Jokes and Trivia for January 23, 2012

Life is meaningless only if we allow it to be. Each of us has the power to give life meaning, to make our time and our bodies and our words into instruments of love and hope. – Tom Head

TODAY – JANUARY 23rd – MONDAY

23rd day of 2012 with 343 follow.

Holidays for Today:

*National Pie Day

*National Handwriting Day

*Measure Your Feet Day- we only ask….”Why!?!”

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BIRTHDAYS ON THIS DATE:

1737 John Hancock, Braintree, Province of Massachusetts Bay, American patriot (1st & 3rd governor of Massachusetts, 4th President of the Continental Congress)
1745 William Jessop, Devonport, Devon , English canal engineer, best known for his work on canals, harbours and early railways in the late 18th and early 19th centuries
1832 Édouard Manet, French artist (pivotal figure in transition from Realism to Impressionism)
1840 Ernst Abbe, Eisenach, Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach , German physicist , known for Abbe refractometer, Abbe number
1855 John Moses Browning, Ogden, Utah, inventor (firearms designer who developed many varieties of military and civilian firearms, cartridges, and gun mechanisms, many of which are still in use around the world)
1862 David Hilbert, Wehlau, Province of Prussia, German mathematician, discovered and developed a broad range of fundamental ideas in many areas, including invariant theory and the axiomatization of geometry
1872 Paul Langevin, Paris, France , French physicist (developed Langevin dynamics and the Langevin equation)
1876 Otto Diels, Hamburg, Germany, chemist (Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for their discovery and development of the cycloaddition synthesis”)
1884 George McManus, St. Louis, Missouri, cartoonist (Bringing Up Father)
1897 Sir William Samuel Stephenson, Canadian soldier, W.W.II codename, Intrepid (Inspiration for James Bond)
1898 Randolph Scott, Orange County, California, actor (The Last of the Mohicans, Westbound, Ride Lonesome, Ride the High Country)
1918 Gertrude B. Elion, New York City , New York, scientist (developed a multitude of new drugs, using innovative research methods that would later lead to the development of the AIDS drug AZT)
1920 Walter Frederick Morrison, Richfield, Utah, inventor (best known as the inventor of the Frisbee)
1940 Johnny Russell, Moorhead, Mississippi, country singer and songwriter (“Act Naturally”)
1943 Gil Gerard, Little Rock, Arkansas, actor (Buck Rogers in the 25th Century)
1950 Richard Dean Anderson, Minneapolis, Minnesota, actor (General Hospital, MacGyver, Firehouse, Stargate SG-1)
1951 Chesley Sullenberger, Denison, Texas, pilot (Captain of US Airways Flight 1549, a flight that successfully ditched into the Hudson River)
1957 Princess Caroline of Monaco
1964 Mariska Hargitay, Los Angeles, Califonia, actress (Olivia Benson on Law & Order: SVU, Ghoulies, Lake Placid)
1974 Tiffani Thiessen, Long Beach, Califonia, actress (Saved by the Bell, Beverly Hills 90210, White Collar)
1981 Julia Jones, Boston, Massachusetts, Native American actress (Leah Clearwater in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse)

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Into each life some rain must fall. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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HISTORICAL HAPPENINGS:

1656 Blaise Pascal publishes the first of his Lettres provinciales.
1789 Georgetown College, the first Catholic University in the United States, is founded in Georgetown, Maryland (now a part of Washington, D.C.)
1849 Elizabeth Blackwell is awarded her M.D. by the Geneva Medical College of Geneva, New York, becoming the United States’ first female doctor.
1855 The first bridge over the Mississippi River opens in what is now Minneapolis, Minnesota, a crossing made today by the Father Louis Hennepin Bridge.
1879 Anglo-Zulu War: the Battle of Rorke’s Drift ends.
1897 Elva Zona Heaster is found dead in Greenbrier County, West Virginia. The resulting murder trial of her husband is perhaps the only case in United States history where the alleged testimony of a ghost helped secure a conviction.
1941 Charles Lindbergh testifies before the U.S. Congress and recommends that the United States negotiate a neutrality pact with Adolf Hitler.
1943 Duke Ellington plays at Carnegie Hall in New York City for the first time.
1943 World War II: Australian and American forces finally defeat the Japanese army in Papua. This turning point in the Pacific War marks the beginning of the end of Japanese aggression.
1950 The Knesset passes a resolution that states Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.
1957 American inventor Walter Frederick Morrison sells the rights to his flying disc to the Wham-O toy company, who later rename it the “Frisbee”.
1960 The bathyscaphe USS Trieste breaks a depth record by descending to 10,911 m (35,798 feet) in the Pacific Ocean.
1964 The 24th Amendment to the United States Constitution, prohibiting the use of poll taxes in national elections, is ratified.
1968 North Korea seizes the USS Pueblo (AGER-2), claiming the ship had violated their territorial waters while spying.
1973 President Richard Nixon announces that a peace accord has been reached in Vietnam.
1986 The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducts its first members: Little Richard, Chuck Berry, James Brown, Ray Charles, Fats Domino, the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley.
1997 Madeleine Albright becomes the first woman to serve as United States Secretary of State.
1997 Antonis Daglis, a 23-year-old Greek truck driver is sentenced to thirteen consecutive life sentences, plus 25 years for the serial slayings of three women and the attempted murder of six others.
2002 “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh returns to the United States in FBI custody.
2002 Reporter Daniel Pearl is kidnapped in Karachi, Pakistan and subsequently murdered .
2003 Final communication between Earth and Pioneer 10.

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My wife and I were celebrating our 50th anniversary. I said to her over dinner, “Fifty years is a long time.”

“A long, long time,” she agreed. Then she smiled. “Something just occurred to me.”

“What’s that?”

“If I had killed you the first time I felt like it, I’d be out of jail by now.”

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ONE-LINERS: HOW TO DIAPER A BABY

A Baseball Perspective

1. Spread the diaper in the position of the diamond with you at bat.

2. Then fold second base down to home and set the baby on the pitcher’s mound.

3. Put first base and third together, bring up home plate and pin the three together.

4. Of course, in case of rain, you gotta call the game and start all over again.

(By Jimmy Piersal, former All-Star Outfielder)

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pic of the day: Shetland Sheep Lamb

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WARNING! ENTERING THE PUN ZONE!

An American couple retired to London, where they found a wonderful house, quite ancient, with a long and noble history.

Much to their chagrin, though, they discovered that their new home was abysmally cold in winter. They immediately set about trying to get a central heating system installed. Sadly, contractor after contractor told them that it simply wasn’t feasible in a house that old

“I was afraid it would come down to this,” the husband finally said.

“What, honey?”

“We can’t have archaic and heat it too.”

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Doctors are used to getting calls at all hours. One night a man phoned, waking me up. “I’m sorry to bother you so late,” he said, “but I think my wife has appendicitis.”

Still half asleep, I reminded him, “I took your wife’s appendix out a couple of years ago. Whoever heard of a second appendix?”

“You may not have heard of a second appendix,” he replied, “but surely you’ve heard of a second wife.”

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Golden Oldie… DISORDER IN THE COURT

Q: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
A: No.

Q: Did you check for blood pressure?
A: No.

Q: Did you check for breathing?
A: No.

Q: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
A: No.

Q: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
A: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.

Q: But could the patient have still been alive nevertheless?
A: It is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law somewhere.

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TODAY IN TRIVIA: Interesting facts about FEET.

~The foot is an intricate structure containing 26 bones. Thirty-three joints, 107 ligaments, 19 muscles, and tendons hold the structure together and allow it to move in a variety of ways.

~Women have about four times as many foot problems as men because of wearing heels.

~The American Podiatric Medical Association says the average person takes 8,000 to 10,000 steps a day. Those cover several miles, and they all add up to about 115,000 miles in a lifetime — more than four times the circumference of the globe.

~Your feet mirror your general health. Such conditions as arthritis, diabetes, nerve and circulatory disorders can show their initial symptoms in the feet. Foot ailments can be your first sign of more serious medical problems. Arthritis is the number one cause of disability in America.

~As a person’s income increases, the prevalence of foot problems decreases.

~The first foot coverings were probably animal skins, which Stone Age peoples in northern Europe and ~Asia tied around their ankles in cold wether.

~The world’s largets feet belongs to Matthew McGrory who wears US size of 28 ½ shoes

~The first shoes were invented 5,000 years ago.

~It is in the afternoon that is the perfect time to buy shoes because the feet tend to be more swollen then.

~The average foot gets 2 sizes longer when a person stands up.

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QUIP OF THE DAY: Never follow anyone’s path. Go your own way and leave a trail. – Damien Heath

THAT’S (ALMOST) ALL FOLKS!

Thought for the day. . .

Gratefulness is the key to a happy life that we hold in our hands, because if we are not grateful, then no matter how much we have we will not be happy — because we will always want to have something else or something more. – David Steindl-Rast