Beware of over-great pleasure in being popular or even beloved. – Margaret Fuller
TODAY – APRIL 27th – WEDNESDAY
118th day of 2016 with 248 days to follow. The moon is waning with 77% visible.
Holidays for Today:
*Administrative Professional’s Day
*Babe Ruth Day
*Denim Day
*International Guide Dog Day
*International Noise Awareness Day
*Matanzas Mule Day
*Morse Code Day
*National Prime Rib Day
*National Tell a Story Day
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BIRTHDAYS ON THIS DATE:
1791 Samuel Finley Breece Morse, Charlestown, Massachusetts, painter/inventor (telegraph), co-inventor of Morse code
1822 [Hiram] Ulysses S[impson] Grant, Point Pleasant, Ohio, Civil War general/ 18th US President (1869-77, Republican)
1896 Rogers Hornsby, Winters, Texas, baseball player (among the greatest hitters in baseball history)
1896 Wallace Hume Carothers, Burlington Iowa, inventor (nylon)
1900 Walter Lantz, New Rochelle, New York, animator (Woody Woodpecker’s creator)
1922 Jack Klugman, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, actor (Oscar-Odd Couple, Quincy, Goodbye Columbus)
1927 Coretta Scott King, Marion, Alabama, civil rights activist (wife of Martin Luther King, Jr.)
1932 Casey Kasem, Detroit, Michigan, voice actor (Robin in Super Friends, Transformer cartoons, Shaggy in Scooby-Doo) and radio personality (American Top 40)
1937 Sandy Dennis, Hastings, Nebraska, actress (Splendor in the Grass, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?)
1944 Cuba Gooding, Sr., NYC, New York, singer (The Main Ingredient – Everybody Plays The Fool)
1961 Andy Schlafly, American attorney and activist, founder of Conservapedia (wiki encyclopedia written from conservative, Christian, creationist viewpoint)
1962 James LeGros, Minneapolis, Minnesota, actor (Living in Oblivion, Sleeper Cell, Ally McBeal, Mercy, Bitter Feast)
1963 Ruth Glick, Lexington, Kentucky, author (Dollhouse books, Cookbooks, Charisma Inc. Series)
1964 Lisa Wilcox, Columbia, Missouri, actress (Nightmare on Elm Street; Black Friday, Savage, The Church)
1972 David Lascher, Scarsdale, New York, actor (Blossom, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Hey Dude, Two of a Kind)
1973 Andre Gower, Culver City, California, actor (Monster Squad, Baby Makes 5, Fathers & Sons, Mr President)
1983 Ari Graynor, Boston, Massachusetts, actress (The Sopranos, An American Crime, Fringe, Whip It, Bad Teacher)
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Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meanings can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart. – Martin Luther King, Jr.
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HISTORICAL HAPPENINGS:
1667 The blind and impoverished John Milton sells the copyright of Paradise Lost for 10 pounds.
1773 British Parliament passes the Tea Act (eventually leads to Boston Tea Party on December 16).
1810 Beethoven composes his famous piano piece, Für Elise.
1813 War of 1812: US troops capture the capital of Upper Canada, York (present day Toronto, Canada).
1865 The steamboat Sultana, carrying 2,400 passengers, explodes and sinks in the Mississippi River, killing 1,700, most of whom are Union survivors of the Andersonville and Cahaba Prisons.
1936 United Auto Workers (UAW) gains autonomy from the American Federation of Labor.
1945 World War II: Benito Mussolini is arrested by Italian partisans in Dongo, while attempting escape disguised as a German soldier.
1947 Babe Ruth Day celebrated at Yankee Stadium & throughout the US.
1959 The last Canadian missionary leaves the People’s Republic of China.
1960 France grants Togo independence (National Day).
1961 Sierra Leone is granted its independence from the United Kingdom
1965 RC Duncan patents “Pampers” disposable diaper.
1967 Expo 67 officially opens in Montreal, Canada with a large opening ceremony broadcast around the world. It opens to the public the next day.
1972 Apollo 16 returns to Earth.
197410,000 march in Washington, D.C., calling for impeachment of US President Richard Nixon
1978 Allegheny Energy’s Pleasants Power Station, Willow Island WV: scaffolding failure during construction of #2 cooling tower killed 51 men.
1983 Nolan Ryan becomes strikeout king (3509), passing Walter Johnson.
1992 The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, comprising Serbia and Montenegro, is proclaimed.
2002 The last successful telemetry from the NASA space probe Pioneer 10.
2006 Construction begins on the Freedom Tower for the new World Trade Center in New York City.
2011 Tornado outbreak (April 25–28) devastates parts of the Southeastern U.S., especially the states of Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and Tennessee. 205 tornadoes touched down on April 27 alone, killing more than 300 and injuring hundreds more.
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I went into the local Tastee Freeze and asked, “What kind of ice cream do you have?”
The girl at the counter replied, “Vanilla, chocolate and strawberry.” Then she started wheezing and patting her chest and seemed unable to say any more.
“Do you have laryngitis?” I asked, trying to be sympathetic.
“Nope,” she whispered, “just vanilla, chocolate and strawberry.”
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The piano man is performing in a bar. An elephant walks in, sits down near the piano and starts to cry.
The pianist asks the elephant, “Do you recognize the song?”
“No, I recognize the keys.”
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ONE-LINERS:
~Laughing stock: cattle with a sense of humor
~Learn from your parents’ mistakes: use birth control.
~Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math.
~Love may be blind but marriage is a real eye-opener.
~Make it idiot proof and someone will make a better idiot.
~Monday is an awful way to spend 1/7th of your life.
~Montana: At least our cows are sane!
~More hay, Trigger? No thanks, Roy, I’m stuffed!
~Multitasking means messing up several things at once.
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Customer: “All my files I saved last week to my C: drive are missing!”
Tech Support: “Do you remember what directory you first saved them in?”
Customer: “No, I don’t. I just know it was on my C: drive.”
Tech Support: “Ok, I’ll walk you through how to find the files.”
Customer: “I wouldn’t think I would be losing files on this computer. Gee, I just had the hard drive replaced in it yesterday.”
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pic of the day: Memorial to Men Who Lost Their Lives in
Power Station, Willow Island WV, Disaster
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WARNING! ENTERING THE PUN ZONE!
An elephant and a crocodile were swimming in the jungle, when the elephant spots a turtle sunning himself on a rock. The elephant walks over to the turtle, picks him up in his trunk and hurls him far into the jungle.
“What did you do that for?” asked the crocodile.
The elephant answered, “That turtle was the one that bit me almost fifty years ago.”
The crocodile said, “And you remembered him after all these years? Boy, you sure do have a good memory.”
“Yep,” says the elephant. “Turtle recall.”
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A man walks into a bar has a few drinks and asks what his tab was. The bartender replies that it is twenty dollars plus tip. The guy says, “I’ll bet you my tab double or nothing that I can bite my eye.” The bartender accepts the bet, and the guy pulls out his glass eye and bites it.
He has a few more drinks and asks for his bill again. The bartender reports that his bill now is thirty dollars plus tip. He bets the bartender he can bite his other eye. The bartender accepts knowing the man can’t possibly have two glass eyes.
The guy then proceeds to take out his false teeth and bite his other eye.
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The editor of a small country newspaper, furious over several government bills that had recently been passed, printed a scathing editorial with an enormous headline:
“HALF THE LEGISLATORS ARE CROOKS.”
Many local politicians were outraged and exerted tremendous pressure on him to print a retraction. He finally gave in to the pressure and ran his apology with the headline:
“HALF THE LEGISLATORS ARE NOT CROOKS.”
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Customer: “My disk ran out of space when trying to save my Word document, so I changed it from double spaced to single spaced and it still wouldn’t fit!”
Tech Support: “Have you made backups of your software and data?”
Customer: “I didn’t know it had a reverse.”
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TODAY IN TRIVIA: Matanzas Mule Day – In one of the first naval actions of the Spanish-American War, US naval forces bombarded the Cuban village of Matanzas. It was widely reported that the only casualty of the bombardment was one mule. The “Matanzas Mule” became instantly famous and remains a footnote in the history of the Spanish-American War. A newspaper article from 1898 describes the funeral of the Mule, where he apparently was buried with full military honors, to the sound of a marching band, whilst 200 people watched on.
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QUIP OF THE DAY: Money can’t buy you happiness, but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery. – Spike Milligan
THAT’S (ALMOST) ALL FOLKS!
Thought for the day. . . Do not go where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. – Ralph Waldo Emerson