2016-08-17

Being on the tightrope is living; everything else is waiting. – Karl Wallenda

TODAY – AUGUST 17th – WEDNESDAY

230th day of 2016 with 136 days to follow. Full Moon with 99% visible.

Holidays for Today:

~ Baby Boomers Recognition Day (August 17, 2016)

~ National Thriftshop Day

~ National Vanilla Custard Day

~ Cat Nights Begin: The term “Cat Nights” harks back to a rather obscure old Irish legend concerning witches and the belief that a witch could turn herself into a cat eight times, but on the ninth time she couldn’t regain her human form. This bit of folklore also gives us the saying, “A cat has nine lives.” Because August is a yowly time for cats, this may have prompted the speculation about witches on the prowl in the first place. (Old Farmer’s Almanac)

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BIRTHDAYS ON THIS DATE:

1601 Pierre de Fermat, French mathematician (Analytic geometry, Fermat’s principle, Probability, Fermat’s Last Theorem)

1786 Davy Crockett, Greene County, Tennessee, frontiersman, adventurer, politician

1828 Jules Bernard Luys, French neurologist (neuroanatomy and neuropsychiatry)

1893 Walter Noddack, German chemist (discovered the element rhenium)

1893 Mae West, Brunswick, New York, actress (Diamond Lil, She Done Him Wrong)

1906 Hazel Bishop, Hoboken, New Jersey, Chemist and cosmetic executive (invented non-smear (“stays on you not on him”) kissproof lipstick)

1920 Maureen O’Hara, Dublin, Ireland, actress, playwright (Miracle on 34th St, Big Jake, The Parent Trap)

1929 Francis Gary Powers, Jenkins, Kentucky, U-2 pilot (USSR captures him in 1959 U-2 incident)

1930 Glenn Corbett, El Monte, California, actor (The Crimson Kimono , All the Young Men, Homicidal)

1936 Floyd Red Crow Westerman, Lake Traverse Reservation, South Dakota, Native American musician and actor (Tillamook Treasure, Renegades, Hildago)

1943 Robert De Niro, New York City, New York, actor (The Godfather Part II, The Intern)

1959 Eric Schlosser, NYC, New York, investigative journalist (Fast Food Nation, Reefer Madness, Chew On This)

1959 Jonathan Franzen, Western Springs, Illinois, author (The Corrections)

1966 Rodney Mullen, Gainesville, Florida, skateboarder (invented flat-ground Ollie, the Kickflip, Heelflip, 360 flip & the Impossible)

1969 Donnie Wahlberg, Dorchester, Maine, singer and actor (New Kids on the Block/ Band of Brothers, The Kill Point)

1981 Kristin Holt, Plano, Texas, television personality (host of G4′s Cheat!)

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And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years. – Abraham Lincoln

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HISTORICAL HAPPENINGS:

1807 Robert Fulton’s first American steamboat leaves New York City for Albany, New York on the Hudson River, inaugurating the first commercial steamboat service in the world.

1883 The first public performance of the Dominican Republic’s national anthem, Himno Nacional.

1907 Pike Place Market, the longest continuously-running public farmers market in the US, opened in Seattle.

1908 Fantasmagorie, the first animated cartoon, realized by Émile Cohl, is shown in Paris.

1945 Indonesian Declaration of Independence.

1947 The Radcliffe Line, the border between Union of India and Dominion of Pakistan is revealed.

1953 First meeting of Narcotics Anonymous in Southern California.

1959 Quake Lake was formed by a 7.5 rated earthquake in Montana.

1960 Gabon gains independence from France.

1962 East German border guards kill 18-year-old Peter Fechter as he attempts to cross the Berlin Wall into West Berlin becoming one of the first victims of the wall.

1969 Category 5 Hurricane Camille hits the Mississippi coast, killing 248 people and causing $1.5 billion in damage.

1970 Venera 7 launched. It will later become the first spacecraft to successfully transmit data from the surface of another planet (Venus).

1998 Monica Lewinsky scandal: US President Bill Clinton admits in taped testimony that he had an “improper physical relationship” with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. On the same day he admits before the nation that he “misled people” about his relationship.

1999 A 7.4-magnitude earthquake strikes İzmit, Turkey, killing more than 17,000 and injuring 44,000.

2005 Over 500 bombs are set off by terrorists at 300 locations in 63 out of the 64 districts of Bangladesh.

2008 American swimmer Michael Phelps becomes the first person to win eight gold medals in one Olympic Games.

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A small town prosecuting attorney called his first witness to the stand in a trial – a grandmotherly, elderly woman. He approached her and asked, ”Mrs. Jones, do you know me?”

She responded, ”Why, yes, I do know you Mr. Williams. I’ve known you since you were a young boy. And frankly, you’ve been a big disappointment to me. You lie, you cheat on your wife, you manipulate people and talk about them behind their backs. You think you’re a rising big shot when you haven’t the brains to realize you never will amount to anything more than a two-bit paper pusher. Yes, I know you.”

The lawyer was stunned. Not knowing what else to do he pointed across the room and asked, ”Mrs. Williams, do you know the defense attorney?”

She again replied, ”Why, yes I do. I’ve known Mr. Bradley since he was a youngster, too. I used to baby-sit him for his parents. And he, too, has been a real disappointment to me. He’s lazy, bigoted, he has a drinking problem. The man can’t build a normal relationship with anyone and his law practice is one of the shoddiest in the entire state. Yes, I know him.”

At this point, the judge rapped the courtroom to silence and called both counselors to the bench. In a very quiet voice, he said with menace, ”If either of you asks her if she knows me, you’ll be jailed for contempt!”

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The little boy had swallowed a coin and it got stuck in his throat. He started to turn blue and his mother ran out in the street yelling for help.

A policeman tried but couldn’t dislodge the coin.

A nurse just happened to be passing by. He tried his best but the coin stayed put.

Finally a man passing by took the boy by his shoulders and hit him with a few strong strokes on the back. The coin came out and the boy started breathing again, none the worse for wear.

The boy’s mother started, “I don’t know how to thank you, Doctor …”

“Oh, I’m not a doctor.”

“You’re not?!?”

“No, I’m from the IRS.”

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ONE-LINERS: Thoughts on Success

– The road to success is always under construction.

– The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.

– The secret to success is knowing who to blame for your failures.

– Success always occurs in private and failure in full view.

– If you worry about yesterday’s failures, today’s successes will be few.

– Whenever I find the key to success, someone changes the lock.

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Big Frank was having his hair styled at the hairdresser’s when a truck smashed into a car, outside. Draped in a cape, his hair divided with aluminum clips, Frank, an ex-paratrooper corporal raced out to the car and found the driver unhurt.

The truck driver, however, was slumped over the wheel, unconscious. Big Frank lost no time in applying his army acquired CPR techniques, including mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. The truck driver recovered consciousness several times, but kept passing out again.

Soon the ambulance arrived with the paramedics and took over, and Frank returned to his barber’s seat. “I just don’t understand why he kept passing out,” he said to the hairdresser. “I did everything they taught me.”

“Well, put yourself in the truck driver’s place,” said the hairdresser. “He’s driving down the street without a care in the world. The next thing he knows, he’s waking up to see some big guy in a green cape with a head full of wires pounding on his chest and kissing him. You’d pass out too.”

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pic of the day: Sunset on the Farm…



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WARNING! GOLDEN OLDIE PUN ZONE!

When Beethoven passed away, he was buried in a churchyard. A couple days later, the town drunk was walking through the cemetery and heard some strange noise coming from the area where Beethoven was buried. Terrified, the drunk ran and got the priest to come and listen to it. The priest bent close to the grave and heard some faint, unrecognizable music coming from the grave. Frightened, the priest ran and got the town magistrate.

When the magistrate arrived, he bent his ear to the grave, listened for a moment, and said, “Ah, yes, that’s Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, being played backwards.”

He listened a while longer, and said, “There’s the Eighth Symphony, and it’s backwards, too. Most puzzling.” So the magistrate kept listening, “There’s the Seventh… the Sixth… the Fifth…”

Suddenly the realization of what was happening dawned on the magistrate. He stood up and announced to the crowd that had gathered in the cemetery, “My fellow citizens, there’s nothing to worry about. It’s just Beethoven decomposing.”

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A farmer lived on a quiet rural highway. But, as time went by, the traffic slowly built up at an alarming rate. The traffic was so heavy and so fast that his chickens were being run over at a rate of three to six a day. So one day he called the sheriff’s office and said, “You’ve got to do something about all of these people driving so fast and killing all of my chickens.”

“What do you want me to do?” asked the sheriff.

“I don’t care, just do something about those drivers.” So the next day he had the county go out and put up a sign that said:

SLOW: SCHOOL CROSSING.

Three days later the farmer called the sheriff and said, “You’ve got to do something about these drivers. The ‘school crossing’ sign seems to make them go faster.” So, again, the sheriff sends out the county and they put up a new sign:

SLOW: CHILDREN AT PLAY.

And that really sped them up. So the farmer called and called and called everyday for three weeks. Finally, he asked the sheriff, “Your signs are doing no good. Is it all right for me to put up my own sign?”

The sheriff told him, “Okay, put up your own sign.” He was going to let the farmer do just about anything in order to have him stop calling. Well, the sheriff got no more calls from the farmer.

Three weeks after the farmers last call, the sheriff decided to call him. “How’s the problem with those drivers. Did you put up your sign?”

“Oh, yeah. And not one chicken has been killed since then. I’ve got to go. I’m very busy.” And he hung up the phone. The sheriff thought to himself, “I’d better go to that farmer’s house and look at that sign… There might be something there that WE could use to slow down drivers…”

So the sheriff drove out to the farmer’s house, and he saw the sign. It was a whole sheet of plywood. And written in large yellow letters were the words:

SLOW: NUDIST COLONY.

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Instructions for those with teenage daughters or daughters who think they are teenagers or who will eventually be teenagers:

Congratulations! You are now the proud new owner of a teenage daughter.

Please read this manual carefully, as it describes the maintenance of your new daughter, and answers important questions about your warranty (which does NOT include the right to return the product to the factory for a full refund.)

IF YOU FEEL YOU HAVE RECEIVED YOUR TEENAGER IN ERROR:

To determine whether you were supposed to receive a teenager girl, please examine your new daughter carefully. Does she:

(a) look very similar to your original daughter, only with more makeup and less clothing?

(b) refuse to acknowledge your existence on the planet Earth (except when requesting money)?

(c) Sleep in a burrow of dirty laundry?

If any of these are true, you have received the correct item. Nice try, though.

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A Sunday school teacher: was discussing the Ten Commandments with her five and six year old kids.

After explaining the commandment to “honor” thy Father and thy Mother, she asked, “Is there a commandment that teaches us how to treat our brothers and sisters?”

Without missing a beat one little boy: (the oldest of a family) answered, “Thou shall not kill.”

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Recently, when I went to McDonald’s I saw on the menu that you could have an order of 6, 9 or 12 Chicken McNuggets. I asked for a half dozen nuggets.

“We don’t have half dozen nuggets,” said the teenager at the counter.

“You don’t?” I replied.

“We only have six, nine, or twelve,” was the reply.

“So I can’t order a half-dozen nuggets, but I can order six?”

“That’s right.”

So I shook my head and ordered six McNuggets.

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TODAY IN TRIVIA: How high are mallard nests built? Mallard nests are sometimes built at a height of 40 feet above ground. Surprisingly, when leaving their nests for the first time, chicks are very rarely hurt due to falling to the ground.

~What sort of noise does a lemur make? The ring-tailed lemur, a primate found only in Madagascar, meows like a cat.

~Which branch of the U.S. Military was first to admit women to its academy? The Coast Guard Academy in July of 1976 was the first U.S. service academy to admit women.

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QUIP OF THE DAY: Do NOT argue with a spouse or anyone else who’s packing your parachute.

THAT’S (ALMOST) ALL FOLKS!

Thought for the day. . . A great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.  – Albert Schweitzer

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