was Terry. Terry was paid a $125.00 salary each week.  The Munchkins got paid $50.00 per week.

1976 – Ronnie Vannucci Jr., US drummer for 'The Killers'.  Post Punk Revival (whatever the hell that means).  Well they sound better than their labels.  Want to decide for your self? Goto:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIZdjT1472Y

events:
1764 – The city of St. Louis, Missouri is established.  Some people still consider this to have been a mistake at least East St. Louis.

1852 – Great Ormond St Hospital for Sick Children, London, admits its first patient.  It is the first hospital (in the English speaking world) set up just for children.  They have received a large amount of funding from receiving the rights to J. M. Barrie's play 'Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up'.  Children's hospitals are now spread around the world and they do amazing things, for kids.  They are not just little adults but complex bundles of chemical and hormonal reactions that are trying to make them into adults. 

In central Ohio we are doubly blessed.  We have a Children's Hospital and because of that we got Jack Hanna for our Zoo Director.  His daughter was sick.  He was a better director than our pathetic little zoo deserved (it used to suck), but Children's Hospital, here in Columbus, was one of the best places in the country to treat his child.  They saved her and Jack saved our Zoo one of the best.  I have seen Pandas and Manatees there and love it.  Also I heard a Tiger meow, I was stunned, I did not know that they did that.  I was not a timid little meow but rather a MEOW.  Too cool for school.  Thanks Jack.

1944 – World War II: The assault on Monte Cassino, Italy, begins.  Over the next 4 months during a series of 4 major battles forces of the UK, US, Free French, Moroccan, Algerian, Poland, Canada, Rajputanas, Gurkhas, and Maoris, fought 80,000 German troops dug in on top of Monte Cassino.  105,000 Allied troops took part in the assault and 100,000 were killed or wounded.  We are talking about one of the worst battles in the we participated in.  To give some perspective, there 91,000 Allied casualties during the Battle of the Bulge, but 840,000 Allies faced off against half a million Nazi troops.

1965 – A new red-and-white maple leaf design is adopted as the flag of Canada, replacing the old Canadian Red Ensign banner.  And a beautiful flag it is. 

2005 – YouTube, the popular Internet site on which videos may be shared and viewed by others, is launched in the United States.  They have only been around for years and everybody knows what they are.  Amazing.  They are the repository of incredible video and totally useless crap.  Search wisely grasshopper. 

holidays:
National Gumdrop Day - Random candy day.

Remember the Maine Day - USS Maine (ACR-1) forward ammo bunker exploded and sank the ship.  She was in Havana Harbor and only 89 of the 374 man crew survived.  All the explanations for her sinking have boiled down to two basic theories.  Accidental explosion from a spark in an atmosphere of excessive coal dust or an external naval mine.  Also we still do not know if the explosions was deliberate or an accident.  Cubans believe that we blew up our own ship to provoke a war with Spain and the dead sailors are heroes that died for Cuban independence (we have an odd relationship with Cuba).  Experts still can not agree.  Whatever the actual reason was, we choose to blame Spain and declared war and a short time later Cuba was free from Spain. 
There are photos of the ship when it was raised for salvage (13 years later) one of which is at:
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/I?pan:5:./temp/~ammem_QzpV::displayType=1:m856sd=pan:m856sf=6a22679:@@@mdb=detr,pan

and another at:

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/I?pan:1:./temp/~ammem_QzpV::displayType=1:m856sd=pan:m856sf=6a22671:@@@mdb=detr,pan

If you look at this one you will see they sank caissons all around the ship and then pumped the water out.  Only then did they do the repairs to refloat the the ship.  The US wanted to recover the bodies, trapped in the ship, check the evidence  and the Cuban government wanted to get rid of a navigation hazard.   The ship was towed out to deeper waters and scuttled. 
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tuesday 16 february
***The Official NoButtonButton*************
***
*** Whenever there is a flat surface,
*** someone will find something to put on it.
***
***  - Col. Lawrence H. Ballweg
*******************************************
birthdays:
1968 - Pierre Bouguer was a French mathematician, geophysicist, geodesist, and astronomer.  He is also known as "the father of naval architecture".  I guess he figured a bunch of stuff out about ship stability and such.  I am out of my depth there ; )  Anyhow he impressed enough people that they named a carter after him, on the Moon and another on Mars.

1878 – Pamela Colman Smith, artist, writer and designer.  If you speak English and have seen a deck of Tarot cards then you have probably seen her work.  She designed the Rider-Waite-Smith deck of tarot cards which makes up most of the decks sold in English speaking countries.  These cards have been in hundreds of movies and TV shows and they are reviled by many of the more conservative religious.  I don't think they are satanic but then I don't think they work.  I do have a set because they are fun to play with.

1909 – Richard McDonald, - This is the guy that fried the very first McDonald hamburger and the ceremonial 50,000,000,000 (yep 50 billion).  He and his brother created the store, the Speedy Service method of getting the food ready and started franchising stores.  They took a business partner (Ray Croc) and sold the entire operation to him ($2.7 million) on a handshake.  Yes he paid.  Why not? He made billions.

events:
1852 – Studebaker Brothers wagon company, precursor of the automobile manufacturer, is established.

1868 – In New York City the Jolly Corks organization is renamed the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks.  Jolly Corks?  This does not have anything to do with drinking does it?   Nah, couldn't be.

1899 – Knattspyrnufélag Reykjavíkur Iceland's first football club is founded.  They would have been started 3 months earlier but it took that long to fill out the forms.  Knattspyrnufélag Reykjavíkur means 'Reykjavík Football Club' and most people say the KR. 

1940 - Altmark Incident: The German tanker Altmark is boarded by sailors from the British destroyer HMS Cossack. 299 British prisoners are freed.  The prisoners were survivors of ships sunk by the German Battle Ship Graff Spree.  The Norwegian Navy made a cursory search of the ship three times and did not discover the prisoners so when the British went in both they and the Germans wondered about Norway's neutrality.  It was one of the causes for the German invasion of Norway.  When one of the British raiders "Are there any Englishmen here?" and he got a positive response, to which he answered "The Navy is here."  'The Navy is here' became a British catch phrase.

1968 – In Haleyville, Alabama, the first 9-1-1 emergency telephone system goes into service.  Somewhere I know there has been a drunk at a party that has called 911 because they ran out of beer.  I just know there is.

2006 – The last Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) is decommissioned by the United States Army. 

holidays:
Feast of Sticky Buns - We will assume this is a random food day.

Bumper Car Day - I love those little things.  A great way to work out your frustrations.  Little sisters don't seem to realize that they are made to bump into each other.  You can really get slugged after the ride stops.

Mule Day - Channel your inner-mule and be really stubborn about something.

Annual Sit and Spit Contest - No idea.  I am sure that nothing polite could come from this though.

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wednesday 17 february
***The Official NoButtonButton*************
***
*** One can get just as drunk on water...
*** as land.
***
***  - Eldred O. Schwab
*******************************************
birthdays:
1723 – Tobias Mayer, German astronomer - He may be best know for his observations and calculations about the Moon.  Since he determined the position of the Moon so well the tables could be use to help calculate the longitude while at sea.  Remember prior to GPS is took real skill good instruments and a great time piece to figure out where you were.  Before the Chronometer was developed it took everything you could find, like charts of when the Moon was going to raise and you still might end up in Brazil instead of Miami.

1844 - Aaron Montgomery Ward invented the mail order business.  The mail-order industry was started in 1872 in Chicago.  Ward, a salesman traveling in dry goods, was concerned that many rural Americans were, being overcharged and under-served by many of the small town retailers they had to rely for their general merchandise.  He offered such good prices that some local retailers would burn his catalogs in an attempt to keep them from the public.  Ward fought to keep Grant Park from being developed so all of Chicago could have access to the lake and the measures that he fought for continues to be give him the title 'protector of Grant Park'.

1912 – Andre Norton, American author.  She is Cleveland girl.  She wrote SciFi and fantasy under the pen names Andre Norton, Andrew North and Allen Weston.  I think  her works are most suited to teenage readers and there are book that will appeal to both sexes.  I don't knowhow many of here books there are but I read about 20 of them and there way more than that.  Usually her books concern an individual or small group that have problems placed in front of them.  They have to solve the problems and grow to do so.  They are not doom and gloom books.  I drifted away when she started moving into the fantasy genre.  I usually like ray guns over magic wands.  For a long list of books and stories goto:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliography_of_Andre_Norton

events:
1500 – The Battle of Hemmingstedt.  This is small area in Germany that ditched the local royalty and set up a Peasant Republic.  They had to be brought back under control, who knows where all these thoughts of freedom could lead.  Anyway the local Duke raised an army, the "Great Guard", 4,000 mercenaries from the Netherlands, commanded by a petty noble (Junker) named Slentz, 2,000 armored cavaliers, about 1,000 artillery-men and 5,000 commoners. They meet the peasant army of about 6,000 men.  The peasants were not rabble, they were well trained and armed.  They kicked that Duke's army in the teeth and sent them the bills for the dental work.  There is still a marker there.  Death to Dictators and heredity royalty.

1809 – Miami University is chartered by the State of Ohio.

1867 – The first ship passes through the Suez Canal.

1924 – In Miami, Florida, Johnny Weissmuller sets a new world record in the 100-yard freestyle swimming competition with a time of 52-2/5 seconds.  He was a sickly kid that used swimming as a way to improve his health.  Boy Howdy did it ever.  The first Tarzan movie he was in, he and Jane were the closest thing to naked you were going to see in the movies for years and they made a good looking couple. 

1925 – Harold Ross and Jane Grant found The New Yorker magazine; the debut issue is dated February 21, 1925.

1933 – Newsweek magazine is published for the first time.


holidays:
Random Acts of Kindness Day - Do something nice for no good reason, just because.

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thursday 18 february
***The Official NoButtonButton*************
***
*** Practical politics consists of
*** ignoring facts.
***
***  - Henry Adams
*******************************************
birthdays:
1898 – Enzo Ferrari, Founder of Ferrari.  If you do not know who he is you must not know anything about driving.  Did you now that in Italy the Ferrari interviews prospective buyer and if you are buying a car to put in storage (as an investment) or you are only going to drive it a couple of times a year then you may get turned down.  They want their car driven and they want they to be driven the way a Sports Car is supposed to be driven.  I believe that means, like a Maniac.  Pretty cars.

1931 – Johnny Hart, American cartoonist.  Best know for his work as the creator of the comic strip 'B.C.' and co-creator of the strip 'The Wizard of Id'. 

1933 – Yoko Ono, Japanese-born singer.  When I looked at her book (late 70s) I thought she was the strangest woman on the planet.  Now I look back with nostalgia because I have had to reevaluate my standards for strange so many time in the intervening 30+ year that Ono looks so tame, by comparison.

events:
1685 – Fort St. Louis is established by a Frenchman at Matagorda Bay thus forming the basis for France's claim to Texas.  Matagorda Bay is approximately 352 square miles in area and Texas is over 268,000 square miles.  Hey wait a minute that is bigger than France.  And Texas used to be much larger.  Sorry France you are definitely losing this one.

1884 – Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is published for the first time.

1901 – Winston Churchill makes his maiden speech in the House of Commons.  Funny, I never pictured him as a maiden.  Maybe he was channeling J. Edgar Hoover.

1911 – The first official flight with air mail takes place in Allahabad, British India, when Henri Pequet, a 23-year-old pilot, delivers 6,500 letters to Naini, about 10 km away.

1930 – Elm Farm Ollie becomes the first cow to fly in a fixed-wing aircraft and also the first cow to be milked in an aircraft.  Supposedly this was a scientific thing and not strictly a publicity stunt.  Well Elm Farm Ollie became know as "Nellie Jay" and as "Sky Queen"

holidays:
National Crab Stuffed Flounder Day - Unless you are a vegetarian this sounds so delish.

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friday 19 february
***The Official NoButtonButton*************
***
*** The more they are in a fog, the more
*** boats (and people) toot their horn.
***
***  - Bernard L. Albert
*******************************************
birthdays:
1978 – Immortal Technique, American rapper.  Heavy on the politics.  Liberals may be too conservative for him.  But he does not just rail at the machine but he has gone to Afghanistan and helped start an orphanage that succeeded and now  houses 20 orphans.  If you want to hear very angry and surprisingly good Rap propaganda then you need to listen to this guy at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Igt-jW4e8ts
USE YOUR HEADPHONES.  Fuck is used so many more times than once..

1979 – Mariska, Finnish rapper.  She writes her own songs and the lyrics often deal with relationships, male chauvinism and politics.  She has three albums.  I don't know if Mariska uses the Finnish F word because I have not found any videos and I don't understand Finnish anyhow.

1981 – Vitas, Russian singer.  No I don't understand Russian either but this guy does not use bad words, I am positive.  I think he is intent on using everything he has to become popular and of course wealthy enough to become a Capitalist.  He is a Russian Lounge Lizard and is the only guy singer I have ever heard that can reach notes, almost as high as, Mariah Carey.  His videos get multi-million hits.  His song Opera #2 or as it is titled on YouTube: Vitas_Opera #2 (俄文+中文字幕) is pushing 6,000,000 hits. Hear him sing a very Russian flavored song (backed by an orchestra and choir) and listen to him try to deafen all the dog in the area with a very, very soprano voice at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjO_VXHxsRw

He actually sounds pretty good but wear your headphones, your dog will thank you.

Russian/Asian pop music is very different from ours and the following song will give you an idea.  Sort of the Back Street Boys meet Bowie during his Glam phase (and he keeps getting taller during the song).  For perky and strange goto:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Mr8qdZSk38&feature=related

events:
1819 – British explorer William Smith discovers the South Shetland Islands, and claims them in the name of King George III.  Chile, Argentina also claim them but the Antarctic Treaty of 1959 say the Islands' sovereignty is neither recognized nor disputed by the signatories and they are free for use by any signatory for non-military use.  I think Spain had a claim on them once as well.  13 countries operate research stations there.  Nobody is fighting over this place because they are 75 miles north of Antarctica (well I guess every place is north of Antarctica).  I mean they are 600 miles south of the Falkland Islands.  They are the islands that the tip of South America is sort of pointing at. 
The land has areas of tundra vegetation consisting of mosses, lichens and algae, while seabirds, penguins and seals feed in the surrounding waters.  They can raise bumper crops of snow every year as well.
There is a real cool map site for King George Island that is interactive at:
http://www.kgis.scar.org/mapviewer/kgis.phtml

1846 – In Austin, Texas the newly-formed Texas State government is officially installed. The Republic of Texas government officially transfers power to the State of Texas government following Texas' annexation by the United States.  Texas becomes the biggest state and will remain that way until January 1959 when Alaska became a state.  They are not going to forget that soon.

1878 – The phonograph is patented by Thomas Edison.  I bet a large number of kids have never used one.  Of course  can probably say the same for the dial telephone.

holidays:
National Chocolate Mint Day - Random Chocolate + something day.

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****joe722****