If May 6 was your birthday, “Happy Birthday!” and sorry I missed it.
Baseball Hall of Famer Willie Mays (NY Giants, SF Giants, NY Mets) is 81.
Singer – musician Bob Seger is 67.
Actor Ben Masters (Running Mates, Noble House, All that Jazz, Making Mr. Right) is 65.
Guitarist Davey Johnstone (for Elton John) is 61.
Actor George Clooney (Bodies of Evidence, ER, From Dusk Till Dawn, Batman & Robin, The Peacemaker, The Thin Red Line) is 51.
Filed under Birthdays
1851 – Dr. John Gorrie of Apalachicola FL, patented the mechanical refrigerator.
1851 – Linus Yale of Newport, NY became well known for his patent of the clock-type lock.
1856 – Psychiatrist Sigmund Freud was born in Frieberg, Germany.
1856 – Robert E. Peary, first person to reach the North Pole, was born in Cresson, PA.
1895 – Silent film screen star Rudolph Valentino was born Rodolfo Alfonso di Valentina D’Antonguolla in Puglia, Italy.
1933 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed legislation creating the Works Progress Administration (WPA).
1937 – The German airship Hindenburg, the largest dirigible ever built, exploded as it arrived at Lakehurst, NJ.
1940 – John Steinbeck won the Pulitzer Prize for The Grapes of Wrath.
1941 – Joseph Stalin became the premier of Russia.
1942 – Lte. Gen. Jonathan Wainwright surrendered all American troops in the Philippines to the Japanese.
1954 – Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile in Oxford, England with a time of 3:59.4 seconds.
1957 – Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy of Massachusetts was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his book Profiles in Courage.
1959 – Pablo Picasso’s painting of a Dutch girl was sold for $154,000 in London, the highest price paid at the time for a painting by a living artist.
1994 – A rail tunnel beneath the English Channel joining Great Britain with France, called the “Chunnel,” officially opened.
Filed under History
“Up yours, Osama.”
– Editorial headline in the New York Daily News, with a photo of the last beam installed atop One World Trade Center on the site of the twin towers destroyed on September 11, 2001.
Filed under News
In case you’ve been asleep the past few days, a “Super Moon” lit up Saturday’s night sky across the globe. It looked especially big and bright since it was closest to Earth and in its full phase at the same time. The “Super Moon” was as much as 14% bigger and 30% brighter than other full moons of 2012. Here are just a handful of photos of this spectacular and breathtaking phenomenon.
An aircraft flies past the moon over Somerset, England
Lincoln Memorial – Washington D.C.
Christ the Redeemer statue – Rio de Janeiro
Statue of Liberty – New York City
Iceland
Toronto, Canada
St Michael’s Tower – Glastonbury Tor, Somerset, England
Temple of Poseidon – Southeast of Athens
New Delhi, India
St. Isaak’s Cathedral – St.Petersburg, Russia
U.S. Capitol – Washington, D.C.
Eastern Canada
Mohamed Ali Mosque – Cairo
Filed under News
Rhode Island always reminds me of a Chihuahua: small, mean and loud!
Filed under Curiosities
Survivalist Tip: Of all the food ingredients you should stockpile, flour needs to be one of them. This is an indispensable commodity. Flour is basically the result of grinding cereal grains, seeds or roots. Every culture throughout human history has created flour, from the ancient Chinese to the medieval French who used it to treat herpes sores to contemporary residents of Beverly Hills who use it to feed their Mexican gardeners. The term “flour” is derived from – what else? – “flower;” both words ironically are French in origin. They come from “fleur,” which means “blossom.” The process of creating flour figuratively means to create the finest part of a meal.
Wheat and rye are the principal grains used to make flour. Don’t worry now about actually trying to create your own batches of flour; just purchase several bags of it before December 21. It’ll keep well, even unrefrigerated. Mixing flour with water usually creates paste. But, it also can be baked or cooked to make some simple, yet nutritious foods to get you through the toughest part of your survival. And, if you want to add extra taste to it, mix it up with some chocolate and/or beer. Hey, just because you’re in the midst of an Earth-shattering crisis doesn’t mean you – a well-prepared survivalist – can’t enjoy yourself, while other hapless souls stumble around the barren wasteland!
Filed under Mayan Calendar Countdown
If today is your birthday, “Happy Birthday!”
Actor Michael Murphy (Clean Slate, Batman Returns, The Year of Living Dangerously, Salvador) is 74.
Actor Lance Henriksen (Powder, Felony, Dead Man, Baja) is 72.
Actor – comedian Michael Palin (Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Life of Brian, Brazil) is 69.
Actor Roger Rees (M.A.N.T.I.S., Cheers, Robin Hood: Men in Tights) is 68.
Drummer Bill Ward (Black Sabbath) is 64.
Actor Richard E. Grant (Jack and Sarah, Cold Light of Day, The Age of Innocence, Bram Stoker’s Dracula) is 55.
Actress Tina Yothers (Family Ties, Laker Girls) is 39.
Filed under Birthdays
1816 – Poet John Keats had his first poem published by The Examiner.
1818 – Socialist writer Karl Marx was born in Moselle, Germany.
1821 – Napoleon Bonaparte died in a prison on the South Atlantic island of St. Helena.
1847 – The American Medical Association was organized in Philadelphia, PA.
1862 – The Mexican army defeated the French military in the town of Puebla de Los Angeles, as the French tried to reach México City.
1893 – The U.S. experienced the worst economic crisis to date, as stock prices plummeted and major railroads entered into receivership. More than 15,000 businesses went bankrupt and 15 – 20% of the work force was unemployed. Within seven months, over 600 banks had closed.
1961 – Navy Commander Alan Shepard, Jr., became the first American in space when he was launched from Cape Canaveral, FL, aboard the Freedom 7 capsule.
Filed under History
